Chapter 28: The Goblin and the Thumbtack

“Did you hear? Siloque got carried out from the first floor.”

“I know. He couldn’t even beat Goblins, the weakest monsters on the first floor.”

“Unbelievable. Even if I were surrounded by a group of Goblins, I wouldn’t lose. That guy can’t even handle a few?”

“Too lame. Even kids can beat Goblins, right? How did he lose?”

***

The discussions were loud, and mocking glances drifted over from time to time.

During yesterday’s test, there was monster farming, so now, as Siloque had leveled up to Lv8, he felt it clearly.

Malice towards the weak.

It seemed everyone knew he was carried out of the Dungeon.

Given that even the protagonist group and even the villain Cliff went down into the Dungeon, it wasn’t strange that some others from the school saw him being carried out.

And now the story was, I lost to Goblins?

Rumors are truly terrifying.

Siloque touched the desk.

The words were carved deeply, revealing the real side of the world.

Should I call this a Japanese tradition?

Why insist on playing school bullying?

On second thought, it wasn’t so strange.

The people around me were too nice, but I never forgot…

This world is essentially survival of the fittest.

Why did this happen to me?

Siloque never even asked himself that.

You don’t need a reason to do good, and even less to do evil.

Anyway, I’m already Lv8, at least in this Class…

I don’t have to pretend to be a gloomy shut-in anymore.

Siloque put down his backpack and took out the Tack Box.

“Mm….”

He glanced over the classmates.

The laughter in his ears vanished.

One by one, the classmates came into view: some bewildered, some confused, some indifferent, some lying on their desks, some chatting, some rummaging through their bags, some with a slight smirk at the corner of their mouths…

Siloque confirmed the protagonist group and the teacher weren’t in the crowd.

“Heh.”

Siloque smiled too.

The target was a group of three girls near the front of the classroom, close to the podium.

Suddenly, Siloque jumped onto a classmate’s desk nearby.

“Eh!?”

The Class erupted in surprised, noisy exclamations.

Siloque leaped again, aiming for the front, locked onto a target midair, and landed, pinning a glasses-wearing girl from the group to the ground.

She fainted on the spot.

“Ugh—!”

Beside the glasses girl, a curly-haired girl had just exhaled her first breath when Siloque stood up, reached out with two fingers of his left hand, thrust them into her mouth, and forcefully pushed her to the floor, crouching over her.

“Kuh…gaa…”

Siloque used his two fingers to keep the curly-haired girl’s mouth open, preventing her from closing it.

In his right hand, he held the Tack Box, suspended before the curly-haired girl.

“I’ll give you 5 seconds… Too long, make it 3. Point out the main culprit.”

“Ah…uh…”

The curly-haired girl trembled in terror, her mouth unable to close, saliva trickling from the corner of her lips.

“Three~~”

The Tack Box tilted slightly, sharp tacks pooling at the opening.

“Gu…mm!…!”

The curly-haired girl struggled, but Siloque held her down firmly.

“Two~”

The tacks hovered at the edge, several on the verge of spilling out.

The curly-haired girl’s terrified eyes blurred with tears, wet trails streaking down her cheeks.

“One.”

The curly-haired girl raised her hand and pointed.

“Zero, oops.”

At the same moment, several tacks fell out.

“!!!”

In a split second, Siloque reached out and caught the falling tacks, returning them to the box.

Tak tak tak——

Hurried footsteps echoed nearby as someone ran past.

“Thank you.”

Siloque thanked the curly-haired girl, then turned to the identified main culprit—one of the short-haired girls in the trio, now at the classroom door.

But for Siloque, that escape speed was far too slow.

“No, no, you can’t run away.”

“Eek——!!”

The short-haired girl trembled in fear.

Without realizing it, Siloque had appeared beside her, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“Now, let’s have a chat.”

Siloque held the girl’s shoulder, preventing her escape, and closed the classroom door.

He pushed her toward his own desk.

“Aren’t you the one who couldn’t even beat a Goblin…?”

The short-haired girl tried to say something, but Siloque replied,

“Ain Palus, student ID AC2021016, talent is , Lv5, no learned skills, max explored floor is Dungeon Level 1, C Zone.”

“Ah….this?…you?…”

The overly detailed information left Ain speechless.

