“Lord Vele. He is coming.”
“Heh heh. Is that so? It seems Ian did his job properly. Then again, he looked terrified today as well, as one would expect from a coward. There was no chance he could refuse my order.”
After accepting his follower’s suggestion, Vele and his gang had immediately dragged Ian to a secluded place. There, they had quietly tormented and intimidated him as usual, taking care not to leave any visible signs, before ordering him to lure Jaes, his roommate, to a designated location at a designated time.
Ian initially seemed as though he would refuse, but once they reminded him of the difference in their positions and roughed him up a little, he readily submitted.
‘That Jaes fellow is next!’
“Hmm? Ian is nowhere to be seen. Jaes is coming this way alone.”
“Is that so? It does not matter. Jaes was our target from the beginning. Since this is his first time, he may not properly understand his place as a commoner yet. Educate him thoroughly, as usual, and then drag him before me.”
“Heh heh. Yes, understood.”
Vele’s family might have used its status as a marquisate to secure various conveniences for him, but within the academy, the rules still required him to receive the same treatment as commoners and obey instructions from the instructors.
Compared to his life at the marquis’s estate, where he could do whatever he pleased, academy life could only be stressful.
For Vele and his followers, the easiest and most reliable outlet for that stress was to torment commoners they disliked and reaffirm their own superiority, just as they were doing now.
‘This fellow has been making me wait for quite some time as well. Perhaps I should deal with him personally for once.’
As the son of a marquis, Vele was far more accustomed to ordering others around than acting himself. Ordinarily, he did not lay a hand on the commoners personally and merely watched with a smile as his followers abused them.
This time, however, Damian was also involved, so Vele fully intended to interrogate Jaes himself for the first time in a long while.
He did not doubt for a moment that Jaes would soon be dragged helplessly before him by his followers.
However—
—First Tier.
—Magic Arrow (Magic Arrow).
—Weighted Incantation (Weighted Incantation).
—Fourfold Volley (Fourfold Volley).
WHIZZ.
“What?!”
“Aaargh!!”
WHOOSH.
“……?! What was that?!”
It did not take Vele long to realise that something had gone wrong.
“You called for me?”
Just as Vele had expected, the black-haired boy appeared before him soon afterward.
However, the commoner named Jaes was not trembling with his head bowed and fear filling his eyes like the other commoners.
Instead, he stared directly at Vele with a cold, indifferent gaze.
“You……!”
‘Why is he alone?!’
Jaes should undoubtedly have encountered two of Vele’s followers before reaching this place.
Yet after those inexplicable sounds, Jaes had appeared alone, standing before him with an utterly composed expression instead of being dragged over by Vele’s followers in terror.
“What did you do?!”
“That is what I should be asking you.”
Pitch-black darkness.
The sensation of being left utterly alone.
Fear of the unknown.
“You bastard……!”
Vele had deliberately summoned Jaes to a deserted location late at night. Yet because of that very decision, Vele found himself experiencing fear for the first time in his life.
—Second Tier.
—Wind Cutter (Wind Cutter).
Flustered, he began recklessly casting magic at Jaes without even attempting to assess the situation properly.
“Haah. You really are a piece of garbage.”
—First Tier.
—Magic Arrow (Magic Arrow).
‘What? Just a Magic Arrow?’
At the same moment, Vele scoffed inwardly when Jaes countered his magic with nothing more than a Magic Arrow.
CRACK.
SLICE.
‘……?!’
However, the Magic Arrow effortlessly tore through Wind Cutter despite it being a superior spell, then flashed past Vele’s face in an instant.
The sensation sent a chill through his entire body, and he barely managed to stop himself from wetting his trousers.
Meanwhile, Jaes, who stood before Vele, had already run countless simulations in his head from the moment he left the dormitory and began making his way there.
‘Tch. I thought I had handled everything fairly well until now, but it has finally come to this.’
Drawing upon his experiences in his former world, Jaes had quickly grasped the atmosphere of his class as soon as he entered the academy. He had already devised a thorough plan to live as inconspicuously as possible, as though he were barely there.
Back in the Republic of Korea, Jaes had grown sick and tired of watching his professor’s mood and dealing with his godforsaken senior students while still keeping up with his own work as a graduate student.
