Isn’t it the only true revenge available to the weak — to struggle, to resist, to smash through malice with everything you have?
It was clear enough that he had been enjoying the sight of Terren besting the nobility of the Academy, that crowd so thick with prejudice, in ways that left them looking thoroughly foolish.
Watching the faces of nobles who had lost to the very commoner they despised so deeply — that had been entertaining.
Yes. It had been hypocrisy.
Only a manner of thinking this staggeringly arrogant could bring about a situation like this. Leopold’s mouth went bitter and he clenched and unclenched his hand for no particular reason. Having come face to face with his own unvarnished self, an inexplicable shame crept up and burned at his face.
Even so…
To think he was more hateful and repulsive than the Academy students who tormented Terren so viciously.
Terren Meyer had surely aimed his anger at the wrong target.
Or — was he himself truly that irredeemable a villain?
Either way, it was an awful thing.
Leopold was sixteen, and while he was far too rational for sixteen, he was still too young to process the animosity directed at him with reason alone.
Apart from his own self-reflection, he found Terren Meyer infuriating.
Lloyd van Acker, eldest son of the Acker family — one of only two ducal houses in the kingdom — was the student with the greatest influence in the Academy next to the First Prince. Leopold Delua had given the clear order to “exercise restraint,” but had failed to define where exactly that restraint ended. That single, catastrophic oversight meant that Terren began to receive a level of harassment at the Academy that had no precedent.
Lloyd van Acker, with his enormous influence, made no effort to hide the animosity he held toward Terren — and the moment the Academy students caught even the faint scent of that hostility, there was only one thing left for them to do.
Torment the already maddening Terren.
It was worse than his previous life. Days so wretched that not even the small, threadbare consideration of “he’s still only sixteen” that Terren had left in him could hold out against it. How could a person be so viciously cruel.
Having insults hurled at him in passing was the mild end of it. If someone crossed his path, they’d land a blow. Groups would mob him together. Spells were fired at him. Occasionally a wooden practice sword came flying his way — real swords were prohibited inside the Academy.
How long had he endured it? Terren Meyer, who had been a vicious murderer in his previous life, found himself worn down to nothing by the malice of a pack of sixteen-year-olds. Deep within him, the murderous impulse to slaughter every last one of them right then and there seethed.
By some small fortune within all this misfortune, this murderous impulse was precisely the right emotion for learning dark magic. Malice and killing intent are the very foundation of dark magic. Terren carefully preserved the malice and killing intent that had been building within him, layer by layer — and on a night sometime before summer, he slipped quietly out of the Academy.
His height had grown noticeably since he first returned to the past two months ago, and that gradual change had been slowly reawakening his sense of reality. He pulled his robe over his head, over the ponytail tied back to keep his grown-out hair from getting in the way. Taking the single dagger he always carried, he walked through the pitch-black capital of Delua.
He walked, rode in a carriage, and walked again. His destination was a cliff on the outskirts of the capital.
A deep precipice — the kind where people who had fled from wild animals or monsters in the dense forest would arrive in despair and fall to their deaths. Terren reached that cliff and looked up at the sky.
The moonlight struck the face of a single rock directly.
People called this place the Precipice. The dark sorcerers did the same. The rock that gleamed so strangely in the moonlight was simply called “the rock.” The reason this nameless cliff, showing not a single trace of human presence, had been given such an unremarkable name was because it had first begun as nothing more than a secret hideout for a single criminal.
Terren walked slowly toward the rock. As he entered its range, the moonlight brightened everything before him with unmistakable clarity.
He knelt, and as though performing some sacred rite, slowly drew the dagger from inside his robe. His ash-gray eyes took in the rock before him.
Terren felt the scene with his entire body. And without a moment’s hesitation, he drew the blade across his arm.
Drip. Drip.
Vivid crimson blood soaked into the rock. Terren smiled and tightened his grip on the blade. The moment the dagger, biting deeper into his skin, ran red — the blood began to flow in fierce, relentless streaks, as though it meant to swallow the entire rock whole.
“For killing intent is stronger than all else.”
Terren murmured. Then he summoned the clear, refined mana that lived within his body.
A violent force thrashed inside him. Almost at once, that force met the wound on his body and faltered for just a moment.
