Chapter: 716
It was a feint, and one that in Smiley’s eyes, was far too obvious.
They took a step forward and lunged with a direct stab aimed at his chest.
Smiley shook his head, giving the student a disdainful look. He thought to punish this fool for such a pitiful attempt.
He easily side-stepped and got closer as he pulled the student’s arm.
The student stumbled forward as Smiley stabbed his wooden sword right into his throat.
His throat was easily pierced and blood ran down the wooden sword.
The poor student’s eyes widened, dropping his own sword and falling to the ground as he gargled on his own blood for a moment before his health points drained and recovered him; he was looking at Smiley in fear the whole time.
Smiley only looked back with a blank stare, one that seemed to say ‘your life is worthless.’
“Next.” he said emotionlessly, as if it never happened.
The next student stepped up and began to spar with him, while the other students whispered.
“Why do they call him smiley if he never smiles?”
“I don’t know… just don’t call him by his own name.”
“Matheson?” the student replied, but whispering a little too loudly.
Even during his current fight, Smiley glared at the student who said his name; the student immediately tensed up and recoiled in fear, hoping to not be noticed. Unfortunately…
“You’re next.” Smiley pointed at the student who uttered his name before ending his fight in a few agile moves.
The student he pointed at wasn’t even in the queue of students there to spar with him, he was merely standing in the crowd and spectating.
A shiver went up his spine. He wanted to protest but knew that would only make it worse.
Over the next few minutes, the poor student was helplessly ravaged by Smiley’s wooden sword which slowly turned red.
Smiley was being used at the academy as, basically, a live-training dummy. Out of all the tasks he was made to do, this was where he could at least vent some of his frustration.
Unlike his former self, he didn’t speak very much, instead letting his sword do the talking.
Other duties included accompanying weaker mages and students in dungeons and doing paper work.
He had his flame rapier taken away from him, along with any other weapons he had, instead given a wooden sword as well as an cheap rapier for the dungeons.
Without his flame rapier, battles in dungeons were now much longer, much more gritty and tiresome, though it only served to make him a much more vicious fighter. His skills with the rapier were above his level, while secretly he practiced with mana.
Of course, he would only have given up his flame rapier after torture, however the academy simply used a girl with a type of love magic to force him to bring his sword out of his inventory and give it to him – though the girl used all her mana in the process as she contested with Smiley’s sheer will.
In all this, Smiley had not given up on escaping. While practicing with mana, he also covertly gathered information, and even knew that he was trapped in a mirror reality now.