Top Student of the Academy (3)

Kill or be killed.

This was her one and only chance.

Crash!

The bottle Luna swung shattered on impact, jagged shards of glass biting straight into the baron's eye.

"Aaaargh!"

The sensation running up her arm had been sickening. As the baron flailed about in blind agony from the sudden blow, Luna scrambled frantically across the floor on all fours.

"Y-You rotten little wrench!" he howled.

A suffocating dread gripped her entire body. Any second now, she expected the baron to lunge after her and plunge his dagger between her shoulder blades.

"Aagh! Argh! Aaaaargh!"

Yet the blow never came. Fighting through a lost arm or blinding agony was a feat reserved solely for superhuman knights.

"Haa... haa..."

Luna held her breath behind a stone pillar, watching the scene unfold. Overwhelmed by the blinding pain, the baron stumbled wildly before smashing his forehead against the brick hearth of the fireplace. He collapsed onto the flagstones, trembling violently as blood poured through the fingers clamped over his ruined eye.

Luna realized what had to be done in an instant. Snatching up the heavy iron poker resting beside the hearth, she brought it down on him with all her might.

Crack!

Blood splattered across the stone, followed by the sickening crunch of bone and flesh. The baron moved no more.

"Ugh... hic..."

Luna turned her gaze toward the hallway. There, lying cold and still, was Baroness Catherine—a woman who had never shown her much warmth, yet had been the only person in this world Luna could rely on.

"They're... they're all dead. What do I do now?"

It was a cursed fief. Horrific monsters crawled through the woods, while the knights and commoners had either perished in the Great War or fled for their lives. Now, she was entirely alone in this desolate estate.

Her sanity frayed at the edges. Just as she teetered on the brink of complete mental collapse, a sound crept into the silence.

A voice slithered into her ears. It was an uncanny whisper, neither distinctly male nor female. Whipping her head around, Luna traced the voice to a hairline fissure split into the masonry beside the fireplace.

"R-Revenge?" she stammered.

The sinister voice was clearly beckoning toward the fresh corpse.

A tendril of wispy smoke drifted from the crack, brushing gently against the tips of her fingers.

"Eep!"

At that contact, violent emotions erupted inside her like a breached dam. She was a hybrid, half-human and half-demonic beast. Her entire life had been defined by loathing, disgust, and cruel prejudice—to the point where even her own father had just tried to butcher her like an animal.

"I-It looks delicious..."

The mangled, bloody corpse that had repulsed her only moments ago suddenly seemed tantalizingly edible.

When she thought about it, the voice made perfect sense. Had she ever asked to be born a hybrid? Why was every tragedy and misfortune in this fief laid at her feet? The cold, hateful glares of the people that had once terrified her now stoked an all-consuming urge to rip their throats out.

"Yeah... he deserved to die."

"...Right. You're right."

Though she was half-demonic beast, she had never manifested their violent physical traits before. But now, for the first time in her life, an insatiable urge for flesh and cannibalism sprouted from the deepest recess of her being—as though a primordial hunger had lain dormant, biding its time for this exact moment to awaken.

· · ·

Gulp.

When her lucidity snapped back, she was already hunched over the baron's corpse.

And smeared across her lips...

"..."

Luna caught sight of her reflection in a tall mirror leaning against the wall. Staring back at her was the very portrait of the cursed, monstrous hybrid that everyone had whispered about in dread.

"Ah... ahhh..."

A hybrid that feeds on human flesh. In the end, the vile rumors hadn't been wrong at all, had they?

And worst of all—the truly soul-crushing part—was that the flesh had tasted shockingly appetizing.

"BLEURGH!"

Luna immediately heaved, vomiting onto the stones. Clawing desperately at her tongue with both hands, she gagged and retched until tears blurred her vision.

The insidious whisper rose in volume, pressing harder against her skull.

She couldn't begin to fathom what it was babbling about. But one chilling truth was abundantly clear.

Her birth as a hybrid. The unnatural surge of demonic beasts overrunning the fief. Every shred of misery in her life had been orchestrated by that entity behind the crack.

Slowly, her inner resistance began to crumble. Her rational mind dimmed at a terrifying pace while feral beastly instincts roared to life.

"Urgh... h-ngh...!"

The noxious haze pouring from the fissure wound around her limbs, sinking into her pores like a suffocating shroud. It was a cosmic pressure no mortal could ever hope to defy.

Tap.

"?!"

Until her thrashing fingertips accidentally tapped against the blue window hovering before her, illuminating the Otherworld Destruction Gallery.

"Huh...?"

Right before her mind was completely snuffed out, the Gallery's pinned notice caught her eye. The moment she read the post, the suffocating fog clouding her consciousness snapped back like a severed cord.

"The Gallery..."

A breathless chuckle slipped past her lips. Was this really taking place in the very same world? It was so hilariously, absurdly detached from her gruesome reality that a spontaneous smile broke across her trembling face.

The sinister voice pressed relentlessly to swallow her whole, but Luna's gaze had already wandered down to the next post.

"Pfft... heh, heheh!"

