Chapter 64

Chapter 64

I Became the Academy Mafia Chapter 64After being sent flying through the air, I landed by rolling across the ground and immediately took a stance for battle.

“Woof woof woof!!”

“Grrrrrrrr!!”

A horde of kobolds aimed their weapons toward me and let out savage cries.

Was fifty really this many?

Just as I reached into the Cube to pull out [Al Capone's Tommy]

, I remembered what Kwak Chun-sik had told me.

‘Deal with them without using a weapon.’

His words telling me not to use a weapon.

In the end, I stopped activating the Cube and, the moment I landed in front of them, raised the aura of [Bloodline: Calione]

that had automatically activated.

“It's nice having so many useless enemies!”

Perhaps because I was receiving the hostility of as many as fifty enemies, an amount of aura incomparable to when I sparred with the Youth Duo elders began rising from my body.

The kobolds flinched at the ominous aura and stepped backward.

“Anyway, we'll talk later, sir.”

For now, leaving Kwak Chun-sik standing behind me with his arms crossed, I gradually gathered the uncontrollably rising aura and spread it throughout my entire body.

If I stopped here, it would end with merely strengthening my body, but I went one step further and gradually released aura from my fists to form a thin membrane.

Like before, I tried somehow to shape it into gloves or another form, but it still felt like trying to sculpt plain water, so all I could do was let it flow along my hands.

Still, this should be enough to deal with those guys.

“Woof! Woof woof! Woof woof woof!”

“Grrrrr! Woof woof!”

Perhaps realizing that something unusual was happening in front of them, the kobolds gradually began raising their weapons.

If the kobolds attacked first, they could mix into the middle of their formation and make it harder for me to create a melee.

I had to enter now, before their fear turned into madness.

Creeeak───The sound of one kobold loading the string of a crossbow rang out, and at the same time, I leapt into their ranks and blew away the face of the one standing at the front.

Yelp──!

With that, most of the ranged attacks they had prepared wouldn't even get the chance to be attempted.

Startled by my sudden charge, one of them threw away the crossbow it was holding and tried to draw a dagger, so I shattered its jaw first and began crushing them one after another.

Every time one of them was horribly broken apart, I could feel the fear coming from them growing stronger.

And that fear was converted into power through [Baby Boss]

, the auxiliary effect of my trait, 【Heir to the Underworld】.

My body, already strengthened with aura, was enhanced once again, and explosive power spread throughout my whole body.

“Kyegegegaeng!”

“Kying!”

The kobolds that tried to surround me were sent flying backward by the shockwave, and when I kicked toward the ones hiding farther away behind the airborne kobolds, they burst apart as though I had kicked water balloons.

At the same time, blood and the foul smell of a wet dog spread thickly throughout the dungeon.

“...

Hoo.”

Red vapor rose from my whole body as though my blood were evaporating.

It was fortunate that I had been releasing aura to keep the blood from touching me.

If things had gone wrong, I would've been drenched in it.

I swept my sweat-soaked hair back and turned toward Kwak Chun-sik, who should still have been watching me from behind.

“Isn't this enough?”

In truth, by the point that I'd rendered most of the fifty kobolds incapable of fighting in less than a few minutes, the battle could already be considered over.

But Kwak Chun-sik's expression was strange.

The Kwak Chun-sik I knew would have said something like, ‘Well, you're usable,’ or, ‘I would've finished faster.’

Instead, he was simply staring at me blankly with his mouth hanging wide open...

Did I make some mistake?

“...

Sir?”

________________

That brat, he said he was Vito Calione's son, didn't he?

After watching the battle of the brat I had thought was nothing more than a youngster all the way to the end, I couldn't help but be astonished.

What I had expected when I threw him into the pack of kobolds wasn't anything particularly great.

During the spar, I'd seen his combat sense and style, so this time I wanted to see how he normally used that aura.

