“Not leaving? Get out, unless you want to die. I'll kill you and get expelled for it.”
“You've got quite the repertoire.”
The moment Teron let that slip, amused, the man hurled his wooden sword. Teron had been picking up a book, and he flinched, ducking his head. Thwack. The wooden sword struck the wall.
Teron Meyer said quietly,
“I'll be sure to pass this along to your friend, so you needn't worry.”
“...I'm going to kill you.”
“Do give it your best.”
He was going to leave anyway. Teron gathered his things and headed for the library.
He claimed a corner seat out of everyone's line of sight and spread out several books at random.
He stayed right there until the sun went down.
The bright sky turned completely black.
It was nearly midnight. Teron was the only one left in the library. For a moment he thought about heading to the Precipice, then gave it up.
Even if I go, all I'll get is a face full of black magic. What's the point?
In the end, he simply kept working in that corner of the library, using black magic to break protective spells.
It was an extension of the experiment he'd done before. Mixing black magic into a protective spell made it stronger. The catch was that the black magic had to be blended in an amount smaller than a speck of dust, and the slightest excess made it detonate at once.
So Teron had spent several months working to control the exact dosage. The protective spell he'd just made was at a nearly perfect ratio, pushed right to its limit.
Teron fired off black magic to attack it. The protective spell seemed to hold for a moment, then shattered with a crash, and the object it had been protecting was crushed into a shapeless black lump.
This was good enough. To make it any stronger than this...
He'd have to mine ore or magic stones.
With dawn near, Teron dusted himself off and rose. He tidied up the mess around him, gathered the books into his arms, and walked down the corridor.
The full moon lit the corridor brightly, casting a shadow. Teron stared at it intently.
In that instant, another figure was reflected in the shadow.
He snapped his head up at once and looked out the window, but only the academy's roof and clock stood there, proudly showing off their forms.
When he looked back at the shadow, there was nothing.
Just before he opened the dormitory door, he sensed someone. Lloyd clearly wasn't asleep, and it soured his mood on its own.
He opened the door and took one step inside.
A masked figure was perched on the windowsill, blade in hand.
Teron froze on the spot. Rolling only his eyes to look at Lloyd, he saw the boy was asleep.
In that split second, Lloyd's eyes opened. His chestnut irises filled, little by little, with terror. Reflected in his pupils was the blade flying toward him.
Teron Meyer instinctively drew the dagger from inside his coat. He hurled it at the blade streaking to kill Lloyd.
Its speed was pitifully slow. Teron's mind raced. Then a black energy rose like smoke from his fingertips.
The black energy began spreading as if to bury the entire room. Soon it split into tens of thousands of strands and yanked the masked man's blade aside.
Clang! A metallic ring sounded, and the blade grazed Lloyd's neck before twisting off to the side. Teron's dagger traced the same arc.
Teron Meyer looked around.
He spotted the wooden sword Lloyd had thrown at him earlier.
Uselessly, the real blade lay far away. Left with no choice, he tried throwing even the wooden sword, but the masked man dodged.
Teron shouted.
“Snap out of it, Lloyd Acker!”
The masked figure had more blades. Not just one or two.
The assassin threw three daggers at Lloyd all at once.
Lloyd was a skilled swordsman, but he was a child short on real combat experience. On top of that, he'd never once imagined he'd live to see an assassin come to the academy.
He barely came to his senses and dodged one, but the second lodged in his leg.
Right before the third could reach him, Teron shoved his body hard.
“Ah, aagh...”
Lloyd groaned, a blade buried in his leg. Teron immediately snatched up a fallen dagger and lunged at the assassin.
An attack came, but this was far beneath Leopold's skill. He could dodge it easily enough without even resorting to black magic.
Leaving only a very short distance, Teron once again threw the dagger straight at the assassin's throat.
The months of special training under Leopold seemed to have paid off.
With surprising ease, the assassin met his fate inside the dormitory room.
His fate...
No.
Teron's eyes grew wider and wider, and he frantically rummaged through his bag of magic tools. Soon a single potion was pulled out. Lloyd watched, his face pale.
