Chapter 238: I’m Literally Living A Trope! (Kofi Donation Bonus)

The hallway went so silent you could hear the water droplets dripping from the fountain.

Alan’s bow froze.

For a fraction of a second, the immaculate, prince-like mask cracked. His crystal-blue eyes twitched, a flash of pure, incredulous shock flitting across his features before he smoothly straightened his posture.

He lowered the flowers slightly, maintaining an understanding, gentle smile, though the frost mist around his rapier surged just a millimeter.

"Decline?" Alan echoed softly, his tone tilting upward with polite confusion. "May I ask why, Clara? If you have prior family obligations, the Snow Family can easily provide—"

"No, it’s not that," Clara blurted out, her cheeks flushing a violent, crimson pink. She looked like she wanted the marble floor to swallow her whole, but she squared her delicate shoulders with sudden, stubborn courage.

"I cannot accept your invitation... because I already have someone else in mind."

GASP!

The crowd collectively inhaled enough oxygen to deplete the sector’s reserves.

"Someone else?!"

"Who could possibly rank above Alan Snow in the freshman cohort?!"

Alan’s smile didn’t waver, but his fingers clamped around the stems of the Frost-Lilies so tightly that several crystalline petals snapped with a faint tink. "Someone else? And who might this fortunate gentleman be?"

Clara didn’t answer with words.

Instead, her honey-colored eyes drifted across the sea of students. She looked past the second-years, past the gossiping girls, past the wide-eyed freshmen... and locked directly onto the tall, lean figure leaning against the marble pillar near the lecture hall doors.

Her gaze softened. A dreamy, hopelessly smitten, utterly starry-eyed expression washed over her face, her chest heaving in a tiny, breathless sigh as she looked at him.

Creed Walden froze.

He stared back at her.

He looked over his left shoulder. Just an empty wall with a carved crest. He looked over his right shoulder. Just Pascal, whose round head was currently reflecting a stray sunbeam.

He looked back at the girl.

She was still looking at him. Her eyelashes fluttered. A tiny, shy smile curved her lips, her cheeks burning so hot they looked like they could fry an egg.

Creed felt his soul try to physically detach itself from his body and crawl into a dark, quiet cave to die.

’No,’ Creed’s internal monologue began, a flat, deadpan drone of absolute cosmic exhaustion.

’No, no, no. Absolutely not. Do not do this to me, universe. Do not pull this junior-high-school webnovel garbage in my actual, physical life.’

He took a quick, clinical inventory of the girl.

Pretty face? Sure, cute enough. Nice ribbons. Soft eyes.

Figure?

Creed’s analytical, summoner-spoiled gaze flicked down toward her chest for a microsecond before returning to her eyes. ℴ

’Tragic,’ Creed thought, with the cold, unfeeling judgment of a man who woke up every morning sandwiched between a primordial succubus with gravity-defying violet curves and a spatial assassin whose thighs could crush a man’s skull like a ripe watermelon.

’Completely tragic. Those aren’t even B-cups. Those are gentle hillocks. Subtle mounds at best. Lilith has more surface area on her left clavicle than this poor girl has on her entire upper torso.

Not nearly enough mass to justify getting dragged into an aristocratic blood feud. If I’m going to get challenged by an arrogant young master over a woman, she needs to at least have enough melons to cause localized gravitational anomalies!’

Unfortunately, reality did not care about Creed’s aesthetic standards.

Following Clara’s dreamy, lovesick gaze, two hundred heads simultaneously swiveled toward the pillar.

The murmurs exploded into a deafening roar.

"It’s him!"

"Creed Walden!"

"The Hope Candidate! The Class Captain of the Elite Class!"

"Wait, Clara likes him?! But he failed the planetary survival test in forty minutes yesterday!"

"Did you not see the Gravity Basin trial yesterday?! He dragged six hundred kilograms up the cliff and took Varien’s badge!"

Standing by the fountain, Alan Snow slowly lowered the bouquet of Frost-Lilies.

He turned.

His crystal-blue eyes tracked across the crowd until they slammed into Creed like two icicles. For three full seconds, Alan’s brain visibly short-circuited.

The memories hit him like a physical blow: the first floor of the pyramid where Creed had mocked him; the third floor where Creed had shattered his domain with three combined paths; the humiliating tumble through frozen pillars that had cost Alan his shot at the top ten...

And now, the girl he had publicly pursued for three weeks—the heiress to an alchemical trade syndicate he needed for his family’s southern supply lines—was staring at the exact same golden-blond bastard like he was a god who had just descended from Mount Olympus.

The frost around Alan’s rapier didn’t just mist; it crackled. A thin layer of white rime spread across the flagstones beneath his boots, creeping outward in jagged, freezing veins.

Alan tossed the multi-thousand-credit bouquet onto the edge of the fountain without looking, letting the delicate petals tumble into the water.

He walked forward.

The crowd parted instantly, students scrambling backward to give the furious young master a wide, clear path.

Creed didn’t move an inch from the pillar. He stood there, hands in his pockets, his navy headband pulled down tight over his brow, staring at the approaching noble with an expression that conveyed only one thing: profound, agonizing, spiritual boredom.

’Here it comes,’ Creed thought, his internal monologue practically weeping. ’The speech. The posture. The haughty challenge. I am living inside a bottom-tier cultivation webnovel written by a teenager who drank three energy drinks and discovered the word ’insolent’ for the first time!

I am literally living the trope. Where is the arrogant elder in the background stroking his beard? Where is the jade beauty spitting blood? Someone please shoot me with a high-caliber cannon!’

Alan stopped exactly five paces away.

His chin was tilted upward at that precise, aristocratic thirty-degree angle that screamed, My ancestors owned your ancestors’ village. His chest heaved with tightly controlled fury, his hand resting firmly on the hilt of his frosty rapier.

"Creed Walden," Alan said, his voice cold enough to drop the hallway’s temperature by five degrees.

Creed blinked slowly. "Alan Snow. Nice coat. Does the fur come from an endangered species, or is it synthetic like your personality?"