Teron Meyer heard the news at the Academy.
Exactly ten days after they'd pulled that despicable stunt, he finally learned that shocking truth from the very mouth of the First Prince, Leopold Deluah.
From that day on, he spent a good long while thinking.
What is it that keeps driving the black mages to act?
Nothing had changed from his past life. Nothing at all, except his own attitude.
Teron was far more aggressive than he had been in his past life.
Now just turned seventeen, he had become the servant the Lord treasured most.
He'd brought the Lord all sorts of information and fine mana stones, and whenever he got the chance, he sought him out to whisper sweet words.
It was nothing at all like this same period in his past life.
In his past life, seventeen-year-old Teron had been a pathetic, wretched nobody, bullied at the Academy, slipping out on holidays to go kill people.
That, apparently, was the root of it all. The more the Lord adored him, the more he heaped comparisons onto the others.
A word or two from the Lord had an enormous effect on every one of the black mages.
The result: those two bastards, seized by the lust for conquest, had recklessly gone and severed the heads of a marquis and a count.
Hearing the damned news from Leopold Deluah's mouth, immediately teleporting to Rapelle only to find them all dead, and, at best, managing to abduct Edmund Rappel, every bit of it had been utterly horrific.
And he'd agonized over whether to kill Klaus and Jedner or not... but weighing all the circumstances, keeping them alive to build trust with the Lord was, no matter how he looked at it, more profitable than killing them and taking a great loss, and so Teron Meyer, with extreme patience, gave up on murder.
He also scrapped every one of his carefully calculated future plans, and found himself moving about quite busily.
I need to see Leopold.
Teron, who had lain on the bare dirt for ages, staring blankly and thinking, forced himself desperately upright.
His body still wouldn't obey him, an aftereffect of the teleportation magic, but he had to move regardless.
He'd promised over and over that he'd come by today, so if he didn't return, the odds were high the First Prince would kick up a fuss again.
Whether he went to see Leopold or just crawled into his dorm room and passed out quietly, it was better to get inside the Academy first.
He moved his feet, made his way into the building, and when he opened the dorm room door, the gray wallpaper of the dorm room, unseen for two weeks, filled his eyes.
He took in the familiar scent of the room and was just about to head to the bathroom to wash off his dirt-caked body.
“...What the hell?”
To his great irritation, his eyes met head-on with Lloyd van Acker, who had only just woken up.
Teron bowed his head for a moment, composed himself, and replied as quietly as he could manage.
“Mind your own business.”
Lloyd, his face groggy and half-asleep, stared at Teron for a while, then abruptly widened his eyes as if in shock.
“You lunatic bastard, you really didn't die...?”
He ignored him outright. But by now Lloyd's drowsiness had fled completely.
“You out-of-your-mind wretch. You insane commoner bastard. What the hell did you go and do? Do you have any idea what an uproar's broken out because of you, all by yourself?”
Lloyd sat all the way up, ran a hand roughly through his hair, and unleashed a fierce tirade. Both shock and irritation were etched onto his face.
The damned news that knights had been dispatched to search for him rose in his mind, and Teron gritted his teeth as he answered.
“As if I wouldn't know that?”
Lloyd frowned slightly.
“...Where'd you run off to, showing up at this hour of the night?”
“I had my reasons.”
“You said you'd be back within the day. Leo waited for you.”
“It's not past midnight yet.”
“...”
Lloyd rummaged through the vest he'd tossed onto the corner of the bed and pulled out a pocket watch. Meticulous as ever, he even checked the time before fixing Teron with a fierce glare.
“What are you scheming?”
“Young master, if you're just here to pick a fight, kindly shut up.”
At the biting words, Lloyd's face flushed red.
“You damned commoner bastard...”
Teron ignored him, went into the bathroom, and while he washed and came back out, Lloyd's posture hadn't changed at all. Far from falling back asleep, the moment Teron returned, Lloyd kept tracking his movements with both eyes. Teron tried to lie down on the bed, and another jab came flying.
