Liam expected the worst when he removed the black devil mask from his face, but the situation took an unexpected turn.
While he had expected others to either attack him or flee away, screaming like banshees, all of them just stared at him, unblinkingly. His royal purple eyes and the vibrant black horn that jutted from the left side of his forehead were hard to miss though he stood in the midst of the heavy downpour.
His skin was snow-white and his clothes were drenched in the rainwater even before he could take ten steps. But none of that attracted Liam's interest right now.
He blankly stared at the young woman who blurted out what was on her mind while staring unabashedly at his face, "Nah…you're just handsome…"
The young woman was openly gawking at Liam and only seemed to regain her senses as her eyes met with Liam's vibrant stare. She blinked furiously and she felt momentarily incapable of formulating a coherent response.
"W-What?…you…you are h-handsome…" She said shyly, just for Liam to recall who the young woman actually was.
'She was nearly raped by the head coach. I thought she was soundly asleep,' He recalled and was about to avert his focus when he heard the young woman pushing the student next to her.
"Isn't he?" She blurted out, trying to seek someone's help as her cheeks kept getting redder.
Kian was standing next to the young woman and he had been staring at Liam just like everyone else. He was forced to gather his senses when the young woman pushed him before he noticed that Liam's attention had moved onto him.
"Y-Yeah, I guess he is handsome…the horn is pretty intimidating…adds charm…I guess…" Kian said somewhat helplessly as he snatched words out of his mouth. He had a lot more to say but no more words escaped his lips. Everyone felt like that, well, almost everyone.
The sudden revelation was shocking and it was hard to digest. After all, the students had been certain that Liam was human. He could speak their language, protected them to the best of his ability and Liam made sure that all of them would become stronger to fight against the Arcane Apocalypse. It didn't really make sense that Liam was suddenly their enemy!
Liam scanned the reactions of the students and smiled lightly as he put the mask back on his face. Earlier, he would have considered killing all of them rather than unveiling his identity but he needed them, or rather their strength and their ability to survive the Arcane Apocalypse. The ducklings who had chosen to follow him were somewhat powerful.
Their Soultraits were decent for combat as well, which meant that they could prove to be useful enough to help him passively protect the natives for his customized mission. He would also get contribution points for that, increasing his rating in the mission by a large margin.
Some things changed a little, which was also why he had decided to reveal his identity. He wanted the natives, or at least his ducklings, to be aware that there were not only monsters but also other, humanlike races, who chose to attack Haltan, whether it was to conquer the entire planet, build a relationship with Natives or simply to protect their own Realm in every possible way.
There might be better ways to explain everything neatly but the shock treatment seemed to be quite efficient as well.
Or so Liam thought until he looked into Olivia's eyes.
"Were you trying to hide that you're not from Earth, or whatever you guys call our planet? Wasn't that quite obvious? You must take us for fools if you actually thought that we didn't notice you're different!" Olivia declared in a manner that caused everyone to look at her with stern expressions.
Liam squinted his eyes, feeling pretty sure that the other students were currently cursing Olivia in their minds. He could tell that the others didn't notice that he was different from them even if he was more knowledgeable about monsters, the Arcane System, and a few other things. All of these pieces of information could have been procured in certain ways other than the 'obvious fact' that Liam came from one of the Nine Realms.
'Either she is extremely good at deducing facts, but oblivious when it comes to seeing things that are right in front of her…or she is good at guessing,' Liam figured while shaking his head lightly. The corners of his lips uptilted at the confused expression on Olivia's face as she was stared at by almost everyone else.
It was obvious that she didn't know what was going on right now.
"You look crazy, dude. What a chad!" Rex suddenly exclaimed. His eyes gleamed brightly as he kept stealing glances at Liam's horn. "Can I touch your horn? Just once…?"
"Fuck off…" Liam blurted out an expected response that caused many to smile lightly. The tension around them reduced considerably, which was contrary to Liam's expectations.
He wanted to instill a certain sense of fear in the minds of those around him but he had no control of the situation and that made him uncomfortable. It was especially burdensome that he was not rejected and that they had not pointed their weapons at him, after all, that was the reaction he expected to receive upon revealing his identity.
'Maybe the natives here are more foolish than the Overworldly Humans I know?'
While looking at Rex, whose eyes were basically glowing in a radiant light, Liam couldn't exclude the possibility. As for Olivia, she was probably too intelligent for her own good, which ended up damaging her common sense.
But then there was also Kian who stared a few seconds at Liam before he nodded his head.
"I will still follow you. I can understand why you hid your identity from us before. Now that we have a hideout you should know that it is not necessary to lie to us anymore. It must have been hard to lie to us all the time yet keep us from harm. You were trying hard to help us even though we could have exposed you with every bit of information you revealed. I don't really understand why exactly the Arcane Apocalypse is happening but I can tell that you are a good person." Kian said while moving his head as he was speaking.
He looked at Liam for a while with a faint smile on his face which was more than enough for Liam's eyes to start twitching.
"Are you guys idiots?"