There may also be some inaccuracies, since English is not my native language.
Essentially, TBATE is first translated from English into my native language - and in that process, some details are already altered to make it more understandable for us. Now I'm taking that adapted (and somewhat distorted) version, revising it, rewriting it, and then translating it back into English.
I hope you'll point out any mistakes in the text that I might have missed.
× × × × ×
Lucius Zogratis POV
My eyes needed a moment to adjust to the sudden redness when I stepped out of the ascension portal.
In the last few days, I had gotten plenty of aether from crystals and fruit. But it was one thing to simply replenish my reserves, and quite another to breathe it in like this, directly, with a full breath. The sensation was almost indecently pleasant, as though invisible warm hands were moving across my entire body, kneading every muscle, every vein, every drop of fatigue out of me.
It had already been three days since Arthur and I created our own worlds. Naturally, each of us had been eager to see the other's creation, but in the end we decided to wait. The worlds had only just been born. Everything in them had come into being too quickly, too abruptly to gain final stability at once. They needed a little time to take root within the core and settle into their own nature.
In my Blessed Land, a little under four years had passed in that time.
And, honestly, the result turned out even better than I had expected.
Each minor clan had already managed to claim a Clan Home, establish itself in the nearest safe territories, and begin making its first primitive tools. And these were no longer just sticks and crudely chipped stones. They were making genuinely purposeful implements, simple weapons, the beginnings of hunting gear, and were even attempting, for the first time, to use the properties of the environment around them in a systematic way to their advantage.
Why had everything progressed so quickly?
Well… because I had already laid the foundation for their development in advance.
Among the plants I had created at the beginning of the world's formation, there were several species perfectly suited for making weapons. Some had wood that was light, flexible, and springy-as though it was begging to become a bow. Others grew long, strong fibers that, after the simplest treatment, became almost ready-made bowstrings.
More than that, some of the plants in my world had originally been shaped like weapons: some resembled spears, others darts, while a third type, in moments of danger, truly did fire seeds, spikes, or dense bony protrusions with surprising speed.
So they quickly understood what could wound, kill, and protect-and then began imitating those things while hunting.
The two languages I had already created also helped. From the very beginning, I made it so that whenever they tried to name something, they would be literally drawn toward speaking the correct word. It did not feel like outside coercion or some command imposed from above. Rather, it was like a natural inner knowing that rose to the lips on its own the moment the mind latched onto an object and tried to comprehend it.
A child looks at a berry and says, "berry."Looks at a stone-"stone."Takes into its hands a freshly bent branch strung with a tightened fiber-and the word that leaves its mouth is, "bow."
Bridges between perception and language had already been laid into the very structure of their thinking. It accelerated development immensely.
During these few outside days, while years flowed inside the Blessed Land, I had also managed to understand the mechanics of energy recovery and division a little better myself.
After several tests and direct observations, I came to a rather curious conclusion: by spending roughly forty percent of the aether from my own aether core, I could fully restore the entire reserve of aether essence in the Violet Heaven. And that was… extraordinarily fast and convenient.
Both my World Seed and my aether core were rank eight, so there was none of the harsh incompatibility and overload that might have appeared from a poor pairing of foundations. More than that, a very powerful soul smoothed the process even further.
In other words, as long as I did not move on to truly insane scales, the world could recover quickly at my expense, and I, in turn, could withstand that burden almost without consequence, regaining my strength at astonishing speed.
As it happened, I could fit one million units of aether essence into the Gray Heaven, considering that the maximum the Violet Heaven could generate was one hundred thousand. And the Gray Heaven, in turn, could directly wrap all the lower heavens-down to the main world itself-in aether essence.
Once I understood that, I naturally decided not to think small.
Through the Voice of the World, I gave the order to form blueprints for a million gu from rank one to rank three. Spending roughly forty percent of my aether, it completed the task without much difficulty. I waited only a few minutes, recovered fully, and then transferred the resulting structures into the Gray Heaven. There, they began slowly and methodically coming into being one after another, and were then immediately delivered to the Voice of the World in batches.
