Chapter 7
Chapter 7
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Duel Preparation #03
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“Arthin... Are you okay...?”
Violet had blatantly ignored Arthin and walked right past him. In response to his words about wanting to die, Senia had hurriedly dragged him into the counseling room next to the faculty office.
Senia herself hadn't studied counseling or anything like it, but Arthin's expression right now was in a state where she absolutely couldn't leave him alone.
She'd suspected his earlier talk of dying was just a ploy to exploit her weakness and manipulate her, and she'd planned to give him a piece of her mind the next time she saw him. But after Violet ignored him, the way he'd said he wanted to die was completely different from back in the hospital room.
‘His eyes are lifeless... He doesn't even respond when I call him... What am I supposed to do...?’
Normally, she'd seek help from her senior, Sergei, the homeroom teacher for Class B. But just as he'd curtly greeted everyone at the entrance ceremony and warned that he'd be too busy to meet, she hadn't seen him even once. She was handling all the class care herself, right down to preparing alchemy lessons in the faculty office.
“Um, do you like any drinks? I've got grape juice or orange juice?”
“Isn't juice too good for someone like me? I'd be better off drinking sewage sludge...”
What the hell am I supposed to do with him!!
She wanted to break down crying inside, but if she lost it too, things would spiral out of control.
“Don't talk like that. I'll bring you a nice, fresh orange juice. Just wait here, okay?”
She'd returned to the faculty office to grab some juice, hoping to catch her breath and think things over, but no clever solutions came to mind.
Ask another teacher for advice? She shook her head. It hadn't even been a week since the semester started—if she started whining to the other professors now, it wouldn't look good for her as either a professor or a teacher.
Her seniors had told her that handling just the professor duties was plenty, and that bonding with the students took time, so she shouldn't worry. But she'd been the one to confidently declare all that. As Senia packed the orange juice, she inwardly wanted to flick her past self on the forehead.
‘Let me think back to my own school days... Those tough days full of discrimination...’
If she couldn't turn to others for help, maybe her past self had the answer. She tried recalling her difficult school years.
“Hmm, hmm.”
Nothing came to mind.
It was only natural. Senia Reeves had faced plenty of jealousy and discrimination based on her race and class, but her gentle personality had drawn good people around her. And the professors who nitpicked her? She'd won them over with her talents.
Above all, with her stunning looks that turned heads everywhere she went, she'd always been treated with care by men. There was no way she could empathize with a student in such deep despair that he wanted to end it all—or come up with some wise way to cheer him up.
“...Huh? Wait, there was one thing, wasn't there?”
Senia suddenly remembered something. She clapped her hands like she'd solved an unsolvable math problem, her face lighting up. But as described earlier, the teacher Senia wasn't the type to come up with wise solutions for situations like this.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ ‘Fuck, why is this happening all of a sudden?’
I was completely thrown off right now.
Violet hating me for no reason I could figure out had already wrecked my mental state.
The teacher who'd dragged me into this counseling room was babbling nonstop, which was just grating on my nerves. I wanted to tell everyone to fuck off, fling open the window, and jump to trigger a regression.
But I didn't. It wasn't because this regression cycle held any value. I had zero attachment to a world that was barely a week old.
The flimsy goal of screwing over the protagonist could wait for the next cycle—or the one after that. What I really wanted was to figure out why Violet was avoiding me like the plague in this cycle.
I didn't think it'd be hard.
I knew exactly what she liked and disliked, her interests, and even what would happen to her down the line.
With that in mind, I'd just sat there in the counseling room. A little later, Teacher Senia came back in, carrying a basket stuffed full of potions.
I'd planned to take the basket and clear my head a bit, but suddenly she sat down right next to me on the sofa.
“Arthin, you remember the promise we made back in the hospital room, right?”
And that's how we'd ended up like this. She was gripping both my hands tightly in hers, leaning in close with these intense, burdensome eyes.
The soft sensation pressing against my arm and the faint, pleasant scent enveloping my nose were making it hard to think straight.
It wasn't some artificial perfume—it was a subtle, natural aroma, her body scent apparently too potent to be hidden even by that loose robe.
What the hell? I didn't remember any 19+ elements in this novel??
Violet's reaction was weird too. Was this some hidden route?
“The teacher will do everything she can to keep her promise to you, so no more bad thoughts like earlier, okay? Promise?”
Was she seriously overreacting this much just because I'd gotten emotional and said I wanted to die?
The casual debt I'd saddled her with back in the hospital room had led to this blissful situation?
Now, thoughts of dying were the last thing on my mind. Far worse ideas were flooding in.
‘Is this my chance? Can I finally break free from this sweet potato hell and become a real man?’
Calm down. Sure, she was initiating the skinship, but there was no seduction in her voice.
She didn't feel like she was actively using her looks to manipulate me. The slight tremble in her soft-spoken voice suggested she was just desperately trying to soothe me.
Once I thought about it that way, this absurd situation started to feel... normal.
How could anyone not notice when we're pressed this close? But hadn't this world spent arcs force-feeding readers sweet potatoes, only to shatter all plausibility with the ending and mess with everyone's heads?
