A Proper Student, I Only Drink Nine Potions a Day

This had made the Phoenix Brotherhood quite famous among the students of Sage University, with influence that ran deep and tangled.

Evan came back to his senses.

Lebon, Thompson, and those few who had joined in bullying him.

Thompson was already an official member of the Phoenix Brotherhood.

As for Lebon and the others, they seemed to have been striving for eligibility to join.

"Looks like bullying me was their initiation test."

Evan frowned slightly.

There was more hidden behind that farce than he had previously thought.

Pulis said no more and changed the subject.

"Go eat first. Come to my office this afternoon to collect your medicine."

The two entered the cafeteria together.

It was still the fifteen-cent lunch: black bread, bean soup, milk, and half a boiled egg.

Pulis, meanwhile, had fried fish and vegetables on his tray, enough for two Evans.

After eating, Pulis did as usual—he only took a few bites before getting up and leaving.

Without drawing attention, Evan mixed together the food Pulis had left behind and packed it into his old biscuit tin, intending to take it home for dinner that afternoon.

With twenty cents' worth of food, not a single meal could be wasted.

After the lunch break, Evan went to Pulis's office as agreed.

The laboratory was as dimly lit as ever.

Pulis took five thumb-sized glass bottles from a drawer. Their mouths were sealed with wax, and they contained the familiar dark red liquid.

"Still take one after sunset each day."

Pulis pushed the bottles toward Evan, his tone as ordinary as ever.

Evan accepted the bottles and carefully slipped them into the inner pocket of his jacket.

"Thank you, Professor."

He gave a slight bow, then turned and left the laboratory.

The oak door closed behind him.

His footsteps gradually faded down the corridor, swallowed by the turn at the end of the stairs.

Inside the laboratory, the female assistant stepped out from the shadows beside the storage cabinet.

"That kid is pretty sensible." Her voice was low and even.

"Do we still need to send Eldin?"

Pulis did not answer immediately.

He stood before the workbench, lightly tapping the surface twice with his fingers.

Then he nodded.

"Go."

He raised his head. A dim glint flickered through the lenses before his pale blue eyes.

"I can feel that he's digesting the Demon Hunter Characteristic."

"To prevent any accidents, have Eldin completely enchant him."

Mutation and the Bloodthirsty Beast

During the afternoon recitation seminar, Evan's performance was still flawless.

He answered every question directed at him crisply and smoothly, reciting chemical equations backward as if they were second nature.

Even Lecturer Wright could not help glancing at him a few extra times. Behind his metal-rimmed glasses, his gray eyes held a few traces of inscrutable approval.

Morales, seated behind Evan, barely focused on the lesson throughout the seminar.

His gray-blue eyes, hidden beneath his side-parted hair, had been studying Evan's back the entire time.

"This guy's posture when sitting and walking looks perfectly normal."

Morales observed silently to himself.

"He doesn't look like someone who's been used."

Since childhood, he had possessed a curiosity and focus rare among those his age.

That talent meant he had barely needed his parents' urging to study his way into Sage University on his own.

But today, that focus was not on his textbooks at all. It was entirely fixed on observing Evan.

Evan's changes over the past few days had been too drastic.

So drastic that he could not explain them with any common sense.

He had to find the answer. Otherwise, the cat clawing at the wall inside his mind would never stop.

After the seminar came the unshakable physical education class.

Evan walked onto the cinder-covered field and took a deep breath of cold air.

After his constitution broke through to level two, his lung capacity had increased several times over compared to a week ago.

This field had once been the place he feared most.

Every run had left him vomiting, his lungs feeling as if someone had stuffed them with a lump of burning charcoal.

But now—

Standing at the starting line, Evan had only one sentence in his mind.

Avoid his edge?

I'll crush his edge beneath my feet.

The starting whistle sounded. He broke into a run, his boot soles making light crunching sounds against the cinders.

While the others were still adjusting their breathing, he could already calmly spare attention to observe the students around him.

