Bloodhound’s Regression Instinct

Chapter-26

On the way back to the dorm.

Someone grabbed Yan’s shoulder.

“What’s going on?”

It was Roman.

He glared at Yan with a fierce look in his eyes.

He was angry that Yan didn’t hold his hand before, but he understood.

He believed that even if he didn’t hold his hand, Yan would let him know when it was time to escape.

But lately, Yan was being called by the instructors and meeting with the chief instructor more often.

He didn’t know if it was because he was in the first place, or if there was some other reason.

For example… if he gave up on escaping and wanted to stay here.

“What happened to what you said about escaping?”

What about the promise he made to him?

Roman’s pupils burned with rage.

Yan smirked bitterly.

‘I had no choice but to become a liar.’

He felt a slight pang of conscience.

But he had his things to do.

“Postponed.”

“What?”

“I have something to look into here. So when the opportunity comes, you guys go without me.”

“Do you think that makes sense?”

Roman’s fierce aura swept over him.

Yan’s eyes sparkled.

‘This guy… he already learned mana?’

As far as he knew, Roman couldn’t even feel mana, let alone use it, before he was falsely accused.

But now, Roman was handling mana, albeit clumsily, in just a day or two.

‘Is this the talent of the future empire’s seven stars?’

He was at least at the level of what they called the eighth rank.

Considering that he was not even close to the tenth rank until recently, it was an amazing growth.

Yan clicked his tongue at Roman’s rapid growth.

Anyway.

He had no intention of putting up with Roman’s childishness.

“Do you think it doesn’t? Did I have to lead you guys out like a nanny?”

“…”

Roman gritted his teeth.

To him, a promise was sacred.

He had to keep it no matter what happened.

And if he wasn’t confident, he shouldn’t have made it in the first place.

That was his most important value and belief.

Yan didn’t care whether Roman gritted his teeth or not, and continued.

“I only said there would be another chance, not that I would make it and shove it in your mouth. Don’t delude yourself.”

As he finished, Roman stared at Yan as if he was going to bore a hole through him.

Silence ensued.

After a few minutes.

“…Fine. I see what kind of person you are.”

With that, Roman turned his body and left his own way.

Yan smiled bitterly.

He hated Roman in his previous life, but he felt somewhat attached to him in this life.

“They seem to have some trouble.”

The one who appeared this time was Kasa Ifrain.

He looked at Roman disappearing in the distance, then looked at Yan and smiled brightly.

“It’s nothing. He wanted to join hands with me in this project.”

Yan crossed his arms.

He was curious what Kasa Ifrain would propose.

If he brought something that appealed to him, he had no reason not to join hands.

“What’s in it for me if I join hands?”

“First of all, the risk of you dying in this project is almost gone.”

Yan’s eyes showed disappointment.

Kasa didn’t notice that and continued.

“Second, when you get out of here, I’ll help you to get out of the empire safely.”

“How?”

“Did you forget that I’m from the Ifrain family? The traitor of the Ifrain family. How do you think I got here without any trouble from other nobles?”

The Ifrain family was dragged to the gallows for treason.

Among them, if it weren’t for the help of his grandfather’s close friend, who was the former head of the family, Kasa wouldn’t be here either.

He barely saved his life, but.

The world was no different from hell for the successor who lost the glory and authority of a noble family.

To the greedy ones, Kasa was like a treasure chest containing the Ifrain family’s secrets and various secrets.

The main house was safe under the protection of the lords who had been friendly with the guardian magic circle for generations, but not outside.

The reason why Kasa could come here with his limbs intact was.

“I guess you have a hidden passage or something?”

“When this training center was built, one of the families that participated in the design was ours.

So it was no big deal to make a passage that connects this place and our family.”

Kasa thought that Yan would definitely join hands with him if he heard this offer.

But.

“That’s nothing. Bring me something better.”

Yan didn’t need any of those things.

‘What does he want from a kid?’

Kasa blocked Yan’s way with a flustered expression.

“Hey, wait a minute.”

“…?”

Kasa had an unexpected face.

Yan’s eyes narrowed.

‘Are they all too young? Did I expect too much?’

Roman trusted others too much and didn’t prepare for any contingencies.

Kasa was either spoiled because he grew up like that, or he was arrogant because he only dealt with kids.

“This is enough, isn’t it? Aren’t these what you want?”

Yan sighed deeply at Kasa’s words.

“You’re saying the risk of dying in this project is gone? You’ll give me a hole to get out of the empire?”

Kasa swallowed his saliva.

“How are you going to guarantee my safety? You’re not stronger than me, you don’t show me anything special, you haven’t proven anything, and you want me to believe that?”

Everything Kasa showed him was nothing but inferior to Yan.

He didn’t care if the instructors praised his dragon art.

