At the ominous premonition, Anakin and Hilde hurried toward the source.
Hilde tracked the mana fluctuations, and Anakin followed close behind.
It was such a faint energy that one wouldn’t notice it without extreme concentration.
Moreover, battles in Tran were strictly prohibited, making it even more unexpected.
I should have paid more attention to Lucien, who had made an enemy of Evan.
No matter how reliable or carefree he acted, he was just a child like us.
I regretted forgetting that crucial fact.
Because I lacked stamina, I was soon panting for breath.
Strangely, Anakin’s stamina and muscle mass never increased, no matter how hard he trained.
It was as if there were a fixed baseline he couldn’t push past, no matter how hard he tried.
Annoyed, Anakin wiped away his sweat as he ran.
Finally, after circling around the back of the Tran building, Hilde stopped abruptly in front of the storage area.
“…….”
The moment Hilde and Anakin saw the scene, they were rendered speechless.
Traces of a fierce battle remained between the patches of grass.
Anakin made eye contact with Lucien, who was there alone, wiping the sticky blood smeared all over his face.
Three cold corpses lay before Lucien.
“Oh, you’re here? I was just about to go.”
“What is…….”
Anakin scanned the surrounding bodies with a pale face.
They were unidentified men with their faces hidden by black masks.
‘Assassins.’
What shocked Anakin even more than that was Lucien’s attitude.
The way he wiped off the blood so naturally, as if it weren’t his first time, made it seem like this wasn’t an isolated incident.
Suddenly, the day of the first practical training, when Lucien was late, flashed through his mind.
Even back then, there were bloodstains on the hem of Lucien’s clothes when he arrived late and smiled cheekily.
At the time, I was too distracted by the training to notice, but…….
“This has happened many times, hasn’t it?”
Hilde, who had quickly grasped the situation, asked Lucien, who was brushing off his clothes.
Lucien replied with an indifferent face.
“It’s been like this ever since I came to Pasadian.”
“……What?”
Red blood dripped down Lucien’s temple.
It was impossible to tell if it was his blood or the blood of the attacker lying there.
“So, you’re saying you’ve been receiving these kinds of attacks from the start?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t it like this for everyone?”
Lucien, seemingly disgusted by the smell of blood on himself, lifted his arm to sniff it and frowned.
“I’m going to go wash up.”
Anakin clutched his forehead as if he felt dizzy and turned back to Hilde.
“Hilde, tell me you aren’t like that too?”
‘Was I really the only one not facing any threats all this time?’
At that, Hilde shook his head and answered.
“No. Nothing happened to me.”
Anakin let out a sigh of relief at those words.
If that was the case, Lucien was a special case.
“Do you know who sent the assassins?”
“No. But it’s always the same. The techniques they use, I mean.”
“……Is it Evan?”
At Hilde’s words, Lucien replied with narrowed eyes.
“It does seem like he sends stronger assassins after I meet a guy named Evan.”
“Then it’s definitely Evan.”
To say it again, Evan was the only person here capable of threatening Lucien.
‘Had he been keeping the grandson of a council member, Lucien, in check the entire time?’
At such a plausible deduction, goosebumps bLocke out all over Anakin’s body.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
Anakin asked calmly while looking at the blood-stained Lucien.
Blood of unknown origin was soaking his shoulder. Lucien answered with a smile.
“Anakin. If three or four assassins ambush a person by surprise and they come out completely unscathed, wouldn’t that be the weirder outcome?”
“…….”
When he put it that way, it made sense.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Talking about it doesn’t change anything, so why bother?”
Lucien struggled slightly to take off his robe.
Underneath, a silk top that didn’t constrict his body was revealed.
“You could have just fought alongside us. You agreed to share the risk of making an enemy of Evan from the beginning.”
I felt a little hurt that Lucien had been bearing all this danger on his own.
He knew better than anyone that even if he was strong, it was dangerous to walk alone without knowing when an ambush might happen.
As Anakin furrowed his brows and spoke, Lucien’s expression stiffened for a moment.
Hilde remained silent, watching the two of them.
