I Got a Fake Job at the Academy

Chapter 652: Broken Family (3)

Lawrence Van Bretus and Lorelai Van Bretus were twin siblings, actually older than Rudger.

However, whether due to the influence of the restraints or the bodily modifications, they appeared to be only in their late teens.

Moreover, the restraints that bound their bodies in a bondage-like manner were troubling.

While they were said to be extremely powerful restraining devices, they clearly revealed the undisguisable bad taste of their designer.

It must be Salesin's work.

"I didn't know the character called 'eldest brother' had such perverted tendencies. But thinking about it now, it's not particularly strange."

Though said in a notably flat tone, his words were clearly intended to provoke and insult the emperor.

The twins bared their teeth in response, growling.

Their anger was unmistakably evident to any observer.

"How amusing to see you angry when I insult the person who made you this way. Even though you've lost your sanity, don't you have any awareness that you were once of imperial blood?"

Bitterness tinged Rudger's voice.

Someday, when he revealed everything and returned to the Holy Kingdom.

Rudger had vowed many times to bring an end to all of this.

The bloodline of the Emperor was his target for overthrow.

That's why he wanted them to remain as they were in his memories.

They should maintain their past appearances so that when he returns after completing all his tasks, there would be satisfaction in defeating them.

But what about now? The twins before him weren't even worth that.

After modifications, their power would be stronger than when they originally trained, but...

"With that strength devoid of reason, desire, or even madness, only blind obedience remains to carry out given orders."

Rudger murmured, seemingly genuinely regretful.

"Not even worth the effort."

-Kyaaaak!

Perhaps sensing Rudger's emotions, the twins showed an unprecedented intense reaction.

They seemed to be raging as if saying, who are you to judge us?

That anger manifested as physical force.

-Kwaaaaa!

A discharge of holy power unleashed with a roar.

When performed together by the twins, it manifested at least five times larger and stronger than previously seen.

But

"So weak."

Rudger enlarged the shadow of his right hand.

The shadow hand, swollen to the size of a beast's limb, grabbed the pillar of holy power directly.

-Psssss.

With just the grip of his hand, the roaring holy power dispersed in the air without exerting any force.

"This wasn't the trivial fight I wanted."

Despite having their ultimate attack neutralized, the twins didn't panic.

Instead, as if responding to Rudger's provocation, they began to emit strong holy power from their entire bodies.

The restraints that had been suppressing their holy power until now weren't enough to contain the genuine holy power the twins were now releasing.

-Zzzzrrrk!

With the sound of leather restraints tearing, the twins' arms regained their freedom.

The torn restraints fluttered like partially unwrapped bandages, caught in the aura of holy power.

As the leather covering their faces scattered, their appearance was revealed along with their tightly concealed white hair.

Beauty like dolls in their late teens, the twins resembled each other like mirror images.

Though they still couldn't speak, the red eyes staring at Rudger were clearly filled with emotion.

Anger toward someone who had touched their pride.

"Hooo."

Rudger drew a smile at the corner of his mouth, as if things were getting a bit more interesting now.

Stimulated by Rudger, the twins burst forth with holy power they had been suppressing, completely erasing the traces of surgical modifications from their bodies.

The same went for their tampered brains.

The immense holy power completely regenerated even the voids in their brains that had been excised.

The twins, regaining their suppressed emotions, charged toward Rudger.

With a thud, the two vanished and reappeared in Rudger's pupils.

The twins who had only been kicking before now had no such restrictions with their restraints gone.

-Flutter.

The twins' arms moved chaotically.

They moved so quickly that they appeared as afterimages even in the slowly flowing time.

Following the movement of the twins' arms, whitish and blackish things dangled and moved.

It was the leather from the restraining devices that had bound their arms.

Following the trajectory of the two people's arm movements, they aimed at Rudger like whips.

-Crack.

In Rudger's vision, a marble pillar hit by the whip revealed a sharp cross-section and fell off in chunks.

It was an attack that neither cuts nor strikes, but carves out the touched area as if erasing it with an eraser.

It expanded like a spider web, seemingly devouring the entire space.

"An attack that encompasses the entire space."

Rudger observed this and returned his enlarged shadow arm to its original size.

Then, with his now normal hand sharpened, he pointed toward the twins.

"For an attack burning your last strength, I'll show you something impressive as a proper courtesy."

A red energy flickered momentarily in Rudger's blue eyes.

Meanwhile, the all-erasing whiplash approached very close to Rudger.

And then

-Crack!

The world split diagonally.

This wasn't a metaphor.

Literally, space itself was cut in half and then twisted as if a fault line had shifted.

Everything within that trajectory scattered as it was split.

The attack unleashed by the twins with all their might, and the twins beyond it, were no exception.

Neither their strong and elastic bodies, nor the holy power protecting them, nor the restraining legal devices with their deceptively tremendous durability were of any use.

The slash unleashed in an instant was not something that could be blocked by such means.

The magic he had just performed was literally an attack that severed space itself.

A technique where the twisted space through Aether Nocturnus is extremely compressed and sharpened, then wielded like shooting a single straight line.

As complex as the process was, its power was real.

Not only were the twins' bodies sliced diagonally, but even the defensive barrier raised by Diena with her golden throne was precisely cut.

