“So damn annoying.” I sighed and dashed out of the wall.

  “Why? I think it’s fun.” Ivaldie smiled.

  “Never mind…” I glanced at Kory – she was fine. Siege softened the blow somehow. I approached her, “So, you’re still keeping secrets?”

  “You too.” She clenched her fists. “I nearly recovered my stolen memories.”

  “Oh…” I looked at Steel and a different girl, Milli, talking with Siege. “I can tell you everything, if you want to-”

  “No. I don’t need them.” She shivered. “I-I really don’t.” That uncomfortable expression, that fleeting jerk of pain – I could tell she really didn’t want to.

  “Are you hiding your trait, because you’re afraid of making me sad?” I smiled. “That’s adorable.”

  Kory shook her head. “Not for you.” She looked at Steel, and wetness gathered in the corner of her eyes. “I-I don’t want to talk about it.”

  I frowned. This was moronic. “Why are you planning to lose, Kory? Is this something you want to be? A loser?”

  Her voice remained stalwart. “I-it’s not just a game, Magnus.”

  “It is. There are those who win and those who lose. Either you’re true to yourself or you’re an empty shell.”

  “I know you don’t care about anyone else. I know that – so stop being like that!”

  “That’s why your SE is not growing as fast as it could, not just because of the damaged genome, but because you’re a coward.”

  Kory raised her hand, and her aura flared. A slap resounded through the room. “I don’t want to hurt her.” She growled the words, and tears fell down from her eyes.

  The slap didn’t even hurt. “She will cry all the same. Silence won’t fix anything.”

  “Magnus. That’s enough,” Ivaldie said.

  “No, it’s not enough. If you don’t take every chance, you’ll just die like a pathetic loser in some ditch.” The beating, the sting of the bullet - how they pulled out my eye, how they broke my leg, how they covered every inch of my skin with bruises. I still saw nightmares of my first death. “Either you take them, or you suffer.” If only I weren’t so arrogant...

  “You aren’t dying…”

  “Say that again.”

  “I said you aren’t dying, Magnus. Your words mean nothing.” She wiped the tears and looked back at the ongoing battle. With slow steps, she walked away from me.

  “Why are you hurting her?” Ivaldie’s voice broke through the cheering of the other students. Steel was beating up Milli easily.

  “If you only had 15 years left to live, would you change your life?”

  “No.” Ivaldie tilted her head. “Or maybe I would.”

  “So very apathetic of you. You think you’re doing your best, Ivaldie?”

  She nodded far too fast.

  “We haven’t seen anything the world has to offer, and you still want to spend your time training to the bone?”

  “It is what a true dragon does.”

  “For you, this hellish training will last forever, won’t it?”

  Ivaldie shook her head. “I will train for as long as I’m needed.”

  “Before this, I just wanted to learn magic. I never thought I could do this much violence.” I tended to ignore the memories of slaughter I committed here, but today they weren’t staying back. “And now, because I took pity for a stupid reason, I have to slowly kill myself to give an idiot a chance at life.”

  “You don’t look like you pity people.”

  My stomach twisted, and a lump rose in my throat. I hated this about myself. “You are right.” I didn’t want to help Kory, I didn’t want to help anyone, and now… Now I kept going because of that self-hatred. “There always has to be a way to become better. People change.” I hoped. “I want to be better, but I can’t help myself. I want to take everything, I want to know everything, and I can’t bring myself to truly care. Isn’t it lonely?”

  The silence lasted. Steel and Milli have been fighting for some time now, and it was a standstill. Steel grew to the size of two meters, covering her skin and VITA with thick scales that shrugged off the slams of Milli’s mace. And yet, despite this, Steel couldn’t quite catch her. The fight was already over in my mind – even if Milly managed to harm Steel, she learned how to regenerate.

  “She can only dodge left or right!” Kory shouted right in front of the barrier. “You can do it!” She was smiling, but I knew she was hurting on the inside.

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  “It is lonely,” Ivaldie said. “But you aren’t truly alone.”

  Sharp pain struck my heart, and I chuckled. “It’s all contractual, Ivaldie. Kory talks to me only because I’m a human; Steel is just a clueless child, and everyone else is out there to kill me. Even my own family wasn’t there for me. This is a world of gain and loss.”

  She grabbed my hand. “What about me?”

  I couldn’t hold back a wry smile. “I’m trying to kill you, Ivaldie, all because I took pity.”

  She clenched my hand harder. “I am too. But it doesn’t mean we can’t be… Friends.”

  “You want that only because you’re a combat junkie. I can see right through you.”

  “If you don’t want to, I won’t ever fight you.” The faint blush on her cheeks. It turned the twisting knot in my stomach into weird warmth. I didn’t like that.

  “Will you surrender the first-year exam for me? For Kory?”

  She smiled, it was an innocent one, so unlike the adrenaline-fueled smirks before. “Then it would be about loss and gain – you don’t want it too. I know.”

  I freed my hand with a forceful push. “I still have to save Kory…” My hands shook. Why?

  “So do I.” Ivaldie’s smile disappeared in the blink of an eye, but I remembered it. “It is my duty as the class leader.”

  “15 years of duty, huh? I don’t envy you.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  The fight kept on going. Steel figured out the trick, behind the dashes, she crushed the Milli’s starpower shield, and not one attack still landed. Milli rained blow after blow with her mace, burning Steel’s scales with lightning.

