“Don’t you dare insult Leo, you filthy commoner.”
Lloyd’s face had gone bright red.
Terren, his scalp split open, pressed one hand against the bleeding wound.
Even the most insolent Academy student would normally be rattled if someone’s head started bleeding the moment they struck them — but Lloyd was nothing of the sort. If anything, he was the one shouting in fury on behalf of the insulted First Prince.
“Do you want to die for defaming royalty? No — I’ll kill you with my own hands.”
Lloyd drew the real sword he kept beside his bed and advanced on Terren.
In a situation where getting on his knees and groveling would barely be enough, Terren met Lloyd with a face of breathtaking shamelessness and rained mockery down on him.
“Oh my, how terrifying. Young lord, are you trying to kill me right now? So you’ve finally decided to defy the First Prince. And the way you plan to do it is by murdering the commoner under the prince’s patronage… quite the grand scheme you have there.”
Seeing the strange smile blooming across Terren’s face, Lloyd could no longer contain his fury and swung the sword. But Terren sidestepped it with ease.
“However lowly a commoner I may be, if the First Prince of Delua — the one who enrolled said commoner here in the first place — were to see this sorry state of affairs…”
“Shut up!”
“It seems the one who would be arrested for defaming royalty is the young lord.”
Terren barely managed to dodge Lloyd’s sword as it came at him in earnest, then struck the back of Lloyd’s head with the pommel of his own dagger, knocking him unconscious.
When Lloyd crumpled to the floor, Terren took a few breaths to steady himself, then checked to make sure he wasn’t dead.
Fortunately, he had rendered him unconscious with clean efficiency. A moment where the experience of his previous life proved its use.
Of course, if it came to light that he had knocked out a young lord of the kingdom, Terren would be executed on the spot — but he trusted Leopold. The prince who was more fair than anyone.
The absurdity of the situation struck him suddenly and he broke into a dull smile. He lifted Lloyd onto the bed, stanched the split in his scalp with a strip of cloth, then stacked his books neatly together.
He loaded the books into a satchel and made sure the dagger he always kept on his person was properly secured. As he slipped out of the dormitory room, he wondered idly whether he ought to just begin today.
Terren Meyer had decided to become a dark sorcerer. The bleak future offered no clear answer, and following the path of his previous life was the best solution he could think of.
He could pursue his research into magical formulas even while learning dark magic — and besides, the sooner dark magic was mastered, the better.
In the distant future — even if he couldn’t defeat his lord outright, shouldn’t he at least be capable of taking a single blow from him?
It was now the spring of Year 200 of the Founding. In his previous life, Terren had entered the world of dark magic in the autumn of this very year.
There were still several months to go. There was no pressing need to follow his previous life to the letter — yet a skeptical voice in him couldn’t help but ask what exactly was to be gained by getting into dark magic a few months ahead of schedule.
But nearly getting killed by Lloyd today…
At this rate, I’ll be murdered inside the Academy before I’ve even learned dark magic.
Terren was no stranger to a sword. Even so, he was not in a position to hold his own against the Academy’s top students all at once. If the sons of distinguished swordsmanship families made up their minds and came at him together with a plan, Terren would probably end up dead with holes in his body, and no one would be any the wiser.
Leopold could likely handle the matter of Terren knocking Lloyd unconscious on his own — but if that enraged the students into coming after him in earnest, there would be no answer to that.
What a headache…
Terren settled into the pine grove that came into view a short walk from the Academy’s back gate, leaned against a tree trunk, and set down his lantern.
He opened a book and ran through the magical formulas again. Every so often he spread out an array and tried to manifest a formula. He would have to work through every existing magical formula before he could claim to have dissected ordinary magic. Ordinary magic — the thing the Terren of his previous life, having learned dark magic, had never thought to pay attention to.
The turn of a page. The soft sound rang faintly through the pine grove. Terren followed the text with his eyes, all the while mocking himself over the futility of what he was doing.
“Leo, no matter how I think about it… we have to expel that filthy commoner. Think it over again.”
The brown-haired boy with the disheveled hair hugged a pillow and whined. His eyes were blazing with resentment.
“Or at least switch my room right now. Are you really going to make me live with that lunatic?”
“Lloyd, calm down. I’ll apologize. How’s the injury?”
“Get a grip. You’re not even having him executed — you’re letting him walk around school like nothing happened?”
Leopold tossed Lloyd a piece of bread. Lloyd caught it and ate it, but his entire body continued to tremble with indignation.
“Do you have some kind of grudge against me?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why in the world are you making me live with that filthy comm— Do you have any idea how shameless that cockroach is? How masterfully he gets under your skin…!”
