Chương 257: Teaching The New, But The Old Does Not Fester

Since it was supposedly the most secure place in the entire country, the Unwanted Presences were kept inside the 'House of Freedom'. It was nothing more than the repurposed royal palace… They had given it a nice name, but this meant that the leaders of today lived just as lavish a life as the royal court of the past, if not more opulent. Aesther truly is a bizarre place.

In any case, this place was clearly not all that secure since they let a steel monster accompanied by a flesh monster inside, and didn't even notice that I carried with me countless ghostly entities. It was a bit hard to take them seriously when they weren't capable of properly vetting the person who was in charge of training their 'last rays of hope'. As for the Unwanteds… They were… Well, let's say that they weren't that bad. They just have a tendency to question me and talk back, which I find most displeasing.

They were lucky that I couldn't talk. Otherwise, I would have been shouting at them all day, as most knight instructors did. Since I couldn't speak in this form without pulling some tricks that wouldn't be very efficient, and I had to write instructions on a board I carried around, or had to have Xlown say them for me, but she could only say what I had told her ahead of time when I wasn't in my knightly form. Such as when I was in the private quarters furnished to me alongside the job.

"Miss Maya… It's four in the morning…"

"I think I am going to puke""Where… Where are our shoes, Miss Maya?" I gestured to Xlown. My clown daughter no longer looked like a clown. She had modified her fleshy attire to look more like that of a fancy messenger, even making a hat with a feather for herself.

"Recruits! My Lady says that your shoes were taken away for the purposes of today's early-morning training!"

"That's… That's late-night training, not… This is definitely not morning in any capacity""Stop talking back, scrawny boy! Or do you want to get spanked in front of everyone? Can you survive the humiliation? My Lady will make you wish that you weren't just an Unwanted Presence, but a child so unwanted that your mother would have joined a monastery and sworn chastity!"

"I am sorry, alright?"

"Good boy! Now give me your paw-" I pinched Xlown's face.

"Sorry, Ma- My Lady" She cleared her throat, a smile on her face.

"As I was saying, your shoes were taken away for the purposes of today's training session. Look to your right, and you'll see three paths made out of warm, burning charcoal. You have to walk across them. Giving up is not allowed, but you are allowed to contort in agony on the ground, scream, cry, and beg""What if we try our best, but don't manage to do it?" I wrote something in response. I hadn't briefed Xlown on taking many questions. That is fine. Training does not equal success.

So far, Daniel Williams has always been the whiniest when it came to training sessions. He was nearly always trying to argue, as if he believed that if he could make a logical argument, it would convince me not to go through with my ideas… Not only had he failed to come up with good reasoning even once, but if he ever managed to do so, it wouldn't persuade me in the least. I don't really get it. How can he afford to have this sort of behaviour when he is so pitifully feeble?

What kind of world does he live in that a man is allowed to be weak of body and mind, and also a little nagging bitch? I find it improbable that such a lowly specimen could ever reproduce. Letting him turn out like this is a sin of his parents. He is lucky that he is an Unwanted Presence I have to teach, and his progenitors are lucky I can't cross over to their world to explain to them how life actually works. …

While he had an abysmal performance in my classes, he was apparently doing quite well in Johnpol Jimeni's class of magic. I suppose many mages were quite weak physically, but that was mostly true for low-level mages and scholars. Mages who actually fought tended to eventually build up some muscles. After all, it was easier to make distance when you actually had some stamina. Kevin Baker was doing better in my class.

He asked a lot of questions, but they had the benefit of actually having some relevance most of the time. He wasn't scrawny like the other guy. Certainly due to having been a military trainee in his former world. I did not know what the military looked like over there, but I assume that it was a sham. He didn't even know how to kill a person bare-handed, and he had trouble keeping his cool around me.

I know that my knightly form has an alluring silhouette, but after a while, he should be getting used to it–Well, it is always better than Mister Skinny. This guy genuinely takes damage from being around a woman he finds attractive. This fucker tenses up so damn much, he bursts veins in his nose and eyes at times. It was funny at first, but the more it continues to happen, the more I feel like part of the training will need to involve learning how to interact with the opposite sex…

Rose Miller was apparently the one with the most potential. She endured the summoning process without any problem. She has far above-average magical capabilities, ranking high in all aspects of inner energy–Which was a set of parameters that were used to quantify someone's magical talent–And she also had a great constitution due to having been a farm girl before coming to this world. She was actually the tallest of the bunch, standing at one meter and eighty-one centimeters in height…

With her red hair and freckles, she definitely seemed like the countryside was her home. She had even been summoned wearing overalls and a checkered shirt. This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. With her good build, good attitude, and the fact that I preferred to work with girls in general, she was definitely my favourite of the bunch.

"Miss Maya, I don't mean to question your teaching methods or anything, but… Are you sure this isn't just torture?"