Some essences looked like tiny translucent insects sleeping inside crystalline cocoons. Others resembled curls of light, little spirals of bone, blue fish floating in the air, pulsing lumps of flesh with the thinnest aetheric feelers. Some looked like centipedes made of moon-silver; others like tiny beetles with dark jade shells; a third looked like droplets of hardened honey. There were also some shaped like larvae, worms, spiders, cicadas, butterflies, or wingless luminous parasites.
The Iron Bone essence had a heavy matte-gray shell, almost metallic, and glimmered from within with a dull red light. The Night Vision essence resembled a small black cicada with many lenses in place of eyes. The Fresh Water essence looked like a transparent snail inside which a tiny droplet was constantly being born and running downward. The Honey essence took the form of a golden-amber bee with a swollen abdomen filled with viscous yellowish light. The Appraisal essence resembled a slender silver praying mantis with crystals instead of eyes, while the Wood Manipulation essence looked like a green, almost emerald caterpillar whose every segment pulsed with patterns resembling leaf veins.
There was a Stone Stomach essence, which allowed one to consume poisons without complications. A Long Leap essence, resembling a tiny bright-red rabbit's paw. A Poisonous Blood essence, like a dark leech with a ruby sheen. An Air Sac essence, allowing one to remain in flight or underwater longer. A Sticky Thread essence-a pale spider with strands as thin as hair and as strong as a good rope. A Silent Step essence, making movement almost noiseless. An Enhanced Reproduction essence-for both prey creatures and monsters. A Territorial Sense essence. A Rapid Wound Healing essence. A Hardened Hide essence. A Heat Storage essence…
After repeating the process several times and creating more than enough monster essences, I ordered the Voice of the World to gather complete information on every living creature in the Blessed Land. It was not supposed to merely list the species, but to analyze their forms, habits, ecological niches, weaknesses, feeding methods, hunting styles, defenses, rates of reproduction, intelligence levels, compatibility with different biomes, and potential branches of development.
After that, I ordered it to spend more than forty thousand units of aether essence generating an even greater number of blueprints for all sorts of monsters. And immediately, even without my involvement, those blueprints were sent by the Voice of the World into the Gray Heaven, where they simply waited for the moment of formation.
The catastrophic hunt could not be based on randomness. It had to be valuable, slightly dangerous, and at the same time carefully calibrated. Not some meaningless natural disaster, but something more like a periodic test of the world's resilience and potential for growth.
So I prepared in advance entire lines of bizarre monsters for it-from simple and understandable ones to nearly absurd creations.
Each time I recovered, I repeated the process again and again.
I created bodies for essences, and essences for bodies.
Some monsters were born literally around a single function. Others became the result of weaving together three, four, or even five essences into a stable complex. Some essences reinforced each other, others conflicted, and a third combination produced unexpected side effects-and often it was precisely those side effects that turned out to be the most interesting.
There were plenty of creatures created specifically around gu.
Some were giant bees capable of producing enormous amounts of honey-not ordinary honey, but honey filled with gentle life force, accelerating recovery, strengthening the body, and even slightly calming the mind. Others could see perfectly in darkness and track prey by the slightest fluctuations of light. A third possessed iron bones so dense that, after death, their skeletons could be used as natural material for weapons and armor. Some generated fresh water within themselves. Others possessed innate appraisal, causing their intelligence to rise noticeably above the norm, allowing them to coordinate better, set ambushes, and even learn primitively from the mistakes of others.
There were creatures capable of controlling plants-not only accelerating their growth, but forcing vines to coil around enemies, roots to burst out of the earth, and thorns to unfold at the right moment. There were beasts on whose backs entire gardens of parasitic fungi grew; these fungi released spores that disoriented prey while at the same time healing the wounds of their host.
Some had blood with powerful healing properties. Others had internal organs that, after proper treatment, could serve as containers for mental energy.
Still others had bones, teeth, horns, membranes, claws, or chitin that were ideal for weapons, ritual items, armor, construction materials, or alchemy. There were also those whose essences enhanced one specific direction: speed, endurance, night vision, skin toughness, hunting instinct, poison resistance, the ability to remain in the air or underwater longer.
In essence, a monster's essence was the most valuable thing that could remain after a monster's death.
