Levia's Misunderstanding, Tears
Tebeston shouted toward McDeras.
"Wh-who the hell are you? Do you know this Raykan bastard or something?"
Seeing McDeras's utterly aggressive stance, Tebeston wondered if the man might be some higher-up connected to him. Even as he rolled across the ground, he started calculating and switched to polite speech. But the moment he heard McDeras's reply, he realized there was no need.
"Never met the boy. And I don't hold any noble authority like you're imagining. If I had to classify myself, I'd say commoner. Why? Is that a problem?"
"You fucking bastard!"
The instant McDeras finished speaking, the man rallied his strength and tried to charge again. McDeras's foot caught him square and sent him rolling across the dirt once more. Groaning in pain, Tebeston bellowed at the onlookers.
"Why the fuck are you just standing there watching?! Beat that son of a bitch down!"
Only then did the ones who had been standing around blankly behind him begin to move, one by one. Unfortunately for them, none of their attacks ever reached McDeras.
"Just... take the hit already!"
The men swung their fists wildly, but McDeras simply slipped past every blow with light, economical movements. Then he drove precise counterstrikes straight into their jaws.
Thud.
Every time McDeras threw a punch, another body crumpled unconscious onto the ground.
"I-I can't fight him! I can't fight someone like this!"
By the time seven of them lay out cold, the rest fled. It seemed the thug named Tebeston was not much of a leader. The moment things got dangerous, the others simply looked out for their own skins and left him behind.
All that remained now were the unconscious bodies, Tebeston himself, and Raykan, the boy he had been tormenting.
McDeras quietly looked at Raykan. The boy opened his mouth.
"Thank you... Thank you for helping me..."
Rather than accept the gratitude, McDeras asked a single question.
"Do you feel wronged?"
"..."
Raykan kept glancing sideways at the nearby Tebeston and did not answer, but his expression alone made the resentment plain.
"If you feel wronged, grow stronger. Even without magic, you can win in a spar any number of times. If there's something you want to protect, put in the proper effort and forge a will that matches it."
McDeras rested a firm hand on Tebeston's shoulder and added,
"Don't lose the feeling you have right now. When something precious appears, the desire to protect it drives a person endlessly forward. Rank, high or low, and whether you were born able to use magic—none of that matters. What matters most is will."
"I'm grateful, but that kind of thing... doesn't matter at all. The only reason you could beat Tebeston is because you're just strong..."
Raykan had put his finger on the heart of it. McDeras immediately countered.
"You're not wrong. But I didn't start out with this kind of power either. More than that, the reason I stepped into this fight is because you chose to fight for something you wanted to protect. I like people like that. If you'd just been taking the beating with no will at all, I never would have intervened. Whether you can or can't is beside the point. If you want to escape the bullying, grow stronger. That's the only way."
Just then—
"Bullshit... You fucking lowborn commoner, leaving a person like this and still running your mouth..."
Tebeston's face flushed crimson as he desperately lunged. His target was McDeras. He unleashed a spell he had prepared in secret.
In an instant, chains forged of magic rattled and surged in from both sides. The plan was to pin McDeras's movements and then beat him senseless.
McDeras shattered the man's magic with a single sweep of his sword.
"This is fucking impossible... Why... why am I losing to some inferior swordsman..."
Tebeston, mid-charge, stared at McDeras with eyes full of despair. McDeras approached with an expressionless face, looking down at the boy.
"Now I finally see fear in your face. You ran wild like the whole world belonged to you—until someone stronger than you showed up, and now you're scared? Pathetic."
As McDeras closed in, the boy spun to flee. McDeras's sword sliced through his Achilles tendon.
Crash!
"Aaaaaargh!"
"Fuck... fuck... When Father gets here... you're dead... you're fucking dead..."
"Ah. How terrifying."
Still expressionless, McDeras severed the Achilles tendon of the other ankle as well. The man's screams rang out in every direction.
In that moment, someone came running from behind.
"Raykan!"
McDeras turned his head that way, half-expecting Tebeston's father. But the figure standing there was a familiar girl.
Levia?
Willow, Levia—or the girl "trying man" had been hopelessly in love with.
Her face was flushed, tears streaming freely as she sprinted toward them, racing madly for her younger brother.
"Are you okay...? What happened, Raykan... Unni will protect you..."
Levia urgently cupped her brother's ruined face and wept. McDeras simply stood and watched the scene unfold.
Only after several seconds did Levia speak to him.
"Cael... was it you who helped him...?"
McDeras gave no answer. Raykan, still buried in his sister's arms, answered for him.
"Yeah, it was him... Those guys on the ground, and Tebeston rolling around down there—he put them all down."
Hearing her brother's words, Levia became certain. She struck Cael's chest and cried out.
"You said you wouldn't help! You basically told me never to speak to you again! So why did you go and do something this dangerous without a word!"
Levia looked at the collapsed Tebeston as she spoke.
"He's... wearing noble house clothes. Cael... there'll be retaliation. Something horrible is going to happen to you... Why would you take that risk just to help my brother..."
"Retaliation?"
