When his suspicions were partially confirmed by Nightflash, King also confessed that he was going to miss him, despite an attempt to make his goodbye sound more professional. It was then that the two said their final goodbyes, and that King admitted that he saw himself as the reason for Nightflash's actions. When Nightflash was released as part of ONI's desperation to have as many Spartans as possible on the frontlines, he and King conversed one final time before the former's departure. Valentine eventually departed, but not before King promised to call him once Nightflash was released. After King agreed to hold onto Trident Industries' prototype SPARTAN Laser, a gift from Valentine to Nightflash, the two engaged in a conversation about Nightflash's fate. Soon before Nightflash's subsequent release in August of 2552, King was approached in the reformed Spartan Academy by Blake Valentine. Although unable to bring himself to speak with Nightflash before his arrest by the Office of Naval Intelligence, King still cared for Nightflash and felt that his actions were the cause of the entire incident. King's admission to Nightflash would become a factor in the latter's murder of the Actuarian soon after, a fact which was not lost on King. Resolved not to do such a thing again, King concluded the Spartans' true enemy was the Actuarian, rather than whatever target he decided to point them to. Having thought over his actions, King regretfully noted that the Actuarian had not given him a choice and that one of the two would have had to kill the janitor. The very next day, however, Nightflash found his roommate quietly sitting in a withdrawn room - coincidentally, where both had gone to avoid confrontation with each other. Upon Nightflash's refusal, King himself carried out the act and curtly left. In a struggle to return to the path that the Academy had laid out for King, he complied with the orders of the Actuarian and challenged Nightflash to murder a staff member. After a moment of stunned silence, Nightflash answered that there had only been six checkpoints. Upon being offered advice by Nightflash, King asked how the former's squad had collected the challenge's seven checkpoints within the time limit. King first began to realize the manipulation that the cadets of the Academy were privy to after repeatedly failing to complete a contact challenge's Gold-Level difficulty. This led to greater differences between the philosophies of King and Nightflash, although the former was encouraging of the latter's quest to reach Tier One. Consequently, Valentine's influence encouraged Nightflash to become more independent from the Academy's system.

The effects of the challenge, namely the ensuing scuffle, attracted the attention of CEO Blake Valentine of Trident Industries to Nightflash. King's attempt to call Mythic off fell on deaf ears, and consequently, Mythic, Brass, Nightflash, and Clyde-213 ('Swift') were stunned by security droids. A brief scuffle between Mythic and Romero-024 ('Brass') followed as an indirect result of King dismissing Nightflash's concession. Throughout the challenge, both squads were slowly whittled down to their respective leaders, resulting in a fierce clash between them that ended with Nightflash eliminated.

While regularly clashing with Nightflash's personality, King stopped to watch Nightflash's assignment to a squad, an event that began to spark greater tensions between the two.ДЄs a result of Nightflash's unorthodox behavior, the Academy Actuarian pit his squad against King's in a surprise combat challenge. Although only Tier Three, King was the fourth highest-placed cadet in the Spartan Academy. At the time of his first appearance, King was a highly skilled and respected Second Generation Squad Leader, commanding Mythic-071 and Roxanne.

Rise of the spartans