The first few seconds of the ambush were absolute, unmitigated chaos.

  Finn and Edgar were trembling in shock. Reynar was literally paralyzed with terror. And I was standing in the center, silently projecting a highly pressurized water dome to keep us from being instantly incinerated by goblin fireballs.

  But after the initial, paralyzing shock... something inside them clicked.

  Finn gritted his teeth, his eyes snapping into focus. "ZEN! SLOW THEM DOWN! I'M GOING TO BLIND THEM!"

  "AND I'LL CRUSH THEIR ARMOR!" Edgar roared, shaking off his fear. "REYNAR, PROTECT ZEN!"

  It was the very first time our wildly unbalanced, chaotic squad actually functioned as a coherent team.

  Finn thrust his hands forward. Instead of an uncontrollable torrent of fire, he released a rapid series of blinding, explosive flashes. The heavily armored dire bears, though trained for combat, recoiled from the intense light, their goblin riders throwing their arms over their eyes.

  I seized the opening. I swept my hand across the floor, conjuring a razor-thin layer of frost. Then, I directed my mana specifically at the bears' massive paws. The ice crawled upward, latching onto their fur and freezing the joints of their iron armor.

  One of the Black Goblins shrieked, desperately hacking at the ice with his lance, but I "accidentally" reinforced the structure. The bears' movements became sluggish and heavy.

  But in that exact moment, my demonic instincts flared.

  From the shadows behind us, five goblin assassins were sprinting toward our blind spot, their jagged daggers dripping with venom. And directly behind them, three more fireballs were arcing through the air, aimed straight at my back.

  "REYNAR!" I shouted. "REYNAR, MOVE!"

  He didn't react. His eyes were glazed over, his hands shaking violently.

  I cursed internally, preparing to silently deploy a secondary barrier behind me...

  And suddenly—he woke up.

  It was as if an invisible force had violently slapped him across the face. His pupils contracted. The mana around his body didn't just flare; it exploded like a localized hurricane.

  "STAY AWAY FROM MY FRIENDS!!!" Reynar screamed, his voice cracking as he physically spat out his own terror.

  The air howled.

  He thrust both hands outward, summoning a massive wall of compressed wind. The three fireballs slammed into the gale and were instantly deflected, shattering harmlessly against the cavern ceiling.

  The backlash of the wind hit the five goblin assassins like a physical battering ram, launching them backward to smash brutally against the stone walls.

  But Reynar didn't stop there. He lunged forward, his eyes burning with adrenaline, and blasted the closest surviving goblin point-blank in the chest with a concentrated vortex of air. The goblin flew across the room and didn't get back up.

  Finn blinked in absolute shock. "...Reynar? What the hell was that?!"

  Reynar was still trembling, but his mana was no longer weak or wavering. It was sharp. Real. Alive.

  "I... I WON'T LET THEM TOUCH YOU GUYS!" he yelled defensively.

  In that moment, he wasn't a coward. He was a true Mage of the Air.

  Meanwhile, Edgar was orchestrating pure madness.

  With Finn blinding the vanguard and me locking their feet in ice, Edgar saw his opening. "COVER ME!!" he roared, and sprinted directly toward the closest immobilized bear.

  He didn't attack the beast. He literally leapt onto it, slamming his bare palms against its heavy iron plating.

  The metal shuddered violently. Then, infused with his raw mana, it began to twist and warp.

  The Black Goblin rider screamed in confusion, "GAAAH—?!"

  And then, the bear's own armor rapidly extruded thick, jagged iron spikes... pointing inward.

  With a sickening crunch, the rider was impaled by his own mount's armor and slumped forward, dead.

  "And now for YOU!!" Edgar snarled at the bear.

  Manipulating the iron plating like a terrifying puppeteer, he forced the armor to constrict. The enchanted metal became a crushing cage. The bear roared in agony... and collapsed under the immense pressure.

  Finn let out a low whistle. "...Edgar, you are a deeply terrifying human being."

  Edgar, panting heavily, stared at his own hands. "I... I didn't even know I could do that..."

  From that point on, we controlled the flow of the battle.

  I froze the targets. Finn cleared the fodder with controlled bursts of fire. Edgar executed precise, brutal strikes using the enemies' own weapons and armor against them. Reynar maintained an impenetrable gale to protect us from long-range attacks.

  We moved like a synchronized, well-oiled machine.

  The goblin shamans desperately tried to counterattack, but my ice spears—thrown "clumsily and randomly"—somehow always managed to precisely pierce their palms right as they were gathering mana, disrupting their spells.