Beyond that, the slash even diagonally cut part of the inner sanctum.

If there had been a little more leeway to increase its power, it might have cut the inner sanctum itself like a normal fault.

-Thud.

The twins, with their upper and lower bodies separated, fell spraying blood.

They were still alive, not dead.

This was due to the vitality created when their modified bodies and suppressed holy power burst forth all at once.

But the holy power that should have regenerated even ordinary wounds couldn't do so this time.

The traces of spatial severance left in the wound were blocking the holy power itself.

"Ah, uh. Ah."

What the twins saw before their death wasn't Rudger who had killed them.

Lawrence and Lorelai, with eyes that had regained their light at the end, stared at each other quietly and opened their mouths to say something.

Their activated brains released a flood of memories that had been suppressed until now, sending them back to the past.

The twins reached out to each other.

But before those words could be finished, their life flames were extinguished as if switched off.

The hands they had pitifully extended fell limply.

Rudger quietly observed the twins' corpses.

To regain lost memories at the moment of the end of life.

What were the twins, who regained their sanity just before death, trying to say?

Whatever it was, since it had nothing to do with him, Rudger immediately lost interest.

His eyes returning to blue, Rudger frowned at the traces of the slash he had unleashed.

'The power is too strong.'

Rudger looked down at his hand.

On his palm, countless fine lines were etched, with drops of blood forming like dew.

'If I had failed in handling it just a little, I would have been the one cut instead.'

Even for Rudger, twisting, stretching, and cutting space through magic was an incredibly difficult task.

The power of space was so strong and dense that trying to control it could conversely consume the user.

'While I was captured, I only conceptualized it in my mind based on inspiration from Rene's magic, and I've just now performed it in actual combat.'

Until then, Rudger had only used space for purposes like enveloping shadows and leaping through them.

Rather than utilizing space itself, he had passed through and used the space on his own.

After that, he had progressed to using the shadow power of Aether Nocturnus to encroach on space, slightly twisting that space.

Even with just that, he could repel any attack regardless of its size.

And now having tried compressing, bundling, breaking that twisted space and drawing it out like a long thread, he realized this was not something a human should do.

'Space is like a kind of invisible water. You can dive in and swim inside, or splash to change the flow of water.'

But it was impossible to mold such water by hand and draw it out like a thread.

To use an analogy, it would be like a person molding water by hand to create threads of ice.

Although Rudger had somehow managed to perform it through a trick, it was truly a miraculous stroke of luck.

Rudger shook his head.

'Being able to use this was possible because I observed and analyzed Rene's spatial magic. I thought I could properly replicate most things, but this is messed up. If I don't properly control it, I'll die.'

It was a dangerous technique that would kill him if used, and might not even bring down the opponent.

The next time he would use it would be in a life-threatening crisis, as a final strike.

'I can only hope to never use it again.'

The only one who could use this was Rene, whose magic itself could handle space.

Of course, since Rene had only just awakened to spatial magic, using this would require at least 30 years of training.

'Although I managed to perform a powerful spell from a stroke of inspiration, there's indeed a clear difference between theoretical conception and practical application.'

But it was still a successful attack in the end, and thanks to that, the tide had definitely turned.

The look of bewilderment on Diena's face at Rudger's slash was proof enough.

"The twins, with one strike?"

Even Diena, who was simultaneously facing Surna and Helia, was so shocked by Rudger's magic that she momentarily forgot about the two demons.

Moreover, wasn't that spatial magic something Lumensis had placed a ban on?

He used spatial magic without possessing space attribute mana.

Behind that lay madness that had opened up a blocked path through long years of exploration and effort.

Even if that path collapsed and became impassable again, the very fact that he had traveled a path thought absolutely impassable was what mattered.

"You, what on earth..."

This was neither divine power nor heretical power.

It was purely performed by Rudger using only his knowledge and magical talent.

A fragment of humanity's infinite potential.

To Diena, who had believed until now that humans were ultimately destined to be ruled by someone, the path shown by Rudger was too great a shock.

"Is this the time to be distracted?"

Surna warned Diena and swung his sword at her.

Diena hurriedly used her scales.

As one side of the scales tilted, the direction of gravity surrounding Surna changed as if bent 90 degrees.

Surna 'fell sideways.'

But since they were indoors, Surna stepped on the wall and ran horizontally toward Diena.

Just as Diena was about to activate the scales again, Helia seized the opportunity and slipped in between Surna and Diena.

Around that space, cotton balls like balloons filled with air appeared.

And cute, deformed sheep bleated, "Meeee."

It was a form of interference reflecting Helia's playful nature, even in this intense battle.

Diena lightly erased them with holy power, then tried to use the scales on Surna again.

-Screech.

As the scales tilted sideways.

Surna, who had been running along the wall, stepped on the ground and continued approaching Diena without stopping.

"What?!"

Diena was shocked.

She had used the scales with the intention of making Surna shoot straight up vertically.

But the result was the opposite.

No, rather, the power of the scales wasn't applied to Surna at all.

How?

"Why are you surprised? Did you think I'd fall for the same ability over and over?"

Surna swung his sword toward Diena with a smile.

"I've already learned enough of your techniques while fighting."

Surna swung his sword and.

-Splash!

Red blood splattered roughly on the golden throne.