I didn't move. My gaze shifted from the blond to my belongings scattered on the floor. A cold anger began to rise in me.
"What do you want?" I asked. My voice was lower than usual. Steadier, too.
The blond raised an eyebrow, surprised that I dared to speak to him.
"What do we want? A little welcome tax. To protect you," he said with a wink. "Here, everything is paid for with points. Academy points. They're used for everything: upgrading your room, getting better meals, accessing training facilities."
He took out his terminal, a much more modern and expensive version than mine.
"The system allows points to be transferred between students. It's convenient. So, you're going to quietly transfer us your starting points. All the newbies get them."
I knew what he was talking about. We had been credited with 100 points upon arrival. Not much, but it was the bare minimum to survive the first month.
I shook my head. "No."
The word came out on its own. It was short, final.
The blond's smile vanished. His face hardened. "What did you say?"
"I said no."
Silence fell in the room again. This time, it wasn't a silence of pity. It was a tense, heavy silence, thick with threat.
The burly boy cracked his knuckles. The sound echoed in the small room.
"Wrong answer, last place," the blond said. He took a step back. "Looks like we'll have to teach you the hard way."
The burly boy stepped forward, a cruel smile on his face. His fists became covered in a thin layer of glowing red energy, like boxing gloves made of heat. A basic reinforcement power, but against an F-rank like me, it was more than enough.
I didn't stand up. I remained seated, my back straight.
He raised his fist, ready to strike.
In that moment, I didn't think about the pain. I didn't think about the humiliation.
I thought about my mother's face. I thought about the bills. I thought about those 100 points, that tiny little nothing that was supposed to help us get by. And I thought about these guys who wanted to take even that from me. Because I was weak. Because they could.
A rage I had never felt in my life surged from the depths of my being. It wasn't a hot, explosive rage. It was a cold rage. A black, silent, and absolute rage.
My right hand, resting on the bed, clenched.
The burly boy's fist came down toward my face.
And just before it hit me, my dagger appeared.
It wasn't in my hand. It was in the air, right in front of my face, floating between his fist and me.
The glowing metal of his power struck the black metal of my dagger.
There was no sound. No sparks. No "clang."
Just nothing.
The power surrounding his fist just... vanished. As if absorbed. The dagger didn't move a millimeter.
The burly boy pulled his hand back, his expression full of confusion. The blond and the other guy fell silent, their eyes fixed on the weapon that was floating, defying gravity.
And for the first time, I saw fear in their eyes.
The burly boy took a step back, looking at his bare fist as if it had betrayed him. There was no mark, no injury. Just a complete absence of energy where, a second ago, there had been power.
The blond, the leader, had lost his sneer. His face was a mask of confusion and suspicion. "What was that? Isn't your power just summoning?"
I didn't answer.
I felt something new. A connection to the dagger. It was no longer just a cold object in my hand. It was alive. It was... empty. And it had just fed. It seemed satisfied.
Slowly, I stood up from the bed.
The dagger moved with me. It left its guard position in front of my face to float calmly beside my shoulder, its point aimed at them. Like a guard dog awaiting a command.
My belongings were still on the floor. My trampled clothes. The humiliation of the Draft was still fresh in my mind. The fear in their eyes was the first positive thing I had felt all day.
I took a step forward. All three of them stepped back.
My gaze shifted from one to the other. Their faces no longer showed arrogance, but uncertainty. They had come to pick on the weakest. They hadn't planned for this.
I pointed the dagger at the blond.
"The welcome tax..." I began, my voice a cold whisper.
I looked at them, one by one.
"...you're the ones who are going to pay it."
The blond swallowed hard. He tried to regain his confidence, but his voice trembled a little. "You think you can scare us with your little magic trick? It's three against one, last place."
He motioned to his two friends. The second one, who had been silent until now, bared his teeth. Sparks began to crackle along his arms. The burly boy, however, hesitated, looking at the dagger with obvious fear.
"You don't know who you're talking to," the blond continued. "I'm—"
"I don't care who you are," I cut him off.
The dagger quivered beside me, as if it were impatient. I had never done this before. I didn't even know if it was possible. But in that moment, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
I held my hand out toward them. The dagger shot forward.
It didn't fly like an arrow. It moved at an insane speed, tracing a black line through the air.
It passed right in front of the blond's face, so close it must have grazed his nose. Then it turned and stopped dead, its point inches from the throat of the boy with the sparks.
All the sparks on his arms went out at once. Silence returned.
He was white as a sheet, unable to move.
"Your points," I repeated. "Now."
The blond took out his terminal, his hands shaking. He tapped the screen several times, his eyes darting from the threatening dagger to my face. He no longer dared to look me in the eye.
My own terminal, in my pocket, vibrated.
[Transfer Received: 300 points]
[Sender: Choi Jin-Woo]
I looked at the blond. There was nothing of a gang leader left in him. He was just a scared boy.
"That's it," he stammered. "That's all we have."
I stared at the three boys for a long moment. The fear was palpable in the small room. The dagger still floated menacingly before the throat of the boy with the sparks.
I nodded, slowly.
With a mental snap, the dagger returned to me, settling quietly into my open palm. The air seemed to relax a little.
The boy with the sparks let out a sigh of relief, as if he had just escaped death. He stumbled backward, leaning against the wall to keep from falling.
"Now, leave," I said.
They didn't need to be told twice. The blond, Choi Jin-Woo, grabbed his two friends and practically shoved them out of the room. They disappeared down the hall without a backward glance.
I was alone again.
The silence fell once more, but it was different. It was no longer a silence of loneliness and humiliation. It was a silence filled with power.
I looked at the dagger in my hand. It looked the same. Black, simple, cold. But something had changed. In me.
I glanced at my terminal's interface.
[Balance: 400 points]
It wasn't much in the grand scheme of the academy, but to me, it was a fortune. It was a week's worth of medicine for my mother.
I looked at the floor, at my scattered belongings. I bent down and calmly began to pick them up.
The image of their terrified faces came back to me.
A small smile, the first of the day, formed on my lips. It wasn't a kind or happy smile. It was a cold, satisfied smile.
Maybe this power wasn't so useless, after all.
I finished putting my things away. I folded them and placed them in the metal locker. The room seemed even emptier than before, and the closed door looked fragile.
I sat on the edge of the bed, the heavy silence around me. I looked at my right hand, the one that had held the dagger. I summoned it again, just to be sure.
The black dagger appeared in my palm. It looked exactly the same. No aura. No light. Just a piece of cold, black metal. But I knew it wasn't the same. I could feel it.
Just then, a new window appeared before me. Not a blue status or transfer window. A red window. An alert.
[SYSTEM ALERT: Anomaly Detected in Aura Flow]
Another line flashed just below it, the text vibrating slightly.
[Unknown Skill registered. Analysis in progress...]
Anomaly. Unknown skill. The system itself didn't understand what had just happened.
I dismissed the alert window with a mental gesture. I looked at my point balance again. 400.
It wasn't just money. It was respect. It was fear.
In this academy, strength wasn't the only thing that mattered. Fear was a currency, too. And for the first time in my life, I had some in reserve.
I would no longer be the victim.
That was a new rule. My rule.