Chapter 78: Mind if I join?

“So rumours were true, Edelhart,” Kaelen scoffed, looking me up and down with blatant disgust. “The ’Shame of the Vanguard’ finally officially dropped his sword and picked up a wand. Switched to the Magic Department to hide in the back with the rest of the frail little cowards.”

The Knight department students behind him chuckled darkly. On the periphery, several Magic students stopped to watch, their faces pale. None of them stepped forward to help. In a physical confrontation, Mages were conditioned to back away.

Kaelen’s eyes drifted to Emma, who was still clinging to my arm. He let out a low, predatory whistle.

“And I see you bought yourself a pretty little shield to hide behind, too,” Kaelen sneered, taking a heavy step forward. “Listen, sweetheart. If you want a real man who doesn’t faint from mana exhaustion, you should cross over to the West wing. This twig will snap the second a real fight starts.”

Emma’s angelic smile didn’t waver, but the temperature in the immediate vicinity plummeted. Her golden eyes went completely dead.

I felt her small fingers twitch against my sleeve, her mana spiking dangerously. She was a fraction of a second away from pulling a hidden dagger or casting an explosive spell right into the brute’s face.

’Down, girl,’ I thought.

I gently placed my hand over hers, squeezing twice. Stand down.

Emma took a sharp breath, her psychotic aura instantly receding as she submitted to my command. She stepped half a pace behind me, playing the role of the demure fiancée to perfection.

I looked back at Kaelen.

“Are you done barking, Thorne?” I asked, my voice carrying a lazy, aristocratic boredom. “Or did you actually have a point to make before I step over you to get my lunch?”

The crowd gasped.

Kaelen’s face instantly flushed purple with rage. The veins in his thick neck bulged. A mere Mage—and a disgraced former Knight at that—daring to speak to him like that within the ten-meter Death Zone was absolute suicide.

“You arrogant little piece of trash,” Kaelen roared, tossing his greatsword into the dirt. He didn’t need it. He intended to beat me to death with his bare hands to prove a point. “I’ll show you what happens when you step off the backline!”

BOOM.

Kaelen kicked off the stone pavement, his aura flaring as he used a Knight’s basic [Aura Dash].

He crossed the three meters instantly. His massive, calloused fist pulled back, aiming a brutal, bone-shattering right hook directly at my jaw. The speed was incredible. No standard Mage could have vocalized a shield spell in time.

But I wasn’t a standard Mage. And I definitely wasn’t frail.

My [Calculation Power] mapped the vector of his punch in slow motion.

Instead of jumping backward to create distance—the fatal instinct of every Mage—I stepped forward, directly into his guard.

’He thinks I’m a twig,’ I smirked internally. ’Let’s test my Stamina-forged physique.’

I didn’t use an incantation. I simply forced a surge of my friction-heavy, hyper-dense mana into the palm of my right hand, discarding the elemental form entirely to create a point-blank kinetic shockwave.

As Kaelen’s fist swung toward my face, I brought my left arm up, brutally parrying his thick forearm. The impact echoed like two steel bars colliding. Kaelen’s eyes widened in sheer shock; my arm hadn’t snapped. It hadn’t even buckled.

Using the opening created by the parry, I slammed my glowing right palm directly into the center of his armored chest plate.

[Kinetic Discharge]

KRA-KOOM!

The compressed shockwave detonated at point-blank range.

The sound was deafening, like a cannon firing in a closed hallway. The heavy steel of Kaelen’s chest plate caved inward with a sickening crunch.

The massive, two-hundred-pound Knight was lifted entirely off his feet. He flew backward through the air as if he had been hit by a runaway carriage, sailing over the heads of his lackeys.

He crashed violently into the dirt of the Knight’s sparring ring nearly fifteen meters away, tumbling uncontrollably before coming to a dead, groaning halt.

Absolute, pin-drop silence fell over the courtyard.

The Knight students stared at Kaelen’s twitching body, their jaws unhinged. The Magic students were equally horrified and awestruck.

A Mage had just engaged a Knight in close-quarters CQC, parried a physical strike, and blasted him fifteen meters away without speaking a single word. It violated every known law of combat at the Academy.