His ash-gray eyes lingered on the fresh blood. Terren drew a breath and let his thoughts unspool slowly.
Every last thing that had happened across his life. His mother, who had died cursing him. Leopold Delua, weeping and screaming. The mountains of bodies piled high. For a moment the smell of the Academy — thick with corpses and blood and that sickening, metallic reek — seemed to sweep dizzily over him.
Terren dry-heaved. At the same moment, he spread his array and inscribed an attack spell.
Ordinary magic. What Terren called white magic was commonly known to be so frail it shattered helplessly beneath a single stroke of a knight’s sword. That was not wrong.
But when it was combined with killing intent so heavy it could not be contained, with stimuli flooding in through all five senses — things like the sight of blood — and with the magical array of a sorcerer whose skill had reached a certain threshold, even a simple attack spell warped into something altogether different.
This was the only way into the Precipice. In an instant, an artificial yet ferocious surge of power came crashing in. Terren’s head was already spinning from blood loss — he seized his wrist, eyes sharpening. Beneath that tremendous force, the ground began to warp and twist into strange shapes.
Terren ground his lip between his teeth and fixed his gaze on the floor. Soon, a small fissure, like a crack, opened in one spot on the ground.
The moment he extended his foot into it, Terren’s body convulsed against an overwhelming torrent of pain.
A moment passed — and also an eternity. Terren Meyer fell without end.
Thud. The sound of his own bones striking the floor — that was when he understood he had finally arrived inside the Precipice. Perhaps there were spells laid into the ground, because mercifully his bones were not shattered — but every inch of him ached.
In a dark space that called to mind an underground dungeon, several torches burned against the walls. Terren looked around. It was unmistakably the same place he had descended into countless times in his previous life.
He felt a strange lightness come over him and let out a quiet, amused sound.
It’s terribly comfortable. Like everything has finally returned to where it belongs. If I could just stay here a little longer…
The instant he thought it, the sound of footsteps crackling against the floor grew louder — and the silhouette of a robed sorcerer began to draw near. A stride just slightly wider than the average person’s. The way his arms swung faintly as he walked.
It’s been a while.
Terren immediately scrambled his body upright and changed his posture. The moment the robed sorcerer arrived, Terren Meyer dropped to one knee and met the eyes of the dark sorcerer Yuhan.
“I have come to learn dark magic. Please assess me.”
A long silence fell.
Yuhan soon ordered Terren to follow.
Inside the Precipice it was grim and dark.
They walked for a long time through the labyrinthine space. Yuhan opened a stone door.
The first thing visible was a man bound hand and foot against the wall of a sealed chamber, bleeding steadily.
“Who are you?”
And then, from beside the blood-soaked man, a cool voice grazed his ear. Terren’s heart lurched violently.
“I am someone who has come in. I know of dark magic’s existence. I wish to learn it.”
“It hasn’t even been an hour since Arnold came through.”
“My apologies. I will give directives after assessing the situation.”
“It’s fine. It’s of no consequence either way.”
The owner of the voice looked Terren over slowly. Snake-like yellow eyes shifted with every passing moment, then gleamed as though he had spotted a particularly appetizing piece of prey. The terrible sensation of it made Terren’s skin crawl.
“How did you come to find this place, young sorcerer?”
Even beneath a robe, his youth apparently showed. He tried to calm the needless anxiety rising in him with pointless thoughts. Terren answered slowly.
“I heard of it from another sorcerer.”
“Give me the name.”
“Daniel.”
“It was wise of me to have killed Daniel. Every last one he brought here has displeased me.”
Terren lifted the head he had been holding low and looked directly at him.
My lord. Ah — the master I devoted my entire life to.
Simply meeting those chilling eyes head-on sent terror flooding through him enough to make his knees go weak — but he held himself upright on sheer stubbornness.
He had served this man as his master for ten years in his previous life.
No matter how young this body had become, being unable even to lift his head under the weight of that killing intent was a blow to his pride he was not willing to accept.
The snake-like yellow eyes gleamed. His lord curved his lips slowly into a smile and savored Terren’s reckless nerve to his heart’s content, then issued a short command.
“Kill that bound man, sorcerer.”
Terren said nothing, and drew the dagger from within his robe.
