The Whip Has Always Been Medicine - 2
How does one best train a wild horse?
Bern’s answer was simple: thoroughly ignore the wild horse altogether and ride a fully trained warhorse instead.
Reality, however, had a habit of forcing people into situations where they had no choice but to deal with wild horses.
And when that moment arrived, there was only one method left.
“Why is everyone sprawled out on the floor? Feeling under the weather or something?”
Bern beamed as if nothing whatsoever had happened.
To the students of Class A, that sunny smile looked exactly like a sneer.
That bastard’s insane…!!
He started with Tony and killed every single one of us without so much as blinking!
An illusion that feels this real is even possible?
I want to live…! I want to live…!
Some cursed under their breath, some recoiled in horror, some stared in awe, and some simply screamed inside their own heads. The reactions differed, yet every last one of them kept their true thoughts locked behind sealed lips.
They were terrified that opening their mouths might get them killed for real.
“Our friends here look pretty rough. At this rate we won’t be able to hold class today, will we?”
“Instructor Bern, even so, that is—”
“Just kidding. Coming to a place of learning and then sending the students home without teaching them a single thing would be far too shameless for a teacher! Of course, students who never consider their teacher’s hard work are pretty shameless themselves.”
“I’m glad you understand that so well.”
“Haha! Don’t worry—I really, really hate shameless people…”
The moment the words left his mouth, Bern shot the students a sidelong glance. Every single one of them flinched and broke out in cold sweat.
It was a warning. Anyone who didn’t pay attention in class would get the exact same treatment they had just received.
Not a soul in Class A failed to grasp his meaning.
“Anyway, let me introduce myself. My name is Bern. Starting today I’ll be your temporary instructor for the next two weeks. I want every last one of you to remember me. Forget, and I might have to crack open your skulls and carve it into your brains myself.”
He delivered the bone-chilling line as casually as commenting on the weather, and the entire class shuddered.
Tony, whose head Bern had personally destroyed, felt the terror twice as keenly. The illusion had long since shattered, yet the sensation of his brain being pulverized still lingered so vividly that tears pricked at his eyes.
“That’s enough about me. As for all of you, I’ll learn what I need by reading your student records later. No need for introductions.”
If a demon who weighed sins and handed down punishments ever stood before them, it would probably feel exactly like this.
Every student in Class A suddenly wished they could erase their own entries from those records.
Bern paid their silent panic no mind. At some point he had picked up the pointer Professor Flatten used to wield. He tapped it lightly against the blackboard, drawing every eye to himself.
“All right, all right! The announcements aren’t finished yet. Starting today I’ll be in charge of Class A, and there are also two transfer students who will be receiving my guidance right alongside you.”
“T-Transfer students?”
A brand-new instructor appearing mid-semester was already unheard of. Adding two brand-new transfer students on top of that was so improbable that everyone immediately assumed some special connection existed between the instructor and the newcomers.
This was the same instructor who had just murdered every one of them through an illusion. Naturally they all tensed, certain the transfer students would be equally unhinged.
“You can come in now.”
“Wang!”
A Pomeranian bounced through the wide-open doorway. A tiny backpack sat snugly on its compact back, and a bright red ribbon was tied into the fur atop its head. The little dog immediately glued itself to Bern’s side and stuck its tongue out in a cheerful pant.
“I’ll introduce this one for you. Its name is Cha… Poppy. From today onward, this is your classmate.”
“Wang! Wang!”
“A dog is our classmate…?”
“What kind of bullshit is this?”
Incredulity had long since given way to complete mental shutdown. A few students, however, found themselves utterly captivated by Chaos’s bright, sparkling eyes—completely unaware of the true nature hidden beneath all that cuteness.
Bern, who knew perfectly well that “Poppy” was Chaos, let out a long-suffering sigh.
He had left Chaos waiting at the entrance of Felix’s dungeon while Hades handled the assigned mission. The moment Bern emerged, Chaos had been ready to leap into his arms with pure joy—until Meril stepped out behind him. Chaos bared its fangs in pure hostility. It could not tolerate the sheep who had tried to steal its master. Chaos lunged without mercy, and Bern had to scramble to pull them apart. The fight was stopped, yet Chaos still refused to acknowledge the sheep’s existence. It even ignored Bern’s order to go home, so he had no choice but to keep the little beast with him until its temper cooled.
“Don’t be fooled by appearances. Cute as it looks, every one of you is only a single mouthful to this kid.”