I casually lowered my hand, blowing a faint wisp of heat from my palm. I rolled my left shoulder, adjusting my jacket.

“Cowards hide in the back, Thorne,” I stated coldly, looking at the stunned Knights blocking my path. “I just prefer to not get my uniform dirty with your cheap blood.”

I took a step forward.

The group of Knights flinched, instinctively parting like the Red Sea to clear the walkway. They looked at me as if I were a monster wearing a student’s skin.

I held my arm out to Emma.

She immediately looped her arm back through mine, her golden eyes shining with a feral, overwhelming worship. She looked absolutely intoxicated by the display of raw, dominant violence.

“Shall we, my angel?” I smiled softly at her.

“Yes, Sir Alex,” she giggled, walking perfectly in step with me as we casually stepped over Kaelen’s discarded greatsword. “I’m suddenly very hungry.”

****

News in Merchen Academy didn’t just travel; it teleported.

By the time Emma and I walked through the towering double doors of the Grand Cafeteria, the entire student body already knew what had happened in the courtyard. The ’Trash of Edelhart’ hadn’t just defeated a Knight department student in close-quarters combat—he had utterly humiliated him with a single, physics-defying strike.

As we stepped into the massive, chandelier-lit dining hall, the ambient roar of a thousand students eating and gossiping died a sudden, violently awkward death.

Thousands of eyes locked onto us.

The Knight students sitting in the western wing looked at me as if I were a raid boss that had just spawned in the tutorial zone. The Magic students in the eastern wing stared with a mixture of profound shock and terrified awe. The established social hierarchy of the Academy—where Mages cowered from physical confrontation and the ’Trash’ was the universal punching bag—had just been completely shattered.

I didn’t break my stride. I kept my posture relaxed, my chin held high, projecting the absolute, arrogant confidence of an apex predator surveying his territory.

“They’re all staring at you, Sir Alex,” Emma whispered, her arm looped tightly through mine. She pressed her modest, perky chest against my bicep, her golden eyes sweeping across the hall with an intensely territorial glare. “They look terrified.”

“Let them stare,” I replied, a cold smirk playing on my lips. “Fear is just respect in its rawest form.”

We bypassed the standard buffet lines. As high nobility, we were entitled to the private, elevated booths at the back of the hall. I guided Emma to a plush, semi-circular velvet booth that offered a commanding view of the entire cafeteria.

The moment we sat down, a nervous-looking servant rushed over, quickly serving us plates of high-grade roasted monster meat and enchanted spring water before practically sprinting away.

“Here, Husband. Say ’ah’.”

I turned my attention from the terrified student body back to my fiancée.

Emma had already cut a tender piece of meat. She held it up on a silver fork, her angelic face glowing with pure, unadulterated devotion. Despite her pristine Academy uniform and her flawless, saintly aura, I knew exactly what she looked like underneath. I knew how those pale thighs trembled, how her clean, smooth armpits smelled of sweet sweat, and how her tight, virgin pussy had greedily milked me for hours.

The contrast between the elegant noble lady feeding me in public and the sex-crazed, obsessive girl who had begged me to fill her womb the night before was incredibly intoxicating.

I leaned forward and took the meat from the fork.

“Delicious,” I murmured, my eyes locking onto hers.

Emma’s cheeks flushed a brilliant shade of pink. She practically vibrated with joy, entirely ignoring the thousands of eyes watching us. To her, this plush velvet booth was the only thing that existed in the world. She picked up a silk napkin and gently dabbed the corner of my mouth.

“I’ll cut you another piece, Husband,” she hummed, her voice dripping with honey.

“Don’t choke on it, Edelhart.”

The brash, completely unapologetic voice shattered the intimate bubble Emma was trying to construct.

Clang.

A heavy metal lunch tray was slammed down onto the polished oak table right across from us.

I slowly shifted my gaze.

Maya stood there, her hands resting on her hips. Her blonde hair was tied up in a messy, delinquent ponytail, her uniform blazer was slung casually over one shoulder, and her shirt was unbuttoned just enough to show the tantalizing shadow of her cleavage. She was grinning, but her sharp blue eyes were darting between me and the angelic girl currently holding a fork near my mouth.

“Mind if I join?”

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