“Where'd you go? Did you really go to Luden? To your hometown?”
“...”
“So how was it out there? Did you accomplish your goal? Did you go to fetch your birth mother?”
Teron Meyer's condition was already at its worst. He'd roamed around all day and had even met with the Lord. Most importantly, he'd overused teleportation magic.
At any rate, the fact that he wasn't vomiting blood on the spot right now was itself a display of remarkable patience.
“So did you bring her back? Your commoner birth mother, I mean.”
Lloyd asked, lips curling in a smirk.
Teron could no longer stand it, and he sneered.
“She died. I buried her and came back.”
“...What?”
Soft-minded little brats were all weak to that sort of thing, apparently. Not to the degree Leopold was, but Lloyd faltered, seeming flustered, and fell silent.
Wagging his tongue to torment others was one of the few things that gave Teron Meyer any thrill.
His mood improved a little, and Teron let out a snort of laughter before climbing up onto the top bunk.
Lloyd stayed still for a moment, then asked.
“Are you serious?”
“Would I be lying?”
“Given the nature carved into that filthy blood of yours, I can't say you'd be incapable of such a lie...”
He's uncannily good at reading people.
Teron jeered inwardly, covered his eyes with his arm, and shut them.
Lloyd let out a sound like another headache was coming on.
“Is it because of that criminal organization?”
“...I don't know what you mean.”
“The criminal organization out in the provinces killing people. The murderers who killed Count Luden and seized his mansion. I'm asking if your birth mother died because of them, you stupid commoner bastard.”
“No. It was death by illness.”
Even as he answered, Teron's mind grew colder and colder.
Lloyd knew more than he'd expected. He had no idea what line of reasoning had led him there, but at any rate it aligned fairly well with the truth.
Leopold had even seen the scene at Luden with his own eyes, so if anything, it would be worse, not better.
A powerful wave of fatigue washed over him. Sleep was crowding in when suddenly he felt a hot liquid.
His nose was streaming with blood, so he stanched it with his sleeve and closed his eyes just like that.
“Answer me, what's that nonsense about? The crap about going to Luden with teleportation magic! Is it true?”
Lloyd seemed to have plenty he was curious about. He kept running his mouth, firing off questions.
They were questions too weighty to ignore. He really ought to give an answer, but...
If I don't sleep now, I'll just drop dead.
Teron Meyer laced his tone with mockery. Letting out a deliberate scoff, he replied.
“Curious?”
“...”
“Ask me again tomorrow morning, politely. Then I'll answer you.”
With that he plugged his ears and ignored every sound reaching him.
And once he did, sleep came at once.
As always, Teron dreamed a nightmare. Piles of corpses and Leopold, a dream no different from usual. It was so familiar it hardly felt like a nightmare anymore. He was watching the pandemonium unfold before his eyes with numb detachment when some jarring, out-of-place sounds mixed in.
“What's wrong with him? Why does he look like he's dead?”
“As if he'd be dead, Leo? He was breathing his filthy breaths just fine up until last night, so don't worry.”
Then warmth touched his body. Feeling human body heat that could by no means belong to a dream, Teron tossed and turned before finally opening his eyes.
Leopold was staring at him.
“...”
By now it wasn't even surprising, and beyond that, it was familiar. The anger remained the same, but he'd grown too jaded even to work his mind and spit out venom.
As Teron kept quietly watching Leopold through faintly opened eyes, the radiant-featured boy raised the corners of his mouth slightly and smiled with his eyes.
For a while, longer than a mere moment, they held each other's gaze in silence.
Just as Teron, gradually waking, came fully to his senses and was about to hurl abuse at Leopold,
the First Prince tilted his head to the side and asked.
“Why are you covered in blood?”
What? Lowering his eyes and examining his own body, Teron found his sleeve and clothes soaked in blood.
Working his mind quickly, he remembered the nosebleed he'd had right before falling asleep last night.
“What's the matter? Where are you hurt?”
“...”
“Answer me right now, Teron.”
The bright smile on his face turned steadily colder.
