My legs didn't hurt.
That was the problem.
For twelve years in the previous timeline, and two days in this one, my legs had always hurt. A dull, background thrum of malnutrition, old injuries, and the crushing weight of existing in a world that wanted me dead.
Now, walking across the Academy grounds, I felt... buoyant.
It was disgusting.
Every step was too light. The cobblestones didn't jar my knees. The air flowed into my lungs without that familiar hitch in the chest. Isolde's "remedial training"—the hammer, the centipede, the breaking and resetting—had worked. She had turned me into a high-performance vehicle for villainy.
I hated it. I felt like a fraud. A villain should limp. A villain should struggle.
I checked my wrist.
Life Force: 73:40:15
Seventy-three hours. I was practically immortal.
"Don't get used to it," I muttered to a passing squirrel. The squirrel ignored me, which was the only honest interaction I'd had all morning.
I needed to lower that number. I needed to spend some of this unearned vitality on something truly, undeniably scummy.
I turned left, away from the pristine main quad, toward the West Sector.
The West Sector smelled of burnt hair, ozone, and desperation. It was where the Academy hid its mistakes. The "F-Class" training grounds. The place where the sons of minor barons and the daughters of wealthy merchants who bought their way in were sent to wave sticks at straw dummies until they either quit or exploded.
Perfect target, I thought. Bullying the weak. There is no spin for this. No political corruption to expose. No secret assassins to accidentally kill. Just kicking a puppy.
I adjusted my black collar. I practiced my sneer in the reflection of a window. It looked genuine. It looked like the face of a man who would steal candy from a baby and then charge the baby a consulting fee.
I stepped into the training yard.
It was a sad sight.
About twenty students were scattered around the dirt field. Their uniforms were ill-fitting. Their wands were cheap wood. One boy was trying to cast a basic Ignis spell, but instead of a fireball, his wand was just burping small puffs of grey smoke.
Pathetic.
It reminded me of me.
The anger flared up instantly—hot, acidic, and familiar. It wasn't just contempt for them; it was contempt for the reflection. I knew that struggle. I knew that desperate, sweating, red-faced attempt to make the universe obey you when you had no talent.
I marched over to the boy.
He was short, round, and sweating so much his glasses were sliding off his nose. He was gritting his teeth, shaking his wand like a thermometer.
"Hnnngh!" the boy groaned.
Puff. Another smoke ring.
"Stop," I said.
The boy jumped. He spun around, dropping his wand in the dirt. He saw me. He saw the black Valerius suit. He saw the face that had been on the news yesterday as the "Hero of the Archives."
"L-Lord Valerius!" He scrambled to pick up his wand. "I... I wasn't loitering! I was training!"
"You call that training?" I asked. My voice was cold. I kicked his wand. It skittered across the dry earth. "I've seen chimneys with more magical talent than you."
The boy flinched. Tears welled up in his eyes.
Good. Cry. Give me the points.
"I... I'm trying to visualize the flame," the boy stammered. "The instructor said to imagine a warm hearth..."
"A warm hearth?" I laughed. It was a jagged, ugly sound. "That's why you're failing. Magic isn't a cozy blanket, you turnip. Magic is a wild animal that wants to eat your face."
I looked around. The other failures had stopped their pathetic drills. They were watching. A captive audience.
Double down. Humiliate them all.
"Look at you," I announced, spreading my arms. "The dregs. The refuse. You think polite thoughts and expect power? You think if you ask the mana nicely, it will come out to play?"
I walked up to the round boy. I leaned in until our noses were inches apart.
"You want fire?" I whispered. "Don't imagine a hearth. Imagine your house burning down with you inside it. Imagine the heat peeling the skin off your back. Imagine the anger of losing everything."
The boy stared at me, trembling.
"Force it," I snarled. "Don't guide it. Choke it. Grab the mana by the throat and squeeze until it screams."
I grabbed his wrist. I jammed his wand back into his hand.
"Do it," I commanded. "Or get out of my sight and go be a farmer."
The boy looked at his wand. He looked at me. He looked terrified.
But fear is a fuel. I knew that better than anyone.
He closed his eyes. He didn't look peaceful anymore. He looked panicked. He looked like he was drowning. He gripped the wand so hard his knuckles turned white.
"Fire!" he screamed.
It wasn't a chant. It was a plea for survival.
WHOOSH.
It didn't burp smoke.
A jet of crimson flame, three meters long and roaring like a jet engine, erupted from the cheap wooden tip. It wasn't a controlled fireball. It was a flamethrower.
It blasted the straw dummy ten feet away. The dummy didn't just catch fire; it disintegrated. The force of the recoil knocked the boy onto his ass.
Silence.
The smell of scorched straw and ozone filled the yard.
The boy sat there, staring at the pile of ash. He looked at his hands. He looked at me.
"I..." he whispered. "I did that?"
"It was messy," I sneered, trying to salvage the villainy. "It was uncontrolled. You nearly burned your own eyebrows off. Disgraceful."
I waited for the system notification. Bullying. Verbal Abuse. Causing Distress.
The boy slowly stood up. He wasn't crying anymore.
He looked at me with eyes that shone like two stars.
"You..." He swallowed. "You taught me."
"I insulted you!" I yelled.
"The instructor told me to be calm," the boy said, his voice rising with excitement. "He told me to find balance. But you... you told me the truth. You told me to use my anger."
He dropped to his knees.
"Thank you, Master Valerius!"
The other students were moving now. They swarmed closer, like zombies who had smelled brains.
"Lord Valerius," a girl with a lisp pushed forward. "My water shield... it's like wet tissue paper. Tell me! How do I make it strong?"
