“Great Deus Crowned Above, your light falls over the earth, and your deeds will never rot away. Your faithful followers beg of you here—grant us your blessing!

—With respect from Ebosger Academy.”

That was Ebosger Academy’s custom every year when it came time to form teams: pray to a god.

Word was, the god could glimpse the future. So the academy let the god decide how the team assignments for group tasks were made.

Plainly speaking, it made no damn sense.

Seven people to a team. The so-called divine assignment was completely random. Last year, for one, a dwarf and an elf got thrown into the same group. Everybody knew those two races were sworn enemies. Their blood feud went back more than a thousand years—elves had once enslaved dwarves, dwarves rose up, and the two sides hacked at each other for centuries until both were left bleeding and broken, forced to lie low and recover.

Enemies met face-to-face. What happened after was obvious enough without saying it out loud.

And that was hardly the only case.

A few years back, the princess of Yadu and the imperial crown princess of Aorweisa got assigned to the same team. Their two nations already scraped against each other like blades. That one incident was enough to spark another war. Cases like that were too many to count.

The white-haired, blue-eyed girl let out a soft sigh.

She was striking to look at, the kind of beauty that caught in the throat—long curled lashes, features fine as if carved with care. But she wore a plain brown work uniform, and in the noisy crush around her, she didn’t stand out at all.

Then again, calling it a crowd of people wasn’t quite right.

Ebosger didn’t look down on demi-humans. It also had aid plans for remote towns and tuition reductions. Whatever race you were, if you passed the entrance exam, you could study here.

The blue-eyed girl lowered her gaze. In her hand was a piece of white bread handed out next door by Luliteya Academy.

Luliteya Academy—under the direct wing of the church, backed by papal recommendation, devoted to the God of Light Luliteya, the one said to be softest toward believers. Monthly stipends. Job placement after graduation.

And most important of all—

You could choose your own team.

On this continent, no matter which academy you went to, you could only graduate if your team’s win rate over three years reached 75.31%.

The whole team’s win rate.

And during those three years, every competition counted. Big ones like inter-academy leagues and matches against military schools. Small ones like the summer shaved-ice creativity contest. Every last one needed teamwork.

Good teammates meant steady credits and a clear road ahead.

Randomly assigned teammates meant trouble. Too many unknowns. Too many ways for a life to get wrecked.

The girl ate the white bread slowly, unhurried.

Her wrist was slender, almost fragile. Blue-violet veins showed faintly beneath the skin, like flowers blooming in silence.

“I really want to go to Luliteya Academy…”

The sigh slipped from her lips, heavy with old weariness, the kind that didn’t belong on a young face.

The voices around her crashed together in a mess of noise.

No one noticed that one quiet line.

The girl wolfed down the bread in a few quick bites, then rose on tiptoe and strained to see the golden letters beneath the god statue in the distance.

That, they said, was the team list granted by the god Deyus.

Then a foul stench rolled over.

Her brows knotted hard. She flicked a spell over herself, sealing off the smell at once.

Crocodile folk from the swamp had just passed by her side.

The girl muttered, eyes dead.

“No offense to any race, but when the academy takes students, could they at least ask for basic hygiene? I’m half-merfolk. If this keeps up, these smells are going to kill me before graduation—”

She shut her eyes.

When she opened them again, her blue eyes had gone deep and dark, like a starless night. Water slipped through her fingers, tame and clingy, winding around her hand like a little water snake.

“The Grand Prince’s team list is out!”

“Gods above—under Lord Deyus’s gaze, which poor bastard got put in the same squad as him?”

“As long as it’s not me…”

Lyrel Norvia snapped out of that dangerous state. Hearing the Godbird folk talking not far away, she fell silent and thought.

She had no steady source of money. In her first year at Ebosger Academy, she had spent all her time studying while scraping by with work.

So she did not know many of her classmates. At best, she could barely match names to faces.

Even so, one name still rang like thunder.

Shute Remiaz.

A royal with no right to inherit the throne, yet spoiled to the bone. His mother was a famous socialite, and he himself was an elegant, arrogant madman.

Probably the kind who loved trouble for the sheer joy of it.

In the cracks between shifts, while Lyrel Norvia ran herself ragged just to live, she would often hear some fresh, explosive scandal about His Highness Shute.

