Friday.
After classes were over, everyone got excited and started running wild, and the most annoying one among them was No. 8 Kono Lint.
”It’s closing todaaaaay!”
Those who planned on returning to their homes hurried back to the dormitory to pack their things, and the ones who would remain went on to do their own thing because a long break was about to begin.
I would stay in the dormitory for today and leave tomorrow when things have gotten calmer. I was going to meet up with Eleris after all. As I was taking the mana train multiple times, to shake off any possible tails I might have, I planned on transforming to a different appearance using Sarkegaar’s ring before going to Eleris’ store.
I could go to the Rotary Gang, but I was reluctant to go there because of various reasons. It seemed like the Prince and the Princess had already begun to look into that place.
This might be an honor in its own way. When would higher ranked people pay so much attention to a beggar’s organization after all?
It wasn’t intentional, but the outcome was moderately good.
Charlotte would try to protect the Rotary Gang because it held the only clue to find Valier, while Bertus would try to use the Rotary Gang as a stepping stone to take over the Capital’s underworld, so he wouldn’t do anything to it.
Depending on my actions, they might actually help me, far from trying to harm me.
Eventually, by proving my usefulness to both of them, I seemed to have turned into one hell of an opportunist. Someone needed by both the Prince and the Princess.
I might actually be quite the popular guy, huh?
Everyone was excited. Both the ones who would return and the ones who would stay behind.
Of course, there were three exceptions.
Ellen Artorius, who’d eventually become a hero never before seen, would continue to think about her brother’s death. Perhaps this festival wasn’t something Ellen could be excited about.
The other two were Bertus and Charlotte.
The two of them were going to be very busy during this festival, having to rush from one place to another. They tried not to show any exhaustion, but they seemed to be struggling.
“Charlotte.”
“…….Yeah.”
Therefore, I was able to wittness a rare scene. I saw the two of them holding a conversation. No one said anything superficially, but the two of them tried to pretend not to know each other in Temple. Of course, they didn’t get along at all.
So, even though it had been a while since they entered the school, that would have been the first time seeing them hold a conversation in Temple for everyone.
The two of them were talking as they walked side by side.
-So, the order of protocol is….
-I already memorized everything. I don’t have to hear it again.
-As expected, you’re smart.
-No, you’re the only oh-so-smart one.
-Why does it sound like you’re being sarcastic even though it’s supposed to be a compliment?
-Because I was being sarcastic.
Bertus, who pretended to be kind, and Charlotte, who was being overtly blunt.
They seemed to be talking about things related to the festival. Since it was an official imperial event, both Bertus and Charlotte would have to make an appearance.
Everyone was staring blankly at the half-siblings holding their conversation, as if they couldn’t believe this was happening.
And, as if not in the least interested in this scene, I watched Ellen Artorius carelessly walking out of the classroom building.
“Get out of my way, you bastard.”
-Pang!
“Urg!”
Then everyone turned to the scene of A-9 Erich hitting B-3 Scarlett in the head while passing by.
“How unlucky.”
Erich could be seen passing by, and A-10 Cayer briefly sweared at her before following behind Erich. I wondered where Ludwig was. I wasn’t sure if he had already left.
Scarlett kept her head down and didn’t say a word. All the other students left, pretending they didn’t see her at all.
For just how long did I have to watch this? According to the original story, Ludwig would end up requesting a duel with Erich. However, this had already gone terribly wrong, just because I intervened once.
Of course, Ludwig’s personality itself hadn’t changed, so Ludwig would end up saving Scarlett one day. So if I intervened now, the future would change again and it might become even more unpredictable.
Fiery red hair and red eyes.
Scarlett raised her head and met my eyes.
Everyone had already left, so Scarlett and I were the only ones left in the hallway.
Scarlett lowered her gaze again in fear after our eyes met.
There were numerous sins I committed in this world, this grievous situation definitely was one of them.
She’ll get saved.
Ludwig will be the one to save her.
Those settings were made with such simple, careless thoughts. Both the reason for her bullying and the solution. However, I eventually got confronted with this reality I created with my own hands.
This strange reality, it was me who created it.
“What’s wrong with red?.”
“……?”
I looked at Scarlett as if I was talking to her.
“What’s so important about hair color? Isn’t it more important being the best in Temple?”
Scarlett raised her head and looked at me again. She was treated like a bad omen by everyone, because of her red eyes and hair, so she got bullied because of it for a long time. I approached her. She backed off against the wall, as if trying to escape from me.
