1st Recollection - 13

"So who am I up against?" asked Taiga.

"Gulp... you're up against rank 2, Kyle Marcoix."

"About where is he in the classroom?"

"He should be standing to your northwest, surrounded by his posse," she spat, disgusted when one of the boys in Kyle's posse smiled at her after mistaking her glance in that direction.

"They're just a bunch of scum buckets that have never worked a day in their life!" she said, gritting her teeth.

If one had been looking closely at the ranking tournament at the beginning of the school year, they would have noticed that all the nobles except for Elaine had purposefully lost to Kyle, he had bought them all out. As Taiga had noticed this, he felt as if he had nothing to worry about and began preparations to set his first plan into motion.

After putting on a protective suit, Taiga stepped onto the battleground, which was really just a fancy name for a bare room with mana infused into its walls to stop any destruction from getting outside.

"Hahahahaha, you think that you are so high and mighty for beating the low end spectrum of nobles, but don't even expect that a piece of trash off the street like you can compare to me."

Hearing Kyle's provocations, Taiga sighed, 'Lets just get his over with'.

He had already made up his mind that he was going to purposefully lose today, as he didn't want anybody to think that he was hiding his powers. He also didn't want to seem too powerful as he knew that there had to be inquisitors sent by his majesty watching all the students every move to weed out the demon king. If he was too powerful, he would almost certainly attract some unwanted attention.

3

2

1

Begin!

Immediately, Kyle closed the distance between us and infused his two-handed sword with almost all of his mana. He swung down sharply, but instead of hitting Taiga, he merely hit his sword. Pretending to be hurt by the attack, Taiga dropped down onto one knee and grunted.

Kyle then immediately swung at Taiga's head from the left side, and wanting it to end quickly, Taiga allowed Kyle to knock him out.

-----------

Sho - 9 Years Old

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh," hearing the sound of screams in the distance, Sho rushed back to the safehouse that he had set up with his sister. Looking back at the plaza, he could see black figures indiscriminately slashing and stabbing at every person in the plaza that he had just came from. Seeing this scene, Sho gritted his teeth and turned his back on the sea of blood, the smell of iron thickened the air, blood flowing through the plaza, as if it was a river.

By the time he got back to the safehouse, it was already dark. Blood continued to drip down his arm from the injury that he had sustained beforehand. Coming to the room he knocked and quietly said

"Hey sis, I'm back."

"Eweoooooooolllllbrother! Don't come in!"

Hearing her muffled scream and warning, he immediately kicked down the door to see a masked assailant holding a knife to his sister's throat. The dark room was a mess, with broken silverware everywhere. Looking more closely, he saw that there was blood pooled at his sister's feet as she had tried desperately to escape her attacker.

He could already see that she was beyond the point of no return.

"Please leave me..... Save yourself..... brother."

Wanting to end his sister's suffering, Sho rushed forward with the knife in his hand.

...

The last thing that he remembered that day was the feeling of stabbing someone's heart and the anguished dying screams of his sister.

----------

Waking up, he "saw" that he was in a hospital bed. Elaine was sitting in a chair to his right, reading a book. He decided to study her for a few more moments, as nobody could tell if he was awake anyways, with the mask covering his whole face.

Taiga could see that Elaine was actually only pretending to read the book as he heard her griping about him.

"Sigh.... why did that idiot have to lose after two strikes. Such a dummy, people will laugh at me if they found out that he was my partner. Why did I have to be stuck with the commoner. Uggggh, whatever, it's not like I can change anything."

"Please stop degrading me."

Hearing the cold voice, Elaine immediately snapped up and then proceeded to walk over to his side.

"Are you okay?" she asked, in a tone that was completely opposite to the one that she had been speaking in a moment ago.

"Sigh, just drop the act."

What Taiga didn't know was that Elaine had started to reassess Taiga as she knew how weak Kyle was, and for Taiga to lose in just two moves, it conflicted with the idea of him being a strong character.

