“Huh?”
“Abandon her after fooling around? That limp-d*ck Sheffil?”
A burly man with fiery red hair slammed his foot on the chair in front of him, perching arrogantly atop the desk.
A hideous scar slashed across his right eye, exuding a beastlike aura that made it clear this man was nothing close to decent.
Topping his head was a conspicuous, lightning-shaped white cowlick that refused to lie flat.
Right now, he looked as though he’d just discovered a new continent, eyes locked on the newspaper in his hand as he shouted dramatically.
“That mutt without even a proper manhood dares go after Dorothy’s lover? Don’t make me laugh!”
With a careless tear, he shredded the newspaper and noticed the boy sitting nervously in the seat in front of him, trembling.
Suddenly realizing something, he chuckled, “Ah, my bad. Forgot that wasn’t my paper.”
Leaping down from the desk with feline ease, he landed beside the boy and cheerfully slapped the scraps of newspaper onto the kid’s head.
“Here you go—hahhahahaha!”
His raucous laughter echoed through Classroom Four.
The boy, face buried under torn newspaper, said nothing.
Quietly, he brushed off his seat, gathered the scraps from his hair, and clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles nearly cracked.
A surge of second-tier magical energy swirled through his palms, silently incinerating the paper fragments.
Was he furious at being humiliated by that bastard?
Of course he was.
But what could a mere second-tier mage like him do against someone like Reinhardt—who was all but a fourth-tier, and ranked nearly even with Jianle in last year’s magic rankings?
In this class, who had the guts to challenge that damn bully Reinhardt?
Just recently, one of his close friends had made that mistake.
Caught in a slip-up, he dared to fight back against Reinhardt’s torment—and ended up with every bone in his body shattered.
By the time they found him in the back hills, he was barely breathing.
And now, Reinhardt—knowing full well about their friendship—was deliberately provoking him, waiting for any excuse to drag him into those woods and do the same.
But what made Reinhardt even more despicable was that there wasn’t any personal vendetta here.
He was just looking for a reason to torment someone… anyone.
Pure, unadulterated malice.
And since he didn’t have the power to fight back, all he could do was grit his teeth and swallow the burning fury in his chest—waiting for a chance to strike back in any way that didn’t involve direct confrontation.
That’s why he’d planted that newspaper—on purpose—for Reinhardt to see.
Gambling is a possibility.
A chance that Jianle and Dorothy might end up clashing with Reinhardt.
“Enjoy the gift, you damn beast—”
“That’s probably what he was thinking.”
What the boy didn’t know was that the “beast” he referred to was currently leaning lazily against the back wall of the classroom, half-listening to the golden-haired man lounging in the corridor and chattering away.
“Hmph, what a joke.”
Reinhardt scoffed and cracked a disdainful smile.
“Jianle? Dorothy? Those two think they can take me on? In their dreams.”
“Right, right. And yet, Mr. Tied-for-Third-Place, remind me who you lost to last semester?”
“Hmph! They just got lucky in last year’s exams and didn’t end up facing me. If they had, I would’ve crushed them—”
“Oh? So you never even met them in the matches and still got flattened? I didn’t know that.”
“If you’re here just to piss me off, Shaya, I’ll personally toss you back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
The white cowlick on Reinhardt’s head bristled in anger, his tone turning menacing as he glared at the man still grinning casually in front of him.
Shaya merely shrugged, unimpressed by the infamous school bully who scared the entire Jadecrest Academy.
“Just commenting on things I didn’t know, is all,” he said.
“You know, I’ve been studying at Norton Royal Academy this whole time, so I’m curious about the students here.”
“Besides, didn’t your uncle always say brothers should look out for each other?”
“Oh please,” Reinhardt snorted, shoving Shaya aside.
“Why aren’t you playing court advisor to your precious prince back at Norton instead of sniffing around my turf?”
Shaya didn’t react.
He simply stroked his chin in amusement as Reinhardt stormed off.
Looks like his dear cousin wasn’t nearly as easy to manipulate as his father.
Climbing to the top using this lunatic was going to be a tough bet.
Still—
An unpredictable fool, addicted to power and violence… not bad as bait to lure out Sheffil, that childhood sweetheart.
It’d be enough—for now.
He could throw Reinhardt away once he’d served his purpose.
Hands in his pockets, Shaya strolled back toward his classroom, humming to himself.
Elsewhere, far from Jadecrest Academy, in the shadows of a suburban underground chamber…
A figure cloaked in darkness clutched a crumpled newspaper, their breath ragged with excitement as if they’d just run a marathon.
Blood-red eyes gleamed with fanatical devotion beneath the hood, wild and ravenous.
“Hahhh~ A’tao! A’tao!”
“Soon! We’ll be together again!”
“Just a little longer~”
“That impostor by your side will be gone… completely gone!”
“Ahh—A’tao, wait for me just a little longer…”
The voice, haunting and low like a whisper from the depths of the underworld, echoed softly in the dim room.
From beneath the girl’s hood, a single white-streaked strand of hair slipped into the light.