"Shut up, Daniel. Have you never seen videos of people running across charcoal like this? You just need to be quick, and you won't even feel a thing""Why don't YOU shut up, Kevin?"

"Heh, should be easy enough""What makes you say that, Rose?"

"I never wear shoes anyway. I walked on burning stone in the summer all the time""What?" Xlown rubbed her chin, muttering something to herself.

"So that's why I didn't find any shoes in Rose's room…" Daniel Williams raised his hand to ask a question.

"By the way, will we get our shoes back afterwards?"

"Sorry. I ate them" There was a moment of silence.

"I was going to eat my hat, but I just like it too much" The two boys seemed to be physically hurt by the pun, but they didn't even say anything and instead walked up to the charcoal paths. Get ready to go. Rose and Kevin needed a few tries to get through it without instinctively jumping to the side, while Daniel struggled for a while longer, but he did eventually make it through.

"S-Say, Miss Maya… Doesn't your world have, like, a system or something? With experience to level up and skills?"

"Daniel, this isn't a-" It does.

"For real?" But it is garbage, for the most part.

"Damn it…" Have you kids not gotten a lesson on ways of power yet? They shook their heads. Here I thought the archmage was supposed to teach general knowledge as well. I had Xlown bring over a bigger board on wheels.

"Oh gods, it's going to be an info dump!"

"Do you mean a freaking lesson?"

"I think he meant it as a joke, Rose" …What the hell is an info dump?

"I am telling you, she turned into a giant, molten monstrosity in the blink of an eye! She was incredibly resilient, and even after I forced her out of this transformation, she was still full of energy and ran off into a dungeon. I didn't believe that I could force her out of it a second time, so I tactically retreated""Mmh… I didn't think I would see the day when Holgod would admit to having run away from a fight""I didn't 'run away'. I 'retreated'. They are completely different things…

Besides, I am not invincible. It has just been a while since I ran into anyone capable of standing up to me""Right… This is certainly disappointing. A Star Gazer's eye would have been an excellent ingredient. If we can't get one of those, I'll need to switch recipes""Are you still not going to reveal what you are trying to brew, Beliol?"

"Do you care?"

"As long as I get paid, not really" The dethroned king of Beelmart and Holgod stood inside an old wooden structure situated atop a floating island. This place lacked the regal grandeur that the decrepit old man had once been used to, but he did not appear saddened by this fact. A third figure stepped into the room.

"Here you go, the Nourishing Crystal of a Widower-Taking Arachne… It wasn't easy to get it""No need to lie to us" The third man cleared his throat.

"... She's a pretty nice woman, even if she's a monster…" Holgod laughed from behind his eternally sad-faced mask.

"You really have a talent with women, Argantis""I only owe it to my late master. May his soul be able to endure the torment of damnation" Beliol Azt Mastras chuckled as he leaned back in his makeshift throne of old wood.

"Speaking of your master, did you find a lead on your fellow disciple?"

"I would like to say no, but I unfortunately did find out where he was hiding. I have to say, it is a good thing that he hides out in secluded, dangerous regions. He is anything but stealthy""Splendid! You have my thanks for your continued support, Argantis""No point in thanking, I wouldn't be here if my hideout hadn't been pillaged… I still can't believe I tried to cast a curse on a curse-eater.

That thing has been thriving for far too long""Speaking of which, the curse-eater you speak of is probably the same individual as the one I just recently encountered. There aren't many curse-slinging, curse-devouring creatures around, after all""I don't know. I never saw the thief for myself. Whether that steel monster is the pillager, I wouldn't be able to know for certain. Hopefully, it is not. I would rather ally myself with her. This Nightmare Plague…

It is simply a wonder for us curse-slingers" Holgod shook his head.

"I am afraid she is already working for someone else. Do any of you know what the eye of a Star Gazer could be good for?"

"There are several elixir and potion recipes that can use them. That is all that I know" The disgraced king's knowledge mostly lay in alchemy, but most of the recipes he knew that used the eye of a Star Gazer were ones he or his grandfather had created themselves. The rest were relatively basic, not the kind of things you would actually send an agent for… Elixirs of mental resilience might work very well, but they weren't so valuable. Argantis stayed silent for a few moments.

"Well, it might be of use in a black magic ritual… We would probably have better guesses if we knew what this other group was about. Any ideas who she was working for?"

"No clue" The three men remained quiet as they tried to think of something, but they all came up with blanks. In the end, Beliol Azt Mastras sighed.

"So… Are you going to pursue a relationship with this Arachne?"

"She did give you her Nourishing Crystal. It wouldn't be correct to not at least see her a few more times" Argantis stepped out of the room.

"Stay out of my business!" Holgod and Beliol were left by themselves.

"... I think he's taken a liking""He obviously did"