The sound of hurried footsteps and heavy, ragged breathing echoed with a dull thud against the pristine marble staircases of the west wing of Ophelius Hall.
While the vast majority of the lower-class student horde crashed against the frontal resistance of the combat maids and magical statues in the grand south vestibule, a small group of four first-year students had taken advantage of the absolute chaos to slip through a service door without facing any resistance.
They were not there to be heroes.
They weren’t looking to stop the Head Maid or save the academy.
They were there for a much more mundane and pressing reason.
“If those savages break my vials of lunar mandrake extract, I swear by all the gods I will poison every single one of them!” Elvira hissed, taking the stairs two at a time, her face pale with pure anxiety.
“My alchemical reagents!
I have top-grade ingredients drying in my room that are worth more than the entirety of Dex Hall!
I can’t let that angry mob smash them to pieces!”
“Elvira, calm down, we’re going to get caught!” Ayla whispered, chasing closely behind her, casting terrified glances toward the lower floors where the sounds of magical explosions and shouting originated.
“We are breaking an emergency-level magical curfew.
If a professor catches us sneaking in here in the middle of a riot, we’ll be expelled from Sylvania forever!”
“We’re already inside, Ayla, there’s no turning back now!” Taylee replied, gripping the hilt of his heavy broadsword, running at the front to serve as a human shield in case anyone appeared.
“We’ll just get in fast, grab Elvira’s trunks from her room, and sneak back out through the rear door before the invaders reach the upper floors.
It’s a three-minute plan.
In and out.”
“We’re going to die!
We’re going to die and we aren’t even part of this protest!” Clevius sobbed, bringing up the rear.
He was trembling so violently that his sword rattled against his own light armor.
“I told you we should have stayed hidden in the gardens!
Why do you always drag me into your suicide missions?!”
The group of four friends finally reached the second-floor landing.
They were fresh, without a single scratch, having not cast a single spell or clashed swords with anyone, but their hearts were racing at a thousand beats per minute from the sheer stress of the infiltration.
They only had to cross the wide, luxurious main hallway—adorned with thick crimson carpets and heavy crystal chandeliers—to reach the girls’ residential wing and rescue Elvira’s precious laboratory.
However, the instant they turned the corner and peered into the hallway, they stopped dead in their tracks.
The corridor was not empty.
In the exact center of the red carpet, blocking the only possible access toward the bedrooms and the stairs leading to the underground vaults, stood a solitary figure.
He wore a dark leather coat, maintaining a straight, impeccable, and relaxed posture, typical of someone who felt absolutely no pressure from the noisy, hostile environment on the ground floor.
His right hand rested with absolute naturalness on the black hilt of a sheathed katana at his waist.
Taylee’s eyes widened, his grip on his sword loosening slightly in genuine disbelief.
“Ed…
Rothtaylor?” the novice swordsman blurted out, immediately recognizing the ash-blonde hair, the athletic build, and the completely inscrutable expression of the excommunicated noble.
Ed didn’t shift his posture a single millimeter.
His cold, calculating gray eyes evaluated the group in front of him in less than a second.
There was no sweat on their foreheads, their weapons bore no recent marks of combat, and their breathing betrayed haste, not battle fatigue.
It was obvious they had just snuck into the building, bypassing the main clash.
He harbored no personal animosity toward them, but to the logical, structured mind of someone who had once been a monarch and a consummate strategist in his past life, these kids were nothing more than unauthorized variables attempting to cross a zone he was being paid in pure gold to secure.
“The upper wing is closed,” Ed said.
His voice was monotone, deep, and devoid of any inflection, cutting through the tense air of the hallway with surgical precision.
“Turn around and go back the way you came.
If you head down the service stairs right now, the intruders will be too busy fighting at the entrance to pay any attention to you.”
“We can’t turn back!” Elvira immediately snapped, stepping forward, her face burning with indignation.
“We just want to get to my room in the north hall!
I have invaluable alchemical materials in there, and I am not going to let those lower-class students tear them apart out of social resentment!
Get out of the way, Rothtaylor!”
“Whatever material possessions you have in your room are none of my concern, Elvira,” Ed replied, maintaining his neutral and implacable tone.
“My security contract tonight is absolute.
No one crosses this hallway toward the bedrooms or the basement.
Turn around.”
Taylee frowned, feeling his alchemist friend’s stubbornness clash against the blonde boy’s coldness.
“Ed, we don’t want any trouble with you, but Elvira is right.
Those materials are her entire life’s work.
Just let us pass, we’ll grab her things and leave immediately.
We won’t interfere with whatever it is you’re doing.”
“I’m afraid trust is not a valid currency in contracts, Taylee,” Ed said.
And with a slow, deliberate, and intimidating motion, he slowly unsheathed his new tactical katana.
The soft, lethal, and constant electrical hum of the tungsten alloy resonated in the silent corridor, and the black blade absorbed the light from the chandeliers without emitting a single reflection.
