The director gritted her teeth and found a seat nearby. She couldn’t do anything if both of us had agreed to fight. However, she clearly wasn’t happy at the moment.
“Derek, get off that platform before you get hurt.” She was strangely looking at me right before saying that warning. “And you.” She pointed at me. “Don’t move a single muscle.”
Derek frowned. “Get hurt? You think I’ll get hurt by fighting against this moron over there? Who do you take me for Alex?!”
Alexandra just shook her head. She tried to open her mouth a few times, but no words were coming out of it. She seemed to be hesitating about telling him about my strength, though I’m sure she must have received some orders from the Emperor to keep everything hidden.
In fact, that was probably the main reason why she was so worried about this fight. She knew about my strength.
“If you want to fight that much, then go for it.” She turned to look at me. “However, you can’t permanently injure him or kill him.”
A sigh escaped my mouth. There goes my plan to cut his tongue… She’s such a party kill.
However, there were other ways to make sure he remembered not to say anything against the soldiers who risked their lives in the war, and I would make sure he remembered this fight for the rest of his life.
While Alexandra kept looking at me while saying her warning, Derek suddenly laughed.
“Haha! Alex, don’t worry. I wasn’t planning on killing him, I just want him to remember who’s his superior. This fucking commoner.”
The director shook his head at this imbecile’s stupidity and frowned at his last words. “Commoner?”
She looked at me for a brief second, and I just put my index on my mouth, indicating to her not to say anything. It would be a lot funnier when Derek realized he was completely wrong about me. Just thinking about it makes me smile.
“Ah, whatever. Just don’t kill each other.”
Derek smiled, happy that the director accepted. “Now, no one can save you.”
We were a little far away from each other, so I didn’t quite understand what he said. “What did you say?” I shouted. “You need to speak louder!”
“Now, no one can save you!”
“What did you say?!” I repeated again while laughing.
“You son of a bitch! You dare mock me?”
Right after saying that, I looked over at Darla, who couldn’t help but laugh at my taunts. She seemed to be enjoying the show, and I also made sure that she was as close as possible to see everything that might happen.
Oh, right. I forgot to warn her.
“Darla, if you ever see some sort of red aura being emitted from my body, you should close your eyes.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Ah, it won’t be as fun when that happens. Just trust me on this one, okay?”
She shrugged and nodded. She wasn’t sure why I had told her that, but she would understand soon enough. After all, I didn’t want one of my students to be traumatized before the semester began.
“Can anyone make a countdown?” I shouted over to the director.
The secretary, who hadn’t been too sure, answered me instantly, and the fight was finally about to start. I couldn’t wait to punish this son of a bitch. I didn’t use any of my weapons since I wanted the fight to last a little longer than one minute.
“Ready?” the secretary screamed.
“Yes,” we both answered in unison.
“3…2…1…Fight!”
And it was finally time to make him eat his words. Still, I took my time, slowly walking toward him while he ran as fast as he could in my direction.
I didn’t even put myself in a fighting position, both my arms were at my sides as I just smiled at him.
‘What should I start with…? Heaven-Defying punch? Back-breaking technique? Kick in the nuts?’
I wasn’t too sure how I wanted to beat him, so I decided to check out his fighting style. Within a few seconds, he got into close range.
He laughed. “You let me get into close range. You already lost.”
He swung his dagger with precise movements. However, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before as I gracefully dodged his strike with minimal movement. In fact, my movements were so precise that I thought I saw a few of my hair strands being cut off.
“I understand that you’re excited and all that, but if possible, could you not cut my hair? You see…I like how it looks.”
Seeing that I could still speak while dodging his attacks, he got even more annoyed and took things up a notch. His movements started getting faster as he added footwork to it. He tried to make me fall by putting his foot behind mine. However, let’s be honest, that’s the oldest trick in the book. Never in a million years would I fall for it.
I dodged another strike of his and just sighed.
“That’s all you can do? I thought this was the greatest Academy in the world. We might need to get a better close-range combat teacher.”
“Agrh! Shut your mouth!”
He was starting to get even more frustrated as his movements lost precision.
‘Ah…I so badly want to make a fool out of him. But let’s continue dodging. Though, I could show Darla a thing or two.’
As he continued to strike me down, I rummaged through my spacial pouch and grabbed the first dagger I could find.
“Alright. Look at my movements closely, and…uh, try to keep up.”
I made sure to shout that loud enough for Darla to hear because what I was about to show her would be useful with any kind of weapon. I would be showing her my footwork.
“First step to being good at fighting close range is footwork.”
My feet started moving on their own as I moved around Derek.
“H-How?”
“It looks as if he’s dancing around him. I can’t even see how he’s moving!”
I heard Darla’s voice and Alexandra’s, and it seemed they couldn’t grasp what I was showing them. I purposefully slowed down my movements for them to observe better, and slowly but surely, I could hear them being a little less confused about it. However, it still wasn’t good enough. None of them had mentioned the real reason I was able to move like this.
“You dare use me to teach others?!” Derek suddenly roared through the entire duel arena. His eyes were completely red with anger as he just stared at me.
I had seen eyes like this in the past. However, I had never thought I would see them within the Royal Academy.
His eyes…they looked like those of a demon.
‘Is that why the Emperor sent me here?’
