Midterm Evaluation (4)
"Kheheh… I knew it. What a pathetic idiot. If you'd just stayed put, you wouldn't have gotten hurt."
He snapped his fingers, and three burly men sauntered out to stand around him. Every one of them was tall and thickly built — clearly men who made their living with their fists.
So what would he be calling men like these for? They weren't here to throw their arms around each other and shoot the breeze. Which left exactly one possibility: the girl sleeping soundly in the tent behind me. He had his eye on Lianna.
"Think you can handle this?"
"Handle what? All I'm doing is taking back a wayward wife."
That smirk, so utterly convinced nothing was wrong with him, made my stomach turn so badly I had to cover my mouth. Nothing is more tiresome than dealing with a beast wearing human skin, so I decided not to bother wasting any more words.
"Wouldn't it have been easier to just hand her over quietly…?"
"Is she a possession? Even if she were, I don't think she's yours."
"…Not one to go easy on people, are you. Rough him up a bit, then tear that tent apart."
He waved a hand at his companions, and the men behind Derek slowly began closing in on me at his command.
"Where did you find these people?"
"Found them? Recruited them? We're all students here, aren't we?"
"…Those bodies are students?"
"Well, they're basically my personal servants, in truth."
Ah. So they really are students. Now that I looked, every one of them was wearing a bracelet. Students with those builds — shameless. Any stranger would take them for street thugs: heights that clearly pushed one-eighty or more, and muscles entirely unbecoming of a student's age.
"Enough chit-chat. Hand over my wife right now—"
"Get lost."
Whether he felt my mercy being refused, the moment I cut him off, his face reminded me of the red pig from a moment ago. Not long after, one of the hulks in front of me came walking over, joints cracking in his hands.
A familiar feeling. The quickening breath, the way every nerve in my body snaps into focus — the memory of how many times I'd been beaten half to death just to learn to feel this. *You never forget what you learn by being beaten.*
For a while I couldn't resist at all, taking dozens, sometimes hundreds of blows every single day. It was around the seventeenth day that I finally dodged one. It was a dodge carried more by luck than anything, but I dodged it all the same. Because of that single evasion, they decided I had a talent for it — and beat me twice as hard as everyone else while I learned all over again.
I lived by being hit, and hit, and hit again. And once I could dodge well enough, they started bringing weapons. First, simple wooden blocks — training ended when a hardwood block that fit in one palm finally snapped. Then came iron clubs — training ended when the bone showed signs of breaking, or when they got tired of swinging. Last came blades of every kind, and from that point on, the concept of 'ending' grew faint. They never stopped before I was nearly dead from blood loss.
Swords, daggers, spears, chakrams — I felt every tool that could be called a weapon with my own body, and only after surviving all of that training was I allowed to learn assassination.
Which means: I was one of the few who passed that hell and lived, and all I ever learned was killing people. So what does it mean when trash I don't need to hold back against — trash I don't even need to *think* about — is standing in front of me like this?
It means they're already dead, that's what.
I wonder where my dear wife is~ Kuk kuk…
Derek whistled, crowing with delight. He thought today was his lucky day. He'd succeeded in assembling a team with money, earned a good chance at acing the midterm — and ever since meeting her today, it felt as though his luck had come roaring back to life.
He'd held plenty of women in his time, but never a beauty like her. Long sky-blue hair, so rarely seen, set against those emerald eyes — no jewel in the world could match her. And when he heard she was a commoner, his confidence swelled all the more. A girl that poor, marrying a noble as highborn as himself, bearing his children — wasn't that the perfect ladder up for her?
It didn't matter that she'd refused. He took it as an attempt to raise her own value, and her haughtiness only made her more alluring.
That is, until she took another man's arm.
I'm your husband!! That's adultery!!
There were too many eyes watching to say it aloud, but the rage shot all the way up to the crown of his head. When he realized the man holding her arm was Jenison, the jealousy burned hotter still. That creature they called a delinquent — that one pleased her more than he did?
Then he remembered she was supposedly being bullied by him, which made even less sense — but he racked his brain until, at last, a single answer pointed itself out: she was being threatened. Of course. Otherwise there was no way her heart would turn from him over some washed-up commoner.
So, for the sake of their love, he decided the man had to be dealt with. He gathered the strongest of his teammates and sent them hunting for Jenison. They weren't at the place his men found, but search the tent behind him and she'd surely come out.
But before he saw her again, he'd teach that shameless bastard — who stole his wife and then refused to hand her over — his proper place. He resolved to rough him up just enough, then feed him to the monsters. Clean, tidy disposal.
And after that… heh heh heh.
Imagining the happy things to come, he rubbed his groin slyly — and, unable to wait any longer, decided to head for the tent first.
"Kk—kkuaaaaagh!!"
"Wh…what?!"
