Chapter 34 – This Time Wasn’t Normal Either (2)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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The council of Hoakin Academy.

The five powerful men who stood among the highest leadership of Hoakin Academy. Old men steeped in gloom, hidden away from the public eye while kneading the world’s most prestigious academy in their hands.

Some might ask, wasn’t the headmaster the highest authority in the academy? As for me, I could only offer an ambiguous answer to that.

It was the headmaster’s role to examine and approve the major issues within the academy.

However, given the nature of Hoakin Academy, where the children of every great family in the world gathered, it could not be the case that the headmaster alone wielded all authority.

Because the status Hoakin Academy held in this world meant that what happened inside it was never just a local issue and always carried greater significance. If the headmaster were to abuse absolute authority, the consequences would spill far beyond the academy itself and become a broader social issue among the upper classes.

Out of that background, the elder council of Hoakin Academy was born. They had kept past headmasters in check by putting forward their legitimacy as the descendants of five of Balor Hoakin’s seven disciples.

If I had to compare it to Earth, the position of headmaster was roughly equivalent to the prime minister of a neighboring country, a top-level decision-maker. The academy elders functioned more like a parliament.

Thanks to their skill at representing the nobility and the strength of their legitimacy, there had been very few points in their seven-hundred-year history when their influence had been low. At most, maybe around the time when the Seven Heroes had defeated Basmon.

So although each of them still carried tremendous influence even outside the academy, water that sat stagnant too long without circulation inevitably rotted. Simply put, the current elder council was a corruption-ridden force. Even back when I played Miracle’s Blessing M, they were the sort who constantly interfered with protagonist Leon’s actions and got in his way.

The demon race at least possessed a flat but undeniable justification in that they were humanity’s enemy. By contrast, the elder council only ever moved to preserve their own vested power.

No matter that they were the descendants of Balor Hoakin’s noble seven disciples, hereditary power was enough to make even them stagnate.

Because of that, their image was so bad that players saw them as an evil force even worse than the demon race.

‘So why are those old geezers after me?’

I folded my arms and frowned. Chloe, who had been crouching behind my back, heard Nox’s words and jumped up like a startled rabbit, raising her voice.

“Don’t tell me you came to Geom-ma because of that?”

Apparently Chloe still hadn’t completely shaken off her fear of Nox, because her eyes were trembling faintly.

At Chloe’s question, Nox let out a deep sigh and shook his head from side to side as he answered.

“You’ve been away from home too long and lost your sense of things, Chloe.”

From the very fact that an assassin specializing in ambush had come strolling up in broad daylight, there had to be some different motive.

Perhaps sulking, Chloe puffed up her face and hid behind my back again. After looking at her for a moment, Nox continued his explanation.

“Auditore does not kill without clear justification. Not even if the order comes from the academy elders themselves. There is only a hair’s breadth between a purge and slaughter. If we fail to keep that boundary, then we are no different from crazed beasts addicted to killing.”

“……”

I blinked. It was a side of him completely at odds with the insolent attitude he normally wore. Every word Nox spoke landed as a fresh shock.

Nox shot me a sidelong glance. When our eyes met, he awkwardly looked away and went on as calmly as he could.

“No matter what kind of request it is, the verification process takes at least two months before we accept it. I have no interest in whatever sort of messes you go around causing, but for some reason the academy elders are strangely obsessed with you.”

I stayed quiet, arms folded, and tilted my head. There were more than a few questions coming over me.

Why exactly the old bastards wanted me dealt with, and why Nox, a member of Auditore, felt the need to tell me any of this himself.

Still, the sharpened senses that had become my default passive denied the idea that he was lying. In matters like this, the Blessing of the Sword God was extremely convenient.

“It’s not just me. Even inside Auditore, the atmosphere is that something feels off and the request should be delayed for now. The fact that they submitted it secretly without going through the headmaster is strange enough, and a request to eliminate a mere cadet also goes against Auditore’s principles. That said, since the order came directly from the academy elders, it’s not easy to ignore. If the pressure continues, Auditore will eventually have no choice but to carry out an investigation into you, Kang Geom-ma.”

For an instant, Nox’s expression blurred, but he hid it and added:

“Whatever the case, Chloe is also a member of Auditore, so she needs to know this too.”

I’d felt it from the moment I first saw him, but this bastard really did seem to care sincerely about Chloe. The way he kept glancing at her injured leg earlier was proof enough.

