System of the Beast Slayer [litrpg Adventure]
Copyright© 2025 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 35
The staghorn in the courtyard had begun to lose its leaves again. Yellow-green paperfalls spun like moths. Children ran through them, shrieking and elbowing one another; the school rang with laughter.
Near the classroom door, Roy leaned against a flaking wall and stared at the half of a five-pointed star on his left sleeve. His brow was knotted, his face drawn; he looked wrong among the bright faces and the noise.
“Roy, I didn’t stay after school yesterday because I was in a bad mood.” Ffion moved up beside him, apologetic on her pretty face. “When afternoon classes finish, want me to go over things with you?”
Roy nodded. His face stayed taut; his mind was elsewhere.
“Oh, and Cardell asked you to come to the second floor.”
...
“How have you been settling in at the school? Are you getting on with the other children? How do you find the classroom, is there anything that needs changing?” Cardell leaned on her desk, hands splayed, watching Roy sit across from her with an encouraging look that read like an interrogation. The deep lines by her mouth made her seem harsher than she likely meant.
“I think it’s all right,” Roy answered honestly. “I’m especially grateful to Teacher Ffion. Without her, I couldn’t have come this far so fast.”
“Ffion is a likeable girl, everyone adores her. She’d be excellent if she didn’t spend so much of herself caring for her parents.” Cardell’s voice held a fondness that was half pride.
“By the way, Miss Cardell, I have a question.” Roy paused. “Does Ffion have a brother?”
Cardell shook her head. “No. Ffion has no siblings. She has only a father who drinks himself raw, and a mother who is not all there. Neither of them can work; she supports them both. That’s why she never married.”
Roy’s puzzlement deepened. Ffion had not told him that yesterday.
“I thought she had a brother, and that’s why she treats me like that, like I’m him.”
Cardell’s face went solemn. “Roy, Ffion has worked with me for ten years. I treat her as my own daughter; I know her life. I can tell you she has no siblings. She cares for every student; you’re new, so she’s paid you more attention.”
Roy did not press it. He accepted Cardell’s words at face value and let the subject drop.
Cardell ruffled his hair with a smile. Plenty of the adolescent boys fancied young Ffion; they spun daydreams that a pretty teacher might single them out. She assumed Roy was the same.
“But listen, Roy, you’ve got talent. You finished in half a month what takes others over two months. Smarter than the other sixty-four here. In a few years you might be one of House of Cardell’s fine alumni; I’ll have your portrait painted and hung, your name kept in the school to inspire those who come after you.”
She opened a drawer and brought out a set of framed portraits. Vivid oil paintings of boys and girls in their early teens, their faces still edged with awkwardness.
Roy’s gaze slid over them, and froze.
“Helheim, graduated December 20, 1259.”
It was a boy’s face, thirteen or fourteen, dark hair, a dusting of freckles across his nose, an unremarkable sort of boy who would be lost in a crowd. But beneath his right eye ran an ugly scar, the length of a forefinger; it lodged in the memory.
Roy was sure he had seen that face before, but where eluded him.
“And where do your excellent graduates go to work?” he asked.
Cardell’s pride flared. “I have a few strings to pull in Aedirn. They’re promising, but raw. I set them up in other towns — Lyria, Rivia, Lower Posada, even the capital Vengerberg. Most take work with the written word; historians, copyists, keepers of books.”
Roy wore a look of aspiration, but inside something tightened. Cardell’s list felt rehearsed; the school’s purpose seemed less straightforward than she let on.
...
After lessons, Ffion was explaining some complicated vocabulary to Roy when a shabby, bloated man burst in.
His face was a map of hard liquor and bad luck. His coat was dark brown, stained with drink and food, his hair matted into clumps, his scalp oily as if it had not seen water in days. He smelled of mildew and rot, disgrace in human form.
He lurched to stand before them, eyes sliding over Roy, then to Ffion. He flung his right hand out as if making a claim and slurred with an air of entitlement, “Ffion, why didn’t you come home yesterday? Give me money ... I need to drink.”
Ffion quietly pulled Roy behind her and put herself between him and the man. Her pretty face tightened; she said coldly, “I don’t have any money for you.”
“You worthless wench, where did you spend the coin?” The man’s brows folded into a deep Z. He flashed a mouth of broken yellow teeth and spat a thick gob of phlegm at her feet, “Bring the money home tomorrow, or you know what’ll happen.” He left the threat hanging and shuffled away, cursing.
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