Jeremy leaned his back against the marble railing on the edge of the arena ring, his amber phoenix eyes as still as an autumn lake, not bothering to part his lips to say another word. He just stood there amidst the harsh wind of the secret realm, patiently waiting for the battles of his teammates to come to an end.
Another half hour sluggishly passed amidst the roaring explosions of magic power.
Leon Vance was the first to tear through his opponent’s defensive line, claiming victory with a brutal and ruthless melee combat style. Immediately following was Evelyn Vael’s lethal cyan arrow piercing through the mechanical core, and finally, Phoenix Noir withdrew his gloomy threads of darkness, silently ending his own match.
Waiting until the entire arena sank into absolute silence, Jeremy then lowered his eyes, withdrawing his gaze. He raised his wrist, lighting up the virtual screen from his magic ID card to check the time. The hellish time limit stipulated by instructor Griffin still had exactly ten hours remaining.
Hopefully, this torturous farce had truly reached its end.
In a surveillance space not far away, Griffin stood with his hands clasped behind his back, taking in every gesture, look, and physical condition of all five of them into the depths of his narrow, light purple phoenix eyes. He lazily lifted his fingertips, casually muttering a brief spatial incantation.
In just the blink of an eye, the secret realm scenery shattered, and all five students were forcefully yanked back to the familiar Anima faculty classroom by an invisible force.
Griffin leisurely dropped himself, leaning back into the rotating magic chair placed on the podium. He crossed his long, perfectly straight legs, his arrogant gaze carrying a chilling scrutiny as it swept over the five figures standing below the podium.
Even the usual fake, gentle facade on his face had completely vanished, replaced by an attitude so coldly indifferent and teasing that it made him difficult to read:
"If one didn’t know better, they would think I paid for a ticket to watch you all compete in some 1v1 individual combat tournament. Truly a synergy so phenomenal it makes ghosts weep and gods wail - everyone only cared about keeping their own lives."
He lightly tapped his fingertips on the armrest, his melodious voice dropping words of sarcasm as sharp as daggers: "Could it be that later, when you officially step onto the frontlines, you all will also only care about whether you yourselves can secure victory, ignoring the life and death, the blood-soaked corpses of the teammates lying right next to you?"
Before Leon Vance set foot in St. Aetherwing Academy, his living dictionary never contained oppressive concepts like "reading others’ faces" or "enduring humiliation."
Earlier, when he had just dragged his body back to the classroom from the deserted island, facing Griffin’s unreasonable interrogations, he had to grit his teeth and suppress himself time and time again to maintain silence like the others. But right now, when his stamina had hit rock bottom and the pent-up resentment in his chest was about to break its limits, Leon was too lazy to maintain any cheap facade of respecting the instructor.
"Whether to lend a helping hand or not... is it really that important?" Because his mood was terrible to the extreme, Leon didn’t even bother to conceal his facial expression. The muscle mass beneath his shirt tensed tightly, his eyebrows furrowed tightly together, and the corner of his lips held a sharp, mocking smile:
"It’s not exactly a life-and-death duel on a real battlefield anyway. If someone can’t even handle a mechanical puppet possessing a realm equal to their own by themselves, then what the hell is the point of continuing to live and take up space?"
When he didn’t open his mouth, Leon looked exactly like an arrogant, aloof, and unapproachable aristocratic young master. But the moment the thorny words escaped his throat, his entire person immediately exuded the rebellious, ruthless aura of a true villainous thug.
"Moreover, if you truly want to investigate where we learned this habit of ’ignoring teammates’ life and death’ from..." Leon took a step forward, his chilling silver-gray eyes looking straight at Griffin: "...Isn’t this the very first lesson you personally brainwashed us with right on our first day of enrollment?"
Because of his direct, offensive rebuttal, the entire classroom fell into a moment of silence as still as a sheet of paper.
Compared to Leon’s undisguised hostility, the attitude of Lucius D’Arsy standing next to him appeared incredibly casual and nonchalant.
The silver-haired young man lazily leaned his back against the edge of the desk, propping an elbow on the glossy surface, a slender hand unhurriedly resting on his chin. On his sharp, masculine face bloomed a gentle smile, flawlessly harmless:
"It seems classmate Leon’s mind is still not very clear due to the mental shocks in the illusion earlier, I hope you will magnanimously overlook it for him, sir."
Hearing this appeasing remark reeking of sarcasm, Leon’s mood grew even worse, exactly as if he had just stepped in a pile of dog crap in the middle of the road. Inherently, his instinct was already extremely averse to Lucius; right now, the level of disgust was pushed straight to its peak.