Whether because of the family he came from or not, his way of expressing things was awkward to the point of being sharp, but no amount of brutal training could erase affection. That was what family was. For some reason, the tip of my nose stung.

Nox had come here under the pretext that the request violated House Auditore principles, but in the end, the reason he’d gone out of his way to tell us was probably Chloe.

And the fact that he’d come in broad daylight also meant he had likely come partly to check how much her condition had improved.

Not long ago, he had looked like someone who didn’t possess even a fingernail’s worth of humanity. Even the eyes that used to look down on me had softened quite a bit.

Of course, my own safety probably didn’t matter to him in the slightest.

And frankly, it wasn’t exactly a pleasant feeling to have some pitch-black male bastard worrying about me anyway.

Whatever his motive, the fact remained that thanks to Nox, I’d learned of the academy elders’ covert assassination order.

“I’ve said what I came to say.”

With that, Nox turned to leave. The sight of his back somehow looked lonelier than before, and I called out to stop him.

“Nox.”

Nox reflexively turned only his head and upper body back. I gestured to Chloe to stay seated, then walked over to him.

Nox flinched and took a nervous step backward. Soon I was standing at his feet. Scratching the back of my head, I said:

“…Well.”

Now that I was standing in front of him, the words of thanks wouldn’t come out easily. Which made sense. I was the same man who had beaten him to a pulp not long ago. No matter what kind of thanks I offered now, it wouldn’t feel sincere in the slightest.

The words wouldn’t come, so I just rubbed the corner of my mouth. A strange atmosphere passed between us. Unexpectedly, it was Nox who spoke first.

“Don’t let Chloe get hurt again.”

“…?”

Nox wore an expression that silently demanded an answer. I nodded to show that I understood. Only then did some of the wariness leave him.

“When Chloe is beside you, she’s happier than I’ve ever seen her. Even as her family, I’ve never seen her look like that.”

Nox let the end of his sentence trail off and muttered it quietly. Then he straightened his back and asked:

“Let me ask you one thing. How are you so strong?”

“……”

I slowly raised my eyes and looked Nox over from head to toe.

A face full of questions. It was completely different from before, when arrogance had seeped from every feature. Even the fierceness in his expression had softened somewhat.

I thought maybe he’d simply lost all spirit after I threatened him, but it seemed a boy’s will would not break that easily.

A mindset that bent but did not snap. I knew that was the first step toward making a great leap.

…The problem was, there wasn’t any answer that immediately came to mind.

How could he know? That my power was no more than a forty-second sprinter. In a situation where my life kept getting threatened by incident after incident exploding out of nowhere every day.

The reason for my strength? To me, strength meant having the kind of power that could constantly face danger head-on. Someone like… the Sword Emperor, for example.

In other words, I didn’t think someone like me, whose strength was a fleeting thing that lasted less than a minute each day, was on a level where I could talk grandly about being strong.

‘Still, just closing my mouth completely would be bad form….’

Nox had revealed internal matters of his own family to me, an outsider.

I could guess that, beneath it all, he’d really come to imply that I should take good care of Chloe.

Carefully choosing my thoughts, I finally opened my mouth in a weighty tone. Nox immediately perked up his ears as if he’d been waiting for it.

“Nox, what you lack is desperation.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Nox’s brows twitched in interest.

“No matter that you’re an assassin from Auditore, real social experience has its own kind of vibe. But you don’t have anything like that, do you? Since I was young, I’ve worked all over the place and seen and gone through all kinds of things. I think all of that built up into the person I am now.”

I glanced sidelong at Nox’s bewildered face, then scratched the back of my neck.

“If you stay shut up inside the academy forever, you’ll hit your growth ceiling fast. So go outside and get some experience in society. If you work hard and sweat for it, you’ll definitely gain something.”

It looked like he had plenty more he wanted to say, but I turned my back without hesitation. Ignoring the gaze I could feel from behind me, I took a light step away.

* * *

Even while I sat through the final class of the afternoon after lunch, questions lingered in my head. The professor’s lecture, tinged with the scratch of chalk, sank low into the background like nothing more than ambient noise.

‘The academy elders are targeting me.’

No matter how much I tried to guess why I was such a thorn in their side, I couldn’t arrive at any proper conclusion. Still, the fact that those old men shut away in their little rooms were my enemies was worth considering.

Muttering bitterly, I began jotting with my pencil to look back through everything I’d done.