Because it was the condensed conclusion of that creature's nature. In some sense, an essence was a small law, carved out of the general fabric of the world and sealed into a convenient form.
Essences of many different forms and purposes were woven together with the bodies of monsters and waited for the hour when they would be sent into battle. All of them were created quietly in the depths of the Gray Heaven. Some were already being stored by the Voice of the World, waiting for the moment when I activated that function.
However… once I realized how easily I could change the direction of development, I began thinking of something else. For the time being, I decided to postpone the generation and creation of monster essences and everything connected with them-they could always be reworked or scattered across the world in the form of rare artifacts or curios. In the end, magic would not appear in my world until one hundred years after life had arisen in the Blessed Land. Which meant there were still about ninety-five years of waiting ahead.
Bzzz.
The portal vanished, leaving behind only an empty frame covered in sharp violet crystals.
My gaze swept over the grayish sky and the abundance of red all around. Apparently, I was standing inside something like a coral reef-only colossal. Tilting my head up, I estimated the height of the nearest formations: more than six meters.
I sent a weak wave of aether from my core in a radius of two hundred meters, trying to sense anything at all, but… nothing.
"Well, that was expected," I thought with a shrug.
Tensing my legs slightly, I leapt onto a tall blood-red coral reef and, strengthening my eyes with aether, surveyed the surroundings. But other than the gray sky and the red coral, I could find nothing.
"Troublesome," I muttered.
Lightly reinforcing my legs with aether, I quickly climbed down and simply began walking in a straight line, since I could neither see nor sense anything through aether.
I had been walking for a little over five minutes when, amidst the red monotony, something alien suddenly flickered into view.
I stopped and crouched.
At the base of one of the reefs, half-grown into the coral flesh, lay a fragment of a blade. The metal was dull, covered in a dark film, but the hilt still bore the traces of someone's hand.
"So I'm not the first one here," I murmured, still examining the broken piece.
I ran my fingers along the fractured edge and noticed deep grooves beside the blade, as though someone had been trying in panic to yank the weapon back out… but had not managed it in time.
The shattered blade looked as though it had been bitten in two by gigantic cutters.
Clack. Clack.
My aether-enhanced ears caught a strange clicking sound, and with it, the distinct noise of footsteps.
Slowly rising, I turned my gaze toward the narrow passage between two blood-red coral spires. For several heartbeats, nothing happened. Then something emerged from the gray half-light.
At first I saw only movement-sharp, jerking. Then the outlines resolved themselves into a figure.
A strange creature.
It was slightly shorter than me, but because of its long, unnaturally thin limbs, it seemed far taller and more massive. Its body was covered in a shell resembling a mixture of black glass and crimson coral. In some places the surface gleamed like polished obsidian; in others it looked porous, alive, as though coral was still continuing to grow over the thing.
The joints of its limbs bent at the wrong angles, making its movements look broken and unpleasantly twitchy, as though before me stood not a living organism, but some poorly assembled construct made of bone and chitin.
Instead of a face, the creature had a narrow elongated plate split by a vertical slit. It was from there that the disgusting sound came:
Clack. Clack.
The slit on its face opened wider, and I saw several rows of small whitish plates moving against each other inside like bony shears. The creature also had enormous pincers, but they looked more like weapons of restraint-the true danger came from the upper part of these crustacean monsters.
Before I could even blink, a second figure stepped out from behind the reef after the first.
Then a third. Then a fourth and fifth. Before I had even taken two full breaths, more than thirty of the crustacean creatures had already surrounded me, though with my eyes I could only see half of them.
Five of the creatures lined up in the passage, as though deliberately blocking the way, and froze, making no move to attack. The clicking of their jaws merged into an unpleasant broken rhythm that echoed off the coral walls.
I shifted my stance slightly.
"And why are you hiding your friends?" I muttered quietly, never taking my eyes off the passage.
The moment the words left my lips, an eighth-rank weapon appeared in my hand, immediately taking the form of twin daggers. Light, balanced, with blades white as snow, they settled into my palms as familiarly as though they were extensions of my own fingers. Aether ran across the weapons in a faint shimmer, responding to my state.
