I'm a Serious Student, I Only Take Nine Potions a Day

"That bitch is actually smoking leaves."

Evan had no interest in that stuff whatsoever.

He grabbed all the leaves from the tin can, walked into the washroom, lifted the toilet lid, and tossed them all in.

He pulled the flush chain. The rushing water swept the pile of dried leaves into a swirling clump and carried it down the drain.

After dealing with the leaves, Evan turned to leave.

Just as he stepped over the washroom threshold, the sole of his right shoe landed on a slightly raised floorboard.

His body suddenly pitched forward.

His eyes hurtled straight toward the iron coat hook above the doorframe.

The hook was made of cast iron, its outward-curving tip covered in brown rust, aimed directly at his left eye socket.

His 1.903 physique saved his life at that instant.

His left hand shot out and grabbed the exposed water pipe beside him. His five fingers clamped around the iron pipe, and the muscles in his forearm tightened like a fully drawn bowstring.

His entire body froze in midair at an angle no ordinary person could possibly achieve, tilted nearly forty-five degrees forward, his nose less than two inches from the iron hook.

He could make out every speck of rust on its tip.

Bracing himself against the pipe, Evan slowly pulled himself upright.

Once both feet were firmly planted again, he did not move. He simply stood in the washroom doorway, his expression darkening bit by bit.

Once was a coincidence.

Twice was bad luck.

But this string of events—missing the tram, bird droppings, laundry water, stolen money, tripping on flat ground—each one connected to the next, escalating step by step.

It was like an invisible hand was tipping dominoes in the dark, every tile falling at precisely the angle needed to strike the next.

This was not a coincidence.

This was Final Destination.

"Could I have been cursed? A Misfortune Curse?"

Knowing full well that supernatural powers existed in this world, Evan immediately arrived at that answer.

"What was the medium for the curse? Who cursed me?"

He looked down at the money he had taken back from Mary. Mary had not stolen his money.

No one had tampered with the lock on the master bedroom door, the door was undamaged, and there were no signs that the room had been searched. It could not have been one of her clients, either.

The sort of men who came here looking for women did not have that kind of ability.

The clues in his mind instantly connected.

"Lebon. Thompson. Or some other middle-class student, maybe even a noble student."

"The medium was most likely the money stolen from me."

He recalled the times he had passed Lebon in the school corridor these past few days.

The blond young man had kept his head lowered as he hurried by. There had indeed been fear on his face, but beneath that fear lurked another expression.

Anticipation.

Venomous resentment.

He had been waiting for something to happen to Evan.

A cold sweat instantly soaked Evan's back.

"That really is unreasonable."

"No warning, no contact. Like casually crushing an insect to death."

Fear and fury surged up at the same time, churning together in his chest.

But fury made up the greater part.

That anger was not directed solely at one person, but at an entire system of rules.

In this parallel world, the rich had moved beyond controlling the poor through sweatshops and financial exploitation.

They could use supernatural power to erase, enslave, and crush impoverished people at the bottom, while those people did not even know how they died.

The noble Vampire Pulis, who used students to test potions.

The middle-class student who had cursed him just because his bullying attempt had failed.

They treated human lives like grass.

He stared at the iron coat hook above the doorframe.

Without the physical enhancement granted by the potion, that stumble just now would have been enough for the rusted iron tip to pierce directly into his eye socket.

A poor student, dead at the entrance to his own washroom, blinded by a coat hook and bled to death.

The coroner would write "accident," and the newspapers would not print even a single line about it.

"Directly altering a person's luck and creating a series of fatal coincidences."

Evan's mind raced.

"It seems the supernatural in this world isn't just about cultivating the body and strengthening the mind, a straightforward path of competing through stats."

"It's more like something bizarre, competing through mechanics and using rules to kill people."

"But."

He looked at his arms, which had become noticeably sturdier. The lines of muscle on his forearms were clear in the gloom.

"As long as the stats are high enough, you can brute-force your way through the mechanics."

Avoiding the laundry water had been stats.

Grabbing the water pipe and saving himself just now had also been stats.

The curse created accidents, but once his reaction speed and strength surpassed the damage threshold of those accidents, accidents would no longer be fatal.

"What will the next misfortune be? How do I break the curse? Or fight it?"

Before he could sort out his thoughts, another, more urgent question came rushing in.

