***
Arthur's POV
'Ah... I'm going to get bullied here too.'
No one helped .
Not even Ava.
I thought we had sothing.
Not friendship, but at least sothing closer than strangers.
We survived that test together.
We died together!
And I helped her!
I saved her...
Without , she would've been the first to die under that fire.
But where was she now?
Good deeds were supposed to be repaid, weren't they? Smack!
I got hit again. By the three students in front of .
Those three were Max's goons.
They were already annoyed with for so reason, but when they saw approach Ava...
Smack!
Yeah.
This began.
Now, I'm in an empty classroom, getting clobbered like usual.
'Nothing's changed from before.'
'Only the people doing the bullying.'
'At first, it was family. Now? It's my very own classmates.'
My brain skipped through it. Their insults fell on deaf ears. Their hits reached an unfeeling body.
I didn't want to give them the satisfaction of winning.
At least that, I held control over. Though... it never seed like it.
My mind continued to churn through that ti...
'Why aren't the professors helping?'
Smack!'
'Are these caras useless?
'I bet they're laughing at my sorry state right now.'
Oh, they were.
Or rather, it was one professor.
He was responsible for our class.
The one we t today...
Emir.
He was at the holo-screen near the front desk.
Watching with a smile.
Was he goading ?
No... that wasn't sothing a professor would do.
'He w-wants to fight back!
'Yes, he wants to see what I'm made of!'
***
Third Person POV
Arthur tried to fight back against them. He really did. He tried standing up, he tried deflecting
his attacks. He tried many things.
And all of them were scrutinized under his professor's gaze.
A trembling gaze.
Why?
Well...
Arthur failed miserably.
A few lucky 'wheel' spins didn't help him.
They only prolonged his suffering.
Emir didn't interfere. He only struggled.
Yes, he struggled to hold himself back.
He wanted to get a few kicks in, too!
But unfortunately, caras were around. They prevented him from participating in this 'fun activity.'
To top it all off, he couldn't show himself oblivious to whatever was happening around him
for too long.
So he stepped in while letting out a few chuckles.
The bullies finally noticed his presence.
|| ||
And a few words flowed through the air:
"You three will et in my office."
"Check your bracelets; I'll send the ti later."
Emir then turned to the door, gesturing for them to leave.
But a screaming voice stopped his actions:
"You impure commoner bastard!"
Ah...
Not everyone was smart in this world.
Or rather, the smart generation wasn't theirs.
Those that grew up in the latest one were...
Unfortunate.
Yes, misfortune plagued them for living so easily.
Emir, who showed no visible reaction, asked without looking back:
"What did you just say?"
Hearing no reply, he turned around and walked towards the dumbest of the three.
"C'mon."
"Say that again."
"..."
With every step, Emir spewed out his snake-like poison:
"No? You can do it. C'mon, say it."
"....."
He had to hear his words again.
"Say it. Say it. C'mon, say it."
|| ||
If not, his killing intent, which had begun to drown the place, would kill the students before
The reached them.
"Say it, say it... I SAID, SAY IT AGAIN!"
"..MONER BASTARD!"
And finally, he answered.
Then all the killing intent suffocating that student...
Disappeared.
This caused his fear-stricken face to show slight relief.
Emir then raised his right hand, causing him to flinch.
"You're right."
And then it fell...
"Huh?"
Softly landing on the bully's trembling shoulder.
"You didn't lie. What you said is true. Unlike you of the pure Elite..."
He patted him.
"I am but a commoner... However, here..."
He pointed downwards.
"Here it's different."
"In this academy, I am a professor and you are a student. Nothing else."
"So your statent challenges my authority as a professor, and for that, you deserve
punishnt!"
"I didn't-"
"But..."
Emir cut him off, inching his face closer to the bully's ear.
"If you continue your 'conversations' with your new friend, I'll consider this matter unseen.
Is that understood?"
The bully stepped back in surprise, and only after understanding his words did he continuously nod, wanting nothing more than this to be over.
Emir let out a dark chuckle and then gestured for them to leave the room.
Terrified, they heeded his unspoken demand and rushed out of there, leaving behind a
speechless Arthur.
He then approached his student, kneeled slightly, and pulled him to his feet.
Only then did Emir see Arthur for the first ti.
An average-looking kid.
Well, mostly the face.
His other features certainly weren't.
Pale, with dium-length white hair and golden eyes.
The boy didn't look like any of this world.
Maybe that was due to his lineage.
But that didn't matter to Emir.
He only saw the contrast between their appearances.
After the boy stood on his feet, his professor gave him a few pats on the head.
Arthur flinched, seemingly feeling pain.
Yet it only lasted a mont.
And in that mont...
[No...]
Lyra realized.
She finally realized what had happened.
She understood how close their relationship ca to its potential end.
Such a thing brought her sorrow deeper than any that she felt before.
[I... I'm sorry, I just didn't--]
[It's fine. I don't mind it.] Their conversation stopped at that.
Emir might truly not have cared about what happened.
But Lyra couldn't possibly know, because her brainwashed self wasn't what mattered.
What mattered was the implication that such a thing was possible.
Maybe he knew of it beforehand, and this only served as a reminder.
She couldn't possibly know... Without him telling her, of course.
Yet it appeared that he had no intention to do so, at least not for the ti being.
"I need you to fight back, Arthur..."
