Chapter 97 Guilt
Shang closed the door behind him after entering his room. Then, he just stood there in the mostly dark room. The small slit didn't let much light through.
Silence.
Shang just waited in silence.
At the moment, Shang's heart was beating rapidly as sweat ran down his body. A deep feeling of guilt was inside his heart.
He had acted coldhearted and brutal, but that didn't reflect the truth.
This was the first time after that fateful night that Shang had injured another person to such an extent.
Punching someone, breaking an arm, or similar things were still relatively normal to Shang. After all, he had been a fighter in his past life, and it was normal for fighters to get injured in a fight.
However, what he had done out there was not normal for a fighter.
Shang might be in the body of a 15-year-old, but in his mind, he still viewed himself as a 23-year-old. So, when he looked at the other students, Shang didn't see people of his age but kids.
They were children.
Additionally, what would they have done to him? At most, they would have broken one or two bones and would have given him some bruises.
Shang had seen the ill-intent in their eyes, but Shang hadn't felt true maliciousness coming from them. They only wanted to beat him down to show their superiority.
They were just kids.
Yet, Shang had done horrible things to them. One of them had been close to death, while the other one went through unimaginable pain.
p??d? n?ve? Shang had his reasons for acting this brutally, but it was still difficult.
On Earth, Shang would have gone to prison for his actions.
Yes, they had attacked him, and Shang had the right to defend himself, but that was it, defend.
Regarding the first guy, breaking his arm and kicking him would have been enough. Shang's action of tearing his arm off had gone beyond mere defense.
However, the worse offense was with Stars.
Stars hadn't even tried to attack Shang. Yes, he had given the order, but he had never shown any intention of attacking Shang.
Shang could have simply beaten him down, thrown him away, or immobilized him.
Tearing out someone's jaw was not considered self-defense.
'I've done the right thing,' Shang thought as he took a deep breath. 'With that display, fewer people will bother me in the future, and I won't have to do something like that again. The other students saw what happens when they try to attack me, and they won't try something like that again.'
'My actions were right. It was the right decision.'
Absentmindedly, Shang took the skinning knife he had bought and began to shave his beard.
'I made the correct choice,' he repeated to himself in his mind.
As the rhythmic strokes of the knife continued, Shang continued to repeat the same words to himself in his mind.
Shang didn't know how long he had been shaving, but when he felt something wet on his right hand, he stopped.
He looked over and saw blood dripping down from the knife.
Shang touched his jaw, but it had already fully healed.
He hadn't even noticed that he had cut himself while shaving, and judging by the amount of blood, it hadn't been little.
'It's a skinning knife. It's only logical that it cuts my skin while shaving. I should be more careful in the future,' Shang thought before washing the knife and leaving it in his room.
Shang also washed his hands before leaving the room again.
Shang came out of the building and looked at the surroundings.
The blood from earlier was gone, and the students were back to doing whatever they were doing.
Not many people were looking at Shang, and the few that did either averted their gazes quickly or lost interest.
It was like nothing had happened.
When Shang saw that, he realized once again that he was truly in a different world. If something like that had happened on Earth, the people would still be crowded around the area where it had happened while police were investigating the place.
In this world, it was normal.
Shang looked at the big clock above the main entrance to the main building. Usually, warriors didn't really care about the time of the day. They mostly focused on the position of the sun to judge time.
However, Mages had introduced a more accurate measure of time, which were clocks. Mages were often very busy, and they couldn't just schedule things based on the position of the sun.
For example, they could have two meetings in the afternoon.
Which one should they go to first? Additionally, the definition of afternoon was different from person to person.
Because of that, Mages used clocks while warriors used the position of the sun normally, but since this academy was very sophisticated and also included plenty of education about Mages, it had adopted the clock.
There was also the name of the weekday beside the clock. The academy knew that warriors often forgot the time while they were fully focused on training.
'I'm lucky. The core lesson for the Caterpillar Class will start soon. I've been stuck on the techniques, and I need some feedback from one of the teachers.'
Shang walked towards the north, towards the bigger training fields. The core lesson for the Caterpillar Class took place there.
After walking for a bit, Shang saw several different training fields and arenas. Fortunately, there were signs beside each training field, and Shang quickly found a sign with a caterpillar on it.
The training field had a couple of older students standing on it. There were probably around 20 students between the ages of 17 and 19. Most of them were talking in groups while a couple of them swung their weapons around as warmup.
The students were allowed to draw their weapons on a training field, but they were forbidden from threatening others. If they wanted to mess with another student, they had to put their weapon away again.
When Shang stepped onto the training field, a couple of students looked at him.
Some of them furrowed their brows. Some of them looked with skepticism at Shang. Some narrowed their eyes, and some of them even smiled politely.
But in the following seconds, the first two groups changed their expression to a surprised one before remaining in an awkward one.
Shang was too young to have such power.
Shang noticed all of that. 'Sure enough, these students are all very experienced. Some of them noticed my power at first glance, but even the ones that didn't quickly found out about it.'
This was a gigantic difference from how many other students had interacted with Shang.
Stars and his group hadn't even realized when Shang threatened them.
The older student in Stars group had slowly noticed Shang's power, but he had still taken a while to truly grasp it. The blonde guy that had tried to shove Shang to the side had also realized, but only when Shang had already shoved his arm to the side two times.
There were definite differences between students of different ages.
The newbies that were around 14 years old nearly never noticed Shang's power.
The 16-year-olds noticed it, but it wasn't easy, not all of them believed their feelings, and it took a bit.
Meanwhile, the 18-year-olds noticed it from a distance in a matter of two seconds, and they quickly believed their instincts.
After Shang entered the training field, a couple of students still looked at him.
Then, one of them frowned.
"I think you're in the wrong grade," he said.