Chapter 57
Friday had arrived, and after classes ended, everyone started becoming overly excited, jumping around and in high spirits. As expected, the most boisterous of them all was none other than Number 8, Connor Lint.
“I’m going hooome!” he exclaimed.
Those who were planning to return to their family hurried back to the dormitories to pack their belongings, while those who were staying put began to make their own plans for the long break.
As for me, I had decided to stay in the dormitory until Saturday, when it would become a bit quieter, before heading out. I intended to meet Eleris after taking a ride on the magic train to possibly shake off any tails that might have latched onto me. I would then transform using the ring Sarkegar gave me and go to Eleris’s shop.
I could also go to the Rotary Club, but for many reasons, I was reluctant to visit that place. Especially because it seemed that the prince and princess had already started keeping an eye on the place.
In its own way, this was an honor for the club as well. This would be the first and last time they would ever garner the attention of such high-status individuals.
Although it wasn’t intentional, the situation turned out to be favorable.
Charlotte, who had no other leads to find Baalier but me, would likely do what she could to protect the Rotary Club, and Vertus would aim to use the club as a stepping stone to take over the empire’s underworld, so neither would interfere.
Depending on my actions, they might even offer assistance instead.
In the end, by being useful to both parties, I had smoothly transitioned into what I dubbed “the ultimate middle-man.” I had become someone valuable to both the prince and the princess.
Hey, maybe I was a decent guy after all!
While some were excited about heading back, and others were thrilled to have a break, there were three exceptions that fit neither of these categories.
Ellen Artorius was certain to spend her time dwelling on her brother’s death, the once-in-a-lifetime hero in the eyes of many. This festival was likely not a good thing for her.
Then there were Vertus and Charlotte.
During this festive season, both of them would be extremely busy running around. Although they tried not to show it, it was clear that they were inevitably worn out by the thought of their future exertions.
“Charlotte.”
“...Yeah?”
Because of this, a rare scene unfolded. It was the sight of the two of them engaging in conversation. No one had openly mentioned it, but ever since their enrollment in the Temple, they had been ignoring each other. It was only natural that they weren’t on good terms.
Therefore, even though they had both been enrolled for quite some time, it was the first occasion inside the Temple where everyone could witness them conversing.
They walked side by side, speaking in voices just loud enough to be overheard.
—So, to go over the order of the ceremony again...
—I’ve memorized it all. There’s no need to go over it.
—You do have a smart head on your shoulders.
—Not even close to yours.
—Why does it sound like you’re mocking me, even though it sounds like it should be a compliment?
—Because it’s sarcasm.
Outwardly, Vertus appeared kind, while Charlotte was unmistakably blunt and curt.
The two of them appeared to be discussing the tasks they needed to perform during the upcoming festival. As it was an official imperial event, both Vertus and Charlotte were expected to make public appearances.
Everyone stared blankly at the sight of the half-siblings conversing as if witnessing something utterly improbable.
Amidst this scene, Ellen Artorius walked out of the classroom building, seemingly indifferent to the spectacle around her. I quietly watched her leave.
“Get lost, you damn freaky-eyes.”
—Thump!
“Ugh!”
All eyes were drawn to Erhi, Number A-9, who punched B-3 Scarlett in the head as he walked past her.
“You’re so annoying.”
After Erhi passed by, Number A-10 Kaier muttered a brief curse and walked on. I wondered where Ludwig was, then realized he must have already left.
Scarlett remained silent with her head bowed. The other students filed out as well, pretending not to notice.
How long was I supposed to watch this go on?
According to the original story, this would be the point where Ludwig would challenge Erhi to a duel. However, since I had already interfered in so many ways, things had gone seriously astray.
Of course, Ludwig’s personality hadn’t changed, so he might still come to Scarlett’s rescue eventually. If I were to interfere again, however, the future would change once more, and things would become even more unpredictable.
Her fiery red hair and scarlet eyes stood out.
Scarlett lifted her head, and our eyes met.
Everyone had already left, leaving only Scarlett and me in the hallway.
“....”
Scarlett quickly averted her eyes after our brief eye contact.
Scarlett was also one of the numerous consequences that were brought because of my plot developments.
“Ludwig will save her. He will come to Scarlett’s rescue one day.”
That idea seemed to be a total mistake. Both the reason for the bullying and the solution to it had been carelessly written. Nonetheless, I had written it that way and had no choice but to observe.
A strange reality, but one that I had created.
“What’s wrong with red?” I said to her in a casual manner.
“...?”
“Why does color matter? In the Temple, power is all that counts.”
Scarlett looked up at me. She had been treated as a harbinger of bad luck because of her red hair and eyes, and had been bullied for a long time because of it. I approached her, and she pressed herself against the wall as if afraid.
I wasn’t trying to intimidate her.
“You saw it as well, didn’t you? In the end, the winner is the one who comes out on top.”
Scarlett had come to watch my duel.