That is, if it hadn't been for the scream that rang out — not his annoying voice, but that of one of his teammates.
Slow. Absurdly slow. He'd apparently built nothing but muscle; his deadened right fist came flying at my face so telegraphed I could have read it from a page away.
I dodged by nothing more than tilting my head, conjured a dagger into my left hand, and slashed across the inside of his wrist. The hulk saw his hand dangling loose and started shrieking — and every head snapped toward me at that scream.
He stood clutching his wrist, stunned by the sudden turn of events, and I closed the distance on him like a shot. He finished reading the situation and fell back into a defensive stance, wary of the dagger in my left hand — so I dropped low and kept charging. With that massive frame of his, I had no choice but to attack from below.
He must have thought the same, because he leaned his upper body forward as if to smother my approach. Unfortunately for him, the thing he needed to guard against wasn't only my left hand.
I conjured a small sickle into my right hand and swept it in a horizontal arc at his legs.
Thwack—
He'd never imagined an attack aimed at his lower body; bewilderment flooded his face. I drove force through my right arm and hauled his leg toward me. At the tearing pain in his limb he screamed and toppled backward, and I climbed on top of him before he could settle.
With one hand now empty, he couldn't even manage a proper breakfall. I took the position people call the mount, and embroidered his vital points with the dagger I'd never let go of. Throat, liver — and last, the heart.
Since his throat went first, he couldn't even scream. He simply closed his eyes, pitifully and completely — and the ones watching him saw the fear written plainly across their faces.
"H…he killed him!!"
"He's a murderer!! What are the professors doing?!"
I heard the remaining students shouting and ignored them. Their mouths would be sealed soon enough anyway — it didn't matter. Leaving him sprawled where he'd fallen, I was moving in on the rest when I felt a presence behind me.
"Ahh… guess I'll have to haul this one back quick…"
A voice I'd never heard before spoke from behind me, and I reflexively hurled the dagger backward. He dodged it with lazy ease, still paying attention only to the fallen man, and when the moonlight of the night sky caught him, I finally realized — he was a professor.
Professor Fred — the infirmary professor who'd dumped his duties on the Saintess and run off last time. The remaining students recognized him too and began wailing that I was a murderer, demanding he deal with me at once.
But with an expression full of question marks, he simply hoisted the fallen man onto his back. Why on earth would he need to do anything about me?
"Y…you're a professor!!"
"And it's midterm evaluation hours right now. I only came because I have to treat this one."
"H—he's dead!"
"He's not. Look at the wound."
At his words we examined the wound closely — and soon noticed that the gash over the heart had vanished at some point.
"Did you not hear the briefing? I told you the bracelet blocks any attack that would threaten your life. Once."
"Th…then why did he collaps—"
"Because while it blocks, it also knocks you out. Therefore, not a single student has broken the rules."
Told to resume the evaluation, I decided to get back to what I'd been doing. The other students, quick on the uptake, abandoned Derek — still flat on his back, trembling — and started fleeing. I didn't bother chasing them.
And then I walked toward the one man left behind.
Looking down at him, the word that came to me was pathetic. His whole body quivered and wouldn't move, and somewhere close by, a sour smell had begun to drift through the air.
Wiping the blood from my body, I spoke slowly, deliberately, so every word would drive itself into his ear.
"Lord Derek. Did you hear that just now?"
"I… I'm… I'm sorry—"
"That no one can die here."
The moment he grasped the situation and scrambled to cut the bracelet off his wrist, I drove a knife through the back of his hand to stop him. Then, leaving his pig-like screaming behind me, I slammed another blade deep into his remaining hand — and slapped the tear-and-snot-soaked face hard, once.
"Honestly, I'd rather just kill you outright."
"Hi… hiiek!!"
"But I've grown curious about something."
"…?"
"What counts as an attack that threatens a life?"
With Fred's appearance just now, it was as good as proven that the professors were watching over us. So — could they really grasp our entire situation remotely? What if someone were poisoned? What if an existing illness flared up? What if the amount of blood someone had shed simply couldn't be seen? Could this evaluation truly guarantee complete safety?
As I laid each point out for him, his face went from pale to green.
"I'm going to put poison into your body now."
"Wh…what?!"
"Don't worry. The antidote is easy to come by."
Relief flickered in his eyes at that — and then, at my next words, his complexion turned terrible again. I planned to tie him to a tree, and around it build a structure for burning fires and raising smoke, hiding him inside it. If so — how would the professors know his condition and come find him? And would this bracelet even block poisoning?
At my final words, the sour stench around him thickened sharply, and the ground beneath him darkened with wetness. Before long, the reactions died away. He'd fainted from pure terror — and it was about time I finished my watch anyway. I tied the unconscious man up roughly, then went to poke the cheek of the girl sleeping without a care in the world, deciding to wake her.
As for dealing with that one — I decided to leave it to the very victim herself.