Now, she had decided to continue to evaluate him, as she didn't know if what had happened in the arena was just an act.

They walked back to their room after Taiga was discharged and got ready for the peer teaching period, which was designed to make the stronger students teach the weaker students some skills.

Of course, for Taiga and Elaine, they were going to see who was actually stronger.

They walked to the training room, where Elaine grabbed a sword.

"Let's start the match."

3

2

1

"Start"

Elaine started approaching Taiga cautiously, as he was in some kind of weird pose with his hands completely flat, in a dagger-like position. She tried to see if the stance had any weaknesses, but was surprised to find that he left no open points in his stance.

She came face-to-face with him and then closed the gap quickly. Swinging her sword at his head, she was astonished when one of his arms came up and blocked the sword.

'How the heck is his arm blocking the sharp side of my sword, is it made of steel?'

She then launched a flurry of attacks, if an onlooker were to witness the match, they would just see two blurry figures whose weapons were moving at such incredible speeds that they were not noticeable to the naked eye, as if they could see the weapons, they would find that the boy was just using his arms to black the attacks from a bona fide sharp sword!

In reality, Taiga was just drawing the match out to first, mess with Elaine, and second, to gauge her abilities with a sword.

After about 15 minutes of relentless battering, Taiga decided that he was going to end it and unleashed one of the basic moves of his martial arts style.

"Unstoppable Piercing Blade"

In less than a second, Taiga's hand had completely knifed through her armor, and was on the other side of her body.

Feeling a strange warmth in her belly, Elaine looked down to see an arm going through her body.

When he pulled his arm out, seeing the hole in her body, Elaine fell down and fainted.

'I guess I'll have to use a potion on her."

This was too bad, as potions were extremely expensive, but he didn't want her to die as she would definitely be useful in the future. Inwardly, he also wanted to gloat in her face sarcastically.

In a few minutes, her wounds had all healed externally, so Taiga proceeded to carry her back to their room, laying her on the bed that was definitely not next to the window.

He layed down on his own bed and stared at the ceiling, thinking back on today's events. He had become semi-friends? with Elaine, had gotten himself beaten up by a bratty noble, had gotten a flashback of a past that he didn't want to revisit, and then he had proceeded to beat Elaine in a fight, which if anybody else was watching, looked like he needlessly endangered her just for the sake of gloating although he didn't think about it like that.

After thinking about other stuff and worrying about if he was going to be picked by a weapons master, he fell asleep, letting the darkness overtake him.

[Taiga's Stats]

Strength: 823

Agility: 1031

Health: 666 Hp

Intelligence: 101,264

Mana: 537,226

Luck: -6

(Luck is always going to be in the negatives as the player is destined to be the Demon King)

Skills:

[Touch Enhancement (Level 98): Increases the user's sense of touch and feeling by 20 fold

(always in effect) - Epic]

[Weapon Proficiency (Level 3 - Sword): Lets the user quickly master the art of the sword more quickly*

(only effective with the sword) - Uncommon]

[True Insight (Level 5): lets you rapidly understand anything

(is turned on at any time by the user, infinite uses) - Epic]

[Large Mana Pool (Level 38): user has an abnormally large mana pool, user can cast more spells

(always in effect) - Mythical]

[Spell Creation (Level 61): the user is able to make new spells

(always in effect) - Epic]

Unique Skills:

[Remember (Level 100): lets the user retain all memories from their past life

(always in effect) - Godly]

[Sage's Eye (Level 100): the user is able to see all of the stats of any object including living things

(is turned on at any time by the user, infinite uses) - Legendary]

[Growth (Level 1): allows the user's skills to grow, becoming "Superior" skills which can then lead to "Godly" skills

(always in effect) - Legendary]

[Resilience (Level 89): gives the user mild resistance to all harmful attacks and statuses

(always in effect) - Legendary]

[Rascal (Level 0): gives the user the unique ability to steal any power skills that they have been affected by

(always in effect) - Godly]