Thwack—! A dull, jarring pain crackled through him, and at the same moment Terren rolled his body and pressed himself face-down against the ground.
He braced himself up on arms that were barely functioning and staggered slowly to his feet.
At the same moment, another kick landed.
His body, already pushed well past its limit, could not withstand it.
Knocked down and left sitting on the ground, Terren stared blankly at the people before him and let out a hollow laugh.
Those five sneering boys were ones Terren knew extremely well. Milo, Nicholas, Ulrich, Hans, Christoph…
More than well — he knew them by heart. They were the ones who had graced him with the honor of their harassment time and time again.
The look on their faces said they had caught him in exactly the position they wanted and couldn’t be more pleased about it.
If Terren had simply taken it lying down, they might have actually grown bored — but since his return, he had been goading them with a sharper tongue than he’d ever had in his previous life.
“Well, look who it is. The repulsive Terren.”
The red-haired boy, Milo, grinned and tapped his boot against Terren’s stomach. The other four snickered.
“And he’s graced us by coming outside the Academy himself.”
What on earth are these people doing here, of all places, in this pine grove, right now. Don’t they even go to class anymore?
A dull, smoldering fury burned somewhere in his chest. He tried to smother it but it would not stop.
He felt an indescribable disappointment in himself. At his age, and he still couldn’t control a single emotion — it had been making his life difficult for months now.
When will I ever stop being such an idiot?
He fought desperately to suppress the killing intent.
“Stop it.”
“Hm? What was that? Can’t hear you. Say it louder!”
The red-haired one kindly crouched down and turned his ear toward Terren.
“Don’t pick a fight with me.”
He would have loved to pour every drop of his contempt into his words — but the truth was that this situation was overwhelmingly against him.
Not only were they five to his one, but the wounds on both arms, left unattended, split open with searing pain at even the graze of the wind.
And every one of them was armed. Real swords were only prohibited inside the Academy — out here, there was no telling what they might do. On top of that, these were the type who wouldn’t hesitate for a second to come at him as a group with blades drawn if things went sideways.
Seeing Terren — who always kept his composure and fired back word for word — show no resistance at all and cut a frail figure excited the boys.
Milo swung his fist at Terren’s head.
Or rather, tried to. The fist he had wound up so fully sliced through nothing but empty air and dropped straight down. That impudent—! He ground his teeth with fury, and his friends began to close in on Terren one by one.
The Terren who had looked startlingly flustered just a moment ago was now wearing that infuriating expression of his, same as always. He leaned against the tree, and drew out each syllable in a warning aimed at the boys crowding around him.
“Gentlemen, please. Surely you didn’t skip class and come all the way out here just to throw punches?”
Every one of them bristled at that. Terren was grabbed by the hair and slapped across the face. Hard enough that fresh blood pooled inside his already battered mouth. He spat, and Milo sneered at how disgusting that was, then gave an order.
“Lick it back up. Like the bug you are.”
“A filthy commoner… The world has truly fallen to ruin — the authority of the nobility has hit rock bottom. Milo, you’re too soft. Don’t do things halfway — show him what you’re really capable of.”
Terren held himself back. There was nothing to be gained from making more trouble — he was already the only one who stood to lose from it.
Every student at the Academy was the son or daughter of a noble family. In truth, if this were anywhere other than the Academy, he would be in a position where a single word of backtalk to a nobleman could see his head cut off.
So he had to—
“Eat it.”
His head was shoved into the dirt. He choked and struggled, but his battered body could do nothing but be crushed beneath the boot of a boy much larger than him.
With dirt in his mouth, he was thrashing to spit it out — and at that very moment, a short, clear command cut through his mind.
Hold back. Unless they try to kill you, hold back.
“Yeah. Swallow it! If you’re a bug, eat dirt — stop clinging to this Academy and go back where you belong!”
“…Why is he looking at us like that?”
No matter how he tried to hide it, the killing intent he could not fully suppress surged and flickered in his ash-gray eyes.
Milo’s brow furrowed. He grabbed Terren’s hair with one hand and scooped up a fistful of dirt with the other.
He reached out to shove it directly into the helpless boy’s mouth.
