A Hunting Dog's Daily Life
A Hunting Dog's Daily Life
I carefully laid down a towel filled with cold ice.
One side of Ines's dazzlingly white cheek was swollen red.
The trace left by the palm of that disgusting hypocrite, Clarice.
"......."
I gently placed the ice towel over the swollen cheek.
At the cold touch, Ines's thin shoulders flinched and jumped.
But she didn't run away. Resting her head against my chest, she leaned into the heavy sound of my heartbeat echoing in her ears and quietly accepted my touch.
The panting breaths like a beast gradually turned into regular soft breathing.
Soon after, Ines fell into a deep sleep.
I brushed aside the platinum-blonde hair scattered on her forehead and stood up.
Throb.
Lowering my gaze, I saw my both wrists bruised red.
It was from the recoil when I tore the mana restraints apart with my bare body during the day.
I could feel the muscle fibers tearing and tiny cracks in my joints. Even after pouring in a low-grade potion, it hadn't fully healed.
If it were the perfected body from the previous cycle, it would have been a ticklish level of recoil.
But the current me was merely a frail teenage boy whose bones hadn't even fully grown.
"I'm lacking."
To endure these harsh four years at the academy and protect Ines, I needed overwhelming power.
Enough usefulness that the church and the leadership would willingly provide treatment and a shield.
Lethal force that could tear out their throats at any moment.
I lay down on the floor next to the bed of the sleeping Ines.
And began a brutal bare-core workout.
Every morning, training to complete my body, the top priority.
Though drops of sweat dripped off my chin and soaked the floor, my eyes were coldly fixed only on the cheek of my sleeping lover.
Several days had passed since that bloody commotion in the main lecture hall.
Daytime when the academy's regular classes began.
The air in the theory lecture room was bizarrely tense and frozen.
Clack.
The moment I casually placed down the pen I was writing with on the desk.
The young master of the viscount's family sitting in front of me flinched and gasped.
The noble cadets in the lecture room did not come within a two-meter radius of me.
A beast that half-killed dozens of escort knights and even tore apart the mana restraints.
They dared not even open their mouths in the face of overwhelming violence, only trying to check and oppress me with dark and contemptuous gazes.
"You there, commoner."
Professor Logan of Tactics, who was tapping the blackboard, pointed at me.
An old fox with tight connections to the influential noble families.
He was the one who, in order to interfere with Professor Walder's promise to me of "maintaining the top rank," would pick faults at every turn to lower my assignments and grades.
"Regarding the formation you submitted for this 'Valley Defense' assignment."
Professor Logan shook my answer sheet with a face full of mockery.
"I understand you're ignorant due to being of common birth, but to push the main knight order into the ravine while even neglecting basic supply line security? Do you think you can discuss the top position of the academy with such vulgar tactics?"
Stifled giggles from noble cadets leaked out from all over the lecture room.
What the professor pointed out was that it deviated from the model tactical assumption of "securing the rear supply line" from chapter 4 of the textbook learned a few days ago.
Instead of answering, I rested my chin on my hand and stared blankly at the old professor's face.
A murder estimate coldly spun in my mind.
Distance: seven steps.
Time to kick the desk, leap, and shove the pen tip on the desk into that old man's carotid artery: 0.5 seconds.
I could make him foam with blood before any scream escapes.
But I must endure.
What I need is not a bloody slaughterhouse, but the academy's dormitory and shield to lay Ines down safely.
I sneered dryly inside.
"Securing the rear supply line? A trash theory that only works at a desk."
In the previous cycle, using that so-called model tactic the professor spoke of, 40% of the western front's knight order were turned into meat paste and annihilated by the Demon King's army's flanking strike.
The formation I submitted was a perfect real-combat tactic that abandoned supplies to avoid annihilation and cut the enemy's waist.
But there's no need to teach the real smell of blood to these hothouse flowers.
What they want is the sight of a commoner bowing to their paltry knowledge.
"I was lacking. Before entering the ravine, deploying the 3rd Infantry Division on the left ridge to secure the supply line in layers from the 'Crescent Defense Wall' on page 12 of chapter 4 is the most perfect answer."
A textbook-perfect answer without a single deviation, dry and flawless.
