The Demon Prince goes to the Academy

Chapter 211

I felt like not only the three idiot brothers but also the Orbis Class students were really shocked by my sudden declaration.

What’s wrong with him?

That was what their expressions seemed to say.

The same went for the fourth-year senior.

“Ha-haha… What did I just hear? Fight? With me? Why?”

“Cause I feel like it.”

“…What?”

“Looking at you, you really are the most fucked up bastard around here, aren’t you?”

I glared at him as I clenched my fists.

He would have been a victim of that system in the past as well, and after enduring it, he became the perpetrator himself. He could still be a victim.

“Every time I see fucking bastards like you, I feel hella sick.”

He was an Orbis Class fourth-year student.

I was going to lose.

“So I don’t care whether I win or lose. I’m doing this because I want you to know what a fucking bastard you are. Got that?”

It wasn’t just everyone else’s expressions that turned rather weird as they heard my aggressive words, but the fourth-year’s smiles gradually stiffened as well.

“Fucking shame on you, you bastard. Seriously, how could you fucking tell a 17-year-old kid from a different year to just go and die? Do you find shit like this fun? Picking on younger juniors again and again? Are you fucking touched in the head? Huh?”

“The Orbis Class’ problems are to be solved by the Orbis Class. I don’t think this is any of your business.”

“If you’re messing up a bunch of kids, that ain’t a fucking class problem, it’s a social problem. You goddamn social evil!”

“…What?”

I looked at the fourth-year senior whose expression seemed to get more and more twisted.

“It’s fucking weird that the Orbis Class is operated like this, but what can I do ‘bout that? However, though this place is weird, this place got even weirder because of a bunch of circle jerks like you.”

He hadn’t even threatened her directly, he’d just done it through vague and indirect actions. He didn’t even have to tell her that he’d kill her if she lost.

He wouldn’t dirty his own hands with Lilka Aaron—he would just delegate that task to his juniors.

He wouldn’t directly threaten or hit anyone.

He was a guy who didn’t want to take on the title of the ‘bad guy’ and just solved everything with his words. He was the type of guy who’d want to deny everything by saying things like “What? I didn’t do anything though?”

Even in that fight, he didn’t say anything like “If you surrender, be prepared to go through hell.”

He’d just said that he would kneel down if she lost.

With just those few words, he managed to make the others’ imaginations run wild.

He was a coward before he was a bad guy.

That guy was a damn bastard in his own right in that problematic system.

The faces of the Orbis Class guys were twisting more and more at my direct verbal attacks.

What’s wrong with him? Did he go crazy?

The three brothers seemed a bit different, though.

Ah, he’s causing trouble again.

—That was what they seemed to think.

It also seemed like they were secretly anticipating that.

Get a taste of Reinhardt’s ferociousness, you punks.

“What good would it do me if I fought with a first-year? Why would I?”

That guy didn’t want to fight either. It was only natural that he would end up winning, but there was nothing good about that. Losing was unimaginable for him, but he couldn’t just win either.

However, it seemed like that guy was actually constantly pressuring his juniors after all, not just that day.

It was more than certain that he wasn’t known to be a good senior, however, in the end, he was still just the type who would never try to do anything rough himself.

So he didn’t see a reason to fight a losing battle, even if he was on the winning side.

The real cause of Ender Wilton’s fall was the abuse he’d received from his seniors.

It was inevitable that a case like Ender Wilton’s would occur in that vicious cycle in which the victims ended up becoming the perpetrators.

I didn’t know whether I could break it…

But I could convey something with my words.

If they didn’t like it, they could stick it to their seniors.

They weren’t going to get killed.

“Are you scared, you bastard? If you’re so scared, just fuck off. Don’t spout any more bullshit. Why the fuck are you meddling with the first-years’ problems when you’re already that old? Aren’t you fucking embarrassed? Don’t you have anything better to do? Oh, or could it be that you’re such a fucked up bastard that you can’t do anything but terrorize your juniors?”

You’re already that old and you still have nothing better to do but meddle with the problems of the lower-year kids.

