The two halves of the Beast slowly slid apart from each other, landing on the ground in either direction. Damaged organs spilled onto the ground between them.
Within that pile, sothing twitched, only to be imdiately impaled by a blade.
"Annoying as ever."
I recognized that fra, and the voice that ca from it. Barely. My chest devoured most of my senses.
Kaito.
Just then, the man turned to face , as if just noticing .
"So you’re the Miss’s chosen."
The man pulled his blade from the pile, flicking the blood away and sheathing the blade in one smooth motion.
The sensation of a blade against my neck vanished instantly.
I heard footsteps as the figure slowly drew closer. I tried speaking, only to cough up more blood. I could barely breathe; my chest burned as though a fla was being stoked in it with each breath.
Kaito stopped right above , looking down at with a gaze that I could only describe as a mix of annoyance and mild disappointnt.
"How are you so weak?"
He said so like I wasn’t up against sothing above by a whole rank.
After multiple attempts, I barely managed to form a sentence, choking on my own blood.
"Khhow... *cough*...long were... you watchi—"
I broke into a coughing fit at the end. Unfortunately, not even that was enough to gain much sympathy from the man.
He glanced casually to the side before turning to face again.
"Since the mont you were ambushed."
"Fuuuuuc.... Faaahhh...."
My body gave up on before I could give form to my last thoughts.
’Fuck you.’
My consciousness slowly faded.
---
Kaito watched the kid beneath him go unconscious with a mildly bored look on his face. He’d expected a better showing, at least from the Miss’s chosen.
In the end, he could only sigh to himself. The results were exactly what he should’ve expected in the end. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen the limits of his abilities in class.
"He has good instincts at least. A bit of a brain too."
Just about every other thing was worthless.
The sound of the boy’s breath growing ever more shallow and difficult was finally enough to make him move.
He grabbed the cadet, Victor, by his collar before tossing him onto a shoulder. Given how short he was, there was barely any awkwardness in balancing him there.
The sudden movent made Victor’s breath dip further, to the point he was barely even breathing. The man wasted no ti in extracting a tallic syringe from his robe and stabbing it straight into the boy’s back.
Victor began coughing again. He hyperventilated, taking in multiple deep breaths, before slowly, yet steadily, his breath stabilized.
He was out of the red zone.
With that dealt with, Kaito glanced once again at his handiwork. A portion of the white walkway was now drenched red in the blood and organs of a forr cadet. It had already begun seeping into the grass field around it.
He wiped the system notification that announced his kill before turning to face the figures rapidly approaching him from a distance.
They were two. Cadets. They couldn’t be allowed to see that ss.
So he moved forward and t them halfway there. Although he was just walking, the distance he covered in each step far outpaced their sprint.
The cadets—he recognized them to be Rowan and Alexa—stopped in their tracks, sowhat spooked by the sudden appearance of his figure before them.
They were cadets of noteworthy talent. Especially Rowan; he’d achieved decent progress in a short ti. Especially for a commoner.
"I assu it’s about ti your classes started. What are you doing out here, cadets?"
Rowan spoke first, visibly weirded out by everything that had happened so far. Still, he kept his tone respectful.
"My apologies, Instructor Kaito. We were looking for..."
His voice trailed off as he finally saw Victor hanging off of Kaito’s shoulder. Concern crept into his voice.
"Is... is he alright?"
Kaito glanced at Victor before giving a light nod to the students.
"He is fine. There’s no need to worry. He just had a little accident; you can talk to him later."
"Is that blood?"
Alexa’s quiet voice spoke out this ti. There was still blood on his face, and through his uniform where the monster had nicked him.
"It is a flesh wound. Nothing to worry yourself about."
Rowan tried voicing his doubts.
"My apologies, Instructor, but—"
"He is fine, Cadet Rowan. That will be all. You can direct any further questions to him when you speak later. Now, I believe you have so classes to attend to."
Rowan still hesitated, glancing between Victor and the instructor before sighing and showing deference.
"Of course, Instructor. We will be heading back now. Please sir, can you ask him to contact us when he wakes up?"
"That can be done."
Rowan gave a light bow, and with that he left, taking Alexa along with him.
Though on the path back, he kept glancing over his shoulder at Kaito and Victor, until they were finally out of sight.
Kaito watched them leave impassively. Then he glanced at Victor’s sleeping face.
"At least he has so good friends."
With that, he stepped off the walkway and into the sea of grass, toward a seemingly random direction.
His work here was done; Alice would send soone to clean the ss up soon enough.
---
The sound of beeping beside slowly roused my consciousness from its restless slumber. The mont I consciously realized that I was awake, my hand imdiately shot up to clutch my chest.
To my surprise, there was no pain; breath flowed in and out without struggle.
’Surprise... why?’
That thought broke a dam in my mind, flooding it with the mories of the hunt, a skinwalker, machete, blood, and Kaito.
A cold sweat drenched my body as I forced it to calm down. My mind finally ford a proper thought.
’I’m alive.’
Before I could think beyond that, I heard a clear, almost ethereal woman’s voice beside .
"You’re finally awake."
It was Alice.
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