Just as Leon gritted his teeth, preparing to curse straight at Lucius’s face asking what the hell he was doing meddling in others’ business, he immediately heard this teammate, who usually always wore a hypocritical, eye-crinkling smile, casually shift the spearhead this time:
"However... if you truly want to enjoy a touching play of friendship, loving and helping each other on stage, then you should have laid out clear rules from the very beginning. That way, our entire team would surely have been very willing to coordinate a performance for you to watch."
Lucius lightly blinked his emerald green phoenix eyes, the pink outer corners glinting with a chilling, bewitching light: "Waiting until we shed blood to secure victory, and then sitting there questioning right and wrong, spouting moral philosophy... seems a bit ridiculous and cheap, doesn’t it?"
Let alone Leon, even Evelyn with her emotionless face or Phoenix always shrinking in the shadows completely did not expect it: the brat who usually only liked to giggle and cling to Jeremy, this time was actually willing to stand on the side of his teammates with such ironclad, thorny arguments.
"..."
Jeremy had just unscrewed his bottle cap, intending to take a sip of water to moisten his dry throat, when the situation in the classroom completely spiraled out of control.
He blandly screwed the cap back on, having thoroughly abandoned all hope for these two wildly arrogant, sarcastic instigators in his heart. If they like to mock anyone, if they like to provoke anyone to madness, just go ahead and do it; he couldn’t be bothered to stop them anymore. Currently, he was just a figurehead captain elected in name only; before his actual strength truly surpassed their realm levels, his words inherently carried no decisive weight.
But being pointed at and sharply rebutted straight to his face by newly enrolled students like this, how would the instructor with that perverted personality react? Explode in fury with magic power, ridiculously mock them back, ignore them entirely, or disdainfully punish them?
Completely different from the bloody scenarios everyone secretly predicted in their heads, Griffin’s face remained flat, not fluctuating in the slightest.
He sat there, as still as a stone puppet unprogrammed with emotions, only patiently using a cold gaze to wait for the two rebellious students to vent their anger completely.
Waiting until the space became completely quiet again, he then blandly announced that the schedule and training quotas for next week would be sent directly to the communication group. The moment the final syllable dropped, his figure twisted in the blink of an eye and vanished from the classroom, leaving not even a scrap of his coattail.
The five youths stood rooted to the spot, remaining silent for a long beat.
Leon was the first to break the atmosphere. He glanced sideways, the corner of his lips curling into a half-smile: "I didn’t expect that someone who usually looks so fake and deceitful like you would actually be quite righteous when things happen."
"Huh?" A low, hoarse, freezing syllable exactly like a sneer escaped Lucius’s throat.
Realizing he had slightly lost his composure in front of others just now, Lucius very quickly steadied the repulsive, ruthless emotions surging in the depths of his eyes. He curved his lips into a radiant smile, narrowing his phoenix eyes: "Don’t be so full of yourself and misunderstand. I simply found that jellyfish-head to be an eyesore for a long time now, I had absolutely no intention of chiming in with you. The relationship between the two of us... isn’t good to that extent."
Leon’s forehead immediately furrowed tightly into a rugged line. Just as he was about to open his mouth to mockingly retort, he saw Lucius turn around, acting as naturally as nothing had happened to sidle up close to where Jeremy was standing.
Leon coldly swept his eyes over Lucius’s clinging behavior toward Jeremy, suddenly recalling that throughout the several days of hellish training on the deserted island just past, it seemed this aristocratic dandy had maintained that sticky distance at all damn times. He couldn’t hold it in, immediately letting out a sarcastic sneer: "Are you his good dog? Constantly clinging to his tail like that, don’t you feel humiliated?"
"..."
The slender fingertips lightly tapping a rhythm on the tabletop by Jeremy halted for a split second. He slowly lifted his eyelids, his amber phoenix eyes glaring straight at Leon’s face, his voice dropping low, carrying a chilling warning:
"I believe I previously established a rule that if you want to argue, please get the hell out somewhere else, don’t bark in front of me, right? If you can’t even manage this minimum level of restraint, then at least don’t drag innocent people into your verbal battles for no reason..."
His mood, already exhausted from being drained, was suddenly dragged down into a pointless swearing match between two pubescent brats, making Jeremy incredibly irritated. He had absolutely no interest in staying to participate in the next part of this garbage play.
Jeremy decisively shoved the desk blocking his front away hard, stood up straight, and took arrogant, long strides straight out the classroom door.