“Didn’t you see that for yourself?”
I wondered why Scarlett had come to see my fight.
Scarlett had seen someone like her, someone from the streets, fight—not with a classmate, but with a senior. She had seen a boy who did not have any apparent abilities or power accept the challenge of a duel from a senior.
The outcome would have been obvious to anyone. So why she had gone to watch it was unknown.
But one thing was for sure—she had definitely seen it. She had seen me win in the end, triumphing over the senior in the fight.
She had seen how I’d kept getting up, regardless of my background or the difference in strength. She probably knew the rumors about me, someone who had nothing but still barged around everywhere and caused trouble.
“Don’t be scared,” I whispered to Scarlett, whose eyes were wide with fear like those of a frightened rabbit, like a devil tempting its prey.
“...”
“Want me to tell you something?”
“Could... could I ask what that might be...?”
Oh yeah.
Scarlett was someone who always spoke formally. Come to think of it, this was the first time we were actually having a conversation.
Anyway, the secret about Erhi de Raffaeli that I was about to share with Scarlett wasn’t anything sensational.
“That guy’s just all bark and no bite.”
‘You’re a person with class too. How long do you plan to get pushed around by such a fool? You know that yourself, don’t you?’
The troublemaker Reinhart had now gone beyond getting into fights himself; he was now instigating others to fight, pushing them to the brink. One might even believe that he was born to sow chaos in the social relationships in the Temple, the spawn of some evil demon.
Come to think of it, objectively, I’d become not just a villain, but a supervillain.
In Batman terms, I was at least on the level of the Penguin.
Despite being completely powerless, I caused quite a ruckus, and to top it off, I’d hit the jackpot by awakening a superpower.
Moreover, despite being of low birth, I’d made it a daily routine to spit curses at those of noble lineage, even going as far as to physically strike some of them with my hand.
I’d pummeled a senior, and the older Royal Class students who knew nothing of my true personality thought of me as kind and just, and even promised to watch my back.
At that moment, I had something resembling support from both Vertus and Charlotte, the two powerhouses of the Royal Class first-years and the wielders of incredible authority. Soon, I’d be quite free from their control, which carried transcendent authority within the Temple. For now, at least, they had no intention to control me.
Strangely enough, I didn’t have any trouble with those who could physically overpower me. Furthermore, I was taking swordsmanship lessons from Ellen, who was considered the strongest among the first-years, and who also happened to be aloof and distant, and known for her brusque personality.
Of course, this was all the result of me only stirring up trouble with those who decided to start a fight with me.
And now, when it came to the issue of bullying in the Temple, I was urging the victims to stand up and fight back against the bullies.
I was at the center of the incidents and occurrences within the Temple, and I was only thinking about stirring up more trouble.
That was me at the moment.
“...”
Scarlett remained frozen for a while after hearing me say that Erhi was just a loud-mouth. However, she hadn’t fought back not because she didn’t know that. It was because she just didn’t want to create any trouble. She believed that being expelled from the Temple would be the end of her life.
Strictly speaking, there was no need for me to help her either, since she was better at fighting than me.
Objectively speaking, when it came to the current power rankings of the first-years, Scarlett would be within the top five. Ellen Artorius was undoubtedly number 1, and while positions 2 through 5 could fluctuate, Scarlett would definitely be among them.
If she set her mind to it, she could easily beat Erhi through a duel or some other way, but the trauma from the repeated bullying she’d received since childhood prevented her from standing up to him.
***
I planned to visit Eleris the next day, but before that, I was going to stay in the dormitory.
Therefore, I began my usual training routine. Adriana had said she was going back home, and we only trained together in the mornings anyway.
Thus, I found myself jogging through the students who were ecstatically leaving the Temple to start their break.
Ludwig, with his insane stamina, ran around the entire Temple every morning without fail. Of course, such a feat was only possible for him, and I still had a long way to go.
I never had any real interest or talent for physical exercise. Even in the moment, I couldn’t say that I was particularly enjoying it. I was running with gritted teeth, out of a sense of obligation. I couldn’t afford to rest. I had something to do, and I had to do it with all my might.
I was enduring it all because of this compulsion.
“Huff...”
After running for a while, the running track led me to the top of a hill at the high-school education section of the Temple. I sat down on a bench there to catch my breath.
I could see the vast landscape of the Temple spread out before me. Though my stamina was not on par with Ludwig’s, it had clearly increased, and I could manage to run up hills like this one without completely running out of breath.
“...”
There were no miraculous strokes of good fortune or explosive growth. Even though I had awakened a supernatural power, it wasn’t the kind of power that could turn the world upside down.
However, although not a lot of time had passed, I had gone from barely being able to run properly without Adriana’s support, to now being able to look down upon the Temple after running up a hill. My progress might not have been as fast as a car or plane could travel, but I could certainly feel myself slowly but steadily making progress.
I was growing, little by little. This certainly wasn’t the kind of fantasy life I had imagined.