The boy’s eyes shifted with unease, and he finally began to pull his face back with a muffled, strangled sound, trying to dodge the dirt and small crawling things that were coming for his mouth.
Milo gleefully rammed the dirt into Terren’s mouth. But moments later he screamed in pain.
Because a sudden impact had been delivered to his jaw.
“Ugh—!”
Terren immediately lurched upright.
His throat, with dirt inside it, kept convulsing in coughs trying to expel the foreign matter — but he didn’t hesitate, and strode forward, kicking Milo directly between the legs.
Milo let out a loud cry and toppled backward.
“You piece of—, aagh—!”
Seeing Milo’s hand scrabbling frantically for the sword he’d dropped, his face scarlet, Terren kicked him again.
The other four boys exchanged glances and drew their swords at the same time.
A thick, viscous killing intent radiated off of them.
The kind of killing intent that rises when someone has been struck by something they consider beneath contempt — and is so wounded in their pride that they resolve to kill it by whatever means necessary.
This was a pine grove. It bears repeating — real swords were permitted in a pine grove. Why had he ever thought this would be a good place to rest? The harassment had been getting worse lately, all thanks to that damned Lloyd.
The Academy was an institution for training swordsmen. Every noble family in the Kingdom of Delua could be considered a swordsmanship family, and none of them had any hesitation about drawing a blade. An obvious thing to say — but Terren Meyer was a lowly commoner who could be killed without consequence.
Terren Meyer wanted to throw a punch at himself from a moment ago. Ah, how can I be this stupid. He cast one look down at his own wretched body.
He reached under his robe and drew the dagger he always kept on his person.
He spun it in his fingers and smiled.
“Aren’t you going to come at me? You drew your swords, so charge. Or could it be you’re actually scared because I’m holding this?”
One of the boys immediately swung his sword, and Terren rolled to dodge it. It was a style of fighting that those stuffed full of pride were absolutely incapable of.
Terren sliced the boy’s leg with the dagger, bringing him down, and immediately pressed the blade to his throat.
“Don’t move.”
A small cut opened on the throat, blood seeping out — and the hostage, on the verge of tears, thrashed wildly and begged the others to stay back.
“Stop, stop it! He’s going to kill me, that bastard is!”
The boys hesitated — but the hostage soon had his neck squeezed until he went limp. At that, the boys, possessing not a shred of loyalty to one another, exchanged glances.
“Just die already!”
And came at Terren again. They were seething with rage, and there was nothing rational about them. Even so, they landed wound after wound on him. It was five against one, and this was the weak body of a sixteen-year-old — but the sight of himself, unable to subdue even this pack of animals swiftly without dark magic, was pitiful.
In the end, every one of them walked away with cuts to their arms and legs, and several had even been knocked unconscious. By the time it was over, a considerable amount of time had passed.
Terren looked at the chaotic mess of the ground and muttered a curse.
Nothing was going right, not a single thing.
He needed to get back to the dormitory room — but it seemed his mind had finally gone properly off the rails too.
Because why else would he be seeing things.
Far off in the distance, a golden-haired boy was staring at him with vacant, stupid eyes.
Now I’m having hallucinations.
He arrived at something like enlightenment and mocked himself.
He summoned what little strength he had left and kicked the Milo who had crumpled before him — and the golden-haired boy who had gone pale as a sheet… that is, the hallucination that looked like Leopold Delua, drew closer.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing right now?”
“You’re watching it happen, so why do you ask?”
Terren sneered, and he strode forward, took in the spectacular scene before him, and ground his teeth.
“This is something else. I don’t even know if what I’m seeing is real. Have you lost your mind? This is grounds for expulsion.”
“…….”
Terren Meyer had no strength left for a retort. His vision kept blurring, and he had to keep squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again.
No idea why that one is here either, and no idea whether any of this is salvageable.
He said nothing and tried to slip past Leopold and get out of there — and Leopold Delua snatched Terren by the wrist.
“Explanation, or whatever else, right now—”
At that moment, Leopold flinched at the damp sensation on his hand. His eyes dropped instinctively to the arm. His own hand, and Terren’s arm, were both slicked with blood.
He could see Terren’s expression pinching slightly, as though forcing himself to endure the pain.
Leopold stared at him blankly, in a way entirely unlike himself.
