Chapter 60: Ch99. Threat
Once the students left the training grounds, Kurt was left with Rodrick, Evellyn, and Nikolai.
"Go ahead, guys. I’ll meet you at the cafeteria, okay?"
They nodded and left, looking over their shoulders from time to time.
"Overprotective friends?" Rodrick asked, chuckling through his nose.
"Nah, we just didn’t have any palpable reason to trust anyone in here until now." Kurt shrugged.
Rodrick smiled, but it was such a genuine smile, that it almost warmed Kurt’s soul.
However, even though the man in front of him was Rodrick, he was still at the Boston Academy.
Which meant that no one could be trusted, until proven otherwise.
"Glad you mentioned it." Rodrick said. "How abut we go somewhere more private?"
"Erm... Didn’t I mention that we don’t trust anyone here easily, until proven otherwise?"
"I said earlier that you have good instincts, right?" Rodrick’s lips curled upwards.
"Yeah, what about it?"
"What did you feel when I almost hit you?"
"I-"
Kurt was ready to answer, but then he thought more deeply about it.
He could sense the greed from the students, the strangeness that emanated from the headmaster, and the cruelty that a few professors hid behind the lovely smiles.
But what about Rodrick?
"Exactly." Rodrick seemed to know exactly what Kurt was thinking. "This academy was built over a foundation made of violence, cruelty, and pure survival of the fittest. But I believe in something that they don’t."
"I’m listening." Kurt crossed his arms and raised his brow.
"I believe that the world they’re trying to fight against, is exactly the world we should grow up in." Kurt tilted his head, and Rodrick laughed. "It’s not a hard conclusion to come to, kid. Think with me. The world needs strong wielders to raid the Nests, I don’t disagree with that. However, I know that there is more to a wielder than meets the eye, and that which hides underneath a wielder’s soul won’t be revealed through survival games or greed."
Before Kurt could notice, his arms weren’t crossed anymore, and he understood what the professor said, but not with his brain.
He understood that with his heart, because he felt like he knew what Rodrick was going to say next, and he felt the same way.
Only that he still carried the feeling of losing it all from the [MEMORY FRAGMENT], so Kurt didn’t know if he was ready to go at it again.
"Most guilds are like financial military institutions in this country." Rodrick kept speaking. "But I believe a guild should be like a second family to its members. Or else, why would people fight for mankind, if there isn’t a single person in the whole world who isn’t important enough to them?"
"You’re basically telling me that I can trust you, because you want to make us like family to you?"
Rodrick burst out in laughter, and his laugh was so loud, that a few students passing by actually turned their heads towards them to see what was going on.
"That’s almost it, kid. But not now, I have a project that I’d like to discuss with you, because I saw the potential you carry, and your friends, even though they’ve been acting a little strange, carry that same potential too. And it would be a tremendous waste, to keep that potential locked inside this academy. So... Will you hear me out?"
Kurt looked at his holowatch, and saw that his friends had been waiting for him for almost half an hour.
"Sure, but can it be another time? Evellyn and Nikolai are really waiting for me, and I don’t want to leave them hanging."
"Of course, kid. But one word of advice before you go."
Rodrick’s tone became so low and grave, that Kurt, who had been shifting his weight from one leg to the other, hoping eagerly to go, stopped moving all of a sudden.
"I felt the thing about your friends, and I won’t be the only one to feel it, if you three don’t fix it soon enough. But whatever you do, don’t go to the headmaster with that matter." He gave it the briefest of pauses, and finished. "Don’t. Trust. Her." She’s with them."
"Them?" Kurt frowned, having earned more food for thought that he was actually waiting for.
"Go, kid. Your friends are waiting." Rodrick shooed him away.
And Kurt left, with more questions than answers.
But at least he had a hint of what had happened with Evellyn and Nikolai.
Or, at least, who was involved in it.
***
Kurt arrived at the cafeteria, and Evellyn was waiting for him along with Nikolai, but they weren’t the only ones at the table.
Christina, Johan, and Caleb were there, along with the girl with short short hair from the test.
Her name was Cinthia, and Kurt didn’t have much time to pay attention to her before, and she wasn’t with them in their classes, for some reason, too.
But when Kurt looked at her uniform, he understood it in the blink of an eye.
She had been promoted to Dark-green class.
She was short, but had the muscles of a fighter, and her dark-green eyes darted all around furiously, as if she saw enemies everywhere, which wasn’t much of an understatement in the academy.
"Hi, Kurt. I hope you don’t mind us sitting here with your friends. It’s not as if many other students want to sit with us, anyway..."
Kurt shrugged, not knowing if she was being ironic or just way too honest.
He sat down, and right before he took the first bite of his hamburger, he heard the now familiar voice of Simon Delaware behind him.
"I guess good people deserve good things..."
Kurt felt the animosity in the air.
He also felt a note of threat in Simon’s voice.
Kurt turned around and looked at the student.
"What? Already up and kicking? I guess I didn’t knock you down hard enough, then... Shame on me."
Everyone in the table chuckled.
But Simon wasn’t laughing.
"Look here, you prick!" Simon grabbed Kurt’s collar and got really close to his ear. "Pretend we’re enemies and keep mocking me. Mad respect for how you broke my Reinforcement, but right now, you need to get out. Lester’s friends in Crimson are all about going at the irregulars, and I heard that two of your friends were already marked off their list, so be careful."
Simon then let go of Kurt’s collar, like he had insulted Kurt really deeply.
"I don’t want to knock you down here, Simon. You want the table? It’s all yours. Let’s go, guys..." And he got up.
"But...?" Evellyn and Cinthia asked at the same time.
"Let’s. Just. Go." Kurt emphasized each word, and as if all of them had gotten the clue, they got up and left.
Outside the cafeteria, Cinthia finally found her voice to speak.
"What the hell was that? Are you a chicken or something? Right after you kicked his ass in front of the whole combat class?" Kurt raised his brow. "Yeah, I heard about it. You’re kind of the center of attention around here."
Kurt shrugged again.
"You all go back to your dorms if you value your awakened traits. I have some business to deal with."
And he entered the cafeteria again.
Cinthia moved forward to follow him, but both Nikolai and Evellyn held her in place.
"I wouldn’t do that if I were you." Nikolai said.
Cinthia growled like an animal.
"And why would I listen to you?"
"Not to us, to Kurt. He’s different from all of us, as you already witnessed during the test, and if he’s telling us to leave, I think we should listen to him."
"Yeah, there was something definitely sketchy in Simon and Kurt’s bickering, so I think we should just go."
Cinthia grunted, but listened to them.
Christina, Caleb, and Johan had already left, even though they didn’t go back to the Indigo dorm.
Everything seemed fine.
But inside the cafeteria, Kurt walked towards the table he was at before, and confronted Simon, calmly.
"Where, and when?" He looked into Simon’s eyes, and wouldn’t take silence as an answer.
"How about now?" A male voice sounded behind him.
Kurt felt the sting of a needle on his neck, and as he turned around to face whoever did whatever they did, his vision went blurry.
"It feels good, doesn’t it?" One of Lester’s goons asked, grinning.
The system beeped in his head.
[UNKNOWN AGENT DETECTED IN THE PLAYER’S BODY]
[GENERATING EMERGENCY QUEST]
