Chapter 63

The last remaining intruder was looking around annoyed. He was in a bad mood already which only worsened when he had to deal with some weird shadow. Now looking around, he was just about done with everything.

"I told them not to send the rookies. But once again, no one ever listens to me.

Sorry kid but this is kind of …"

He couldn't finish because he had to doge a flying lamp. He was told there would be some weird things but this wasn't exactly what he expected.

The boy was trying to get to him, surprisingly skillfully for someone who was supposedly untrained, but he didn't have to try evading too hard to remain unharmed.

He would have stuck around to humor the kid but he had a job to do so he just hit him in the head and turned back to the door he tried to open earlier.

He was quite surprised when he felt a hit on his back and saw the stupid lamp from earlier being held by the kid who was clearly struggling to remain standing.

He grabbed onto the weird weapon's lantern with his bare hands then proceeded to crush it to prove to the boy the futility of his struggle. What he didn't expect was to actually get burned by the flames inside.

"Damn it! Alright, I'm done being nice!"

He pushed the boy with all his power, making him crash into the hard wall. He then pulled out his knife.

His assignment specifically said to avoid unnecessary casualties and he planned to stick to that, but he also had to get the kid to leave him alone and he also really wanted to vent his frustrations.

He slashed at the boy's arm like he had done to so many people before.

This time however, it felt off somehow. The resistance was nowhere near what he expected and looking down he saw that the arm, although bleeding profusely, was still attached.

And to his annoyance the little brat was still trying to attack him with increasingly pathetic punches.

It was a sorry sight to see and he couldn't really comprehend why someone so pitiably weak wanted to fight him so bad.

He lifted the boy up by the neck and was seriously considering killing him. He couldn't really do much with that thought because suddenly…

CRACK

He felt a sudden pain in his chest. Initially he wanted to disregard it as the desperate struggle it was, but the pain wasn't going away.

In fact it was getting worse, a lot worse.

Eventually the pain was so unbearable that he let go of the beaten up kid and was left clutching his chest on the floor.

After a number of slow, agonizing minutes he passed out.

Meanwhile Peter got to his senses and staggered to his feet.

[Xe4lt:Z9#>

(St @m:n a: 3B%]

He had trouble reading his status but he could guess that it was horrible. But even if the situation turned out nothing like he wanted, he still won.

He looked down at his intact hand which was unconsciously still holding on to the dark crystalline handle of the Hostia. He didn't plan on using the weapon but it seemed like the best time to do so.

He knelt down next to the would-be assassin who was still convulsing in pain.

[Absorption failed.]

Peter stayed there for a while, looking into nothingness with a blank stare. Eventually a weak chuckle left his mouth.

"Yeah… I probably shouldn't have that."

And just like that, after getting bruised all over his body, receiving a concussion, having several of his bones broken and getting his hand partially cut off, the victor of the battle finally passed out.

In the morning Mr.Smith visited the academy's infirmary. His team spent all night hunting down an unreasonable amount of incompetent assassins. They were bogged down to such a degree that when they heard the alarm all of them thought that it was because of another moron who got past them by pure chance.

As a result of their complacency the team's youngest member got severely injured. He was an honorary member so they felt especially bad about it. Mr.Smith wanted to personally check the damage on the poor boy.

Although Leon managed to get an outstanding medic to supervise the academy, their equipment was subpar to say the least. Based on what he was told he didn't have high hopes for his young student's recovery.

Outside of the patient's room he had a sudden feeling of refreshment. He knew the doctor long enough to recognize his ability and to know that this wasn't how he treated individual patients.

Walking inside the room was a lot more crowded than it was supposed to be. First off there was the doctor who was sitting in a corner reading and Peter who was lying on a bed, unconscious.

Other than them there were also two black figures, one of them humanoid. They were both lying on the bed and seemingly watching the sleeping boy.

"Care to explain what is happening?"

"Sure. All that's happening is that the lady won't let me do my job."

Mr.Smith looked at the humanoid shadow trying to make sense of her.

"How do you know that exactly?"

"The damn thing jumped at me when I tried to get close to the kid. At least the other one is just sleeping"

"Couldn't you just subdue her?"

"Say that after you get punched in the kidney. If I didn't react fast enough I'd be lying in the other room."

The usually calm and collected man was quite surprised this time, looking back and forth between the shadow and the physician. Eventually he composed himself and returned to the original reason for his visit.

"Will he recover? That wound on his arm looks really bad."

"Don't worry. He could recover even without me. And about his arm, that's actually quite common for those who can make themselves incorporeal or have a strong regenerative ability. In his case it seems to be both."

"That's good. What about the other one? Can you do something with him?"

The assassin they found next to Peter was also in horrible shape. No one in his team had seen anything like it before, all they could tell was that it was serious.

"Aside from getting him a new torso? No, not really. At first I had trouble figuring out where his bones were supposed to be, it was so mangled!"

"You really can't do anything?"

Mr.Smith's doubt was understandable. The doctor was one of the best in the country. The only people he couldn't heal were those with large portions of their bodies missing or already doomed by some ability more powerful than his own, of which there weren't too many.

"Don't get me wrong, I could heal him. It's just that his body is so disfigured internally that it would remain mostly non functional. Right now the main reason he can't wake up is because he's feeling too much pain. 

If we let his nerves die off he still might be able to wake up and consent to the installation of prosthetics. Other than that there's nothing we can do."