The World Is Mine For The Taking-Chapter 1088: Epilogue 20 - The Heroes From Another World (7)

"You really are merciless, Shredica," my previous instructor muttered, sounding half-exhausted and half-amused, like he had seen this exact scene one too many times already. He rubbed his temples and glanced at the wreck I had become. "You have to take it easy on them. They still haven’t even been taught how to fight in real scenarios. They’re already feeling overwhelmed, and you’re not helping that, you know?"

Shredica didn’t even flinch. She didn’t look back at him. She just stood there with her arms crossed, staring down at me like she was checking whether I was a stain that needed to be wiped off the floor. "If he’s going to be that way," she said flatly, like she was stating basic math, "then he wouldn’t be able to come home."

Her voice didn’t waver. Not even a tiny bit.

"If his goal is really to return home, he has to have that merciless tendency and kill anything that gets in his way." She said it the same way someone would state the time of day—calm, emotionless, disturbingly natural for her.

Hearing something that dark being said so casually made the hairs on my arms rise. I couldn’t help but feel like she was... pitying us, in her own twisted way. It was like, underneath all that coldness, she understood us too well. Almost like she had been in the same situation once—teleported here, thrown into chaos, forced to fight with no warning. But at the same time, the way she looked at us, at me... it wasn’t pity. It was like she was looking at a mirror. Like she saw herself in us, but not in a good way—more like she was seeing the parts of herself she hated, and she was trying to beat them out of us.

"If you don’t want to get disappointed and you want real results," she said sharply, snapping me out of my thoughts, "stand back up and try that again."

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. The way her eyes narrowed at me made me feel smaller than a pebble. She looked at me like I was trash she had to deal with.

I tried to fight her. I honestly did. I pushed myself back up, my arms shaking, my legs barely responding. But the moment I moved, the world spun, and before I could even understand what happened, I was face-first in the dirt again. It happened over and over. I’d stand up, she’d flick her wrist—or leg, or elbow, or whatever—and boom, the ground would rush to kiss me like it had been waiting for me all day.

She was really merciless.

Whenever I tried to get up, she’d immediately move like a shadow that had no patience left for me, kicking me down again like I was nothing more than a training dummy she was sick of looking at. There was no mercy in her movements. None. It felt like I was just dancing helplessly at the very tip of her fingers, and she was making sure I understood exactly how helpless I was.

My instructor, my previous one, just watched with this look like, "Well, here we go again." He sighed, shook his head, and folded his arms. It was almost like he had bet money that this would happen.

My classmates who were training nearby paused what they were doing. I could feel their eyes on me. Some of them winced when my face slammed into the dirt again. Others whispered among themselves, probably something like, "Damn, dude..." I couldn’t blame them. I would’ve pitied me too.

By the end of it, I was sprawled across the ground, barely able to move a finger. Every inch of my body hurt—except now it hurt so much that it was starting to feel numb. That kind of pain that goes so far it loops back around into weird emptiness.

She was too strong.

And now I knew, for a fact, that this woman was not the Chihara Akane I knew. She wasn’t even close. This wasn’t the gentle, polite, quietly intimidating person I knew back home. This wasn’t even Chihara Akane in general. No—this was something else entirely. A different person in the shape of someone I recognized. Maybe even a different soul altogether.

"Now, now. Take it easy, Shredica," my previous instructor said, stepping in before she decided to break something important inside my body. "He can’t even move anymore. How about giving him a break and continuing his training tomorrow?"

Shredica stared at me one last time, let out a long, annoyed sigh, and then walked out like she hadn’t just rearranged my internal organs through physical force.

"Fufufu..." my previous instructor chuckled under his breath. "It seems like you might be able to achieve your dream with her as your instructor. She’s a wild card, you know. And she’s almost the same age as you. Or I think she is. Anyway, I bet you’re going to enjoy yourself by her side."

Yeah. Sure. Totally. Enjoy myself.

There was absolutely no way I’d enjoy myself. That was torture disguised as training.

***

One of my classmates—who had been assigned as a healer—walked over and healed me. The warm light surrounded me, sinking through my skin, my muscles, my bones. In just seconds, all the pain began melting away.

I thanked her. Honestly, I was shocked. A moment ago I felt like a cracked vase about to fall apart, and now I felt like nothing had ever happened. It was insane how effective healing magic was.

While heading to my room, still processing everything, I came across a maid. She paused, looked at me up and down for a moment—maybe checking if I was still injured—and then smiled.

And for some reason, my heart sped up.

Then I remembered what Amakawa-kun told me:

"We are heroes from another world, after all."

It echoed in my head. And suddenly, all the pieces started connecting. The rooms, the food, the way people treated us—it wasn’t just courtesy. It was because we were... special here. Because we came from another world. We were valuable.

So when that maid smiled at me like that... gently, seductively... it hit different. I felt myself getting swept up by it before I even had time to think. Maybe it was the exhaustion, or frustration, or stress, or everything mixed together.