Silver Frost has a Hero Academy of its own. Unlike the world’s largest and most prestigious General Star Hero Academy, it’s an ordinary Hero Academy—a preparatory school for the General Star Hero Academies, like ordinary Hero Academies around the world.

This Hero Academy was named after the city. It’s called Silver Frost Academy.

At ordinary academies, most students hold the Soldier Rank. A few students hold other General Star ranks, though. Those few are pillars of their academies, since most of the world’s rare General Star talents are all at General Star Hero Academy.

Students here have more freedom, relatively speaking. The rules aren’t nearly as strict as they are at General Star Hero Academy. For some people, it’s practically the perfect choice.

The reason Shi Ji came to Silver Frost was actually Silver Frost Academy. It was an arrangement made by General Star Hero Academy. Given Shi Ji’s temperament, he’d initially wanted to go back to his old ordinary school and live like an ordinary person. But the placement was compulsory—and when he thought about how food at a Hero Academy was free, it was an irresistible temptation for someone as broke as him. So he didn’t give it another thought. He packed his things right away and headed to Silver Frost.

After a less-than-perfect night’s sleep, he ran into a few minor problems. Luckily, the place where the alien had appeared wasn’t far from Silver Frost. At the pace Shi Ji was hopping along, it took him only about ten minutes to reach the city center.

The best time for lunch had already passed, and Shi Ji was starving. He immediately went and ate a bowl of beef noodles without any beef. Once his stomach was full, he followed the address to find Silver Frost Academy.

Hero Academies were always built apart from the city proper. Since he didn’t know the area, finding the place was a real pain. And by the time he finally got there, damn it, more than an hour had passed.

It was four in the afternoon when the young man in black finally stood at the gates of Silver Frost Academy.

Silver Frost Academy might not match General Star Hero Academy in size or facilities, but it had all the essentials. What nobody would’ve expected, though, was…

“Hey, hey, is this really Silver Frost Academy? Why does it look so much like a prison?”

Shi Ji stared up at the enormous academy, utterly baffled. He might as well have had three question marks floating over his head.

Silver Frost Academy wasn’t as big as General Star Hero Academy, but it was still huge, and the wall around it was incredibly tall. At a conservative estimate, it had to be more than ten meters high. And the gate in front of him was something else—it was a freaking extra-thick iron gate. Anyone else would’ve thought this was a prison.

Shi Ji immediately got a bad feeling. He couldn’t shake the sense that what awaited him really was a prison.

The gate was shut tight. There was no way in.

The young man looked around and called out several times.

“Hey, hey! Anybody there? Open the gate! If you don’t open up, I’m leaving!”

Nobody answered.

His gaze shifted, and he spotted several cameras mounted on a pole nearby.

The cameras were still swiveling, keeping him in their sights.

What was that supposed to mean? Someone had clearly seen him, but they were ignoring him.

With a light jump, Shi Ji sprang up and grabbed onto the pole. He leaned in close and peered into one of the cameras.

“If you don’t open the gate, I’m not coming into your lousy academy!”

As soon as he finished speaking, a girl’s voice suddenly came from nearby.

“Are you a monkey or something? Why are you hanging up there?”

Her voice was very soft and fine, with a somewhat delicate quality to it.

Shi Ji froze, then turned to look. That was when he noticed a petite girl standing nearby in formal attire.

She looked no more than 150 centimeters tall—probably a little shorter. But despite her little-girl stature, there was a mature air about her small, oval face beneath her short blue hair. She had her arms folded across her chest, as if trying to look mature. Her face was turned to one side, and she wasn’t looking at Shi Ji.

The young man was a little surprised. His hand suddenly tightened, and before he knew it, he’d snapped the camera off the pole. He didn’t think much of it and casually tossed it into a nearby trash can.

Climbing down from the pole, the young man was about to walk over to the girl when she suddenly looked at him and said, “Those cameras cost fifty thousand each. Deliberately damaging one means paying ten times that. You just threw five hundred thousand into the trash.”

Shi Ji’s eyes widened.

“Five hundred thousand…”

Without thinking twice, he turned and jumped over to the trash can, then reached in and picked the camera back up.

…