Chapter 38: Chapter 38: The Vampire’s Request

My eyes landed on Ray Evenheart.

He was a quiet student with black hair, a pale face, and a very lean body that looked like he had not eaten a proper hot meal in weeks.

He sat at his desk with a solemn, frustrated expression.

His hands were cupped together tightly, but the magical fire was just not forming despite his trying so hard to summon it.

Ray was just a struggling commoner in the original novel, but he soon turned against the academy and everyone in it.

He ended up being the reason the cult managed to trap the students inside the grounds for a full week, making everyone fight high-level monsters without a single break.

But his betrayal was not born out of pure malice or greed.

The cult kidnapped his mother.

They lied to him, saying they had a magical cure for her illness if he simply followed their strict orders.

But the truth is, there is no cure.

His mother was always destined to die from the sickness.

She was a brave city guard who worked on a secret mission to capture those same cultists years ago.

They remembered her, knew her son would eventually join the academy, and cornered him using her as the perfect leverage.

Ray did not care about the politics of the nobles or the danger to his classmates.

All he wanted was to save his only family.

I looked closely towards his outstretched hand.

It was shaking hard, his pale face was sweating profusely under the classroom lights, his teeth gritting together in desperation.

He wanted to get stronger to save her, but his core was just totally blocked by his crippling anxiety and something else.

In my last life, Ray turned into a madman right after his mother’s death.

He lost his mind and started killing innocent members of his own village.

Those regular people had refused to keep her body in the local graveyard since her corpse was corrupted with demon essence from the cult’s sick experiments.

And so he was brutally killed by a passing high-ranking awakener who just saw him as another crazed villain.

It was sad.

’I know how his tragic story ends,’ I thought to myself, feeling a weight settle deeply in my chest.

’And in my past life, I still couldn’t save him from that terrible fate. I was just too weak and focused on my own survival.’

While I was busy looking at him and lost in my depressing memories, Melissa was looking right at me from the next row over.

The memory of the totally still, lifeless face she made after the test yesterday still haunts my mind.

But right now, she was leaning her chin on her hand and smiling widely just from seeing my serious expression directed at Ray.

It felt wrong and deeply unsettling.

Miss Elena walked down the aisle towards Ray.

The kind professor placed a gentle hand on his shaking shoulder and started helping him verbally, guiding his breathing to fix his erratic mana flow.

But it just did not work.

His internal block was way too heavy to be fixed with a few nice words.

After a frustrating hour, the class finally ended.

Students packed their bags quickly, eager to leave the stuffy room.

I walked out into the corridor, and Melissa immediately walked right towards me, matching my stride perfectly.

"How was the new elite room?" she asked, a playful glint shining in her blue eyes.

"Are you stalking me now?" I asked her, raising a suspicious eyebrow and keeping my voice guarded.

"I just saw you walking up the steep hill from my own room window," she pouted, turning her head aside in fake innocence.

"It was nice," I answered flatly, not wanting to give her any specific details about my morning.

"Why were you so off in the class today?" she pushed, stepping a little closer so our shoulders almost brushed.

"Can you please just keep your attention on the class?" I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"I don’t wanna," she teased smoothly.

"You are way more interesting than basic fire spells."

’Whatever that actually means,’ I thought, rolling my eyes and walking faster.

’She always speaks these weird, cryptic things just to mess with my head and keep me off balance.’

The next scheduled class was located down in the main physical training hall.

Each of us was instructed to take a sparring partner from the crowd and repeat the basic sword moves we learned last week.

We were closely supervised by Instructor Grace.

She was a tall, heavily tanned woman wearing only a tight white banian and loose combat pants.

Grace had short, spiky white hair and thick muscles that looked like they were carved out of rock.

She carried a wooden practice sword resting lazily on her shoulder.

"Hit them hard," Grace barked, her loud voice easily echoing over the loud sound of clashing wood.

She paced quickly up and down the long rows of fighting freshmen.

"Why would you hesitate on a downward swing?" she yelled directly at a nervous noble boy, making him flinch.

"Keep your focus on the enemy’s shoulders, not their weapon," she corrected a girl nearby, physically tapping the student’s posture into place.

"Watch his hand movements closely before you commit to a block."

She gave her strict instructions continuously as she walked through the long line of us sparring.

The air in the large room quickly grew hot with sweat and physical exertion.

My assigned partner for today was Kiara.

She is the haughty noble girl.

More importantly, she is also one of the main characters of the original story, who is secretly hiding a dark secret about her bloodline.

A secret that makes her extremely dangerous to be around if she loses control.

We stood facing each other on the green mats, holding our practice weapons at the ready.

"Are you the top scorer guy?" she asked, her tone filled with boredom.

She lazily brought her wooden sword up, hitting my wooden blade flatly with a loud clack.

She did not even bother to put her body weight into the strike.

"Hmm," I confirmed simply, keeping my posture entirely defensive and waiting for her real attack.

She stepped much closer, dropping her guard and quickly looked around the noisy hall to make sure Instructor Grave was currently yelling at someone else on the far side of the room.

"May I ask you for a personal favour?" Kiara asked, her voice dropping to a whisper so no one else could hear.

"What?" I asked, confused by the sudden shift in her normally arrogant attitude.

She took another step directly into my personal space, closing the gap entirely.

Her orange eyes locked onto mine, holding a very strange hunger that made my stomach drop to the floor.

"Can I suck you once?"