Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest novel Chapter 984

"Stop."

Both halted.

Sweat beaded on Ethan’s forehead. Astron’s breathing had shortened slightly, his grip relaxed but not fatigued.

"You both failed," Eleanor said, flat and uncompromising. "But the failure was expected. It’s your first day working with live resonance."

She turned slightly toward Ethan.

"Lightning is volatile. Few cadets grasp how to follow its rhythm before trying to force it into control." A pause. "You followed."

Ethan blinked, almost surprised by the note of acknowledgement.

She didn’t linger.

Instead, she turned toward Astron.

"You understood the structure. You anticipated the imbalance. But you treated it like split mana control." Her voice lowered. "Don’t. This is not dual-casting. This is convergence."

Astron’s gaze didn’t waver, but he gave the faintest nod.

Eleanor stepped back, arms crossing again as her analytical mind ran through timelines.

If they keep this pace…

Her thoughts mapped across days, iterations, potential breakpoints.

Eleanor’s gaze drifted from their faces back to the regulators, now cycling through cooldown patterns, the glow of the elemental crystals dimming into stillness. Her arms remained folded, but her mind was moving rapidly.

Of course Ethan adjusted faster. It makes sense.

Lightning.

It wasn’t just his elemental affinity. It was something deeper, more instinctive. Every inch of his psion structure responded to lightning as if it were native—coded into his body’s rhythm. That kind of connection wasn’t built through study or repetition.

It was felt.

He didn’t tame it.

He understood it.

She had seen this before. Among those who trained early in elemental resonance. Among bloodline warriors and trait-forged heirs. But Ethan hadn’t had that kind of start. No tutor-guided mana paths. No refinement chambers.

And yet—

He moved like someone born to wield lightning.

It was more than control. It was intuition.

Eleanor’s eyes shifted to Astron.

And him?

That was the question she still hadn’t answered.

Even now—months into her observation, even after personal sessions, even with full access to his training logs—she had no idea what his elemental affinity was.

He had never shown preference. Never leaned into any specific energy type. She had subjected him to fire, wind, ice, even high-resonance shadow induction… and none of them stuck.

Not in the usual way.

No rejection, no resistance—but no acceleration either.

Just… neutrality.

That’s what made it so strange.

Elemental neutrality was rare. Suppressed affinity even more so. But him?

She studied Astron’s posture—the loose readiness in his arms, the way he waited for the next command without leaning forward or backward.

No anticipation.

No hesitation.

Just balance.

It’s like his mana doesn’t belong to any family of elements I’ve shown him. As if… his affinity is hidden. Or worse—undefined.

That possibility was unsettling.

Yet it also made sense.

Because for all the vagueness of his alignment, Astron’s understanding was precise. High.

When things were explained clearly—when a concept was mapped out with direct cause and effect—he absorbed it without error. His execution might lag behind at first, but only because he spent that time solving the problem, not brute-forcing it.

He didn’t learn by feel like Ethan.

He learned by logic.

By structure.

If I give him the right frame, he adapts. Fast.

And that, Eleanor mused, was where the contrast lay.

Ethan’s learning curve was strange. It wasn’t steady. It dipped and rose in sharp bursts. There were times when he struggled with a concept for days—and then, seemingly without warning, something would click.

He would break through.

Not because of external feedback.

But because his internal world had shifted. Realigned.

That was the mark of what most instructors would call a "natural genius." Not the kind that mimicked perfectly or studied with discipline, but the kind that internalized.

And when Ethan internalized something?

It stopped being knowledge.

It became instinct.

Eleanor’s lips thinned as she completed the thought.

He leaps forward when no one’s watching.

That kind of mind was dangerous. Brilliant, but volatile. Because without the right direction, those leaps could go wrong. Too far. Too soon.

She looked between the two of them now.