They Called Me Trash? Now I'll Hack Their World

Chapter 253: Tick tock, Marcus[1]

{3rd Person POV}

******

The morning sunlight filtered heavily through the stained-glass windows of the dormitories, casting a mosaic of colored light across Marcus Valen’s lavishly decorated room.

Marcus was sitting at his desk, turning a heavy, wax-sealed parchment over in his hands.

It had arrived just moments ago via an urgent guild courier. He broke the Valen family seal, unrolling the thick paper with an air of arrogant expectation. He had been waiting for the authorized promissory notes to fund his festival.

As his eyes scanned the rushed, aggressively penned handwriting of his father, the confident smirk vanished from his face. All the color violently drained from his cheeks.

For a long, suffocating moment, Marcus just stared at the parchment.

Then, his face flushed a dark, furious crimson.

"Dammit!"

Marcus violently swept his arm across the desk. A heavy silver goblet, a stack of textbooks, and a crystal inkwell went flying, crashing against the stone wall in an explosive shower of black ink and shattered glass.

His two lackeys, who had been lounging, instantly jumped to their feet, drawing their training blades half an inch out of pure reflex.

"My lord!" one of the heavily built boys gasped, his eyes wide with alarm. "What happened?"

Marcus was breathing heavily, his chest heaving as he stared at the ruined ink staining his expensive rug. He crumpled the letter in his fist, his knuckles turning stark white.

"I don’t know!" Marcus roared, his voice cracking with pure, unadulterated rage.

He kicked the heavy wooden desk, ignoring the pain that shot up his leg.

"They didn’t tell me anything! Only that there was a ’catastrophic delay’ on the southern route and they aren’t coming to the festival. My entire seasonal fund has been completely cut!"

The lackeys exchanged a nervous, uncertain look. A noble without his family’s financial backing during the Academy’s most public event was a massive social vulnerability.

"What do we do, Marcus?" the other lackey asked cautiously. "Without the guild’s silver, we can’t hire the artisan laborers to build what you wanted."

Marcus’s jaw clenched so hard his teeth ground together. His dark eyes flickered with a desperate, vicious light. He wasn’t about to let the other aristocratic houses see him humiliated.

"We do exactly what we planned," Marcus spat, forcefully straightening the collar of his uniform jacket.

"We are going to enter both the exhibition and the vendor categories. House Valen will be the one dominating this year. We need the prestige now more than ever to cover whatever the hell is happening back in the capital."

"But the labor—"

"We don’t need to hire laborers," Marcus interrupted, a cold, cruel smirk slowly pulling at the corner of his mouth. "I already own one."

---

The central academic courtyard was a chaotic sea of activity. Hundreds of students were swarming the manicured lawns, staking out their assigned plots and unloading crates of building materials for the upcoming festival.

Emma was standing near the edge of the administrative building, her shoulders hunched as she desperately tried to navigate around the massive crowds to reach her next class.

"Emma."

The voice cut through the noise of the courtyard like a physical blade.

Emma froze. Her breath hitched painfully in her chest. She slowly turned around, her knuckles instantly turning white as she gripped her bookbag.

Marcus was standing a few feet away, flanked by his two lackeys.

The aristocratic charm he usually weaponized was completely gone, replaced by a dark, simmering hostility. He stepped directly into her personal space, completely cornering her against the cold marble wall of the administrative building.

"M-Marcus," Emma stammered, her eyes darting nervously to the crowds of students walking past, none of whom were paying them any attention. "I already gave you the runic translations for tomorrow’s—"

"Forget the translations," Marcus hissed, his voice dropping into a lethal, commanding whisper. He leaned in close, ensuring only she could hear the venom in his words.

"My family is experiencing some... logistical hurdles. So, you are going to earn your keep."

Emma shrank back against the marble. "What do you mean?"

"House Valen has secured a prime double-plot in the central square," Marcus dictated, jabbing a hard finger against her shoulder.

