“Say thank you. It wasn't easy getting you let in here.”
“Don't take credit when you dragged me here by force.”
“Still, it's nice, isn't it? You can stay here the whole vacation if you want. Come on, doesn't that deserve a little gratitude?”
He was ignored outright, yet it was rather enjoyable.
Leopold ordinarily disliked idly wasting time, and yet sitting here in a daze watching Teron Meyer felt genuinely fun.
The scent of old books filled the entire room. Beside him came the soft rustle of a page being turned. He could see Teron Meyer's pale face, concentrating to a startling degree.
Surrendering himself to all of these sensations, Leopold slowly closed his eyes.
The Grand Library was a truly wonderful place. It was vast, and there was no one there.
What a perfect set of conditions.
On top of that, during the day sunlight streamed in and warmed the body, and at night bright lights spread across the whole interior. There was even a sofa where one could sit and read.
Teron had been left inside it. These were rare, happy days in his life.
All day long he pored over and studied books that existed only in the royal palace. He skipped meals and holed himself up in there from morning to night.
The Grand Library held not only swordsmanship texts but also magic tomes and all manner of ancient books mixed together. In his past life, Teron remembered flipping through only a few of the magic tomes in here. Considering the quality and rarity of the volumes, it was a truly regrettable thing.
Leopold was busy. When vacation began, the kingdom held its Founding Festival, and because of it he apparently had a great many people to meet. Even so, he steadily came to find Teron and disturb him. After learning that he'd been going hungry, Leopold would sometimes bring food along and shove it into his mouth.
Honestly, by this point there was no choice but to admit it. Whatever else was going on, Leopold held toward Teron a subtle goodwill rather than malice. Teron Meyer, upon realizing this, stood still for a long while.
Why on earth? The only ways he'd improved from his past life were his way with words and his mental age. Teron was still a vicious black magician, and he knew nothing whatsoever about how to earn people's goodwill. No matter how hard he racked his brain, he couldn't find the reason, but this was surely the natural outcome.
Leopold was like a natural disaster, a being one must not dare to predict or try to understand. To the point that even if one day he suddenly turned and tried to kill Teron, it would make sense.
And yet, with things having come to this, Teron inevitably began to feel self-conscious. Even going to the Precipice directly felt too risky, so he had to use teleportation magic several times, and while disposing of and cleaning up after the people his lord had tortured, the afterimage of Leopold kept flickering before him.
This can't go on, Teron thought, and he set a date.
It was the day of the Founding Festival. Three days during which Leopold Deluah, busy receiving guests, would absolutely never come to find him.
Teron set off for the north together with a black magician named Sein.
“You... you're remarkable...”
Sein marveled. Folding his small eyes into pretty little creases as a display of astonishment, he crossed his arms and stared intently at Teron drawing the teleportation circle.
Right now the two of them were somewhere between the capital and the north, in an abandoned house in a village.
Teron retched. A moment later, a clot of blood spurted out.
“So it really does drain a lot of your energy. You're using magic power, aren't you? Still, it's fascinating.”
“Shut your mouth, Sein.”
“I hate being ordered around by a child. Where does a brat still wet behind the ears get off giving commands?”
Leaving Sein to snap back with a smile on his face, Teron went on and finished drawing the circle.
The two of them stepped inside the circle and teleported once more. Arriving inside a cave, Teron bent his knees and vomited blood.
Sein's expression twisted as if he found it filthy. After quite some time had passed, they pulled their robes over their heads and slipped out of the cave.
A chill ran through his whole body. Feeling a cold sharp enough to make his bones ache, he knew they'd arrived properly.
This was the north. Pushing himself deliberately, he'd crossed from the capital to the north in a single day using teleportation magic laced with black magic.
He'd done it because he only had three days. Leopold had said he'd be busy with the Founding Festival, that he wouldn't be able to come by during that time. Fortunately, he hadn't spouted any nonsense about attending the Founding Festival together, but he had let Teron move about the palace freely. This moment was the opportunity.
Leopold was ruining everything. Teron, who'd had plenty to do over the vacation as it was, had given up most of it because of that guy. Even in carrying out his evil deeds, he found himself minding Leopold's eyes, and now he flinched like a criminal at every little thing.