  She didn’t care. More scales grew and replaced the burned ones. Steel became a true tank thanks to Kory and me… Steel straightened up and smiled. “Finally, it grew!” I scouted her – her SE increased by 3, just enough to pass Ixis.

  “Why won’t you die?” Milli shouted. A child with an eight-year-old body could never defeat a two-meter-tall monster. Not with brute force.

  Steel raised her foot high and stomped. The floor cracked into pieces, and Milli almost fell over. Then Steel opened her mouth and a surge of liquid fire rained down on Milli.

  She screamed and scratched, flaring starpower irregularly. “Help! I give up!” Milli might have looked nearly like Ivaldie, but she was nothing like her. None of them were.

  Siege’s black aura spread through inside the barrier like thick smog, and when it was gone, so was the fire.

  “You did it, Steel!” Kory shouted.

  “Good job! I knew you could do it,” I said.

  Steel smiled victoriously, her eyes locked on Kory. “Yay.” Then her eyes turned to the crying Milli. Her skin and scales were terribly burnt. Steel’s fire was too weak, but it was sticky. “I-I’m sorry…”

  Siege clapped his hands. “Kory, go heal her if you want to.”

  She didn’t complain and went straight towards Milli. After conjuring a complicated technique, golden light shone in Kory’s hands. Milli slapped them away. “I don’t need healing from the human’s lackey.”

  Kory gasped. Then an arrow made of black starpower struck in Milli’s shoulder, and she screeched. Her burns inflamed, scabbed, and shed themselves in a matter of seconds.

  “Usually I apply numbing to my inversed damage techniques, but since you don’t want Kory, I decided it would be a good lesson.” Siege giggled. “Even your SE rose by one, how nice! Don’t forget to thank me.”

  The girl groaned in pain, failing to stand up.

  “I said, thank me!”

  “T-thank you.”

  “Good. Ha-ha.” I knew one thing for certain: I didn’t want to be like Siege… Except I already was like him. My throat went dry.

  Steel and Kory were hugging, whispering to each other…

  “Get out of here! I have others to test. Next, Goile and Sarei. Fight – and do it quickly. I’m getting hungry for blood.” He giggled.

  They cleared the arena, and another boring fight started. Goile and Sarei had weaker SE than even Steel, and their combat strategy was lacking. Both of them used long-range attacks, and it turned into a more violent version of dodgeball. I just let my brain record the fight, focusing on another thing.

  Mitzi – I did exactly what Siege would do. To be proper, I had to apologize… Even if I didn’t want to.

  “Ivaldie.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you hurt someone badly, what would you do?”

  “In a fight?”

  “Do you know what bullying is?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Now I do. If I did that, I would apologize and then never do it again.” The translator was very convenient. I can throw out Earth words, and she could still understand me.

  “Yeah, thanks…”

  The fights passed quickly. No one could lengthen them quite like Steel did, and all of them ended in a few minutes. Except the last one.

  “Now, Kory and Nillie… actually.” Siege approached the Ruby girl and flicked her head. She dropped to the ground, knocked out cold. “That’s it, no more fights.”

  “You could’ve just told them not to fight!”

  “Shut up, Magnus. I didn’t think of that.” He grabbed Nillie by the hand and lifted her to her feet. Black mist surrounded her body, and in a second, she woke up.

  “W-what?”

  “You won’t fight. Get stronger first.”

  Kory looked to the ground in embarrassment. Steel bared her teeth, held back only by Kory’s pleading gaze.

  “Kay, so evaluation is done. Everyone, but Ivaldie and Magnus, is trash! By this point, you should be fully capable of killing someone stronger than you, and all I saw were boring projectiles, weak strengthening, and even worse constructs. Your home reading is – The Basics of Knightly Combat, since you are clueless losers.”

  “Siege. Give me and Steel dungeon delving permission.”

  He grinned. “Right, granted!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out three tiny black cards. Siege threw them into the air; they flew towards us.

  Siege’s Dungeon Pass

  Type: Knight Artifact

  Description: Grants unlimited access to all dungeons. Just don’t kill yourself, kid, or I’ll take your soul.

  “How did you modify the scouter description? I want to do that too.”

  “There are books about that. You can figure it out.” He turned to the rest of the class. “Does anyone else want a pass?”

  Milli, Goile, and Sarei raised their hands, and Siege promptly dispensed some more cards.

  “Class over. Go learn how to fight, or I’ll kill you. Till next week. Magnus, you’re going with me to ELEVATE. Ivaldie, since you got to adept, you can rest.”

  “Let’s get that over with.”

  Siege giggled. I shivered in fear.

  I said awkward goodbyes to Steel, Kory, and Ivaldie, since nobody else even wanted to look in my direction.

  The ELEVATE room was as lively as always. Mousei was peppered by techniques from both sides, and she parried every one of them with her fat tail. Louize’s eye lasers and Ocoz’s spirit snakes were exploded outright.

  “Ignore them. Get in the altar.” This reminded me of something.

  “Already? Maybe we can do some more toxic training?”

  “Nope, your strengthening is at Knight already. It won’t be as useful, not until you reach the Baron threshold.”

  With shaking hands, I stared at the damnable artifact. I was going to get tortured again. Or maybe it will be some sort of joke like the last time. All I knew was that it wasn’t going to be pretty. One after another, I dragged my feet until they connected with the gleaming surface.

  Everything turned to darkness once more. My feet were gone, my arms were gone too. I couldn’t even see, couldn’t breathe, there was no heartbeat, no noise. Only the all-consuming silence.

  I knew this place – I’ve been here before. I’m dead again.