The attention was like a physical weight.
One of the bullies, the one who seed to be the ringleader with a smug, entitled tilt to his chin, grinned.
It wasn’t a friendly expression.
"Well, well, what do we have here?" he drawled, his voice dripping with false curiosity.
This was horrible. Exactly the scenario I’d wanted to avoid.
My plan of being an invisible, uninteresting passerby had spectacularly failed.
I paused, my forward montum halting.
I looked at them, keeping my face a carefully constructed mask of neutrality.
It’s not like I was scared or anything. Maybe I would have been if it was at my first day in the academy. But now?
After what I’d been through? All the training, fighting, claiming, killing, and almost dying.
These were just children playing at being tough.
No, the emotion curdling in my gut was pure, unadulterated annoyance.
I just hated being involved in sothing that doesn’t consign , that would waste my precious ti without offering any profit or advantage.
It was a pointless diversion.
But well, it consigned now. The spotlight was on, whether I wanted it or not.
So I might as well deal with it and get it over with. The fastest way out was through.
"Oh, hey," I said, my voice as normal and casual as possible, as if we’d just run into each other at a coffee shop. I gave a slight, non-committal nod.
The bully looked at , then at his gang, well, I could call them minions because he definitely looked like the leader.
The way they all looked to him for a cue confird it.
If he wasn’t in charge, he wouldn’t have been the one to step forward and address first, right?
That logic made quite so sense.
For a mont, there was silence. Then, as if on cue, they all burst out laughing.
It was a harsh, mocking sound that echoed in the hallway.
They laughed like I had said the most funniest joke of all ti, doubling over and slapping their knees.
Spare the flattering.
My one-word greeting apparently qualified as peak cody.
The leader soon stopped, almost instant.
His laughter cut off like a switched had been flipped.
His eyes, which had been crinkled with mirth, beca sharp and calculating.
His face settled into sothing almost like a frown, a look of predatory assessnt.
"Quite a friendly kid, aren’t you?" he said, his voice now low and devoid of its earlier mockery.
Kid?
The word replayed in my head.
Who did this idiot think he was? So ancient cultivation protagonist that was aged thousands of years old, condescending to a mortal?
We were probably the sa age. The sheer, unearned arrogance of it was almost impressive.
He was posturing, trying to establish dominance by pretending to be older.
It was a pathetic power play, and it was starting to seriously get on my nerves.
The boy walked towards , slowly.
Each step was a deliberate, asured click of his shoe on the polished floor, a performance ant to intimidate.
He was enjoying this, savoring the mont of having a new audience for his little show of power.
I just watched him co, my own expression carefully blank.
Inside, I was already calculating the angles, the distance, the potential outcos.
This was such a waste of energy.
He soon reached , and when he did, he didn’t shove or get in my face.
Instead, he did sothing infinitely more annoying.
He swung his arm around my neck in a faux-friendly gesture.
It was heavy and possessive, his grip just a little too tight to be comfortable.
I could sll cheap cologne and arrogance.
"Look at you, aren’t you a brave one," he said, his voice a low, right next to my ear.
The words were ant to be mocking, to make squirm.
I didn’t squirm. I just turned my head slightly to look at him, our faces uncomfortably close.
"Yes, I am," I answered, my voice flat. "I don’t see the reason to not be."
It was the simple, unvarnished truth. Being brave, or at least appearing fearless, was often the most efficient path.
Showing fear to a predator like this was just asking for a longer, more drawn-out confrontation.
A part of my brain, the part that wasn’t annoyed, was genuinely puzzled.
Did all these guys seriously not know ?
I wasn’t exactly seeking fa, but I thought I’d gained a little reputation after the ranking assessnts.
I’d perford so few cool combos against the combat dummy robots, moves that were more about precision and timing than raw power.
I was rank 387, which practically made one of the strongest normal humans in the academy without a designated ability or technique. At the ti, anyway.
Well, I had both now, and my rank would be undoubtedly higher than when I was assessed.
But all of those facts, the rank, the reputation, clearly didn’t matter to this boy right beside .
His ignorance was either a shield or a weapon.
Maybe he is totally ignorant, just a blowhard who doesn’t pay attention to anyone but himself.
Or probably didn’t do his assessnt the day I did...
Or, a more concerning thought surfaced, maybe he is a high rank.
Soone so confident in his own power that he doesn’t bother to learn the faces of those beneath him.
The thought of him being a high rank made straighten almost imperceptibly.
I couldn’t afford to underestimate anyone if I wanted to win.
Underestimation was a luxury that got people killed, or at the very least, embarrassingly beaten in a academy hallway.
I had to be prepared for anything.
The leader’s face beca even more serious.
He seed to also sense the shift in my posture, the lack of fear in my response.
He was trying to read , to figure out if my calmness was stupidity or confidence born of strength.
Looking at the faint confusion in his eyes, I realized the guy is more stupid than he actually was arrogant.
He couldn’t figure out, and it was irritating him.
He broke the silence with another laugh, but this one was shorter, harsher.
It was a sound ant to cover his own uncertainty.
"Are you that ignorant?" he asked, his voice gaining a bit of its previous bluster. "Do you know who I am?"
It was such a cliché line. The kind of thing a cartoon villain says right before the hero knocks him out.
I felt a surge of pure, unadulterated annoyance.
This wasn’t even a worthy obstacle; it was a tedious trope.
Without missing a beat, I looked him dead in the eye, my face utterly serious.
"Your mom didn’t tell you?" I answered.
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