"Hey man, how old are you?"

"Haha, Brother, I am 19 this year."

"Ho, then why do you look like a little kid? Did you never hit your puberty?"

The Hunter’s Academy, a great place with a simple name. An academy that only accepted people gifted with a talent, which was considered rare among humanity. But it didn’t mean all talents were good. Rated from 1 to 5 in general sense with each number signifying a different lethality rank of a talent, it doesn’t mean that one rank is better than the other.

Level 5 is for useless talents which have no value whatsoever during warfare. Though exceptions do exist. Level 4 denotes useful talents that lack any lethality in any way or form. Level 3 covers talents that are not directly dangerous but can be used to take life. Level 2 includes lethal talents that can cause great harm to people. Level 1 talents are the uncontrollable disasters that can’t be handled easily, like those that spread viruses and such.

Of course, besides these talents, there was an extra rank of 0 talents, which were considered special due to the unique physiques they provided to their possessors. The fellow who had been pummeling a young-looking kid and treating him like a shuttle for his food was the very same, a level 0 talent.

"Brother, I don’t know… Something’s probably wrong in the water." The boy laughed while acting subservient to his bully, who went by the name of Jacket.

Just Jacket, or so he liked to call himself. Born to a mortal family, he had too much to prove. But since awakening his talent, the humility one should have from his background disappeared, as his Level 0 talent was a bit too strong, making him a sort of trashy genius of the school.

It was why the boy had chosen him as his first target. Though this man was not alone. The boy found various special targets that would be useful and approached them, acting like a shuttle, or their underling, using their authorities to become one of the shitty bullies himself. Acting weak in front of the strong, while arrogant in front of the weak—a perfect trash character who no one respected, including his so-called friends.

This loneliness was strength in his mind, giving him free time to think his plans properly, to plan ahead for the arrival of that bastard’s son, and to set up a perfect trap. And the day he had been waiting for all this time finally came.

‘Finally,’ the boy thought. He could finally see the son of the bastard who ruined his life, the bastard who stole everything from him. The boy wanted to go and play his cards right then and there, but the school setting was a bit too open, and the boy was not stupid enough to think that these children of heroes wouldn’t have any bodyguards. At the very least, there would be Grade 2 existences waiting in the dark.

Though confirmation was still needed, so the boy played a little game. Using their own arrogance, he brushed past them and fell down. It was then that he felt something lock onto him. ‘There they are,’ the boy smiled on the inside while playing his act perfectly. Though this smile was also filled with some disappointment, as he understood clearly that the revenge he wanted was not so easy to achieve.

‘Well, no worries.’ Using some excuses and apologizing, the boy was able to escape the clutches of this spoiled child, but it didn’t mean he truly felt sorry about any of it. Due to this small event, the boy expected some backlash from the student body. They all wanted to look good in the eyes of the hero, and why not mess with some poor kid if it made the hero’s kid happy?

And that’s what the boy expected would happen until, “You stupid kid, you messed with that hero’s kid?” Jacket, on the other hand, seemed to have smiled at this. “Pretty ballsy, seems like my training was not useless.” He seemed happy over the boy’s actions, mistaking it all for what he did purposefully, and as for the truth, he didn’t care.

“How dare he mess with one of my boys?” Jacket ensured the boy some revenge, where he would beat the living hell out of the newbie nepo baby who probably was not as talented as the rumors suggested. ‘Just a frog in the well,’ Jacket thought, looking at the first-year class with a hint of mockery.

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Born into a mortal family, he had no resources to speak of. All his current achievements and strength were obtained from hard work, making him one of the youngest to advance to Grade One Warrior before the age of 20. So he always held a hint of hatred for those born with golden spoon.

But such it was only later that the by learned, how much of a fake person Jacket truly was.

The result of the bout between Jacket and the Hero’s son was somewhat expected at the end of the day.

“This bastard.” Jacket, awakened with the talent of Impervious, was a perfect punching bag in a simple sense. This Impervious physique of his also brought him many advantages. There was no limit to the amount of time he could practice and train his body. His endurance made it so that he rarely got tired or suffered from muscle cramps, which was one of the reasons why he ascended so fast.

But this also made it harder for him to train after reaching a certain level of strength.

“You are not all talk…” And Jacket smiled at the hero’s son. This was the first time he had felt any pain since awakening, the first time he finally experienced soreness in his muscles. Jacket knew from this very feeling alone that this simple sparring match with this newbie had brought him many benefits.

“I concede.” Jacket also understood that if you couldn’t beat them with strength, you should concede to them before things escalate. He was just from a simple mortal family; if he couldn’t win with strength, then he had no other way to retaliate anymore. Besides, becoming enemies with a hero’s son would only bring him problems in the long run.

Of course, there were a lot of other thoughts in Jacket’s head over why he used the boy as an excuse to fight the hero’s son. “And from fighting, I don’t think you are the kind of guy who will do such a thing.” Then he turned to look at the boy, appearing angry, though he kept his mouth silent.

The one who spoke was none other than the hero’s son, Rehmant. “I have been saying it from the start, you shouldn’t believe the words of weak people. They always lie to take advantage of you.” From his past experiences, the little goodwill Rehmant had towards the weak had disappeared with time. In his eyes, they were just lost sheep that needed to be shepherded by the strong.

So in his eyes, the senior who appeared as a boy was nothing more than a liar who tried to borrow the strong to beat him. Though there was some truth in all of that. ‘Hah, I need to play my cards properly. I can’t let that fool lead me anymore.’

Apology was all he could make. Although he was immune when in front of teachers, there was a tacit agreement between the teachers and the student body: as long as nothing serious happened, you could fight as much as you wanted in certain black zones where the security cameras didn’t exist. These black zones existed in the Hunter Academy to establish the hierarchy between the rowdy awakened Hunters who always wanted to abuse their power. It was their way to vent their emotions.

It was also the place where the boy still got beaten up after his apologies to these people.

“Hey hey… he understands. No need to beat him so much.” Rehmant was the one to stop Jacket, who was teaching the boy a lesson.

“Don’t feel bad for him, he might look young, but he is older than you.” Jacket explained, and Rehmant was surprised to hear this.

“He is a senior? So immature?” A bit surprised by the boy’s look and actions, part of which he made up in his own head.

But the boy didn’t mind it. Abuse him all you want, curse him, use him as a scapegoat. The boy kept sticking to these people. Even as they grew stronger and the size of their group increased with time, the boy kept close to them, helping them, acting in the background, and even somehow influencing their ideas with simple gossip that he spread to multiple members of the Elite group.

By the end of the year, most started to treat the boy as a natural member of their group, even his bullying decreased with time, but none of them held much respect for him from the start. He was a useful helper in their eyes, that’s all. As for his talent? A simple thread-based talent which was rated Grade 4 due to its lack of lethality. The boy could create threads out of his blood that he could use to bind or make others trip over. But each use of the blood also made the boy anemic, which might be the reason for his small build.

“Are you guys planning to go to tomorrow’s graduation ceremony?”

“I know none among the fourth years, why bother? It's better to use that as an excuse to have some fun outside. It's been a while since I drank beer.”

“Nah, not for me, I can’t drink it. My protectors will probably inform my parents like last time. It was rare for my mother to come home in anger.”

“Stop being a mama’s boy. If you want to hide from your protectors, don’t we already have a way?”

“... Well, just this once.”

‘A year’s wait was not fruitless”