He gathered the kids and built up his power to deter other trainees, but it was nothing but a sand castle without a clear center.

And Kasa was still lacking to be a clear center.

“That, that’s!”

“That hole, what about it? Do you think the empire is water? You think you’re so great, that no one knows about that hole and you got here safely?”

A hole?

What’s that. If he tries to escape from here, does he think the special forces will just watch?

That’s nonsense.

He was getting annoyed.

He had a lot to do, and he had a headache just thinking about what to do next.

He felt pathetic for advising himself.

This is not, a teacher or anything.

“If you want to join hands with me, bring me something more tempting.”

How did such a guy become that legend?

Yan spat out his tongue and left his seat.

Kasa stood there like a scarecrow, watching Yan’s back disappear.

Lorena watched them quietly from behind.

Her eyes narrowed.

‘What’s so special about him that those guys are so restless?’

Number 12, Roman.

He was quite different from her in terms of numbers, but he was not an ordinary guy according to what he saw in the first test.

He was the one who broke the prejudice that big guys are stupid.

He seemed quite used to building his own power and standing above others, and he seemed to have a good head.

He was a dark horse who rose to fame in this test.

And number 3, Kasa.

He was her rival in her mind.

Cruel was strong, but he had a vicious personality and was a lone wolf, so she didn’t care about him, thinking he would fall as soon as a joint test that required cooperation among trainees came out.

But Kasa was different.

He skillfully captured and persuaded the trainees in the first test, and hid his own power as much as possible while completing the test objective.

She didn’t know how good his real skills were, but they weren’t low.

But she didn’t think that Cruel, Roman, and Kasa were better than her.

‘But what about him?’

The guy who suddenly fell from the sky and surpassed her and became the first place, Yan.

She began to feel a slight rivalry with his unknown identity.

* * *

The next morning.

All the trainees gathered in the central hall on the first floor at the call of the instructors.

“From today, we will start a two-year intensive training.”

Intensive training?

The trainees tilted their heads.

Aren’t they already doing something that can be called training?

In the morning, they learned various skills and tactics from the instructors, and in the afternoon, they found and practiced the arts that suited them in the martial arts hall.

The instructor who stood on the podium seemed to know their questions and said.

“This is not a bland lesson like before, but a training to acquire the spirit that suits the ‘Dragon Knights’.”

The instructor twisted his mouth.

“There will be casualties. No, there must be casualties.”

The atmosphere in the central hall froze.

The instructor chuckled.

“From now on, we will only pick out the gems among you.”

As he finished, Cruel raised his hand.

“I don’t see number 974.”

Cruel had found an art that would pay back all the humiliation he had suffered from Yan in the royal martial arts hall.

He vowed to rip Yan’s throat with his own hands, but he was not in the line.

The instructor heard a snort from him.

“He’s an exception!”

“…?”

“…Why!”

Cruel and some of the trainees widened their eyes.

“Wh, why! He’s also training with us…!”

“Shut up!”

The instructor cut off Cruel’s words.

He was the instructor who had argued with the chief instructor a while ago.

He also wanted to comfort the soul of his colleague who was torn to pieces and killed by Yan, but.

He had no choice but to give up because of the chief instructor who was covering him.

“Do you think he will be treated the same as you guys who are overwhelmingly the first place?”

At that, Kasa muttered in a hollow voice.

“He knew this situation since yesterday.”

He understood why Yan was so confident.

“If he knew he was out of this sieve, he would have done that.”

Roman’s face was distorted.

‘This hypocrite bastard. He never intended to leave in the first place.’

He was convinced that Yan was already on the same side as the chief instructor.

The instructor in front smiled.

The others might not know, but the ones who could be called the core of this project seemed to have a grudge against Yan.

“From now on, two years!”

He shouted in a loud voice.

The trainees perked up their ears.

“Until you reach the level that the instructors expect, all the instructors will put you in extreme situations!”

The trainees who heard the instructor’s words were divided into three categories.

Those who didn’t understand what he was saying, those who turned pale, and those who shone their eyes.

“And when this intensive training is over, the second test will be announced soon, so keep that in mind.”

* * *

At that moment.

Yan was facing the chief instructor.

They were standing near the hill where the chief instructor had demonstrated the black shadow sword the day before.

“Do you know why I’m teaching you one-on-one?”

“…?”

“You told me something before, right? It seemed like it could be profitable.”

Yan tilted his head.

What did he tell him before?

“Raid the special forces commander’s money source.”

Oh, was that it?

That’s why he suddenly showed this trust.

Yan nodded and the chief instructor chuckled and said.

“You’re lucky. You’ll get a completely different training from those trainees over there.

But surviving is up to you.”

The chief instructor laughed and wrapped his arm around Yan’s shoulder.

“Did you say goodbye to your friends?”

