Chapter 166: You Have Been Wronged
Dorian was worried that things wouldn’t end well.
But when the skeletal deer’s skull hit the stone with a hollow, final thud—he allowed himself to breathe again. Barbara had appeared like a thunderclap; a fiery-haired avalanche of muscle and fury.
And the skeleton deer that had nearly cored Kai through was now a headless heap of bone.
It was a very close call.
He knew that without her intervention, Kai would’ve taken that charge full with his body. It would end badly without a doubt. So, Barbara’s intervention was welcomed. He met Bryan’s eyes, and a silent understanding passed between them.
Bad luck struck, but they managed to survive somehow.
However, as if bad luck as has humour, Barbara, out of nowhere, punched Kai in the face hard.
And the crack of knuckle against skull split the air like a whip; the sound was so thunderous that it reached all the way to where Dorian and Bryan were. Both of their eyes widened—as if they had seen a ghost.
From the distance, they could see that there was an argument between them.
Bree’s tense posture, Barbara’s bristling shoulders, and Kai’s frustrated face.
It was escalating for sure, but this punch was going overboard. Barbara had struck him with the full, lethal intent of a killing blow—the mana sheathed in her fist had detonated against Kai’s skull, and the sound still rang in their ears.
Overboard for a simple argument.
"For fuck’s sake," Dorian hissed and ran.
"Fuck is her problem?" Bryan also followed behind. "What did Kai even say?"
Soon, the two found Kai sprawled on his back. Arms limp at his sides, and his face turned toward the uncaring night sky. Blood sheeted from his broken nose in a dark, continuous stream that traced tributaries into his cheek, hair, and pooled in the shells of his ears.
From closer inspection, the bones of his face had shifted in an unnatural way.
A wrongness of contour that betrayed the fractures beneath the skin.
Even his breaths came shallow and wet; desperate sips of air that barely stirred his chest. He didn’t blink. He simply stared upward, eyes glassy, as if his mind hadn’t yet caught up to the ruin of his body.
"He doesn’t look good..." Bryan muttered worriedly.
"No, shit!" Dorian barked at the obvious. "He got punched by a damn High Angel!"
"Do something!’
"Err... Right, I got this."
Dorian dropped to one knee and fished a vial from his pocket. It was a standard healing potion that he got from the infirmary in case he got really hurt. He tipped it past Kai’s slack lips and waited for the solution to bloom and spread throughout Kai’s body.
It came soon, a shimmering pale green light; a sign that the regenerative energy was working.
Behind, Bryan’s temper detonated.
"Fuck is wrong with you?!" He roared and approached Barbara in the distance; anger could be seen burning behind his eyes. "That’s a cheap punch, you damn coward! Aren’t you a High Angel?! Have some fucking dignity!"
He saw what happened from start to finish.
Barbara had sneaked a punch when Kai’s guard was utterly lowered.
After all, he didn’t want to fight, and Bree seemed to also know Barbara.
It was the reason why the punch landed perfectly.
Ignoring what was going on, Dorian waited patiently for Kai’s wounds to recover. But nothing seemed to change. His brows furrowed when he saw the shimmering pale green energy was sucked violently toward Kai’s core and vanished.
One second, it was doing its magic, but it disappeared in the next.
"What...? What just happened? Where did it go?" Dorian stumbled back—eyes darting across the motionless form before him. "Don’t tell me—is it his Divine Lock? Did it reject the solution? But why?" His voice cracked. "Was his body too damaged? Damn it!"
Dorian knew that this could have happened.
Being this hurt meant his Divine Locks could turn hostile, attacking any energy that attempted to enter his body, or his body simply couldn’t absorb the regenerative energy from the solution anymore because of how damaged it was.
Even so, it was still surprising for it to actually happen.
"I need to bring him back to the infirmary—but can he hold on until then?" Dorian gritted his teeth as the trip back to the academy would take a long time, and Kai might die mid-way. "I should still try. No other choice."
Dorian was about to carry Kai, but his body stopped.
A frown creased on his forehead as he turned to look at the sky. "Huh? What’s happening?"
Not too far away—Bree stood frozen in her place. Her mouth parted in a shock so deep it had erased every word she knew as she stared at where Kai was. This wasn’t the Barbara who she remembered. This was someone else.
Someone who answered a simple misunderstanding with a broken face and a pool of blood.
Her eyes widened and glistened, and then she turned to look at Barbara, searching for anything to explain why she did what she did. It didn’t have to go this way, especially when she had vouched for Kai.
Barbara’s lips remained shut.
She didn’t have any intention to defend herself.
Instead, she simply reached out and closed her hand around Bree’s wrist and pulled her away.