One day he was organizing an independence march for the elves.

The next, he had burned down the divine palace enshrined by the royal house.

The day after that, he got blind drunk during an academy assessment and drove off a demi-god professor known for a saint’s temper.

Shute Remiaz meant trouble.

Shute Remiaz meant a future full of pits and blades.

Lyrel Norvia made her judgment on the spot, then prayed with all sincerity to whichever god was willing to listen.

“Please, not with him. Amen.”

The girl in brown work clothes gathered up her white, curly long hair and tied it into a little tuft. Her ears stood straight, listening hard to the low gossip from the Divine Bird folk off to her front right.

Their hearing and eyesight were far beyond ordinary people. Even from this distance, the golden names under the statue looked close enough to touch.

“Ah! That ugly thing from the Abyss got put in the same team as His Highness the First Prince! You think he’ll drag His Highness down into the Abyss?”

“Wouldn’t be so bad. Saves him from shaming our Empire.”

“Lord Deus above, am I seeing wrong... the forest witch, Johe!”

The white tuft on the girl’s head trembled.

Fear hit her in a flash.

She had no idea who that “ugly thing from the Abyss” was. But Johe, the forest witch? That one she knew all too well.

A textbook madwoman. Cold, twisted, born wrong in the head.

She took pleasure in smashing other people’s hope, bit by bit, right before their eyes.

The girl had once had the bad luck to meet Johe in the final stage of the first-year midterm spell combat assessment. She had been one breath away from passing. One step. One heartbeat.

Then Johe knocked her clean out of the trial.

The merfolk had strong recovery by nature. The girl carried half that blood in her veins, so her body healed faster than most. Even so, she still spent two months retaking the exam, and another half month nursing her wounds.

That name, Johe, had carved itself deep into her bones.

What kind of monster lineup is this? Is Ebosger Academy really not going to get blown into the sky?

She screamed inside her own head, eyes fixed on the group of Divine Bird students giving their running report on the spot. The blue in her eyes sharpened, brimmed with wariness.

She needed information on Prince Shute’s team.

If she ran into them in a match later, she had to be ready. And if she really could not avoid them, then at least knowing what they could do might let her last a little longer.

“The little princess of the Gray Wolf tribe too... tsk, stuck in that team.”

“Gray Wolf tribe? She can’t even change back into her original form. Sooner or later they’ll strike her name from the clan.”

“The Wild Rose of Fibiriel... she’s actually in His Highness’s team too...”

“...”

“...No matter what, we can’t face them head-on later. This lineup alone is already enough to scare a divine bird stiff...”

The girl’s pupils shook.

The Wild Rose of Fibirie.

The only female duke in the Kingdom of Fibirie.

Fiana Janroe.

Titles in Fibirie were never passed down in neat order. In that land, choked with smoke and war, a title belonged to the last one left standing. Fiana had once had over twenty siblings. Add in the side branches—uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, the whole mess—and there had been nearly forty more kin tied to her blood.

Now, the number of her direct relatives was zero.

Fiana was not from the same department as the girl. Even so, the girl knew her well.

Mostly because Fiana had posted plenty of tasks and bounty orders before.

And the pay was fat. So fat it made people forget fear for a while.

The girl had taken a few of those jobs. She had also seen Fiana up close. Close enough to know one plain truth—

She was no match for her.

Fiana was a top-tier berserker. In close combat, she could grind a person’s flesh and bones to slurry. And her defense was tight as iron hoops on a war barrel, stubborn to the point of disgust.

If someone wanted to split Ebosger Academy into two rough halves, it was simple enough: the magic departments, and the non-magic departments.

The magic side had many branches, mostly divided by natural elements. Fire magic, for example—represented by His Highness Shute Remiaz. Wood magic—represented by Johe. As for the girl, she belonged to the water magic department, whose standout figure was Huan’an, the class leader of her own class and son of the High Priest.

The non-magic side was even more sprawling. Berserkers, puppeteers, blacksmiths, atavism studies, swordsmen, and more besides. Some niche departments had only one or two students in a whole class, but the academy still ran the lessons all the same.

