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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Hendrick, a neatly dressed male student wearing glasses who introduced himself, entered with a line of students behind him, similar to Anton Signir and May.
However, it wasn’t a close-knit friendship like with May’s group, nor was the atmosphere dominated by violence like Anton Signir’s.
It felt like a perfectly organized group gathered for their individual benefits.
Personally, it wasn’t an atmosphere I particularly liked.
Anyway, Hendrick smiled, brought a chair, and sat down in front of me.
“Your names are Berman and Daniel McLean, right?”
“How did you know that?”
The fact that he knew my name without me revealing it already didn’t sit well with me.
Whether aware of this feeling or not, he pushed up his glasses and looked at me arrogantly with his legs crossed.
“I saw you having a confrontation with Anton Signir at lunch today. Your bottle-throwing was quite impressive.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to impress you.”
Why are you putting your feet up? It’s annoying.
As I was speaking sarcastically, he continued his words in an extremely calm and businesslike manner.
“I have a favor to ask. Give Anton Signir’s pride a rough beating.”
“Why not just ask me to kill him?”
They weren’t just playing around.
It felt like children pretending to be adults, which made me laugh involuntarily.
“Sigh, I don’t want to make this kind of request either. But recently, Anton’s behavior has been troubling our prep class too. We just want to study quietly, but they keep picking fights with us.”
Indeed, the prep class students standing behind him were sighing or showing expressions of dissatisfaction with Anton’s behavior.
“Pales Academy is deep in the mountains, so we don’t have anyone else to ask for this kind of favor. Even if we tell the professors, they’ll just give him a simple warning and that’s it.”
“Even if I beat him up a few times, it won’t change much, will it?”
“No, that’s enough. Just stepping on Anton once, who’s getting more arrogant as he nears his 5th year graduation, will be sufficient.”
Hendrick turned his head slightly while crossing his arms.
Then, one of the students came forward with a large bag as if they prepared it in advance and opened it in front of us.
Inside were thick bundles of cash notes, an amount that students shouldn’t normally possess.
“Gasp!”
Berman and his group opened their mouths wide, their eyes starting to spin quickly.
They immediately realized that this large sum of money would be given to them if they took down Anton.
One of the things I learned living in the Demon Realm Forest was that the more appetizing a mushroom or fruit looked, the more cautious you needed to be.
Those things decorated their exteriors as attractively as possible to hide their deadly poison.
From my perspective, these bundles of cash were the same.
I had a strong intuition that eating this would lead to more than just an upset stomach.
“If you knock Anton down and prove it, we’ll give you all of this. It’s money we collected from all the allowances our prep class students received from their parents.”
So it wasn’t just kids’ pocket money, but they were playing around with money squeezed from their parents’ blood and sweat?
Especially since Pales Academy, unlike Aios, accepted commoners if they had the ability.
Just looking at it, you could tell it was money collected with the sweat of their parents who had toiled in the fields for their sons and daughters to study hard.
“That’s enough. I’ll talk to the professors about Anton.”
Thinking there was no need to listen further, I stood up abruptly and went outside.
Berman and the others asked, drooling, if I was really going to pass this up, so I yelled at them in annoyance to come quickly.
“Instead of wasting money on unnecessary things, save it and buy your parents a nice set of clothes, you immature bastards.”
I said this as I went out.
Berman was pouting, still glancing towards the room door.
“How much was that just now?”
“If we beat up Anton once, we could afford a really nice sword, right?”
“I’d go for clothes. Holly’s shop just got a lot of new items in.”
“Don’t think stupid thoughts.”
After warning them not to get involved in strange things, I left the hotel.
The guys followed me, watching my reactions, and sighed looking at the night sky.
“Ah, I thought I might get a girlfriend today.”
“Couldn’t we have just said no and then continued playing with the girls?”
“That orange-haired girl really seemed to fall for me.”
“It’s been so long since we had a blind date.”
Not wanting to stay with these guys any longer, I started walking at a slightly faster pace, but Berman and the others followed urgently.
“Ah, I want to meet a girl.”
“Isn’t there anyone who can introduce us to someone?”
“Aaah! Teeeeeex!”
“You crazy bastards! Stop following me!”
Now I was just running, but these guys were gritting their teeth and following.
Even though I was moving quite fast, they were sticking to me while breathing heavily, showing their determination – or perhaps lust – of young men.
“Night King Daniel! Bestow your grace upon us!”
“Please introduce us to some girls!”
“Our blind date failed too, please help us!”
Now they were grabbing my arms and trouser legs, begging desperately.
I was about to just knock them all down and be done with it, when…
“Hmm?”