"Let’s go," Barbara said as she pulled Bree away.
"What do you mean?!" Bree stumbled after her, too stunned to resist; her feet dragged across the stone as the distance between her and Kai grew. But she snapped out of it and swatted the forceful grip, but the grip remained. "Let go of me! I’m not a part of your group anymore!"
"Later, we’ll talk. Don’t fight me right now."
"I’m not going with you!"
"Bree, what did he do to you? What kind of sorcery that made you so fixated on him?!"
"I don’t owe you a reason for wanting to be close to him," Bree retorted sharply—her pinkish eyes glowed with mana. Anger began to rise to her throat, forcing her veins to bulge. "I’m not yours to claim, Barbara. I hope you know that."
"Since when have I ever wanted to claim you?" Barbara roared back, and then pointed at Bree’s behind, past her shoulder. "That Lesser Angel is probably the one aiming to sleep with you— and take your power! He’s a guy! Is there any other reason than that for him?"
Bree could feel the heat burning her throat.
And her gaze turned colder and sharper, like a drawn blade.
"Don’t insult him, Barbara. I’m warning you," Bree rasped—as the beautiful mark on the side of her face began to hum with mana, and the amount even made Barbara’s brows dip into a frown. She shouldn’t be this strong. "You don’t want me angry."
Just as Barbara was about to say something, the wind shifted.
A cold breeze brushed against their bodies as an invisible distortion like static lingered in the air. It wasn’t coming from Bree or Barbara. And almost on cue—the two of them looked back and saw the night had taken form.
Moments earlier.
Kai stared at the night sky and breathed through his mouth.
He saw Bryan and Dorian coming to check on him, but he couldn’t move his eyes.
All the muscles in his body were locked.
Even if they could still move, they wouldn’t, as Kai’s mind was somewhere else entirely.
He heard light whisperers; they tolled inside his fractured skull like a bell that would not stop ringing—voices he had heard in passing, in corridors, or directly to his face. Lesser Angel. The words coiled through the cracks in his bone and seeped into the soft tissue beneath.
’You’re only a Lesser Angel.’
’Know your place, Lesser Angel.’
’You Lesser Angel bastard!’
Each whisper repeated and overlapped with one another; merging together until they became a chorus without end. A requiem of disdain and arrogance that had haunted every step that he had taken since entering the academy.
A relentless scrutiny he had endured.
The pain was unimaginable. It lanced through his skull in waves like a thousand needles into his skull, and he could no longer tell if the agony came from the fracture—or from something more fundamental breaking inside him.
Just the prospect of always being the Lesser Angel—the bottom, the outcast, the one who had to fight twice as hard only to survive—was a weight that pressed down on his chest. A weight that tested the limits of his patience constantly.
His eardrums began to surrender; the sounds of the world slowly began to fade.
Dorian’s panicked voice thinned to a distant murmur. Bryan’s curses dissolved into static.
Every noise bled away, and Kai floated alone in the quiet.
His body soon followed; the sensation retreated from his limbs first, and then to his stomach and chest, until only a faint, fluttering pulse remained at his core. His two Primordial Locks gushed with mana in desperate response.
And for a moment, his body thrummed with mana.
It distorted half an inch above his skin, but it was useless; the damage was too serious.
Even as a grade two Awakened Supernal, the damage was still too much.
Darkness seized his periphery. It crept in from the edges of his vision, a black tide swallowing the stars one by one. Kai gasped for breath and watched the night sky shrink to a pinprick. He was blind.
But despite his blindness, in the dark, he could still see something. Someone.
Bella stood before him, bent low, staring into his eyes.
Her blonde hair did not cascade down to him; it floated—drifted in slow, weightless currents like she had become a Ghost. Under her gaze, he felt like his soul was being probed. But the worst of all was her face.
No smile like she always wears. No warmth that she normally radiated.
Just a flat, stern stillness that peered directly into his soul.
"B-Bella..." He called out her name and tried to reach for her face, but couldn’t.
His hand refused to listen.
’Have you given her kindness?’ She asked; her lips didn’t move.
"Yes..." Kai answered whisperingly, knowing exactly what she was talking about. "I have."
’Then what are you hesitating for? Rise,’ Bella straightened her back and looked away.
As if her voice were a spell, Kai’s body rose from the ground against his will—or with its own strange obedience. He sat upright—and stared ahead; his vision still swallowed by darkness. But at the very center, he could make out Barbara and Bree in the far distance.
Almost like someone deliberately narrowed his vision so that he could focus.
’You have been wronged,’ Bella embraced him from behind and whispered into his ear.
"I... I have been wronged," Kai repeated.
’Tell me, what would a strong person do if he was wronged?’
"He’d... He’d strike back."