Compared to that, discerning the intentions of a few pretentious teenagers was as easy as turning over his hand.
From the beginning of his time at the academy, Jaes had therefore shown himself to be neither outstanding nor excessively incompetent, naturally diverting the attention of dangerous groups like Vele’s away from himself.
‘People like that pick fights with you if you are too talented because they find you irritating, and they pick fights with you if you are too pathetic because you look like an easy target.’
Jaes’s strategy had appeared to work exceedingly well for the past month.
For some reason, however, it had gradually begun to fall apart because of Damian, the son of a duke.
‘Phew.’
Jaes had already noticed that Damian and his butler, Robert, had been observing him whenever the opportunity arose.
He had also realised that their interest had caused Vele’s group to become conscious of him as well.
Nevertheless, they were all still children under the age of twenty. Jaes had encountered situations like this countless times at school in his former world, so he had managed to evade them thus far by taking advantage of the instructors and his surroundings.
After all, this was a society divided by social status.
Since his opponents were the children of nobles, Jaes had concluded that nothing good could come from becoming involved with them unnecessarily.
He had hoped that they would eventually grow tired of pursuing him and give up of their own accord. Unfortunately, the situation had escalated until his roommate Ian became caught in the crossfire.
‘It looks like I have no choice but to confront them at least once.’
Jaes still deliberately maintained a certain distance from Ian, but Ian was undoubtedly so naive and good-natured that it almost seemed excessive.
Of course, Jaes himself had abruptly fallen into this world alone, without a single person upon whom he could rely. He was no saint who would willingly place himself in danger for the sake of the people around him, nor did he intend to become one.
At this point, however, he believed that he needed to act for his own sake as well.
‘Bullies only become more relentless when they think you are an easy target.’
It had been the same in his previous world.
As an orphan, Jaes had been an exceedingly easy target for delinquent students, and he had been forced to endure their harassment whenever they grew bored.
It had only diminished somewhat after he pretended to have lost his mind and fought back with sheer spite and determination.
For a while afterward, their retaliatory beatings had become even more severe. Eventually, however, they had grown tired of suffering injuries themselves and naturally moved on in search of someone easier to torment.
‘I never imagined I would have to go through something like that again.’
Even in another world, wherever people gathered, the same kinds of garbage inevitably appeared.
Jaes had attempted to avoid them peacefully by any means possible, but now that matters had reached this point, confronting them in the same manner was the best solution.
“Hey, Jaes. Good to see you. You know who we are, do you not?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Huh……?”
Vele’s followers finally recognised Jaes and approached him, only to stare in surprise at his unexpectedly insolent response.
“You bastard?!”
They reached for him with furious expressions.
—First Tier.
—Magic Arrow (Magic Arrow).
—Weighted Incantation (Weighted Incantation).
—Fourfold Volley (Fourfold Volley).
“Aaagh?!”
Jaes precisely cast the magic he had practised countless times over the past month.
In truth, this was another reason Jaes had chosen to accept the risk and teach them a lesson.
By combining the fundamental magic theory he had learned at the academy over the past month with the independent studies he had undertaken since his stay at Duke Ailin’s estate, Jaes had succeeded in increasing the efficiency of the First-Tier spells Haste and Magic Arrow through simplification. He had also attained a certain degree of precise control over them.
At present, he had been diligently conducting image training to familiarise himself with using them strategically.
As an engineer who simply could not help himself, however, he could not suppress the desire to test them in a real situation.
‘Mir. Mark the locations and power levels that will allow me to knock them unconscious without injuring them.’
<Yes, Master!>
He also had appropriate assistance from Mir, who now claimed to be a Spirit(?).
Jaes still could not expect the same kind of computational assistance Mir had provided in his former world. However, after discovering that its ability to synchronise with his five senses remained intact, he had researched additional ways to make use of it somehow(?).
The result was the feature he was using now, which allowed Mir to visually display the data Jaes requested, so long as that data fell within the boundaries of what Mir had already learned.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP.
“Ugh…….”
<Hehe. I did well, didn’t I?>
‘Yes. Still, it would be wonderful if you could assist me with casting and manipulating spells, just as you used to handle programming assistance on your own through deep learning.’
<BEEP. That is beyond the capabilities of my ‘current’ specifications.>
‘I know, I know.’
