Looking at the picture sent by Braden triggered the agonizing memories of today's afternoon. He had been summoned by them a few hours ago, dragged behind the equipment shed like a dog to be disciplined.
They had beaten him severely, their fists and kicks raining down until his body was a canvas of bruises and his consciousness began to fade.
Violence... Violence wasn't a big deal. He was used to violence.
He gritted his teeth and endured like he always did, trying his best to deny them any sense of satisfaction.
But today, the pain was just the beginning. What followed the pain was healing.
Just as Ethan thought the torment was about to end for the day, they had produced expensive healing potions—items ordinary students certainly couldn't afford to waste—and forced them down his throat.
He felt the wounds on his skin close in real time, not with relief, but with dawning terror. He knew them well enough to know they weren't saving him.
They were resetting him. Once his skin was whole, the beating began anew.
This cycle of destruction and restoration repeated several times until the physical pain was eclipsed by a crushing psychological weight. After a certain point, he stopped feeling like a human. Instead, he felt like he was their toy, something they could break and fix at their leisure.
He remembered the sound of their inhumane laughter ringing in his ears. It echoed in the hollow space where his dignity used to be.
What had he done to deserve this?
They had laughed as they watched the light slowly die in his eyes, cackling with glee as the tears of a broken spirit carved paths through the dirt on his cheeks.
And just when he thought that life couldn't get any worse, he was proven wrong. The final degradation—he was stripped of his clothes, leaving him exposed and shivering from what was to come.
The snapping sound of the shutters of the cameras on their phones reached his ears. He was forced into humiliating postures and treated like a circus animal.
They mocked the size of his manhood, their jeers piercing deeper than any physical blow, and took close-up photos to immortalize the moment.
Back in the present, Ethan stared down at the glowing screen of his phone. The image loaded fully. It was a picture of himself from that afternoon, stark naked, with his privates exposed for the beholder.
But to the him right now, the most troubling part wasn't his nudity; it was his face. The boy in the photo looked utterly defeated. He hadn't even tried to cover himself. His expression was one of absolute surrender, a pathetic mask of despair that screamed he had given up on being human.
A text message bubbled up directly beneath the photo.
"You don't want this premium material to spread to the rest of the school, do you? Then, you should know what to do. You should've known your place, right from the start."
If this were the Ethan from ten minutes ago, the sheer weight of this threat would have crushed him. He wouldn't have had the strength to even read the words. The shame alone would have been enough to send him sprinting off the edge of the building to escape the inevitable nightmare.
But as the wind whistled across the rooftop, something strange became undeniably clear.
The current Ethan felt completely different about the situation. Where there should have been panic and despair, there was only a hollow, detached silence. Where there should have been tears, there was only cold calculation.
"Childish."
The word slipped past his lips in a decisive tone.
As his eyes rolled over Braden's "threat" once more, he couldn't help but scoff. It was ridiculous. To think that he had nearly thrown himself into the abyss over something so trivial?
It was simply absurd!
The social hierarchy of a high school, the opinions of mere teenagers, the fear of public humiliation—all of it seemed so much smaller now compared to before. It was like looking at an ant trying to intimidate a giant.
"A waste of time," he muttered, his thumb hovering over the delete button.
Why should he even engage with this? Why should he dance to Braden's tune? Whether he obeyed the demands or sought revenge, the result would be the same: he would be squandering precious energy on something that offered zero benefit.
There were better things to focus on. He was alive. He was a 1st Circle Magician!
The world was vast, filled with power waiting to be claimed and mysteries waiting to be unraveled. He needed to first analyze his current condition, figure out why his personality had shifted so drastically, and start training his abilities.
He wasn't going to waste any time playing games with a bunch of insecure bullies.
It was right then. The moment he made the decision to ignore Braden completely…
CRACK!
His world fractured.
"Argh!"
Ethan gasped, his knees buckling as he collapsed onto the rough gravel of the roof. His hands flew to his temples, pressing hard against his skull.
He immediately realized that this wasn't just a simple headache. Calling it a headache would be an insult to the agony tearing through him.
This was something else entirely. It was a lance of pure, molten torture skewering his very essence. It didn't feel like a biological misfire of neurons; it felt more like his soul was being ripped apart at the seams.
"Gah... hhh..."
He gritted his teeth so hard he thought they might shatter. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes—not from sadness, but from the sheer, blinding intensity of the sensation.
For various reasons, Ethan was confident in his ability to tolerate pain. Even without his new personality, the old Ethan had been no stranger to it.
But this? This was utterly intolerable.
It was a primitive, screaming demand that bypassed his logic and assaulted his core. It was a warning. Suffering in its purest form.
Why? His mind screamed, scrambling for a cause amidst the white-hot pain. What triggered this?
He analyzed the timeline. The inexplicable pain had struck the exact second he decided to dismiss Braden completely.
"Is it... him?" Ethan wheezed, forcing his mind to focus on the image of his tormentor. He forced himself to think about Braden, about the humiliation, about the 'unfinished business.'
Only then, the agony receded slightly.
The blinding spike of torture dulled into a heavy, throbbing pressure. It was still there, lurking like a predator in the dark, but it was now bearable.
Ethan remained on his knees for a moment, panting heavily as the cold sweat on his forehead dried in the breeze. His eyes narrowed.
He stayed like that for several seconds, eliminating one possibility after the other.
"I see," he whispered, "Could that be it?"
Even now, he did not believe that he was a totally different person. Such a thing couldn't possibly be true! But what was true was that something within him had changed.
Right now, it seemed to him that the 'Ethan of yesterday'—the weak, broken boy who had stood on this ledge ready to die—wasn't completely gone.
It was merely a hypothesis, but it was the only one he could think of right now.
His old personality, or perhaps the fragments of his shattered psyche, still held some sway over this body. That pathetic, emotional version of himself refused to let this go. The unfairness, the humiliation, the deep-rooted fear!
There was a part of him that demanded a resolution.
"I need to deal with him? Is that it?" Ethan muttered to the empty air, testing the boundaries of the pain. "I can't move on until I fix this mess?"
The moment he voiced these thoughts, the intensity of the pain decreased even further, almost as if it was validating his thoughts.
"What a pain in the ass!"
He slowly climbed back to his feet, dusting the gravel off his trousers. As the consequences of the revelation slowly settled in, Ethan's expression turned grim.
He couldn't ignore Braden. If he tried to walk away from this problem, that mysterious, crippling agony would return to bring him to his knees. His own traumatic past seemed to be holding him hostage!
Ethan looked down at the phone he had dropped onto the ground. The picture of his humiliation was still on the screen.
He didn't truly care about the photo. He didn't care about his reputation amidst a bunch of high schoolers. But he did care about his own efficiency. And perhaps more importantly, he did not want to experience that horrifying pain ever again.
"Fine," Ethan muttered, staring at Braden's name while picking up his phone. "If you're going to be an obstacle on my path, then I have no choice."
He was forced to acknowledge the threat that Braden posed. Not out of fear or subservience, but out of necessity.
Only after he accepted this reality did the throbbing in his head finally settle into a quieter, more manageable hum.