Help! I don't want to NTR the protagonist!

Chapter 78  78. True friends

If this was the extent of Xander's and Oscar's plan to ruin him then they should have done better.

Lucius just chuckled at the thought as he opened the door to his classroom.

As soon as he walked in the air in the classroom seems

To freeze as everyone tried to look away.

The rumours outside and his crazed appearance yesterday had firmly cemented his image in their minds as a complete mad dog.

Nobody wanted to interact with this mad dog less they get bit.

Looking over Lucius accidentally locked eyes with a pink haired beauty.

It was at that point a crafty smile appeared on Lucius's face as he quickly waved towards Nina.

The poor girl nearly had a heart attack and quickly buried her head in her books once again like it was some sort of defence mechanism.

Lucius just smiled and walked up to his seat and during the entire time Nina didn't dare look at him.

Although Lucius was a bit miffed that his progress with a heroine had been reset it was to be expected.

When the timid Nina heard all these crazy rumours yesterday, she nearly passed out from shock!

If it was any other time Lucius could easily have such a naive girl wrapped around his finger and easily deny and defend himself from the crazy rumours.

But yesterday he had just jumped a man and beat him until his fists turned bloody.

With such a display what was there to deny?

Nina herself was still struggling to come to terms with what happened yesterday herself.

She never could have expected that her first ever friend was a mad lunatic!

She wanted to scold her naive and past self endlessly. Just because she was eager to make friends she had actually gotten in league with a delinquent gangster!

Still, even if Nina had put herself on guard against him she was still too naive.

Lucius was very confident in breaking down the guard of the little girl.

"Nina, I know you can hear me."

As Lucius spoke Nina just shivered timidly and buried her head in her books

Sigh! So you're going to ignore me too? And just as I thought I had finally made some friends."

As Lucius spoke, the grief and sadness in his voice could be heard clearly.

And each word he spoke caused a song of pain in Nina's heart

For a moment her memories flashed back to the time she had spent in the magic tower.

After detecting her golden talent everyone was so happy to be around her but soon after her poor talent as a mage was exposed she was s quickly ignored

Everywhere she would go she would see and hear the mean whispers and rumours spoken by everyone around her. In a way, her situation was not too dissimilar to Lucius's.

She had also lost the people who she thought would be her friends.

A look of hesitation flashed between her beautiful eyes as she asked.

"A-are the rumours about you true?"

Hearing this question Lucius just scoffed.

"Even if the rumours are true, does it matter?"

"Well.."

Lucius didn't even let Nina finish speaking and counted

"What does it matter if the rumours are true? Aren't we still friends regardless? I don't care what other people say about you and I'll still be your friend so why can't you do the same."

As Nina heard this her mouth hung open as she tried to speak but no words came out of her mouth.

She remained like that for a while, seemingly undergoing some type of enlightenment

'Yeah! So what if there are bad rumours about him? Didn't I also have some nasty rumours about myself? I should still be his friend regardless. there's no problem with that.'

No, In fact, there was definitely a problem.

If Lucius was really a bloodthirsty killer, would it really be safe for a naïve young girl like her to hang around someone like him?

The answer was obvious to anyone with a brain.

The people you make friends with can affect you in a negative way but with just a few words Lucius had managed to get Nina to ignore this.

She really was too naïve

If put in terms of the modern day , she was definitely the type of person to get catfished and fall for all sorts of internet scams.

Loneliness was a scary thing.

In order to get rid of it you can selectively ignore all sorts of red flags and this was what was happening to Nina right now.

"L-Lucius, I think you're right. Even if rumours are being spread it shouldn't affect our friendship."

Seeing this Lucius wanted to laugh.

"That's true! Friends shouldn't care about things like that ."

Lucius thought that it was best to set this type of thinking as the foundation of their friendship. After all, his real status was way worse than the rumours.

He wasn't just some neighbourhood gangster but instead a real domestic terrorist and the leader of the crazy bunch too!

If such a revaluation was brought to light then he really may kill this timid little girl.

Hopefully, if the worst case scenario were to happen and his identity was revealed with this foundation he would be able to maintain his relationship with Nina, or at the very least, not turn her directly hostile against him.

But for Nina's safety and for his own, it would be best if such a thing were to never be revealed.

So after repairing his friendship Lucius just made some more idle chatter with Nina, trying to slowly but surely increase his favorability until the fierce looking Mr. Hoffman walked in , signalling the start of the new school day

….

So just like that, several days passed by since Lucius's brutal assault on Xander.

Lucius's life in the meantime really didn't change much.

The rumours got slightly worse but they were still bearable. The only thing was that people started avoiding him more and more and it was harder to find a sparring partner during his lessons, but those were all minor developments .