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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Yuziro
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“T-Twice…?”
Prion Colson asked with fear-filled eyes, but Rain didn’t answer.
It wasn’t that she didn’t hear him─it was of an attitude that she held no obligation to respond.
Rain Garden, the original Hero, began to recall the brutal, deeply buried memories from the Demon Realm.
Her eyes, which had seemed to contain only ordinary emotions, unexpectedly sharpened like a blade.
Prion Colson had seen those eyes of Rain Garden a few days ago.
That terrible memory of when she had ripped out his fingernails without any emotion.
Perhaps even colder than then, a gaze that seemed like it would cut you just by looking at it.
He unconsciously clenched his fists, as if to hide his fingernails.
Sweat seeped through those fists.
“Headmaster, Headmaster… Is it okay for the original Hero to do this to a cadet!?”
Prion began to ramble like that.
But no one here was listening to his words now.
“Al Sola… Professor Al Sola, aren’t you ashamed to interfere in a duel between students like this!?”
The echo of his unanswered shouts bounced off the unpleasantly unfamiliar walls of the room and returned to his ears.
The words ‘Aren’t you ashamed.’ echoed all around.
It was as if he was saying it to himself, who had attacked his opponent from behind even after the outcome had been decided.
“Saint… Why on earth are you siding with these people!? Because they’re former comrades? Or is there some other reason?”
“Demon.”
Rain Garden’s tightly closed mouth opened.
Prion brightened at the finally returned response and listened intently to her muttering.
“I thought we had exterminated all the demons, but one was left… Of all places, in Hidin. And it even infiltrated the academy where I work. Wearing the skin of a human named Prion Colson, you deceived everyone. But now that you’re caught, it’s the end… I will crush your organs.”
And at that brutal muttering, Prion’s whole body stiffened without him even realizing it.
He swallowed hard, squeezing saliva from his dry mouth.
His heart was pounding like it was about to explode.
It seemed to contract to the size of a bean, then expand as if it would pop out of his ear.
Now he could only hear the sound of his own heartbeat.
Rain began to say something to Lian and Sola.
Prion, whose ears seemed to be deafened by his heartbeat, couldn’t hear those words.
The ends of his body began to grow cold.
It felt like even though his heart was beating, his blood wasn’t circulating.
Sweat began to pour from his entire body.
He bit his lips tightly without even thinking of wiping the flowing sweat.
He felt the overwhelming presence of the original Hero’s party with his whole body.
This wasn’t good.
No matter what he did, he wouldn’t be able to fight back or even create an opening.
“Spa…”
Crunch─
He barely uttered a single word.
Before he could even convey his intention to say ‘Spare me.’
Because the headmaster of the academy, the original Hero Rain Garden, had cut off his right arm without any hesitation.
“Ah… AAAARGH!!!”
Pain incomparable to having his fingernails ripped out rummaged through his brain.
His head gave the command to ‘move the arm,’ but there was no object to receive that command.
Only phantom pain and burning pain kept kneading his head.
“Hic… ugh…”
Prion Colson was now unable to even breathe, and was writhing on the floor.
Seeing his state, which had already lost its hostility, Sola used the magic
to reattach the arm that had fallen off and become blood-soaked.
Then Lian began to act.
“
”
This was a healing magic most commonly used by priests who used holy power.
A small silver halo attached to the bleeding cut surface and disappeared as if absorbed.
“Ha… hic… tha… thank you…”
The healing effect of Lian Serwin, called the Saintess, was incomparably great.
With just a single regeneration spell, she completely reattached an arm that had been severed from the body to its previous state.
The spilled blood remained the same, but the severed trace was so cleanly reattached that it was impossible to find.
Prion bowed his head repeatedly, expressing his gratitude for the miraculous healing.
Even though the unpleasant sensation that his arm had disappeared still lingered in his head, his limb was intact anyway…
“Twice.”
Rain’s emotionless voice was heard again.
And only then did Prion roughly realize the meaning of that word.
‘Don’t be relieved just because it’s reattached. It’ll end up falling off twice anyway.’
This was what Prion understood as the meaning of ‘twice,’ and it was correct.
“Uh… uh… uh…”
Seeing Rain slowly raising the red-stained sword, Prion’s pupils constricted.
As if trying to completely close his pupils and cover his sight.
