Chapter 174. How to Survive an Encounter With a Psychopathic Princess
By some miracle or perhaps by the sheer, infectious insanity that Kaela Aurelius carried like a plague, she had managed to rope in two of the younger combat students for this impromptu excursion.
They were second years, fresh-faced and still possessing that naive, terrifying spark of enthusiasm that only exists before one has truly seen what a real battlefield looks like.
They had been so eager for the chance to spar informally with a princess that they hadn’t bothered to ask the obvious question: could the phrase "just for fun" and the name "Kaela Aurelius" ever realistically exist in the same sentence without one of them dying?
Clara had tagged along for the first stretch of the trek, mostly because the direction happened to overlap with a secluded patch of ancient woodland she’d been meaning to study for her botanical notes.
But as the group reached a clearing thick with the telltale rustle of small forest creatures and the sharp, musky scent of wild prey, her survival instincts finally overrode her curiosity.
"I’m out... I’m seriously out," Clara said, stopping at the edge of the clearing and adjusting her bag with obvious reluctance.
She pointed a warning finger at the two eager second years. "If you two end up with broken ribs or concussions, don’t come crying to me."
"I am not filling out the medical incident reports."
She angled herself toward a narrower, quieter trail branching off to the left. "I’ll leave you to your... fun."
"Try not to bruise anyone too badly. Or at least try to leave them conscious enough to walk back to the barracks."
"No promises!" Kaela called after her, her voice carrying that dangerous, singsong quality that usually preceded something breaking. "Besides, if they can’t handle a little light cardio, they shouldn’t be in this academy anyway!"
Clara rolled her eyes so hard it actually hurt, muttering something about ’psychopathic nobility’ under her breath as she disappeared into the undergrowth.
Kaela turned back to the two students, who were now standing straighter, hands hovering nervously near their practice weapons. One of them looked thrilled; the other looked like he was questioning every life choice that had led him to this moment.
"Alright, listen up, rookies," Kaela said, rolling her shoulders.
The joints popped audibly in the sudden quiet of the woods. "Rule number one... if it moves fast, hit it harder."
"Rule number two... if it bites you, try not to scream like a bitch because it attracts more of them."
"Is that... is that part of the official training manual?" one of the boys asked, voice cracking slightly.
"No, that’s my personal philosophy." Kaela grinned.
Suddenly, the bushes thirty feet ahead exploded with movement. A shape darted between the trees quickly, low to the ground, and disturbingly fluid.
It was some kind of forest beast, a lean, wiry creature covered in coarse grey fur with elongated claws designed for tearing flesh rather than digging. By any reasonable measure of a trained soldier, it was a mere nuisance, a glorified pest.
But to Kaela, it was a target.
Her eyes lit up with a feral intensity. "There! First blood!"
She began cracking her knuckles in rapid succession, the sound like small bones snapping in the silence. "Don’t just stand there gawking like idiots move!"
By the time the sun had climbed another hour into the sky, casting dappled shadows across the forest floor, Kaela had developed what could only be described as a personal, highly unofficial, and deeply concerning scoring system.
She was mentally tallying kills against an imaginary quota she’d apparently established in some dark corner of her subconscious, a quota she hadn’t bothered to share with her two terrified subordinates.
"That’s four," Kaela announced with the casual air of someone checking off a grocery list.
She didn’t even break her stride as she wiped a spray of dark, viscous blood from her cheek. "Four before lunch... I’m pushing for six before we even think about finding a picnic spot."
The second beast she had dispatched hadn’t gone down easily; it had been a larger, more aggressive thing with serrated teeth that had managed to tear a shallow gash across her forearm.
But she had countered with a brutal, bone-crushing strike to its skull that had left the creature’s brain matter decorating the nearest fern. To Kaela, it was just another Tuesday.
Tomas, a lanky second-year who had spent the better part of the morning wheezing and trying to keep his boots from slipping on blood-slicked roots, wiped a thick layer of sweat and grime from his forehead.
He shot her a look that wavered dangerously between genuine awe and the kind of bewilderment reserved for witnessing a natural disaster.
"Princess Kaela, respectfully..." Tomas panted, clutching his practice sword like a lifeline, "I don’t think this qualifies as ’resting.’ I think I’m having a cardiovascular event."
Kaela didn’t even glance back at him. "Sure it does, Tomas."
’Don’t be dramatic! I’m not doing this because I’m forced to!" Kaela pointed at him. "I’m doing it because I want to... That is the literal, textbook definition of recreational activity!"
"I don’t think that’s anywhere near the dictionary definition of resting," Tomas argued weakly, glancing at the corpse of the creature Kaela had just pulverized. "Resting usually involves lying down... and not being covered in viscera."
"It’s my definition," Kaela snapped back, though there was more amusement than anger in her tone.
Her head suddenly cocked to the side, her nostrils flaring. Her entire body went rigid as she tracked the unmistakable rustle of movement in a nearby thicket.
Her pupils dilated with the single-minded focus of a hawk spotting prey. "Besides, this is fun."
"You know what isn’t fun? Sitting around doing nothing, and I tried that once!" Kaela crossed her arms. "Lasted maybe twenty minutes before I felt like I was going to climb the academy walls and scream until my lungs gave out."
Tomas exchanged a meaningful, terrified glance with Elara, the quieter girl who had been trailing at the rear.
Elara wasn’t talking much, but her eyes were darting between Kaela’s aggressive stance and the carnage left behind; she was quietly cataloging Kaela’s technique, the way she pivoted on her heel to maximize torque and the way she favored her left side when delivering a killing blow, as if she were writing a field guide titled ’How to Survive an Encounter with a Psychopathic Princess.’
"Has anyone ever told you," Tomas asked, his voice lowering to a conspiratorial whisper as they moved cautiously forward, "that you might be physically incapable of relaxing without beating something up first?"
Kaela paused mid-stride, actually stopping to consider the question with more genuine introspection than either student expected. "Yeah, actually."
"Instructor Wade said something similar during my last evaluation... And Lia’s said it too, usually right before she loses a spar to me and needs something external to blame for her failure."
"Doesn’t that... concern you at all?" Tomas pressed. "Like, the implications for your long-term mental health?"
"Not really," Kaela said, already moving again.
Her boots crunched over broken branches as she lunged toward a bush where something snarled. "This is just what fun looks like for me."
"It doesn’t mean I’m one-dimensional... I like music, I like eating food that actually has flavor, and I like annoying Lia specifically because her reactions are fucking hilarious!" A competitive glint entered her eyes as she drew her blade. "I’ve got plenty going on outside of violence!"
"I just also happen to really, really like fighting, and today is the one day nobody’s standing over me with a clipboard demanding paperwork about why I broke a monster’s spine."
A wet crack echoed through the clearing as Kaela landed her fifth kill, a vicious ambush by a burrowing creature that she had met mid-leap with a devastating downward slash.
The creature’s ribcage collapsed under the force, sending sparks of crimson spraying across the grass. She let out a satisfied grunt, already scanning the treeline for her sixth target.
Neither student pushed the point further. There was something undeniably, terrifyingly honest in what she had said.
Whatever else Kaela Aurelius was—a princess, a student, and a headache—she was clearly a person who knew exactly what made her feel alive, and she chased that feeling with the same relentless ferocity she used to hunt monsters.