"What now?" Seris Moonlight asked.
Phoenix paused, analyzing the situation before responding.
"For now, we need to leave before reinforcements arrive. But…"
He cast a glance across the battlefield, now littered with corpses—and the crows that had found a lavish feast.
"You're thinking of looting the bodies, aren't you? Professor Phoenix, what happened to your manners? Hehe~"
Aegon chuckled from behind the group, calmly cleaning his sword. Like Phoenix, he looked untouched by the battle.
"Looting?" several students echoed, reacting in a mix of shock and discomfort.
Some looked disgusted, hesitant. Others remained impassive.
Overall, the idea of tampering with the dead was foreign to them—repulsive even. They had lived far from such grim realities.
"We're low on supplies. Right now, acquiring resources is a top priority."
Food. Clothing. Weapons. Anything that could improve their chances of survival, even slightly, was worth securing. That was Phoenix's reasoning.
But Aegon shook his head.
"It's pointless. Didn't you notice? We just fought the lowest scum of the Ultras. Barely above animals. What valuables do you expect to find on them?"
He spoke with quiet certainty, never glancing up—his attention entirely on his now-clean blade.
Phoenix couldn't deny his point. The Ultras soldiers had indeed looked more like empty husks than thinking beings.
Still—
"You may be right. But let me ask ..how many did we fight here?"
"No idea. You handled most of them yourself… maybe a few thousand?"
"Exactly. Thousands. I'm sure at least a handful had something useful."
No one knew how long they'd be stranded in this foreign land. They were running dangerously low on resources.
"Something useful? Even if they had anything, you probably incinerated it with their bodies, Professor Phoenix. You're wasting your time."
Aegon opposed Phoenix directly, as if this wasn't the first time they'd clashed on such a matter.
"Then one hour."
"What?"
"We search for just one hour. Then we move."
The battle had just ended, and lingering too long was unwise. Phoenix offered a compromise.
Aegon sighed, closing his eyes. He could see Phoenix wouldn't back down.
"Do whatever you want."
Everyone in the Elite Class had heard the exchange. To an outsider, it might've sounded like a conversation between equals.
And yet the truly astonishing thing was that a B rank like Aegon could speak to someone like Phoenix—an SS rank—without flinching.
Wherever he went, the prince commanded presence.
The presence of a true king.
"It's settled then," Phoenix declared. "Those of you still fit for battle will assist me in the search. I know this isn't something you're used to… but if we want to survive, we have to do what it takes."
Phoenix addressed everyone, but most of them couldn't even bring themselves to meet his eyes.
Despite their overwhelming victory, the truth was—it hadn't been easy.
The students were in varying states.
Snow and Frey still had enough strength to fight if needed, but what about the rest?
They were utterly exhausted.
Lara Croft could barely hold her bow anymore, her muscles worn and trembling from too many repeated shots. That alone said everything.
"I'll go," Frey said, unwilling to remain near the prince any longer. Looting corpses felt more bearable to him.
Snow followed suit. "We'll help too. Other than aura depletion, we're not really hurt."
Selina volunteered as well, joined by the mage Xevier.
"We need to recover the magic traps we scattered across the battlefield anyway, so we can do both," Xevier added.
Phoenix nodded and also called on Ghost, Danzo, and Daemon to join them. Daemon, however, refused.
In the end, seven of them stepped forward to retrieve what they could from the fallen, while the rest watched silently.
"How can they do something so vile?" Saint Candidate Emilia said, sadness painting her face as she watched Frey and the others search the corpses with emotionless expressions.
Seris, standing nearby, shook her head. "You're too innocent, Emilia."
"Am I the strange one here?!" Emilia asked, clinging to her beliefs.
She had opposed Phoenix's proposal from the beginning, but lacked the courage to object out loud.
"At times like these, we do whatever it takes to survive. Look at them. We already killed them. What difference does looting their corpses make? They're dead either way."
"But... what separates us from animals, then?"
Emilia's gaze shifted to the crows still pecking at the dead.
"There are boundaries given to us by the Lord of Light. Boundaries we must never cross."
Her voice trembled, but her conviction remained unshaken.
Seris didn't know how to respond. People like Emilia were the worst in these moments—convinced their beliefs were absolute, unwilling to bend no matter what.
But the reply came from someone else entirely.
"What kind of drugs do they feed you at the church?!"
It was Daemon, clearly fed up with her moral outcry.
"What?"
"Wake the hell up, you naive little girl, and try flipping the board for once. Put yourself in their shoes."
"Daemon..." Seris tried to stop him, but he pressed on.
"Let me spell it out for you. If the roles were reversed, they wouldn't just loot your corpse. They'd take turns raping you—again and again—until your fragile little body shattered to pieces !"
His brutal tone left Emilia in stunned silence, mouth open, words failing her.
"Take your dumb sense of morality and toss it in the nearest trash heap. The only thing that matters in this world is survival. You can only afford to spout this crap because you're on the winning side. You and your entire church are nothing but hypocrites!"
For some reason, Daemon looked even larger than usual as he shouted.
"Hy...pocrites?" Emilia murmured, right before Daemon roared:
"YES, HYPOCRITES!"
A heavy silence followed.
Then came the sound of soft sobbing.
Daemon's jaw dropped as Emilia suddenly burst into tears.
Without warning, he had made her cry like a child.
The girls nearby immediately gathered around to comfort her, glaring at Daemon with disgust and contempt in their eyes.
He scoffed, spat on the ground, and stormed off, flipping them off as he went.
"What kind of pathetic fools have I gotten stuck with?"
He muttered the words and disappeared, his muscular back fading into the distance.
...
...
...
Far from the commotion between Daemon and Emilia, Princess Sansa sat alone, staring at the field of corpses—specifically, at Frey.
He was rummaging through the dead one by one, his face blank, showing no emotion at all.
"I can't read him…"
Sansa muttered. She couldn't figure out what was going through his mind.
Ever since his hair had turned white out of nowhere, she hadn't been able to read him like she used to—except in rare moments.
Unless he lowered his defenses, it was impossible to see through him.
His presence had become completely enigmatic… but for some reason, she couldn't tear her eyes away.
"He's… good at handling corpses," she murmured under her breath, only for a sudden voice to interrupt.
"Yeah… like he's used to it."
Sansa turned to find a familiar girl standing beside her.
"Clana…"
Clana Starlight—Frey's relative. The girl greeted the princess with a gentle smile.