Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest novel Chapter 1028

The names were added.

The lists updated.

The scouts moved on—efficient, clinical, already scanning the next team entry.

But not everyone in the chamber moved with them.

Far above the seated tiers, where the light dimmed and the projection glows didn't quite reach, a lone figure stood near the upper catwalk—behind the reinforced viewing shield, where only those with high clearance had access.

He hadn't spoken a word all day.

But now—

Now he stared.

Through the shifting feed. Through the echo of thunder spells and spear strikes. Through the rising hum of scout chatter and system resets.

Straight at Ethan Hartley.

His pupils were slit.

A thin vertical line of gold gleamed inside each eye, refracted through the crystalline lens like twin blades drawn halfway from their sheaths.

His breath caught—once.

A crack escaped his throat.

Soft.

But fractured.

"…It's him."

The words weren't spoken with wonder.

They dropped like broken glass.

His hands curled at his sides—one wrapped in a silk glove, the other bare and scarred with faint arcane scoring. His coat—dark, noble-cut, unmarked by faction—shifted slightly with the ambient mana pressurizing around him.

And his eyes—

His eyes did not blink.

They froze.

Like something long-buried had stirred.

Like something long-feared had been recognized.

Or remembered.

And slowly—slowly—his gaze turned cold.

Dead cold.

As if memory had locked its jaws onto him and whispered a name he could neither refute nor forget.

"Ethan Hartley…"

Something that didn't belong.

Something that should've never caught up.

And now that it had—

He would not let it pass again.

*****

The morning sun filtered through the cathedral-like windows of the Arcadia North Annex, casting thin, deliberate beams across the clean-cut stone of the observation corridor.

Fourth day.

Leonard stood still, hands resting behind his back, gaze fixed on the display crystal hovering in front of him—unlit.

He hadn't activated it.

Not yet.

The silence around him was almost meditative, but his thoughts moved like clockwork gears—grinding, calculating, realigning.

He had spent the last three days combing through the academy's cadet roster with surgical precision. From the top fifty down to the 900s. Filter after filter. Pattern after pattern.

He'd observed formations. Studied recovery responses. Measured mana drift, tempo irregularities, and glyph contour delays.

Every anomaly had been logged, marked, tested.

And discarded.

One by one.

Even Darien Vale—one of the most promising outliers on his list—had returned no resonance. No echo. No pulse.

Three days. Over four hundred cadets personally reviewed.

And the artifact?

Still quiet.

Still waiting.

Still blind.

He let out a long, quiet breath through his nose.

This method is too slow.

He had known it from the start, but now—with time compressing and scouts circling like wolves around the rising stars—he could no longer afford the wide net.

Precision. Now. Not theory.

That meant changing tactics.

Leonard activated the projection crystal at last—but not to search.

Instead, he pulled up his private list.

Nine names.

Each one marked with a golden glyph in the shape of a crescent halo.

They weren't the highest-ranked cadets. Some weren't even in the top 1000.

But they shared traits.

Not power—but silence.

Mana signatures that looped oddly.

Records with missing birth notations.

Spell rhythms that bent instead of surged.

And most importantly…

A way of hiding, without realizing it.

These weren't cadets trying to be seen.

They were cadets whose presence distorted just slightly the longer you looked at them.

Of course while he was looking for his target, he didn't forget his sister.

But sadly…..It was not the time.

Not yet.