He stabbed my throat.
The blood gushed out in a pulsing stream, spitting across the ground. My head felt like it spun around me. The sound of the beep echoed again and again. My eyes blurred.
As I lost consciousness, my body quivered. I fell to the ground, my face slamming onto the floor. My neck twitched as I lost blood.
My hands were tied from behind, my legs shaking like earthquakes. I panted.
The principal stood up from his chair, revolving around me.
"Do you not know why you're here yet, young one?"
He circled me.
"It's so simple, don't worry. You don't need to think to answer it. It's because you get involved in things that don't matter to you."
Raucously laughing, he kept talking inanely about why I was being treated like this. The reason? I ended the love triangle.
Zia never cared, but Oliver loved her. And on the other side, Oliver didn't care about Ezabel — but Ezabel loved him.
The Father wanted to use it for his own advantage. He wanted to keep Ezabel hooked on the thought that one day Oliver would give up on Zia and notice her. By that, Father Athos would be able to keep both Oliver and Ezabel on his hook.
I don't know why, and I don't want to know, but it feels more like he wanted to have both of them broken.
My guess would be that it's going to benefit him if he arranged a political marriage for both.
If Oliver got to marry — or at least propose — Ezabel would lose faith and do the same as well.
That's all the principal blabbered about.
I was so stupid for not noticing it. When we were on the bench, he imperceptibly said a hint. It could've been intentional, or not.
He said that I had already met all three, and now I was with the fourth one. How could he know I met Ezabel if he wasn't in the restaurant?
That's what I couldn't get my head over. Even after getting stabbed in the throat, I was still overthinking it.
Well—That's me—The living artifact.
Athos was loitering until the principal finished his pathetic, non-threatening speech. Athos, vacillating over whether to kill me or keep me alive, murmured for a while.
He stood up from his chair, muttering,
"You have me impressed. I'm actually very fond of strong people like you. You're still alive and kicking."
Laughing at my face with his wicked smile, overflowing his mana, he impressed the principal.
"How dare a lowly human like you joke with me? Forget about that, you even destroyed my plan. Now how am I supposed to keep them hooked?"
For some reason, he was so obsessed with hooking them until they waited.
I raised my head with nothing but sheer neck strength, ruefully pushing myself up and moving ahead.
Grunting,
"I w—will p—prevail. Both of you—you are d—dead in a minute."
The knife ravaged my neck over time.
Slightly pulling myself backward, I was able to bend my back. Then, using my bent knees, I bounced backward, following it with a backflip.
I stood on my legs again. Since my artifact Machbone was activated, I broke free from the handcuffs. They barely restrained me.
One thing I'm glad about is that now I know the Father and the principal both don't know I'm an artifact...
I FEEL EXCITED.
The Father hissed upon seeing me get back on my feet. I strengthened my neck as hard as a rock, pushing the knife out as my neck muscles did their job.
My neck regenerated.
RED FLAG.
Both of them were heavily astonished by the sight of a very rare and high-level magic never even practiced by humans.
REGENERATION.
My protest was loud and clear — no need to discuss. The principal wiggled right in front of my eyes with an ice spear, just to end up being paralyzed.
It was all so sudden. Of course, I had my power activated. A single flick of my finger would have cleared his throat that he used to blabber on and on.
But reality hits harder than my attack.
The Father felt this heavy object that was never seen nor touched. Slouching, bending down, he panted.
The principal got petrified, as if watching a scry-view with no signal. His wide-open eyes looked terrified. The room went silent. The chair they consistently sat on bounced like a ball.
The foist exploded, the roof bursting wide. Someone jumped in.
As he jumped in—I won't lie—even I felt the weight.
Long, thin, black hair, all skew-whiff and tangled. He wore a waistcoat with a bull-rider hat. Physically fit, a navy shirt and black pants.
The rooftop was pillaged—it could fit a carriage. A black moleskin cloak coat peered out from the rooftop. He sighed, still glancing downward.
"Get your fat *ss here."
In seconds, the cloak flew to his shoulders, resting. Covering his eyes with his hat, while his nose–mouth part was hidden by his hand holding it. He turned abruptly, walking straight to where I was.
He took off his hat and put it on my head—covering my eyes.
He was Ed's older brother, one of the strongest in the Hazen family. His cloak naturally followed the hat and sheltered me.
Likewise, he cracked his fingers, looking straight at Father Athos.
"How about you pray for the dead?"
Father Athos was horrified, anxiously scrolling on a scry-view. He called the head family of the Merriiley.
The principal laughed.
"Ha... hahaha... it's been a while since the prodigy graduated."
The truth was, Ed's older brother had been one of the principal's students back when the principal was young—when he was a teacher.
Ed's younger brother looked at him, saying,
"You are next. So just shut up and wait, old hag!!"
That's how the fight began, and the principal refused to wait for his turn. Nevertheless, Ed's younger brother was dead set on killing them both—that was the order of the head family of Hazen.
That's how I saved my a* from regeneration to another red flag.
So I walked aroun
d to see and find the chair. And upon picking it up, I heard a sweet voice.
"JACE!!!"
She was my mother...