Distrust and Hatred (Part 6)
Of all the paths leading back to the dormitories, this dark, crumbling trail was the one academy students went out of their way to avoid. Even on the grounds of an academy nestled in the heart of the capital, it was neglected to the point of being worse than a refuse dump—closer to an untamed wasteland.
For Junon, who had grown thoroughly accustomed to slipping away from prying eyes, it was merely his route of choice.
Which raised a rather pressing question.
Why on earth was a lotus blooming along a secluded trail meant for dodging glances and tuning out the murmurs of passing strangers?
Lotuses were aquatic plants that flourished in lakes or ponds. While they could occasionally be found in marshes or flooded paddies, the common thread uniting all those habitats was water.
The ground beneath his boots was nothing of the sort. It was unpaved, untended, and parched to dust under the unrelenting sun. The nearest trace of moisture was a decorative fountain he had passed long ago.
There was no conceivable way a living lotus could sprout here. And if one had miraculously appeared before his very eyes, it proved only one thing.
"Shit...!"
It had to be magic.
BANG!
A thunderous roar ripped through the quiet air. A wave of baked, powdery sand surged outward, raining down over his black hair. Through the billowing black smoke, pink hair as vibrant as a lotus petal fluttered before his eyes.
Aris...!
She stood there, radiating a searing tide of malice that burned far hotter than the scorched earth beneath them.
Aris had been certain of victory. The moment Junon chose this deserted, eerie shortcut where not a single soul roamed, laying eyes on that lotus should have marked his end.
Yet he had countered her spell with infuriating poise.
And with that pathetic Mana Shield, of all things.
Pitter-patter.
Grit and baked sand, thrown high into the sky by the ear-splitting blast, rained down around them like a miniature storm.
"So, you noticed," she murmured.
Emerging from the shower of falling debris, Junon stood completely unharmed.
Watching him, Aris let out a dry, mocking chuckle as a realization struck her.
"You seem to know that lotus belongs to my magic. Don't you?"
"...!"
"Ha. To think you'd remember, too."
To Junon, the entire scenario defied all logic. As a regressor, he shouldn't have been facing a lethal ambush from someone he hadn't even interacted with in this timeline.
Yet a glaring oversight finally hit him.
I screwed up.
It was another member of Team Tembris.
Even after Erika's chilling warning that memories of that past life lingered, his vigilance had been far too lax. In that moment, Junon could only curse his current complacency alongside his past self's blunders.
She knows too.
Aris's words left no room for doubt. Just like Erika, she clearly retained fragments of that doomed timeline.
However, the difference between the two women was like night and day—a rickety wooden fence compared to an impenetrable fortress wall. If Erika's hostility was like pricking him with a sewing needle—
"Then since you know exactly what you did, I don't need to waste my breath explaining why I'm doing this, do I?"
Aris was swinging a broadsword meant to sever his neck in one clean strike.
The moment her words fell, lotuses sprouted in rapid succession. Blast after blast tore through the clearing, met each time by the resolute barrier of Junon's Mana Shield.
It was hardly an exchange of blows; it was a relentless, one-sided barrage met with ironclad defense.
Five minutes.
That was how long Aris had been unleashing her full might against him.
Dragging this out any longer is dangerous.
Her original intention had been to incapacitate him with explosive lotus blossoms and deliver a stern warning. She had even brought materials to disguise the blast as an alchemical accident, but the confrontation was dragging on far too long.
The issue was Junon's unnerving agility and unyielding guard. No matter how clever her feints, he slipped past them like a cornered rat. Pushed to her limits, Aris had no choice but to unleash something drastic.
"I really didn't want to use this since it makes too much noise, but..."
"...!"
Intent on finishing him off in a single decisive strike, Aris bloomed eight lotuses encircling Junon from every direction. The dried sand scorched black under a magical heat incomparable to anything she had unleashed before.
BOOOOM!
That should finish it.
In her memories, the number of shields Junon could manifest at once was two at most. While a Mana Shield was inherently specialized for defense and effective at blocking spells, deploying barely two over his forearms would never suffice against an all-directional blast.
Aris had struck precisely at that blind spot by blooming eight lotuses simultaneously. Flames, shrapnel, and concussive shockwaves converged onto a single point. Standing dead center, Junon couldn't possibly walk away unscathed.
His enchanted uniform would cushion enough of the thermal energy to keep him breathing, but he certainly wouldn't have the strength to stand back up. All that remained was to give the charred, battered boy a proper warning.
Aris stepped slowly toward the eight smoking craters reeking of singed earth. Then, a subtle discrepancy caught her senses.
Wait. The smell of burning flesh is too faint. Which means...
He had withstood the full detonation of eight lotus blossoms.
And as if to confirm her suspicion, as the dark haze thinned, Aris spotted another figure standing beside the boy.
A presence far more troublesome than Junon merely surviving her assault.
"I believe you owe me an explanation for causing such a disturbance within the academy, Lady Aris."
"...Lady Ophelia?"
Students, alumni, and border ministers alike spoke of her with unanimous reverence. They all agreed that Ophelia, daughter of the Grand Duke, was already fully prepared to assume rule.
She commanded brilliant eloquence that swayed and mediated contentious nobles. She possessed a benevolent heart, extending aid to commoners without distinction. And she bore the commanding charisma to rally troops on the front lines herself.
She was a woman who embodied every virtue demanded of a sovereign.
