The Sixth School.

Chapter Forty Three: An open position…

Shalia stood in silence beside the entrance to the infirmary. The sun was slowly sinking in the horizon to the west and any time now Roka would be exiting the infirmary to head home. Anyone looking at the calm expression that she had on her face, wouldn’t be able to guess at the storm of emotions that roiled within her. It wasn’t often that the Town-head’s daughter didn’t know how to feel about someone. That insufferable boy, however, had managed to worm his way into that category. At first, Shalia had thought the boy to be beneath his notice. In fact, the only reason she’d even known his name was because of how often his mother came to ask after him while he was in the infirmary.

That indifference, however, turned to dislike when she was forced to put up with his ugly face as a fellow student of the healer. His only redeeming quality, as far as she was concerned, was the fact that he didn’t try to get her to date him like some other commoner toads in the town had. At the very least, he seemed to recognize his station in life. Or at least, that is what she had thought right up until he was invited to their house for dinner. It had been a tight slap to her ego to learn that not only was the boy not attracted to her, but worse yet, found her to be barely tolerable. The fact that he managed to also get her to be punished by her father had sealed the deal for her. Roka had firmly been in the group of people she hated. The fact that her father had been trying to get her to marry him had only solidified this status.

When she began her punishment as the boy’s servant, she’d been dreading all the demeaning tasks that the boy would have her do. He’d expected the boy to go on a power trip and get her to do all kinds of things just so he could brag that he’d gotten the Town-head’s daughter to do those things. Much to her pleasant surprise, however, the boy had come up with an arrangement that not even she could argue against. So long as she escorted him to the infirmary in the morning and back home in the evening, then she could do with the rest of her day whatever she pleased. It was the perfect deal. She could spend most of her day with her friends, the other noble kids, instead of tending to stuffy herbs and the like. A small part of her had been miffed that the boy seemed to be trying to get rid of her as quickly as possible. This annoyance, however, was quelled by the thought that she now had the chance to pursue Bran. Before long, she believed she’d have her crush wrapped around her finger.

That should have been the end of the story! And from what Shalia could tell, it was, for the damnable boy. Other than responding to her greetings with a smile, he would go on to act like she didn’t even exist. Even with the wooden mask on, Shalia would have noticed if he tried to sneak any glances her way, but no such thing happened. As far as the boy was concerned, she might as well have been a wooden statue. Despite not liking the boy at all, it would be a lie to say that it didn’t sting her ego even a little bit to be completely disregarded. But other than her slightly hurt ego, it was the perfect situation. Not only was she no longer forced to go for the dreadful lessons, but she also had the whole day to herself to do as she pleased. It was perfect! Or at least it had been… for the first three weeks.

With her days to herself, Shalia had spent this time with her friends, the other noble kids, with the majority of her attention going to Bran. For as long as she could remember, she’d always had a crush on him. With all the free time she now had, Shalia had considered this to be her chance. Unfortunately for her, the boy seemed to have a one track mind and right now it was firmly fixed on training his body to perfection. He gave all other things barely any time of day. That included Shalia. It had been frustrating, especially because she’d be left to watch him lift weights or do stretches that put that damn perfect body on display. It always left her feeling hot and bothered. Something she usually dealt with in the privacy of her room imagining all the naughty things that Bran and his perfect body could do to her.

It was in the privacy of her room that the first sign that something was off revealed itself. Shalia had been furiously plunging her index and mid-finger into her tight and wet love tunnel, imagining Bran pinning her against the wall, lifting one of her legs and fucking her like a wild animal, all the while, his eyes never leaving hers. His gaze boring into hers, marking her soul as his the same way he was marking her body. Just a few weeks prior, the image would have been enough to send her over the edge in a little over five minutes. Now, however, she had been at it for almost fifteen minutes and yet, her orgasm remained elusive. All of a sudden, without her intending for it, the image in her mind shifted. Suddenly, instead of the perfect face of Bran, Shalia was looking up at a plain wooden mask and the cold eyes of the scarred boy behind them. There was no passion in these new eyes like she’d imagined with Bran. His eyes, instead, were those of a predator that had marked their prey. A predator that would stop at nothing until they’d gotten what they wanted. And right now, that burning-hot and all-consuming desire was directed at her. Though Shalia would never admit it even under the pain of torture, it had been one of the biggest orgasms of her life, even bigger than anything her fantasies of Bran had ever given her.

