Chapter 200
Overall, the room was no longer a place of learning.
It had transformed into a museum of spontaneous violence, the remnants of a blitz-like conflict that may have lasted only seconds, yet whose impact was eternal.
Every crack, every pile of books, every dying beam of light served as a reminder of how fragile tranquility truly was, and how devastating the power could be that chose to disrupt it.
'My desire to destroy her writhes. It is completely unbearable.'
From within the haze of suffering and chaos, a memory burned with a fire darker than any explosion.
It was not the mysterious face of Aldraya that haunted him, but the sharp gaze and scathing mockery of a girl from his own class.
The woman whose hand had seized his collar with humiliating violence, whose words had cut deeper than any shard of glass.
In Ilux's mind—still pulsing with pain and rage—every detail stood in stark clarity.
The sneer at the corner of her lips, the condescending tone of her voice, and the brutality in her grip, as if meant to assert dominance over his perceived abnormality.
The urge to retaliate did not come merely as a fleeting emotion.
It crystallized into something cruel and intensely personal, a fantasy of revenge designed to tear apart more than just pride.
Within Ilux's mind, filled with noise and disorder, a dark image took shape.
The desire to destroy the girl's "purity."
Not in a shallow physical sense alone, but as a metaphor for total annihilation—of her arrogance, her illusion of innocence, and her sense of safety.
He imagined a retribution that would shatter her entire world, casting her down into shame and pain that would never heal.
Not tears that merely fell, but sobs that tore at the soul, flowing for the rest of her life, exposed before her own furious and helpless parents.
A spectacle of destruction steeped in drama, where the once-confident girl would be left utterly broken, a living witness to the ruin she herself had invited through her behavior.
"Bastard!!"
Buakkk!!
Duuffh!
Within the still-shifting dust cloud, Ilux found her.
The woman whose mockery still scorched his ears lay helpless—not in grace, but in pitiful weakness.
She lay on her back, half-conscious, her eyes—once narrowed with contempt—now wide open yet vacant, reflecting only the flickering lights like the final flame of a dying candle.
Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, and her entire body looked limp, like a cloth doll tossed carelessly onto the rubble.
She was not fully unconscious, but her awareness drifted somewhere far away, severed from the strength and arrogance she had once displayed.
Ilux stood before her, his dark silhouette, caressed by dim light, covering the girl's body.
Without a word, without any change in the expression on his dust- and cold-sweat-streaked face, his right hand—still in human form—reached forward.
His strong fingers clamped onto the girl's collar, fabric that was likely expensive and well-kept, now wrinkled and coated in dust.
With a single rough yank, he lifted her upper body from the floor, causing her limp head to sway helplessly.
For two seconds that felt frozen in time, Ilux stared at her.
His eyes, now filled with elemental sharpness and boiling hatred, swept across every detail of her pitiful face.
He saw raw fear, a mute plea for mercy struggling to shine through blurred eyes, a faint tremor on lips that had once been so boldly cruel.
In those two seconds, their entire history of humiliation crowded together, colliding with the absolute fragility laid bare before him.
And in those same two seconds, whatever compassion might have remained evaporated, replaced by a dark satisfaction that justified every act of revenge he had devised in his mind.
Then, with a swift and forceful motion like a bullet released from its barrel, his left hand—momentarily reshaped into a human hand, yet still veiled in residual elemental energy flowing through his blood—moved.
It was not a slap, but a controlled punch loaded with restrained power.
The fist struck the girl's cheek with a dense, crushing impact.
The sound of the blow—a loud "buakkk!!"—was nearly swallowed by the rustle of collapsing debris, yet its effect was devastating.
The girl's light, limp body was flung like a dry leaf caught in a hurricane.
She flew several meters through the dust cloud before slamming with full force into a formation of bookshelves that were already tilted and partially collapsed.
The impact did not strike a single shelf alone, but dragged and rolled through at least ten structures leaning together in their shared ruin.
The crash of splintering wood and screeching metal greeted her.
Those already-fragile shelves finally gave way, collapsing completely in a cascading chain of destruction, burying the girl beneath piles of wood, metal, and a rain of books falling from above.
Before total darkness swallowed her consciousness, a short, deep groan of pain escaped her lips—a sound utterly unlike her former sharp mockery.
It was filled with genuine physical suffering, a final confession of fragility.
Then, silence.
Her body was perfectly trapped beneath the shroud of ten collapsed bookshelves, only a portion of an arm or a scrap of fabric possibly visible, like an improvised grave amid greater devastation.
Ilux stood for a moment, staring at the new pile he had created.
There was no deep satisfaction, only a cold emptiness.
The revenge had been carried out, yet in a world already in ruins, it felt like nothing more than adding one more fragment to an endless sea of debris.
'Break through!!'
"I want to report."
After running through a labyrinth of seemingly endless corridors—where every hallway felt like a repetition of the same nightmare, walls breathing dust and hurried footsteps echoing—Ilux finally arrived.
The Star Academy Security Center stood at the end of a brighter corridor, its sturdy, unremarkable doors and dull metal plaque unimpressive, yet at that moment it was an oasis amid the storm of chaos trailing behind him.
With the last reserves of strength driven by pure adrenaline, he shoved the massive door open.
Not shoved—he slammed it.
The solid wooden door crashed against the wall with a thunderous bang that echoed through the suddenly silent corridor, like a violent protest against all false quiet.
Ilux staggered inside, his body—still bearing dust and an elemental aura not yet fully extinguished—flooding the sterile reception area.
The previously regulated, air-conditioned coolness instantly mixed with the heat and suffocation he carried in from outside.
He stood in the center of the room, his breathing ragged in short, rapid, uneven bursts, like a steam engine on the verge of explosion.
His chest rose and fell violently, underscoring the severity of the physical exertion he had just endured.
On his face, there was no longer any trace of weakness or haze.
The dust clinging to his skin, the small scratch on his cheek, and the dagger-sharp glare of his eyes formed an undeniable mask of seriousness.
Every muscle in his face tightened and hardened, erasing any lingering trace of adolescent fear.
What remained was only cold resolve—a focus that demanded immediate recognition.
To be continued…