“Welcome, everyone, to the Academy.
I am Leopold, First Prince of the Kingdom of Delua, and I have enrolled in the Royal Academy this year as a new student.
May you all dedicate yourselves to your studies here and contribute to Delua’s eternal prosperity—”
“For Delua—!”
Seated in the banquet hall, raising glasses of wine together in a toast, Terren thought:
Twenty people died in our village alone because of last year’s famine…
This food you eat and drink — where does it come from, and where does it all go?
The Kingdom of Delua, wrapped in gold and smiling — they would never know. Disgusting hypocrites who claimed to serve Delua.
If one were to ask what dark magic is, the answer would be this: the devil’s fruit that breeds murderers.
This was no metaphor. It was the very essence of dark magic itself.
To learn dark magic, you must kill people. And the more people you kill, the stronger your power grows.
A powerful dark sorcerer, then, must be the first person one ought to avoid in life. Someone capable of cutting down the innocent in an instant for the sake of their own power — “trash,” as a certain someone once put it.
Terren Meyer was currently in a state where he could not use dark magic in the slightest.
Not even a faint killing intent prickling across his skin, not even the faintest trace of that uncanny sensation.
It was a frustrating thing. To learn dark magic again, he would have to kill people — and beyond that, to become as powerful a dark sorcerer as he had been in his previous life, he would have to kill as many people as he had killed then.
Terren opened and closed his hands, sticky with cold sweat.
Having spent the entire weekend wandering the Academy, absorbing insult after insult as he assessed his circumstances and analyzed his current situation, he felt a breathless, suffocating sense of hopelessness close in around him. At this point, he even began to doubt whether his reason for returning to the past was truly to atone for what he had done.
Even so, Terren laid the facts out calmly.
Fact one. Terren is not a dark sorcerer right now. He is nothing more than a detestable parasite leeching off the Academy.
Fact two. To become a dark sorcerer, serial killing is inevitable.
Fact three. Serial killing does not befit atonement. Terren must live out this second life the way he had said to.
He had despised killing. And he had despised crime just as much as he despised killing. The memory of how he had reacted when both of those things he hated were combined was unpleasant enough to remain vivid even now. Terren Meyer had no desire to ever see that again.
But the most important — fact four. There is no magic stronger than dark magic.
Whether Terren chose to live a righteous life in the name of atonement or became a murderer as he had in his previous life, the outcome would ultimately be the same. The dynasty would collapse, and a nation of dark sorcerers would rise in its place. Those who attended the Academy — or were of the noble class that could attend — would be slaughtered to the last.
There was no way to change it. There truly wasn’t. Terren Meyer had been his lord’s servant, not the damned lord himself.
Even Leopold, the First Prince who had been the kingdom’s sole Sword Master in his previous life, had not lasted even a single minute against the reach of dark magic before dying on the spot.
Is there any way to find a solution, even now? The thought surfaced, and Terren pressed his pen hard into the paper, dragging out dots as his expression twisted.
If that were an option, I should have gone back to when I was ten. The lord and his followers have already gathered by now.
Then again, could regular magic accomplish anything…
Terren lifted his quill and pressed a meaningless dot onto a page of his textbook, the one covered in teleportation array diagrams.
Delusions have limits. Do I actually think that’s possible?
What could anyone do with magic this pathetic and weak?
The only spells it can cast are teleportation, summoning, attack spells that get shattered by a single strike from a knight’s sword…
“…Meyer.”
A magic array that crumbles from a single slash of my own blade.
“Terren Meyer!”
The furious, cracking voice of an elderly professor rang out. Terren narrowed his eyes and looked toward the blackboard. Snickering came from the students around him.
“Do you have any idea what time it is right now?”
“…I apologize.”
“Honestly, the lowborn lot of them… how dare they, in the sacred hour of magical studies. You’re the type that should never have been allowed through the door in the first place!”
At the professor’s outburst, Terren recalled his previous life.
Whenever Terren paid attention in class, this man had cursed him as a filthy bloodline full of greed. Whenever Terren performed well on exams, his face had gone pale and he had done everything in his power to crush him. Yes — a perfectly ordinary nobleman.
People like that were usually the first to be killed by a dark sorcerer’s hand. The image of the professor’s head, split in two, flashed vividly through his mind.
Snickers and mocking laughter rose from the students around him. Everyone laughed — everyone except one. The only boy who remained serious stepped in to stop the others.
“Quiet down, all of you. What do you think you’re doing during class?”
“Oh, Your Highness, let them laugh. Isn’t this student going to be expelled soon anyway?”
“He won’t be. Students under royal patronage are not so easily expelled, Professor.”
He replied lightly, his voice carrying a faint smile. His meticulously groomed, brilliantly golden hair shifted ever so slightly each time he spoke.
The professor, who had been in the middle of a tantrum, pressed his lips together in displeasure at having his actions checked. But he was a middle-aged man thoroughly steeped in the hierarchy of class. The shame of having his behavior reined in by someone so young seemed to matter far less to him than the fact that Leopold was the kingdom’s prince — the one who had brought Terren here.
He forced the corners of his mouth upward and replied.
“Very well… Your Highness. But I trust Your Highness is also aware. That it is only a matter of time. You will come to regret it.”
“What do you mean, Professor?”
“I mean that one ought not to associate with the lowborn.”
The prince of Delua gave a slight frown. But he soon let out a sigh, as though resigning himself to it. A faint smile still rested at the corner of his lips.
“If that is what you believe, Professor.”
Can’t be helped, then.
Had Terren Meyer said those exact words aloud himself, he might well have found himself hauled up to the scaffold and executed on the spot.
But the prince of Delua — Leopold Delua — was the kingdom’s First Prince, and he knew how to leave the other party feeling at ease. There was not a trace of malice in the tone with which Leopold smiled and replied.
The professor ordered Terren to write out the formula for the magic array on the board, and even after watching Terren produce a flawless answer before his very eyes, he continued to pick at him with irritation. Terren Meyer was slowly starting to remember why he had turned the Academy into a sea of blood.
It had only been three days since his return, and Terren was already being provoked at every turn — by classmates, by professors, without pause or reason.
Everyone looked at Terren Meyer with expressions of contempt. He was a parasite to this school. A commoner who had forced his way into a space that belonged to the nobility. A piece of trash who stood out for all the wrong reasons despite being a mere commoner. Vermin…
It was almost funny — that most of them would, within less than three years, be on their knees before Terren, begging and pleading.
But whatever the case, Terren had to find a way to save them.
Dark magic was not a tool of justice, one that went around killing only the worthless ones who deserved it.
The first victim of this terrible magic had been Terren’s mother. The last had been the kingdom’s First Prince. The former was his only blood. The latter was…
“Terren, don’t let it get to you too much. Sometimes there are people in this world who see things through a very narrow lens.”
After class ended, Leopold called Terren over and drew him into a private study room. He continued speaking with a look of guilt settled over his features.
“You understand?”
“…….”
The latter was — yes. That damned Leopold Delua.
The most out-of-his-mind man Terren had ever laid eyes on in his entire life.
The person Terren had despised for as long as he could remember.
“Leopold…”
Even as he received the full force of Terren’s hostility-laden gaze head-on, Leopold remained unruffled. He shrugged, making a gesture that said, “Go ahead, if you’ve got something to say.”
Only now did Terren truly feel the reality of having returned to the past. He twisted his mouth into a crooked smile and replied.
“Drop the act.”
