novelraw Chapter 40 : Increased Bullying (2)
Chapter 40 : Increased Bullying (2)
Chapter 40: Increased Bullying (2)
“What?”
“Whaaat~? How can you say that so casually right now? A student who needs intensive care is wandering around like that!”
She immediately tried to forcefully pull my wrist and lay me back on the bed.
But since my body wasn’t in perfect condition either, the moment she pulled my wrist, my body throbbed again and a wave of pain rushed in all at once. Without realizing it, I nearly lost my composure and almost activated a spell.
I barely held myself back.
Once I settled safely onto the bed, she began to explain the state of my body in earnest.
“You may be seriously injured, but as long as you receive proper treatment, you’ll be fine. But unlike Hei or Banshi, yours isn’t just simple burnout, so you need to rest for at least a month.”
“A whole month?”
Even if that magic had been a bit too powerful, it didn’t feel like something that required a month of rest……
“Your homeroom teacher and even the professors have already approved it, so that’s how it is.”
“…….”
“Come to think of it, it’s dinner time now.”
The nurse teacher checked the time, then turned away from me and looked at Hei and Banshi.
“You two need to eat as well. Are you going to eat here? Or will you go to the cafeteria?”
“Mm……”
“…….”
Both of them glanced at me for no reason.
Wanting to be alone even for a moment, I subtly waved my hand, telling them to go eat at the cafeteria.
They replied that they would eat there.
The nurse teacher spoke.
“Then I’ll bring Artel’s meal. Artel, don’t you dare go anywhere. Stay put. Understood?”
Even while taking the two of them out, she stopped at the doorway to leave me a warning.
“I’m not some kid……”
“You are a kid. Did the shock make you go a little crazy for a moment?”
“…….”
Maybe because I had used Linking for the first time in a long while, I momentarily forgot that my body was that of the young student Artel.
Without knowing it myself, I kept thinking I was moving around in my old body, as Archis Eimer of my previous life.
Still, the fortunate thing was that the nurse teacher didn’t suspect anything further and simply left with Hei and Kiena.
“Anyway……”
Once I was left alone in the infirmary, something I normally didn’t care about suddenly became irritating.
The current condition of my body, which supposedly required a full month of treatment.
‘Is it really because this isn’t my original body, so recovery takes longer?’
Come to think of it, Artel had always been physically weak—frequently collapsing and constantly suffering from minor illnesses.
My body in my previous life had been sturdy enough to be considered one of the strongest among mages, but now that I was feeling how frail this body was, my mood grew strange.
‘If my body is this weak…… it’s not enough to just cast Archmage-level spells.’
No matter how much magic was based on mental strength, combat still required a body.
And by combat, I meant the future fight against Tylant. Before that, there was also Etar.
To cross high mountains, one needed strong legs, but right now those legs were nothing but fragile scarecrows, ready to snap at any time.
‘A problem exploded in a place I never even imagined.’
Now I also had to worry about how to strengthen this fragile body.
Beep.
Just then, a notification sound rang from the Mob.
It wasn’t the usual alert of someone contacting me.
It was the sound that played only when points were used.
“I can’t use points in my current state.”
[Usage History]
– Cafeteria: 1,000
When I checked the Mob, a record showed that points had just been used.
Even though my body and the Mob were in the infirmary, points had been deducted automatically, meaning the nurse teacher had used them.
I had already suspected and been sure of the Mob manipulation, but this moment felt like she was hammering a stake into the ground so I would never forget it.
A week later.
It was the day Hei and Banshi fully recovered and returned to their daily routines.
Artel’s body was mostly healed as well, but due to the nurse teacher’s firm decision that he must rest for a full month, he was effectively confined to the infirmary.
Leaving Artel behind, Banshi and Hei walked side by side down the hallway to attend the class that would soon begin.
“We rested for a whole week—how far did the lessons progress?”
Hei asked first.
“Probably not that much. I stayed in Class 1 for five years, but the lessons were never fast. At most, they probably learned one or two additional spells.”
“It’s still worrying. I already struggle to keep up with the lessons as it is.”
Now that he was returning fully to his routine, Hei felt nervous about the things waiting immediately ahead.
“In the sparring match, you were better than the others, though. Don’t worry so much.”
“Artel said that too, but is that really true……?”
“Yeah, really.”
Hei let out an awkward, embarrassed laugh.
Receiving praise from an unexpected person must have made him feel oddly pleased.
Soon, they arrived at Classroom 7, the room for Fire-element classes, and went inside.
Among the Fire-element students, the last two to enter were these two.
The moment the door opened, all the students’ gazes focused on them at once.
But only for a moment. As soon as anyone met their eyes, they looked away in a panic, as if they had seen a Medusa that would turn them to stone.
‘Strange.’
It was Banshi who sensed the atmosphere shift in an odd way.
The air in the classroom felt unusually heavy today.
Sitting down beside Banshi, Hei asked the student next to him,
“How far did the lesson go?”
“Uh, here……”
The student pointed at a page in the textbook, about to explain the progress to Hei.
“Are you crazy?”
Suddenly, Hapert—sitting in the front row—turned slightly and glared with a threatening expression.
“Ah……”
The student who tried to help Hei grew frightened and quickly withdrew his finger from Hei’s textbook, fixing his gaze firmly on his own.
