Chapter 19 – There Was Never a Quiet Day (4)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Looking at that bastard Nox, it seemed his spirit had truly been broken since yesterday’s duel. There did appear to be a tiny spark flickering in his eyes, but at best it was no more than the hostility of a matchstick.

When I went to visit the hospital room, I brought one sashimi knife tucked inside my upper inner pocket just in case. If he showed the slightest sign of something, I intended to cut him down on the spot.

Even so, I had planned to settle things through talk if possible. His family was the one and only assassin collective in this world. No matter how strong I was, I couldn’t take all of them on.

So I left after giving him one warning to snuff out that possibility in advance. If he intended to interfere, I would exterminate Auditore.

Naturally, it had been a threat full of nothing but swagger. Since my blessing could only be used for thirty seconds, dealing with every member of that family was impossible.

Well, I did feel like maybe I could kill about ten of them in thirty seconds, but that would be a worst-case scenario, and I still wanted to avoid killing whenever possible. I didn’t want to grow any more used to the sensation of cutting people.

Judging by that pale look on the bastard’s face, the effect of those words seemed to have hit home perfectly. It was a look I’d seen a few times in my previous life. The face of someone whose spirit had collapsed beyond repair.

It didn’t feel good. I was the one who had broken the would of a boy praised as a genius for his entire life.

Scratching my head, I stepped out of the hospital and shook off the medicinal smell that had soaked into my clothes.

The hazy violet of the sunset that had been hanging low was disappearing beyond the horizon.

I stared blankly at the sunset for a moment. I’m sure I’d been moved by a view like that only a few days ago. Now, though, I didn’t feel anything at all.

Had I gotten used to it?

Clicking my tongue softly, I rubbed at the lump in my chest. Today had been a particularly exhausting day. Thinking I’d just settle dinner with some instant ramen, I turned my steps toward the campus mart.

* * *

When I opened my eyes, the sun was already high in the sky.

I turned only my head and checked the time on my phone. Then I rolled around under the blanket for a while before finally dragging myself out of bed. The beginning of another lazy day of getting up late and moving slowly.

Weekends really were nice.

I narrowed my eyes sleepily and let out a long yawn. Maybe because I’d slept deeply, the body that had felt like a bundle of wet cotton had grown light again.

When was the last time I’d actually slept this soundly? Scratching the back of my neck, I grabbed the bottled water by my pillow.

I immediately gulped it down to rinse out my mouth. Wiping the water from my lips along with an old-man-like sigh of Now I feel alive again, I ran a hand across my mouth.

I hadn’t even been drinking, but I looked exactly like some modern man suffering from a hangover.

I want a beer.

I found myself craving a full 500cc mug so badly it made my skull tingle. In my previous life, because of the restaurant, I used to pull draft beer from the machine now and then while cleaning up after closing.

Starting with the beer foam brushing over the tongue, followed by the sharp fizz striking refreshingly against the back of the throat.

Saliva began pouring from my mouth. I briskly wiped it away with my sleeve. Fate really was strange.

Up until last year, I was living an ordinary life, even drinking beer now and then, and somehow I had ended up standing in the eye of a storm of the extraordinary.

Just yesterday alone, two beautiful girls were brawling in front of me with knives mixed into the scuffle. Thinking about it, I myself had gone to visit the person I’d sliced up and threatened to wipe out his entire bloodline. A dry laugh slipped out of my mouth.

Had something gone wrong with my head too?

I raked my hand through my hair and shook off the useless thoughts. The more I obsessed over all those petty things, the more I’d get dragged in without meaning to. As for Nox, unless something happened, I could probably stop worrying about him now. The problem was Rachel…

According to Miracle’s Blessing, her personality was YOLO incarnate. She was exactly the kind of character who could never be pinned down.

Even during the game, she had approached the protagonist Leon first in an openly clingy way, only to fall after the main heroine Abel in the end.