【Entered the academy as top student.】

【Completely destroyed Nox of the assassin family in a subspace duel.】

【Cut down that fish-headed bastard during the midterm in Leon’s place while he was half-dead.】

“……”

Seeing it written out like that, I really had caused quite a few incidents.

Back during the entrance ceremony I’d been talking about stability, safety, and getting through things quietly, but at this rate it almost looked like I’d been desperately trying to stand out all along.

All I could do was soothe myself by saying every one of those things had been necessary to survive.

Of course, it was absurd to think the elders were after me just because of that. There was definitely something deeper and far nastier hiding underneath.

While I was calmly organizing my thoughts, an odd sense of wrongness suddenly flashed across my mind, and my brow furrowed. My gaze immediately fixed itself on the notebook.

【Leon was attacked by the mermaid on Scopuli Island.】

‘…Scopuli Island… Leon… mermaid….’

I carefully replayed what had happened during the midterm. The mermen gathered conspicuously near that pool not far from our assigned zone. And the demonoid mermaid had appeared as if it had been waiting for the moment Leon let his guard down. Thinking about it now, it was strange.

Even though it had been in a position to target all of us, that fish bastard had attacked Leon specifically and precisely.

Keeping my arms crossed, I began gathering those fragmentary bits of information together in an instant. It only took a few seconds to reach a conclusion.

‘…The one being targeted wasn’t me. It was Leon.’

I didn’t know the elders’ true intentions, but I felt certain that Leon, not me, was their real objective. I was just seen as an obstacle that got in the way of that objective.

No matter how thoroughly Headmaster Media tried to keep things quiet, it was far too naive to think that fox-like old men at the top of noble society wouldn’t hear of it.

The very fact that they were aiming at Leon, a hero candidate, suggested the possibility that someone among them, or perhaps even all of them, was in league with the demon race. Nothing was certain, but judging by the elder council’s conduct in the story, it was more than worth suspecting.

‘Bastards.’

The emotion that began deep inside my chest climbed all the way to my throat. To those old foxes rotted to the core, preserving their own vested power mattered more than humanity or the academy.

And no matter how rotten they were, for members of the academy to be plotting harm against cadets….

Once again, I was reminded of just how rotten the ethics of the people at the top really were.

For a moment I considered going to them myself and giving them a dance of blades, but dropped the thought.

For now I had only abundant suspicion and no solid proof.

I could storm in on impulse and hack the entire elder council to pieces, but it still wasn’t time. Not yet….

“…Hoo.”

Let’s wait until every piece of the situation locks together like gears.

‘And when it does, I’ll cut them all down.’

After reaching that conclusion, I turned my head and looked out the window.

The setting sun painted the scenery yellow as it slowly sank, and behind it the shadows stretched out like tails.

The ancient architecture built by human hands and the light of the natural sunset blended together so well that it almost made me lose my sense of reality for a moment.

And yet not the slightest ripple stirred in my mental image. The fading sunset only wavered in my pupils as a simple phenomenon. It stirred no emotion whatsoever.

After staring blankly beyond the window, I turned my head back toward the podium.

The professor was silently filling the green chalkboard with material about the mythology of this world’s setting. In the light streaming through the windows, the lenses of the professor’s square glasses flashed.

【In an age whose origin could not even be conjectured, there existed countless gods in the heavens. Those who ruled over all things in the name of order and prosperity. Yet even they, who seemed near-omnipo%@#tent, could not escape extinction. The ones who annihila#%ted them were–】

I was interested in the mythology itself, but because the chalk writing was so sloppy, I could only vaguely guess at what most of it said.

I turned my eyes away from the board and thought carefully about what I had to do next. Enhancing my weapon, which I had already decided was the top priority.

To help with that, I needed an ally. In other words, party members.

‘If I ask Chloe, she’ll help….’

But I’d rather had a strategist type than another Lü Bu type like Rachel.

I tapped the desk lightly with a fingernail, and then one face suddenly crossed my mind as though slicing through it.

“Speed Weapon.”

I grinned to myself and looked back at the chalkboard, where the myth continued to take shape one letter at a time.

【–the absolute god and strongest of all, even among those near-omnipo전tent gods. The outer god who cut down every god in heaven and brought an end to the age of myth.】

I couldn’t read most of it, but I still copied down a few words from the final column into my notebook. Studying was, after all, part of a student’s duty too.

【In later ages, humanity dared to call that existence….】

At last the chalk put down a final period, as though declaring the end of the lesson.