The creatures emitted a crackling sound, and a familiar pulse moved through their bodies.
Could that be…?
My lips curved into a faint smile when I realized we had ended up in that zone of white bones because of me. Cracks raced across their thin legs, which at first glance did not seem especially dangerous, and in the next instant the limbs began to change with a dry crunch. Chitin split apart, bone seemed to compact, and the narrow legs widened nearly threefold, becoming far sturdier and more massive. Their seemingly fragile silhouettes instantly lost all pretended awkwardness.
The creatures lunged forward all at once, without waiting for any signal. And before springing into motion, each of them truly did cast me a short, almost mocking glance. Or perhaps I only imagined it.
I stepped forward to meet the first monster.
It attacked sharply, with terrifying speed, thrusting its right pincer forward, clearly intending to clamp down on me and drag me toward its mouth. But I had already seen the trajectory. Slipping to the side, I moved out of its line of capture and, in one smooth motion, slashed my dagger across the inner bend of the limb.
The rank-8 blade went in easily.
The creature jerked, let out a ragged clack, and tried to turn, but I was already at its side.
My second dagger drove upward from below-straight beneath the facial plate.
The clicking jaws snapped shut uselessly barely an inch from my shoulder.
I twisted my hand and tore the blade back out.
A thick dark liquid mixed with violet light burst from the wound, as though half-decayed aether flowed inside the creature. The thing convulsed once more and collapsed into the red grit, clawing at it with its pincers.
The second creature was already there.
It was smarter than the first-not charging straight at me, but trying to circle from the left while at the same time opening its mouth and thrusting both pincers forward. I activated God Step and appeared slightly behind it on the left. My daggers had already changed shape, becoming a massive scythe. Because that creature had used a pseudo-artifact to strengthen its legs, its speed had sharply increased, and at that velocity it would no longer be able to stop quickly.
And that was exactly what happened.
The enormous crustacean monster slammed at full speed into the white scythe and was instantly cut in half. Its face was still turned toward the place where I had been standing just a moment earlier.
All of that had taken just over five seconds.
My calm gaze shifted to three more creatures that had been preparing to attack but now stood slightly to the side, weakly clicking their pincers, clearly wary.
I could see glimmers of intelligence in them. They slightly raised their pincers, almost as though they were humans.
I see…
They had already seen humans do something like that, managed to comprehend it, and were now trying to copy it after realizing I was far stronger than they were.
More than twenty-five crustaceans, each one capable of killing an early silver-core mage, were now raising their pincers and trying to look harmless-almost like cute little dogs.
"Hahaha…" I laughed loudly at their pathetic performance and, without the slightest hesitation, slaughtered every last one of them.
When it was over, silence returned once more. Only the red grit beneath my feet was now mixed with pieces of shell, dark fluid, and fragments of bony plates. The air filled with the sharp unpleasant smell of raw chitin, blood, and something sour, almost mineral.
Without hurry, I walked among the corpses and began examining the spoils.
From roughly half the bodies, I managed to extract pseudo-artifacts. All of them looked almost the same: several curved blood-red coral legs fused into a single fragment and soaked through with a faint aetheric pulse. Apparently, it was those very fragments that strengthened the monsters' lower limbs, allowing them to gain speed so sharply and change the structure of their bodies in the moment of attack.
Naturally, I did not kill them all at once.
I left a couple alive. First I tried to link the system to one of them, but apparently, because they were still monsters rather than truly sentient beings in the full sense of the word, nothing happened. The system simply did not respond.
So I tried another approach.
I spoke to them, attempted to use the simplest images, directions, gestures, even pressure from my aura, just to see whether they could perceive any meaningful command at all.
But nothing came of it.
They only clicked their pincers, twitched their ugly faces, and stared at me with that strange, dull wariness one sees in a predator that knows how to kill but does not know how to truly think. They definitely possessed intelligence-that could not be denied. They knew how to ambush, coordinate, observe, imitate the simplest gestures, and perhaps even draw crude conclusions from what they saw. But it was still far too little.
They could not answer. Could not point the way. Could not even understand what exactly I wanted from them.
