I Reject Quests

Rewen turned his head to the side and saw the devil woman looking at him. 'This bitch…' He cursed under his breath but didn't do anything other than throwing a questioning glance.

The devil woman half-covered her mouth and lowered her head so as to hide her face from the teacher teaching. "You are going to pay for what you have."

'It looks like she had figured out what I had done to her minutes ago. I thought she would be dumber.' Rewen was in no mood to play with her and ignored her. 'The lecture is more important.'

The devil woman wasn't too pleased with the reaction and kicked his legs again.

Rewen couldn't hold it anymore and was about to get up and tell her to the teacher.

"Heh! Now you will complain to him. If I kick you outside the class, who will you complain to? Your Momma?"

Somehow this struck a nerve in him.  He grimaced while looking at her. "For someone of your stature, you are unexpectedly childish."

The devil woman grinned as if her plot succeeded. "As expected. You do know my identity."

Rewen didn't know what face to make. He wasn't particularly hiding the fact that he knew of her identity. He played along. "For a fallen devil, you sure took a lot of time to confirm the fact that I know of your identity."

The devil woman's eyes twitched. "That's only because I'm in my human body. Speak, how do you know of my identity?"

"I have no obligation to tell you. Take out the explosive out of Svety and I might be willing to tell you."

"Do you take me for a fool?"

"Yes. Who else other than a psychopath plans to destroy the entire city just for a little game?"

"If you hadn't rejected my invite to the 'little game', this wouldn't have happened in the first place. In a way, all of this is your fault. Choose. Play the little game with me or the lives of millions. From your words, you seem to be a righteous person so I'm hoping the choice would be pretty easy."

"Young man and woman sitting at the back. This isn't a lover's café. If you want to chat, I suggest you go outside. The air and weather is also decent."

Rewen was about to open his mouth when the teacher's, Alrocit Dominic's, voice sounded from the front.

Rewen unnaturally got up from his seat while the devil woman remained seated without any expression on her face.

"I'm sorry for disturbing the class." Rewen apologized. He wasn't a narrow-minded rebel and respects seniority. He knew he was disturbing the teacher so there was a need to apologize for his actions.

Alrocit nodded, and then turned to the devil woman. "What about you? Do you not feel the need for an apology?"

"I don't. My voice didn't even reach you. Why would I apologize for disturbing the class? Rather, don't you think that you are the one disturbing the class making this into an issue? I give you money to teach, not to get scolded." The devil woman replied, still sitting in her seat.

A commotion arose in the class. All of them were bewildered by her audacity.

'This woman… sure enough, girls do take their self-respect seriously.' Rewen didn't want the matter to escalate and signaled her to get up.

Which she ignored, of course.

Alrocit couldn't have imagined that he would get this sort of response. He wanted to get angry and lash out but felt very tired. Eventually, he sighed. "Let's continue." All the years of trying not to become a pushover got wasted in this single instant.

Rewen sat down on his seat.

The devil woman showed him a smile. "You are pathetic. Where is your pride now?"

Rewen was too lazy to bother with her and focused on the lecture.

"To actually make use of the "alpha" stage, all you need to do is 'let go'. You all probably don't know what I'm talking about because you have never tried to use a skill. When you are in the process of reaching the "alpha" stage, your body becomes very tense and rigid. Long time ago, there was a bold claim made that if you become relaxed in the "alpha" stage, your body would explode. That, of course, turned out to be false.

"In reality, when you relax in the "alpha" stage, the natural energy you have gathered up gets released. Now, what use of that is?

"If you are thinking it would blow your opponent away or something, you couldn't be more wrong. The natural energy is not physical which is why even so when it gets released extremely fast, it couldn't deliver a physical blow to your opponent. What it actually does is disturb the 81 Mana Points making it difficult for the opponent to perform a skill for the time being.

"That's it. That's the only known Static Way in which the "alpha" stage could be useful."

"Any questions?"

"No? I'll continue on to the Dynamic Way then."

"Again, as the name and its meaning suggests, it's got to do with movements. I wonder. What could Movement + "alpha" stage exactly mean? The mana is moving? The natural energy?"

"…" The students, as usual, stayed silent.

"I'm afraid it isn't as simple as that. Here, you have to move the Mana Points."

"The Mana Points? How?"

"It isn't that difficult to move a single Mana Point. Transfer your mana to the particular Mana Point and visualize it rotating either clockwise or counter-clockwise. It's simple. You could do it right here and now. The real challenge comes when you have to move more than half of the Mana Points. For that, you need to transfer mana from one Mana Point to another within a fraction of seconds."

"Couldn't we just move it if we transfer mana to the Mana Points and visualize?"

"It isn't that you couldn't but it's immensely difficult. Controlling more than 40 Mana Points is way more difficult than you think.

"Alright, now that you have moved the Mana Points, the next thing you need to focus on is the "alpha" stage. Your body which is already tense due to the sudden movement of the Mana Points would become even more tense and stiff because of the "alpha" stage. You will become as stiff as a rock. You couldn't move or anything. What you can do is take a small amount of mana and move it around your body touching all the Primary Mana Points and you are done."

"What does it do?" A confused student asked.

"It would heal. Naturally, don't expect to regenerate your arms that got torn up or anything. It would remove your fatigue and exhaustion and also heal small wounds."

The word "disappointed" was written all over the students' faces.

Sensing that, Alrocit coughed. "If you could successfully use the Dynamic Way, it would become an actual skill. It could heal larger wounds the greater your rank is. Now. Questions please. If you don't ask, I'll ask instead."

The class discussed back and forth. Rewen too involved himself in the discussions as this was a subject he was interested in.

Ten minutes later, Alrocit picked up his pen. "That's it for today. Submit the assignments in time. Also, you and the girl beside you. Follow me to my office."

***

Rewen and the devil woman sat opposite to Alrocit.

"So tell me. What should I do with the two of you?"

"Let us go." The devil woman blurted out without any hesitation.

"What is your name?" Alrocit wasn't too pleased with her.

"Luciana."

"Luciana what?"

"I have no surname."

"Are you an orphan?"

"Something like that."

"Sorry to bring this up but I'm not sure I can digest any more of your attitude. Look. I'm saying this very politely. Please don't disturb when I'm teaching. You can do whatever you like after I complete what I had to say but don't talk in between. Sounds good?"

Surprisingly, the devil woman didn't say anything rude now. She just nodded.

Alrocit gave a small smile, and then turned to Rewen. "You should be… Rewen?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Don't forget. A good partner has to support her in his academics."

"Sir, we aren't-"

"I understand. I'll pretend I didn't know."

Rewen was speechless. He turned to look at the devil woman. She had the same neutral face.

"You both may go now. If you have any difficulties in the future regarding my subject, you can come here."

***

"One last time. You sure you don't want to regret this in the future?" Rewen asked with a cold face.

"Make sure that you don't regret your decision in the future." The devil woman wasn't someone to keep quiet.

As they came near the class, Rewen saw Vin and Zaplin standing by the door. "Did he scold you?" Vin asked with a grin.

"Let's go. It should be P.E. now. Was I too late?"

"Nah , everyone left just now."