The Extra is a Genius!?-Chapter 52: Weightless Strength

Noel sat cross-legged on the dorm floor, shirtless, the chill of the stone seeping into his skin. A single window let in the pale light of dawn, casting long shadows across the bed, the desk, and the sword leaning silently against the wall.

He wasn’t meditating.

He was staring at the system window floating in front of him. freewebnoveℓ.com

[Core Progress]

Current Core: Novice

Total Accumulated Growth: 47.32%

He tilted his head slightly, lips curling in a dry, bitter smile.

"So... four months of lectures, drills, mana shaping, and pretending to give a shit: thirty-two percent."

A pause.

"Then one month of stabbing things in the woods like a madman... and boom, fifteen percent."

He let out a sharp exhale. Not quite a laugh, but close.

"No wonder the old nobles love war. Growth looks a lot better when someone else is dying for it."

He closed the window with a flick, letting the numbers disappear from sight but not from thought.

Standing up, he cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, muscle soreness reminding him that progress still had a cost.

He glanced at Revenant Fang resting against the corner, the metal dull under the morning light.

"Forty-seven percent," he muttered. "And still barely a foot off the bottom of the ladder."

His eyes narrowed.

"Fuck, I need more of that hunting, is way more eficient."

The sword remained silent.

But something deep in its core—it listened.

He could feel it.

Noel sat alone at a back table in the library, a stack of dusty bestiaries and topographic maps spread out before him. Most students were still easing into the semester—making noise, chatting about electives, comparing schedules.

He wasn’t interested in electives.

He flipped a page with precise fingers, skimming through the habitat registry for magical creatures in the surrounding region. His eyes scanned lines of terrain markings, danger zones, and containment perimeters.

"The place is too monitored... the monsters too weak... or already cleared out..."

He muttered under his breath as he ruled out each zone, pen tapping the margin of the map with increasing impatience.

Then he found it.

A narrow stretch in the lower forest range, labeled in faded ink: Varn’s Hollow — officially marked as unstable, but not sealed off. The description was vague: a collapsed ravine, deep mana activity, possible Rank-Rare creature presence. No formal guard station. No active patrol routes.

And most importantly: no tracking or suppression orbs in place.

He leaned back slightly and crossed his arms.

"Varn’s Hollow... sounds like a good place to get eaten."

He smirked.

"Perfect."

He jotted down the location on a folded page and slipped it into his pocket. Then closed the books, stacked them neatly, and stood.

Noel walked past a few students huddled over spell diagrams, who didn’t even notice him. One of them whispered something about core theory. Another about battle simulations.

He didn’t slow down.

’You all can keep simulating. I’m done waiting.’

Noel was walking down the outer hallway of the main building when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.

"Hey! Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me, bastard."

He turned halfway, just in time to catch Roberto jogging up beside him with that usual grin plastered on his face.

"I wasn’t pretending," Noel said flatly. "I was blatantly ignoring you."

Ouch. And here I thought absence makes the heart grow fonder."

"Not when you’re the one coming back."

Roberto laughed, unbothered, and fell into step next to him. "So... how’s the genius doing? Fully recovered? Or still waking up in cold sweats from all those monster cuddles?"

Noel didn’t answer right away. He scanned the corridor ahead—students chatting, professors moving between offices, no one paying them much attention.

"Seems like rumors travel fast, even far from the academy." He sighed. "Fine," he said eventually. "Just getting back into routine."

Roberto snorted. "Routine? Man, this place changed while you were out. You notice the new faculty wing? And they’re reshuffling dorms again—some new room system for higher-ranked students."

Noel gave him a noncommittal nod, mostly to keep him talking.

"And get this," Roberto leaned in slightly. "They’ve started monitoring student movement now. Like, actual gate-checks if you try to leave the inner grounds."

Noel’s face didn’t change, but inside, his thoughts froze.

’C’mon, what is this shitty-ass timing? I was planning to go hunting, and now they’re monitoring student movement? This has to be a bad joke’

The problem wasn’t finding monsters to hunt.

The problem was getting out of the academy without being seen—or worse, logged.

He couldn’t walk through the front gate, and sneaking through the walls would take more than just a cloak and a quiet step now.

’Great. I can’t even start grinding a few monsters without breaking the damn rules.’

Roberto glanced at him. "You good?"

"Yeah," Noel said. "Just thinking."

"You look like you’re planning to blow something up."

"Only if they make me sit through another mana theory lecture."

Roberto laughed. "Fair. Just let me know in advance. I’ll bring snacks."

Noel didn’t reply, but a faint smirk passed over his face—for a second.

Then it was gone.

That night, while most students were reviewing the week’s lecture material or passing notes in study halls, Noel was bent over a large parchment map of Valon’s capital district.

