The scion unsheathed a cleaver-like dagger and stabbed it through the laptop like it was made of paper. I battled the urge to leap out and slap the insolent nobleman. How could he do this to a computer? Any computer! My computer… My livelihood! My property! All the years leading to acquisition of it! All the hard work that was saved inside!

His lustrous, empty toy would cover but a fraction of that cost.

Lordling dropped the damaged instrument into the dirt like the garbage it truly was now. This absolute little shit! I was beyond enraged. I was an insult away from flinging a stone at his smug face.

I couldn’t.

The scion might have been provoking me on purpose, but he already knew I wouldn’t be launching assault – even in these favourable circumstances. After all, had I been a hired gun I would have gone straight into the bedroom and choked out this god’s gift to humanity with a frilly pink pillow.

“I look forward to dismembering you,” vicious twit left me these parting thoughts before departing as gracefully as he’d come.

He didn’t need his phone. Didn’t need my computer. He showed up simply to flaunt his superiority. That was well within his right as Raktkalis and I would have accepted it. To a certain point. A line was crossed. Nobody rips my life apart and gets to laugh about it.

Limb-locking trepidation was all but gone, but logical part of the brain was still painfully aware. It wasn’t even this git’s prowess that stopped me, but much larger consequences. I couldn’t dispose of this little shit, even when he’d come in on a platter. The general of Kalanta was not someone who takes slights lightly.

However, I could take a bite at his reputation. The household wouldn’t care about children’s spat at school. They might even get on his case too if the highborn doesn’t handle it properly.

Now, what would be sufficiently humiliating for an adolescent egomaniac? I was leaning towards preying on the little despot’s self-image. Veivirzis Raktkalis always stalked around in a battle armour. It was quite unnecessary within a city, outrageously so. After all, that was not only uncomfortable, but also cumbersome. The metallic safeguards were meant to protect against the teeth, not human threats. He had to be wearing those bulky plates to hide something he didn’t want others to see. Scrawny physique, for example.

It was truly a pity the phone had no embarrassing pictures. Surprising, too. A young man away from his family’s estate for the first time should be up to some unsavoury misadventures. However, lack of personal photos on that device only reinforced my impression that Kalantan’s appearance was really a sore point.

It didn’t matter. Truth paled in face of malicious rumours anyway.

In case a sniper was posted some unseen distance away, I waited for the darkness to fall. Wasn’t going to make their job easier for them. In the meantime, I laboured with basic image processing on the phone. It wasn’t meant for fine finagling, so two minute job took a bit longer.

In the end, brat’s face from the ID card ended up on a naked torso posed in an unflattering manner. As the twit supposedly already knew where I was, I connected to the network again and posted my creation on the school’s social forum from his own account. I hadn’t even paused to reconsider.

Insufferable ruffian firmly deserved it. And how much worse can it get at this point, really? He’ll dismember me harder?

No assault squad had stormed in to bust me. Surroundings were quiet.

Swiftly dismantling the connectivity again, stashed the phone away and eyed the pitch black debris. It helped that I knew the area. Darted towards my maimed computer and immediately ran off, hugging it close to my chest.

I thought I grabbed some trash along, but under the streetlights I saw a pen. Pedantic servants did a sweep and had not overlooked my bug inside. No matter, there was another one – even if I had no way to retrieve it. Just a matter of principle. I simply loved sowing the paranoia. There was no reason I had to be the only one afflicted by it.

I needed to use the computer lab to see if my beloved heap of junk could be salvaged. Security around the entrances was high and the windows had bars. Not the upper floors, though!

Twined my trembling, already bleeding fingers around the security barrier and hoisted myself up. I’ve wrapped my hands in a shredded cloth repeatedly, but the rips kept getting reopened. I couldn’t afford time to let the injuries close on their own, nor had the luxury to visit the campus infirmary for obvious reasons.

I slunk in through an unprotected window and remained on the floor. Voices nearby had me frozen in place. Campus had been eerily quiet on my run over, which was inconvenient. It was complicated to stay hidden when I was the only one strolling around. And now there were people were I needed them least!

Fortunately, the speech came from outside of this classroom.

I began pulling out my precious junk and gently pulling it apart. The talkers were here to stay, too. I had no choice but eavesdrop.

“But can you just imagine how she felt?”

“I was there.”

“Yet you don’t seem to care! I can’t put that crying out of my mind. The wailing. Pleading.”

“Caring won’t change a thing now.”

“A girl died! Slit her own throat! In. Front. Of. Us! Begging for help.”

“It happens. Perhaps not where you come from, but when they say jump – we jump.”

The familiar scenario caught my attention, as my unwieldy fingers kept trying to do work.

“It happens?! Are you fucking insane? This shouldn’t be happening! We are civilised people and you’re acting like what that barbaric psycho did is the norm. He’s killed five people in single day! And nobody seems to fucking care!”

“Do you want to become the sixth?”

“Are you fucking…”

“Eli, there’s nothing anybody can do. Just forget it happened.”

Righteous woman kept descending into hysteria and her boyfriend did his best to contain the problem. If I understood the exchange correctly, even more bodies littered the holy neutral grounds. Losing a multitude of personal staff would be hard to explain away. For anybody except that guy, apparently. He either didn’t care, or suicides were really the loophole he’d banked on.

As spontaneous as this recourse appeared to be, it had to be meticulously calculated. The lordling was brazen and daring, but not without intelligence.

After cooling off, I started having misgivings about posting that unfortunate picture.