Glan Natural Science Academy

Chapter 54

“AHH!”

The purple-haired girl shrieked, her heart broken after realising Konan was murdered by Ryger through unknown means. Compared to the Glan nobles’ gentlemanly socialisation process system of laboratorical learning, the Sealand Principality placed more importance on the competitiveness between students and so used a system of gladiatorial trials.

Thus, the entrance exam for the Sealand Principality was to kill a gladiator in a coliseum. Needless to say, these gladiators were lowest level gladiator slaves arranged by the Sealand academy and their combat strength was even less than that of a normal adult. Still, it wasn’t hard to see the cruelty in Sealand.

Expeditions of blood and steel. Strength is authority.

In such cruel competitions, most students of the Sealand Natural Sciences Academy rarely interacted with others in a hypocritic and amicable manner, and instead used a more straightforward method of exchanging benefits. They valued promises made verbally and through contracts more.

It was unquestionable that the friends that they have in such a setting were true friends that they could completely be at ease around. After all, what friendship was even more sincere that one forged by companions who fought side by side in gladiatorial trials. Konan, Baker and Violet, their friendship was one borne from such a situation.

If it were a normal person who saw their companion murdered in such a brutal way, their normal reaction should be to first feel fear, then feelings of anger and revenge. But Violet wasn’t such a person.

“I will have you dead!”

She no longer cared about Stella who had been fleeing in disarray. Perhaps if she chased after her for a few more moments, Stella would give up on the oblation turtle to save her life. But in this very moment, things like the oblation turtle, specimen collection and honour roll results did not matter at all. They were nowhere near as important as letting out the pain and hatred in her heart.

Screaming out loud and with her hair all over the place Violet, bolted towards like a bunch of immolating flames towards the edge of the blood mist, towards Ryger simply stood there frozen because of Konan’s death.

Stella huffed and puffed.

Because she was too far and was paying full attention to running, Stella did not notice the incident that occurred at Ryger side. But when Violet actually stopped pursuing, she stopped to catch her breath. Clutching the wound at her waist caused by Wind Blade and ruffling her frayed her, she looked at the mist of blood far in the distance. And when she did, she gaped.

“He blew up that girl!?”

……

At the same time.

The words that Satro spoke of in his first lesson of dissection with Ryger seemed to float in front of the dazed boy’s eyes.

“Many scholars will have some negative emotions or guilt or excitedness or feel sick because of the blood when they first begin to dissect specimens. We need to correct our experimental attitudes and treat the life and death of specimens rationally. The murders in the process of research are nothing more than a necessary step that we need to go through in seeking knowledge and the truth. When it is unnecessary, we must avoid needless killings.”

Ryger’s thoughts now were extraordinarily clear. There was no bloodlust that came after killing. There was also no fear. There was only cold, silent calmness. It was an instinct that originated deep inside his bloodline.

“A mature human body has in total two hundred and six bones. The intestines are about four times longer than the person’s height. The total length of blood capillaries is more than a hundred thousand kilometres. The heart pumps blood at a rate of sixty to hundred times per minute. A person’s normal temperature is between 36.5 to 37 degrees Celsius…”

Now, after witnessing Konan’s death from exploding, vast amounts of general knowledge of the human body emerged in his brain. All of it was something that he unintentionally came across while in the Glan Natural Sciences Academy’s library.

Ryger’s mood was as calm as when he faced his first frog specimen in his dissection class.

From his trance, Ryger suddenly woke up. There was a hint of confusion in the cold rationality found in his eyes.

“I will have you dead!”

Violet’s hysterical roar from far away made Ryger awaken completely.

“Although I don’t know how she died – and in such a miserable way while she was at it too – but she definitely didn’t die because of my bloodlust. Humans are also nothing more than a link in nature’s food chain – there will also be life and death. Her death was merely the result of survival of the fittest, the result of her losing to me in nature’s survival competition.”

There was no unwillingness to accept the situation, no apologetic feelings and not even a shred of regret or chagrin.

Since it had already happened, and he knew he would face revenge, the awakened boy wasted no time at all, running towards Lulu and Logic. Only by meeting up with these two could he ensure his safety.

It was at this moment that Ryger truly realised that this was the world of adults that his father had faced. Only by trying his best could he ensure that he was able to live on in this world safely. The world of adults similarly followed the laws of conservation – to achieve a goal, one needed to pay other prices!

“Big brother, you’re so cool!”

Lulu looked at Ryger, eyes sparkling as though she was looking at a hero. She seemed to treat’s Ryger’s bloodstained and weary state as nothing more than him overexerting himself in his fight with Konan. “One day,” the girl said excitedly, looking at Violet who was rushing over from afar, “I’ll be as strong as you!”

