Ch.236236 – A Mature Child

<236 – A Mature Child>

9 AM.

Normally, this would be the time for first period.

As I turned my steps toward a place without students to start another day of delightful blood collection, someone called out to me.

“Hey, little mouse!”

“Uncle Ocheon?”

“Where are you trying to go again?”

“I just have somewhere to be for a moment!”

“You say that, but you didn’t even participate in the desk-throwing event yesterday.”

“Ah, I forgot!”

“That’s a lie. There’s no way someone like you, who’s counted among the best memories in the Academy, would forget.”

Son Ocheon had come looking for me with determination.

His face showed a resolute expression that seemed to say, “If I let Oknodie go like this today, I’ll drink poison and die!”

“Are you feeling self-conscious? Because of those vermin saying bad things about you.”

“So what? I can miss a competition or two.”

“The you I know would never do that.”

“What do you know about me, Uncle Ocheon?”

“Lately, I’ve been thinking I might not know much about you. But I do know how much you love to play.”

Son Ocheon’s voice was filled with confidence.

“Stone collecting. Bug catching. Sandcastle building. Hide-and-seek.”

“!”

“You play around so much while others are training to death, yet you didn’t participate in desk-throwing? That’s impossible!”

Well, when he puts it that way, I have nothing to say.

It’s not like I was really playing though.

Take the sand digging, for example.

Hidden-trigger sandcastle building, where you find items hidden somewhere in the sand faster.

I worked hard building excellent castles because of the gimmick where treasure chests buried in the sand would rise into the sandcastle on their own, but it was misunderstood as just playing around.

“Then what was it? If it wasn’t play, did it have some other training purpose?”

“Ah, anyway. It’s none of your business, Uncle Ocheon!”

“Isabelle is worried about you.”

“Ah.”

“Did you know she’s been working hard making lunch boxes for you? She said she wanted to become a Dark Chef or something and experiment with various recipes, so I helped her collect all sorts of ingredients from the forest.”

“If she’d told me at the dormitory, I would have gone to find her earlier…”

“Are you saying this while still sneaking out through the ventilation ducts?”

Tch. For a monkey beastkin, he’s quite eloquent. I can’t refute him at all.

“Well, I understand you must have your reasons. So tell me.”

“…Do I have to?”

“If you don’t want to, you can watch how miserable Isabelle will be until the end of the sports festival, thinking you no longer want to eat the food she makes.”

Ugh… using such an underhanded method.

Pretending to be pitiful was my specialty!

But if it’s for Isabelle, I have no choice.

“Fine… I’ll tell you.”

Thinking of Isabelle’s distress, I whispered to Son Ocheon what I had been doing all this time.

“I’ve been collecting blood.”

“Blood?”

“With these.”

Transparency cancel.

At my signal, the mosquito squadron that had been flying around invisibly revealed themselves.

“Mosquitoes?”

“Yep.”

“You?”

“Yep.”

“Mosquitoes?”

I demonstrated for Son Ocheon, who kept asking in disbelief.

“Mosquito, bark!”

“Whaang!”

“Mosquito, sting!”

The mosquito squadron extended their sharp proboscises and repeatedly stabbed the pebble I pointed at.

Son Ocheon’s dumbfounded expression as he stared at the stone full of holes was worth seeing.

Since his reaction is good, should I show him one more service?

“Mosquito, bang!”

The mosquito squadron activated Bloody Boost and fired compressed blood like machine gun bullets toward the pebble, leaving red trajectories.

Son Ocheon stammered as he watched the pebble crumble to dust, unable to withstand the destructive power.

“So you used these to bite people?”

“Yep!”

“How many died?”

He was dead serious.

* *

When Son Ocheon was going on about mosquitoes, I thought he might have been bitten by one in his sleep and lost his mind, but seeing is believing, so I followed him and there really were mosquitoes.

And they were blood-thief mosquitoes that followed Oknodie’s orders, secretly approaching students to suck and steal their blood.

“Aren’t those poor things being mistreated?”

One knight department aspirant unconsciously detected the invisible mosquitoes and dodged their stings in succession.

This thoroughly angered the mosquitoes, who fired Bloody Missiles in rapid succession, causing the startled student to tumble down from the stinging sensation.