Jaes conversed with Mir, which now seemed to have truly become a living being.
In any event, his first real battle combining spell manipulation with sensory synchronisation with Mir succeeded without deviating significantly from his image training. Thanks to that, Jaes gained even greater confidence.
‘Good. There are no problems in actual combat either.’
Given Jaes’s personality, he had only made the attempt after completing sufficient calculations, practice, and image training. Even so, he had been somewhat concerned about the tension and unexpected variables that came with actual combat.
Fortunately, the tension of a real battle was far less overwhelming than Jaes had feared.
‘After what I went through back then, facing children like these is not even enough to make me nervous. It is not as though they are directly trying to kill me like those people were.’
Still, they were members of the nobility, so Jaes needed to take some measure to deal with the aftermath.
THUD.
To accomplish that, Jaes finally sought out Vele and appeared before him.
“Wind Cutter!!”
“Too slow.”
Wind Cutter was a Second-Tier offensive spell that compressed the air into the shape of an invisible blade and launched it at an enemy.
As a Second-Tier spell, its offensive power and cutting ability were incomparable to Magic Arrow, a basic First-Tier spell.
SWISH.
“What?!”
However, Jaes’s precisely constructed Magic Arrow travelled much faster. Before Vele’s pitifully incomplete Wind Cutter could even take proper form, the Magic Arrow pierced through it and scattered the spell before continuing straight toward Vele.
THUMP.
It forced him to collapse onto the ground.
SHAKE. SHAKE. SHAKE.
“H-How? M-My Wind Cutter lost to a mere M-Magic Arrow……!”
“Yeah. You lost.”
“That is impossible……!”
“……Do you still not understand the situation?”
Jaes glared at him.
“……Urgh! Surely you are not doing this because you do not know who I am?! I am……!!”
“Ah, ah. That is enough. You really have not strayed even slightly from the response I expected. Listening to any more would be a waste of time, so I will get straight to the point. Listen carefully.”
“……! H-How insolent!! Do you truly believe you can do this to me and remain unharmed……!!”
“Oh, really? Then I suppose it would be better to kill you here and conceal the evidence.”
A chill ran down Vele’s spine.
“W-What are you saying?! Do you truly believe you could commit such a deed without being discovered?!”
“I think I could. It is all thanks to a certain someone choosing such a deserted, secluded place.”
“U-Ugh!!”
“So, unless you want that to happen, listen to what I have to say. It will not be a bad arrangement for you either.”
“……? W-What?”
“You understand my ability after what happened tonight, don’t you? But all I want is to live quietly. From now on, stop paying attention to me and the people around me, including Ian, and behave yourself. I will not demand anything more than that.”
“…….”
“You can lie to those minions lying over there and tell them that you defeated me here. You can brag as much as you like. That will improve your standing in their eyes, so it should benefit you as well. In exchange, make certain that none of you ever picks a fight with us again.”
Jaes had no desire for the situation to escalate any further.
He believed that this was a sufficiently ‘rational’ solution that Vele should also be able to accept.
Jaes would be able to fulfil his wish to live quietly, while Vele would be able to preserve his pride.
“Otherwise, we can settle everything here. Now, make your choice.”
PRESS.
“……Urgh. F-Fine!!”
“Good. As a noble, you will take responsibility for your own word, won’t you?”
Jaes released him.
“I will bow my head to you in front of others as much as you like. Just make certain that you keep your promise not to touch me or anyone around me.”
TAP TAP.
After delivering that one-sided declaration, Jaes swiftly left the area to avoid being seen by anyone.
“……Uuurgh.”
Vele stared at the empty space Jaes had left behind, his face filled with humiliation.
He considered it an immense stroke of fortune that no one else had been present to witness what had happened.
……However,
“Hmm.”
Beyond the veil of the pitch-black night, someone Jaes had failed to notice had watched the entire scene with an intrigued expression.
GRIND.
“Just you wait, Jaes……!”
Unlike the ordinary students of Jaes’s former world, Vele was a noble filled with an enormous sense of privilege. Jaes had failed to anticipate just how much greater Vele’s pride was than theirs.
A few days later, that miscalculation would return in a completely unexpected form.
It would bring the quiet, inconspicuous school life Jaes had desired to an abrupt end.