Clevius let out a sharp whine from the rear, taking a clumsy step back and bumping into Ayla.
“T-This guy isn’t joking!” the cowardly swordsman stammered, his eyes welling with tears of pure panic.
“He even has a real weapon drawn and he’s pointing it at us!
Taylee, I told you from the start, her stuff isn’t worth our blood, let’s go!”
“Shut up for once, Clevius!” Elvira spat, quickly drawing two glass vials containing volatile liquids from her belt.
“If we don’t get through here, my six months of research will go in the trash!
Ayla, get ready to support us, we’ll force him out of the way if we have to!”
Taylee, seeing that negotiations had failed and pressured by Elvira’s anxiety, didn’t wait a second longer.
He launched himself forward with a grunt of exertion, swinging a powerful diagonal slash with his heavy broadsword directly at Ed’s torso.
It was a frontal, raw, and fast attack, but predictably linear.
Ed didn’t even blink.
With a movement so swift and fluid it seemed like a mirage, Ed took a half-step laterally to the left, employing the fundamental footwork he had mastered over decades of death matches in his original world.
Taylee’s heavy broadsword cleaved only empty air.
Before the young man could recover his stance and halt his own body’s momentum, Ed slightly twisted his wrist and used the blunt flat of his katana’s black blade to strike the side of Taylee’s sword.
The impact wasn’t imbued with magic, but the pure kinetic force and the perfect angle behind the strike were devastating.
Taylee’s hands instantly went numb from the violent vibration, and he was thrown sharply to the side, his shoulder crashing hard against the hallway wall.
“Fire!” Elvira yelled, throwing her two alchemical vials in a precise parabolic arc straight at Ed’s position.
At the same time, Ayla, sensing the danger, rapidly channeled her mana, launching three bursts of compressed wind designed to push and knock down.
Ed analyzed the three different trajectories in a mere fraction of a second.
He didn’t retreat a single millimeter.
He channeled a dense layer of his orange mana through the pathways of his right arm and injected it directly into the katana’s blade. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
The modern alloy from New Eridu hummed at a higher frequency, conducting the energy flawlessly.
With two precise, extraordinarily fast slashes that left brief blue trails in the air, Ed intercepted the alchemical vials mid-flight.
He didn’t cut cleanly through them to make them explode; he used the flat edge of the weapon to deflect them with a deft twist of his wrist, sending them crashing into a painting on the far wall, where they detonated into a harmless cloud of sleeping gas.
Immediately after, without breaking the flow of his stance, Ed pivoted on his heels and used the same circular momentum to disperse Ayla’s wind projectiles, shattering the spell’s matrix structure with pure, overwhelming physical pressure.
“What…?” Ayla murmured, taking a step back, her lips trembling.
Her wind magic had been dispelled as if it were a cheap parlor trick.
From the blind right flank, taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Clevius attacked.
His technique was an absolute disaster, he was crying his eyes out in pure terror, but his reflex speed was surprisingly high.
He launched an erratic flurry of quick thrusts aimed at Ed’s legs and torso.
Ed blocked the first thrust with a dry metallic clack.
He deflected the second with a sharp lateral motion of his black blade that sent sparks flying.
For the third, Ed simply took a firm step forward, unnaturally closing the distance, completely ignoring Clevius’s sword, and delivered a brutal, dry knee strike directly into the pit of his stomach.
The dark-haired swordsman let out a high-pitched wheeze of pain, opening his hands and dropping his weapon as he fell heavily to his knees on the carpet, clutching his abdomen and gasping desperately for air.
Ed gave the hilt of Clevius’s sword a casual but precise kick, sending it sliding across the floor to the other end of the hallway, leaving him disarmed.
There was no sadistic malice in Ed’s fluid movements.
He wasn’t trying to teach them a moral lesson like some hidden mentor.
He was simply executing his area-containment duty with the coldness of a professional.
The group in front of him was painfully inexperienced.
Their attacks completely lacked tactical coordination, they were fighting over mundane emotions, and their defensive stances were riddled with fatal openings.
In his past life, they would have been disarmed in the first five seconds of a children’s sparring match.
“Your movements are slow, your intentions are glaringly obvious before you even attack, and your teamwork is nonexistent,” Ed declared with a factual neutrality that was more crushing than a direct insult.
He lightly flicked the blade of his katana without taking his eyes off Taylee, who was barely getting back to his feet with difficulty.
“If this is the true limit of your operational capabilities to defend your precious ‘belongings’, I suggest you surrender, sit on the floor, and wait for this riot to end.
You do not have what it takes to take another step down this hallway.”
Taylee ground his teeth together, feeling humiliation burn in his chest.
The blonde boy in front of him wasn’t using flashy, destructive spells.
He was simply standing there, breathing calmly, using pure fundamentals and overwhelming spatial control to dismantle their every attempt.
“We’re not done yet!
