The Rebirth of Evelyn Knox

Chapter 39: Prejudice

The academy's expedition picked up students from each of the five major capitals in the continents, and Moreen city happened to be its last stop.

Although compartment thirteen currently only had the few of them, Evelyn knew it would not remain so for long. After all, they could not be the only ones from the Lavinian Empire who would go to the academy.

Even if there were few or even no children of the ancient families entering with her this year, there would still be dozens of commoners.

"I wonder what your classmates will be like."

Evelyn stroked little Ruru's fur leisurely, clearly not very curious about her upcoming companions for the journey.

"I don't think we'll be meeting any classmates at all. The commoners who go with us will all end up one year behind me, so they'll all be my juniors."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Still, there could be someone from the ancient families, or someone from the royalty, who knows?"

"Mhm, there will definitely be some. If not from our own, then from other regions. But they may not end up being in our compartment."

Amara nodded thoughtfully. "True."

If it had been in the past, Evelyn would never have been so unenthusiastic about meeting potential 'targets' for her missions. But she had learned a lot more about her system and skills in these two years, and now had a clearer idea on how to make progress.

Even after two years and a clearly strong bond between them, neither Amara nor Vivian's affection had crossed the line which would allow her to acquire their enhancements.

Perhaps the more 'gifted' an individual was, the harder it was to max out their affection. Her parents can be considered gifted only among mortals, but it had taken her years to max their affection, and that was despite their clear adoration of their dear daughter.

This made it clear to Evelyn that the affection route was quite unreliable, and should only be a last resort. Instead, it was far better to simply defeat or kill her opponents.

It was unfortunate that this 'defeat' condition's requirements were quite harsh, and she simply could not bring herself to bully Vivian, Amara or even Bree to that point.

Of course, since people in this world could get stronger even without her system or the grand 'Calamity' skill, how could she not have any other way?

Apparently, the way people acquired 'experience' in this world was not through missions, but through 'cultivation', 'slaughter' and 'enlightenment'.

Evelyn had the feeling that although the way they went about naming and understanding it was different, this cultivation and enlightenment weren't much different from her experience and missions.

And the common point between the two was that the levels shown by her system and those that the people measured through devices and artifacts were identical.

Perhaps when the people of this world unknowingly completed a 'mission', they could undergo 'enlightenment'.

But of course, unlike her, who could just browse the missions and pick the ones she liked, these people did not have that luxury and could only do things blindly and hope for the best.

One such example would be the 'ceremony' she had undergone. If she didn't have a system interface and only had a vague idea of how it worked, she would have wondered if she had 'failed the mission' or if there was never one in the first place.

But the reality was that this mission required her to complete all three of her ceremonies before she could receive her rewards, and that was a long way off. And with war on the horizon, she did not even know if it would ever happen.

Her thoughts were cut off by the giggle and gaggle of around a dozen children who phased into the carriage all together. Most of them were boys, with only four girls, and all of them had either brown or black hair.

"Yes! Finally, we're in, ancient academy here we come!"

"Silly."

"Haha"

Their jovial mood instantly turned sour, however, as they realized they were not alone in their carriage.

No, instead, the people occupying one of the tables were clearly quite 'different' from themselves.

Their clothing was luxurious, and the aura they gave off was one of nobility and indifference.

Most people in this world were born with either brown or black hair and eye color. In some places, green, grey, yellow and even blue eye colors could be seen, while the hair color could range from gold to red.

More exotic eye colors could still exist, but at the very least there would be no mortals born with 'pink', 'purple' or other such outlandish colors of hair. And the glittering pink hair of the girl in their compartment could only mean one thing then she was born from a 'spirit egg'.

An abnormal existence, completely different from 'humans'.

For many of these commoner children, this was their first time seeing one this close. Although they tried to be on their best behavior since they knew that the ancient academy definitely did not lack these kinds of people, most of them still ended up gawking.

One of the boys even started walking towards their table, but was abruptly pulled back by the others.

"What are doing?! You want to get beaten? Did your mother not teach you anything?!"

"W-What? What's going on? I just wanted to say hello."

The girl's voice was ominous and somber. "Don't talk to the abnormals. You will get hurt."

The boy gulped, clearly much more fearful of the strange pink haired girl than before.

Their group quickly huddled away to the table diagonally opposite to Evelyn's, and she rolled her eyes at their reaction.

The 'normal' people clearly had a lot of prejudice against those born from 'spirit eggs'. Although it was widely accepted among the higher echelons that this kind of sentiment was just a form of 'jealousy', there was little they could do about it.

If she had not talked to Cecilia before, she would not have even known about this.

Amara was surprised by both the reaction of the children who entered, as well as Evelyn's indifference to their attitude.

"What's going on? Why do they look like Vivian fried their pet duck?"

Vivian couldn't help but whine. Why was this thing always brought up? She didn't even do anything this time!

"That's unfair, 'mara, I did that only once!"

The older redhead ruffled her little sister's hair. "One time too many, I say."

"Uuh."

Evelyn couldn't help but giggle, her mood much lighter than before. "Well, don't mind them. They're just prejudiced. They'll come around by themselves, eventually."

Amara tilted her head. "Prejudice against what?"

"Hmm... 'Spiritual' and 'Blessed' physiques, I guess. Especially those that stand out at a glance."

Amara realized just then that Evelyn's pink hair really did stick out like a sore thumb. Even if herself and Vivian can pass off as exotic mortals, no one will ever mistake Evelyn for anything other than what she was.

"Oh what if they don't come around by themselves though, shouldn't we clear up any misunderstandings?"

Evelyn clearly disdained the thought, and the displeased frown on her face made it no secret. "I did nothing wrong. Why should I go clear anything up? If they never come around, well, it's none of my business, is it? Unless they stick it to my face, in which case I will just have to teach them a lesson."

Evelyn turned her pink eyes to the commoner group with a smirk, and the children quickly huddled together in fear.

"Kyaaa!"

"Wow, such sharp eyes! I feel like I was stabbed!"

"You're just being overdramatic now. There's no way she can hurt us without even touching, r-right?"

Evelyn could only roll her eyes, blaming her own enhanced hearing for being able to hear their nonsense. Perhaps leveling up so fast had its own downsides, but she would gladly take those over being a weakling.

And it's not like she didn't understand where these children were coming from. In her last life, her condition had definitely been far worse than any of them, after all. But she would rather spend her time focusing on herself rather than finding fault with others.

At this moment, another entity phased into their carriage, one that Evelyn had clearly met before.