‘Even so, isn't this more like some smut webnovel or light novel reaction?’
Maybe the author had crammed more settings into the side characters than I'd ever imagined.
“The teacher keeps her promise, so you'll keep yours too, right, Arthin?”
“Uh... yeah, got it. Sure...”
I had no choice but to give a half-hearted reply. Somehow, she'd seized control of the promise.
Still, I didn't tell her to back off. I wasn't enough of a blockhead to refuse when a beauty was rubbing her chest against my arm and interlocking fingers with me.
“Really? No more scary talk like dying? Promise?”
“Yeah. As much as you help me out, teacher, I'll do my best.”
Going from her helping me out of coercion to her eagerly stepping up to keep her promise? That was the best possible development.
So for now, I decided to enjoy the soft embrace of the academy's largest chest wrapped around my arm.
Size-wise, didn't Teacher Senia have the biggest ones in the academy?
The fact that weapons of this mass were hidden under a robe for me to enjoy? The men of this world must be weeping.
Still, damn, these tits were incredible.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇ Rexton Wise's mood was in the gutter. He'd heard from a servant that Arthin—that scum—had already been discharged, yet here he was, still confined to the ward for treatment.
And to top it off, he'd been trying to end that bastard's school life once and for all, only for the wastrel eldest son of the Pelkas Merchant Group to get in his way. It was an unbearable humiliation.
‘Damn it, I need to write Father and push him to cut ties with the Pelkas Merchant Group and trade with someone else instead. And I'll make those Ludwig vermin pay—starting with their eldest and second daughters...!’
His fist clenched tightly under the covers, but he couldn't let his anger show on his face.
He didn't want Sion—who was peeking at his face while pretending to sleep right beside him—to realize he was awake.
“Young Master, a face more beautiful than even the Crown Prince of the Empire, marred like this... I simply can't bear it. I want to rip open my belly this instant, pull out my guts, and beg forgiveness.”
As Sion caressed Rexton's face with her trembling fingers, he had to endure the goosebumps crawling over his skin.
“But don't worry, Young Master... That arrogant, lowly little brat—we'll make her pay in three weeks... Ten times the blood you spilled? No, a hundred times... That should soothe your heart, right?”
Sion Idris had been hired as his swordsmanship instructor when he was young. Even to his novice eyes back then, she had zero talent for teaching. Yet the Wise Family never fired her.
Ten years ago, Sion had been a famed knight in the Empire. Still a teenager at the time, she'd personally beheaded over a thousand bandits. And the tale of her severing the arms of the Bandit King—who'd ruled like a monarch near the borderlands—and dragging them to the capital on horseback was legendary.
In the end, the knight commander had kicked her out because he couldn't stomach her sadistic tendencies. For a mid-tier kingdom family like the Wise Family, picking her up was a stroke of luck. Rexton's father, figuring she wouldn't settle for mere bodyguard work, had even given her the position of sword instructor.
“What if we make it look like an accident—no, pretend it was one—and give her a fatal wound? If she begs for her life, crawling like a worm and bowing her head to you? It'd be fun to see that stupid beastkin bitch and the money-grubbing idiot from that merchant family squirm in disgust again, wouldn't it?”
Rexton had no real complaints about her. Despite the bad rumors from the Empire, she was unbelievably loyal to him. And she tormented the hated Arthin in ways he could never have dreamed up.
Not his type, but objectively speaking, having a beautiful, strong knightess in her twenties by his side was enough to make his peers envious. Seeing the drooling idiots gawk at her swaying ponytail always gave him a rush of superiority.
He'd learned the truth two years ago, on his 15th birthday. During the lavish party, he'd politely accepted the wine his father recommended and sipped away until he passed out without realizing it.
His bad luck? What he didn't know was that his body—which showed exceptional talent for necromancy—also had outstanding resistance to poisons and immunity.
He woke at dawn, shifted his head, and nearly fainted in shock.
There, by his bedside next to the moonlit window, stood Sion. She'd been staring fixedly at his sleeping face.
Those eyes weren't the kind, loyal knightess he knew.
They were filled with lust, obsession, and madness—the most terrifying sight he'd ever witnessed. Too shocked to even scream, he'd been grateful to his own frozen body.
After that, Rexton had avoided her. When he'd cautiously brought it up with his father, he'd been scolded: drunk and can't tell dreams from reality? And as he'd naturally distanced himself, she'd started controlling his schedule under the pretext of sword practice.
In the end, he'd fled to the academy. Even then, she'd followed. He'd given fake departure dates and slipped away in secret, but there she was, already aboard the ship to the academy. With no friends to confide in, Rexton was drowning in stress and fear.
“Young Master, my beloved Young Master... I'll get your revenge for you. So rest well, and smile at me sweetly, praise me like always. You got it, my cute Young Master...?”
God—if there was no God, then the Demon King would do. If only someone would take this woman away from him, he'd pay any price.
Please, just get me out of this nightmare.
No matter how many times he prayed it in his mind, Sion's hand stroking his sleeping face showed no sign of stopping.