Chapter 6: The Broken Mask and the Weight of Silence
Alicia was trembling where she stood. The world was slipping away from under her feet.
The sounds of laughter in her ears mingled with the ghosts of the past.
The roar of the crowd in the square the day her family was executed... The sounds the other children made while pushing and shoving her at the orphanage... All of it was echoing in this classroom right now.
Her eyes began to burn. That famous, indestructible mask of hers... That fake smile she plastered on her face... She could no longer hold on.
Tears gathering in the corners of her eyes broke the resistance of her eyelashes and began to trickle down her cheeks.
No, she said inwardly. Don't cry. Don't give them this pleasure. You must be strong. You promised your father. You promised your mother. You said 'I will live no matter what, I will be happy.'
But this was too much. This humiliation, this absolute failure... She hadn't just summoned a weak monster; she had summoned a monument of shame that would go down in the academy's history.
All her dreams, her desire to prove herself to the empire, her hope to clear her family's name... All of it had flickered out inside that gray orb.
With vision blurred by tears, Alicia looked at the boy sitting at her feet.
The boy was still in the same position. The laughter around him, the mockery, Alicia's ruin... None of it mattered to him. He was just staring into the void.
A dark emotion she couldn't control at that moment welled up inside Alicia. Pure, searing anger.
She knew. Her logical side screamed that this was not the boy's fault.
He was just summoned. He was a victim, perhaps even more innocent than Alicia.
But Alicia's heart was in no state to listen to logic at that moment.
At that moment, she needed a tangible target to direct all her pain, all her shame. And the target was right in front of her, this useless entity in rags.
"Why?" whispered Alicia, her voice broken by sobs. "Why you?"
The boy did not react.
Alicia's hands formed fists. Her nails dug into her palms so hard they bled.
While the laughter of the whole class echoed inside her brain, Alicia could take it no more. She had reached the breaking point.
She leaned toward the boy, screaming with a voice trembling with despair and hatred:
"I wish you had never existed!"
This sentence was painful enough to suppress even the laughter in the room for a moment.
Alicia could not bear to look at the boy's face any longer. She turned her back, stomped her heels hard on the ground, and ran stumbling toward the door.
She shouldered the classroom door open and threw herself into the corridor.
As the door closed behind her, she had left behind not only the laughter but also a piece of her soul and that silent boy fate had bound to her, all alone.
The atmosphere inside the classroom took a strange turn with Alicia's dramatic exit.
The laughter slowly died down, leaving its place to curious and mocking whispers.
The abandoned boy was still sitting on the obsidian floor, upon the runes. The words "I wish you had never existed" seemed to hang in the air, but there was no sadness, no offense, nor a sign of understanding on the boy's face. He seemed to exist in a place beyond emotions.
"Hey, Professor!" called out a large student from the back rows. "What happens now? The girl abandoned her contracted monster. What will this thing eat and drink? Or will it be thrown onto the street?"
Snickers rose from the class. "Maybe he can start work as a janitor!"
Professor Valerius silenced the class with his hand. "Silence!"
He fixed his eyes on the boy on the floor. This situation was an event that had no clear equivalent even in the regulations.
A student abandoning the entity she summoned, especially before the bond was fully sealed...
"I will discuss this matter with the Dean," said Valerius, his voice lacking a bit of its usual authority. "For now..."
The Professor knew he had to continue the lesson, but this "thing" standing in the middle of the class was distracting.
He squared his shoulders. After all, he was an F Rank. A harmless, useless piece of waste. It was easiest to grab him by the collar and throw him out.
"You," said the Professor, walking toward the boy. "Stand up. Wait in the corridor."
The boy did not move. It was as if he hadn't heard the Professor's voice.
Professor Valerius hated disobedience. He frowned. "I told you to stand up!"
Still no reaction.
Feeling his patience overflowing, the Professor reached out to the boy. "Do you not hear me, you miserable creat"
Just as the Professor's hand was about to touch the boy's shoulder, the boy suddenly lifted his head.
And those pitch black eyes locked directly onto Professor Valerius's yellow, predatory eyes.
At that moment, time stopped.
Professor Valerius had fought countless monsters in his life, entered dungeons, and dueled with dark mages.
He was a proud member of the Silverthorne dynasty. But the moment he looked into those eyes, icy sweat poured down his spine.
This was not a look. This was like looking down from the edge of an abyss. And the abyss was looking back at him.
The Professor saw a pure, primal void in the boy's eyes.
Inside that darkness, it was as if thousands of screams were echoing silently, as if light bent and vanished at that point.
This was not the gaze of a child; this was the reflection of something ancient, very old, and incomprehensible.
The hand the Professor extended remained suspended in the air.
His fingers began to tremble. His breath knotted in his throat. His instincts, those animalistic survival impulses, sent a single command to his brain: RUN.
As if noticing this terror of the Professor, the boy stood up slowly, with an almost mechanical movement.
He was short, frail, and in rags. But at that moment, he stood like a giant in front of Professor Valerius.
The students in the class did not understand why the Professor froze, why his face turned as white as lime. They just felt a strange tension.
The boy severed his gaze from the Professor and headed toward the door. His steps were silent. He seemed not to make contact with the floor while walking.
As he passed between the rows, students preparing to heckle him felt their tongues tied as the boy approached. An unexplainable pressure settled on their chests.
The boy reached the door. He grasped the heavy door handle with his small hand and opened it slowly.
Just before going out, he stopped. Did he turn his head slightly back and cast a final glance at the class, or did he just look into the darkness, no one could be sure. Then he passed through the threshold, and the door closed behind him with a click.
The class took a deep breath. It was as if the oxygen in the room had returned.
"Professor, what happened?" asked a student quietly.
Professor Valerius was looking at his still trembling hand. He could not answer.
And right at that moment, a shrill cracking sound was heard from the measurement orb the Professor had left on the table.
Everyone's eyes turned to the table.
That magic orb, claimed to be solid and unbreakable, first cracked down the middle. Black smoke leaked through the cracks. And in a time as short as a tenth of a second, the orb exploded with a massive noise.
"BooM!"
While glass shards and magic dust scattered around, the class remained in terror once again.
On the floor, among the broken glass, there was still a black smoke gently fuming.
And that smoke curled in the air like the harbinger not of an F Rank failure, but of something much more terrible.
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