They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

Chapter 258: It’s Lunch Time!

"Enough."

My knuckles connected directly with the center of Marcus’s face.

The sickening crunch of his nose shattering completely drowned out Emma’s terrified gasp.

The force of my punch lifted Marcus entirely off his feet, violently snapping his head back before he crashed into the dirt, a spray of blood painting the canvas of the nearby tent.

The two lackeys froze for a fraction of a second, staring in absolute shock at their bleeding lord.

Then, their shock boiled over into furious, blind rage. They dropped Emma, simultaneously drawing their heavy training swords, and lunged directly at me.

"I’ll kill you!" the one on the left roared, swinging his blade in a wide, clumsy arc aimed straight for my neck.

I didn’t even bother activating my interface.

Just smoothly pivoted on my heel, letting the heavy steel whistle harmlessly past my throat by less than an inch.

"Too slow," I murmured.

I stepped inside his completely shattered guard, driving a short, brutal palm strike directly upward into his solar plexus.

The air violently evacuated his lungs with a hollow pop. As he folded forward, gagging for breath, the second lackey charged from my blind spot, thrusting his sword toward my ribs.

Then I sidestepped the thrust with absolute minimal effort, casually grabbing the boy’s wrist. Twisted his arm until the joint audibly popped, forcing a scream from his throat, and kicked the back of his knee to drop him to the dirt.

I was dismantling them methodically.

"You bastard!"

The furious, blood-gurgling scream tore from back.

I turned my head just in time to see Marcus aggressively pushing himself up from the dirt. His face was a mask of ruined cartilage and crimson, but his eyes burned with sheer, unhinged madness.

He thrust both his hands forward, channeling every ounce of his remaining mana into a massive, superheated fireball that illuminated the narrow alley in a blinding, volatile red glow.

He hurled it straight at me.

I didn’t dodge. I simply reached down, grabbed the collar of the first lackey who was still gasping for air, and effortlessly hauled his massive frame right up into the projectile’s path.

BOOM!

The fireball detonated directly against the lackey’s chest. The boy let out a horrific, muffled scream as the superheated flames scorched his armor and threw him backward.

I carelessly dropped the smoking, unconscious meat shield onto the dirt.

The second lackey, horrified by what Marcus had just done to his own guard, tried to scramble backward. But I didn’t let him.

I drove the heel of my boot directly into the side of his head, instantly knocking him out cold.

The alley went deadly quiet, save for the crackle of residual flames and Marcus’s heavy, ragged breathing.

Then I slowly turned to face Marcus, casually cracking my knuckles, the sound echoing sharply against the stone walls.

"The distractions are gone," I stated, my voice completely devoid of any emotion.

Marcus wiped a streak of blood from his chin, his chest heaving. The sheer terror in his eyes was slowly being replaced by the desperate, cornered arrogance of a noble who refused to accept reality.

"You..." Marcus sneered, spitting a glob of blood onto the cobblestones. "You think... you think a fast, pathetic brawler like you can take down a Valen?!"

Marcus swept his hands in a wide arc, conjuring three concentrated lances of fire. He launched them in rapid succession.

I let him.

And raised my forearms, crossing them in a standard defensive block.

I deliberately allowed the force of the fire lances to push me backward. My boots skidded loudly across the dirt, leaving two long trenches as I feigned struggling against the sheer heat. The sleeves of my uniform jacket singed, smoking faintly.

"Is that it?" I gritted out, intentionally pitching my voice to sound strained.

Marcus let out a manic, triumphant laugh. He thought he had me figured out. He thought I was just a physical fighter who had caught him off guard, fundamentally inferior to a true mage’s destructive output.

"You’re nothing!" Marcus roared, his confidence completely restored. He stepped forward, his hands blazing with absolute heat as he prepared to unleash a massive, localized inferno.

"I am going to burn you to ash, you scum! And then I am going to make that commoner bitch regret the day she was born!"

I slowly lowered my arms. The smoke cleared from my jacket.

My lips curled into a terrifyingly cold, utterly dead smile.

"There it is," I whispered. "That’s exactly what I needed to hear to completely stop holding back."