"Mary. She definitely went to find Zack."

Evan's pupils contracted.

"So that's it. Offending Mary was also part of the misfortune."

"No wonder that anger hit me so hard just now. I almost couldn't control myself."

The curse had amplified his violent emotions, making him act at the worst possible time and pushing things in the worst possible direction.

"This is trying to make me offend the Gus Gang outright."

The Effects of the Completed Night Demon Potion

"The Gus Gang..."

Evan knew the Gus Gang's methods well.

He had heard of debtors having an arm chopped off, their severed limbs tossed into the rotten mud at the docks to feed the crabs.

He had personally seen the owner of a fast-food cart on the corner beaten to death by three men on a cobblestone street because he could not pay protection money. Not one of the onlookers had dared to call the police.

He had also once watched through a narrow crack in the door as Gus Gang members extorted his parents. His father had bent at the waist, forcing a smile more painful than crying onto his face as he respectfully handed over an envelope.

"If supernatural power is the privilege of the wealthy in this world, then a local force like the Gus Gang must have supernatural beings too."

Rumor had it that the Gus Gang's boss was a mysterious Soothsayer who could see many things and predict a person's daily fortune.

The old drunks in taverns would lower their voices and say that the Gus Gang had remained unshakable in this neighborhood for so long.

It was not only because their fists were hard, but because their boss "knew everything."

Evan cautiously stepped out of the washroom. Before every step, he tested the floor's stability with his toes, only then shifting his weight onto it.

The 1.9 physique gave him sharp hearing and vision, allowing him to catch many tiny details.

Which floorboards were loose, where the doorframe had splinters, which spot on the table corner was perfectly aligned with a person's temple.

The entire apartment had become a map full of traps in his eyes.

He went around the canvas sofa in the living room, returned to the bedroom, and locked the door.

"Zack will come looking for me soon. When that happens, I definitely won't get off easy."

"In that case, I'll fight it head-on. At worst, I'll go find Pulis."

"He used me to test potions. If he wants to keep testing potions on me, then he has to provide me with protection."

"This is a deal, not begging."

With that thought, Evan pulled the thumb-sized glass vial Pulis had given him from the inner pocket of his jacket.

The dark red, viscous liquid sloshed slowly inside the vial. Even through the glass, he could smell the strong stench of blood.

It was already past six. In November, the sky had long since turned completely dark.

Only the last dim yellow remnants of the streetlights seeped through the gap in the curtains.

He twisted off the wax seal, tipped back his head, and poured the viscous liquid into his mouth.

An intense bloody taste exploded across his mouth—rust, salt, and something deeper, a beastlike musky reek.

He had thought he would vomit.

But he did not.

It actually tasted pretty good.

The liquid was spicy and warm as it slid down his throat, like a mouthful of mildly spicy chili oil.

It burned all the way from his throat to his stomach, then that heat rapidly spread through his limbs.

[You have consumed the Night Demon Potion. Duration: 12 hours.]

[Effect: While the potion is active and it is nighttime, perception increases by 30%, and night vision increases by 200%.]

[Do you wish to reverse the side effect?]

"Reverse it."

[Reversal progress: 4 hours.]

The moment he took the potion, the world changed.

It was as if someone had turned the brightness dial in his eyes and the volume dial in his ears to their maximum at the same time.

There were clearly no lights on in the room, and it was pitch-black, yet he could see everything.

Every word on the old newspapers stuck to the wall, every scratch on the tabletop, every fold in the bedsheets—all of it was visible in minute detail, as clear as if it were under the noon sun.

Only the colors were colder, tinged with a faint blue-gray hue, as though he were viewing the world through tinted glass.

His hearing was even more frighteningly sensitive.

Old Tom talking downstairs, a baby crying in the building next door—everything sounded as though it were happening right beside his ears.

"Pulis's research progressed that fast? The Night Demon Potion is already finished?"

What he had taken before was an "unfinished Night Demon Potion." Its actual effect had merely been a crude boost to his physique, completely unrelated to the name Night Demon.

He had not expected the finished product to come out after only four days.

And this finished product truly lived up to its name.

Night Demon.

Perception and vision that turned him into a ghost in the darkness.

At that moment, Evan's extraordinarily sharp ears caught a sound.

It came from downstairs.

Hurried footsteps. More than one person.