Her quadruped companion had experienced a blessing in disguise in the form of getting tortured by that evil scholar, and she now made Ryger a goal which she would work hard in the future to catch up with. In this moment, she was no longer nervous, as she had been before this, because this was her first time out.

The fighter girl took in a deep breath and charged towards Violet on her own initiative. “Big brother, you rest first. I’ll help deal with her!” said the girl valiantly.

She then intercepted Violet.

Faced with the fighter girl who now was able to exhibit her full strength, Violet found it very difficult to break through her defences no matter how desperately she attacked, and was instead getting suppressed by Lulu. Evidently, Lulu’s true strength was above that of Violet – only so could she fill the gap that was the difference of strength between scholars and fighters of equal levels.

Such a scene caused old man Logic to unconsciously narrow his eyes.

“This gal has a bright future in front of her.”

Baker, hiding in his sealed-off wall, saw through the gaps Ryger, who was looking at Lulu’s fight with Violet. His gaze sharpened. He stirred and was about to ambush Ryger when he heard a low growling sound. Turning his head and seeing Kyubey baring his teeth at him, Baker quickly sealed the wall shut and hid in it like a turtle.

……

Dylan had been travelling the Salt Sea for a long time.

As a direct descendant of the Nio family – one of the great families in the Glan Principality, making them inextricably linked to the Glan royal family – Dylan’s understandings of growth when it came to evolutionary secrets far surpassed others. This was because it was none other than his family who birthed one of humanity’s three pioneers, Pioneer Anton Nio!1

And so, although Dylan was only an initiate student, he already had quite the mature plans when it came to his life. To him, elementary attacking skills would only become less and less useful when he grew stronger in the future. And so, in his plans for the future, he had since a long time ago decided to have all his elementary skills be supportive ones. And it was precisely because of this that his fighting strength was mediocre among the initiate students.

Of course, this ‘mediocrity’ was only a matter of relativity.

“Hall, Morgana, Angina. For now, these three are probably the only students in the Academy’s first rung. On the surface, Morgana is stronger than Angina, but in the long term, Hall most probably… Mhm, these three aside, there are a few others whose performances have been commendable and have chances of squeezing into the first rung. There really is a lot of talent in this batch of students, huh.”

Dylan was now blowing bubbles in the Salt Sea’s water and swimming around freely at quite the considerable speed.

Though, the Salt Sea’s deepness far surpassed people’s imagination. At its dark seafloor, the pressure was beyond imaginations and there existed extremely dangerous mutants. Knowing these, Dylan naturally did not dare to go too deep.

Pshhh!

The water surface was broken by Dylan and he climbed back to land. Sitting on a reef, he shook his head in disappointment after screening through his harvest today, and tossed all of them back into the sea.

“As expected, finding a valuable specimen that is to my satisfaction without the family’s help is truly like finding a needle in a haystack.”

With a resigned expression, he lay lazily on the black coral, his thoughts wandering on its own to the time he was undergoing initiate studies back in the family, to scenes where he would get any specimens that he asked for immediately. He cursed himself for not knowing to cherish that moment, and only realising how precious his opportunity was after he lost his family’s support when he started his studies at the Academy.

The more he thought, the more annoyed he got. Slapping the reef he was on fiercely, he sat up.

“Even without the family’s help, I have my wisdom. I will definitely accomplish something and make those old people acknowledge my talents!”

Right at this time.

In the direction where the black corals and the beach met not too far away, a clear roar suddenly came. Dylan was taken aback.

“This is a place of travel most suitable for initiate student’s specimen collection. How can there be large beasts here?”

Because the distance between the two place wasn’t too close, Dylan naturally didn’t know that this was the result of Ryger opening a spook bottle to deal with the Sealand student Konan’s dynamic vision.

“Could it be a hidden species that the Academy hasn’t yet discovered?”

Excited, he no longer hesitated. As the energy field on his body undulated, wind energy gathered near his shoulders, forming a pair of wings of wind.

He leapt and after flying a circle, Dylan blasted off in the direction where the roar had come from.

……

At the same time, at a beach in the Sealand Principality not far away, there was a team. This was a travel team formed by 5 students from the Sealand academy. Few of them managed to faintly hear a roar.

“Sounds like a large one!”

“Let’s go take a look?”

One of them, a man wearing hide armour, shook his head. “It’s within Sealand’s border. If we encounter senior students of theirs, we’ll be in danger. We should leave it.”

Compared to the Glan Natural Sciences Academy’s students who were in love with scholar robes, those from the Sealand Natural Sciences Academy had more range in their attires, having had a long history in coliseums.

Although senior students would normally head to other areas to collect specimens, it wasn’t unheard of for some to go to the Furnace Mountains.

The few of them quelled any thoughts of discovering what it was and moved further away from where the sound rang out.