"You are going to build the wooden framework for our pavilion. You are going to set up the localized thermal arrays. And when the festival opens, you are going to run the vendor stall from dawn until dusk."

Emma’s blue eyes widened in sheer, absolute horror.

"I... I can’t!" she pleaded, her voice trembling violently. "Marcus, that’s three days of non-stop work! I have my own project for Professor Vance, and I—"

Marcus roughly grabbed the lapel of her uniform jacket, forcefully jerking her forward.

"Did I ask for your schedule, commoner?" he snarled, his eyes burning.

"You will do exactly what I tell you, or I send a letter to the Syndicate right now and have your father reduced to ash by nightfall. Do you understand me?"

Emma’s lips trembled. A single, humiliated tear spilled over her eyelashes, tracing a line down her pale cheek. The fight completely drained out of her, leaving nothing but a hollow, crushing despair.

"Y-Yes," she whispered brokenly. "I understand."

Marcus shoved her back against the wall, brushing off his hand with absolute disgust.

"Good. The timber is waiting at plot forty-two. Start carrying it."

By the time the afternoon sun began to dip toward the horizon, the central courtyard had transformed into a massive, sprawling construction site. The air was filled with the sounds of hammering, the buzzing of active mana tools, and the loud, echoing shouts of students organizing their displays.

At plot nineteen, chaos of an entirely different sort was unfolding.

"Hold the beam steady, Kyle!" Sira yelled from the top of a small wooden stepladder, a hammer clamped between her teeth.

"I am holding it steady!" Kyle shouted back, his arms violently shaking as he tried to keep the heavy wooden crossbeam balanced on his bruised shoulder.

"Hurry up and nail it before my spine snaps!"

"If you two completely incompetent apes collapse this structure, I am formally withdrawing my name from the registry," Tobias sighed heavily. He was sitting at a nearby stone table, a cup of hot tea in one hand and a complex architectural blueprint in the other, making absolutely no move to help them with the physical labor.

Jin let out a relaxed sigh. He stepped up beside Kyle, taking the majority of the heavy beam’s weight with one hand while reaching up to adjust the angle.

"Just shift it two inches to the left, Sira," Jin called out smoothly. "The center of gravity is off."

"See? Jin gets it!" Sira mumbled around the hammer, quickly aligning the wood and driving the iron nail home with three heavy, resounding strikes. She hopped down from the ladder, dusting off her hands with a thoroughly satisfied grin. "Perfect! Now we just need Tobias to engrave the thermal runes on the grill."

"I am a scholar of arcane theory, not a blacksmith," Tobias muttered, though he dutifully set his tea down and began organizing his runic carving tools.

Kyle collapsed onto the grass, dramatically wiping fake sweat from his brow.

"We survived. Jin, I’m starving. Buy us the expensive meat skewers from the dining hall."

"You haven’t even finished the walls yet."

But as Jin turned his head to scan the courtyard, the faint smirk his face slowly died.

Just a few plots away, the contrast was sickening.

At plot forty-two, Marcus Valen was lounging lazily in a plush velvet chair he had ordered his lackeys to drag out from the dormitories. He was casually peeling an apple with a small silver knife, laughing at a joke one of his men made.

And directly behind him, hauling a massive, back-breaking crate of raw, unrefined runic stones, was Emma.

Her uniform was completely covered in sawdust and dirt. Her hands were raw, she had been forced to carry all afternoon. She stumbled under the sheer weight of the crate, her knees buckling slightly.

Marcus didn’t even look over his shoulder. He just snapped his fingers in the air, a sharp, degrading sound that commanded absolute obedience.

Emma violently flinched. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from crying out, forcing her exhausted, trembling legs to straighten as she carried the heavy crate toward the back of the Valen pavilion like a common slave.

Jin stood perfectly still amidst the laughter of his friends, his eyes locked onto the scene.

His expression was completely blank, but the air around him seemed to suddenly drop a few degrees.

Just few more days, Jin thought, his jaw clenching so tightly a muscle feathered in his cheek.

Enjoy your throne while it lasts, Marcus.