Bang!
Felix's head slammed against room 36's door.
Said door trembled as his body slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Dorion looked at Alek and asked with a broad smile, "And you dared to ask why I was so hard on him? You almost killed him…"
Blood oozed from his nose, lips, and ears as he lay there, bruises riddling his body.
The moment he returned, he suffered a beatdown.
When they asked where their lunch was, that earned him another beating.
A third followed when Alek's mood turned foul.
When he finally awakened, it was time for dinner.
After returning with no dinner, there was another beating.
Even if it wasn't his fault, so what?
The day after, classes officially began.
As ordinary students, they were tasked with learning martial arts from the basics.
Already bruised and injured, Felix put his all into mastering the art, as it was his only way out of this situation.
Yet, it was difficult.
Basic martial arts.
The instructors demonstrated the moves, and the students attempted to replicate their techniques.
They would be in squatting positions for over an hour, and at times, two and three hours.
At times, Felix felt his legs turn to mush. Before he even realized how, he would break his stance and fall onto his buttocks.
Other times, while attempting to replicate the instructor's movements, certain positions would rub against the injuries and bruises inflicted by his roommates.
As a result, his performance in class was utterly horrendous.
As a class, they were trained to move as one. One person's strength was another's strength, and one person's weakness was another's weakness.
Felix didn't seem to have any talent for martial arts, and on many occasions, he single-handedly caused the entire class to suffer punishment after he broke a stance or performed a set of movements dreadfully wrong.
Suffering punishment because of someone else was unbearable and infuriating.
Standing before a mirror, he was in one of the washrooms within the combat hall.
He had dark circles under his eyes and a face filled with bruises. But more than his face, every movement he made caused him pain.
The healing pod wasn't something that would be used for the likes of them unless they were on the brink of death.
It had only been a month since entering the camp of ten thousand, yet he was barely able to move around.
Instead of becoming more powerful during this time, his body felt weaker, as if its strength were continuously plummeting.
He was beaten on the first day.
That night, he was beaten too.
The next morning, he was beaten.
Beaten, beaten, beaten.
He was bruised and battered for things that were not his fault.
Anon was so inconsistent at appearing for meals that it inadvertently made Felix's life hell.
This was how things were.
Anon didn't care about breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because in most instances, he was preoccupied with mastering the staff and cultivating, and yet, this seeming act of diligence greatly affected others.
But was it his fault?
After all, he didn't make the rules.
Yet, his fault or not, it did not change that Felix was tormented due to this.
Dorion and Alek didn't care.
Day after day, week after week, they were relentless.
But they did not seem to realize...
When he began to be bullied for things that appeared to be his fault, like his slow comprehension in martial art classes, whatever guilt he felt was drowned out by the injustice he suffered.
So, what if they got a little punishment.
What, you're going to blame me because I'm slow?
Heh.
Maybe if my body wasn't fucking broken, I could repeat the instructors' movements.
Alek and Dorion broke his body, and his infuriated and annoyed classmates injured his mind.
But he was no Nickyle.
His eyes.
They weren't dead.
They broke him physically and injured him mentally, yes.
And yet, this did not break him.
Felix…
He was willing to become a bookworm just to enter the academy, why?
He was willing to do anything to change the fate of his family.
Low-class commoner…
Such a term was insufferable, something he could not bear.
Even as the students and instructors looked down on him, spat at him, and cursed him, he didn't care.
Though he was a "higher human" with a healing factor that allowed fractured bones to recover in hours and shattered bones in just a day or two, every morning he awoke in pain.
Each night, he would "sleep" through the loss of consciousness, and when he awoke, it was usually between one and three in the morning.
He'd head to the showers, where sweat mixed with blood always flowed down the drain, before wrapping his entire body in bandages and exiting the dorm room around four, or even earlier.
Even if he broke curfew, he didn't care; he would go out for a morning run with a body that felt completely ruined.
During these runs, he completed all kinds of calisthenic exercises, as many as he could think of. After all, as an evolved human, even his lanky frame was incredibly dense, weighing over two hundred pounds.
With slow movements and high repetitions in his exercises, coupled with the consistency of exercising every morning and the determination to repeat the instructors' movements after each class, his strength and technical abilities rose slowly—almost unnoticeably—but surely.
Like this, the end of August arrived.
He stood before a mirror in the washroom, staring into his eyes.
He could see the exhaustion and the dark circles under his eyes.
Compared to the first of July, he had changed, a lot.
It was said that the eyes were the window to the soul.
His eyes.
They were not dead like Nickyle's.
Yet, within existed hatred, hatred that festered within his sense of self for some time.
Hate that underwent several complex transformations in such a short time.
This kind of loathing, he felt towards Alek and Dorion.
To his classmates.
And even the instructors.
No, more so to the instructors.
They said things like unity and bonding, and they actively instigated chaos between the students.
Those like Elissa were even worse.
Their eyes stared at him with looks that did not seem to be observing another human.
His hands pressed down onto the counter.
Under his grip, the stone counter trembled and cracked.
"It's the twentieth of August now." Felix's voice was croaky, his tone was low, and much deeper than before.
His hair was disheveled, and he had grown a couple of inches taller.
Standing at around 6'1", his previously skinny physique was now more defined, with the muscles in his forearms bulging as he gripped the stone counter.
"I've willingly taken a beating from Alek and Dorion for over twenty days now… I'll return this injustice back in blood."
At the same time, the door to the washroom opened.
"Oh, look who we have here." Four students entered, the seeming leader of the pack stating, "I was wondering where the waste had run off to."
Shifting his gaze from the mirror, Felix turned to these four, "Luca, Bentley, Oliver, Phillip."
"This act of cleansing will begin with you four." Felix cracked his neck.
Luca, a fair-skinned young man with sharp features and noticeably bulging biceps, heard Felix's words and came to an abrupt halt. His body trembled.
"Hah… Hahahaha!" He laughed as if he had just heard the greatest joke. Clenching his gut tightly, he leaned toward the dark-skinned Phillip and asked, "Did you hear him? Eh? Did you hear the waste?!"
Phillip, slightly taller, clenched his jaw and exaggerated his reaction to Felix's words.
They really didn't take Felix's words to heart, but it didn't mean that he could say such things without any worries.
Bentley stepped forward.
He was the smallest of the group, standing just under six feet, making him shorter than Felix, but was quite skilled at hand-to-hand combat.
"You're just making things worse for yourself."
Bentley said indifferently, "We only do this so you'll know to just give up. You wouldn't even be the first to leave the camp midway."
"Give up, huh? Banish myself from the camp." Felix coldly smirked and stepped toward Bentley.
The latter was swift to react, jabbing out.
His guard was tight, and his fists were quick, but Felix was even faster.