Where Forbidden Items Gather (4)
Zzzt, zzzap!
"You... you damn... argh!"
The masked figure twisted in agony with every spark that jumped from the wires binding him.
His entire body was wrapped tight in current-laced wire. The slightest movement delivered an electric shock, which meant the only choice left to him was to be dragged along like a lamb to the slaughter.
"These goddamn... argh! brats. What the hell is wrong with this year's freshmen?"
"......"
Song Cheon-hye gave no answer. She simply funneled more mana into the wire in silence.
The wire would keep its target paralyzed until its fuel ran dry.
With the thief completely subdued, all that remained was to follow procedure and haul this delinquent... senior off to the Disciplinary Committee office.
Then—
KWAAAKWAAANG!!
"Eep!"
A thunderous explosion startled Song Cheon-hye out of her skin.
She'd hiccuped before she could stop herself, but thankfully the Thief Club senior was too busy wrestling with the wire to have witnessed it.
Steadying her racing heart, she judged the distance between the source of the sound and her current position.
For the noise to carry this clearly from so far away, it was no ordinary incident.
I have to go.
Song Cheon-hye poured additional mana into the wire holding her prisoner.
It bothered her a little to leave him behind, but confirming whatever was happening over there took priority. She could come back and collect him right after.
Song Cheon-hye kicked off the ground and cast her spell.
Lightning cloaked her legs, and she tore across the ground like a bolt from the blue.
The moment she arrived at the epicenter of the explosion—
"Ugh...!"
Song Cheon-hye felt her breath catch in her throat at the overwhelming wave of heat.
Scanning the chamber, she saw a massive hole punched clean through a triple-layered stone wall, the remaining rubble melting and slumping like butter left in the sun.
And a short distance away lay Gwak Seung-jae, sprawled unconscious on the floor.
"Senior!"
Song Cheon-hye rushed to his side in a heartbeat and checked his condition first.
Anyone caught square in a strike like that should have died on the spot, and it wouldn't have surprised anyone. Even if he'd somehow survived, the odds were good that part of his body would be cooked through or his organs pulped to paste.
And yet—
"......?"
Gwak Seung-jae was impossibly, suspiciously fine.
A few very minor burns, some scrapes from rolling across the floor, and a mana circuit that had been knocked slightly out of alignment—that was the full extent of it. The kind of damage that a few days of good rest would fix entirely.
Injuries this light from power like that? Nothing about it added up.
"Song Cheon-hye!"
A second-year Disciplinary Committee member descended nearby.
He reacted exactly as she had—wincing at the heat that rushed his face the moment he landed, hurrying to check Gwak Seung-jae's condition, then blinking in bewilderment at how unharmed he turned out to be.
He turned to Song Cheon-hye. "What in the world happened here?"
"I don't know, sir. I only just arrived."
"......Let's pull back for now."
Though Gwak Seung-jae's body seemed sound, he was still unconscious. They couldn't rule out the possibility that whoever had done this might return, so any discussion was better held somewhere safe.
The second-year hoisted Gwak Seung-jae onto his back.
I rolled my wrists, one full turn each.
The hand that had cast Inferno Fist wasn't just unburned—it was pristine, without so much as a singe. Proof that I had nullified the elemental penalty completely.
Still, a faint smoldering itch lingered, as if my fist wanted to catch fire from the inside out.
I kept flexing my fingers open and shut as I walked back toward the dormitory.
That was a real hassle this time.
Holding back my power, I mean.
If I'd hit him at full output, Gwak Seung-jae probably wouldn't have left a corpse behind. Even mid-range output would have blown off one of his limbs.
No more, no less—precisely enough to knock him out of combat. That delicate calibration had taken real effort.
I wondered if Gwak Seung-jae would ever appreciate it.
The benefit of throttling my strength so carefully was simple: it kept the incident from escalating.
Infiltrating the Thief Club's temporary storage and stealing banned items—no matter how severe the punishment, it ended within the bounds of penalty points and disciplinary measures.
Granted, this was no petty offense, so the points would be steep and the discipline harsh enough to land us with the worst chores. But that was the absolute ceiling of the punishment.
However, if I had seriously injured Gwak Seung-jae—or worse, killed him—that would be the moment everything stopped being a matter between students and became a matter for the adults.
The case would climb up to the faculty chain, be handled with far greater severity, and the punishments would follow suit.
Whenever you broke Dragon Slayer Academy's rules to gain something, you always had to be careful not to cross that one line. Never give the staff an opening to step in.
The Disciplinary Committee won't just let this slide, though.
It was only that things hadn't spiraled further—today's events weren't going anywhere.
The Life Cube was stuffed to bursting with banned items, and Inferno Fist was, by any definition, a forbidden skill.
On top of that, I'd knocked out Gwak Seung-jae and burned a bridge with the Emerald Magic Tower while I was at it. Both the Student Disciplinary Committee and the Emerald Magic Tower would be digging for my identity—for the sake of justice, and to save their own face.
Not that they'll find anything.
I'd left a few clues behind, but they were nowhere near enough to pin me down.
If Dang Gyu-young opened her mouth, there was a slim chance—but I highly doubted she would.
She was the president of the Thief Club, after all.
Student Disciplinary Committee Office. The Room of Truth.
Oh Se-hun, the Committee Chief, wore his usual gentle smile.
Across from him sat Dang Gyu-young, slouched in a slovenly sprawl.
The aftermath of a ferocious battle had caked her face in dust, and her once-neat straight hair hung in a disheveled, filthy mess—a stark contrast to Song Chungi, who didn't have a speck of dirt on him.
Her whole body screamed I lost the fight, but the expression on her face said something else entirely:
Yeah, I lost. So what, got a problem with that?
