Chapter 233
Chapter 233
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 233
Chapter Title: Beyond Salvation (1)
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Training finally ended as the sun set.
“Haa… Haaa…”
“Ugh… Ugggh…”
The students were all sprawled out on the ground, utterly exhausted.
Their hair and clothes were soaked through, as if they’d been caught in a downpour from how hard they’d pushed themselves.
“Pathetic. Collapsing after just this much running.”
Demian clicked his tongue as he looked at the students.
Indignation appeared on the students’ faces. After all that suffering, being called pathetic clearly filled them with resentment.
“What, you got a problem with what I said?”
Of course, the moment Demian glared at them, they all scrambled to school their expressions.
“Starting tomorrow, I’m doubling the training intensity.”
“Yes?”
“D-Double?”
The students yelped in shock.
Even today’s training had been so brutal they’d thought they might die.
No, this wasn’t training. It was straight-up torture.
“You think it’s easy for lazy bums like you to get good scores in just a week?”
Demian’s bellow made the indignation return to the students’ faces.
They’d never once said they wanted good scores on the exams. It was all because Demian had forced them.
“Still, in this state, you won’t be able to handle tomorrow’s training.”
Suddenly, Demian Haksen drew his longsword. The students gasped and scrambled backward.
“T-Teacher! S-Spare us!”
“P-Please don’t kill us!”
The students slammed their heads to the ground, begging desperately—enough to make even Demian flustered.
“Who said anything about killing you? Just watch closely.”
Demian plunged Dawn into the ground. Then he activated the Authority of Envy.
The third Authority Demian had unlocked, ‘Envy,’ had the power to convert mana into a force of another nature.
Demian transformed his mana into holy power and infused it into Dawn.
Ziiing.
Dawn let out a sword cry, as if pleased to absorb the holy power.
Originally, Dawn was a sword that could generate its own holy power and perform miracles.
Now, with Demian’s holy power added to Dawn’s own, its miracles were amplified even further.
Dawn emitted a brilliant light. The light spread out, enveloping the students’ bodies.
“Huh? Wha?”
“Huh?”
Surprise appeared on the students’ faces. The pain throughout their bodies vanished in an instant.
The students stood up and moved around, testing their bodies. Astonishingly, their flesh had been perfectly restored.
“Even top-grade healing potions don’t recover you this fast…”
“What the hell is that sword?”
“I’ve heard of it. It’s gotta be that spirit-grade holy sword the teacher got from the Holy Order.”
“A spirit-grade holy sword? How’d he even snag something that rare?”
The students whispered among themselves, their faces full of awe.
Once all the students were healed, Demian sheathed Dawn. The light faded completely.
“Everyone feeling okay now?”
The students nodded in unison. A smile appeared on Demian’s face.
“Then you can handle tomorrow’s training, too.”
The students’ expressions crumpled at once.
It wasn’t something to be happy about. With that holy sword around, Demian Haksen would work them to the bone every single day.
“See you tomorrow. And I’m warning you ahead of time—if anyone skips class and runs, I’ll kill them.”
“Yes…”
The students replied listlessly. Demian Haksen turned away.
“Oh, right.”
Then he turned back to the students.
“Give me some of your hair.”
The sudden request filled the students’ faces with strong doubt.
“Hurry up and stick your heads over here.”
But Demian didn’t explain. He walked among the students, snipping off small locks of their hair with a dagger and putting them into a small pouch.
“Then I’m really off now.”
This time, he left the training ground for good.
The moment Demian vanished, the students collapsed to the ground.
“Damn it…”
“How the hell did a guy like that end up as our instructor…”
The students sighed heavily and spat curses.
“Hey! Oliver! You sold us out to that monster, didn’t you?”
“You bastard! How could you betray us like that!”
The students’ anger turned toward Oliver. He made an aggrieved face and protested.
“I-I was threatened into it!”
“You call that an excuse?!”
“You should’ve kept your mouth shut even if it killed you!”
But the students, furious from the grueling training, weren’t having any of Oliver’s excuses.
“This isn’t the time for us to fight among ourselves.”
Someone spoke up then. The students turned toward the voice.
Penelope Borza was staring at them with a rigidly stern face.
“If we stay like this, we’ll keep getting trained by Demian Haksen. No one wants that, right?”
“No kidding!”
“Like hell we wanna train under that asshole!”
The students raised their voices. Penelope Borza nodded.
“I feel the same. I’ve got my own swordsmanship to refine—can’t waste time on useless crap like this.”
“But how do we stop it?”
A rough-looking male student asked Penelope. She shook her head.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking for your ideas.”
“I’ve got a good one.”
Another male student spoke up. All eyes turned to him.
“There’s no way they’d allow this barbaric training! If we tell the other teachers, Demian Haksen’s sure to get disciplined!”
The male student said excitedly. But the other students’ reactions were lukewarm.
“Who’re you gonna tell?”
“You think any teacher will listen to Class 13?”
“Th-That’s…”
The male student couldn’t answer.