He had bribed a Class C student with cartography access to get it—two silver coins and a vague threat about "accidental incineration" had done the trick.

His dorm door was locked. The curtains drawn. Candles flickered softly as he traced the path with a piece of charcoal.

First problem: the academy walls.

Ever since the Banquet incident, barrier protocols had been reinforced. Orb surveillance rotated every fifteen minutes, but there were still dead zones—usually during magical resets or when orbs switched tracks between segments.

He circled three possible breach points.

Second problem: the city walls of Valon.

That was the real challenge.

There were checkpoints at every official gate. Stealth artifacts wouldn’t be enough—not with identity runes now layered into the exit wards.

So, he turned to the underground systems.

Sewer routes. Delivery tunnels. Utility corridors used by Academy staff and merchant supply chains. The records weren’t complete, but the scraps he’d collected over the past few weeks painted a rough picture.

’Too many eyes watching from above—professors, prefects, probably a few detection spells thrown in for good measure. Moving around up there was just asking to get caught. So yeah... I’ll go underground. Less attention, fewer questions.’

He’d need to move at night, and most likely twice—once to test the route, once to execute the full escape.

Then came the third issue: timing.

He couldn’t afford to be gone for more than 48 hours without someone noticing. Longer than that, and people would start asking questions.

His plan had to be efficient.

Breach the academy barrier.

Navigate beneath Valon.

Reach the outer perimeter.

Enter the forest from the east.

To hunt to grow stronger, survive to see another day, and keep pushing forward—because in this world, standing still was just another way of dying.

Return unnoticed.

A straight line would’ve taken a day.

He expected three.

He marked the final destination: Varn’s Hollow, a small scar on the edge of the map. Unclaimed territory.

’There it is.’

He leaned back, eyes fixed on the charcoal lines he’d drawn.

"Just to grow stronger," he muttered.

A smile—sharp, tired, real—crept across his face.

"...Yeah. That checks out."

The academy was quiet at night.

Not silent—nothing ever truly was—but the kind of quiet that let Noel hear his own breathing as he crouched on the third-level balcony of the library wing, cloaked in a layer of shadow and tension.

He waited.

Then waited some more.

The surveillance orb floated across the western quadrant, following its usual curved path before blinking out briefly during its mana cycle reset.

’Seventeen seconds of blindness. That’s my window.’

He moved.

Climbing the library’s outer wall hadn’t been the hard part. Neither had disabling the pressure sensor on the final ledge. The hard part was calculating the jump—from this roof to the slope just beneath the edge of the academy’s outer perimeter wall.

He wasn’t strong enough to leap it raw.

But mana-shifting his weight and channeling force through his legs with control?

That, he could do.

"Who the hell would expect someone to leave by going over the top," he muttered, tightening his gloves.

Noel ran three steps and jumped.

The landing was clean.

A slide across the curved stone slope, a hard grip on the outer ledge, and a pull upward. Now he was crouched on the outer perimeter wall, directly beneath a decorative crest that cast a long shadow at night.

From up here, he could see everything.

The central spires. The glow of mana lights. Even the upper dorms where Class A students slept, unaware that one of them was halfway to committing an expellable offense.

He dropped silently to the grass outside the wall and moved into the treeline.

Phase one: complete.

The trees swallowed him quickly.

Noel moved without hesitation, cutting through brush and stone until he reached the edge of the outer service district—an abandoned zone of cracked buildings and forgotten ward pillars, just beyond the academy’s outer reach.

He crouched behind a ruined wall and uncovered the rusted grate beneath it, half-hidden under dirt and roots. The entrance to the tunnels.

He didn’t open it immediately.

Instead, he sat down, drew the chalkboard from his coat, and began to sketch the paths he’d studied for days. Distances. Turnings. Time estimates.

After ten minutes, he stood and slipped inside the grate.

Noel wasn’t escaping tonight.

Tonight, he was memorizing.

The tunnel yawned around him, dark and wet and filled with silence. He moved slowly but confidently, tracing the exact route he’d planned: through the industrial sector’s drainage lines, past the collapsed junctions, and around the old security grids buried beneath the second-tier noble quarter.

Each segment, each corner, he counted his steps.

He stopped occasionally to place faint mana tags on key points—just enough to help retrace his path if something went wrong.

After two hours, he emerged quietly through the other end, climbed a half-buried maintenance shaft, and noted the opening hidden behind an old warehouse.

He marked it. Then went back.

By the time he returned to the academy perimeter wall, the sky was midnight black.

He climbed silently, vaulted the same section of roof he had before, and landed inside the school grounds without making a sound.

Ten minutes later, he was back in his room, shirtless again, damp with sweat, and staring at the ceiling.

’Tomorrow night.’

He closed his eyes.

The real training would start soon.