Lucien tried to hurl him away using his skill, but a punch from Damien scattered his thoughts, causing him to fail in activating his skill.
Bam! Bam! Bam!
Damien was trying to get in as many hits as he could before Lucien could use his skill and overpower him. He didn't know Lucien couldn't do shit while getting hit in the face.
By the time he realized something was wrong, Lucien's cheeks had swelled to look like a baboon's red bum, and only the whites of his eyes were showing.
His eyes had rolled to the back of his head. He was knocked out cold!
The onlookers felt impressed. A civilian had defeated a skill user. It was a rare sight!
Before Damien could revel in his victory, someone dragged him off Lucien and slapped him.
Damien raised his head and saw a muscular, bald-headed man staring at him coldly. It was the Head of Discipline, Carter. Seeing the dark expression etched across his face, Damien knew he was in trouble.
"Student, do you have no regard for school rules? How can you beat a fellow student this badly? Go to the disciplinary office. Now!"
"But—"
Damien opened his mouth to protest, only for Carter to cut him off coldly.
"Don't you dare argue, or I will have you expelled."
Damien felt exasperated.
Lucien was the one who started it. Why should he get punished? He was not in the wrong for defending himself from a bully, for God's sake!
Moreover, while Lucien cut a sorry sight, Damien, with his face covered in blood from the nose down and his clothes a complete mess after being slammed into the wall, made for a far more pitiful spectacle. Yet Carter showed him no consideration as if he could only register Lucien being injured. The favoritism at play here was nauseating
Had he been bribed to take Lucien's side, no matter what?
Damien didn't know that he had guessed correctly.
Lucien came from the wealthy Von Karette family, one of the most influential families associated with the school.
Carter had even accepted money directly from Lucien's father to look out for him while he was in school. Naturally, he would take Lucien's side over a nameless nobody like Damien.
"What are you still standing there for? Do you want to get expelled?"
Damien couldn't have that.
Having spent the last three years in this hellish place, surviving bullies like Lucien and studying hard to complete his compulsory education, he wasn't going to give it all up just to prove he wasn't in the wrong to a man who had already chosen a side.
Thus, he shook his head and said, "No. I will listen."
"I will come decide your punishment after seeing Lucien to the infirmary."
Saying that, Carter picked up Lucien and carried him toward the infirmary on the ground floor of the seven-storey school building made of reinforced concrete, while Damien obeyed his instructions and headed toward the disciplinary office.
The corridor leading to the office was empty but well-lit by the rays of light streaming in from the windows opposite the wall with the door.
As he was walking through it, the piercing sound of glass shattering reached his ears.
He whipped his head around, only to see a sight that made his blood run cold.
A window had shattered inwards, with shards of glass lying scattered across the corridor, each one reflecting a hideous mosquito-like monster half the size of a human head.
Two pairs of wings extended from its back, beating rapidly and leaving afterimages in the air as it flew down the corridor.
Damien's face fell as he saw it whizzing toward him.
Its proboscis was more than twice the length of its body, as sharp as a blade and extremely thin, resembling a rapier capable of piercing through flesh and bone. He, on the other hand, didn't even have a weapon on hand.
If it reached him, he was as good as dead!
He rushed into the disciplinary office and slammed the door shut behind him, but the mosquito monster easily carved a hole through it with its sharp and long proboscis and broke into the office to get to him.
"I am not dying here!"
Damien roared as he grabbed a chair and swung it, striking the mosquito monster and sending it crashing to the ground.
Seeing it twitch on the ground like a bug that had been sprayed with insecticide, Damien found it far less threatening than before.
He repeatedly struck it with the chair and made a pleasant discovery.
Aside from its proboscis, its entire body was surprisingly soft and squishy. Under the rapid blows, it deformed into a grotesque mess, meeting its end.
The instant it died, a ray of light shot out of its corpse and entered Damien's body in a flash, giving him no chance to react.
Damien felt weirded out as he noticed that a strange presence had settled in his mind. However, before he could worry about it further, a semi-transparent screen opened up in front of his eyes.
The strange messages displayed on it in stark white stood out against its dark blue edges.
[You have killed the Carrier.]
[The Gate has been passed on to you.]
[It has been detected that you are a human. You have the right to inherit His duty and become the Master of the Gate. Will you accept?]
[If you choose to refuse, the Gate will be passed on to the next thing that kills you.]
Damien knitted his brows together.
The presence inside his mind was a gigantic gate that seemed to be cut out of a single rectangular block of marble and hung suspended in the void. Carvings on its surface depicted a river running downstream toward a stone split evenly in black and white.
It was a magnificent sight, but Damien couldn't make sense of it.
Anyways, he had no way of taking it out. On top of that, he was seriously tired of being ordinary because he had been punished too many times for it, as if it were the greatest sin ever.
So, although he didn't know what he was getting into, he gave his consent to the Voice in his head.
"I accept."
[Congratulations, you have become the Master of the Gate, gaining the power to grow strong through slaughter and travel between Earth and the Primordial Lands by activating the Gate using runes.]
[You can gain runes by triggering quests and completing them.]
[While you are in the Primordial Lands, no time will pass on Earth, and while you are on Earth, time in the Primordial Lands will not move.]
[Your upgraded status is mentioned below.]
Damien's eyes landed on his status screen.
Name: Damien Drake
Class: Commoner
Perk: Every time you level up, you gain 1 attribute point and 1 skill point to distribute freely.
Title: None
Level: 0
Experience required to level up: 0/4
Health: 5 / 10
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Stamina: 6 / 10
Potential: 3
Damien was born in a world where children could learn fighting and survival skills in school. For the sake of self-preservation, he had been studying and training since he was a child. Moreover, after his father died, he got rid of all distractions and devoted all his time to studying and training. Thus, the stats shown on his status screen represented the average for trained adults and were excellent for a young man his age!
"Interesting," Damien's lips curled into a smile as he realized he had become something like a game character, but with a huge twist.
He used to play games when his father was alive, so he was clear about what he was seeing.