Hypocrisy — who could say it isn’t?
The reason one meddles in matters that are not their own is nothing more than a vague sense of justice, or a pitiful streak of sympathy.
Justice carried out without even a moment’s reflection — will my actions actually help? — is violence. It is sin.
This foolish man, who had committed that very sin to a nauseating degree, was piling up his karmic debt again today, as faithfully as ever.
The return to the past brought him no joy whatsoever.
The shock of having come back lasted only a moment. The faint sense of clarity that came with a sound, undrugged mind didn’t hold for more than a few days.
The man before him was smiling gently, watching him. Not even the slightest flicker of irritation showed on his face in response to Terren’s barbed words.
Terren Meyer squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again against the throbbing ache in his head.
His second life was already as good as a failure. The sight of that damned Delua still made his blood boil.
Would anything even change, this way?
His reason told him as much, clearly — but the instinctive revulsion was not something he could simply will away.
“Stop with the pathetic act.”
Terren murmured quietly.
He was speaking without any plan. Even so, he was enduring — to his absolute limit.
A shabby boy who couldn’t use dark magic, with nothing more than a dagger hidden inside his breast pocket, reflected in the blue eyes of the golden-haired young man.
“Terren, this isn’t something you should be ashamed of.”
Eyes filled with pity. Terren Meyer barely managed to swallow back his nausea. It had been a long time. That scorching, blazing fury — and the worst impulse, to kill him then and there.
“It seems Your Highness’s brain isn’t even fit to be decorative.”
Terren sneered, the corner of his mouth curling with contempt.
“I had at least trusted that, however dim, Your Highness could understand the Deluaan I speak.”
“…That’s rude.”
Leopold’s brow furrowed slightly.
Running a hand through his carefully groomed golden hair, he looked Terren in the eye.
“I understand that you’re upset. I know full well that the hardships you face on a daily basis must be difficult.”
That lofty, imperious attitude — as though the entire world sits beneath him.
At first — that is, what had the Terren of his previous life said in a situation like this?
That Terren Meyer had been young and emotional back then, so it probably wasn’t all that different from now.
If anything, he might have been far worse — far more without sense. And yet the sixteen-year-old Terren of his previous life had never once been able to wound Leopold. To Leopold, Terren Meyer had been nothing more than a pitiful, unfortunate commoner.
“That doesn’t make your rudeness justified.”
Terren had to hold himself back.
To save the Kingdom of Delua — to save Prince Delua — he needed to stop, even now.
He needed to accept Leopold’s goodwill. He needed to warn Leopold before his lord began scheming in earnest. The most useful of all Terren Meyer’s faculties was his mind — and days of running it at full capacity had led him to this single conclusion…
No. Actually, that wasn’t true. There had been absolutely no way to save that terrible Delua.
None at all.
And yet the only plan Terren could think of was this one.
…Is it really the only one?
Delua was rotten. Corrupt to the point of bursting.
A fact that the students of the Academy, standing on silk carpets, would never be able to perceive.
The miserable fate that awaited Leopold Delua was entirely his own karmic debt — a consequence of being this country’s prince.
Dark magic already exists. And it is powerful.
Powerful enough to defeat anyone.
Terren ground a curse between his teeth, silently. Without even trying to hide the laugh that slipped out on its own, he sneered.
“Truly… Your Highness is no better than an idiot.”
“…I don’t think we have anything more to talk about. Terren, if the moment ever comes when you understand what I’ve said, I hope you’ll make sure to apologize.”
“Allow me one warning. Your short-sightedness, your arrogance, and the moronic conviction packed full of that self-righteous sense of superiority — they will bring great disaster upon you.”
Leopold wiped away the smile he always wore. In its place stood only a prince of a kingdom, colder than anyone. His gaze went frigid as he narrowed his eyes.
“I’m warning you. Stop it, right now. The moment you say another word, I will no longer protect you.”
Terren was swept up in a surge of exhilaration.
This was not the first time. It was an expression he had certainly seen before, somewhere. Other than a fleeting memory slicing through him like a cold spike driven into his skull, nothing else came back to him.
Of course, the Terren Meyer of that time had been more foolish — more laughable. Leopold had been the kind of saint who could generously forgive a dull-witted commoner, so it was probably only after the war began that he had truly come to rage at Terren. To think he’d brought that moment forward by three whole years…
His head blazed. A small, rational voice told him this isn’t how it should go, tried to pull him back — but Terren simply could not hold himself together. He hated Leopold. He had hated him his entire life.
And of all versions of him, the sixteen-year-old Leopold — packed solid with self-conceit — was the worst of the worst. The gum he had been grinding through to hold back his fury bled.