It seemed like my words had finally made him reach his limits.

“…Hah.”

He glared at me as he swept his hair back.

That was the first time I had met a narrow-eyed character.

“Cheeky bastard.”

However, the guy just widened his eyes without much buildup.

“Okay. Let’s do it then.”

A fight with nothing to lose.

It seemed like that senior had finally decided to truly educate his cheeky junior.

“Oh, you still don’t know my name, right? Alright, I’ll tell you.”

The guy smiled.

“I’m Orbis Class’ Year 4 A-1, Oscar de Gardias.”

No.

No, wait just a sec.

This dude is imperial royalty?

It was then that I properly looked at his face.

—Blonde hair and golden eyes.

Certainly, those were the characteristics of the Gardias family.

Were the eyes of the Gardias family special or something?

When I thought about it, Bertus and Charlotte also kind of felt like narrow-eyed characters.

Oscar de Gardias. That bastard pretended to be kind and then showed his true colors, giving off a pretty bloody atmosphere.

I was wondering whether there was something special about that jerk.

However, out of all things, the guy I cursed out for being a fucking bastard turned out to be part of the imperial family.

No, I mean, not all blondes on the continent belonged to the Gardias Family!

I should carefully look at other people’s eyes from now on.

But well, no use crying over spilled milk.

It would be pretty difficult to take all that back—I didn’t even want to do that.

It was a wall I had to crush anyway.

“I’ll be rather disappointed if you changed your mind now that you found out who I am.”

“That won’t happen, so let’s do this.”

I didn’t know how hard that guy hit or what his position in the imperial family was.

I couldn’t just say “I didn’t know you were from the imperial family. I’m sorry. I’ll take it back.”

I couldn’t just take back the words that I had already said. No matter if he was imperial royalty or whatever, I had to go through with it. Things didn’t work out like I planned, but I just had to continue moving forward.

“Yeah, there are two members of the imperial family in the first year of the Royal Class as well, after all. You wouldn’t get scared by just that, right?”

Oscar de Gardias pulled out one of the provided training swords.

He was someone who had been trained in the handling of weapons.

I also took a sword.

Not only was he a member of the imperial family, he was also A-1 of the fourth year. He shouldn’t be the type of person who would seek to raise his self-esteem through his juniors because he wasn’t skilled enough or something. On the contrary, he was very talented.

Regardless of whether he was of the imperial family or not, I had no chance of winning.

“The rules are the same as before. Whoever surrenders first or is incapacitated will lose.”

“Good.”

The guy looked at me and smiled.

After he introduced himself as part of the imperial family and number A-1, the three arrogant brothers seemed to think that I had already stepped on a landmine, and the Orbis Class first-years seemed to think that my future was already very obvious because I had touched someone I shouldn’t have.

The rules were the same as before.

—Whoever declared their defeat or was incapacitated would lose.

But it seemed like I wouldn’t even have the time to declare my defeat—it looked like he wanted to end things in an instant.

-Kakaang!

* * *

* * *

After rushing up to me, he instantly hit my training sword. I felt my palms tingling with intense pain. However, I didn’t let go of my sword.

I used the Body Strengthening and Swordsmanship preset. Oscar stabbed at me, and I pushed my sword against his.

-Scraaape! Scrape!

While pushing against each other’s swords, we were both trying to press our swords against the others’ neck. If the balance of our power was disturbed by even a little or either of us slipped, our attacks would immediately get let through.

He grabbed his sword with his empty left hand and tried to get the upper hand.

Half-swording…

I also tried to avoid getting pushed back in our power struggle by holding the tip of my sword in line with his movements.

-Scrrrrrape!

“You’re faithful… to the basics, huh?”

He looked at me with a sly smile on his lips. He’d tried to push me away in an instant, but was honestly surprised when I actually responded to his attempt.

“You seemed to have learned from a pretty competent teacher, isn’t that right?”

Was he showing off that he could talk casually even in that situation?

“Yeah… She’s incomparable to a bastard like you.”