The next day, she had been in a daze. Her brain had been repeatedly trying and failing to figure out why the annoying boy that had landed her in trouble was now featured in her sexual fantasies. Though she tried to act nonchalant about it, she had been watching the boy like a hawk, watching to see if he was doing anything to her. Even the slightest thing off about the boy would have been enough for her to run to her father and report him for doing something malicious to her. Unfortunately for her, other than just smiling when greeting her, the boy seemed to forget about her very existence the moment he turned away from her. His hands never did anything other than swing as he walked. His gaze never shifted about like he was up to something, instead, they would always remain fixed on where it is he was going. When they got to the infirmary, he would just go in without so much as a glance or nod her way.

After days of observing the boy for any suspicious actions and finding nothing, even Shalia herself began to think that she was just being paranoid. But while her investigations yielded nothing, her fantasies didn’t yield in the slightest. She had resolved within herself to focus her fantasies only on Bran, but whenever she did that, not only did it take her much longer to cum, but the orgasm itself was so weak that it wasn’t worth all the effort she had put into achieving it. After about a week of this, she gave in purely out of frustration and fantasized about Roka hate-fucking her into submission. That had definitely been the best orgasm of her life right up until then. That had been almost a month ago, and ever since, despite doing her best to act indifferent around the boy, she had been having shuddering orgasms fantasizing about him ramming his dick deep into her every which way possible.

If this had been all there was to the situation, Shalia could have managed. She could have done her shameful deeds in the privacy of her room and afterward pretended as if nothing had happened. The only problem was that, just like had been the case with Bran, the masturbation was no longer cutting it. Unlike with Bran, however, it wasn’t that Roka no longer turned her on. The problem went in the other direction, in that, the need and desire she felt for the boy was growing with each passing day such that, simple masturbation couldn’t quench the fire that seemed to have been lit within her. Who would have thought that a simple indiscretion, while the boy was in the infirmary, would come back to bite her in the ass so hard. Having seen the boy naked while he was in the infirmary, Shalia had gotten an up-close view of his thick veiny cock and now, every time she closed her eyes, she couldn’t get the image out of her mind. She also couldn’t keep her pussy from growing wet and twitching with need every time she thought of it.

Shalia was left in a quandary, unsure how to proceed from here. On the one hand, her body was extremely honest about what it desired and craved. On the other, her ego wouldn’t let her even consider the boy as a potential partner. Dating a commoner would have been bad enough in itself. To go after one that was so badly disfigured was something she just couldn’t bring herself to do. This decision, however, left her in the awkward position of damn near trembling with need any time the boy was near and her body longing for him when he was away. The worst part of all this was how one-sided it was. For her, it was a struggle to keep the façade of normalcy despite the burning desire in her heart. For the boy, however, she might as well be a plant by the roadside that he walked past every day on his way to work and back.

A sigh left Shalia and she pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind as she heard a familiar set of steps. Turning around, Shalia spotted the boy walking towards the infirmary door, ready to head home. Given how well he carried himself, Shalia might not have noticed the signs if not for her training under the healer. The listless look in his eyes, the slight slouch of his posture despite consciously trying to keep it upright, the wan complexion of his usually tan skin. Whatever it was the healer was teaching him, the boy seemed to be pushing himself a bit too hard.

After two months of doing it repeatedly, Shalia didn’t even have to think about it before a warm smile crossed her lips. There was a time when the smile wouldn’t reach her eyes. Over time, however, the line between pretense and reality had blurred and not even Shalia herself could tell whether she was genuinely smiling at him or not. “Good evening, Roka,” She greeted.

A smile crossed the boy’s lips as he turned to her. Shalia could tell he was smiling despite the wooden mask because of the motion of his cheeks. The part that she couldn’t explain was the fact that even without seeing it, she was sure it was a genuine smile. Perhaps it was the fact that the boy had already shown that he felt no need to be kind or nice to her. If he didn’t want to, then he simply wouldn’t. End of story. Besides, their agreement didn’t require him to smile. Only Shalia was expected to smile and be nice whenever they met. Their agreement said nothing at all about how the boy was expected to behave.

“A good evening to you as well, Shalia,” Roka warmly greeted her before walking past.

This was another small annoyance for her. Roka never stopped to greet her. She’d greet him while he was approaching and he’d respond while walking past her. Still, as she’d always done, she sped up her steps until she fell in step beside him. Normally, this would have been the end of their interaction until the next time she needed to escort him. This time, however, after a minute of silence, Shalia spoke up. “Why do you need me to greet you with a smile every time we meet,” She posed. It was a question out of the blue. It also wasn’t what she had meant to say, the boy’s presence, however, left her feeling off-kilter and so she’d asked the first thing that came to mind.