And naturally, his small actions didn’t bring any meaningful change to the emotions of the three people…
Splat─
He didn’t even recognize the swinging motion, but Prion’s arms fell to the floor.
His arms, stuck in the pool of blood that had already formed, stained his uniform with blood droplets.
The disgusting smell of iron rising from the red pool made of his own body’s components struck his nostrils.
He tried to block the refluxing gastric juice by covering his mouth with his hand.
But there was no object to execute that command.
“Ugh… blargh…”
Prion, who mixed his own gastric juice with the pool of blood, looked up at them with tears streaming down his face.
Their gazes were nothing but cold.
Perhaps because of the influence of those gazes, it felt like his body temperature was gradually lowering.
“Hic… hic… spa… spare me…”
Perhaps hearing his fading plea, Lian approached him again and used a healing spell.
But it was different from before.
She cast the spell as it was without reattaching the fallen arms.
“Uh… uh… that…”
Seeing his own grotesque arms blocked by regenerated flesh, Prion blinked his eyes pathetically.
The bleeding had stopped, but he was in a state where he couldn’t say anything.
“Uh… uh…”
Between Prion’s groans from phantom pain and his writhing, the squelching sound of liquid filled the room.
As such silence, but not quite silence, passed, Prion also began to regain his senses little by little.
The first thing he thought when he came to his senses was a sense of injustice and anger.
Why?
Why do I have to suffer like this?
Why are they defending that guy so much?
Is there something going on?
He’s just an ordinary guy with a peculiar way of dressing.
He can’t even fight well or use magic.
So why on earth?
Was he in charge of satisfying their sexual desires?
Did they develop feelings for him?
Prion’s negative emotions began to coalesce toward the clear special treatment of that bandaged cadet, for which he didn’t know the exact reason.
And at that moment when the thought that he ‘couldn’t get out of here anyway’ consumed his mind…
“…This fucking…”
Rough curses came out of his mouth.
“…What the hell is that bastard…”
His body trembled.
Prion, directly receiving the coldly descending gazes, shouted in anger while dripping cold sweat from the pressure.
“What the hell is that bastard that you’re defending him so much!! You fucking…! No matter how you look at it, it would have been advantageous for you to take my side! I’m Prion Colson, the son of Edrion Colson, a promising Gold-rank adventurer, and the second-ranked cadet in the academy!!”
“So? Are you justifying your action of backstabbing? I thought the outcome had already been decided?”
“Al Sola. What do you know? If that beggar-like bandaged bastard had known his place and groveled accordingly, it wouldn’t have come to this!”
“Are you saying you did the right thing? That you’d do the same thing again if you went back?”
“Ha. As if that would have been the end of it. If I had known things would turn out like this, I would have shattered the skull of that cripple who receives special treatment.”
Upon hearing his words, Al Sola twisted her lips upward.
She wanted to fix his mouth so that he could never again insult the one she couldn’t help but love.
However, Al Sola knew that now was the time to pass the baton to Rain.
The intensity of the anger that everyone here was harboring was probably the same.
Because Al Sola, Rain Garden, and Lian Serwin were all hating him to the point that it could be called blind hatred.
But the frequency of expressing that anger was different.
Al Sola, who would mercilessly kill the other person just for belittling Ron; Lian, who would cut off related support and socially bury them.
Unlike them, Rain had always suppressed her anger and acted as rationally as possible.
She had never been seen getting angry.
Even when she did get angry, she wouldn’t curse or unilaterally disparage the other person.
The pitch of her voice was also the same as usual.
That was the woman they were well acquainted with, Rain Garden.
Someone who possessed something beyond composure.
Neither Al Sola nor Lian had ever seen Rain Garden’s brow furrowed like this.
“What original Hero… You fucking bitch…”
Prion was muttering with his eyes cast down, unable to even look up at Rain who was calling him.
His mouth eagerly expressed his will to resist, but his body seemed to have lost all will, trembling periodically while kneeling.
Prion, who had been repeating the same curses like ‘fucking, fucking,’ stopped speaking.
The trembling of his body also abruptly stopped completely.
Prion’s brain, driven to the edge of a cliff, began to spin at high speed.
Digging through the experiences he had lived and the knowledge he had gained, which remained as memories, he began to find a way to break through this situation.