“Protect? What is your protection? Picking fights with professors out of some petty rebellious streak? Parading around with your followers, making a spectacle of pitying a commoner, and driving me into an even worse corner?”
It was true that the reason Terren could stand here in one piece was thanks to the generous crown prince’s consideration. In the Kingdom of Delua, the nobility did not even regard commoners as human.
To them, a creature with lowborn blood, a reeking body, and the intelligence of something less than a monkey was walking through the middle of the Royal Academy like it belonged there.
“What exactly is it that Your Highness wants? Is a sense of moral superiority gained through hypocrisy your sole purpose? If my words still sound to you like nothing more than the buzzing of a bug…”
The prince was good. If he weren’t, Terren would never have resolved to save him. The most repulsive man in the world was, paradoxically, just. Perhaps that revulsion was itself derived from that very justice — so perhaps it was not a contradiction at all.
“You deserve to die, you disgusting Leopold.”
Having received that curse, Leopold paused for a brief moment, his expression unreadable as he looked Terren over. The bewilderment and anger hidden beneath his carefully maintained composure were plainly visible. Things were growing more and more tangled — but this, at least, was genuinely satisfying.
“Terren.”
Leopold’s eyes lit up with a sharp, piercing gleam. He stepped forward.
“Do you mean that?”
Terren Meyer tugged up the corner of his mouth and sneered at him.
“Do you think I don’t, Your Highness?”
He had finally thought of a new way to save Leopold.
There would no longer be any reason — any justification — for him to stand on Leopold’s side.
It was the genius that his hatred had called forth, born from the certainty that tolerating Delua was simply impossible.
Terren spent his days in the same routine. He attended classes alone, ate alone, and when the day was over, buried himself in the library or the dormitory to work through his assignments and read.
As always, the professor could never bring himself to acknowledge Terren’s outstanding marks, and the students spat an insult or two at him every time they passed.
Terren’s roommate, Student Vice President Lloyd van Acker — a close friend of Leopold’s, and an unfortunate soul who had been forced to share a room with Terren at the First Prince’s insistence — hated Terren Meyer with just as much ferocity as ever.
The Terren of his previous life had been sixteen, so however shameless he might have been, he had still possessed some degree of self-awareness. He had spent his time buried in the library just to avoid Lloyd, and late at night he would creep quietly back into the dormitory room and sleep without making a single sound — like a mouse holding its breath.
It was a laughable thing. The truth was that the magnanimous Leopold Delua would have handled even that much insolence without issue.
Terren piled books high on the desk in the dormitory room. In that one-mat space spread with books flung open at random, he spun his quill between his fingers and copied out the magical formulas he needed. Books like Advanced Magical Theory, A Compendium of Magical Formulas, The Principles of Magic — advanced scholarship that probably did not exist anywhere in the standard curriculum.
The Terren of his previous life had been a capable dark sorcerer. After the war ended, he had also been a capable administrator. But more than any of that — Terren had been the foremost researcher in all of Delua. The reason Terren had been able to enter the world of dark magic at sixteen was, in truth, rooted in his deep passion for the study of magic itself.
The essence of magic is mana. An intangible force that produces transcendent power. The academic discipline of studying how to harness that force was called magical theory. And the asymmetric technique of wielding mana through blood and killing intent to release tremendous power was called dark magic.
To gain great power, one must learn dark magic.
Terren agreed with that. Even so, this was still a time of peace — there was still a little room to drag his feet — and so he was spending his time learning what he could about the modification and application of ordinary magic.
The scratch of the quill filled the dormitory room. Lloyd came in at some point during the night, but fortunately he lay down in his bed immediately and pulled the blanket over his head. Some time passed — and then a hard object came flying at Terren’s face. Terren jerked his head down in surprise and barely dodged it. It was a wooden practice sword.
Lloyd growled through his teeth.
“Can you not stop that damned quill scratching right now?”
Terren picked the wooden sword back up and threw it onto the bed.
The Lloyd of before would have been struck with outrage — how dare he — and stood there gaping. But that particular brand of aristocratic stupidity was nowhere to be seen in him anymore.
He had grown used to it.
“If you don’t like it, get out. A sword before words — you truly don’t have a single shred of sense in you. And this is the young lord of the kingdom.”
Lloyd got up and cracked the wooden sword across the top of Terren’s head. He hadn’t been able to dodge it, and his scalp split open, bleeding. Terren Meyer sneered.
“Go ahead and kill me, young lord. Do you think that righteous friend of yours would just stand by and watch?”