“I know. I know how you feel. It’s not as though I’m not angry myself.”
Lloyd, who had been glaring daggers at Leopold, brightened at that. But the words that followed knocked the breath right out of him.
“But that’s nothing more than personal anger. It shouldn’t have any bearing on public matters.”
“You’ve lost your mind. And what about me — knocked around and rendered unconscious. Think about me for once.”
Leopold fixed his gaze on the window. In those pale blue eyes, Lloyd glimpsed something he could never hope to keep pace with — complex thought, conviction, and a burden of anguish that ran too deep. Those who grew curious about just how deep it ran, and for even a moment tried to match their stride to his, could never bring themselves to leave Leopold’s side afterward.
“Clearly…”
Leopold smiled faintly.
“You were the one who provoked him first.”
“Hey!”
Lloyd van Acker fumed with indignation clear to the crown of his head, but he could never get the better of Leopold.
“Am I wrong?”
“Yes, you are. It was a perfectly justified statement of opinion, not an insult. And besides, the fact that I’m even debating whether something counts as an insult with a commoner in the first place—!”
“To think that even you’ve fallen into that kind of supremacist thinking. I’m disappointed.”
The First Prince shook his head.
Lloyd bristled but soon channeled the entirety of his anger into a single scowl.
He was the prince’s closest friend, and his most ardent devotee. When beside him, at the very least, he could not go against his will. It was a conviction that rose from somewhere deep within.
“I respect everything else about you without reservation… but why you go out of your way to protect that man, I cannot fathom.”
“Terren is capable. Capable talent deserves an education to match.”
“Laughable. A commoner of all things…”
“Who was it that took second place on the last exam?”
“Lucky fluke. He’s probably been scheming something underhanded, the way gloomy commoners do.”
Leopold gave a slight shrug. Out of nowhere, the curse Terren had flung at him a few days ago drifted through his mind.
“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?”
“Looking at you, I can’t say he was entirely wrong.”
“About what?”
“Lloyd, treat Terren well. If anyone gives him trouble, put a stop to it yourself. That’s an order.”
“Your Highness, have you lost your—”
Lloyd’s face crumpled. Leopold sneered.
“Does it look like petty hypocrisy to you too?”
“Be reasonable! If he were a decent commoner that’d be one thing — didn’t you hear that he knocked me unconscious? Why should I protect someone who’s no better than a criminal?!”
“Do I seem like a repulsive person to you?”
“What?”
Lloyd stared at him blankly. What is this man on about. Unable to make sense of it in the first place, Lloyd dismissed it in a single sentence.
“Don’t tell me that disgusting little rat actually said something like that to you. Someone should rip his tongue out…”
“Never mind. What’s the point of talking with you.”
And don’t go getting yourself beaten up and knocked unconscious by the roommate you hate so much. The moment he said it as an order, Lloyd convulsed with outrage. Leaving the young lord of the Acker family in the middle of his furious tantrum, Leopold slowly made his way out of the infirmary.
Terren Meyer.
Why did he hold such animosity toward him? What Leopold had extended was clearly goodwill alone, and Terren ought rightly to have been grateful for it.
He had been well aware of the discriminatory treatment Terren was receiving, both openly and in ways Terren might not have noticed himself, and he had put in considerable effort to shield him from it.
“You deserve to die, Leopold.”
Receiving that raw, undiluted hatred head-on had, in truth, been quite a shock.
He was angry — but the sense of injustice ran even deeper than the anger.
Leopold Delua liked people who knew how to resist.
He had, in his heart, always looked down on the weak — those who crumbled and broke under a single malicious act.
The reason he had brought Terren to the Academy and done what Terren called a “repulsive thing” was because he had wanted to see him overcome his hardships and grow.
As Terren himself had put it, Terren Meyer was a repulsive commoner. Leopold considered those mired in bloodline supremacy and elitism to be fools — yet, lamentably, everyone around him was exactly that kind of person.
What could be done. Even a prince could not uproot convictions that had calcified to the bone. And so he had stood back and watched.
It was the arrogant inaction of someone who could afford it — the First Prince of Delua, who carried the finest blood in the kingdom.
Even so, he had always provided Terren with the minimum measures of protection. He had given him no small amount of financial support out of his own pocket, and ensured he had access to a quality education as well.
Leopold also recognized Terren Meyer’s ability. If he didn’t, he would not have endured the embarrassment of speaking up to shield him every time Terren faced hardship.
So then — wasn’t everything beyond that Terren’s own responsibility to carry?