It felt like I’d gotten entangled with exactly the one person I least wanted to be involved with. I wasn’t interested in running around like a pushover trying to avoid her, but I couldn’t think of any proper way to deal with her either.

I’ll think about that later.

There was still plenty I had to do. What came first was preparing for the first midterms, now only two weeks away. Since the reward was the B-rank weapon Murasame, I intended to take it seriously.

Even if it was a longsword in the sword category, for someone like me who was practically the same as having no weapon at all, it was a blessing from heaven. Also, the fact that it fell outside my blessing’s size requirements was another merit, if you wanted to call it that. Well, if it really didn’t suit my hand later, I could always just take it to a smithy.

The content of the exam would be that, regardless of class, teams of five would be formed to subjugate a group of demonic beasts. The academy’s practical lessons and tests were generally centered around cooperation.

Something about how, while individual skill mattered too, trust between comrades mattered even more if you wanted to survive on a battlefield.

Well, thanks to that, if you got lucky with your teammates, I guess you could just ride the bus and collect the reward for free.

For reference, the beast we’d be subjugating during the midterms was the D-rank merman, a demonic beast with the upper body of a fish and the lower body of a human. Put simply, imagine a walking fish with two legs.

Fuck.

They had looked disgusting enough even in the game, so just imagining seeing them in real life made my teeth grind. I’d spent a lifetime catching fish, and the thought of facing fish with legs made curses swirl around inside my mouth.

If only they’d been mermaids instead, at least my eyes would’ve had something nice to enjoy.

Though those were actually demonoids.

The demonoids, the core force of the demon race. Compared to them, demonic beasts were basically just watchdog-tier creatures.

Even though things had remained quiet since the armistice agreement with humanity seven hundred years ago.

Still, just as people say there was no history of humanity without war, there had often been conflicts both great and small.

The most representative example was Basmon, commander of the Demon King’s Sixth Legion, who had crossed the ceasefire line on his own fifty years ago.

Under some bullshit justification about reviving Lycan, the First Legion Commander sealed by Balor Hoakin, the Hero of Origin, he had invaded alone.

After a bloody battle that lasted seven days and nights, the Seven Heroes emerged victorious.

However, among the seven heroes on the winning side, three of them, excluding the Sword Emperor, the Sage, the Spear Saint, and the Absolute Bow, lost their lived at Basmon’s hands.

The demon race brushed it aside as Basmon’s unilateral act and evaded responsibility, while humanity too let it slide in the end, fearing that pushing the matter further would sever the fragile thread of the armistice.

If even the seven strongest humans together lost three people to a single commander under the Demon King…

And Basmon had even possessed that cliché trait of being the weakest among us. It made Balor Hoakin, who had sealed the First Legion Commander Lycan all by himself, seem all the more incredible.

But the problem was that, three years from now, we’d had to wage war against the entire demon race, including the Demon King himself.

“……”

Feeling stifled, I rubbed my face so hard it grew hot, then slapped my cheeks twice.

If I wanted to survive in this hellhole, I had to get a grip. I forced myself to settle down and think only about the midterms for now.

First of all, I had to put in some legwork and find a decent team. Under normal circumstances, the noble brats wouldn’t let a special advancement student like me onto the same team as them.

But wasn’t I a fairly famous figure in the academy by now? Since there was no way to get through these three years quietly anyway, I adjusted my goal toward using that as a selling point and living a little more comfortably.

Having finished that train of thought, I stared blankly at the ceiling. And then I buried myself back into bed.

In a growing body, there was never enough sleep, no matter how much I got.

* * *

One week later.

Not a single cadet was willing to take me on as a teammate, as if it were all some big joke.

Forget the plan of riding the bus comfortably on the first exam. At this rate, I might even fail.

Why? I seriously asked myself that question. Was it overconfidence? Thinking it over carefully, I had the feeling that the problem was that I’d gone too far in how I handled the Nox situation.

Since I was the type of person who couldn’t do anything just halfway, I definitely had a tendency to respond too harshly, and because of that, I had become something close to an object of fear among my classmates.