McDeras walked straight over to the fallen Tebeston and stomped hard on the boy's head. The body went limp and unconscious.
"If I were afraid of something like retaliation, I never would have gotten involved in the first place. And I didn't know he was your brother."
"How does that make sense? You saw a picture of my brother before..."
"I told you I lost my memories."
"..."
Levia looked into Cael's eyes and thought. So he had only been pretending to have lost his memories.
Because she had rejected his confessions again and again and shown how uncomfortable she felt, he had acted like he lost his memory and chosen to distance himself so he wouldn't burden her heart.
Saying he wouldn't help her brother, acting cold at the academy—all of it had been an act. Cael still liked her without thinking of the consequences.
"You... did this because of me...?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You think doing something this dangerous will make me look at you differently? That I'll accept your confession?! Why take the risk? Don't you know what happens when you get mixed up with nobles...?"
"Levia. Stop shouting. It's ringing in my skull. And I've already gotten plenty mixed up with nobles. That crippled boy over there—Tebeston—his father is supposedly coming here soon."
At McDeras's words, Levia seemed to snap back to reality and looked around wildly.
"Run."
When the man did not react, she shouted again.
"I said run. I won't mention you at all."
"What do you plan to do?"
"I'll... I'll say I asked you for help. And I absolutely won't tell them your house or where you live. Don't come to the academy—just run. If they can't find you, the only one responsible is me. It'll look like I put you up to it, so the noble house will take it out on me. We'll do it that way... so hurry and run, Cael."
McDeras stood still where he was and spoke.
"Running is something only the weak do."
"Nobles are different! Your swordsmanship can't do anything against people like them! You could actually die—they have that kind of power and authority! There's a reason I couldn't just jump in even though I knew my brother was being bullied!"
Levia pounded on McDeras's chest as she cried out.
"Please run... You finally worked so hard and got strong... You can finally live without being bullied anymore... You have the kind of sword skill that can earn respect anywhere, just like you wanted... Why are you trying to throw your life away here... Why for someone like me... I rejected your confessions every single time, so why..."
"You're full of yourself. I feel no romantic interest in you. And more than that—"
McDeras gestured toward the outskirts and added,
"It's already too late to run."
The noisy whinnying of horses reached them. Men in splendid robes walked forward, surrounding a middle-aged man.
McDeras counted them.
Roughly twenty. Every one of them a mage.
"Who did this?"
The middle-aged man who was clearly the center of the group—wearing on his chest the brilliant emblem granted only to nobles—asked coldly.
When no one answered, he ground his teeth and asked again.
"I asked who put my son in that state."
"I... I did it..."
Levia answered, grabbing McDeras's and her brother Raykan's hands and trying to hide them behind her. But her slender body could never conceal two men.
McDeras shook Levia's hand off and stepped forward. He looked at the man and spoke.
"I did it. Looks like that brat needs a proper re-education. I was going to kill him, but he said he was calling his father, so I held back. Figured I should at least let the man leave a will."
For a moment the man burst into mad laughter.
"Look here. Can you not see the crest on my chest? Can you not feel the mana of the mages around me? Or are you simply looking to die? You should be on your knees begging, yet what is this absurd attitude? Kneel and beg now and I'll settle for taking one arm and one leg."
Levia urgently seized McDeras's sleeve in a death grip. McDeras shook her off again and answered.
"I was about to say the same thing. Kneel and beg like a dog and I might forgive you."
Hearing McDeras, Baron Teron raised a hand.
"Lowborn scum."
A mental-type spell activated in an instant. The man cast it while sneering.
"You will see the most horrific moment of your life, repeated tens, hundreds, thousands of times. Even if you cry and scream for it to stop, it is already too late."
McDeras analyzed the magic formula being cast. He already knew this variety. A spell called Trauma. It stimulated the target's trauma to induce mental contamination.
Unfortunately, McDeras knew a method that could reduce that magic to nothing. This time, however, he chose not to use it.
Link
Instead, with a single short word, he simply connected the man's mind to his own. From this moment on, the trauma McDeras experienced would be shared with Baron Teron.
"So you're not just a cripple—you can use magic after all. Doesn't matter. You're still just a green brat. Trauma of your level will never contaminate my mind in the slightest."
The instant the man shouted, the Trauma magic took effect.
In that moment, the surroundings were dyed in darkness.
McDeras stood staring blankly at the sky, expressionless, simply observing.
Dragged into McDeras's trauma, Teron looked around.
"Please... please spare me..."
"Stop... stop... I surrender... I surrender, please..."
The screams of countless people, blood soaking the battlefield, and the rotting stench of corpses that stabbed at the nose.
Teron's body shook violently as he stared at McDeras. McDeras spoke without expression.
"Did you think my trauma would be something like childhood pain?"
McDeras, clad in a massive robe and holding a staff in which an absurd amount of mana had condensed.
Baron Teron realized something had gone terribly wrong and spun around, desperately trying to flee somewhere—anywhere. But across this vast battlefield, no escape route existed.
Drip... drip-drip...
Fleeing, Baron Teron stopped dead from a horrific pain and stared blankly at the sky.
From the heavens, a red rain was falling.