Ebosger’s curriculum was broad and wild, and students were free to study across disciplines. Even the half-mermaid girl, who spent most of her time making money, had still taken alchemy and shapeshifting training as side studies.

And it was in shapeshifting training that she had run into Fiana.

That time, Fiana had turned herself into a giant python over three meters long. Then, right there in the arena, she slowly crushed an opponent who had transformed into a lion—flattened him inch by inch under her body, and then swallowed him.

From start to finish, she wore that cold, contemptuous sneer. Not a shred of doubt. She had known she would win from the first breath.

The other student dropped the course on the spot.

The half-mermaid girl had watched the whole thing from the side and quietly decided, in her heart, that this lady duke was not quite right in the head.

In this team, there was one thrill-seeking madman, one antisocial lunatic, one Abyss race member, one genuine mental case, and one little gray wolf.

And then there were two brave souls.

The girl gave Jiujiu a little shake, and curiosity welled up in her sea-blue eyes.

The Divine Bird clan had grown much grimmer. Their voices came out dry and stiff.

“Oh, a succubus.”

“Just a succubus.”

“Yeah. At least not some bird-killing maniac... holy hell, Elliot!”

The golden words beneath the divine statue revealed each team in order: race, department, then name.

Elliot Winquell.

A male succubus rare enough that one might not appear in a hundred years.

The people fawning over him could probably line up from the royal capital all the way back to the girl’s hometown.

Even when she was working part-time, she often heard her coworkers shriek over him like fools.

And on top of that... the rumors around him were rotten to the core. They said he loved to toy with hearts, that other people fell for him hard enough to live or die by it, while he only laughed and watched. Some said blood had already come of it.

Poor little gray wolf princess.

Stuck in a pack like this, she’d be lucky if she only lost a layer of skin. Forget graduating in peace. If this team managed not to tear each other apart, that alone would be a miracle.

What a league of scum.

The girl recalled those rumors and let out a cold little sigh in her heart. Her face, though, stayed flat and frost-still. In a voice so soft it was barely there, she murmured,

“But maybe it’s better this way. These are almost all the most infamous second-years in the whole academy. Let them fight among themselves, and there’ll be one less obstacle during the competition—”

“Huh? What kind of race is a half-mermaid?”

“No idea! Is there even someone like that in Water?”

“Lyrel Norvia? That name’s strange. Have I seen her before?”

“Never. Going by the kind of team His Grace Dios put together, she’s probably no decent sort either.”

“The eldest prince’s team... damn. Better steer clear from now on.”

The Divine Bird folk scattered after a few remarks, but in front of the glowing golden names, the discussion only grew louder.

The girl stood there, stiff and blank.

She did not even want to breathe.

Her whole body locked up like a stone figure, and her eyes were full of disbelief.

Her name was Lyrel Norvia.

Half-human, half-mermaid. Water element.

A decent sort.

She had never done anything that could make heaven or earth curse her name. She had kept her head down, lived honestly, behaved herself as a person—and as a mermaid.

Maybe it was just someone with the same name.

Holding onto that thin scrap of hope, Lyrel Norvia moved forward bit by bit, slow as if dragging chains.

Then her name rang across the whole courtyard.

“Lyrel Norvia—”

It spread at once.

People were puzzled. Asking around. Whispering. Arguing in low voices.

Then they saw the girl with white hair and blue eyes.

And almost without thinking, they all stepped back two paces.

…No way.

Her heart was already screaming itself raw, but her face stayed blank, cold, still. She walked to the front one step at a time, and there, beneath the statue of Deus, she saw the circling golden letters. Behind them was the attached image taken when she first entered the academy—her younger, greener face, full of plain hope.

A public execution.

At that moment, what flashed through Lyrel Norvia’s mind was the whole hard stretch of her first half of life. The eight years she had clawed and struggled just to get out of that little town. The countless nights buried in practice problems, grinding through cultural classes until her eyes ached. The quiet school life she had wanted. The steady work environment she had planned for. The good future she had pictured for herself—

All of it.

Gone.

Burst into foam.

Deus, and you dare call yourself the God of Life? You ruined my life! I’ll remember this for the rest of my days! You’re guilty as hell! Beyond forgiveness! I’ll curse your whole bloodline!

That was the last thought in Lyrel Norvia’s head before everything went black.