What on earth was he doing now?
When he splashed that potion, glowing with a lustrous color, over the assassin's wound and forced it into his mouth, the wound of a man whose heartbeat had been slowly stopping began to heal. Teron picked up the dagger and drove it into both of the assassin's legs. Then, gripping him by the hair, he approached Lloyd.
An emotionless voice spoke.
“Do you know who he is?”
“...No, who, who is he, what is that...”
His words cracked on their own. The blade lodged in his leg, blood flowing, had sharpened Lloyd's mind. Pain draped his whole body, but it was less than the terror of this situation. The full moon shone down on them as if it found the whole thing amusing.
“I don't know, I... what the hell is this, dammit, it hurts...”
“You're hurt, so stop the bleeding first.”
“Damn it, what the hell is going on, wait a second. Why did you save that thing? You'd already killed it!”
“I used a healing potion.”
“Are you insane, a healing potion? Where the hell would you get something that expensive, no, dammit, why would you save that thing?!”
The assassin hung from Teron's grip, foaming at the mouth, unconscious. Teron roughly yanked off his mask. He asked,
“Do you know who he is?”
“How would I know?!”
“I'll give you a healing potion, so treat your leg, and first go bring the dormitory supervisor. Call the First Prince as well.”
When Teron tossed him the potion, Lloyd opened the cap with trembling hands and pulled out the lodged dagger.
“Ugh, ughhh...”
Groaning at the tearing pain, he splashed on the potion, and astonishingly the wound gradually knit itself closed.
“Did you hear me, young lord?”
“What if another assassin comes? What if I go out and get killed?”
“The assassin's skill was greater than that of most knights. Sending someone that formidable means they judged a single man could kill you. So you'll be fine.”
“...”
“Believe me. You'll be all right.”
“...Fine.”
Lloyd slipped out of the room. Teron patted the assassin's cheek and whispered,
“Are you a black mage?”
There was no answer. He'd checked just in case, but as expected, the man wasn't one. That left only one possibility.
There was some faction targeting Lloyd.
No matter how he thought about it, if Teron hadn't been there, Lloyd would have just now died on an assassin's blade.
This is different from my past life.
He felt his heartbeat all the way down to the tips of his toes.
Did this even make sense?
Teron hadn't set off any major variable, yet an assassin had suddenly burst into the dormitory. Could that even happen?
The sound of his heart filled his ears and his brain went hot.
Teron tried to pull himself together. There was a strong chance this was simply a butterfly effect. Maybe something like this had happened in his past life too, and Teron just hadn't known.
Around this time at sixteen in his past life, he'd hardly ever gone back to the dormitory. He'd often spent the night at the Precipice, or in the library, or in the pine forest.
So of course he wouldn't have known. Not knowing would be the normal thing.
He pressed the assassin's pressure point and knocked him out thoroughly once more. Slowly steadying his breathing, he waited quietly for Lloyd.
After some time passed, footsteps approached, and the door flew open.
Leopold rushed in, dressed in plain clothes. The dormitory supervisor, too, stared at Teron and the unconscious assassin with a face full of shock.
“Teron! Are you okay?”
“Explain what happened, Teron Meyer. Young lord Acker doesn't look to be in any state for it right now.”
He glanced at Lloyd, whose face had gone dead white. Teron said quietly,
“I don't really know either. I was doing coursework in the library and came back to the dormitory late at night, and I locked eyes with this man. We fought, I wounded his leg so he couldn't move, and then I knocked him out.”
“Is that true, young lord Acker?”
“Yes, it's true...”
“He had no interest in me and targeted only the young lord. Since it's clear their purpose lies with him, I think this needs to be investigated thoroughly.”
“...What?”
The dormitory supervisor frowned, but his pupils were trembling.
The Royal Academy was famous for its rigorous security. If a rumor spread that an assassin had breached it, its prestige could collapse in an instant. This had to be buried quietly.
“Don't run your mouth with pointless speculation, Teron!”