Rain Garden, Al Sola, Lian Serwin.
The common point was that they were people gathered around the original Hero as the center.
Why wasn’t Odrox here?
Male? Only females were gathered.
Find more commonalities.
Bandages.
Defending that guy.
Excessive reactions that didn’t match the title of former comrades.
Then.
His brain, which had been spinning like crazy, grasped a fragment of a memory.
That memory, which for some reason was shrouded in fog with only the edges slightly remaining.
Their shaken expressions when Ron had embraced the two’s shoulders.
“Three people, towards one person… affection… love…”
At Prion’s low and soft muttering, the gazes of the three simultaneously turned towards him.
Prion slightly raised his head at the situation where he had abruptly quieted down and looked at their faces.
The expressions of the original Hero’s party, known for their nobility and pride, had completely stiffened.
Even though it was a monologue he had unintentionally uttered, this reaction.
Was it the right answer?
But why? Why was it such a serious matter that it would elicit this kind of reaction?
Bandages.
If that guy was really the fifth member…
“Ha… haha. Are you saying all of you fell for that idiot? The original Hero? The Archmage? The Saintess? The core members of the 7 Stars?”
Although he hadn’t grasped the exact details, he had at least confirmed that the complexion of the three people who had been holding and shaking his lifeline had changed from before.
He couldn’t tell if it was bewilderment or not, but Prion chose to push forward with this momentum, and he began to wag his tongue.
“Can’t even use magic. Not noticeably good at combat. Even if you can’t stop your heart from moving with willpower alone, I can’t understand giving your heart to such trash… He’s nothing more than an attention seeker with no future! Is that why you’ve been rejecting men’s courtship until now? What a pathetic pure love. And why is that guy acting like a cripple…”
Prion’s words, which had been wagging his tongue like that, were cut off.
Because he had seen Rain’s eyes, which had been stiff until now, were now filled with anger.
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It was a series of terrible times.
Rain’s anger, which they saw for the first time in their lives, was so intense that it made not only Sola but also Lian’s bodies tingle, even though they weren’t the targets.
The anger that had only been accumulated and not properly released completely exploded at Prion’s words that insulted him.
No one said a word.
They couldn’t speak.
It was a miserable sight.
It wasn’t this brutal even when torturing demons to extract information.
It was a punishment too cruel for Prion’s wrongdoing.
He was now kneeling in a filthy pool, trembling all over.
He seemed to have no external injuries except for the two arms that were cut off first.
But his eyes were trembling like an aspen tree, as if facing a monster with overwhelming power, and saliva was dripping from his mouth that hadn’t fully closed.
“Ki… kill… just kill me…”
Prion, who was asking for eternal rest instead.
“Prion Colson.”
“Ye… yes…”
When his name was called, he automatically responded with honorifics, having learned the fear of the moment when he hadn’t answered.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“…Bu… bullshit… Now you’re pretending to be a hero…”
“That’s not it. I don’t want death to make you comfortable. Because for you right now, death is nothing more than an escape.”
“…Uh… uhh… Sa… Saintess… Please, just let me die…”
In this situation, Lian’s healing magic was no different from a continuation of pain.
It wasn’t a sacred and benevolent word like healing or blessing.
In this situation, it was no different from a curse that prevented him from ending this pain with death.
Lian looked down at him with an expressionless face, even after hearing his pathetic plea.
There was no room for leniency.
“Al… Al Sola… Please just kill me…”
He said that to Al Sola, who hadn’t taken much action despite her temperament.
Al Sola didn’t answer.
She just looked down at him.
Where did it go wrong?
Prion thought like that and once again stared at Rain’s blade that was slightly rising, and closed his eyes tightly.
Hoping that this was just a nightmare.
The severance of body parts, which he had lost count of how many times it had been.
Pain that made it seem like his breath would be cut off.
Gradually loosening consciousness.
Just when he thought, ‘Finally, I’m getting comfortable,’ his consciousness returned again.
The filthy pool that had become a slightly deeper color and the severed areas that had been completely healed without leaving any traces.
The path to escape through death was completely blocked.
The tip of Rain’s sword moved once more.
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[POW torture wan not what i expected when i began this novel ngl]
That dude has a point tho, but not strong enough to withstand the consequences