  The Black Goblins were highly intelligent, but against a unified team wielding four complementary elements... they didn't stand a chance.

  Five minutes later, the cavern was dead silent.

  A spatial tear ripped open in the center of the room, and the instructor stepped through.

  He slowly surveyed the aftermath. The spiked, crushed armor of the dire bears. The scorched stone walls. The frozen goblin corpses. Reynar's residual wind currents still whistling through the chamber. Edgar standing triumphantly on the carcass of a bear. Finn smelling entirely of ozone and burned hair.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  And me, sitting on the floor, doing my absolute best to look like I was one breath away from dying of mana exhaustion.

  The instructor smiled thinly. "Congratulations. You have successfully cleared your first dungeon sector independently."

  Reynar instantly collapsed onto his back in relief. Finn tried to strike a cool pose, completely ignoring his singed eyebrows. Edgar rubbed his forearms, his muscles still twitching from the strain of transmutating enchanted iron.

  "Rest up," the instructor added ruthlessly. "Over the next three days, you will clear five more sectors. The difficulty will increase exponentially. Prepare yourselves."

  We exchanged horrified glances.

  "F-Five...?" Finn croaked. "I am actually going to die..." Reynar whimpered. "I want to go home..." Edgar groaned.

  I just sighed internally. That was almost insultingly easy. But for their sake... I suppose I can pretend to be terrified.

  The Descent into Hell

  Over the next three days, we were pushed to the absolute breaking point.

  We were no longer the arrogant, inexperienced students who had walked into the first cave. The subsequent dungeon sectors had been a brutal, unrelenting school of survival.

  Vicious traps. Disorienting spatial loops. Endless, pitch-black corridors. Monstrous boss chambers. Grueling, drawn-out battles. Sleepless nights spent shivering in cold stone tunnels, taking turns standing watch.

  By the time we reached the end of the fourth sector, every single squad was completely wrung out. We were exhausted, bruised, and running on fumes.

  And yet, we kept walking. Because we were the Elite Class. Because we couldn't show weakness. Because the instructor had warned us: "The fifth cavern is the hardest. You must endure."

  We genuinely believed we were ready for it.

  We were catastrophically wrong.

  We had been wandering the fifth sector for twenty-four hours. The cave system felt infinite. The tunnels twisted, intersected, and doubled back on themselves. Sometimes we would walk through the exact same chamber three times, as if the dungeon itself was alive and actively shifting its architecture to trap us.

  The air was thick with fog and the sickening stench of rot. The only sound was the hollow echo of our own footsteps.

  No one spoke anymore. We were conserving every ounce of energy.

  Finn had become dead quiet and deadly serious—a terrifying first for him. Edgar walked with heavy, calculated steps, conserving his strength for the inevitable fight. Reynar—the boy who used to jump at shadows—now walked with his head high, constantly reading the air currents, actively shielding our flanks.

  And I... I just continued to play the role, panting and dragging my feet right alongside them. Let them think I was growing with them.

  And then, we made a fatal mistake.

  We walked into a massive, cavernous hall. It was entirely empty.

  Too empty.

  "Careful..." I started to say, feeling the subtle distortion of spatial mana beneath the stone.

  But it was too late.

  Edgar's heavy boot stepped on a slightly raised stone tile. A mechanical CLICK echoed through the chamber.

  The world violently lurched.

  A forced teleportation trap.

  When my vision cleared, we had been dropped directly into the deepest circle of hell.

  The Final Stand

  We found ourselves on a high ridge overlooking a gargantuan subterranean cavern.

  And in the center of the valley below... were the other two squads.

  Elinia's squad. And Noah's squad.

  They were completely surrounded.

  It wasn't a "group" of enemies. It wasn't a "platoon." It was a horde.

  I quickly scanned the battlefield. Nearly two hundred goblins clad in heavy leather armor. Thirty long-range shamans lobbing continuous volleys of fire. Ten necromancers chanting endlessly, raising the fallen over and over again. And roughly seventy massive, brutally scarred orcs wearing bone masks, wielding crude iron axes.

  And trapped in the dead center of that maelstrom was the proud Elite Class of the Royal Academy...

  ...and they were being slaughtered.

  Elinia was bleeding from a cut on her forehead. The royal aura around her was flickering erratically—a deadly sign of severe mana depletion. Tara was barely able to lift her sword. Siren was heaving for breath, his usual flawless composure completely shattered. Astra was collapsing to her knees after every single healing spell, physically weeping from exhaustion. Miella and Kairen had already taken several grievous wounds, yet they stubbornly kept forcing themselves back to their feet.