It wasn’t just me either. Chloe hadn’t gotten any team invitations either. It was probably because of what happened with Rachel. Ever since that incident, the cadets in our class had subtly started avoiding her too.

Well, even I wouldn’t want to keep a friend around who pulled out a box cutter instead of talking. But since I had gotten tangled up in that whole thing, it bothered me for some reason.

For me, this kind of situation was familiar since I’d been a loner from the start, but Chloe had entered the academy and adapted pretty well, maintaining gentle friendships here and there. And now, overnight, she was being treated like a loner too.

“After thinking a moment, I asked Chloe.”

“Chloe, still no cadets asking you to join their team?”

Ah, no. Not yet, hehe.

“Chloe answered while scratching her head and wearing that loose, easy smile.”

“Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, for me it’s normal since people were already avoiding me anyway, but you had started making friends and stuff, didn’t you?”

Ah! I was okay! As long as I had Geom-ma……

She let the end of her words trail off in that shrinking voice of hers. The truth was, her saying she was fine didn’t seem to be a lie. There wasn’t any trace of worry on Chloe’s face. If anything, her expression was brighter than before.

“Right. Chloe’s just that kind of girl. I smiled without realizing it.”

“Then for this exam, let’s be on the same team. We’ll still need three more people, but for now we’re both still without teams, so. That’s okay, right?”

Ah, ah, yes! Of course!

She nodded furiously in agreement and then gave a soft smile. My suggestion that we be on the same team wasn’t driven only by sympathy.

Chloe was a fighting asset I truly acknowledged. If she was with me, I wouldn’t even need to be the first one to draw a blade. Honestly, in a one-on-one fight I could finish things in under thirty seconds, but the exam was about killing more mermen within one hour. No matter how fast I was, there was no way I could meet the target in thirty seconds.

“While Chloe and I were talking about the exam like that, a familiar uninvited guest suddenly burst in.”

Geom-ma-kun! I came to hang out!

“Rachel. After that incident, things had stayed quiet for a few days. At the arrival of a guest I had no desire to see, my face turned exhausted.”

“Why are you here again?”

Huh? I just came to hang out.

“At the seat beside me, Chloe was glaring so sharply it looked like she might start grappling right then and there. Her hand was already moving toward her pocket, and I could practically smell the steel.”

“Just go home today. I’m busy enough already and don’t have time to deal with you.”

“Geom-ma-kun, you’re so cold!”

…Could you, maybe, not call me Geom-ma-kun?

“Rachel answered by sticking out her tongue. Pressing my fingers to my temple, I waved her off. It meant leave already. Maybe she was deaf, because instead she pressed herself right up against my side.”

Geom-ma, did you find a team for the exam?

“Whether she meant to or was just joking, Rachel hit exactly where it hurt.”

“No.”

Oh, really? Then want to join our team?!

“At that sudden proposal, my head tilted to the side.”

“Why me? Even without me, there’d be a line of people wanting to be on the same team as you.”

“Those people are boring. I just feel like something fun would happen if I teamed up with you.”

“I already decided Chloe and I would be on the same team.”

That was fine! We happen to have two spots open.

It was tempting. The problem was that the other person was Rachel, but as the old sages said, hate the sin, not the sinner. I rubbed my chin. It was a proposal personally offered by the academy’s fourth seat. At this rate, my first exam score was already looking dangerously shaky. I wasn’t exactly drowning in options.

I asked Chloe what she thought. She narrowed her brows, clearly unhappy because it was Rachel, but at my request she reluctantly gave a small nod.

“Then I’m asking you.”

“Okay! But no backing out later!”

Apparently pleased with my answer, Rachel smiled in satisfaction. Right away, she took out her phone and started texting, saying she’d contact the team leader. Watching that, a question suddenly crossed my mind.

“By the way, who’s the leader?”

“Leon van Reinhardt. You know who that is, right?”

Fuck this.