Glan Natural Science Academy

“I’m tired. Are you not sleeping yet, big brother?”

Woken up by Ryger’s excited voice, Lulu rubbed her eyes then went back to sleep.

But Kyubey, who was by her side, couldn’t sleep at all. After the fight earlier today, he found the way Ryger looked at him was weird. Not only did Ryger keep stealing a glance at him a lot, that boy’s eyes seemed to be sparkling while he did so! And the gaze he had while looking at him was clearly the gaze he’d had when looking at the fellow whose leg had been dismembered and stewed in a pot, the gaze that was as though he was looking at a naked girl and not a blackfire wolf, which Kyubey himself was. What a pervert!

Kyubey’s heart was pounding. He won’t have any ideas of doing it to me, will he? First using those disgusting paws to touch himself, then…

Blurghh

Kyubey instinctively thought that this fellow was very dangerous, similar to how the vagrant cats and dogs in the Academy smelt danger from Ryger with their senses!

 

Slurp.

Ryger looked at Kyubey, sucking in his saliva before they could spill out of his mouth and trying his best to show a harmless smile. 

All of a sudden, the wolf, already shivering, whimpered and stuck his head under Lulu’s clothes, trying his best to stay out of sight. No matter what, he would not look at Ryger straight in the eye.

It wasn’t unusual for Ryger to act as he did. Now that Kyubey had awakened and possessed the capability of unleashing metal-corroding flames, if he managed to dissect the wolf and learn the secrets behind the flames…

Frankly, there were some points he almost couldn’t resist and wanted to ask Kyubey, “Heh heh, say… Can you lend me yourself for a little bit of dissection?”

      

On the other side, Stella looked at this nameless male student, thinking back to how he was able to blast a female student of Sealand to smithereens on his own this morning. She could not help but be filled with curiosity towards him.

“I don’t know what Sokal said to you, but I want to say I’m not a bad person.”

Her sudden words snapped Ryger out of his self-absorption.

“Eh?”

Ryger quickly composed himself, making a serious face, keeping his specimen into his spacebox and wiping his temporary test bench, all to hide his embarrassment.

“He only said you made him unable to return home. Nothing else.”

Ryger replied to her in a casual manner.

Stella held her chin and said deeply, “Do you know? Money can cure poorness but it can’t cure ignorance. Greed is never-ending.”

“Erm?”

Ryger raised his head and looked at Stella, frowning, thinking why was she suddenly talking about this.

The girl made a self-deprecating expression and laughed freely. In this dark, silent night, she treated Ryger as someone to confide in. “Since I was little, I grew up with the daughter of a maid and we were always together. I didn’t treat her as a maid – she was a sister to me, the best I could ever have. She was a devout follower of the Light God and unlike most of the nobles who believe in the Light God only in speech, she believed in Him from the heart. She was a true follower who would give up everything she had to the Light God.”

“There are a lot of them,” said Ryger calmly, the girl’s words seemingly resonating with a certain memory of his. “The me of the past was also a follower too.”

Stella took a deep look at Ryger, at this male student who joined Class 11 mid-way. If not for their coincidental meeting this time, she would know close to nothing about him and wouldn’t have made any attempts getting to know him.

“Yes, there are many such people. The Light Creator Deity created everything and humanity opened the Box of Original Sin because of their desires and thus fell into the Box. Only through self-dedications can they achieve self-redemption.”

Her self-deprecating expression grew more pronounced.

“At that one year, she grew sick. It was lung disease. To us, this sort of disease only needs a pastor to perform a Benediction to be cured. But to them, there’s no other way but bloodletting therapy. So I gave her a lot of money for bribing the pastors. Do you know what ended up happening?”

From Stella’s words, it wasn’t hard to see that she thought was a noble student just like her.

A hint of scorn crept up the edges of Ryger’s mouth without himself noticing. “She gave all of it to the Church.”

Stella looked at Ryger, shocked.