I tried once more to hint at the portal, but all I got in response was the same dull clicking of pincers and meaningless movement of jaws.
Useless.
So in the end, I simply slaughtered the rest of them too.
Disappointment
It was a complete disappointment.
By that point, I had already killed more than two hundred of those monsters, and every single one of them carried the same pseudo-artifact-the same one that enhanced movement speed through the legs. And even that, as it turned out, had a disgusting limitation: the moment one exceeded its usage threshold, it started damaging the user itself.
A single pseudo-artifact, essentially useless, that crippled you after using it.
Wonderful zone.
The only upside was that I had at least found the places where those pseudo-artifacts were created. Or rather, born.
The crustacean monsters gathered around them in entire heaps-sometimes forty at once-and simply stared at the blue coral slowly pulsing from within. Every pulse seemed to bring an already-used pseudo-artifact back to life, filling it anew with a weak imitation of power. And from my observations, that same coral was probably what produced new ones as well.
So I killed all the crustacean monsters gathered at those places without much hesitation, and then, activating the God Rune of Theft, extracted the source itself without any difficulty and tossed it into the system.
After that, I spent another couple of hours running through the entire zone, trying to find anything else at all.
But there was nothing.
Nothing except more and more of the same crustacean creatures.
Later, I did come across something that remotely resembled the king of that miserable place. At least that was how I first took it: the creature was more than three times larger than the others, heavier, denser, with a far thicker shell and a noticeably stronger aetheric presence. For one brief moment, I even thought I might finally be in for a fight at least somewhat worthy of the name.
That, naturally, did not happen.
I beat it to death without even using a weapon.
I just reinforced my fists with aether and started punching.
No weapon. No God Runes. Only body and aether.
It was a surprisingly pathetic fight, especially considering that after its death, I found only two pseudo-artifacts in its body. One was already familiar: speed enhancement through the legs. The second granted general enhancement to the pincers.
I did not have pincers.
So that, too, was useless.
The longer I remained in that zone, the stronger the impression grew that it felt… unfinished. As though someone had created it in a hurry, sketched out the foundation, thrown in a few functions, and then simply forgotten to fill it with anything truly valuable. Everything there felt raw, monotonous, and astonishingly poor in possibilities.
And yet, despite that, I spent another couple of hours checking everything a second time.
I examined the coral fields, circled the places where the creatures gathered, investigated the areas with blue sources again, tracked the movement of the larger swarms, and even deliberately squeezed into several especially narrow and unpleasant fissures between the reefs, where the air reeked of dampness, chitin, and old blood.
But the result remained the same.
Nothing valuable.
Nothing worth my time.
In the end, still unable to shake the unpleasant feeling that I was nevertheless missing something, even though I had checked everything at least twice, I cast one last look over the gray-red expanse, then silently turned toward the portal and left.
From the corridor beyond Arthur's classroom door, I could already hear the laughter and shouting of unsupervised teenagers. I was about thirty minutes late, and judging by their conversations, this was already the second day of classes.
As I stepped across the threshold, I caught fragments of conversation.
"…they told me the new professor isn't even from a Named Blood. Should be easy…"
"…heard about Professor Afelion's new hot assistant?"(They meant Caera.)
"…this class is a complete joke. I can't believe Attackers are supposed to waste their time on…"
"…are you kidding? The other lessons are insanely hard, so I'm looking forward to doing absolutely nothing here."
I quickly looked around as I descended the steps. Two young women were sparring roughly in the duel ring, one student was fiddling with the control panel, and several others were striking training dummies. The rest were loitering about.
"The professor isn't here again," said a round-eyed boy without looking up from his book.
"Yeah, and he's only the assistant professor, Deacon," said another student with black hair. He was the same boy who had ordered around the two bullies in the library.
"You're late, and where's the professor?" grumbled his broad companion with his arms crossed over his chest.
"And the two of you missed the first day. Why even hire two people if neither one shows up?" added their tall friend, his legs thrown over the back of the chair in front of him.
Opening the office door and stepping halfway through the threshold, I said, "Looks like you all have things under control today. I'll be in my office. Professor Grey is in the Relictombs, so for a while longer, you're free to do whatever you want."