“……?”
Hei was so dumbfounded he couldn’t say anything.
After thinking deeply for a moment, he nodded to himself as if making a decision and began reaching a hand toward Hapert’s back.
At that moment, Banshi grabbed his hand and lowered it.
“Leave it. You don’t need to know the lesson progress.”
“What do you mean I don’t need to know?”
“Just trust me. Don’t bother arguing with a childish kid like that.”
Banshi could very easily tell why Hapert was behaving that way.
There is precedent text; should translate but sensitive to instructions: must preserve punctuation/inverted quotes; but Korean text uses none special quotes besides normal quoting. So proceed.
There’s no need for deep thought — the reason was so simple it was almost childish.
Because the Fire element, thanks to achieving an overwhelming 18 consecutive victories in the first sparring match, had all Fire-element students positioned in the upper ranks.
Then in this sparring match as well, with a record of 6 consecutive wins, they maintained 2nd place, meaning all Fire-element students were still positioned up to 8th place.
The gap with the Dark element still existed.
And the penalty applied up to 5th place.
Hapert was precisely within that top 5, which was why he bore a grudge.
And using his family background, he was thoroughly isolating Hei and Banshi.
The one responsible for the 6 consecutive wins was Banshi, but the backlash landed on Hei as well simply because Hei, Artel, and Banshi normally stuck together.
“A so-called mage from a noble family should at least feel ashamed.”
Banshi openly threw out words meant to provoke.
Her voice was loud enough for not only Hapert in front of them but even the students in the first row to hear.
Infuriated, Hapert couldn’t control his temper. He twisted around and glared fiercely at Banshi.
“What did you just say?”
“Are your ears clogged? You couldn’t hear that?”
Then Banshi manifested a small flame on the tip of her index finger and continued.
“No matter how I look at it, something seems blocked. Should I clear it out for you with this?”
“Have you lost your mind……?”
Hapert shoved his chair back hard enough to nearly throw it as he leapt to his feet.
There were still a few minutes before class started, and this was the moment when the conflict between two students who had never even spoken to each other escalated to its peak.
“What’s with the commotion?”
Just then, the arrival of their teacher, Ever, cooled the heated tension.
The moment Banshi heard Ever’s voice, she curled her finger to hide the small flame and answered,
“Nothing.”
Banshi replied brazenly, though Hapert still didn’t withdraw his savage glare.
“Well, all right.”
Ever could tell something had happened, but instinctively sensed that digging deeper would only be troublesome, so he simply ignored Hapert.
The Nohill Family was also a Fire-element family like the Ed Family, but the two families did not get along.
The reason was that the Nohill Family maintained a very friendly stance toward the Draco Family.
The representative family of the Fire element was the Ed Family.
And the Nohill Family was one of the constituent families beneath them — the subordinate families.
All Fire-element families, except for the representative Ed Family, received the Ed Family’s policies, interference, and directives.
This union-like structure applied not only to the Fire element but to all elemental families.
However, the Nohill Family of the Fire element and the Mihael Family of the Light element seemed to harbor dissatisfaction toward this system, and eventually began acting independently without accepting the representative families’ interference.
Thus Ever had no desire to concern himself with Hapert, who was a mage of the Nohill Family.
“Are Hei and Banshi fully recovered?”
He completely ignored Hapert and asked only the two of them.
“Yes.”
“That’s good. Let’s begin class then.”
He went down to the platform at the very front and began the lesson.
Meanwhile, Hapert’s hand that held his pen trembled violently.
‘What do they think a family is…… You’re not something that can ignore us……!’
Following Artel, now even Banshi.
A family — to exaggerate a bit — was a privilege, yet these two brats dared to disregard that privilege. It was something he could never forgive.
‘It’s because you’ve never experienced the fear of a family. Just wait, I’ll make sure you learn soon enough.’
Hapert pondered how he might break the pride that had grown so large in the two of them.
‘Right, I can use the vacation.’
An unexpectedly brilliant idea came to him quickly.
‘Go ahead and strut around while you can. Starting next semester, you’ll be trembling in fear and living like meek little mice.’
“Really? So Hapert ended up targeting you and Hei too. Actually, the day before the previous sparring began, he and I also had some friction.”
As soon as Fire-element class ended, Banshi came straight to find me.
Fortunately, the nurse teacher had stepped out for a moment, so we could talk comfortably without worrying.
What Banshi told me was that now she and Hei had become targets of bullying as well.
The students who joined in were likely doing so only because Hapert had a family name behind him.
To commoners, a noble family was like a star in the sky — visible, yet unreachable.
“What was the atmosphere like? I mean Hapert.”
“There’s nothing unusual yet, but I thought you should know, Archis-nim.”
“I already knew. I told you, the day before the sparring began, I also had a run-in with him.”
“What kind of run-in?”
“He and his cronies came over and threatened me to go to the Dark-element classroom. Said they’d ‘deal with me’ if I didn’t.”
“Pfft.”
Banshi burst into genuine laughter.
“Who was going to ‘deal with’ whom?”
“It’s cute, right? So I just gave him a little lecture and sent him off.”
“Oh, right. Then once you recover, are you participating in the next sparring match immediately?”
The timing of my recovery overlapped with the date of the next sparring match.
But I shook my head.
“No, I can’t participate in the next sparring match.”