The boy turned to look at her with some surprise in his eyes. He probably had the same face that one would have if a statue you’d always walked past one day decided to talk to you. Shalia had to fight the urge to smack him when his cheeks pulled apart into what must have been an amused smirk. It almost felt like she’d lost some unspoken battle by being the first one to speak more than a greeting to the other. Still, now that she had spoken, she stubbornly looked at the boy, expecting an answer. “To teach you a lesson,” Roka calmly replied.

“And what lesson is that?” Shalia snapped, unable to keep the annoyance from her voice. Just who did he think he was to be teaching her… Shalia’s thought train came to a screeching halt at the dangerous glare that Roka directed her way. Even without his saying so, she knew what she’d done wrong. The boy had already said that he didn’t mind silence. If she was to speak, however, she needed to do it respectfully and with care to keep both her words and tone cordial. Even if she was annoyed, the boy wouldn’t countenance her using the tone that she had, with him. “I’m sorry,” Though it felt like ashes in her mouth to have to apologize to the boy, Shalia knew that she was the weaker party in this arrangement. Her father had given Roka all the power and should he wish, he could make her life miserable. A small apology in exchange for continued peace was a small sacrifice she could make. Shalia employed all the willpower she could muster to resolutely ignore how wet the boy’s glare had just made her. She could practically feel the grool flowing down her inner thighs under her robes. “What lesson do you wish to teach me?” She asked much more diplomatically, doing her best to keep her voice steady.

“Given the countless realms in existence, there are probably more sentient beings than there are leaves in the entire forest around us,” Roka replied enigmatically. Before Shalia could ask what that had to do with anything, he continued. “Of all those individuals, Shalia, only about two care how you feel, that’s your mom and perhaps your dad. The rest of us only care how you act!” He declared. “The fact that you don’t like me doesn’t bother me in the least. Everyone is free to like or dislike whoever they wish to. Your feelings, however, do not give you license to act like a complete ass,” he stated. “For almost two months now, you have been walking beside me in silence. And while it can’t exactly be called paradisal, it also hasn’t been a miserable slog for both of us. You don’t like me and I don’t like you. And yet, here we are, walking and conversing without things devolving into an exchange of snarky comments and snide remarks. Why? Because our behaviors matter way more than what we each feel about each other,” he stated plainly.

“My father is…”

“…the Town-head. And because of that, you believe either that you deserve more regard than you are getting, or that you are under no obligation to show the same amount of regard to the commoners that you expect to get from them.” Much to Shalia’s annoyance, Roka cut her off before she could even finish her statement. What was even more annoying was just how accurate his guess of what she was about to say, was. “You have such a haughty attitude simply because your parents fucked and you happened to come out?” The boy asked.

Shalia couldn’t help but frown at the crass language employed by the boy in asking the question. With the rules set in place by Roka, however, she wasn’t allowed to snap at him for it. Unable to castigate him for his foul language, Shalia could only ignore the vulgarity and focus on the actual question itself. The more she thought about the question, however, the louder her silence sounded in her ears. True enough she was the child of her parents, but why was that even something to be proud of? It wasn’t like she had in any way contributed to this state of things. She wasn’t even alive at the time that they came together. And the fact that she was the result wasn’t in any way under her control. She just happened to be born to parents who happened to be in charge in the little town they were in. She could have just as easily found herself as the daughter of commoners if her parents' situation was different. She was a cub standing in the shadow of its parents and thinking that it was great simply because the shadow cast by her parents was great. The silence became so uncomfortable that, for the first time, Shalia was happy to catch sight of the gate to Roka’s compound.

On his part, the boy didn’t try to press her for an answer. He instead seemed to have gone back to his own musings, once again, acting like she didn’t even exist. Something that irked her to no end. “You don’t look so good!” Shalia spoke up as they moved past the gate and into his compound. “Are you sure you are getting enough rest?” She went on to ask, trying to change the subject.

This time, when Roka looked at her, there wasn’t that annoying amusement. Instead, there was genuine surprise in his eyes as he regarded her. Shalia didn’t have to think long to figure out why. The Shalia that he knew never would have cared about how he was doing. The Shalia that had been fighting and losing the fight against her body’s desire, however, did. Not to mention the fact that a simple question from the boy had utterly seriously shaken any feeling of superiority she might have harbored. Even now, the more Shalia analyzed and sought an answer to the question, the more she realized just how ridiculous the notion that she was somehow special as a function of her birth was.

A small smile crossed Roka’s lips as he replied. “I see that you did learn something from the healer,” He stated much to her confusion. “She asked me the same thing today,” Roka clarified his statement. “In fact, despite my protestations, she ordered that I should take the next week off,” He informed her.