"...Hmm, ahem! Right. Next time, think once more before submitting assignments."
Logan, having lost any grounds for argument, awkwardly coughed and turned around.
Disappointment was evident on the faces of the noble cadets who had been holding their breath.
Clumsy quibbles and vile cradles.
Within that, I perfectly hid the beast's fangs arrogantly protruding and willingly played the role of a well-behaved model student.
But the pressure of the day requires an outlet.
When the academy's night deepens, controlled reason transforms into vicious instinct.
I took off my shirt, heavily soaked with my scent and sweat, and firmly wrapped it in Ines's arms on the bed.
I must return before she wakes up and realizes the absence of the heartbeat sound.
Allowed time is only three hours.
The forest beyond the barrier, outside the academy.
A goblin champion and a pack of low-level monsters glowing with murky eyes in the darkness.
Clutching a single dagger, I kicked off the ground.
Slash-! Crack!
The extreme stress and murderous intent suppressed during the day were released into physical violence that tore monster flesh and shattered bones.
A mechanical slaughter without any emotion.
I drove the dagger under the jaw of the charging monster, rummaged through its entrails, and roughly dug out the mana stone. The stench of blood soaked my entire body.
I had not the slightest thought of saving the world.
The church promised to cover all treatment costs, but as an orphan with not a single coin, I needed immediate money for food.
I couldn't feed the bone-thin Ines cheap pieces of academy bread.
The sole purpose of this horrific slaughter was only to stuff the "finest meat" I got from the black market into my woman's mouth.
Thoroughly selfish and blind devotion.
For that purpose, I cut down dozens of monsters in the darkness and tenaciously gathered profitable mana stones and hides.
It was when I returned to the dormitory room drenched in the stench of blood.
As soon as I opened the door, Ines, who had been trembling anxiously in the corner of the bed, jumped up.
Was it because of the church's healing priest who had briefly visited during the day?
"She is an empty shell whose mana has all burned out. Not even worth treating."
When the priest tried to touch Ines's body, she had convulsed like a beast and refused that touch.
The flimsy diagnosis and the remnant of the unpleasant divine power left by the priest seemed to still linger in the room.
Ines ruthlessly rushed and burrowed into my blood-soaked chest.
She didn't care at all that the filthy blood soaked her white cheeks.
She just wrapped both arms around my waist as if to break it, and pressed her ear tightly against my chest.
"Stay still. I'm here."
I sat on the edge of the bed, holding her thin back in my large hands, embracing her tightly in my arms.
Thump, thump, thump.
The regular heartbeat echoed.
A relieved breath flowed from Ines's mouth.
And, right at that moment.
Wooong-.
Near my chest where Ines had buried her face.
Precisely from my heart where her forehead touched, a dazzling and warm halo of pure white light began to faintly bloom.
It was a power of a different dimension from the unpleasant energy left by the healing priest earlier or the disgusting counterfeit scattered by the fake saint Clarice.
A sublime and overwhelming divine power that seemed to caress all the despair in the world.
That pure white power flowing from her in my arms traveled through my blood vessels, washing away the torn muscles and small wounds from dealing with monsters like snow melting.
"...!"
I stopped breathing.
She, who had become a simpleton, was healing me in response to my pain even within that empty unconsciousness.
With trembling hands, I cupped Ines's cheeks and slowly lifted her face.
Empty gray pupils without focus. The perfect appearance of an imbecile drooling and making meaningless sounds.
My thoughts came to a cold halt.
Such a vast and intact divine power still remains within this child.
An empty shell with burned-out mana? Not even worth treating?
"...No way."
A chilling hypothesis flashed through my mind.
Maybe Ines didn't go mad on her own from the stress and devotion to the world.
In order to elevate the fake saint Clarice as the new symbol of the church.
If the church leadership deliberately destroyed the reason and intellect of the true saint Ines, turning her into an imbecile and throwing her into a garbage bin.
Perhaps somewhere in her soul, a tiny fragment of reason lives and breathes, healing me every night.
"...Haah."
A cold breath escaped through my lips.
The moment the fragmented puzzle pieces fit together perfectly, chillingly.
My dry indifference toward the world began to burn into uncontrollable hatred.
Wait for me.