Reincarnated as an Energy with a System

Chapter 2056: Pushback

"How brave," Ning said loudly.

All four of them turned.

"Four of you against one person who doesn’t fight back," Ning continued, walking further into the alley with his hands in his pockets. "I’m genuinely impressed. That must have taken an enormous amount of courage to plan."

One of the men, the one who had struck Naysha in the back during their fight on the street, stepped forward with a sneer.

"What, do you want to get beaten up as well? There’s plenty of room back here for two."

Ning allowed his expression to shift into something that looked very much like worry. He took a half-step backward and raised one hand toward the side of his head.

"You should be careful," he said, and he let a slight waver enter his voice. "I’m recording all of this. Everything you’re doing right now, I have it on my helmet."

For a moment, the four of them simply stared at him.

Then they burst out laughing.

"Recording?" the first man said, wiping at his eye. "How exactly are you recording anything? Your camera’s broken, idiot. So is your microphone. That helmet couldn’t record a conversation if you held it up to someone’s mouth."

Ning let his eyes widen in what he hoped was a convincing look of surprise.

"How do you know that?" He let his voice quiver just enough.

The men laughed again, louder this time.

"Are you really that slow?" another one said. "Who do you think broke it?"

Ning stared at them as though the idea had genuinely never occurred to him. "You? I can’t believe it. Why would you do something like that?"

"Because you’re annoying," the first man said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You and your mouth, walking around like you own the academy since that simulation. Someone needed to put you back where you belong."

The others nodded along.

"But how did you even get into my room? The door was closed."

The man laughed. "We have our ways."

Ning tilted his head slightly, as if falling into deeper thought than he really was. "Was it Liam?"

The man’s smile became a little sharper. "So what if it was? What are you going to do about it, report it with that broken helmet of yours?"

The others laughed again, and the first man cracked his knuckles.

"That’s enough questions. It’s time for you to get what he’s getting."

Ning let out a quiet sigh.

It was mildly annoying. They had confessed to breaking the helmets, admitted they had found a way into his room, and gone so far as to sneer at the question about Liam, but none of them had actually said anything that tied Liam directly to the act.

Everything the recording held would point at these four, and Liam would be able to stand behind them and claim he had never known a thing.

Still, that was fine. It was more than he’d had an hour ago.

The four cadets came at him all at once.

Ning did not fight back, at least not in the way they expected. He did not punch, kick, or strike anyone. He simply moved, stepping aside from the first man’s fist, letting the second one’s grab close on empty air, and then placing a hand flat against a chest or a shoulder and pushing.

The pushes were not especially hard. Each one was measured precisely enough to break the man’s balance at the worst possible moment, sending him stumbling into a waste container, into the wall, or into one of his own friends.

They got back up and came at him again, and Ning did exactly the same thing.

He dodged, and he pushed.

Again and again, the four of them threw themselves at him, swinging wilder and wilder as their frustration grew, and again and again, they ended up on the ground without a single one of their attacks ever reaching him.

One of them landed hard on his back and stayed there for several seconds, wheezing. Another tripped over the first and went down on top of him.

It went on for several minutes until the four of them had been knocked down so many times that their legs were shaking every time they tried to stand, and finally, one by one, they stopped trying.

They lay scattered across the alley floor, breathing hard and staring up at him with expressions that had gone from contempt to confusion to something very close to fear.

Ning had not so much as raised his heartbeat. He straightened his jacket, then turned toward Jason, who was still standing against the wall with his mouth slightly open.

"We should run," Ning said.

Jason blinked at him, looked at the four groaning cadets on the ground, then back at Ning, and nodded rapidly.

"Yes. Yes, we should."

They walked quickly out of the alley and back onto the main street, and once they were a safe distance away, Jason broke into something close to a jog, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds as though expecting the four men to come after them.

Nobody followed.

The two of them made their way back toward the academy as the afternoon light began to fade, and somewhere along the way, Ning checked the recording stored on his helmet.

The camera feed was slightly grainier than it used to be and carried the faint hiss of a microphone that had once lived inside an old tablet, but every word the four cadets had said in that alley was there, perfectly clear.

Jason looked toward Ning. "What are you planning to do with that?" he asked.

Ning shrugged. "I don’t know. I’ll probably give it to the staff, I suppose. They can decide how they wish to handle this situation themselves."

Jason frowned. "Won’t that invite more trouble than we want?"

"You were one step away from being beaten up in an alleyway. How much more trouble can you get into?" Ning asked.

Jason froze for a second before nodding. "You’re right. It’s time I stop being a coward. I’ll hand over my recording too."