Simon Wilbury

Simon Wilbury was one of the three students that Alexander Hoffmann almost killed.

## Story

Simon Wilbury was the sole son of Baroness Wilbury and Major Wilbury. As the sole heir, Simon Wilbury was supposed to become a True Mage and lead the Wilbury household. However, he was born without an Affinity.

Being born without an Affinity was possible, but it was rare. Being born without an Affinity makes it very difficult to become a Mage. While it is possible to train in Element Neutral Magic, these kinds of Spells only become prevalent near the very top of the Adept Realm. Even if someone wants to specialize in Element Neutral Magic, they would still need to gain experience with some Elements. If someone wants to purely advance on the path of Magic, they need to master the manipulation of Mana. Something like that requires practice.

But since the Element Neutral Spells are either extremely easy, like Mana Shield or Mana Step, or extremely hard, like Mind Read and Mana Force, it is very difficult for someone to become a True Mage by only relying on Element Neutral Spells. Getting started isn't an issue. Becoming a True Mage after becoming a Peak Adept isn't an issue. But everything between is an issue. Imagine you are building a very big and complex contraption, but you only know what parts you need and how to create the most complex part of the contraption. You have all the parts, and you have the core, but you don't know how to build everything.

That's the situation these kinds of people are in. However, it is possible to succeed by supplementing Magic study with Warrior Path training. By strengthening your body, your mind gets strengthened regardless, and as long as you don't have a warrior's body, the strengthening also wouldn't be that much weaker. Simon Wilbury would have only needed to reach the Early Commander Stage. At that point, his mind should have become powerful enough to train in the more complex Element Neutral Spells. So, of course, his parents sent him to the Warrior's Academy. From what I've heard while compiling his file, it was his father that taught him nearly everything Simon knew about fighting. And he was really good at it.

On the very first day, Simon was fighting for first place in not only his class but the entire Grade. Sadly, after losing to an even more talented warrior, Simon lost all his drive. It was like he no longer cared about being in first place, which resulted in his eventual decline. A couple of years later, Simon was still very strong, but he wasn't even in the top 5 of his Grade anymore. The other students simply worked much harder. Another issue was also that he only very rarely went hunting, and he earned most of his Contribution Points by stealing resources from other students.

The academy does not forbid theft, mainly to give the students a safe place to learn about these things. Some students learn how to steal, which will help them in the future when they need resources. Other students learn how to protect themselves from thieves. You would much rather learn this lesson by only losing a couple of days' worth of Contribution Points instead of some very valuable ore you nearly gave your life to obtain. And Simon Wilbury could be viewed as a sort of 'teacher' that taught how to protect yourself from people coveting your things.

He was pretty successful in his banditry, until he targeted Shang. Shang's mental state was unstable due to his trauma and confliction regarding his murder of the rat gang that tried to rob him, torn between his desire to not be bothered by it due to the cruel nature of the world and his moral compass. His severely chaotic mental state led him to lose control and take his punishment of Simon and the others way too far, viciously mutilating Simon's head and chest to the point that he begged for his life and his mother through the mass of broken flesh and bone that used to be his face. Shang was horrified by his own actions but hated himself even more for feeling that way, since in this world, empathy is weakness. His rage and self-hatred was directed back into Simon, and he came an instant from killing him before he was stopped by the Water Mage.

Simon's physical wounds had been healed in a matter of minutes, as the academy's Water Mage is very good at healing. But for the next week, it was basically impossible for anyone to have a normal conversation with Simon. At first glance, he appeared normal, but whenever he talked to anyone, he would talk very fast, stumble over his words, and his voice would be very high. In short, he fell into a minor panic as soon as another human interacted with him. Mervin took special care of Simon, and he tried to get Simon acclimated to human society again. And it worked. Just one month later, Simon was normal again.

However, two things were not the same. First, when Simon was supposed to spar, he would commit a great number of mistakes due to nervousness. Second, even though Simon hadn't hunted much in the past, from that moment on, he has never hunted again. 70% of his file are reports and evaluations from different teachers regarding Simon's abnormal mindset and his problems at the academy. Of course, things only got worse. The other students noticed how weak Simon was, and they made fun of him for not even having the courage to spar with them. They called him weak-willed, pathetic, and a disgrace to every warrior.

After several months of all of this, Simon finally had enough and lashed out. His rage exploded forth, and he pulled out his weapon. He tried to kill another student, but the student evaded the attack and kicked Simon to the ground. While Simon had been dealing with these things, the other students had continued training, and Simon couldn't even be counted as average by this point. A teacher arrived shortly after, and Simon was expelled. Drawing your weapon on another student without them drawing theirs first is forbidden.

He returned to his parents, and they put him through therapy and intense training. They were doing their best to push Simon forward until he was outstanding again. And five months later, they found his corpse hanging from a noose inside his room.