Whenever someone like Ophelia acted on a sense of unease, it was usually rooted in intuition—an inherently subjective and speculative basis. Yet despite its uncertainty, time and again on the battlefield, the judgments she made following those strange gut feelings proved remarkably accurate.
That was why Ophelia had followed Aris, drawn by an inexplicable dissonance in the girl's demeanor.
"You will explain, step by step, why the two of you were engaged in combat in such a secluded place."
Her intuition had hit the mark yet again.
"Hah, hah... Over there...! Two people are fighting, please stop them...!"
A witness had conveniently alerted her as well. A fellow third-year student had been frantically searching for help before rushing over, pleading with her between ragged breaths.
Factoring in the testimony of that student, Henna, and witnessing the charred scene firsthand, Ophelia quickly reached a conclusion.
Even at a glance, this had clearly been a one-sided assault—unmistakable signs of hazing hidden away from public view. Ophelia intended to hand down severe disciplinary action and inform Goden as well. However—
"It isn't what it looks like. It was just a minor misunderstanding."
"...Pardon?"
For Junon's sake, both Ophelia's intuition and Henna's testimony had to be proven wrong.
"Then... I shall take my leave."
Aris bowed deeply, and Ophelia gave a brief nod.
Because Junon personally claimed he had provoked Aris and that emotions had simply flared, the incident was mediated and logged as mutual friction. Yet anyone with eyes could tell his testimony was suspect.
What on earth is that bastard playing at?
Walking away, Aris gnawed anxiously on her thumbnail.
Ophelia's sudden appearance had thoroughly wrecked her plan to deliver an unmistakable warning to Junon. To make matters worse, the Lady and Goden were childhood friends who shared virtually every piece of information. If word of this reached Goden's ears, she might even be expelled from Team Tembris.
Everything had been on the verge of unraveling because of a single statement from Junon. As Aris racked her brain trying to devise an excuse, Junon had cut in.
"It isn't what it looks like. It was just a minor misunderstanding."
With those few words, he wiped the slate clean.
Though Ophelia initially pressed him with deep suspicion to uncover the truth, Junon had remained evasive. Neither side had left behind definitive physical evidence, and both had secrets they desperately wished to keep buried. In all likelihood, just like Aris, his silence was tied to memories of that past life.
I have no choice but to wait for another opportunity.
Though deeply unsettled, with Lady Ophelia now watching, Aris could no longer afford to act recklessly.
Thus Aris departed, leaving only two people behind on the scorched trail.
"Now that the perpetrator is gone, why not speak honestly?"
"About what?"
"The acrid stench of burned earth, the soot scattered across the ground... No matter how you look at it, you were the victim here, not Lady Aris. Am I wrong?"
Ophelia urged him to speak candidly without fearing retaliation, intending to mete out appropriate discipline to Aris.
Yet Junon had no intention of revealing the truth.
"It only looked that way because I'm weaker. I was the one who picked the fight."
"Incidents like this occur constantly within the academy. As head of the Disciplinary Committee, I handle their punishments myself. You must be honest with me."
"It really isn't something you need to concern yourself with, My Lady. I am not a victim."
Truly...? But that makes no sense...
It wasn't as if Ophelia had uncovered hazing in the academy once or twice. From the moment she realized the professors turned a blind eye or handed out slap-on-the-wrist reprimands, she had personally uncovered countless incidents.
Thanks to that experience, distinguishing victim from perpetrator had become second nature to her.
Yet Junon claimed he wasn't the victim? That made no sense whatsoever. Furthermore, that student named Henna had rushed over in desperation as if begging to save him. By all rights, he was undeniably the victim.
And yet, her conclusion rested merely on intuition. Henna's report had only been a frantic plea to stop a fight, lacking concrete specifics.
In other words, the moment the supposed victim denied it, all clear evidence evaporated into thin air.
"May I leave now? Looking like this, I'd really like to wash up."
"I suppose so... Go ahead and head inside."
Baffled, Ophelia had no choice but to let Junon go. Without solid proof, she only had circumstantial suspicion.
Watching Junon's retreating back, Ophelia surveyed the scorched, cratered sand left behind by the clash.
With the sharp, discerning gaze of a commander who led expeditions, she pieced together the course of the battle. It was hard to believe the combatants had fought with equal strength.
Which made the reality all the more astonishing.
"This is definitely unusual."
Ophelia knelt, touching the sand where scorched grains met untouched earth. Three paces away, another set of traces stunned her even further.
"No matter how I look at it... this wasn't a level of power he should have been able to withstand."
From the initial ambush onward, the successive blast marks looked as if they had struck an invisible wall; the sand inside and outside the threshold possessed entirely different textures.
It was as though an absolute barrier had held the line.
Ophelia's gaze settled on the spot where those traces were most distinct. Eight blast marks radiated outward, leaving the ground in the exact center completely pristine.
That was where Junon had blocked the eight lotuses.
"How... did he intercept every single one so accurately?"
When Ophelia had arrived, it had already been too late to fully assist him. She had only managed to intercept two of the eight lotuses, hoping to minimize his injuries.
Yet the explosive shockwaves converging from all eight angles had been severed cleanly. Such a feat was impossible without calculating both the exact coordinates and output of each blast with terrifying precision.
In other words, Junon had neutralized all of Aris's firepower on his own—neither underestimating nor overexerting, but calculating the exact force required down to the millimeter.
"Just how meticulous is he...?"
Judging from her vast experience, Ophelia could state with certainty: had the clash continued, there was no telling who would have emerged victorious.