“Does that mean I won’t be escorting you for the next week?” Despite her best effort to sound nonchalant while asking the question, Shalia couldn’t help but inwardly cringe at the clear note of disappointment in her voice.

From the annoying look of amusement that was back in the boy’s eyes, Shalia knew that he too had picked up on it. Mercifully, he didn’t tease her for it and just answered directly. “No. If anything, the number of times I’ll need you to escort me will increase. I’ll need you to escort me to the infirmary and back, once in the morning, once at midday, and once in the evening. I’ve been spared the majority of the work. Some parts, however, cannot be skipped,” He relayed.

Shalia knew she was screwed the moment she found herself feeling excited at the prospect of being around the boy more. She could no longer deny the fact that the boy had somehow gotten his hooks deep in her. Regardless of what facade she put up, he had her in the palm of his hand. A part of her wanted to ask about the parts of his training that couldn’t be skipped. Another part of her, however, understood that this was a question she probably wouldn’t get an answer to. As such, she moved on to the only other thing that she had thus far left unsaid. “It’s a good thing you have some free time. Mother will be visiting you tomorrow!” Shalia reported.

The brow on Roka’s face rose high at the revelation. “To do what?” he asked.

“To check up on me, of course,” Shalia replied with a roll of her eyes. Only Roka would ask such a question after being told that the wife to the Town-head would visit. “She wants to ensure that you are not abusing the authority granted to you by my father,” she clarified.

To Roka, the visit would seem sudden and out of the blue. Shalia, however, knew why her mother had chosen to visit. While she had done her best to act normal outside her bedroom, the increasing need she felt for the boy had caused a certain amount of distress to break through her façade. Not enough to be obvious but enough so that someone observant would have noticed it. Her mother, was one such person. And for all her faults, the woman did care about her daughter. She had sat Shalia down and tried to get to the bottom of her issues. Shalia, however, had been evasive all through the conversation. She would sooner die than admit that she was distressed over her burning need for Roka. This evasiveness, however, had only caused her mother to be more concerned and thus decide to make the sudden visit. Her mother would have told  Shalia’s father but Shalia argued against it. She didn’t want the man finding out that Greg hadn’t actually been giving her any tasks and that she was free to spend her days however she wanted. As such, she had begged her mother not to bring her father into this, with the excuse that it was a small thing that she didn’t need to blow out of proportion.

“And your father?” Greg posed.

“Too busy,” Shalia replied briefly, not looking at the boy.

A smile crossed Roka’s expression. “I’d be happy to host the two of you,” he said. Shalia couldn’t be too sure, but she got the sense that there was a predatory gleam in Greg’s eyes as he uttered the words…

***

Greg had a small smile playing on his face even as he hummed a tune from his former life. There was no rush to his steps as he walked through the noble district in the city of Torrin. That isn’t to say that he was walking aimlessly. He had a plan. The only reason he wasn’t rushing was because he’d played this dungeon so many times that he knew where his targets would be and how long they would be there. And given that he was already so close by, he saw no need to rush.

Despite the toll that every dungeon dive had on his soul, the dungeon is the only reason that Greg has thus far been able to keep from being swamped by everything he was being taught by the healer. The amount of information one needed to imbibe just to be a basic-level healer in his teacher’s eyes was mind-boggling. From different types of herbs, both poisonous and restorative. To different types of beasts and their anatomy. To different types of ailments, their symptoms, prognosis, and different methods of curing them. All this on top of the language and writing lessons that continued to this day. By now, Greg had mastered enough of the human tongue to be able to converse comfortably with someone and write it with very few grammatical errors. The healer’s focus had shifted from the human tongue to the second of the three languages she wished to teach him, the origin tongue.

It required that Greg give it his all every single day that he went in for lessons, otherwise, he’d just flounder. At the very least, the dungeon interspersed the lessons with some adventure, such that it didn’t turn into an endless slog. Not to mention the incalculable gift of time. On the days that Greg felt like he hadn’t quite gotten everything that he should from the healer’s lessons, he would rent a room inside the city and use the dungeon time to go over everything that he had learned that day. It was like being given an extra fifteen or so hours to the twenty-four that others got. If not for the fact that dungeon dives took a lot out of him and thus left him feeling tired and lethargic the next day, it would have been the perfect solution.