This matter was the same. His plan to travel north slowly over the vacation, alternating between teleportation magic and carriage, had fallen apart. Instead, he'd pulled off the mad feat of vomiting blood while teleporting across the kingdom in a single day. He'd even brought along the black magician Sein, aiming to kill three birds with one stone.
A while later they arrived within a snow-covered mountain, buried in drifts.
The snowy mountain, famous as a region where monsters appeared, was empty and desolate, not a soul in sight. But cross the mountain and go beyond the border, and barbarian tribes were everywhere. The barbarians lived in the border regions and plundered the people of the north again and again.
Deluah's current king, moreover, had little interest in the northern people. The citizens being plundered could do nothing. It was a lawless land, through and through. Kill a barbarian, and far from being reproached, he'd receive thanks from the northerners instead.
Sein looked down the mountainside and smiled brightly.
“So shall I go kill them and come back?”
Teron pulled the hood down with his hand so his face couldn't be seen.
“Yes. Kill to your heart's content, then come back up here.”
“Hmm, no thanks. Let's go together. Being told to go alone is a little scary.”
He was needlessly thorough. As befit a black magician who lingered in Teron's memory, he was full of suspicion.
Sein was one of only four black magicians in the capital.
There were nine black magicians in existence at present.
Five of them were out killing people in the provinces, and the remaining four resided in the capital.
Excluding Teron, there were Yuan, Arnold, and Sein.
Yuan stayed permanently at the Precipice and attended to their lord, while Arnold funneled in sacrifices from the back alleys.
But Sein, like Teron, only visited the Precipice on occasion. Truth be told, Teron still didn't really know what he did.
Even so, the Sein of his past life remained vividly in his memory. He was a killer even worse than Yuan.
A man who normally never even showed his face suddenly joined the rebel army, slaughtered the members of the royal family, and personally led their lord to the throne. Then he cheerfully sauntered off to the provinces.
He committed mass murder in the provinces too, so much that Teron had fretted every day that the kingdom might collapse from a population shortage.
Unbefitting a black magician, he kept a smiling face, but on the inside he was the blackest of them all. And unlike Yuan or Arnold, he was the one Teron had the least connection with.
The person you know least is the most dangerous of all.
Teron went down the mountainside and watched him massacre the barbarians en masse.
One barbarian rushed at Teron with a blade. He twisted his body away as if he'd encountered a bug.
Soon a black energy came surging in, and the barbarian who'd been attacking Teron rotted black and died.
Teron shook himself off. Sein tilted his head.
“Why don't you kill them?”
“That's my business, so mind your own.”
How his mind was working was plain as day. He was surely thinking Teron's behavior was strange. What's with him, he'd be furiously turning it over in his head.
“Mmm, you're the first person I've met who acts so unlike a black magician, Teron. I don't quite understand it. You must be confident. Even with me suspicting you.”
“Our lord knows everything. Your thoughts are of no importance.”
“Is that so?”
Sein wore a sinister smile. And soon he killed ten people at once.
After a few hours had passed, the plain was filled with corpses stained black.
Teron kicked the bodies aside to clear a path.
“Let's go now.”
“Ahh, of course. It's nice, getting stronger. But Teron, I'm asking out of curiosity, is there any reason I have to keep my promise?”
Teron Meyer smirked.
“You won't come out at a loss either. If I've gone this far, you can tell, can't you? Just how much effort I'm pouring into this.”
To think he'd found and provided a way to kill people with ease. For a black magician, this act was an enormous kindness and a gift. Following the perfectly natural calculation that no one would do such a thing without reason, Sein was surely weighing the profit and loss.
Teron said quietly,
“Within the snowy mountain there's a cave. There's magic cast inside it. Two. Two people are needed.”
“So it's magic you can only enter once the conditions are met.”
“That's right. Go inside, and there are minerals beyond imagination. To give one example... a jewel that won't shatter even when struck by black magic.”
For an instant Sein's eyes gleamed. It was an outrageous claim, but if it weren't something of this caliber, Teron would have no reason to go this far.
Teron continued.