Yeah, typical face-slapping, though not my style, but I wasn’t the one to unwelcome it. This bastard needs to get some beating of his life, to get his arrogance in check.

The manic grin on Marcus’s face hadn’t even fully formed before I completely shattered the physical space between us.

Marcus’s eyes widened in absolute, paralyzing horror as I materialized directly inside the radius of his blazing inferno.

He tried to hurl the fire, but my left hand shot out like a viper, clamping around his throat with the crushing force of a hydraulic press. I violently slammed him back-first into the brick wall of the alley.

The flames in his hands instantly sputtered and died.

"You like using fire, Marcus?" I asked quietly, staring right into his terrified, bulging eyes. "Let’s see how well you handle a purely physical evaluation."

I pulled my right fist back and drove it into his ribs.

CRACK!

Marcus let out a suffocated shriek as three of his ribs instantly fractured. I didn’t give him a second to breathe. I dropped my grip on his throat, grabbed him by the lapels of his expensive coat, and delivered a devastating knee directly into his abdomen.

He doubled over, violently coughing up blood, but I forcibly jerked him right back upright.

"This is for the extortion," I whispered coldly.

WHAM! A right cross shattered his left cheekbone.

"This is for the trade routes."

WHAM! A left hook completely unhinged his jaw.

WHAM!

WHAM!

Marcus was sobbing now, his hands weakly batting at my arms, desperately trying to surrender.

But ignored him entirely. Grabbed the back of his neck, pulled him forward, and drove my knee directly into his face.

He dropped to the dirt like a puppet with its strings cut.

And I didn’t stop here.

Just grabbed him by his collar again, dragging him up to his knees. His face was a completely unrecognizable mask of swelling, purple bruises, and flowing crimson. His nose was flattened, his lips were split, and both of his eyes were already swelling shut. He looked less like an aristocratic noble and more like a slab of ruined meat.

I leaned in close, my voice dropping into a low, terrifying register.

"If you ever so much as look at Emma again," I promised, "I won’t use my fists. I will rewrite the very blood in your veins until it boils."

Then I let go of his collar. Marcus crumpled face-first into the dirt, entirely motionless, completely and utterly broken.

Standing in the deafening silence of the alley, the heavy scent of copper and scorched earth hanging thick in the air.

I slowly turned around.

Emma was pressed hard against the canvas of the storage tent, entirely frozen. Her bright blue eyes were blown wide in absolute, unadulterated shock. She was staring at Marcus’s ruined, unrecognizable body lying in the dirt, her chest rising and falling in rapid, panicked breaths.

I let out a long, quiet sigh and looked down at my hands.

My knuckles were coated in crimson. I crouched down and unceremoniously wiped the worst of the blood directly onto the clean, unburnt fabric of Marcus’s uniform coat.

Standing back up, I swiped my spatial ring and pulled out a crisp, white linen handkerchief. I meticulously wiped the remaining grime from my fingers, crumpled the stained cloth into a ball, and casually tossed it onto Marcus’s chest.

Then stepped over the unconscious lackey and began walking toward Emma.

As I closed the distance, she let out a sharp, terrified gasp.

And instinctively took a stumbling half-step backward, shrinking away from me. She wasn’t just looking at Jin the student anymore; she was looking at the violent, unhinged reality of what I was willing to do to protect my people.

I stopped a few feet away from her. I didn’t try to justify the brutality, and I didn’t offer any apologies for the blood on the ground. I just looked at her terrified, tear-streaked, soot-covered face.

Then let out another heavy, exhausted sigh, slowly shaking my head.

I closed the final gap between us. Reaching out, my movements deliberately slow and telegraphed so I wouldn’t startle her further, and gently but firmly wrapped my clean hand around her trembling one.

Her skin was freezing cold, completely rigid with fear.

"It’s lunch time," I said, my voice dropping back into its usual, calm, completely mundane rhythm, acting as if there wasn’t a bleeding guy lying in the dirt just ten feet away.

"Let’s go eat something."

Without waiting for her to process the sheer, I gave her hand a gentle, reassuring tug. And turned my back on the wreckage, pulling her out of the shadows, leading her away from the alleyway and back toward the bright, noisy safety of the festival grounds.