“Balls.”

“Eh?—AH!”

Joking, I would never kick a fellow human in the balls.

Mutilation was a different story.

On that note, my arm was still aching.

I wasn’t able to replicate what I did before since my grasp on mana wasn’t that good, but with time, I knew I could perfect that move. After today, I think I’m going to dedicate a lot more of my time to meditating since I haven’t been doing that at all lately. Like all problems, the solution was practice.

I don’t know if what I did was magic, but it surely utilized aspects of it.

With that said, I can say that magic was definitely something I needed to learn. That earlier instance served as a warning for me to take things seriously from now on, though it would also appear that only a handful of students knew how to perform magic. There were many things I was curious about, but I’ll leave the pondering for another time.

After all…

*BOOM

The explosion that rattled my ears several times over had already grown close enough for me to distinguish its noise from that of artillery shells. It was nothing like live ammunition or explosives; the snapping wasn’t as raw.

“You’re not too shabby, but I don’t have all day.”

The masculine voice cracked a bit when pronouncing some of the syllables.

“Do your worst,” replied the feminine voice. It wasn’t hard to infer who uttered that clichéd phrase.

‘Ten minutes.’

To be honest, I’m quite fascinated by what this watch is made of. It doesn’t seem to get dirty at all even though I train every single day wearing them. And it was fairly light, just slightly heavier than toy plastic but still retaining the dexterity of hard metal. I would have expected my sweat to corrode the metal parts, but rust doesn’t seem to form—that, or it was a foreign material.

There also didn’t look like there were any ways to hold the watch together or open it. I was talking about the lack of screws or a lid to pop off. The whole thing was welded shut with no openings at all. Even the part I assumed to be glass looked like it was welded into the metal with no way to access the inner workings. Whether or not it functioned with gears, I wasn’t sure. It was worthy to note that this world’s society used a similar time management system that centered around there being twenty-four hours in a day. Come to think of it, there were a lot of other subtle similarities that were just too much to be chucked off as mere coincidence.

“Fireball.”

‘Sick.’

So anyway, I did as any good teammate would do which was watch on the sidelines. I was only peeking my head out from the staircase just enough to catch glimpses of what was going down.

It looked like it was a three-on-one, but only one of them was actively participating while the other two were relaxing. His teammates are quite unreliable if I do say so myself. They ought to be more productive like me.

A ball of fire about the size of a pumpkin manifested in the palm of that person’s hands. There wasn’t any magic circle of that sort like I saw before with the electricity guy.

“Ha!”

And as he flung it, a brush of heavy wind came out of nowhere, crashing into the ball of fire as it combusted into a flash of light peering out from the erupted smoke screen. This was the origin of that “Boom!” sound.

“I knew it, so you are already at that level,” said the voice amidst the smoke.

“Christopher, should we help?”

“Yeah, she can’t handle the three of us at once.”

The student—Christopher, was it?—he grumbled back a “No,” dismissing the assistance.

‘Eight minutes.’

Should I do something?

‘Nah.’

If my hypothesis was correct, I should just let them fight. Since it was very likely that the professors and whoever else were watching with some omniscient magic, I should let Melissa take the spotlight…

Did I say spotlight?

‘Fuck no.’

I did not just run up hundreds of fucking stairs to sit back and watch without popcorn in hand. Either I get popcorn, or I smash!—wait, wrong impression.

For a better reflection, this was the same as jacking off but never reaching orgasm. Point is: it’s supposed to be climactic! CLIMACTIC, you hear? I may be a masochist with how eternally sore my body was, but I know that I am not into blue-balling when it comes to the climax.

My heart had returned to beating normally a while back. It has rested enough.

My knuckles were beaten up because of the lack of conditioning. Yet, I still used them as I pleased. I was more than aware that I needed hand wraps if I wanted to punch harder with less risk of damage.

The Christopher guy who was dueling Melissa in a magic competition was already on high alert as he was. Hence, I will start with those two in the back who were too relaxed for their position.

“Fireball.”

I bided my time for one more second until the cue—

*Boom

With the smoke as a cover, I darted into the all-too-familiar battlefield.

With a gun in hand—I mean—a hand in hand, I struck it straight up one of their asses.

“Youch!”

I had their positions memorized beforehand so I didn’t need to navigate the battlefield with sounds as a guide, but the information was more than welcome. A sound response only meant one thing.

‘If it hurts, it works.’

The time to worry about the sexual ramifications of what I just did was not now.

I immediately pulled back my fist and carried the momentum of pulling back into a twisting motion that sent the power back to my other hand as I landed an elbow straight to the jaw.