“I asked you before if anything was wrong. You said no. Why did you lie?”
“Because it was a threat I received all the time. And I can handle this much by myself.”
“……‘All the time.’ Wait, were you like this even before coming to Pasadian?”
Lucien looked so calm that Anakin asked the question thinking, ‘No way.’
At that, he tilted his head and said.
“Isn’t it normal to see an assassin once in a while?”
“…….”
The two were so dumbfounded by Lucien’s words that they lost the ability to speak.
‘No, is it normal to see assassins?’
Anakin, too, had received threats of assassination several times.
Of course, they had all been filtered out before they could even reach him.
Hilde, who had been watching the situation with his arms crossed, also seemed to find it absurd, breaking his silence.
“Did you have no guards?”
“Guards? We didn’t have anything like that?”
At Lucien’s bewildered reply, Hilde and Anakin pressed their lips shut.
A cold silence followed for a while.
“……Lucien.”
This was ridiculous.
How could a person who was the grandson of a council member live without any guards?
Especially in that world, where threats to one’s life were frequent.
“You really mean not even a single guard?”
Anakin asked, confirming it again in a flustered voice.
“I told you, yes.”
A slightly sulky Lucien pouted his lips.
The more I learned about Lucien’s past, the more shocking it was.
Even the lowest-ranking noble kept at least one guard.
Even if it wasn’t an official knight.
Yet, there was no guard for the grandson of Rapiter Filo, one of the key figures among the council members of Pasadian.
“Weren’t we all supposed to survive on our own? I always was.”
“…….”
‘No wonder.’
I thought he acted too used to it. He was just that accustomed to assassins since childhood.
“How are you even alive until now?”
Hilde stared at Lucien as if he couldn’t believe it.
“Because I won every time.”
As Lucien said that with a smile, Anakin only blinked blankly.
‘Is that true talent? Did he really come this far purely through insane, natural-born talent?’
“That old man only taught me magic; he wouldn’t have had even an ounce of intention to protect me.”
I thought perhaps Lucien really had been driven by a “hungry spirit” more than any of the other children.
“……Let’s clean this place up first before we talk.”
Anakin frowned at the sight of the corpses, and Lucien said.
“Oh, that? If you just leave it, they usually take care of it themselves.”
“……Huh?”
“They looked like they were used to it too.”
Right. This place wasn’t normal either.
It seemed the cleaners of Pasadian took care of even things like this.
“……Aha.”
‘At this rate, am I the only one who’s abnormal?’
If everyone else is abnormal, then the normal one must be the weird one…….
Anakin decided to attain enlightenment.
The training grounds were filled with heated cheers.
The 45th class, who held the most significant weight in the upcoming sparring, were observing the 46th class’s practice.
“Hmm. As expected, Kainon is the strongest.”
“He’s the only one worth watching in the 46th class.”
“He’s kind of cute in his own way, though.”
Sarin, a 45th-class student, clicked his tongue while looking around the training ground.
“I think the 47th-class students we saw the other day actually have more potential.”
“The 47th? Don’t hype them up too much, Sarin. People are already calling them the best class in Pasadian history.”
“Heh. Why, Darek? Are you jealous?”
“It’s not like that.”
As Sarin playfully tapped Darek’s shoulder, he frowned and denied it.
“There were definitely a lot of kids who stood out.”
At Darek’s words, Sarin agreed.
“No, I thought it was a lie when they said the grandson of Rapiter Filo was here. But he was actually there, wasn’t he?”
It was strange for the grandson of a council member to enter Pasadian.
It would be one thing if it were a different school.
‘Is he a monster they raised on purpose?’
Sarin tilted his head and thought.
“And there are two nobles. The Asta Dukedom and the Descartes Count family. They must be distant collateral relatives. There’s no way the direct descendants of those great families would come to Pasadian.”
“You seem pretty interested, given that you know everything?”
Sarin looked at Darek with sly eyes. Then, Darek said in disgust.
“……If you keep provoking me, I’ll sit somewhere else.”
Then Sarin said in a puzzled voice.
“You don’t have any friends other than me anyway.”
“…….”
