Chapter 18: The Unveiling
I stared down at his terror-stricken eyes and murmured,
"It's perfect for us born from dirt, we'll return to it. So why don't you eat some dirt and find your humanity?"
"Ugh, mmph!"
"It might even be good for your core. At least it's better than a rat, right?"
He thrashed and kicked at my clothes. Just then, a flash of light burst into my peripheral vision.
CRASH!
I raised my arm, blocking the spell. The handful of dirt I had been holding scattered into the air. A stunned student, his wand extended, shouted,
"You… you… you could use magic all along!"
"You must've seen wrong,"
I answered simply, shrugging. The ridiculousness of my words left him gaping at me.
"You…!"
Taking advantage of my distraction, the student I was holding by the collar swung his wand.
BOOM!
I immediately erected a barrier, deflecting the spell. After training with Leo, attacks fueled by emotion felt less like threats. The student, having been hit by his own reflected spell, clutched his eye and crumpled to the ground.
"Agh! Hey, someone do something about this bastard!"
"We're trying!" another student shouted from somewhere.
I deflected the attack and looked around, moving the fallen animal to a safe corner.
The fact that the attacks were so easy to block, despite their claim of "trying," confirmed that my divine power was effective against them.
At that same moment, a student swallowed hard as he continuously launched attacks at Lucas.
'It's not working at all.'
His hand, gripping the wand, was slick with cold sweat. He couldn't grasp what was happening.
Three of them were attacking at once, yet the barrier showed no signs of breaking.
Even attacks outside its range were nullified by Lucas, who was using a similar amount of power.
CRACK!
A student was pushed back by Lucas's spell. The very sight of Lucas using magic felt so unreal that the pain was forgotten.
'Well, of course he can use magic.'
Anyone from a family with even a single title could use the kind of magic he displayed in class the level of a five or six-year-old.
It wasn't an exaggeration to say that 99% of people couldn't progress beyond that, so he had assumed Lucas was one of them.
But...
'I had no idea he could use it this well.'
The Ascanien family was one of the top magical houses in the empire, so it was possible. But this guy wasn't from that family. That's why he got into this school with an unprecedented charitable donation.
'Could he really have gained magic by drinking blood...?'
Even as a Phleroma, when he couldn't use magic, he was just a pathetic and repulsive figure.
There were times when he even suspected Luca was just pretending to be a Phleroma to protect himself.
After all, it was better to be a subject of fear than to be completely ignored.
But this current situation shattered all those assumptions.
The student looked at Lucas's face through the flashes of light that rained down. Unlike his friends who were screaming and lunging,
Lucas simply narrowed his eyes in displeasure and flickered his wrist.
WHOOSH!
Lucas flicked away a shard of the barrier that had splintered near his cheek. Even though he was reinforcing the barrier, the shock from the three consecutive spells was taking a toll.
'Even if their skills are pathetic, three people are a bit much.'
I shouldn't waste any more time; I needed to wrap this up.
Lucas held his wand diagonally, pushing two students back, then flicked it horizontally toward the remaining one.
"Huh?"
Before the student could even register what was happening, he lost his footing.
When he opened his eyes again, damp dirt filled half his vision, and his wand-holding hand was caught in Lucas's binding spell.
"…!"
"You're giving up too easily. You should be able to fend off something like this."
Lucas sneered at the student who had lost his balance and fallen to the ground. The student screamed, "Hey! Do the same thing to this bastard!"
"In this case, the priority would be to remove the binding spell…"
Just as the student, with a look of sudden realization, was about to shout again, Lucas chuckled and kicked him.
He then immediately turned to block the attacks coming from behind him.
'Now I see why they're so obsessed with hierarchy.'
They had no substance.
For the past ten years, I hadn't done a single workout, and I had only been learning magic for two weeks.
The fact that I was doing so well showed how hopeless these guys were. It didn't matter how much difference there was in magical power.
Lucas fended off the remaining two's attacks and strode towards them. The two students flinched and shouted, "Is this guy completely insane?! Huh?"
Without a word, Lucas kicked one of them on the shoulder, knocking him over and flipping him onto his back. He handled the other student's attack by simply crushing it with his magic.
The flipped student turned his head and shouted desperately,
"Hey! Hey! Seriously! This is too much..."
"Seriously?"
"Agh!"
Lucas twisted his arm and held him.
"You're asking me to be 'serious' now, after you slammed me into a wall?"
"I... I didn't do it! He did everything!" The student pointed at the student holding his eye in the distance.
'...What a spectacle.'
Lucas, finding him not worth a response, hit him with a spell and turned to the last student.
Perhaps seeing what happened to his friend for saying something unnecessary, this one stayed silent. Lucas finished with the two students and stood up.
"Phew..."
I had neutralized all the students who would interfere. Lucas approached the student who had tried to feed him the rat earlier.
The student was gripping his wand in one hand and clutching his eye with the other.
"Hand over your wand."
"N-no... Agh!"
I stepped on his wrist , and the wand came loose. He fell to the ground, groaning and clutching his wrist. Lucas spun the wand in his hand and said,
"You're using a good one."
"Wh-what..."
"I guess you have to spend money if you want to stay here without any skills."
The student was so dumbfounded that a charity student would say such a thing that he stared blankly at Lucas before suddenly shouting,
"You bastard, give it back! I'll report you for theft!"
"Is that what you're worried about?"
Lucas smiled and knelt down beside him. "Was it fun?"
"Wh-what..."
"Ah, never mind. What's the point of asking? Experience is better than words."
Lucas grabbed another handful of dirt. Then, he grabbed the collar of the student's shirt and pulled him forward.
"Eat it."
"..."
The students lying on the ground froze, watching the scene unfold. The student whose collar was being held was equally dazed.
