"The use of demonic artifacts is forbidden on school grounds; you might get admonished for it next time, young master." A dark-cloaked figure warned with a kind voice. He suddenly appeared in front of me without making a sound and disappeared just as fast.
He was wearing a simple white mask, the dark colorless cloak covering his entire body let out just the arm he used to end the life of the maid, and the dagger in his hand had a strange blade that simply couldn't stay still, vibrating at odd frequencies as if not of this world, just staring at it was making my eyes hurt.
He was one of the hidden bodyguards who roamed around me, one of the few the other maid talked to me about.
Whoa, I didn't even hear him make a single step. I can't believe my eyes; they really existed!
It was as if he materialized himself in front of me, and when he vanished, he made the maid's corpse vanish alongside him.
A ghost? What the hell was that? Wait, if you could do that, why haven't you protected me from his first punch?
I took a deep breath in with my mouth and exhaled it all through my nose in one go to clear my nostrils of all the blood that was slowly clogging my airways. This resulted in bloodstains all over the floor and the table next to Ron's.
Ah, finally I can breathe.
I then adjusted my broken nose; strangely enough, it made some strange cracking sound as I was fixing it. By the time I was finished fixing myself, the fat man was staring at me with a terrified look.
What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that? I'm just fixing the damage you caused, what? Are you suddenly feeling guilty about what you've done? Maybe if you grovel at my feet, I can forgive this— what's the word for this… trespassing? Yeah! Trespassing!
"Lucifer, are you… okay?" Ron asked me.
"Oh, me? Yeah, sort of… I think. Don't worry about it; I've already fixed it, so there's nothing wrong with it anymore." I responded, pointing at my nose. Blood still gushing out.
The room remained silent; all the cheering was gone, probably because of the murdered maid. Or so I thought.
"So, are you going to leave or not?" I asked the ugly bastard patiently waiting in front of our classroom entrance.
His face remained pallid, and after making a couple of steps backwards, he suddenly decided to run away, with his tail between his legs, figuratively speaking.
The other students that had gathered around also remained silent and slowly dispersed once the situation had resolved.
Well, and here I hoped to make some new connections… What a shame… Well, the year hasn't started yet; these are just classes for people like me who are behind the… ah, I don't even want to think about it.
"Ron, what do I do about this? Is there a way to heal it in the school, or should I bring another demonic artifact with me…? Ah, right, they are forbidden here…" As I turned around to face Ron, I saw my maid on the ground, wrestling with the other maid.
My bodyguard, with her incredibly thin knives, was trying to gouge out the eyes of the other maid currently pinned on the ground.
"Stop! Stop! I don't want to see more blood here; the whole room is going to stink like shit at this rate. Just let it go… Fuck, you see? This is why I wanted to know your name! I don't even know what to call you!" I shouted as I kicked my maid away from the one pinned on the ground.
In return she instinctively tried to stab me; she missed me by an inch but still managed to cut through my loose pants.
Holy shit, have you gone crazy? What are you, a feral cat?
As soon as she was freed, the other masked maid crawled away at lightning speed to the corner of the classroom. It took her some time to gather the courage to stand up.
"Young master."
"I don't give a damn about what you have to say; I just don't want to see any more of this. I'm tired of this awful smell tainting my nose." I said to her.
Mph! How annoying! This was supposed to be my perfect day. How could it all go so wrong? I swear I'll make that pig pay for this, even if I have to bully for the entire next year…
"Ehm, Lucifer?" Ron tapped twice on my shoulder to get my attention; I had completely forgotten about him.
He was fidgeting his fingers awkwardly as he seemed to be in an uncomfortable situation.
"What's up?" I asked him without turning around.
"The infirmary is closed, but if you go to the principal, maybe he could open it for you." He whispered in my right ear; his voice was trembling for no apparent reason.
"Thanks a lot, and where would I find the principal?" I then asked.
My bodyguard's face was left with lots of scratches; she was injured all over, but all of those injuries were slowly disappearing, closing on their own.
A healing factor, huh? That would certainly be extremely convenient to have at times like… Fuck, blood is slowly clogging my nostrils again. Fuck, was it his fist or his rings that did this to me?
Ron, in the meantime, had walked and was now waiting in front of the door of the classroom.
Oh, right, sorry, I keep getting distracted. Right, we need to go to the principal to open up the infirmary.
"I think it's better if I guide you there; people will think strangely of you if Ron's the one accompanying you." Lyjah said to us, As soon as I got out of the classroom, he was waiting outside.
"Why?" I asked.
"Uhm… Things here can get pretty chaotic, as you saw earlier, and Ron isn't high enough in the rankings to avoid trouble coming your way." He explained as he began walking on his own in the long and now empty hallway.
Huh? The people of the upper cities sure are strange. Why would they hyperfixate on ranks? No, that's just something everybody does. Even back at my previous school, the kids flocked to me because I came from a higher-ranked family than theirs… Certain things never change, do they?
It was the first time someone didn't back down immediately as soon as they saw my peculiar hair color. So it was a novel experience, an annoying but novel one.
I wonder how many people here can afford to treat me in such a manner? If they do, they must surely be quite powerful; otherwise, it simply wouldn't make any sense.
"What are you thinking about?" Lyjah asked me as he was dragging Ron along with his arm wrapped around his neck.
"Nothing much, I was just comparing the environment." I responded.
"Oh, right , you came from the surface… and you've also recently been in the Fracture… So how were they? Out of the three, how would you rank those places?" He asked me, and this time, instead of keeping his nonchalant attitude, he seemed genuinely curious to get an answer out of me.
"Ah, really… Well… It's tough to say, really; each place has its own…" I didn't remember much of the time I stayed in the fracture, so I was trying to gather every bit of memory I had of that place.
"Haaa! Who am I kidding? In terms of beauty, I would rank the upper cities first, the surface second, and Fracture last." I confessed.
"But the food there is incredible; you would never guess something so bland and colorless could taste so… so mind-blowing…" At the very least I still remembered that.
It was one of the few good things about the place…
Now everything tasted like a piece of cardboard with different textures, sour food felt like ingesting a bunch of needles, and spicy food set my throat on fire, but for the rest, I couldn't taste it anymore.
"Interesting, I never thought I'd hear something like that from you, especially since—" Our pleasant conversation was interrupted by a student who bumped into Lyjah.
The student was running in the middle of the hallway, carrying with himself a bunch of bricks for some reason, and when he crashed into Lyjah, they both fell on the ground; those bricks crushed Ron's feet.
He surprisingly refrained from cursing out loud at the clumsy guy who had just broken his foot, while Lyja was obsessively looking around.
"Are you okay?" I asked the guys to help him get up.
"Sorry!" He immediately began apologizing profusely, bowing his head and picking back up his many bricks.