I'm a Proper Student, I Only Drink Nine Potions a Day

Evan's pupils dilated slightly.

He suddenly turned his head.

The second lap of the girls' running group had just reached the boys, less than ten meters away.

The scent grew even stronger.

Three meters from Evan's side, a gaunt, pale-faced student slowly rose from a bench.

Evan recognized that face.

Gilbert. He was also one of the students who had tested the potions.

Gilbert's breathing grew increasingly ragged, his chest heaving violently like a bellows.

His eyes now glowed with an unnatural dark red, as though some inner color were seeping through his irises.

In that instant, Evan's nostrils were flooded with an intense stench of blood.

That smell was coming from Gilbert.

Rich, fresh, and warm like heated steel.

"Do you smell something?"

Evan asked the people beside him in a low voice.

Lane shook his head blankly.

The gaunt young man named John beside him grinned, revealing a row of uneven teeth.

"What else could it be? The perfume of rich young ladies."

Evan's brow furrowed deeply.

Such an overpowering smell of blood, yet none of them could smell it at all?

"Hey! Gilbert! What are you doing?"

John noticed the student who had stood up as well and waved as he called out.

The next second.

Gilbert's body seemed to ignite from within.

He lunged desperately toward the flank of the girls' formation.

He moved far too fast for a gaunt, sickly student.

Cinders sprayed beneath his feet as his body skimmed almost along the ground. Even the boys sitting nearby had no time to react.

The girls were even less prepared.

In their world, these poor boys from the lower class did not even dare look at them too long. They could never have imagined that someone would charge at them.

"Ahhh!"

Piercing screams shattered across the field like broken glass.

The running formation instantly collapsed, pale athletic skirts scattering chaotically beneath the sunlight.

The demon-hunting instinct formed by the Demon Hunter Characteristic made him react instinctively.

His brain had not even processed it before his body moved first.

Two steps forward, three strides closer. The power granted by 2 points of Constitution made him a beat faster than Gilbert.

Just as Gilbert's right hand—its nails already sharpening and lengthening into claws—was about to tear into a blonde girl's shoulder, Evan's left hand seized his shoulder hollow.

"Ahhh!"

The girl let out a shriek so sharp that her voice cracked.

Evan ignored her and kept hold of Gilbert's shoulder.

An inexplicable instinct surged up from the depths of his spine, directing his muscles into an impressively cool and practiced movement.

Borrow the force. Turn. Bend at the waist. Throw.

Gilbert's gaunt body was flung to the ground in a standard shoulder throw, kicking up a spray of cinders.

But he had not lost the ability to resist.

Low howls rumbled from his throat, sounds no human throat should have been capable of making.

Muscles bulged beneath his skin at a visible rate, his gaunt shell swelling under some force from within.

Evan narrowed his eyes and leaned closer.

The two canine teeth in Gilbert's upper jaw were slowly lengthening and sharpening.

"This is... a chain side effect from the Night Demon Potion and Blood Potion?"

Evan immediately thought of the "Basic Sanguine" Beyonder Characteristic on his panel.

He had not mutated because his panel reversed the side effects.

But the other test subjects had no such miracle. Their bodies were being torn apart and twisted by the chain reaction between the two potions, eventually turning them into incomplete Monsters.

Gilbert struggled violently beneath him.

That strength was nothing a gaunt, frail student should have possessed.

His nails carved deep furrows into the cinder-covered ground as he twisted like a crazed crocodile rolling over.

"Help! Help! Another poor person has gone mad!"

The noble young ladies screamed in terror as they scattered in every direction.

That word, "another," made Evan's heart sink.

It seemed this had happened an unknown number of times already.

As Gilbert struggled fiercely, memories Evan had never learned yet found incomparably familiar suddenly surged into his mind.

The memories were like the quiet whispers of an old Demon Hunter in a tricorne hat beside a campfire.

"Incomplete Bloodthirsty Beast."

"Its weakness is the protrusion on the side of its throat. That part is called the Bloodthirst Sac."

"It continuously stimulates the host's nerves, driving them into a bloodthirsty state."

"Shattering the Bloodthirst Sac can temporarily break down the Bloodthirsty Beast's urge to attack."