A slightly high-pitched nasal sound was heard.
When I glanced up, I realized we had already arrived at the hotel where Aios was staying.
Rin, wearing just a coat, was approaching us with a blank stare.
For some reason, it felt like the darkness beyond the reach of the lights was naturally writhing in sync with her footsteps.
Berman’s group shut their mouths tightly.
Being guys who lived by their instincts, they seemed to realize that this was the timing for them to flee without saying a word.
“W-Well, we’re leaving!”
“Goodbye!”
“Thanks!”
The guys slipped into the hotel, passing by Rin.
I thought she might stop them, but Rin let them go as if she hadn’t seen anything.
“Want to go for a night walk?”
Rin approached me with a smile.
The eeriness I had felt just moments ago had already disappeared, and the soft light from the hotel lamps illuminated the night air.
“I just came back from one, but…”
“Hm?”
In battle soccer, it was important for a defender to close down the space the opponent was trying to penetrate.
Rin wasn’t even participating in battle soccer, yet she was using a similar technique in real life.
Feeling my tongue go dry, I could only nod.
In the end, we ended up going back the way I came, but the feeling was distinctly different.
Until just a while ago, the darkness outside the ordinary magic lamps felt like it was growling at me to behave.
“What’s this about a blind date?”
And Rin, who was no different from the master of darkness itself, turned her head slightly to look at me.
I was startled when she suddenly reached out, but she just linked her arm with mine.
“I was just tricked into going. I had no idea it was that kind of thing.”
“Hmm?”
Rin made that nasal sound again.
I thought I might have upset her somehow, but she smiled instead.
It wasn’t a creepy smile or one that made the viewer uneasy, but a genuinely pure, joyful expression.
“That’s a shame. It would have been nice if Daniel had really gone on a blind date.”
“Huh?”
An unexpected response came back.
I thought the usual Rin would have told me not to show my face at such places carelessly, or said she would go after Berman and his gang if they tried to corrupt me.
“Why?”
Even now, I could feel her affection and goodwill towards me from the hand that was linked with mine.
Yet she was allowing me to meet other women?
I found it strange, but Rin answered immediately.
“Because it would mean that you had definitely forgotten about Eris.”
“…!”
I stopped walking without realizing it.
Rin also stopped in place, matching my steps, and looked up at me with a gentle smile.
“I’m confident, you know. If you don’t like anyone, I’ll become that person.”
Rin, grinning with a playful smile, looked just like she did when we were very young, running around the hills behind the village.
The appearance that had made me harbor a slightly early first love in my young heart.
Now she had received unwanted power from the God of Death and had become a great evil known as the continent’s doom.
But that was literally a kind of natural disaster.
The girl named Rin was still pure, bright, and always smiling.
“So Daniel, don’t worry too much. I understand that you’re confused and hurt because of Eris. But don’t worry. Sometimes, you know.”
“……”
Rin lightly pinched my cheek as if to say I was hopeless.
“Giving up can lead to better results.”
“Rin……”
“Your cheeks are so soft. Hehe.”
Rin changed the subject, perhaps worried that my heart might become complicated.
She took a step back, put her hands behind her back, and grumbled.
“I think you’re too blessed. You have a childhood friend who’s always by your side, willing to protect you, but you’re only looking at other women.”
“……”
I had nothing to say.
I wasn’t ready yet to forget Eris and accept Rin, and Rin knew this too.
“It’s okay, no matter what wounds you receive, I’ll always be by your side. I will never, ever distance myself from you like Eris did.”
Rin suddenly hugged me tightly.
Her warmth and the scent of her shampoo tickled my nose.
“I’ll always be with you.”
My hands, having lost their place, just stiffened around her.
Smooch, smooch.
Then.
A strange sound echoed gently.
Rin, still hugging me, poked her face out towards my armpit to check behind me first, hearing the sound coming from the alley behind us.
“Oh my!”
Rin, startled, immediately burrowed into my arms, but she kept turning her head slightly to check again and again.
Wondering what it was, I also twisted my upper body slightly.
In the alley, a red-haired girl and a blonde boy were engaged in quite an intense kiss.
The important thing was that both of them were faces I knew.
“Th-That. Isn’t that Ares and Arni?”
Rin asked me as if to confirm, and I put my hand to my forehead, detached Rin, and gently pushed her back.
“We shouldn’t be watching that.”
“Wow, to think Ares would be the first among us to become an adult. Well, I guess it was likely to be him.”
Although she was listening to my words about going somewhere else, Rin kept glancing back towards the alley where the two were, saying it was fascinating.
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