The moment she read the post, Luna couldn't hold back the laughter bubbling up from her chest. For an instant, she completely forgot the horror of her situation. How many years had it been since she last laughed like that?

The dark tendrils creeping from the wall wriggled furiously, attempting to lasso her back into the abyss. But Luna's eyes refused to budge from the glowing window before her. In the dreary, blood-soaked depths of the midnight mansion, that single radiant interface felt like an untouchable beacon of light.

At the time, she hadn't understood what that feeling truly meant.

"...But now I understand," Luna murmured, lifting her head as she concluded her story. Her eyes remained fixed on the Gallery screen. "I wanted to live."

Even after surviving that night alone, she had attempted suicide countless times. Yet every single attempt had ended in failure.

"Back then, I thought I wanted to die by Juddak-nim's hand so I could at least pass away as a human rather than a monster."

That hadn't been the truth at all.

The warmth, tranquility, and sheer laughter she had felt while reading the Gallery—it was an intense longing for that life that had made her want to survive.

"Phew... Now that I've let it all out, my heart feels much lighter."

The vacant, doll-like detachment she had worn when she first stepped into the office was nowhere to be seen. In its place was a serene, remarkably at-ease expression.

Having listened through her entire ordeal, I tapped out the question that had been lingering in my mind.

She had claimed to have tasted every variety of meat imaginable, only to find them sickening and revolting. But that hadn't been a lie.

"Yes, I despise it. It looked intoxicatingly delicious back then, but the moment I saw my reflection in that mirror, I snapped out of it."

Even if the entire world branded her a cursed monster, she couldn't allow herself to become the beast they feared. She had clung to the Gallery to endure the passing hours, gradually purging the corrupting miasma until the very idea of flesh—which had once appeared so tempting—became thoroughly nauseating.

"Of course, I am prepared to face my punishment."

"Temptation or not, the choice was mine to make..." Luna's gaze lowered with a twinge of somber sorrow, before hardening with absolute resolve. "Even... even if that punishment is a Permanent Ban."

Without another word, I hit the delivery order.

"Ouch!"

Right onto the crown of Luna's head, an item materialized out of thin air.

"That hurt!" she protested, rubbing her scalp.

She had thrown around words like 'cannibalism,' making me think she was some notorious serial butcher. But from beginning to end, she had simply been a victim.

'It was kill or be killed.'

Yongyong-i's lie-detection abilities had already verified the truth. In circumstances like this, even modern jurisprudence had a very clear, unambiguous term for it: justifiable self-defense.

'Even up to the moment she swung that poker, she was the victim.'

I had no right to grant forgiveness on behalf of a victim. That principle remained unchanged. But the baron wasn't a victim; he had been the perpetrator right until his skull cracked open.

"...Excuse me?"

Bracing for impending execution, Luna blinked blankly. The shock was so profound that her eyelashes trembled visibly.

"B-But I..."

"Ouch!"

Thump, thump, thump!

Before she could babble any more nonsense, a barrage of soy meat packets rained squarely onto her head. Living through a lifetime of relentless ostracization had clearly warped her sense of self-worth into thinking she deserved ruin.

She might be younger than me in years, but her life wasn't something I could ever pretend to measure. Instead of offering hollow, dramatic platitudes, I gave her those simple words of acknowledgment—and Luna froze solid on the spot.

"Ah..."

Her lower lip trembled, and just as tears threatened to spill over her lashes, she sprang to her feet and frantically scooped every last packet of soy meat off the floor into her arms.

"Hmph!"

With a sudden turn, she dashed straight out of the director's office. Yet right before the heavy doors clicked shut, she peeked her head back inside, gazing intently at the Gallery interface.

"...Thank you."

Judging by the look on her face as she left, things certainly hadn't turned out for the worse.

"Well, that ended nicely."

When the academy's top student had abruptly demanded to meet me, I had expected a disaster. Fortunately, it was resolved without a hitch.

"Hrmmm?"

Leaving Yongyong-i behind as she curiously tracked Luna's retreating figure, I turned my attention back to the Gallery board.

"Come to think of it, this world really is bleak."

People claimed the atmosphere had brightened considerably since the advent of the Gallery and the Marketplace, but from where I was sitting, it still had a long way to go.

"Maybe I should expand the academy's total enrollment."

War orphans were still everywhere. Besides, thanks to the Gallery's various community revenue streams, funding their tuition wouldn't just be bleeding points out of my own pocket.

"And I'm almost ready to level up anyway."

I muttered to myself, glancing at the nearly maxed-out experience bar. This tier had required an absurdly steep mountain of EXP. As I wondered what new administrative module would unlock, a new post caught my eye.

"Hm?"

A whistleblower report. Usually, posts like this involved a corrupt knight throwing their weight ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠around to torment commoners.

"A knight again, huh?"

There was a common saying in this world: the most honorable people were knights, and the scummiest bastards were also knights. I clicked into the thread to see what kind of tyrannical tantrum a knight had thrown this time.

"...Wait, what?"

It was indeed a run-of-the-mill case of workplace abuse and power-tripping.

Except in total reverse.

A Gallery part-timer was bullying the living daylights out of a knight.