"But after roughly two hours, the Bloodthirst Sac will recover on its own."

The Demon Hunter's Instinct

Images from those memories flashed past one after another.

A hand blade, an angle, a precise burst of force.

He dropped to his knees, pinning Gilbert's arms beneath them and nailing this frenzied Monster to the ground.

His left hand gripped Gilbert's jaw and yanked it sharply upward.

A stretch of pale neck was exposed. Beside the Adam's apple, a swelling the size of a pigeon egg pulsed slowly beneath the skin. Every beat made a suppressed roar leak from Gilbert's throat.

Evan brought his right hand together into a hand blade.

He struck the pulsing protrusion with precision.

"Urgh... urgh..."

The swelling shattered beneath his hand blade. Some viscous fluid inside seeped beneath the skin and into Gilbert's body.

Gilbert's body twitched twice beneath Evan.

Then all strength rapidly drained from his shell. His muscles slackened, and the dark red faded from his eyes, returning to a dead grayish white.

Like a sack with its bones removed, he collapsed limply onto the cinder-covered ground, his chest rising and falling faintly.

He was not dead, but he had lost his ability to fight.

Evan climbed off him and brushed the cinders from his knees.

Looking at Gilbert, whom he had subdued, Evan felt a peculiar sense of accomplishment rise within him.

It felt like finally killing the first Monster of his life in the newbie village of a game and receiving a generous chunk of experience.

"Looks like the Demon Hunter Characteristic I digested last night enhanced my sense of smell. That's why I was the only one who could smell that blood."

He lowered his head and looked at his palm.

"And the knowledge and combat experience belonging to Demon Hunters have already seeped into my instincts."

"I don't need to recall them consciously. Once external stimulation appears, they surface automatically."

It felt like a song he knew extremely well.

If someone asked him to recite the lyrics outright, he could not do it.

But the moment the melody began, he could sing along with it, connecting every line perfectly.

And magical creatures.

Were the melody of a Demon Hunter.

"Demon Hunter. It seems that if I want to fully digest the knowledge within this Characteristic, I need to come into contact with more magical creatures."

Evan silently summarized in his heart.

"Isn't this the acting method from Lord of Mysteries?"

His eighteen years of experience as a veteran webnovel reader lined up perfectly with what he was experiencing.

A Demon Hunter's inheritance was not dead knowledge written in books, but a repository of instinctive reactions that needed to be activated through actual combat.

The closer one got to magical creatures, the more easily those sleeping memories and instincts awakened.

As Evan pondered this, the field fell silent.

The crimson setting sun sank behind the rooftops of the western buildings, dyeing the entire cinder-covered field a frozen orange.

Lane, John, and the raggedly dressed poor students stood where they were, eyes wide and faces filled with shock.

Farther away, the rich young ladies who had just been screaming and scattering had stopped as well. They covered their mouths, disbelief written across their faces.

The way they looked at Evan was no longer the contempt they showed toward "poor boys," but the gaze reserved for something that had intruded into their world, something entirely incompatible with everything they understood.

Human instinct was drawn to strength.

Especially in that instant of being rescued from danger, gratitude and admiration would be magnified without limit.

That string of actions Evan had just performed—

From smelling the blood and rising, to the shoulder throw, then the precise attack and a single finishing blow.

Clean and decisive, without a single unnecessary movement.

Like a wandering Knight who had stepped out of some cheap novel.

In the distance, several school security guards hurried over with wooden clubs in hand.

When the middle-aged guard leading them saw Evan standing in the middle of the field, his brow knotted tightly.

"Why is it you again?"

This middle-aged man had been one of the witnesses who saw Evan kill Lebon and the other three in the main teaching building's lobby that day.

In his mind, this thin student in a patched jacket was a Lunatic who did not value his life.

Before Evan could explain, a clear voice came from behind him.

"Sir, please don't misunderstand. Arkham was protecting us. That poor student suddenly went mad."

A slender figure stepped out from the girls' group.

She raised her hand and pointed at Gilbert, who was still twitching faintly on the ground.

Only then did the middle-aged guard notice the limp body on the ground. His expression quickly shifted from vigilance to gravity.

He turned his head and spoke in a low voice to his companion.

"Go inform Professor Byron, quickly."