Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem

As soon as she saw the cut on Zach's wrist glue itself together and disappear like it never existed, she realized what the scars all over his body meant. They were from injuries that his miraculous healing ability couldn't completely make go away. They were from something much more severe than a simple cut.

Zach looked at the skin on his own arm.

His regenerative ability had only strengthened with time, especially now that he had recovered from the backlash of overusing his world essence energy. His body was in a good state, and his world essence energy wasn't in the dormant state it had been in when he first acquired it.

It wasn't fully active quite yet, but Zach figured that one more proper fight where he put his life on the line would be enough for that. He could control it relatively well, at least compared to when he just got it.

He did not suffer from the burn scars anymore, and they were barely more than white-ish wave-like marks all over his skin.

He frowned.

But regardless of how faint they were, they were undoubtedly burn scars. He sighed.

"Not once did any of you ask if I was okay after I appeared at the camp," He couldn't help but point out while Lexi was busy thinking about what to say.

"I know I didn't exactly give space for that, but still…

"H…How did—do—all of you see me?" He asked, genuinely befuddled. He knew how he looked at himself. He knew what others saw when they looked at him, whether it be strangers or fellow students at the Academy.

Few of them bothered hiding what they thought, after all.

But his family…

He had thought they looked at him the same way he looked at them. They were his precious family. But was he not their precious family?

They had abandoned him. They had almost left him to be executed. They hadn't believed him when he said he technically died during his first year at the Academy.

Was the only time they took him seriously just then when he shouted at them for abandoning him and their people? Was it only because they felt the world essence energy and the strength of his presence?

Did they not worry about his well-being? Did they just take it for granted? Did they take him for granted?

Lexi hurriedly shook her head.

"You're my precious little brother! Of course, I care about you. Of course I worry!" She said, grabbing Zach by the sides of his head and forcing him to look into her eyes. She was sincere, and she would beat that sincerity into him if he didn't believe her.

"It's just…Your childhood was…eventful if I'm nice. If I'm a little more blunt, you had a hectic, chaotic, troublesome, and dangerous childhood. You were in more incidents than we had guards at the time. It was impossible to keep you safe and out of trouble.

"However, no matter what kind of trouble you got swept up in, you were always flushed out on the other side without so much as a scratch.

"I guess…I guess we just kind of assumed you had some kind of divine protection or something—that you couldn't or wouldn't be harmed."

Lexi shrugged and avoided Zach's gaze out of guilt as she continued.

"I guess we figured that no matter what happened, you would be safe. It wasn't like the Academy and the center of the Empire could be more dangerous than home, right? After all, who could ever want to hurt our precious little Zachy-Zach, right?"

"...A lot of people as it turns out."

"..."

Zach wasn't sure what to think. He kind of understood their perspective.

After everything he had been through, it made sense to think he was blessed if one just looked at the incidents as bad luck or coincidence. After all, only someone with incredible luck could survive everything he had been through.

But he had only escaped bodily harm. He had still been forced to endure and go through dangerous, traumatic, and stressful situations while he was far too young for it.

'I guess that's not much for a member of the Evandiel family, though,' Zach thought to himself. What was almost drowning, being kidnapped, and almost exploding to a member of the strongest family in the Empire? Not much.

But to a kid with an age in the single digits?

Zach wasn't blessed or lucky to have survived all of that.

He was cursed to have gone through all of it.

It was the difference between how Zach and his family saw it. That was why they thought he would be fine at the Academy.

And it was why Zach knew that he wouldn't be fine regardless of where he was.

It also didn't help that he actively looked for trouble nowadays. But that was beside the point.

It was a difference in perspective that could have been solved if his family had paid more attention to him, talked to him, and made sure that he wasn't just physically okay after everything he went through.

He got used to it, after a while, and by now, Zach didn't suffer from anything.

But back then, he would have loved to sleep in the same bed as his parents or something, not be stuffed into a separate estate with servants, who, oddly enough, saw it from the same angle as him and most others, who saw him as a cursed child of misfortune.

Zach sighed and looked at Lexi, who had tears in her eyes as she stroked his cheek.

She had realized that out of the places she could see, his face was the most scarred. As she studied it, she could tell what had made the injuries that left those scars.

It was fire.

She couldn't even imagine the pain Zach had gone through.

She couldn't even begin to imagine everything that Zach had gone through over the years. All because they just assumed he was fine. She wanted to apologize, but that wouldn't do anything. An apology wouldn't heal the scars on his body or on his heart.

Zach grabbed Lexi's hand and stopped her from caressing his cheek. It was a little unpleasant to be shown such tenderness and care from someone who had teased him almost relentlessly the past twenty years.

"As I said, it's fine." Zach turned around and continued walking. He didn't know where or how long he was going to walk, but he didn't want to stand still any more.