As far as I had learned from Ellen, I had a talent in swordsmanship that exceeded rank itself. I intuitively knew how to respond to any situation, when I should hit and when I should retreat, from that girl who was born with a natural talent for combat each and every day.

-Hit!

“Kurg!”

However, while our swords were scraping against each other, he kicked my ankle. When I was losing my balance from that, he stabbed at me.

-Bam!

“Ugh!”

He jabbed my stomach with the blunt training sword, after which I quickly retreated to catch my breath.

“Did you know that, if this was a real battle, you would have died?”

He stared at me, his expression completely relaxed.

“But this is just a fight, so I haven’t won yet.”

I’d let one attack through.

Had it been a real battle, I would have been killed by Oscar de Gardias. However, it was just a brawl. It wasn’t over yet—I would get beaten up until I surrendered.

There was no shame in doing that.

“I don’t feel like I will hear the words ‘I surrender’ leaving your mouth, though.”

“…”

“Well, I’ll just have to beat you until they do.”

-Kang! Kakang! Kang!

After he succeeded in landing his first attack, he came at me more fiercely. As if he was done testing the waters, he went on the offensive.

—Side, bottom. Top. Stabbing through the middle.

He didn’t just attack me with his sword. If he saw a gap while I was blocking one of his attacks, he would punch me with his left fist or kick me or the training sword itself.

-Hit! Bam! Bang!

“Hurk!”

“You’re full of gaps, junior.”

He couldn’t even be compared to Lilka Aaron, whom I’d fought earlier. That guy was better than me both physically and in swordsmanship.

I wasn’t a match for him, and if it was a practice match, I would have lost more than five times already. However, since it was a fight, he would punch, stab, and swing at me until I was knocked out.

It was also largely due to the accumulated damage from the fight I had with Lilka Aaron.

-Baam!

“Kurg!”

A frontal kick hit my abdomen, making me take a few steps back. He rushed at me, hitting my training sword as if he had no intentions of letting me go.

I can’t.

I have to use ‘that’.

-Kaang!

“!”

As I hit his sword from the bottom up, I lifted up his arms, leaving his chest wide open

“Haap!”

-Boom!

“Uuurg!”

As soon as I hit his side with my right foot, he fell to the floor and rolled over.

“Haah… Haah…”

“…What is this?”

He hurriedly got up, fixed his posture, and titled his head.

“You… what did you do?”

He looked a little flustered, as if something had occurred that shouldn’t have happened.

Yeah, it must have felt weird.

“Did you know? I’m a supernatural power user.”

Supernatural power…

Lilka Aaron seemed to know, but Oscar de Gardias looked like he didn’t know that I was a supernatural power user.

However, I hadn’t used ‘that’ in my previous fight.

“Supernatural powers…”

Oscar put more strength into his gaze when he heard me say the words “supernatural power”.

Something strange had happened just then.

It was because I’d managed to suddenly break his guard with a different kind of explosive power than I had shown before.

He must have sensed how much strength I had before, so it must have seemed strange to him, feeling such formidable power suddenly filling me.

I had been using self-suggestion as a physical strengthening ability.

However, not too before that, I’d realized a more advanced use of the supernatural power of self-suggestion.

—That was ‘Skills’.

I started another chuunibyou session, created an image of a skill in my mind, named it, and became able to use it.

As always, that power was rather destructive for my mentality, but its effects were powerful.

The one I’d used just then was called ‘One Strike’.

—I used my supernatural power solely on powering up a single attack.

“Here I come.”

That time, it was ‘Rapid Movement’.

“!”

Before he could react, I reached him and stabbed my sword at him.

-Kadadang!

“Kuhuk!”

As that guy blocked my sword stab, I went a little further and gave him a headbutt.

–Bam!

“Kuhurg!”

-Thud!

I smiled at him as he grabbed his ringing head and took a few steps back.

“What? Is it that unusual?”

I’d been deathly embarrassed when I’d set up those skills, but they were the most effective thing I had!