Emir spoke, ending the weird silence that began after his pat.
"I want to help, but the academy doesn't allow us to coddle you students."
Arthur looked exacerbated, his eyes twitching.
"But I can't do anything!"
"It's the sa everywhere—"
Smack!
His words died out as Emir slapped him across the face, causing his neck to twist to the right.
"Your future is that of a soldier... Arthur."
The protagonist looked back at Emir with anger.
"Why-"
He got slapped again.
"But-"
Smack!
"I—"
Smack!
"...You-"
Smack!
"Fuck! STOP IT."
Emir's hand paused just before reaching Arthur's now bruised face.
"Do you understand?"
The student appeared to have learned as he quietly nodded.
As his educator, Emir was proud. He taught him a valuable lesson today.
Slaps to the face did indeed hurt.
Oh, and that it was best to rely on oneself instead of others.
In most cases, at least.
"Good, I'll see you next class then."
Emir left the room with a smile.
He definitely didn't slap him for fun. It was to teach.
Only that.
Yes.
'Now let's go get introduced.'
...
[Welco to the ninth floor, Sir Emir.]
"Thank you, Brain."
Emir replied as he stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby.
"Mind telling where the cara feed is sent?"
[Rank Identification: Privileged, SS Security Clearance, Access Accepted to Level 2.]
A green-colored hologram suddenly materialized before him.
It was a tiny, spherical blob of...
'...a Sli?'
[Follow .]
The holographic creature left a trail of gunk in its wake.
'Oh, maybe that's why.'
Emir chuckled and walked after it.
They made their way through a long hall bathed in blue, conversing between themselves.
"So, Brain, what do you do around here?"
[That would take approximately one hundred and ten years to verbally explain. Is that fine
with you?]
"What do you think?"
[You don't want to listen to it.]
"I don't."
[A summary then?]
"How long would that take?"
[Ten hours.]
"...And?" [You don't want that either.]
"Why?"
[It's still too long.] "Correct, now what do you think I want?"
[To check the caras.]
"No, ah, whatever."
Emir gave on talking with it and looked around.
The source of said blue light were big glass chambers that housed legions of servers on each
side of the hall.
The transparent walls revealed circuitry and pulsating processors across nearly all tallic
fraworks. Soundless quantum computers in formation, a congregation of machines and servers interconnected by nothing but the network.
This behemoth of tech marvel worked without wires, speeding through countless data at
incomprehensible scales. Alongside them were normal, high-speed computers that maintained consistency in all
departnts.
One did not use a nuke to kill a cockroach, and one did not need a quantum computer to do
basic
math.
Quantum computers were simply a further advancent of everything database and
simulation-related.
The transistors in those machines allowed in Qubits instead of Bits, which were zeros, and
ones. The reason for such change was that if the transistors shrank to the size of only a few atoms, electrons couldn't be controlled and would pass through the transistors due to quantum tunneling.
So a simple upgrade wasn't possible, an entire change was needed.
A different machine altogether.
One that could even teleport humans. Though without Aether, the only teleportation possible
would've been where the original body was destroyed and copy-pasted to the location selected. A fatal, unnecessary wonder, but a wonder nonetheless.
Such things and more were all created after the discovery of the fifth state of matter in space.
It wasn't 'Plasma,' nor 'Quark-Gluon Plasma', a liquid-like state plasma. What it was was a
'Bose-Einstein Condensate.'
A quantum object that neared Absolute Zero.
'Amon sure has outdone himself...'
He cracked a grin as he stopped his mind from going too deep into the black hole nad
science.
His gaze then shifted from the inner workings of the place to sothing closer.
A few holographic displays hovered above so of the consoles that had escaped the mass of
tech behind the walls.
They projected complex data charts and streaming algorithms, which added to the already
high-tech sanctum.
It truly seed that the owner of this place loved it to be sleek.
'Impressive... really impressive.'
Emir liked what they had done here quite a bit.
It matched what he wished for in his base of operation.
His ho.
While he didn't particularly need any of this as he had Lyra...
That family of his wasn't privy to such a privilege.
They had Lyra's help at tis. But that was the thing. 'At tis.' Sure she hung around the
house or the company, but whenever Emir needed her, that's where she would go. She
couldn't work on multiple spaces at super high capacity at once. After all, her computing power was limited.
This setup on the other hand... It had everything Emir wanted.
Multiplied by a thousand.
Especially the cara system.
And now Emir stood before the entrance to the said cara system.
The monitoring room.
He looked towards it, waiting.
[Processing...]
[Level 2, accessed.]
The gates opened to show a large room.
Unlike before, it was relatively empty, only containing desks that outlined the walls.
[Please, sit down; e cara feeds will appear shortly.]
Brain approached a desk and circled its chair.
Emir laughed at how absurd this all looked, and then took his seat.
Then, not even a mont passed before multiple holo-screens projected themselves in front
of him.
They displayed students and non-teaching staff mbers present throughout the academy. [Professors are hidden?]
[Correct, level 3 privilege is required.]
[I see, thanks, Brain.]
[It's my pleasure, Sir Emir.]
'Now then...'
The holo-screens whirled to his neural network's command.
Snap!
The movent of these projections ceased as Emir focused on a particular screen.
In it, one could see a student with particular grey hair, bunched up into a ponytail.
Emir relaxed his posture, leaning back into his chair.
'Let's see how my students are fairing.'
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