I wasn’t trying to threaten her.
“You saw it. The winner’s always right.”
Scarlett came to see my duel.
“Didn’t you come to see that?”
Why did Scarlett come to see my duel?
She wasn’t from the same class, but she came to see my duel with the senior. I accepted this duel with that senior without even having a talent.
It was clear what the outcome would be. I didn’t know why she came.
However, she saw it clearly. I was able to emerge victorious against that senior in the end.
She must have seen me stand back up again and again, despite our difference in origin and strength.
“Don’t doze off.”
“…….”
Then I whispered to Scarlett, whose eyes seemed like those of a frightened rabbit. It was just like the sweet temptation of a devil.
“Should I tell you something?”
“Wha,t…. is it?”
Right.
Scarlett talked to me quite politely. Come to think of it, this was our first time talking.
Anyway, I told her Erich Lafaeri’s secret.
It wasn’t even that big of a deal.
“That guy’s a pushover.”
You were in the same year. How long did you want to get pushed around by that weakling?
You already knew that much.
‘The trouble maker Reinhardt went beyond just starting fights on his own and now egged others on to fight. He’s said to be a devil’s seed born to instill conflict, destroy friendships and disrupt other’s peaceful life at Temple.’
That was right.
Objectively speaking, I was no longer just a villain, I was slowly transitioning into a supervillain.
Put in Batman terms, I wouldn’t be the Joker, but rather the Penguin.
I even had the unprecedented luck to awaken a supernatural ability in the middle of a fight even though I was completely incompetent.
It was even common for me to swear at nobles while being a beggar, and even laying hands on them.
Not only was I able to beat up my senior, but I even got the college level seniors of the Royal Class, who didn’t know about my true personality, to believe I was good and righteous. They even promised to take care of me if I ever got into trouble.
Currently, I received support from both Bertus and Charlotte who were Number 1 of their respective class and were virtually the most powerful. In other words, I was rather free from their power which transcended Temple. They both had no intention of directly controlling me.
I strangely didn’t even have any problems with the ones that could subdue me. Ellen, who was pretty much the strongest among the first years and had no close friends, even taught me swordsmanship.
Of course, that was because I only clashed with people who had seriously flawed personalities and picked a fight with me first.
And now, no matter how big a problem the bullying was, I was even urging the victim to fight the perpetrator.
The man who was behind every incident that took place in Temple and only thought about messing around.
That was who I became.
“…….”
Scarlett remained frozen for a long time after telling her that Erich was actually a total pushover. It wasn’t like she didn’t know that or that she didn’t know how to fight. She didn’t want to cause any trouble. She thought that her life would be over if she were kicked out of Temple.
Strictly speaking, she didn’t really need my help.
I mean, she was a better fighter than me anyways.
Objectively speaking, in the current first-year combat ranking, Scarlett would be among the Top 5. Of course, Ellen would take first place with a wide gap between the first and second place. She might jump between the 2nd and 5th place, but Scarlett would definitely keep being among the best.
She wasn’t able to do it because of her trauma caused by being bullied for all her life by a person, who she could defeat in a duel quite easily.
* * *
I was staying in the dormitory for today, as I was thinking of paying Eleris a visit tomorrow.
So I just started doing my usual training. Adriana said she’d leave today, so she only came by to train in the morning.
Everyone was excited for this holiday, so there were many students who were rushing to leave Temple.
Ludwig, who was still quite inexperienced, ran around Temple once a day every morning without fail. Of course, that was only possible for him. I still had a long way to go.
Originally, I didn’t have any interest or talent in exercising. Now that I thought about it, I wasn’t really enjoying it either. I just clenched my teeth and powered through because I felt a certain guilt. I wasn’t allowed to rest. I had something to do, so I had to work hard.
That strong compulsion was the only thing that kept me going.
“Whew….”
However, after running for a while, at the place where Temple’s Higher Education Department was located, I sat down on a bench on a hillside where one of the running tracks was. I was trying to catch my breath.
I could overlook the vast landscape of Temple from there. Even if I wasn’t as strong as Ludwig, my stamina definitely improved by leaps and bounds. I was even able to climb these hills without much problems, even though I was still slightly out of breath.
“…….”
There wasn’t any event like a sudden explosive growth in stats or my overall performance. My supernatural ability awakened, but that didn’t mean I suddenly had the power to flip the world upside down.