Like a wrecking ball, the initial impact was the strongest, but the following impacts were also not to be joked about. As the ball hit the target, it would bounce back, carrying the momentum from the first impact before going back to hit the target again. This principle alone was the reason why fighting combos worked. Force never stops until completely dispersed. It was all about how you manipulated that force which would allow the power to be reused again and again. In an ideal situation, the force would multiply with every successful hit as the torque of the body would introduce more and more power into the equation.

And this—this is the ideal situation.

I was confident that he got knocked out with that elbow since there was no verbal feedback.

The other person was a little further away, so instead of halting my steps and rushing over, I used the leftover momentum from the elbow and transferred the weight to my back leg.

In less than a second, I had cut the distance with a large hop.

Without letting the momentum go to waste, I already had my left arm snapping out at the same time my feet landed. And as I expected, my jab connected perfectly with the student’s chin.

The idea was the same again. I’m sure I don’t need to explain it. Any slightly athletic person would intuitively know the concept of momentum and its relation to power. If a car were to crash into a wall, everyone knows that the faster the car was, the more damage it would cause.

Suppose my fist was the car and that person’s chin was the wall—point being: he’s fucked. Absolutely fucked.

The entire weight of my body was in that punch. If it wasn’t clear enough, jump on a twig and you would know that your fat ass can split wood in half. Now imagine what kind of damage that would cause if all of that momentum was packed in a solid punch.

“Ble…”

And that was the second one down. Both out cold. If they were physically fit or aware at all, they should wake up within seconds. But seeing how I knocked them out so easily, I’d like to think I had a minute.

“Fireball!”

Just as I was about to turn around to that voice, the drastic change in temperature brushing past my neck compelled me to flop over and brace for a fall.

But I knew I couldn’t stay immobile, so I quickly kicked off the floor and rolled to the side.

It was a good thing I did because I would have eaten the ball of flame had I not moved.

And contrary to my expectations, no explosions followed.

The lump of fire disappeared when it touched the wall.

“A two-on-one, huh? Bring it!” the Christopher guy shouted as he sent another lump of fire at me.

And as any half-intelligent monkey would do, I ran away.

“Fireball!” He shouted again, but nothing came.

“Aghk!” Instead, he fell over with a tiny imprint on the back of his ruffled uniform.

As he toppled over, a cool breeze brushed past me. It wasn’t a coincidence and it wasn’t hard to deduce the “what.”

Once the smoke fully cleared, I was left surrounded by three bodies as an extra fourth body appeared from the smoke covers.

“Why are you here?—wait, where’s Samantha?”

Some of her hair was out of place, but her appearance was never one to be considered disheveled.

“...”

“Where’s—.”

“Outside,” I hushed as I made my way to the fire boy.

I turned him over with my foot, making sure he was out.

“Go first,” I said.

“...”

‘What was it?’

Normally, I didn’t care, yet I couldn’t keep my mind from the strange paranoia that someone was looking at me.

‘Oh.’

“Go on,” I said to the child who still had her eyes fixated on me, trying to analyze something that wasn’t presentable. For most people, such a cold and sociopathic look would scare them off, but I was more than intrigued.

‘I must be quite handsome.’

All the people who have ever attempted to judge me through an objective lens never understood what “objective” entailed.

Take away the husk, and she was identical to the idiots who prided themselves in their existence; greatly overvalued.

I could see it all now.

It wasn’t hard for me to fathom her life experiences from that single mistake in expression.

I would never mistake that blank face for anything else.

For such people, not having a perfected mask was the greatest flaw in their guised humanity.

‘I’m getting ahead of myself.’

I reminded myself once again that she was Sam’s friend. I don’t want to care about her ulterior motives. But if I am indeed correct with my assessment, that would mean Sam had no “true” friends. I can try to be her friend, but then again, when it came to relationships, I belonged in a similar category as the person in front of me.

And this child could attempt to understand me as much as she wants. I knew she was too naive to make anything out of my actions, be it: body language, routine, the distance between each of my steps, or my diction.

Of course, as a human being, there were bound to be things I was unaware of, but I am quite confident in my knowledge. I believed in my own judgment accrued through years of experience.

The only people who can truly know themselves are those who have lived through the ins and outs and have thus become much too aware for their own good.

‘Don’t be a fool.’

It took a couple more seconds before she snapped back into it, with the light in her eyes sparkling once again. Of course, I stared back at her under the guise of dozing off while looking at my watch.

“Eee!” She gave a tiny shriek having realized something.

This time, I turned my face to her, making it clear that I was now paying attention.

“I had all the coins before b-but… Their GONE!!!”

Ironically enough, I could see the lantern in her pupils dim a little.

It was an honest voice—honestly filtered.

The cute scent of despair.