"You're weak!" I shouted at her. "You're soft! You think water is gentle? Water drowns people! Imagine holding your enemy's head under a river until the bubbles stop!"
The girl's eyes went wide. She turned to a training post. She screamed.
A blade of water, pressurized to the point of being a saw, slashed out. It cut the wooden post in half cleanly.
"It works!" she shrieked. "I have to be a psychopath! It works!"
Narrative Deviation Detected.Action: Verbal Abuse / Psychological Torment.Interpretation: Unorthodox High-Efficiency Instruction.Result: The Awakening of the F-Class.
I stared at the text. My knees felt weak.
"No," I whispered. "Stop it. Stop succeeding!"
"Master!" The round boy grabbed my leg. "Please! We are trash! Teach us how to burn!"
"Get off me!" I tried to shake him off. "I am not your master! I am a bad person! I am trying to hurt your feelings!"
"He's testing our resolve," a tall, gangly boy whispered. "He wants to see if we have the guts to embrace the darkness."
"We do!" they cheered.
I backed away. There were twenty of them now. They had that look—the look of fanatics. The look of people who had been ignored their whole lives and had just been handed a loaded gun.
"Listen to me!" I pleaded. "I am using you! I am venting my own frustration!"
"Yes!" they chanted. "Vent! Use us! Make us strong!"
I turned and ran.
I sprinted out of the West Sector, my new lungs pumping air efficiently, my reforged legs carrying me away from the monster I had just created.
Behind me, I heard the sound of explosions. I heard manic laughter.
[MENTORSHIP ESTABLISHED][SUB-FACTION CREATED: THE DISCIPLES OF DARKNESS][REWARD: -2 HOURS (Accidental Philanthropy)]
Life Force: 71:40:15
I stopped behind a large oak tree near the faculty gardens, leaning against the bark, gasping.
"Two hours," I wheezed. "I lost two hours. And now I have a cult. Why? Why is the universe like this?"
I slid down the tree trunk.
Above me, in the high branches of the oak, leaves rustled.
I looked up.
Nothing. Just shadows.
But the back of my neck prickled. The hairs on my arms stood up. It wasn't the System. It wasn't the Life Force drain.
It was the feeling of being watched by a predator that had found something interesting.
[LOCATION: THE OAK TREE - UPPER BRANCHES]
Lirien, Princess of the Great Forest and Captain of the Royal Guard, lowered her binoculars (a magical artifact that looked like two brass tubes taped together).
She sat perched on a branch fifty feet in the air. Her balance was absolute. She blended into the dappled sunlight so perfectly she looked like a trick of the light.
She opened her notebook.
It was a small, leather-bound book filled with precise, elegant handwriting.
Subject: Caelus von Valerius.Observation #4.
She licked the tip of her quill.
Method of Instruction: Psychological Trauma.Effectiveness: 100%.Time to Result: Immediate.
She looked down at the figure of Caelus slumping against the tree roots. He looked miserable. He looked like he hated himself.
"Interesting," she murmured. Her voice was like wind chimes in a graveyard.
In the Great Forest, magic was taught through songs, patience, and centuries of meditation. It was slow. It was boring.
Caelus had walked into a yard of failures, insulted their ancestors, told them to imagine murder, and turned them into weapons in under five minutes.
Lirien's lips curled into a smile that showed too many teeth.
"Efficiency," she whispered. "The humans finally produced something efficient."
She wrote one last line in the notebook.
Hypothesis: Subject operates on a philosophy of 'Weaponized Hatred.' Potential application for Royal Guard recruitment? Must observe further.
She snapped the notebook shut.
She didn't climb down. She simply stepped off the branch and vanished into the wind, leaving only the faint scent of pine and old blood in the air.
[LOCATION: THE CAFETERIA - LUNCH]
I sat at a table in the far corner. I had chosen it because it was near the garbage disposal. It felt appropriate.
I had a plate of grey mash and a single, sad sausage.
I stared at the sausage.
"You understand me," I told it.
"Caelus."
I didn't look up. "Go away."
A tray slammed down next to mine. It contained a steak. A whole, glistening, medium-rare steak.
Sylvia sat down.
"Eat," she said.
"I'm not hungry."
"You lost life force," she said casually, cutting a piece of her own steak. "I saw the notification flare on your wrist. You did something 'good' again, didn't you?"
"I tried to bully them," I whispered, burying my face in my hands. "I told them to imagine burning their houses down. And they thanked me. They called me Master."
Sylvia chewed slowly. She swallowed.
"F-Class?" she guessed.
"Yes."
"They're desperate," she said. "Desperate people don't care about kindness. They care about results. You gave them results."
She stabbed a piece of steak and held it to my mouth.
"Eat. You need the protein. Your new bones are heavy."
I looked at the fork. I looked at her eyes. They were grey, calm, and terrifyingly possessive.
"I hate you," I said.
"I know," she smiled. "Open up."
I opened my mouth. She fed me the steak.
It was delicious. Which made it worse.
"Someone is watching us," Sylvia said quietly, not looking around.
"Who?"
"Foreigner. Elf."
I froze mid-chew.
"Why?"
"Don't know," Sylvia said, picking up her napkin to wipe a speck of sauce from my chin. "But if she comes closer, I'll clip her ears."
I swallowed the steak. It felt like a stone in my stomach.
A cult of failure students. A stalker regressor swordswoman. And now an Elf.
"I just want to be a villain," I whimpered.
"Maybe tomorrow," Sylvia said soothingly. "Have a potato."