I had seen countless aura users over the years, enough to be called an Aura Master, and I knew better than anyone what average growth looked like.

He awakened his aura less than a month ago... then I could roughly guess.

Since handling aura is difficult, he'll fight by concentrating it on one part of his body.

While moving, he'll use more power than necessary to maintain it, and in the end, he'll fail to control his pace and collapse from exhaustion.

But.

‘Is that possible?’

The brat had already surpassed my expectations.

The aura fluttering uselessly here and there was, just as he said, that of a novice who had awakened only recently, but everything else about him was...‘A genius.’The reason he struggled to handle aura wasn't because control was difficult or anything like that.

He simply couldn't handle the overwhelming quantity of aura.

A torrent of aura that would prevent an ordinary person from even moving, and he was forcibly guiding it, handling it in the form of ‘release.’

And I had seen a sight like that once before in the past.

──Vito Calione.

The man everyone now called ‘Don,’ and the man who ruled the night streets of the entire world.

A man who, in the past, stood at the forefront of those who were discriminated against and alienated more than anyone else, burning himself away to protect them.

A man called the worst and strongest, whose single punch burst apart countless monsters, and whose single kick sent giant beasts toppling over.

‘As expected, blood doesn't lie.’

Through that child's figure, I had overlapped the image of Vito Calione.

“...

Sir?”

The brat called out to me.

Despite creating such a gruesome and horrific scene, there wasn't a single drop of blood on his body.

Aura dense enough to even push away the surrounding blood.

Even seeing it right before my eyes, it was absurd.

It was truly a monstrous amount of aura.

If it was this brat, someone who possessed even more aura than Vito Calione, even more than me.

“You... could do it.”

“...

Pardon?”

The technique I created in order to oppose Vito Calione, the man who would later surpass me.

The technique I created to surpass that man, a technique that even I couldn't properly wield.

I became certain that this brat could learn it perfectly.

_______________

“Could do what?”

There it was.

The activation line for Grandpa Kwak Chun-sik's gimmick.

The corners of my mouth twitched with joy, but I did my best to hold the muscles still.

I'd thought I would have to suffer for quite a while, but judging by the tears gathering around his eyes, it seemed I had genuinely fulfilled the gimmick's activation condition.

Wait, was there even a condition for making him emotional?

I just did what I normally do...

“...

For now, let's talk about it later. Other ones will soon come after smelling their comrades' blood.”

“They're the kind of guys you'd sweep away with a single wave of your hand anyway.”

“You brat, do you think my aura grows out of the ground? In a dungeon this size, maybe, but if I did that recklessly somewhere else, I'd die on the road, you brat.”

After saying that, Kwak Chun-sik once again clasped his hands behind his back and started walking deeper into the dungeon.

“I'll walk slowly until the boss room, so you handle them.”

“...

Me? Isn't this your request, sir?”

“It's my request and your mentor's request. Did you come here saying you'd be a mentee just to learn a little and leave?”

Wow.

He's really framing me as the bad guy here.

I thought I'd raised his affection a little with what I just did, and immediately his temper comes out again.

Still, the monsters appearing in a dungeon of this level seemed like something I could handle with [Al Capone's Tommy], so I sighed and pulled out the firearm.

“Underst── Ack?!”

Kwak Chun-sik suddenly smacked me across the back.

“If you sigh, your blessings run away, you brat!”

No, he's seriously like an old-fashioned geezer about the strangest things.

In the end, I pulled out Tommy and followed Kwak Chun-sik while taking down the approaching kobolds.

Kwak Chun-sik watched my Tommy with curiosity.

“You suddenly pulled out a gun, so I wondered what it was. It seems to be an artifact. Does it fire mana as bullets?”

“Yes. Sometimes aura gets mixed into it too, and red bullets come out.”

“What? Aura is... well, with someone like you spraying aura in every direction while firing, of course it would affect the mana too.”

Hm?

“...

I was spraying aura in every direction?”

