[98-F, Demon hunter guild, guild master office]

"Young miss, thank god you're here!"

Arriving at her father's office, Amanda found Maxwell rushing in her direction. His face was visibly distraught.

"What's wrong?"

Halting her footsteps, Amanda frowned.

"Young miss, something terrible happened to the guild master"

Amanda's heart sank when she heard those words.

"...Father?"

She tried her best to keep her calm. At least on the surface.

"Investigating a potential energy spike coming from one of the <S> ranked dungeons that we own, fearing for the worst, the guild master decided to head in to check on the situation. Unfortunately..."

Maxwell took a deep breath.

"Unfortunately, the dungeon desynced whilst the guild master was inside"

"Ah..."

Amanda took a step back. Her body turned cold.

A dungeon desync was when the dungeon suddenly lost its connection to the human world.

As a result, if anyone stayed in it, they would find themselves transported to the demon world. The most dangerous place that existed.

"D-don't worry young-miss, although the guild master is in a t-troubling situation, not all hope is lost. His vital signs seem to still be okay at the moment meaning that he is still alive..."

Seeing Amanda's state, Maxwell tried his best to comfort her.

Unfortunately, his words weren't convincing as he occasionally fumbled on his speech.

"As I've said before, there really is no need for you to worry about the guil—"

Hearing Maxwell talk, Amanda stood there in a daze. Everything Maxwell said just went from one ear to the other.

She couldn't process anything.

Even if what Maxwell said was true, Amanda knew that the situation was dire. Stuck inside of a dungeon with no way out, chances were that her father would no longer come back.

In the past, there had never been a case of someone ever escaping from a closed dungeon.

Never.

"We are trying anything within our po...young miss?"

Taking a look at Amanda, Maxwell stopped. Her face was pale. Maxwell instantly became worried.

"Young miss, please listen. Although the guild master is stuck inside of the dungeon, his life does not seem in danger at the moment. Please don't assu—"

"May I have some time alone, please?"

Amanda suddenly cut Maxwell off. A weak smile appeared on her face.

"...as you wish young miss."

Staring at Amanda's weak smile, Maxwell lowered his head.

Though he wanted to say something, noticing Amanda's current state, he decided that it was best to leave her alone.

Bowing down, he turned around and left.

"Ah..."

Watching Maxwell leave the room, Amanda walked with faltering steps. Her legs didn't move as she intended them to. She almost fell multiple times but finally managed to arrive before her father's desk.

Sitting down on her father's seat, she looked at her father's desk. Apart from the myriad of papers sprawled all over the place, on it were multiple pictures of her and her father when she was a child.

Taking one of the pictures, Amanda caressed it.

As she caressed the picture frames, Amanda's mind blanked.

"father..."

She muttered as her body faintly trembled.

Was this a repeat of the past?

Was someone else going to leave her again? Would her father leave like her mother and Agnes, her nanny?

She didn't want that.

Suddenly, Amanda's vision blurred.

—Pita! —Pita!

Only then did she realize that tears were streaming down her face.

***

[Leviathan building, 10 A.M]

Inside of a private training ground.

"Huff...huff..."

With heavy breaths, I lowered my body and did a push up.

'294...295...296...'

Counting the reps inside of my mind, I continued to do this for the next thirty minutes or so.

Whilst I was doing the pushup, on my finger was a small black ring.

===

Name : Ring of gravity

Rank : C

Description : A ring with ten settings. Upon wearing the ring, body mass will double. Whenever the setting is changed, the mass will double with respect to the setting chosen.

===

By adjusting the settings of the ring I could manually increase the weight on my body.

Though I could use the gravity room, according to Donna, in order for me to improve my mana capacity, I had to continuously deplete my mana and replenish it.

Just like training a muscle.

"Huuu..."

Taking a deep breath, I did another push up.

After my meeting with Jin last week, I had this sudden urge within me to just drop everything and start training.

And so that's exactly what I did.

Leaving all matters related to the mercenary guild to Smallsnake, I closed myself inside of my room for a whole week and trained like crazy.

With lectures now on hold because of the tournament that was about to begin, apart from the occasional call-ups from instructor August with regards to the tournament, I had a lot of time to myself.

Time in which I fully spent on training.

Apart from eating and sleeping, all I did was train.

With Kevin and now Jin continuously getting stronger, I realized that I was getting left behind by them.

Most shockingly, Jin had ranked up to <D-> rank. Something that was only supposed to have happened towards the beginning of the second year.

Jin's rate of progress was astonishing.

'I can't get left behind...'

With this thought in mind, I upped the intensity of the training.

'Next goal, <D-> rank'

I could feel it, I was close.

***

The usual peaceful morning was disrupted by the endless chattering coming from a bunch of students lined up in a horizontal line.

Before them stood a tall and stern instructor.

After an arduous couple of hours of intense training, the instructor had ordered them to line up in front of him.

"Shut up!"

Instructor August's voice boomed across the area. Instantly all chattering ceased.

"This fucking job..."

"Here you go, sir"

"Hm?"

Next to instructor August, an attendant handed him a stack of papers. Briefly glancing at them, clicking his tongue instructor August thrust them back to the attendant.

"What do I need the papers for? Just send them to the students through a message"

Instructor August berated.

