Chapter 808: Got Time For a Quick Chat?
Chapter 808: Got Time For a Quick Chat?
The next day, Knight Combat ended with the kind of silence that came only after an entire class had been beaten into regretting someone else’s existence.The training hall doors opened, and the students of the second-year Knight Combat class began spilling into the corridor with none of their usual noise. There were no sharp complaints at first, no immediate arguments, no laughter from the more shameless ones trying to pretend they had not been pushed near collapse. Most of them were too busy breathing.
A few moved with their hands pressed against their ribs or shoulders, while others dragged their feet with the stiff, resentful gait of people whose legs had been forced to remember every mistake they had ever made. Sweat darkened collars and training shirts beneath academy uniforms hastily thrown back on, and more than one student looked as though they would have happily murdered the person responsible for the session if their arms still had the strength to lift a blade.
The cause of it walked somewhere near the back, looking smaller than usual beneath the collective hatred aimed his way.
Some student from the middle ranks had decided, halfway through drills, that muttering something under his breath about the instructors "overestimating themselves" was a survivable choice. The comment had not been loud, but Knight Combat instructors possessed the kind of hearing that became supernatural whenever a student said something stupid.
What followed was not punishment in the simple sense. It was worse than that. It became "corrective endurance training," which meant the entire class spent the remaining hour and a half running formation transitions, weapon-disarm sequences, shield recovery drills, and paired movement under weighted restrictions until even the students who had done nothing wrong wanted to confess to crimes just to make it end.
Liam walked out beside Asher, his expression calm but his body carrying the same dull strain as everyone else’s. His shoulders were sore, his forearms carried the lingering ache of repeated blade impact, and there was a faint sting along one side of his abdomen where a practice spear had caught him during the final rotation. None of it was serious. It was simply annoying. His breathing had already settled, though his muscles still felt the echo of the session with each step.
Asher, however, had no intention of suffering quietly.
"That," Asher said, voice tight with fury as they stepped into the corridor, "was complete nonsense."
Liam adjusted his grip on the strap of his bag. "It was avoidable."
"Exactly," Asher snapped. "Avoidable. Entirely avoidable. All that idiot had to do was keep his mouth shut. That was it. That was the entire challenge placed before him by the gods, the academy, and basic survival instinct, and somehow, he failed."
A student walking ahead of them glanced back, then quickly faced forward when Asher’s eyes sharpened.