“Of course. You think that was fighting with control? Watching from behind made me so furious I nearly died of anger instead of the kobolds.”

“You can teach me from now on, can't you?”

“I was already planning to. Hold on. Stop here.”

Kwak Chun-sik suddenly stopped me, stepped forward, and placed a hand on a dummy wall.

“Let's see~ Around here should do.”

“...

Pardon?”

“Watch closely. This is something you'll be able to do later too.”

At that moment.────────────!!

An enormous roar and dust filled the surroundings as the wall exploded.

A long, straight tunnel had been blasted through as though a bomb had gone off.

Beyond it, I could see one kobold larger and paler than the others.

“Hohoho. As expected, my instincts have never been wrong.”

The Kobold Queen.

There was no doubt that it was the boss of this dungeon.

But what surprised me wasn't only Kwak Chun-sik's ability to find the Kobold Queen in an instant.

Even after that violent explosion, not a single stone fell from the tunnel, and the inside was perfectly clean.

“Let's go.”

I couldn't help wondering just how much control over aura was necessary to perform a feat like this.

As expected, I suppose you have to reach this level to be called a monster.

“Woof! Woof woof! Woof!”

When the Kobold Queen spotted us and began barking, armored kobolds gathered nearby and started entering the tunnel with their weapons.

They were armed on an entirely different level compared to the other kobolds.

In particular, the shields held by the two at the very front looked capable of deflecting most ranged attacks or magic.

“My, how noisy. The sound echoes, so why don't you shut up a little.”

Muttering that, Kwak Chun-sik opened his palm and swept it horizontally in the shape of one straight line.

“Kying?”

“Kyeng?”

The kobold guards looked puzzled at Kwak Chun-sik's action.

As they tried to raise their shields and advance again.

With a shiiing── sound, the upper portions of the shields they were holding were sliced off and fell to the ground.

The two kobold guards tilted their heads in confusion.

At the same time, both collapsed with a thud.

Blood was spurting from the heads of the two fallen kobolds.

“...

Ha.”

I could only stare blankly at that overwhelming display of power.

If I had been one of those kobolds, could I have blocked it?

No.

With a bare body or ordinary equipment, absolutely not.

Even if I tried to dodge, if I knew nothing beforehand, I definitely would've been hit.

“Eugene. At first, I thought you were an uncut stone, but you're already polished to some extent. In that case, what you'll need from now on is storytelling that will increase the value of the jewel.”

As he says that, a sword made of blue mana rises above his hand.

“And from now on, I intend to teach you techniques that will help build your legend.”

Kwak Chun-sik looks at the sword resting above his hand and draws his right arm back behind his waist as though pulling a bowstring.

Even then, his expression remains incredibly quiet and calm.

At last, after pulling his arm all the way back, he slowly, almost shyly, begins extending it forward.

It was a kind of phenomenon.

All he did was extend his arm.

All he did was thrust the sword.

Yet somehow, the sword was already touching the neck of the Kobold Queen standing far away.

There was no scream from the Kobold Queen whose throat had been pierced precisely.

It simply stood there blankly with an expression that seemed unable to understand what had happened.

Thud.

The Kobold Queen's body met the ground.

At that, every kobold nearby began wailing.

They screamed.

They struck the ground, tore at their heads, and cried out.

And all those sounds──

“Solitary Evergreen.”

──vanished with a single word from him.

The blue sword still hadn't been retrieved from the Kobold Queen.

Countless branches burst forth from it, taking control of every corner and stealing the lives of all who had invaded its domain.

When Kwak Chun-sik lightly relaxed his right hand, the blue tree that had taken over the area dissolved into the air and disappeared as though it had fulfilled everything it needed to do.

He turned around as though nothing had happened and spoke to me.

“Aura Style. That's the technique you'll be learning from me from now on.”

Kwak Chun-sik.

My mentor said that with a gentle smile.