The growth was slow, and the crisis was still distant, but it was undoubtedly approaching.
“Huff...”
This seemed closer to just another day in real life, rather than something in a slice-of-life story.
This was not the sort of story where the narrative simply glossed over years or decades of training, and suddenly presented a character who had become incredibly strong.
It was a story where I had to experience those months, or even years, with my own flesh and blood.
An author might simply just write, “This character diligently trained for a month and suddenly became very strong,” and call it a day. But I, had to partake in each step of the briefly described “dilligent training” part in real life.
‘... I’m so thirsty, I feel like I’m gonna die.’
At the moment, though, I needed to find some water before continuing my run.
***
‘I’m type A.’
“Come in with your attack.”
Type A was a preset that specialized in swordsmanship and physical enhancements, tailored for close combat sword fighting.
Clang!
“Huff...”
I sighed as I watched the sword slip from my grasp yet again.
“Work on your grip strength.”
“I am. I’ve been working on it so hard that my hands are numb.”
Even when using my supernatural power, my grip inevitably loosened whenever our swords clashed.
“Then use your superpower.”
“... I’ve been using it constantly this whole time.”
“Oh.”
She made me feel so small.
Picking up the practice sword, I sat down on the floor with a thud. My hand was so numb that holding onto the sword had become difficult.
“Hey, don’t you think something’s off?”
“What do you mean?”
Ellen tilted her head in response to my question.
“I can feel that you’re definitely stronger than that third-year student I beat with a stroke of good fortune while using my supernatural powers.”
And that was probably the truth. She could easily wear me out and leave me unable to move even when she was holding back and going easy on me. I could confidently say that if she had fought Mayaton, the duel would have been over in five seconds. It was not an implausible scenario. Ellen, after all, was a relative of Artorius, the greatest hero humanity has ever had. To be precise, she had even more innate talent than Ragan Artorius.
If Ellen Artorius were to keep training like this, she’d become an even greater monster than Ragan Artorius.
“Why is that a concern?”
It seemed she couldn’t understand why I had mentioned how strong she was.
“I can understand how you eat so much but don’t gain any weight because I’ve seen people like you.”
Some of them have incredibly high basal metabolic rates, and some have poor digestive efficiency. Thus eating a lot without gaining weight was definitely possible.
I stood up and pointed to Ellen’s arms and wrists.
“But you shouldn’t be able to produce that kind of power with your physique.”
Mayaton was big, but Ellen, on the other hand, was not muscular at all; strictly speaking, she had a slender frame.
Such power coming from such a fragile body defied the laws of physics—magic aside, it just didn’t make any human sense!
What made it worse was that I kinda knew the reason why.
It was obviously because of me.
I had described her as being the strongest person in this world, excelling in both scholarly and martial pursuits and all that ridiculousness, but then I had to label her a “beautiful girl.”
A 188-centimeter tall, muscular behemoth might exist and be considered “beautiful”, but would never be seen as a “girl.” Thus, before me stood a girl who was about 163 centimeters tall and around 40kg in weight, yet possessed the power of a human tank, a physical anomaly created purely because of my unrealistic descriptions.
Her frame appeared to lack any sign of muscle, and was soft and pliable to the touch. In reality, her forearms should have been as thick as a laborer’s, but they were delicate and pale, and the skin was as soft as a baby’s. It wasn’t as if she had thick, durable bones either. Sometimes during our sparring, our bodies would make contact, and it always felt soft.
Of course, it was true that, upon reaching a superhuman stage, one could surpass the physical limits of the body through magical enhancement, attaining strength beyond what was considered normal. However, Ellen didn’t know how to do that yet, so what she was displaying now was purely her own physical strength.
‘Yeah, I guess I am a god.’
I had shattered the physical laws of an entire world with just a few strokes of a pen.
Ellen responded to my grumbling by shrugging her shoulders slightly.
“My family has always been strong.”
‘Ah. Is that the element of plausibility that this world added to explain your abilities? Are your family’s muscle fibers made of adamantium wire or something?
‘Well, I suppose that reason is plausible enough, for someone who comes from the strongest lineage in this world.
‘“I was just born this way!” I guess you can just dismiss all the nonsense with just that one sentence. I didn’t create such a setting, but maybe you were a descendant of dragons or something, since it’s a world where whatever loopholes in logic I’ve left out get filled in one way or another.’
In the end, since this was a violation of plausibility that had come from what I had written, there was no use in complaining about it any more. I would only be harming myself by doing so.
There was a limit to how much growth I could achieve through training alone, and I planned to supplement that with my supernatural powers.
Furthermore, if it was possible in the long term, I would also need to enter the superhuman stage through magical enhancement.
“Let’s go again.”
“Ready!”
Clang!
“...”
‘... Is this baseball?’
I felt a sense of futility as I watched my practice sword fly to the other side of the training ground.
Ellen had almost hit a home run with that strike.
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