Hunter Academy: Revenge of the Weakest novel Chapter 989

"Pens down. Now."

The command echoed through the massive lecture hall like the toll of a bell. The proctor’s voice was clipped, deliberate, and utterly merciless.

Chairs creaked. Pens dropped. A few students froze mid-sentence, desperate to squeeze in just one more word—but none dared to defy the order.

The room, thick with tension and the faint stench of stress-induced sweat, fell into a brittle silence.

Students sat slumped over their desks like defeated soldiers after a siege. The last of the theoretical midterms—four grueling hours of multi-discipline nightmare fuel—was finally over.

A low groan broke the silence. "What the hell was that third section?"

No one responded immediately. Then, from the row behind, another voice muttered under their breath. "I swear half those questions weren’t even real. They made those up just to watch us suffer."

"Shhh," came the immediate whisper from the side. "He’s still collecting."

And sure enough, the proctor—a tall man with a face carved from granite and eyes that missed nothing—was already making his rounds, snapping his fingers and pointing at students who lingered too long near their answer sheets.

No one wanted to test him.

Not after three days of midterms.

Not on the final hour.

So the complaints died quickly, swallowed by the sound of shuffled papers and the slow scrape of chairs being pushed back.

Outside the tall windows, sunlight slanted across the courtyard, but no one looked up. They were all still processing what had just happened.

One student leaned back slowly in their chair, rubbing both hands over their face. "We did it," they murmured. "We survived. Barely."

Someone next to them let out a bitter laugh. "If surviving means mentally disintegrating over mana displacement calculations and battle logistics from a war fifty years ago, then sure. We survived."

"Don’t remind me."

The proctor loomed once more. "Exit quietly. Hall is dismissed."

And just like that, it was over.

The last page. The last pen stroke. The final exam of the theoretical midterms.

The students rose with the slow, aching shuffle of people who had fought something far larger than themselves and lived to tell about it—but only barely.

On the outer steps of the main academic wing, where a group of weary cadets spilled out into the open air like prisoners finally released from a week-long sentence. The stone beneath their boots was warm, the sun casting golden light across the courtyard—but none of them looked particularly revived by it.

Julia was the first to break the groaning silence among the core group. She stormed out of the building with her coat slung over one shoulder, hair a little messier than usual, face scrunched in visible frustration.

"I am pissed off," she announced, voice raw with indignation. "Pissed. Do you know why?"

Nobody answered.

She didn’t wait anyway.

"Because for once—once!—I actually studied." Her hands went up in the air. "I stayed up. I took notes. I highlighted things. Lilia saw me. You saw me!"

Lilia, walking calmly beside her, nodded. "She did. She even color-coded."

"I color-coded," Julia repeated, stabbing a finger into the air as if accusing the world itself. "And not a single topic I focused on showed up. Not one. No supply chain optimization. No arcane reinforcement algorithms. Nothing. Just… just mana stability equations from pre-modern adaptation theory? Who even uses that?"

Lucas let out a dry chuckle as he trailed behind them, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. "Sounds like you had a textbook-targeted betrayal."

"Don’t mock me," Julia grumbled. "This is a betrayal of the highest order. My brain hurts in places I didn’t know it could."

Ethan walked beside her in silence, hands in his pockets. His face was composed, but his eyes were slightly glazed—the same look of someone who had been trapped in a theoretical hellscape and was still trying to remember their name. "That third section," he murmured, "wasn’t even worded like a real question."

"I know, right?" Julia snapped her fingers in his direction. "I wasn’t even sure if it was a trap or if I was just losing my mind."

"Both," Lilia muttered. "It was both."

Carl, as always, walked quietly behind them, his hands clasped behind his back, posture straight despite the storm of complaints around him. He didn’t groan, didn’t curse, didn’t vent. But his silence carried weight, the kind that said he’d also suffered, even if he wasn’t vocal about it.

Lucas raised a brow toward him. "Carl, you alive back there?"