“I don’t have anyone to call a friend.”

“Really? What about that… what was his name? Ah, Roman! I thought you were pretty close with him since you planned to escape together?”

“Not really. Let’s start the training.”

“Did you learn what I gave you?”

“Yes, roughly.”

Yan dusted off his fists.

Then he grabbed one of the training swords on the ground.

From today, the intensive training period begins.

The trainees in the training center will be trained in extreme situations for two years under the instructors’ tyranny.

The surviving trainees will grow dramatically in every aspect, from arts to physical and mental strength.

Of course, there will be many dropouts along the way, and the eliminated trainees will be mercilessly killed.

The instructors won’t care about that and only think about the results.

And he…

“Shall we start? I’ll count to ten.”

For the next two years.

With the vision he gave him and this body.

Inside the hill.

“Ten, nine…”

Clang-!

“Wow, when did you learn the body enhancement art? You’re fast.”

He had to survive from the chief instructor.

* * *

Two years passed like an arrow.

During that time, the trainees learned the basic art of the special forces, the ‘Dark Shadow’.

The Dark Shadow consisted of three sword styles, one body enhancement art, and a mana manipulation method.

As a basic art, it not only strengthened the body and the mana road, but also allowed them to handle the attribute of ‘darkness’, that is, the negative energy, albeit weakly.

But it was not easy to learn it.

The instructors trained the trainees almost to death in order to make them perfect in a short time.

Out of the nearly 800 trainees, only 200 survived until the end of the intensive training.

More than half of the trainees were beaten by the instructors or fell into traps and died.

Not to mention, there were countless trainees who died in the life-and-death duels that were held periodically.

But the dead trainees were the dead trainees.

The level of the surviving trainees rose dramatically, and their eyes were full of fierce hostility because of the Dark Shadow.

There were quite a few trainees who became so fierce that they would emit killing intent just by being near.

The biggest achievement was the four who showed visible results in the first test.

The skill test that was held during the two-year intensive training period.

There, Lorena, Cruel, Kasa, and Roman never fell out of the top five.

Kasa, Cruel, Roman.

These three always rotated the third place, and the ones below them also kept changing.

Of course, as time went by, Cruel gradually solidified his third place.

But there was something that didn’t change.

First place. Number 974, Yan

Second place. Number 1, Lorena

It was their rank with Yan.

He felt nauseous even after training and practicing hard, but every time the scorecard was updated, he was always at the top.

“Can I see that kid today?”

Cruel gritted his teeth next to him.

Lorena quietly glared at the first place on the scorecard.

She would have accepted it if she had seen his skills with her own eyes, but she was annoyed because she didn’t.

The instructor on the podium looked at the trainees who had a completely different aura than two years ago and smiled with satisfaction.

“Today, we finish the intensive training!”

There probably had never been such a large number of talents in the Dragon Knight project so far.

The other trainees were not disappointed either.

But the top four were all monsters.

Lorena and Cruel handled the sword energy skillfully.

They reached the level of a mature 6th-grade knight.

In this state, they could get any important position in any knight order.

When the skill test with the instructor one-on-one was approaching, even the decent instructors avoided them.

The strong are respected, the weak are despised. This applied to the instructors as well.

No matter how small the difference between the instructors and their level was, the difference in the vision and the art they used was huge.

There was even a case where an instructor died by Cruel’s sword in a guided duel.

Roman and Kasa were close to 6th grade, but not quite.

But they showed results in something other than power.

They built their own forces almost to the level of an organization or an army.

Roman mainly gathered the trainees from other lands, and had nearly fifty subordinates.

Kasa made the trainees from the empire’s commoners and the lower nobles from the border, nearly eighty trainees, his fervent followers.

“Is this kid absent today?”

Cruel looked around for someone.

His eyes were full of killing intent.

‘Number 974… I endured this shitty two years to tear your limbs apart.’

He had been talented since before entering the training center, but his growth was blocked by his arrogance.

He met Yan and grew explosively.

With the sole determination to take revenge.

‘Where are you, you bastard!’

Yan was nowhere to be seen for the two years of intensive training.

He wondered if he was in his personal quarters, but he sneaked in and only found furniture covered with dust.

Next to him, a bulky guy and a snake-like guy were also looking for Yan.

As the instructor’s speech on the podium was about to end.

Crash-!

Something broke the window and flew in with a fierce momentum.

Clack!

It grazed Cruel’s cheek at the speed of light and slammed into the ground, still trembling.

“…Fuck!”

Cruel flinched.

The blood from his cheek touched his lips.

His pupils shook violently as he confirmed what was stuck on the ground.

It was a fragment of a training sword.

As soon as he saw it, he sensed whose work it was.

“This, this son of a bitch!”

The only one who could use a training sword while not being here.

It was Yan, whom he wanted to kill so much.