The mosquitoes quickly sucked blood from his wrist as he touched the ground.

I was speechless at the sight of the mosquitoes turning red.

It was a cunning hunting method, like primitive humans hunting mammoths or elephants with spears.

“More than the hunting method, I’m concerned about the targeted students. Look carefully.”

At Giselle’s attentive observation, Isabelle and Son Ocheon also realized something.

“They’re trying to harm other students.”

“That little mouse… she was protecting everyone?”

The girl they thought had run away because she was afraid of hearing people badmouth her was actually protecting everyone from behind.

Isabelle was already in tears.

Even Son Ocheon felt a lump in his throat as he watched Giselle patting Isabelle’s shoulder to comfort her.

“Oknodie, that’s enough. The Dark Society members and I will help take care of the rest, so go have some fun.”

“Huh? No way. This is more cost-effective!”

“Don’t talk about cost-effectiveness. Saying one person’s sacrifice makes everyone else happy is meaningless. If people can’t enjoy the sports festival without sacrificing a child like you, they should quit the Academy.”

“Fine. Then please check around Arcadia carefully. There are a lot of them around there.”

A second wave of emotion washed over them.

She was secretly protecting Arcadia, who was openly treated as a has-been!

Even Son Ocheon quietly turned his head and covered his eyes with his hand.

“?”

Isabelle took the confused Oknodie’s hand.

“Let’s go, Oknodie. There’s still the paper airplane throwing event that you like. Let’s do it together.”

“Do you want to?”

“Yes, I really want to.”

“Hehe. If Isabelle wants to, I guess I have no choice. I’ll play with you today as a special favor.”

As the two walked away, Giselle spoke softly.

“Mr. Son Ocheon. Catching the students that the mosquitoes were monitoring will require somewhat violent means. You might be disciplined if the student council catches you. Can you still help?”

“Of course. Don’t you see how pitiful that little mouse is? No matter how strong that small thing is, it breaks my heart to see her not knowing the joy of living. I’d welcome the chance to help like this.”

The two men made a promise.

They would somehow deal with the impure students that Oknodie had been marking.

* *

Paper airplane throwing competition arena.

Lower-class students who came hoping for an easy win were dumbfounded by the scene unfolding before them.

“Why are missiles coming out of paper airplanes?”

“Aaagh! My plane got shot down!”

“These guys have no sportsmanship… *sob* Did you really have to engrave flame bullet formulas on your planes?”

“Yeah, just escape with a triple acceleration formula.”

“Don’t you losers know how to engrave defensive formulas?”

Students faced a miserable competition that was more like competing with development products worth 10 billion in sales at what should have been a simple science practice field!

The spectacular flight show by skilled competitors whose limits seemed boundless became even more tense with Oknodie’s arrival.

“If non-senior students are already going wild like that, how good must Oknodie be?”

“Maybe it won’t be that bad? Oknodie might just be here to have fun.”

“Has anyone seen Oknodie participate in other events at this sports festival before?”

“I think this is the first time her face has appeared in an event listed in the information booklet, right?”

Individual events weren’t massive competitions where hundreds of students were lined up and thrown in all at once.

They competed in groups of 5 to 10 people at a time!

“Sigh. You guys just scatter whenever you see a strong kid.”

“I thought that flame magician Rozini would burn her own paper airplane first, but she burned everyone else’s and survived to take first place…”

“When it rains, you should take shelter first.”

Students were backing out of the participation line, reading the room.

Isabelle, who had entered the line holding hands with Oknodie, felt guilty.

“Sorry, Oknodie. We should have waited and observed a bit more before entering.”

“It’s okay. The longer I have to think about what formulas to engrave, the better.”

Isabelle felt even more apologetic.

Such a clever and kind-hearted child.

Despite having no competitors and everyone’s wary gazes that might make her feel intimidated, she doesn’t complain and instead comforts Isabelle with mature words.

It’s hard to tell who’s the child and who’s the adult here.

“Hey, first-year over there. Looks like you’re having trouble finding opponents. How about competing with us? We can have matches among ourselves if we mutually agree.”

While they were busy preparing formulas, an unfamiliar voice called out to them.

Greeting the two as they looked up from their paper airplanes were second-year students with emblems on their collars.