  And Noah... Noah stood perfectly still, his face as white as a sheet, his arm extended high into the air. He was desperately maintaining a massive, shimmering illusionary dome to shield Astra so she could triage the dying. His eyes were completely hollow.

  They had been trapped down there for hours.

  No breaks. No rest. No food. No water. No hope.

  They were on the absolute brink of annihilation.

  Suddenly, Elinia raised her head. She looked up toward the ridge.

  Our eyes met across the chaotic battlefield.

  And for the first time in her life, I saw pure, unfiltered relief in her icy eyes. Not pride. Not arrogance. Not the cold superiority of a Royal Heir. Just the desperate, human joy of salvation.

  She didn't shout. But I could read her lips perfectly.

  "You came..."

  The Battle That Became a Legend

  We didn't wait for orders. We didn't discuss a plan. We moved purely on instinct.

  "WE'RE GOING IN!" Finn roared, his exhaustion vanishing in an instant.

  He threw himself off the ridge, erupting into a blinding pillar of fire as he landed in the thick of the horde, instantly incinerating a dozen goblins and blinding the archers.

  Edgar landed like a meteor, slamming his hands into the stone. He didn't just manipulate weapons; he violently warped the iron armor of the orcs, driving their own breastplates inward to crush their ribs.

  Reynar dropped into the fray, immediately summoning a localized tornado that violently deflected a volley of fireballs away from the exhausted healers.

  I landed silently beside Elinia. I didn't hold back anymore—well, I held back enough not to reveal my demonic origin, but I stopped playing the weakling entirely.

  I unleashed a relentless barrage of ice spears. I froze the ground beneath the orcs to shatter their footing. I created perfectly angled ice ramps to give our swordsmen aerial leverage. I intercepted hostile spells mid-air with dense water bullets.

  The dynamic shifted instantly.

  The mages threw up synchronized shields. The swordsmen carved a bloody path through the chaos. Astra, sobbing with relief, continued chain-healing everyone in range.

  We fought our way forward. Inch by agonizing inch. Meters were paid for in blood, ice, fire, and steam.

  "THE NECROMANCERS!" I yelled over the din of battle. "THEY ARE THE CORE! IF THEY LIVE, THIS NEVER ENDS!"

  Siren, Tara, Miella, and Kairen—running on pure, blind adrenaline—nodded and surged forward.

  I blanketed the battlefield in a frictionless sheet of black ice, sending dozens of orcs crashing to the ground. Elinia transmuted the cavern walls into massive stone spikes, impaling the shamans. Finn set the very air on fire. Edgar wielded the enemy's dropped weapons like a telekinetic storm of blades. Lucille, blood dripping from her nose, desperately teleported our swordsmen directly into striking distance.

  We reached the first necromancer. Dead.

  The second. Dead.

  The third...

  And slowly, the endless tide began to break.

  The deafening roar of the cavern began to quiet. The necromancers fell one by one. The undead collapsed into dust. The remaining goblins broke ranks and fled into the dark.

  And finally... the last orc hit the ground.

  The horde was broken. The cavern fell dead silent.

  The Aftermath

  Every single one of us collapsed.

  Some sat. Some lay flat on their backs. Some slumped against the blood-stained stone walls.

  Elinia finally dropped her arms, her eyes rolling back as she lost consciousness before she even hit the floor. Siren collapsed immediately beside her. Astra lay motionless, too exhausted to even twitch. Noah was shaking violently, his arms locked in position, still trying to maintain an illusionary dome that was no longer necessary.

  We lay there in the dark for three hours.

  No one spoke. No one moved. We just... existed. And breathed.

  I made sure to lie on my back, panting heavily, looking just as dead as the rest of them. But beneath the surface, I was discreetly and gently projecting a soothing, microscopic aura of cold mana over the entire group, stabilizing their erratic heart rates and artificially speeding up their mana recovery.

  Eventually, the spatial array activated above us.

  When we were teleported back to the Academy courtyard, the faculty was waiting.

  The instructors stared at us in absolute, unadulterated shock. We were covered in blood, soot, monster viscera, and dirt. We looked like a squad of seasoned war veterans returning from hell.

  "You're... you're all alive?" the combat instructor breathed in disbelief. "Every single one of you?! How did you...?"

  None of us answered. We just stood there in exhausted, unified silence.

  And for the very first time since the Academy opened... the instructors didn't single anyone out for praise.

  They didn't praise Elinia. They didn't praise Siren. They didn't praise me. They didn't praise Finn.

  They praised all of us. Equally.

  Because what had happened in that cave wasn't a victory of individual magical talent.

  It was a victory of absolute, unbreakable Will.