“No need to look at me like that. I did say the me of the past was also a devout follower. Go on.”

Stella took in a deep breath and nodded.

“Yes, she gave all the money to the Church! I asked her why! She said she wanted to finish her self-dedications, to redeem herself for her sins. The Lord will feel her devoted faith and have mercy on her soul.”

Done speaking, Stella then looked at Ryger. He could clearly feel the anger and pain in her eyes.

“She died?”

“Yes. She died.”

Her words came through gritted teeth.

“And at her funeral, the pastor actually said, ‘may her soul enjoy eternal happiness at Heaven!’”

“Hah hah hah…”

A light laughter came from Ryger, seemingly thinking of his own father who similarly died because of ignorance and foolishness. It was obvious his wound was inflamed yet the doctor said it was bad blood. His father had died from an infection after getting too weak because of numerous bloodletting therapy. Perhaps until he died, his father still thought of it as a punishment from the Light God.

Stella continued. “It was also from that moment that I began to recognise this world! It turns out that none of the nobles treat the Light God seriously at all. He’s nothing more than another way for them to bleed others dry of wealth and fulfil their desires. But for those believers, He is their everything! Ignorance has corrupted their soul and has eaten deep into their bones but for all the money squeezed out of them, the Church’s and the nobles’ greed and desire can never be sated!”

 Ryger pursed his lips, keeping silent. He wanted to say something but he found out he didn’t know how to say it.

Snickering as though as self-deprecating, Stella carried on, “After that, I was no longer willing to continue that life – living for money every day and using it to satisfy endless greed!”

“And so you declined Sokal’s wedding and came to the Academy?”

Ryger had never thought that there would be such a story between Sokal and Stella.

Stella nodded and gritted her teeth. Resolutely, she said, “As long as the forebearers are correct – that there does not exists an omnipotent “God” and that even the Light Creator Deity cannot influence the machinations of celestial bodies – then as long as we get stronger and unveil the truth, there will be a day where we will be able to make this rotten, ignorant world become rational, to let everybody live for themselves!”

Affected by Stella’s outflowing emotions, Ryger, at this moment, couldn’t help but be overflowing with vigour.

“Yes!”

Ryger looked at Stella, who was shining with the radiance of  rationality, straight in the eye.

“Every time I read the books of our forebears, I can’t help but think, why did Pioneer Baniwens held on to《Heliocentrism》so unwaveringly till his death, so unflinchingly, even at the very last moment when the Light God sent down a miracle to incinerate him?” Ryger muttered, filled with longing and admiration. 

“Ignorance is the dense, heavy screen of night while rationality is a spark of flame. He was using his death to light up the light of rationality of this world no matter how dim it was, and to bring a glimmer of warm hope to the people.”

……

 

Second day.

The original plan was to try finding some plant specimens at the Furnace Mountains but because of the incident with the Sealand students, the few of them decided to return early.

Kyubey had tried to hide but to no avail. In the end, he was unable to escape from the grubby paws of Ryger. Of course, there was no way for him to dissect Kyubey so he instead asked Lulu that he wanted to collect some metal-corroding flames Kyubey for experimental use.

Lulu was naturally happy to oblige his request.

Kyubey unwillingly spit out some black flames then quickly dodged away out of sight.

With an excited smile, Ryger hurriedly took out the metal he had prepared ahead of time to use as fuel, then carefully kept the black flames in the form of sparks into a glass bottle for experimental specimen use in the future.

The metal-corroding flame had a singular characteristic. It used only solid-form metals as fuel, melting the metal to liquid form in the process. Most metals were unable to avoid being subjected to the flame’s corroding effect. But for other substances, the flame was unable to exert any effect.

Though, it would be a mistake to erroneously believe this metal-corroding flame is harmless to the human body.

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Calcium alone is present in the human body at 2% of its total mass! 

Not to mention there were many other metallic elements. Should a person be subjected to a large amount of metal-corroding flames, the consequences would be unimaginable.