However, a short while ago, I wasn’t even able to run properly without Adriana’s support, but now I had enough stamina to run up a hillside and look down on all of Temple. It wasn’t at the speed of an airplane or a car, but enough to feel my growth and the results of my training.
I was growing little by little. Obviously, this wasn’t the fantasy life I was dreaming of.
My growth was rather slow, and even if the crisis was still far away, it was still definitely approaching.
“Phew….”
This felt more like a slice-of-life story than the one I actually wrote.
This was completely different from casually describing that a character suddenly became stronger after years or decades of training.
I had to fill these weeks, months and years with my own body.
It was up to me to work hard in these months I described in the novel.
“……I’m thirsty.”
But let’s first drink some water and continue to run.
* * *
I’m Type A.
“Come.”
Type A was a preset setting specialized in close combat, namely swordsmanship and body strengthening.
-Kaang!
“Sigh….”
I sighed as I watched the sword slip out of my grasp.
“Train your grip strength.”
“I am. I’m doing it to the point where I can’t feel my hands anymore.”
Even if I used my supernatural power, I keep losing grip of my weapon after taking a hit from her.
“Then use your ability.”
“……I’ve been using it.”
“Ah.”
She was a master in making me feel small. I slumped on the floor as I picked up my training sword. My hands felt numb and I had a hard time holding my sword properly.
“Hey, isn’t it strange?”
“What is?”
Ellen tilted her head at my words.
“I know because I felt it, but aren’t you a lot stronger than the 3rd year I was barely able to defeat by luck?”
It was actually like that. I ended up like this even while she was going extremely easy on me. I could guarantee that if she had gone up against Mayarton that day, the duel would have been over in under 5 seconds. I wasn’t exaggerating. That was Artorius, the greatest warrior of all mankind, for you. To be exact, she was even better in terms of talent than Ragan Artorius.
If nurtured properly Ellen Artorius would become even more of a monster than him.
“What of it?“
If you’re strong, you’re strong.
“I can understand that you don’t gain much weight even after eating so much. There are people like that after all.”
People with a super high metabolism or people with poor digestive efficiency. There were definitely people who wouldn’t gain that much weight by eating a lot. I got up and pointed at Ellen’s arms and wrist.
“What I mean is, how can you have that much strength when your body looks like this?”
Yes.
Mayarton was big. Ellen, however, wasn’t muscular and, technically speaking, she had quite the slender build.
It was totally mysterious how she was able to generate such power from such a thin body. It was just so strange, physically speaking!
I disliked it even more, because I thought I knew the reason for that.
Of course, it was because of me.
Obviously…. She was supposed to have the best talents in the world, ahd excellent skills and was a total munchkin, but I described her as a “Beautiful girl”, which was why she looked the way she looked. There might be 188cm tall muscular beauties out there, but they wouldn’t look like young girls, now would they? So that was why there was a kid in front of me with a height of 163cm and a weight of 40 kg with the strength of a human tank. This physical discrepancy was purely caused by my unrealistic standards.
She seemed soft everywhere as if she had no muscles. In fact, the skin on her arms looked as smooth as a baby’s, when they were supposed to be weathered and packed with muscles. She wasn’t even toned. Actually, we had some body contact while we were training so I found out that she was all soft.
Of course, if one were to enter the superhuman stage, it was possible to have power that went far beyond what a normal human was capable of, using magic body enhancement..
However, she didn’t know how to use that yet, so she was only using her body’s strength.
Right.
I was god.
I broke the laws of physics of this world with just a few lines of text. Ellen frowned slightly at my grumbling.
“Our family is strong.”
Ah.
Was the probability of that part just supplemented to that degree? Were your family’s muscle fibers made out of adamantium wire or something?
Seriously, even if they were the strongest family in the world, this didn’t make much sense.
I was born like that. What are you going to do about it?
In three words, it was blunt. Well, I had never made that kind of setting, but her family might be descendants of dragons or something. This was a world where the probability which I flipped on its head got supplemented.
In the end, it was me who violated the rules here, so I had no right to complain. I could just accept it. There was a limit to how much growth one could achieve through training alone, so one would supplement one’s body using talents or skills.
If one were able to do this long term, one entered the superhuman stage through magic body enhancement.
“Hold it again.”
“Hm!”
-Kaang!
“…….”
Are you playing baseball?
Seeing my training sword fly towards the other end of the gym, I felt dejected.
It wasn’t a homerun, but a hit.
