Eiro slowly waited by the arena's exit. His class went pretty well, as he just so slightly modified each of the students' weapons to make them a better fit for their, sometimes not fully developed, bodies.
But for now, the Demon was waiting for a certain few students that he yet had to fully punish. The group of bullies gathered in front of him, completely and utterly exhausted.
"All of you, write a ten page essay about why what you did was wrong. Each of you individually, of course. If I notice that the letters have too much in common, or if I notice that you didn't write them yourself, I'll have you write a twenty-page essay. While I'm there to watch you write it." The Demon said in a strict tone.
One of the students practically glared back at Eiro and replied, angry at the fact they were being punished like this, "Don't you think you're exaggerating a bit?! We won't do it again, alright? Just fucking stop it now, or I'll tell my father about this!"
Eiro turned his head toward the student, "Don't worry, I'll be speaking to your parents about this anyway. So you can go ahead and tell them whatever you want. However, I just want to point out one little thing. You could have killed Rico with what you made him do."
"Oh, don't be ridiculous, now." Richard sighed loudly, the only one unimpressed by the idea of his parents being informed, "All we had him do was swallow some rocks and his shitty, rusty earring. How could that have-"
"The earring had a small exposed pin, which could have certainly wounded Rico a bit. Not fatally, of course, but you could have injured him." Eiro pointed out, and without giving him another chance to speak, Richard continued, "Hah... how sad, now you're contradicting yourself. You just said it wouldn't have been fatal, so how would it have killed him?"
As if he already won this 'debate', Richard looked Eiro straight in his eyes, as the Demon continued, "Simple. At some point, Rico would have visited the infirmary. There, one of the academy's hired healers would have realized that he was wounded internally, and would have healed his stomach area. There, that mana would have interacted with that 'shitty, rusty earring'." Eiro explained. The children were a bit confused, of course.
"That earring was apparently a family-heirloom. But you already knew that, that's probably the reason why you made him swallow it. However, I was amazed to realize that it had a miniature Magic Stone set into it. Not a rare one, of course, but still. It was a Magic Stone. The mana from Rico being healed could have interacted with the Magic Stone, causing it to produce even a small amount of magic within Rico's stomach, or digestive track. Considering that it was a Fire Magic stone, that could have backfired quite a lot, obviously. The healers that stay within the infirmary aren't equipped to heal that sort of injury." Eiro explained to the students.
Each of them had a pale complexion, realizing what might have happened if Eiro hadn't come along. Of course Eiro was hiding the fact that there was a miniscule chance for any of this happening, since the pin on the earring in question was actually rounded and not sharp, but it still could have led to some injury. It was just very unlikely.
Once again, however, it seemed like Richard didn't care much. At first Eiro thought that he somehow realized that it wouldn't have injured him, or that such a situation was incredibly unlikely, but that clearly wasn't the case considering what he said next.
"So what, if he's dumb enough to do whatever we tell him to, then maybe he would have deserved that." Richard pointed out, and Eiro locked eyes with him. He was trying to act tough, and Eiro wasn't sure if this kid really was like this, or if he was just pretending.
"All of you beside Richard, you are dismissed. The deadline for the essay is a week from now." The Demon said, and everyone quickly rushed past him to get out of here, while Richard kept staring at Eiro.
"Hahaha, seriously? You think it's a good idea to be alone with me?" Richard asked with a loud laugh, as if Eiro just made a huge mistake. He took out a small blade, nothing but a letter-opener, out of his coat and slowly made its tip hover over its tip.
"Listen here, what you're going to do now is this. You will let me leave, and you will never speak to anyone about this ever again. If you don't want your pitiful life absolutely ruined, then you're going to do what I say." Richard laughed, and Eiro looked back at him.
"You think you scare me? I just want to talk to you, to figure this out. The school offers plenty of support to its students, especially if they're going through certain things mentally. Mental health issues are a serious thing. We don't live in the same times where people think that you are possessed by an evil spirit anymore. Now we can differentiate between an actual evil spirit's possession and just someone needing a lot of help. It's obvious that you need plenty of help." Eiro explained bluntly, "I can set up a session between you and Mrs. Klitzing, she is apparently quite exper-"
"Oh, just shut the fuck up, now." Richard groaned loudly, "Nothing is wrong with me, you absolute idiot. I'm literally perfect."
Eiro let out a deep sigh. He himself didn't take this whole 'mental health' thing too serious before either, but after having long conversations with Arc about the world he used to live in, he started to realize that it might be something more serious than he thought. Arc kept going on and on about how he wished his former world was more like this in the regard of how this sort of topic was generally treated.
But that wasn't important right now, what was important was that Richard was obviously threatening to injure himself just to control Eiro.
"Fine, if you don't believe me..." Richard slowly pressed the tip of the letter opener into his own palm, quickly drawing blood, "Oh no~... Seems like the new teacher Eiro has aggressions against nobles... The whole division can confirm that he was quite aggressive toward us yesterday as well... He must feel jealous for how he himself grew up..."
The young man kept on smirking, but Eiro didn't take his crap, "I guess before then, we'll head to the infirmary ourselves. Put that away and come with me."
"Huh?" Richard replied baffled, "You don't care that I'm about to ruin your career?"
"Ruin my- Kid, I'm an Adventurer, I'm a stand-in for a teacher that literally killed students here. I'm a close personal friend of the King. Stabbing a little asshole's hand won't ruin anything for me." Eiro replied, and simply grabbed Richard by his arm to drag him toward the infirmary.
Richard clicked his tongue, "Fine, then I'll have to go with plan B. If you don't listen to me, I'll tell my men to go to your house and kill your children. They're professionals, trained to the highest degree by our-" The boy suddenly stopped and looked down at his hand, before flinching back in pain as he realized that his hand was stuck to his thigh.
The moment that Richard chose to threaten Eiro with something like that so casually, the Demon chose to check if Richard was just making this up, or if he was serious. And it was basically impossible for Richard to lie any less. He would absolutely try to go through with this.
So, considering that he was threatening to have people killed, Eiro figured it was fair to stop treating him like a child. Richard wasn't playing the children's games that Eiro thought he was. He was playing in the league of the adults.
And Eiro treated him as such. He grabbed the letter-opener and pressed it through Richard's hand until it came out the other side, and then continued to press it down to stab Richard's leg with the very same blade.
"Alright, you just took it a step too far, buddy. I'll tell you what's going to happen now. You're going to your dorm-room, you sit down at your desk, and you start writing the essay I told you to. Then, you're going to meet Rico, and personally apologize to him by burying your smug face in the dirt he's standing on. If you don't, then next I'm going to stab something bigger than this letter opener through you. You got that?" Eiro asked with a soft smile on his face, his eyes constantly interlocked with Richard's.
"You're absolutely insane!" Richard exclaimed, but Eiro really didn't care in the slightest abotu what he had to say, "You're the one that threatened to have my kids killed just because you have an issue with me. You should take responsibility for that." The Demon pointed out.
He pulled the letter opener out of Richard's leg and hand, and quickly cleaned up the blood before swiftly healing any wounds with Nelli's help. Now it just looked like Richard accidentally cut open his pants with his own sword or something like that.
Of course, at the end of the day, Richard was just a kid. Even if he was playing with adults, that wouldn't change anytime soon. But Eior was ready to bend his own rules a little bit for pricks like Richard anytime.