“Pfft! No matter what you say, there’s no way we’d lose to a stubby little dog like—”
“Say that after you look behind you.”
“Huh?”
The girl who had scoffed at Bern’s warning turned her head—and found Chaos clinging to the back of her neck.
“Grrrr…!”
Only then did everyone else realize Chaos had vanished from the platform. The girl whose nape was now in Chaos’s jaws felt every hair on her body stand on end. It was only a threat for now, but if Chaos had truly meant it, her throat would already have been torn out. No one had even reacted. Bern’s claim that they were “one mouthful” had just been proven true.
“This is exactly why people call you greenhorns. Now that you understand the gap, stop making fools of yourselves. As long as you don’t provoke it like just now, it’ll treat you friendly enough.”
“Y-Yes…”
“Poppy, you too. Quit the nonsense and come back quietly. Introduction time isn’t over yet.”
“Wang!”
Chaos hopped down from the girl’s back, tail swaying, and strutted back to Bern with elegant little steps. Then it rubbed its entire body against Bern’s leg, clearly delighted. On the surface it was nothing more than an affectionate puppy—yet the knowledge that something unfathomable lurked beneath made the sight all the more chilling.
“I know it’s confusing to suddenly have a dog as a classmate, but get used to it. It’s far stronger than any of you, so there’s plenty you can learn from it.”
Forced into the position of learning from a dog, the students burned with humiliation yet could not raise a single objection. Not one of them had even been able to react to Chaos’s speed. On a real battlefield they would already have been silent corpses.
“Next, let me introduce the other transfer student. Come on in!”
“Y-Yes!”
Soft footsteps approached. A girl with impressively fluffy white hair carefully entered the classroom—Meril.
“A-Ah, hello…!”
Overwhelmed by the dozens of staring eyes, Meril kept her head slightly lowered as she walked up to the platform. Several of the boys flushed at the sight of her. That fresh, untouched quality of hers had struck a chord in their young hearts.
“This friend’s name is Meril. As you’ve probably already noticed, she’s not an ordinary human—she’s a beastkin.”
Unlike elves or dwarves, beastkin were scattered throughout the kingdom and not especially rare. Yet almost none attended Felix Academy, and those who did tended to have extreme personalities. Some enrolled purely to prove their superiority over humans; others dreamed of founding a kingdom for beastkin someday. Most beastkin carried that kind of ambition, which made Meril’s presence feel rather special.
“Meril still has a lot she doesn’t know, so be kind to her. If she asks about something, explain it thoroughly.”
Bern’s only additional condition for taking the teaching post had been Meril’s transfer. Having lived her entire life inside the dungeon library, she knew nothing of human society. Bern wanted her to experience friendship and the human world, so he had enrolled her as an academy student.
“What’s that student’s danger level?”
“Is your friend a monster? You’re ranking her threat level?”
“B-But you said Poppy was dangerous!”
“I never said it was dangerous. I said don’t mess with it.”
“Anyway, if she’s on the same level as Poppy…”
“What, planning to bully her if she isn’t dangerous?”
Bern’s pointed remark landed like a needle. The girl who had been eyeing Meril with mild hostility twitched her eyebrows.
This was a world where the strong looked down on the weak. Even inside Felix Academy the law of the jungle reigned supreme. The fewer rivals one had, the more arrogant one became—and Class A was especially bad about it.
When the water upstream is rotten, the water downstream rots too.
Class A lorded it over Class B, Class B over Class C, and so on down the line. That generational bullying was one of the things rotting the academy from within.
“For the record, from today until two weeks from now, Class A is under a complete ban on fighting between students, bullying, extortion—any unjust acts whatsoever. If I catch anyone doing that in front of me…”
Bern snapped the pointer cleanly in half with a sharp crack and smiled a meaningful smile.
He was a man who could slaughter people without ever committing the actual crime of murder. Having already been killed by him once, the students of Class A quietly nodded.
“Good. We’ve set the rules, so follow them diligently from now on. In return, I’ll make every one of you stronger than you are now.”
At those words, a faint spark of life returned to the eyes of the half-dead students. The higher one climbed, the higher the walls became. For students who still possessed ambition, the promise of a way to smash those walls was extremely tempting.
There was just one tiny problem…
Welcome to the world of the Sword Whip…!
The one who was about to become their teacher was clearly the wrong man for the job.