Magic Academy Mayhem: A Class Full of Maniacs - Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Cynthia’s emotions had finally settled. She rose and walked over to Richter, lowering her gaze to look down at him. “Lift your head. I’ll put medicine on you.”

The pain itself was nothing, but because of the Resonance, it was hard to ignore every single second.

Fortunately, her Storage Ring contained an ointment meant specifically for situations like this. Its effect was about the same as a potion, but it also added a layer of pain relief.

With both stacked together, his recovery should be a little faster, at least.

Richter ignored Cynthia’s words. From the look of him, he had no intention of listening at all.

So Cynthia simply took matters into her own hands.

Richter was around 188 centimeters tall, and Cynthia wasn’t short either, currently standing at 172 centimeters. Since he was chained up and could only kneel, she would have to squat if she wanted to meet his eyes.

But Cynthia had no patience for that.

She raised her hand, hooked her fingertips beneath his jaw, and forcibly made him lift his head.

His long silver hair was slightly disheveled. His face was a mess of bruises and cuts, and there were faint shadows beneath his eyes, yet he was still far too beautiful.

When she saw his reddened eyes, Cynthia paused.

Had he been crying?

The thought had barely surfaced before Cynthia dismissed it.

No. With his personality, how could he possibly cry? Come to think of it, the area around his eyes and the corners were usually tinted with a faint blush, as if someone had blended eyeshadow there.

It was probably just his lack of sleep, combined with the injuries, that made him look so wretched.

“…How long are you going to stare?” His voice was very hoarse. Without the smile on his face, he seemed almost unfamiliar.

“What, am I not allowed to look?” Since she had to hold this young master’s face, Cynthia could only open the ointment with one hand. She scooped up a generous amount with her fingertip and smeared it onto his face. “Since you know you’re pretty, are you planning to start charging an admission fee?”

“…”

Richter lowered his eyes and struggled to turn his face away. “…What’s there to look at when I’m this filthy?”

“Don’t touch me. It hurts.”

Cynthia truly felt like she was serving some spoiled princess straight out of an anime. She refused to indulge him. “If you’re this delicate, why did you get into a fight?”

Richter let out a cold laugh. “Because he pissed me off.”

Cynthia fell silent.

The real reason he had gotten angry was probably because Eli had said something like, “You’re her dog…” or whatever it was.

Well, that made sense. Anyone would be angry if someone they had only known for a few days said something like that. Even she had been so speechless at the time that she had walked away.

Still, this wasn’t the first or second time those two had taken shots at each other. It wasn’t really her place to decide who was right and who was wrong.

Cynthia’s fingertip brushed over the wound at the corner of his mouth, and her voice softened. “Try to get along from now on.”

“…”

Richter raised his eyes and quietly stared at the girl in front of him. “I’ve always been trying to get along with you.”

There was no emotion in his voice, but his ice-blue eyes were deep as the ocean. The bruising made his pupils look somewhat dark.

Meeting those eyes felt like having her soul laid bare. It made a suffocating feeling rise from the bottom of her heart, as though she were sinking into the depths of the sea…

Cynthia instinctively covered his eyes.

This was not an answer she had expected.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t noticed how, from the moment they enrolled until before they entered the confinement room, this guy had been constantly orbiting around her. Other than occasionally trading barbs with Eli, he barely interacted with the other two.

She just didn’t quite understand why Richter was so unusually focused on her.

Was it because of her status as the daughter of one of the Empire’s highest-ranking noble families?

Or was it simply because he found her agreeable and wanted to develop their ordinary teammate relationship into friendship?

Out of habit, Cynthia listed out a whole series of possible reasons. But right now, her purpose in pretending to be a considerate, good teammate was not to investigate the matter, and she cared even less about why Richter paid her such special attention.
His long lashes fluttered, and her palm felt a little itchy.

Cynthia pushed aside her jumbled thoughts and took in every bit of his expression.

Perhaps because he knew resistance was useless, Richter stopped struggling and dodging. Only his furrowed brows made it clear that he was in an exceptionally foul mood.

After applying ointment to the reddened skin around his eyes as well, Cynthia let go. “I’m not just talking about me. I mean everyone on our team.”

After three days of thinking, she had finally come to her senses.

Standing by and letting her teammates’ relationships deteriorate would do her no good at all. In the future, it might even lead to more trouble like this-or something worse.

Better to cut off that possibility before it happened.

After graduation, they would all go their separate ways. By then, whatever they did, whether they lived or died, would have nothing to do with her.

Richter said nothing. Cynthia glanced over at Eli.

“Eli, what do you think? Are you planning to keep making things worse until you’re forcibly expelled from the academy, or will you each take a step back, get along peacefully for six years, and graduate without incident?”

“…” Eli remained silent.

Neither of them gave a final answer, and Cynthia knew perfectly well that a few casual words would never make them love each other like brothers.

Nor was she in any hurry.

She released the hand pinching Richter’s face, placed the ointment in his palm, and reminded him in a flat voice, “Go to the bathroom later and put this on the wounds elsewhere too, especially your abdomen.”

Without caring whether he answered, Cynthia put the ointment down, returned to the open space from earlier, and sat down to continue reading her book on magic arrays.

Vernel and Sangmo were technically victims dragged into this as well, but she had nothing else to say about it.

Not dwelling on it any further, Cynthia gathered her thoughts and focused on reading, intending to continue cultivating once she finished.

An Apprentice Mage was equivalent to the First Order. At this stage, there was little difference from a beginner apprentice, and raising one’s star level was not considered difficult.

After accumulating strength over the past few days, she had a feeling that she would soon break through to three-star.

However, judging from what she currently understood, after crossing the Second Order and entering the Intermediate Mage stage-the Third Order-a mage’s advancement speed would gradually become affected by their sequence talent.

If talent was lacking, effort would have to make up for it. If she wanted to graduate smoothly in the sixth-year final competition, she had to make use of every minute and every second she had right now and pull her realm up to the upper-middle level as much as possible.

At present, all of Cynthia’s thoughts were focused on the word realm, and she gradually forgot the long stretch of confinement.

–

Four days later, Cynthia successfully broke through. Her current realm had reached First Order Three-Star.

The seven days of punishment had also officially come to an end.

After they left the confinement room, Eli and Richter apologized to each other under Griffin’s pressure. Aside from that, they did not say another word to each other, each treating the other as if he were invisible.

And Griffin’s lessons had only grown more difficult than before.

Under training that could only be described as demonic, the five of them improved not only in magic and practical combat ability, but also studied all sorts of theoretical knowledge, including continental history, racial relations, and the current division of the continent’s core powers.

Time passed just like that. It had now been thirty days since Cynthia enrolled-exactly one month.

With round-the-clock effort and high-intensity training, her realm had already reached First Order Five-Star.

The others’ realms had risen as well, but perhaps because advancement slowed the higher one’s realm became, each of them had only gained one star during this period.

Vernel was currently seven-star, while the other three were six-star.

Cynthia was still satisfied with the speed of her own realm advancement.
After washing up, she lay down on her bed, and the Light Screen lit up.

Cynthia opened the group chat and glanced at it.

It was a message from Griffin.

The contents were… notes for the Freshman Competition.