When the student just stared without doing anything, Lucas's grip tightened.
"Thanks to you guys, I was able to use magic, and it was great. Why don't you give me a chance to repay you?"
"...How could I eat this?! That's ridiculous."
"And a rat isn't?"
"..."
"What's the difference? At least this is more realistic than eating a living rat."
Lucas glanced at the mysterious animal lying on the ground and then held out the dirt. "Do you want me to say it again?"
The guy's hands trembled as he grabbed Lucas's arm. "Hey, hey. Let's not do this..."
"Don't do this?"
SMACK!
Lucas repeated the student's earlier line, slamming his head against the ground.
"Gasp, ugh…"
"I have a lot to say, but honestly, I don't think it will solve anything at this point. Just know one thing."
Lucas grabbed the student's collar again and lifted him. "If you don't do as I say, I'm reporting everything that happened today. "
"My magic will be considered self-defense, and the school will expel you to avoid having this reach my father's ears."
"..."
"Do I need to say more?"
"Hey! Just close your eyes and do it, even if it's disgusting! We can just report this bastard later!" a student from a distance shouted.
Only then did the student snap back to reality and start thinking.
'...I didn't consider him actually reporting it.'
He had expected the guy to just keep his head down and say nothing, just like last year.
He had no idea he'd changed so much. If this guy reported it, he could really get expelled. And if that happened, he wouldn't be able to inherit a proper title.
A chill ran down his spine. Why did he enroll in this school in the first place? Expulsion was unacceptable.
'…Should I just deny it? There's no evidence anyway.'
No.
The student's eyes darted to the other students nearby. If even one of them betrayed him, he was finished. They might even spill everything to get a deal to avoid expulsion.
'Or should I be the one to do that first?'
But there was another problem. There was no guarantee that they would accept the deal. If he tried to negotiate first, he'd be digging his own grave. Honestly, what Lucas was demanding was so absurd that it would probably go beyond self-defense.
They had brought the rat to his mouth, but he hadn't swallowed it. They might even be able to get away with saying it was just a joke.
'I might even be able to flip the script and accuse him instead.'
And he hated to admit it, but besides just going along with it, he couldn't see any other way out. It was clear Lucas would use magic if he didn't.
Lucas observed the student's expression and tilted his head.
"You're thinking so hard. Why don't you just eat it yourself before I put it in your mouth?"
A crooked smile played on Lucas's lips. Seeing the ominous smile, the student reluctantly, slowly, brought his head toward Lucas's hand.
His friends groaned and winced.
"Ugh..."
"Oh, damn it, I could never do that…"
'You were so quick to tell me to do it!'
Even though he had initiated all this, having to take the entire blame was too much. Once this moment passed, he'd deal with Lucas first, and then he'd give those other guys a piece of his mind.
The student gritted his teeth and put his tongue out. Lucas, watching him, smirked and scrunched his face.
"Wait... you're really going to eat it?"
"…!"
"Spit it out. It's too disgusting to watch."
The student, still not understanding the situation, stared at Lucas, who narrowed his eyes as if he couldn't stand the thought.
"You didn't swallow it, right? I don't think I saw you move your throat."
"You... you just said to eat it..."
"That was obviously a joke. Seriously, how could you eat that? I feel like I'm going to throw up everything I ate today... You're something else."
Lucas chuckled, then his eyebrows shot up when he saw the student's dazed expression.
"Was it good? Since you tasted it, why don't you tell me in detail what it was like?"
"You bastard!"
The student swung a fist at him. He was so agitated that his aim was off, and it was an easy punch to dodge, but Lucas just winced slightly.
BAM!
"Ugh..."
This guy should have thrown a punch from the beginning. It was so much more effective than his useless magic.
Lucas winced and touched the area around his eye. His skin felt as if it had been sliced by a knife, a warm heat rising, and then it suddenly became as cold as an ice pack.
The pain felt like his skin had torn, but he knew it was unlikely to tear that easily.
'Still, this should leave a bruise.'
Whether it was a lucky hit or he was just that strong, my head was throbbing.
'This is dangerous.'
But it wasn't a perfect hit. If it had been, my bone would have been broken. As my vision swirled as if I were drunk, I closed my eyes tightly.
The guy grabbed my collar and pulled my arm back tautly.
Suddenly, a student shouted desperately,
"Hey! Don't hit him!"
The student froze at the scream. Only then did he truly notice Lucas's expression.
"Why are you stopping? Keep going. Hit me until you've worked it out of your system."
Lucas burst into laughter and stared wide-eyed at him. The situation him telling me to hit him more reminded me of what Leon had said when I first properly used magic, and I couldn't stop laughing.
The student let go of my collar and stumbled back.
'Why... why is he laughing?'
His friend's desperate cry not to hit me replayed in his mind. There had to be a reason. How many people in the world would laugh after being hit?
When he had pushed this guy into the wall earlier, there wasn't a hint of a smile on his face, so why now...
'...No way.'
A thought occurred to him, and his face turned pale.
From behind, another student desperately shouted again, "He's doing this to pretend he's the victim later!"
"It's not a pretense; it's real," Lucas said, holding his still-throbbing head.
"I never said my promise not to report you was a joke. If you're going to act like this, I have no choice but to report it, do I?"
"N-no... Lucas, I..."
As the student waved his hands anxiously, Lucas smiled and shook his head.
"I know. You misunderstood. You just couldn't control your temper and threw a punch, right?"
"...Wait, yes. Seriously, it was a total mistake. You know that!"
"I know very well."
A flicker of hope appeared on the student's face.
"Then...!"
"Thanks for making a mistake. It's nice to have some visible evidence."
The student's expression instantly soured. Lucas gave him a small smile and patted him on the shoulder.