Greg got to the door to the Merchant’s house and calmly walked inside. It was still before the thirty-minute window in which Zarra would be left alone in the house. And so, Greg wasn’t at all surprised to find the Merchant and his wife, along with the mountain of muscle that was the Merchant’s bodyguard in that first room. The merchant and his wife who had been arguing about something or the other, went quiet and turned in his direction. Greg, however, didn’t look at them. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the mountain of muscle. A smile crossed his face as he reached his hand forward toward the man. Had the man been allowed to keep his memories from previous dungeon runs, then the man would have panicked just from seeing Greg. He, however, didn’t. After all, Greg had nothing in his hands and was standing all the way across the room. And given how scrawny he was compared to the giant of a bodyguard, he didn’t pose that much of a threat!

Swoosh!

Swoosh!

Swoosh!

That was the first and last mistake the bodyguard made in this iteration of the dungeon run.

Before any of the three present, most especially the bodyguard could register what was going on, Greg’s hands turned into a blur. The first reached out to grasp something before him. Before its fingers could fully close around thin air, the soul bow appeared in his firm grasp. The ring on his other moving hand flashed, and in one smooth motion, Greg drew an arrow from the storage ring, nocked it on the bowstring, drew, and released. This motion happened three times before the others in the room could even understand what was going on. By the time the merchant panicked and jumped to stand in front of his wife, three arrows were sprouting from the bodyguard’s face. The giant of a man was still standing as if his mind had yet to register that he was dead. His expression was calm, not because he didn’t fear death, but because his mind hadn’t even been given the chance to comprehend that he was about to die before he did. There was a loud thump in the room as his body finally fell backward onto the floor.

Out in the real world, Greg was strictly forbidden from trying to circulate or make use of his mana. This was because his conscious manipulation might interfere with the natural formation of his pathways as intended by the healer’s method. This, however, wasn’t the real world, but a make-believe one made up by the system. And the dungeons usually allowed Greg to make use of any innate traits he had in the real world, within the dungeon. Greg was not yet their equivalent of a tier-one mage in terms of core and mana pathways out in the real world. He, however, was half a step into the first tier. And as a half-step first-tier mage, while he couldn’t cast any spells, Greg could use his mana to operate the weakest of magical items such as the low-grade, tier-one storage ring he had on that he’d bought from the dungeon shop. That’s why, unlike the first time that Greg summoned his soul bow, this time he had the ammo to turn the weapon into a true threat.

Months of using the soul bow as his exit strategy whenever he saw that he would fail in his mission or things were going in a way that he didn’t want them to, had also granted Greg an unexpected boon. After about the fiftieth time of feeling the soul bow drawing the mysterious energy from him, Greg had wondered if he could control it, and how much the bow drew from him. Greg had extensively experimented in the subsequent dungeon dives and had come to figure out a few things. The first was that, the bow would only start drawing from him if he kept holding the bowstring for more than three seconds. The next discovery was that while drawing the bowstring with an arrow nocked wouldn’t bring the drain down to zero, it would cut it down by almost ninety percent. It took a while of thinking before Greg figured out why this was. With an empty bowstring, the bow would try to fashion an arrow purely out of the energy that it drew from him. With an arrow nocked, however, the bow would instead try to infuse the arrow with the energy it drew from him. A process that was not only slow but limited by the fact that his arrows didn’t seem capable of holding that much energy, to begin with. Greg didn’t know if it had something to do with the size of the arrows or the material it was made of being a limiting factor.

The final discovery was that drawing on the empty bowstring for a long time wasn’t necessarily a death sentence by itself. The reason why Greg had died all those times that he did so was actually because of his lack of control. The bow would naturally draw on the energy from him but Greg needed to tell it when to stop. By drawing on the bowstring without telling the bow when to stop, Greg’s soul had become like a leaking barrel. His soul had been leaking energy until it became critically compromised. The system would thus step in and end the dungeon run before Greg could do permanent damage to himself. As such, the more refined Greg’s control over the mysterious energy became, the less danger pulling on the empty bowstring would pose to him.

The only thing that Greg so far remained unable to do anything about was the thick aura of bloodlust that suffused the area around him whenever he used the bow. While it was good at cowing his weaker-willed enemies into submission, it also had the downside of announcing his presence to his potential targets. Greg wasn’t as yet a marksman. This meant that for him to be reasonably certain of hitting his target, he’d have to get close to them. But at close distances, those he was after were more likely to pick up on the bloodthirsty aura of the soul bow. This, however, was an issue he could only deal with over time. The soul bow had been infected by the real Roka’s anger and resentment and there was no way of quickly cleansing it of the same. Greg would just have to ‘tame’ the bow over time until it acknowledged him and would work with him as its master.

Dismissing the bow, Greg turned to the merchant with the small smile that he had shown the bodyguard right before he killed the man. “Word on the street is that you have an open position for a bodyguard,” Greg spoke in a tone that, while cheerful, only caused the hearts of those present to be chilled with fear…

***