"Every single one of you... acting as if you’ve all gone completely insane."
"..."
The straight, tall, and slender back of the red-haired youth very quickly disappeared behind the quartz stone corridor outside. Lucius stood there, lowering his eyelashes, the fake smile constantly present on his lips instantly vanishing without a trace.
Bang!
Lucius suddenly unleashed a brutal kick, sending the heavy oak desk in front of him flying several meters away. He strode forward, the surrounding space seeming to be choked by the murderous intent as he instantly closed in on Leon.
Under Evelyn’s cold gaze and Phoenix’s stillness, Lucius’s slender hand encased in a snow-white glove shot out like lightning, tightly gripping Leon’s throat with a force meant to crush dog bones.
The expression on the silver-haired young man’s face right now was gloomy and ruthless to the point of transforming into a completely unfamiliar demon. Even his usually clear voice seemed to have been steeped in ice and snow at the bottom of an abyss:
"...Hey, you teammate who makes people nauseous the moment you open your mouth, are you truly tired of living and want to seek death?"
Leon also completely didn’t expect the other party to suddenly go mad, striking viciously without any warning like this. From childhood to adulthood, as the prodigy of the Vance family, he had never been humiliated by someone choking him like this. His silver-gray eyes exploded with chilling murderous intent.
A golden light flickered, and the pair of Crescent Blades semi-circular ring weapons carrying the screech of tearing wind immediately materialized, slashing a fatal strike straight toward Lucius’s arm choking his neck.
"Tch..." Lucius let out a freezing sneer from his throat, decisively letting go and taking a half-step back to dodge the attack.
At the same time, his long leg lifted, unleashing a thousand-pound heavy kick driving straight into Leon’s abdomen. The brutal impact force made Leon sting with pain to the point of shuddering, forced to hastily retreat a few steps backward to neutralize the shockwave.
Seeing two fierce beasts in the team draw their weapons, about to lunge into a life-or-death battle right in the middle of the classroom, Evelyn standing to the side still maintained an attitude exactly like an outsider lacking emotional nerves. Up until this very moment, her facial expression remained as flat as stagnant water.
She calmly turned around and walked toward the door to leave, absolutely not interfering, nor bothering to open her mouth to mediate, only silently choosing the method of staying far away from trouble.
As for Phoenix Noir, he continued to shrink in his black cloak, stubbornly sitting in the darkest corner of the classroom without moving a single millimeter, patiently sitting there waiting for his two teammates to finish beating each other bloody.
An hour later.
The underground solitary confinement room in the basement of the Anima Faculty.
Evelyn and Phoenix silently stood leaning their backs against the freezing cold marble wall in the corner of the room.
Jeremy was the last one to be forcibly grabbed by the collar and locked in here by the instructor. He stood with his arms crossed, his phoenix eyes looking down at Lucius and Leon, who had their hands and feet tightly locked by magic chains, their faces bruised and battered, their clothes torn to shreds, covered in injuries and forced to kneel on the cold stone floor.
Because he was too speechless and felt this situation was truly ridiculously laughable, Jeremy’s facial expression right now was flat, calm to the point of almost turning into ruthless coldness.
"...I only just complained a single sentence that you guys were insane, and you two immediately proved to me that you really are insane? Or should I say... did I suddenly awaken a cursing superpower, where whatever damn sentence I utter immediately comes true?"
Jeremy now completely didn’t want to waste a neuron thinking of any reasoning. Riding on the terrible, irritable mood in his chest, he spewed out sharp words that were not very pleasant to the ear:
"Living half-dead on the deserted island these past few days, weren’t we still cooperating perfectly well? Having just dragged ourselves back to the academy not even long enough to warm our seats, did you two get possessed by evil spirits or accidentally take the wrong stimulants to have a fit of barking wildly and then lunge into biting and tearing each other into a heap like this?
If looking at the other’s face truly makes your eyes itch so much you can’t stand it, then wait until the holidays, set a date outside the school’s life-and-death arena, and find a chance to kill each other. What kind of farce is fighting and destroying the entire classroom?"
The two arrogant youths kneeling on the ground kept their heads bowed, resolutely not uttering half a sound of rebuttal.
It wasn’t that they obediently admitted their faults and didn’t want to speak, but rather that aside from having their hands and feet hog-tied by magic chains, right on their throats, they had been cast with a 24-hour silencing spell by Griffin, forced to wait until tomorrow morning for the silencing barrier to automatically disappear.