“You must have worked hard writing all that, but you misspelled Siloque. The pronunciation is ‘ro’, not ‘lo’. Actually, I really wanted to get along, but you went a bit too far this time.”

Ain didn’t know how to respond and swallowed nervously.

“As proof of reconciliation… I counted just now.”

Siloque’s slender fingers brushed the rough surface of the desk.

“I wanted to count by strokes, but there weren’t enough tacks, so I counted by characters—18 in total.”

“?”

Ain didn’t understand Siloque’s meaning.

“I’ll round it up for you. Call it 20. You need to eat 20 for me.”

Siloque smiled, shaking the Tack Box.

Realizing what he meant, Ain’s face drained of color.

“No! I’m sorry, really, uh——!!”

Ain burst into tears.

Siloque held her down and pinched her mouth into a horn shape.

The gleaming tacks poured into Ain’s mouth one by one.

Ain struggled, but all it did was wrinkle Siloque’s clothes so badly that no iron could smooth them out.

“2, 3, 4… Sorry, if I wasn’t in a hurry, I’d pour them in slowly.”

“7, 8… Ah, don’t spit them out. I’ll help put them back.”

“11, 12, 13… Your saliva turned red, it’s overflowing.”

“It’s fine, if it hurts you can hold my hand, 15, 16…”

“19, 20. Wonderful.”

Siloque let go of Ain.

“Thank you for hanging in there, Ain Palus.”

“Ah….khaa….”

Ain crouched on the ground and spat out the bloody tacks—20 in total.

The rest of the Class was dead silent.

Only the sound of tacks clinking to the floor as Ain coughed filled the room.

Siloque helped wipe away the red stains with tissues and picked up the tacks, putting them away.

It wouldn’t be good if someone stepped on them and got hurt.

“This makes us even. I’ll take you to the infirmary. Heave-ho.”

Siloque hoisted the dazed, blood-mouthed Ain onto his back and picked up the unconscious glasses girl from the floor.

“Oh, right, right.”

Siloque glanced at the classmates.

“From now on, just ignore me. Pretend nothing you said to me today happened. This—”

He lifted the unconscious glasses girl high.

“—Just pretend it never happened. From this moment on, pretend I don’t exist. I don’t plan to be friends with any of you. Understood?”

“Um….”

A classmate tried to say something.

“Mm~~?”

Siloque gave a pure, innocent smile.

Just by appearance, an absolutely pure, lovely black-haired girl.

“No, sorry.”

The person sat back down and opened a brand-new textbook.

Siloque turned to the curly-haired girl still sitting dumbly on the floor.

“If the teacher asks later, say the two of them had their period and felt unwell, so I took them to the infirmary.”

The curly-haired girl nodded stiffly, like an under-lubricated robot.

Siloque carried Ain and tucked the glasses girl under his left arm, then left.

The classmates exchanged glances.

Someone checked the time.

From when Siloque started to when he left….

“Two minutes… not even?”

The front door of the classroom suddenly opened, and everyone’s eyes shifted.

“Why are you all staring at me?”

Bried munched on bread as she returned to her seat, feeling the atmosphere was unusually heavy today.

More students arrived.

“Hey, did you hear? That Siloque guy, that extra effeminate one, couldn’t even beat a Goblin.”

“….I don’t want to talk about this.”

“Why so serious? It’s not like you couldn’t beat one.”

“Alright, drop it.”

“So why are you—”

“Enough.”

***

Later, this incident became a secret exclusive to Class F.

The small cliques in the Class gradually found out what Siloque did, but no one spoke of it openly.

Though some didn’t believe it, seeing Siloque’s desk, the Tack Box with bloodied tacks, and the traumatized curly-haired girl, no one really wanted to test whether it was true.

After all, they were just a bunch of rabble.

***

“Class Meeting begins… haa……. You guys are unusually quiet today. The lack of energy and motivation from the students is…a good thing for me… Staying here makes me sleepy…”

I’ve never seen you not wanting to sleep.

Siloque finally made it back to the classroom before class started, covering the carved words on the desk with a book.

Thankfully, the homeroom teacher Priss believed the curly-haired girl’s explanation.

She believed the two absent students had period pains and didn’t investigate further.

“I said last week too…to enter the Dungeon…you need to form teams… Starting today…formal group formation begins…and as a chance…everyone…reintroduce yourselves…”