Those who chose the running event were generally students from the lower classes.

Baseball required buying specialized bats and gloves. Boxing required paying venue fees and hiring sparring partners. Rowing was out of the question—it was a pastime for the children of wealthy families.

Only running required no equipment, no rules, just a pair of legs that could run.

The students in Evan's group generally looked terrible.

Their faces were sallow or pale, their lips bluish, with dark purple bags hanging beneath their eyes.

One look was enough to tell they had taken the medicine.

He spotted Lane among the crowd.

Lane looked much better than the last time Evan had seen him.

A hint of color had returned to his sallow face. His steps were still unsteady when he ran, but at least he no longer looked as though a gust of wind could knock him down.

"The pain relief and blood enhancement from the Copper Pill actually have this kind of effect?"

Evan silently made a note of it.

From outward appearances, the Copper Pill could make a patient look healthier than actual medicine.

But he knew it was only delaying death by a few weeks. The price was that those at the bottom would become more obedient, more optimistic, and more devout before they died.

Just as expected of the Healing Church.

The run ended quickly.

Everyone else sprawled across the wooden benches beside the field, panting hard, their chests heaving violently.

Only Evan remained standing there. His breathing had grown slightly heavier, but there was no fatigue on his face.

He sat at the end of a bench and took out his pocket watch from his jacket pocket to check the time.

Just then, a set of orderly footsteps came from the entrance on the north side of the field.

A group of around twenty female students ran over, their running forms uniform and their steps light.

In this era, any woman who could attend Sage University was either rich or noble.

Even while running, they wore finely tailored sportswear.

Pale blue, cream white, light pink—the colors were soft and gentle.

Their hair was tied up uniformly, secured with silk ribbons or hairpins.

Their faces wore light makeup. Even when their cheeks heated from running, they only took on a healthy rosy glow.

Every one of them radiated an elegance and reserve that seemed to come from their bones.

Even during strenuous exercise, their movements looked like a waltz played at a slightly quicker rhythm.

The poor students on the benches, dressed in worn jackets, patched trousers, and leather shoes with broken soles, immediately stared wide-eyed.

These swans were beings they would never be able to touch in their entire lives.

When the girls' group ran past them and a breeze carrying sweet floral fragrance swept by, several poor boys could not help puffing out their chests and taking deep breaths of the mid-November chill.

"Smells so good."

A round-faced boy beside them sighed with his eyes closed.

Lane came over and sat beside Evan, leaning against the back of the bench as he caught his breath.

"How do you feel?"

Evan nodded. "Very good. It doesn't hurt as much anymore."

Lane grinned. The smile looked especially content on his still somewhat sallow face.

"Me too. I feel better than ever before."

He lowered his voice.

"I even introduced a few classmates to get the medicine. We poor souls should help each other whenever we can."

Evan gave a quiet sound of agreement and did not object.

He knew the Copper Pill was a slow poison, but he also knew that for people like Lane, it was the only straw they could grasp.

Trying to stop them was meaningless. If he did, they would only think him cold and heartless.

After what happened to Lebon, the school's unspoken ban on acknowledging Evan seemed to have quietly fallen apart.

Today, these poor students from the lower classes all took the initiative to nod at him. A few bolder ones even came over to speak with him.

Evan merely nodded back to all of them without saying much.

The distance between him and these people was already far greater than it had been a week ago.

But he had no intention of showing that distance.

Several students beside him began complaining in low voices.

"Can't we just not take this medicine? I feel like if I keep taking it, I'll turn into an idiot."

"The school checks. They even come to draw blood every few days."

"Then what if only one of us takes it each time? He can tell us the side effects first. We can take turns?"

"Wouldn't they find out?"

Listening to their complaints, Evan's eyes suddenly lit up.

"If you don't want to take it, give it to me."

The thought had barely surfaced. Before he could figure out how to bring it up, his ears caught an abnormal sound.

A heavy, suppressed sound, like some primal beast straining to burst through the iron bars.