I shut the door before anyone could answer.
The moment it closed behind me, the chatter started up again at once.
"Great! Free day."
"…just like last season…"
"…training without mana is such a stupid idea…"
With a sigh, I shut them out and dropped into my office chair, leaning forward and resting my head on my right forearm. In my left hand, a blue coral appeared, softly glimmering with aetheric light. Looking at it, I turned over several ideas connected to the Blessed Land.
Perhaps I should add a function for crossbreeding monster essences, so the Na'vi could create more unique essences? And add a few zones where they would appear on their own once in a very long while? I also thought it would be worth adding the ability to create limited monster essences useful for daily life.
Besides that, I intended to add mana to this world, and to do it in such a way that anyone could use it. And I wanted to make the magical system itself something like the one from the world of Frieren. I liked the concept: imagination + mana + knowledge = any possible magic.
There was a faint knock at the door.
"Come in."
The door opened, and before me stood a boy-pale and sweating. Arthur had described him, and I immediately understood that this was Seth.
"Sir, since Professor Grey isn't here, will you be teaching today?"
"I could, actually," I replied, raising a brow, "but I have no intention of wasting my time on people who do not want to learn. You're Highblood, aren't you? Hire yourself a private tutor."
A chorus of laughter came from the classroom, and Seth stared at the floor with drooping shoulders as he slowly closed the office door. Of course, I could have interfered, but at that moment it was far more important to me to focus on the Blessed Land and what it might become.
"Don't worry, we can help teach you a thing or two," someone mocked.
Immediately after the door shut, a dull impact sounded, followed by a pained grunt.
"No, not like that, orphan. When you curl up like that, you lose sight of your opponent and…"another, sharper impact sounded,"…leave yourself open to blows to the head."
The magical system from Frieren was too tempting: practically anything one could imagine could be made real. But the monster essences I had created, inspired by the world of gu, were also immensely attractive.
Which should I choose?
Then again, both could wait. If I wanted, I could abandon the idea altogether: the cost of the matter was small. Yes, I had spent a couple of days on it, but that was hardly much of a loss. Considering that I had spent only a few aether crystals and a bit of soul energy-which at the base level existed in quantities hundreds of times greater than my aether, not even counting the black-and-white flame that widened that gap even further.
(Actually, more than that. 409,600 was the power-point value of an eighth-rank aether core, while the base power value of a twelfth-rank soul was 524,290,000. The soul was stronger than the aether core by more than 1,280 times, and taking the black-and-white flame into account, by more than ten thousand.)
So in truth, I had spent only a couple of hours of my time doing it. And a bit of aether, but I restored aether quickly thanks to the aether crystals of which I possessed an endless quantity.
Or perhaps I should not choose at all, but combine both concepts? First give the world magic based on Frieren, and then add monster essences. Or the reverse.
Perhaps I should choose a completely different concept of magic altogether? But which magical system from the worlds in my memories would be suitable for implementation in my own world?
My thoughts were interrupted by a series of heavy, insistent knocks at the door. I stood, crossed the office, and opened it.
"What?"
The man in uniform on the other side wrinkled his nose and frowned disapprovingly. Clearly a Highblood who considered me trash with no place in this academy whatsoever.
"Assistant Lucius, correct?"
"That's me. How can I help you?" I asked, tilting my head slightly to examine him better.
"I'm here to deliver something to Professor Grey, but since he isn't present…" The man was middle-aged, with graying temples and fine wrinkles around his eyes. He wore a black-and-azure suit. "My name is Rafferty. I am, in case you weren't aware, the head of your department."
He held out a scroll.
"This is the updated class roster that you and Professor Grey will need. Several students have already dropped this course."
I took the scroll and tossed it onto the desk. "Understood. Is there anything else I can do for you?"
The department head frowned.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. Make sure that in the future you attend classes on time and adhere to the academic schedule established by the academy. As for Professor Grey, I will be having a special conversation with him, so when he returns, tell him to report to my office."
Forcing myself into a frown, I gave a slight bow, though it did not quite produce the intended effect-I was two heads taller than him.
