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Me and the group of boys who attacked me stared at each other, waiting for each other to make the first move. While we were waiting, my “weapon” was groaning and trying to sit up, so I whipped his whole body against the ground, eliciting a groan from him, but surprisingly still managed to maintain his aura.

Not wanting to let my opponents have the initiative, I charged first, covered my eyes with an arm, and cast a flash spell that made those caught by the blinding light scream in surprise.

I used this opportunity to jump and use the first row of blinded boys as stepping stones to get to the remaining mages in the back. By the second step, there were already hands reaching up to try and grab me, there were most likely those who were shorter or just lucky enough to have their line of sight blocked when I flashed the group, but they were easy enough to avoid, I just had to aim for those who were covering their eyes as my stepping stones.

Within four steps, I was amongst the mages and laying the smackdown on them while the rest of the group tried to get me.

By the time I smacked the last mage student into the wall, I had found myself once again surrounded, but they now did not seem so eager to attack me, and from the way Oswald was looking around at the other boys, he was not so sure himself, but he must have thought of something and shouted for everyone to charge.

I swung my human weapon, but by now, most of them had Augmentation spells cast on them, and even if the mages were knocked out, the spell would persist for a while. So when my human weapon hit the first boy, he braced with his arms up and tanked the blow as his uniform glowed from the impact it absorbed, while others swarmed past to get to me.

I had no choice but to relinquish my human weapon and rely on unarmed combat. Knowing that things were not going to be good if I did not manage the amount of people engaging me at the same time, I turned to the closest wall and fought my way toward it. But this time, I did not have the luxury of weapon reach, and I had to be accurate with my strikes to avoid hitting Augmented uniform and breaking my fighting rhythm.

So that meant headshots attacks and throws. After knocking in some noses and throwing them over my shoulder to my pursuers, I managed to put my back against the wall. That means at most two people could comfortably attack me at the same time.

After blocking and counterattacking for a few seconds, an idea came to me, and I tried it out. I mentally cast a dark haze spell and soon a bubble of darkness started forming around me.

It first covered my imminent attackers who panicked and started throwing wild attacks, which were easy to pick out and counter with a hook to the jaw, crumpling them. I then started expanding the dark haze spell to encompass the surrounding boys.

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Naturally, they backed off as there were no mages left to counter my spell, but seeing as it was my spell, I was not affected by the dark haze and looked around to find the main instigator of all this bullshit, Oswald.

Now as a personal principle, I don’t want to hit kids, much, but if there is anything I have learned from my travels back in my old world, especially in Asia, is that sometimes, some kids need an ass whopping to get some things through their thick skulls.

So if I need to beat the idea of not messing with me into Oswald’s head, so be it, I can’t leave this to fester for the rest of my time in this academy. And since he is from a martial house, they must have some training to toughen them up, so I might have to go hard on him. Should be fine, nothing some healing magic can’t fix.

As I looked at the backing away students, I found Oswald backing away with his lackeys in front of him.

So, in order to get the jump on him, I would need to modify my spell on the fly to make it so I am not the center of the spell, like everyone is expecting. Once I was done with the modification, I went to the edge of the haze, right in front of Oswald, and saw the boys standing ready for me to come out.

I then release the spell modification and the center of the spell once again becomes me, this shifts the wave of dark haze to wash over Oswald and those standing behind him. The moment the dark haze washed over them, the front row tried to back up, but the back rows did not react in time, leading to a jam in their retreat.

This left Oswald blind and free for the picking. So like all the many monster horror movies I have watched, I acted like the monster, I crouched and reached between two of his lackeys, grabbed Oswald’s ankle, and yanked hard while jumping backward.

This made Oswald shriek in terror as both of us were airborne for a moment, just before I whipped him to the ground, and knocked the air out of him, even with his aura on. And now that he is not doing that stealth aura thing, I can tell that he has a respectable aura quality for his age. But with my mana pathway tempering improving my aura, he is nowhere close to matching me.

As he was trying to recover, I jumped on top of Oswald in a full mount and slapped Oswald across the face, “You better grit your teeth, Oswald, nobody is coming to save you this time, but I guess you knew that, seeing as this was the moment you used to try and ambush me.” I gave him a slap to the other side of the face to even things out.

From there, I repeatedly slapped Oswald as he brought his arms up to defend his face, soon he started to try to push me away to get some distance and bucked his hips. I used that opening to transition into an armbar. As I flexed, that was when the screaming really started, and the only thing his lackeys and gathered help could do was stare into the dark haze as they heard the screams which were soon interrupted by a visceral pop sound and a scream that petered out into sobbing.

I released Oswald, crawled next to him, and whispered into his ear, “You ever pull this shit with me again or you and your lackeys so much as look at me funny, I am coming for you, and next time, I am taking your legs too. For now, I will just be satisfied with your other arm.”

“No! No, please! NO NO” Oswald shouted as I crawled over to his other side and pulled his good arm into an armbar, as I flexed and pulled his arm, more screaming came out of his mouth, but before I could pop his elbow, the heavy thud of boots came down beside me, and a pulse of tyrannical aura ripped my dark haze spell to shreds to reveal Instructor Greyham.

“STOP!” Instructor Greyham boomed as he looked down at me, just as I popped Oswald’s remaining elbow.