"......"
Clearly displeased by the sight, Song Chungi scowled once and turned his back on her. He'd subdued Dang Gyu-young and handed her over, so his part here was done. Whether Oh Se-hun sorted out the rest was none of his concern.
"I'm leaving."
"You've worked hard. Sit down and rest a minute before you go."
"There's a mountain of paperwork waiting. These people just made it taller."
Song Chungi grumbled that he'd be pulling an all-nighter tonight.
As he walked away, the Disciplinary Committee members watched his back with strangely unreadable eyes.
The Student Council had always maintained strict neutrality, never wading into other organizations' quarrels. And yet tonight the Student Council President had jumped in without a moment's hesitation—of course they were curious what on earth had happened.
Does the Chief know about this?—the questioning glances landed on Oh Se-hun, but he simply smiled and shook his head.
If I tell them, it'll be a disaster.
The moment the truth left his lips, wouldn't Song Chungi come kicking that door back down? Burying it quietly was for everyone's good.
In any case, Song Chungi was gone now, and the cleanup fell to Oh Se-hun.
Which meant dealing with the young filly in front of him.
"Yaaaawn—"
Dang Gyu-young stretched out a long, lazy yawn. Sinking deeper into her chair, her head came to rest where her shoulders were supposed to be, and from that position she asked:
"How long are you planning to keep me here? Dock the points and let me go already."
She spoke as if she knew exactly how the conversation would play out.
And why wouldn't she? It had been over two years since she started making regular visits to this Room of Truth. She'd faced Oh Se-hun more times than she could count, so by now the whole routine had worn thin.
Oh Se-hun recited his usual lines. "If you cooperate, this will wrap up quickly. Want to take a look at this first?"
Dang Gyu-young took the documents and flipped through them one page at a time.
Item names were listed across page after page—a cross-reference of the storage ledgers from before and after the break-in.
What the documents before her listed was the minus column of the ledger.
Or more precisely, everything stashed inside the Life Cube.
A few unfamiliar names did catch her eye.
Probably that cheeky junior claiming his share. Why Heart Thunder Jade of all things, and Inferno Fist on top of it—she had questions, but none of that mattered right now.
Dang Gyu-young played dumb. "What about it?"
"Gyu-young, let's not waste each other's time. You know exactly what this is."
"Do I? First time seeing it."
"Keep denying it and we both just get more tired."
"Mm, not listening~"
Her shameless stonewalling was nothing new.
The Thief Club's creed: once swallowed, a thing stays swallowed, barring extraordinary circumstances. And tonight, for once, they'd taken a truly enormous bite—there was no way they'd let go.
When she came out this brazen, Oh Se-hun's response was equally standard.
"Gyu-young, this time I can't just look the other way. I don't know how you did it, but a lot of items are missing. You're covering the shortfall—all of it."
"And what does 'all of it' mean exactly?"
Every rule they'd broken tonight, stacked and stacked and stacked again...
Then add the missing items on top of that...
"Three percent in penalty points, a cut to your club budget, two weeks of sewer cleaning and monster extermination down in the underground waterways, one week of building repair work, and every second-year and above takes on two outside commissions."
"......Okay, that's a shitload. So now's the part where you dangle a counteroffer, right?"
She was moving first, knowing full well the carrot came next.
Oh Se-hun smiled wryly and continued. "Come clean and return every item, and I'll make it one percent in points and three days in the sewers. Everything else, wiped clean."
A drastic offer by any measure. Slashing penalties this steep edged past what a Committee Chief's authority should allow—but with Oh Se-hun's abilities, he could make it happen.
And yet, he had already predicted exactly what answer would come back.
He always made the offer. He could count on one hand the times it had ever landed.
Same as always. She'll take the punishment and walk.
"Nope. I'll take the two weeks, thanks."
"Figured you'd say that."
True to form, Dang Gyu-young chose the former without a flicker of hesitation.
Every last item she'd entrusted to Kim Ho was worth a fortune. Weighed against the colossal profits they'd bring when sold off, punishment at this level was a bargain she'd pay gladly.
Dang Gyu-young rose from her seat. "Done?"
"Done. Discipline starts tomorrow. Let the others outside know in advance."
"Sure. Later."
"Get some rest."
As Dang Gyu-young stepped out of the Room of Truth, the five Thief Club members who'd been crouching in the corner crowded around her.
"Boss, we done?"
"How many weeks of discipline?"
"What about the penalty points?"
"No outside commissions, right?"
......Hold on. Five?
The total headcount for tonight's operation, Dang Gyu-young included, had been seven. One was missing.
She scanned the familiar faces and realized the missing one was Kim Ho.
She'd assumed he'd been caught with the rest of them, but apparently the kid had shrugged off the pursuit and escaped.
But how?
Shaking off an ordinary Committee member could be chalked up to luck, but slipping Gwak Seung-jae's attention was a genuinely tall order.
Come to think of it, she hadn't seen Gwak Seung-jae anywhere either.
Dang Gyu-young grabbed a passing Committee member. "Hey, where's Seung-jae?"
"The infirmary, ma'am."
"......The infirmary?"
The member's expression shifted strangely—almost as if to say, how do you not know that?
"He got taken down by someone on your crew. You didn't hear?"
"......!"
"Who was it, anyway?"
So he hadn't used some miraculous trick to slip away—he'd won a straight, head-on fight, put Gwak Seung-jae down, and strolled out cool as you please.
Which was its own kind of impressive.
A first-year who hadn't even been enrolled a full week... beating a second-year Disciplinary Committee executive?
Dang Gyu-young let out an awkward laugh.
"Haha......"
That little punk's got real talent.