"My apologies. There was some confusion in the Relictombs. There won't be any more absences. And I'll pass your message on to Professor Grey."
His face softened slightly.
"See that you do. We don't need any new problems."
Turning on his heel, Rafferty strode off. Through the doorway, I saw an entire group of students frozen in place, undoubtedly having overheard the entire exchange.
Silently, I shut the door and returned to the desk. I had never even bothered looking through the old class list, so I unrolled the new scroll and quickly skimmed the now noticeably shorter roster.
The sounds of Seth getting beaten up resumed with renewed intensity. Letting out a breath, I rose once more, stepped back into the classroom, and leaned against the doorframe to watch.
My kindness works against me at times like these. Much as I dislike saying other people's lines, the ease with which Arthur handled this situation did not leave me much room to improve on it.
A moment later
"Start," I barked, catching both teenagers off guard.
Seth jerked his blade downward, and it cracked into Portrel's nose with a sharp impact. Blood sprayed across the uniform.
With a growl, Portrel charged forward, swinging his sword like a club. Seth squeezed his eyes shut, stumbled, and his sword sagged right between Portrel's legs. The enraged Highblood tripped over it and crashed to the floor at Seth's feet.
The tall boy with multicolored hair burst out laughing. "Well done, Port!"
I blinked.
"Well, that was entertaining. Had the two of you been rehearsing that little comedy routine, or was that improvisation?"
Seth turned away in embarrassment, scratching the back of his head. Portrel, on the other hand, was trembling with rage.
"How dare you, nameless trash!" the huge Attacker snarled, rising to his feet and pointing his sword at me. "I don't know what you did, but my father will-"
"Portrel, you forget yourself," said a firm, authoritative voice. "Your actions disgrace your Blood."
Portrel flinched, flicked his gaze from the leader to me and back again. "Sorry, Valen."
The director's grandson flashed a diplomatic smile. "I offer my apologies on behalf of both Highblood Ramsayer and Highblood Gladwin, Assistant. Portrel is an excellent fighter, but he has a temper."
A glimmer entered his eyes, and a hint of malice slipped into his smile. "A pity you chose such an unimpressive opponent for him. Perhaps your lessons would be better delivered through a personal demonstration."
His gaze sharpened.
"I'm sure it would be a great honor for Portrel to spar with you, Assistant."
"A very great honor," he repeated with a vengeful grin.
"…Fine. I'll play with him," I said, slowly removing the spiral ring from the middle finger of my right hand.
The ground beneath Portrel's feet trembled as the Attacker lunged forward with a speed impossible without magic.
But for someone who had trained with Arthur-a man with the physique of an asura and the ability to teleport-anyone's current speed was no more than the pace of a snail.
I made only the slightest step to the side, slipping away from the wooden sword aimed at my shoulder, and with a light flick, struck the boy across the face with the back of my hand.
I forgot to mention: I was also using a single-use rank-8 pseudo-artifact that had restructured my bones, so even without reinforcing the blow with aether, my strike felt like an iron hammer swung at tremendous speed.
Portrel's head and entire body jerked violently, he lost his footing, and was literally sent flying out of the unprotected ring with a loud crash, smashing into a row of seats.
Silence fell over the hall as the students watched Portrel very slowly and very obviously disorientedly crawl out of the chairs he had crashed into.
"Class dismissed," I announced, fixing my attention on Valen. "Get out."
Laughter and excited chatter broke out through the classroom as the others began gathering their things and climbing the steps.
"Help Portrel up, Remi," Valen said dryly.
While the tall boy helped his resisting companion disentangle himself from the seats, Valen's gaze lingered on me, the crooked smile never leaving his face.
Portrel, meanwhile, stared at the floor, trying not to look in my direction, but his fists were clenched white as his friend mocked him the entire way up the steps.
My attention shifted to the exit, where students had already begun to gather.
"I said class is over. Why are you still lingering?"
The reluctant gawkers stepped aside, revealing a familiar blue-haired, red-eyed woman. She tried to remain calm and expressionless, but the warmth and faint gleam in her scarlet eyes betrayed more emotion than she wanted to show.
"Long time no see, Lucius."