"This is your job, not my job"

"B-but—"

"No, buts, I don't have time to deal with this kind of crap. I'm here to train the students. Don't waste my time with such useless crap"

Cutting the attendant off, instructor August glared at the attendant instantly overwhelming him with his presence.

"Keugh..."

"Understood?"

"Y-yes"

Under the terrifying glare, the attendant could only nod his head.

The attendant took the papers and left. Not wanting to be next to instructor August anymore, the attendant had basically run away.

"You'll soon get a message detailing the games that you will be participating in as well as the rules of the tournament..."

Turning back his attention to the students, Instructor August gave a brief rundown on the situation.

"Huaaam..."

Listening to instructor August speak, a small yawn escaped from my lips.

Honestly, instructor August's training sessions, although brutal, were not as brutal as the ones I had with Donna and Monica.

Compared to theirs, this felt refreshing.

That aside...

'The atmosphere around the campus...'

With the tournament coming up in about a week's time, tensions were rising in the academy.

Especially between the Lock students and the exchange students.

Though things didn't reach the point where conflicts arose, the tension in the air was stronger than ever.

"...okay I think I've said enough for today"

Snapping me out of my thoughts was instructor August's loud voice.

"You're dismissed"

With instructor August's announcement, the training session came to an end. Besides me, the other students let out a sigh of relief as they headed back to their dorms.

"What are you going to do now?"

On my way back to the dorms, walking beside me, Kevin asked.

"I'm going to go back to the dorm"

"Ah, is that so..."

"Why? You wanted to go somewhere?"

"Not really....ah, by the way, what was up with you this past week? I could barely get a hold of you"

Kevin shook his head and switched the topic.

"Right, I was training"

Dedicating most of my time to training this past few weeks, I would only see him during the morning practice sessions with Donna or tournament training sessions.

Aside from that, I refused to leave my room.

Right now, all I had in my mind was training.

"Training?"

"Yeah"

"I see, that makes sense"

Kevin wasn't any different.

He too spent most of his time training. So this was probably why he didn't say much after.

"Hold up!"

Suddenly, a crisp voice called from the distance.

"Emma?"

Kevin said as he turned his head towards where the voice came from. He was able to instantly recognize the owner of the voice.

Turning around to double-check who the voice belonged to, to my surprise I found out that it was Emma's.

Arriving before Kevin, Emma passed by me without even greeting me or acknowledging my presence and looked at Kevin straight in the eyes.

"Kevin"

"Yes?"

"Can you slow down a little..."

"Ah, sure"

It was only then that I realized that Kevin and I were walking a bit too fast.

As such, we slowed down a little. Enough to accommodate Emma.

"Thanks"

Moving next to Kevin, Emma thanked him.

"So what did you want to talk about?"

Looking back into Emma's eyes, Kevin asked.

"...It's about Amanda"

"Amanda, what about her?"

"Mhmm, how should I say this, but did you perhaps notice something different about her these couple of days? I wanted to see if I wasn't the only one that felt this way"

After struggling to choose the right words, Emma voiced her concerns.

"So Amanda is acting weird according to you?"

"Yeah"

Turning his head, Kevin looked at Amanda who was not far off from where they were.

After a couple of seconds, he bitterly smiled and shook his head.

"She looks the same to me"

"Really? then am I perhaps overthinking things?"

Emma frowned. She did not look convinced.

"Sorry, I'm not very good at judging facial expressions and emotions..."

Scratching the back of his head, Kevin apologized.

"No, it's fine. I'm probably overthinking things. It's just that I wasn't able to see Amanda for the past week or so. I tried texting her but she wouldn't respond no matter how many times I messaged her..."

Typically Amanda would always text back within an hour or so. Her behaving like this was quite odd.

'What's going on?'

Overhearing the conversation between Kevin and Emma, I tilted my head to the side and looked in Amanda's direction.

'Did anything happen to Amanda?'

I turned my attention to Amanda. Taking a closer look at her from the distance, I tried to see if there was anything different about her.

After a minute, my brows knit.

Although nothing seemed out of the ordinary from Amanda's appearance, I could feel an air of gloom revolving around her.

She seemed to be much colder than usual, and even the people close to her felt the same as they stayed away from her.

'Could it be...'

Recalling Emma's words to Kevin, a thought suddenly struck me.

I could only think of one scenario in the novel that would cause her to become like this.

[<S> ranked dungeon desync incident]

The day where an <S> ranked dungeon desynced with her father in it.

An event that would only be revealed after a couple of years thanks to the higher-ups in the demon hunter guild covering everything up.

Unfortunately, they could not cover it up for long and it would soon be revealed to the whole world.

Once revealed, the whole world shook and the demon hunter guild fell to second place with Starlight guild finally overtaking them.

It was also the event that caused Amanda to close herself up even more.

But...

'Why now?'

I thought as I placed my hand on my chin.

I couldn't wrap my head around the timing of this event.

This was an event that was only supposed to happen in a couple of more years.

How did it suddenly get pushed up by so much? What were the variables that I influenced that made it this way?

Just when I least expected it, another problem arose. With Amanda's father now gone, I knew that I could only keep my parents safe for a couple of years.

Once news of Amanda's father's disappearance became known, I knew that I was on my own.

Staring at the clear blue sky, I muttered, "This is going to be troublesome, I hope I'm wrong..."