The students gathered here had clashed repeatedly with the academy’s teachers and been dumped into Class 13.
The majority—no, all—of the academy’s faculty despised and hated Class 13.
“I agree with the others. The teachers won’t help us.”
Penelope said in a voice laced with displeasure. She didn’t trust teachers either.
“Then let’s tell our families. We can make this a public issue!”
Someone else said brightly, clearly thinking it was a great idea.
But Penelope shot it down again.
“Our families? You think they’ll take our side?”
No one could answer Penelope’s question.
They’d threatened to tell their fathers while getting beaten by Demian Haksen, but it was all bravado.
In reality, even if they did tell them, their families wouldn’t help Class 13. They’d basically been abandoned by their houses already.
“…I’ve got a good idea.”
Then Oliver Fortina spoke up. Everyone scowled.
“The guy who sold us to Demian Haksen wants to give advice now?”
“You gonna snitch to him again?”
“Ah, that couldn’t be helped!”
“Let’s hear him out first.”
Penelope told the students. They quieted down, due to the strange pressure radiating from her.
“The point is, we just need to avoid the training, right? We run away before Demian Haksen can catch us.”
The students’ faces twisted at Oliver’s words.
“You call that an idea?”
“Didn’t you see what happened to the ones who ran earlier?”
“How the hell do we escape a Master Class?!”
A Master Class’s detection range was insanely vast. That’s why they’d been caught by Demian just moments ago despite running.
If Demian Haksen waited near the dorms from morning, the students had no way to escape.
“Ah, I’m not done yet!”
“What other dumb shit you got?!”
“You all know the academy’s got a super long history, right? With all that time, its buildings have been expanded over and over.”
Oliver said to the students.
“That’s why every building has multiple hidden secret passages. Our dorm’s no exception.”
“You don’t mean…?”
“That’s right. I know a few secret passages.”
The students’ faces lit up in an instant at Oliver’s words.
“We sneak out of the castle through the secret passages at dawn, then come back in a week. By then, Demian Haksen’ll be kicked out of the academy.”
The students’ faces broke into broad grins.
“Oliver, you sneaky bastard! Holding out on a plan like that!”
“You’re the man!”
The students swarmed Oliver, cheering wildly.
* * *
But they never dreamed.
“That’s the best they could come up with? Secret passages.”
That Demian Haksen had overheard their entire conversation from outside the training ground.
With Master Class senses, he could eavesdrop on conversations from this distance.
“Pathetic.”
Demian clicked his tongue. Thinking they could escape him that way was utter foolishness.
“I figured they’d try something like that, so I’ve already prepared.”
Demian pulled a leather pouch from his pocket. It was the one he’d just filled with snippings of the students’ hair.
The reason Demian had collected the students’ hair was simple.
With a part of someone’s body, you could use tracking black magic.
“Well, I could find them quick without it anyway.”
Secret passages or not, they’d eventually lead inside the academy.
Demian’s detection range covered not just the academy but the entire city with room to spare.
They might be hard to spot underground, but the moment they poked their heads out, he’d sense them immediately.
Even so, Demian had a reason for using black magic.
He had to find Sla.
He was too busy tracking Sla to waste time on the students. That’s when he’d thought of the convenient black magic.
“Gonna beat ’em good tomorrow for sure.”
Demian muttered under his breath as he cracked his knuckles. His finger joints popped.
* * *
The sun had set, but Demian’s tasks weren’t done.
Instead of heading to his lodging, he went to the west wing building. It was late, so no students were using it.
Demian entered the building and headed to the last classroom on the third floor.
A man stood there.
He had a plain face and wore thick glasses. He radiated no hostility at all.
“Sir Demian, right on time.”
The man smiled and said. Demian approached and asked.
“Demon Extermination Squad. That you?”
“Yes, name’s Jake. I’m a commoner, so feel free to call me casually.”
This was the Demon Extermination Squad member the Sword Saint had planted in advance. Officially a commoner, but a full-fledged squad member.
“Mind if I verify?”
“Go ahead.”
Demian pulled a small monocle from his pocket and put it on. Jake’s forehead bore a stamped seal.
Sla could disguise himself as someone else. The infiltrator might’ve already been swapped with Sla.
To prevent that, the Sword Saint had stamped the squad members’ foreheads with a magical seal as a basic safeguard.
Even they didn’t know what the seal looked like. Only Demian Haksen knew, having been informed by the Sword Saint in advance.
“It’s you. Any leads on Sla?”
“I tried, but no solid clues.”
Jake shook his head.
Jake had infiltrated the academy as staff around the same time as Demian. In such a short time, there wasn’t much to find.
“But I did hear something odd from the other staff.”
“Odd how?”
“They say the number of missing students has spiked lately.”
Demian furrowed his brow at that.
“Students are going missing, and the academy’s staying quiet?”
“Well, here’s the thing—they weren’t taken from inside the academy.”
Jake scratched the back of his head.
“They went missing outside the academy.”