You are going to let us pass!” Taylee roared, refusing to accept defeat so easily.
Knowing that conventional tactics and brute force were useless against this wall of efficiency, Taylee decided to risk everything.
His mana began to flow erratically, turbulently, but undeniably powerfully.
A pale, brilliant, and sharp light enveloped the thick blade of his broadsword.
It was the secret technique of his ancestral lineage, a sword art specifically designed to break through any defense.
Seeing the dense accumulation of energy in Taylee’s weapon, Elvira and Ayla immediately understood what the boy was going to attempt.
“We have to cover him at all costs!” Elvira shouted, pulling out three more high-grade volatile vials, preparing to throw them simultaneously over a wide area to blind Ed’s reflexes.
Ayla began to murmur a rapid, complex chant, preparing heavy chains of dense wind to try and immobilize their opponent’s feet, even if just for a miserable second.
Even Clevius, still coughing and without his sword, tried to crawl miserably across the carpet to grab Ed’s boot.
The four students, driven by the sheer stubbornness of retrieving their belongings and not looking like cowards, converged in a coordinated, suicidal assault against the solitary, dark-clad figure.
Ed evaluated the impending collision in a single heartbeat.
The sword technique Taylee was preparing finally showed a respectable energy density, enough to cause severe structural damage to the building’s pillars if not deflected correctly.
Ed slightly bent his knees, lowering his center of gravity, and adjusted his grip on his katana’s anti-slip polymer.
He wasn’t going to dodge this assault.
He was going to take the boy’s strongest attack head-on, shatter his ancestral technique with his own condensed orange mana, and knock all four students unconscious onto the floor once and for all to end this absurd commotion.
Just as Elvira raised her arm to throw her three explosives and Taylee took the first thunderous step of his charge…
the air pressure in the hallway changed in a drastic, unnatural, and genuinely terrifying manner.
It was a fluctuation so sudden and massive that it stole the breath from everyone present.
An asphyxiating, burning, and oppressive heaviness settled into the corridor in the blink of an eye, causing the massive crystal chandeliers above their heads to tremble violently.
Elvira stopped her arm dead in the air, paralyzed by pure animal instinct.
Ayla’s half-formed spell dissipated between her fingers from the simple, pure interruption of her concentration due to sheer fear.
Taylee halted his charge abruptly, skidding on the carpet, feeling every cell in his body scream that if he took a single step forward, he would be incinerated.
From the top of the main stairs, behind Taylee’s paralyzed group, a female voice cut through the absolute silence.
It wasn’t a hysterical scream or a loud warning.
It was a hushed, cold, hollow whisper, completely devoid of any warm intonation.
“What do you think…
you’re doing to him?”
Ed shifted his gaze past Taylee’s tense shoulders and suppressed a very justified curse.
Yenika Fael stood on the stair landing.
Her pristine school uniform was disheveled from her frantic sprint from the forest, but that was the least of the problems.
Her eyes, usually bright, sweet, and full of kindness, were now submerged in an empty, lethal, and unfathomable darkness.
She was staring directly at the backs of the four students who, from her highly altered perspective, had just attempted to gang up and ambush the person she had been searching for all night.
The temperature in the hallway began to rise dramatically.
Actual sparks of pure fire began to materialize out of nowhere in the air around Janica’s figure, burning small black scorch marks into the luxurious carpet.
The spiritual mana radiating from her in waves was not that of a brilliant second-year student; it was the aura of a natural calamity.
She was preparing the direct invocation of Tarkan, the Lord of Flames, right there, in the middle of a closed, narrow space.
‘If she summons that high-tier fire spirit in here, not only will it melt the hallway, but it will collapse the structural pillars of the ceiling and kill us all by asphyxiation in a matter of seconds,’ Ed calculated with chilling, alarming speed.
There was no time for diplomacy.
Completely ignoring Taylee’s harmless group, Ed dropped his flawless combat stance.
He sheathed the black katana in a fluid motion that emitted a loud metallic click, activated the Gale Essence technique in his legs, and moved with explosive speed.
He blurred like a swift exhalation past Taylee and Elvira, and planted himself firmly right in front of Janica.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Ed raised both hands and firmly grabbed the girl’s shoulders, physically interrupting the destructive upward flow of her mana and forcing her to look him directly in the eyes.
“Janica.
Stop.
Now.”
The physical contact—firm yet meticulously controlled—combined with Ed’s authoritative, grounding tone of voice, had an immediate effect on the tamer’s psyche.
The terrifying, blind trance shattered like fragile glass.
Light and lucidity slowly returned to Janica’s eyes.
She blinked a few times in disorientation.
As her vision focused and she fully returned to reality, she realized a detail that made her heart do a backflip in her chest.
Ed was incredibly close to her.
Too close.
Their faces were mere inches apart.
She could feel the pleasant warmth of the boy’s firm hands holding her shoulders through the fabric of her uniform, and the unwavering intensity of those attractive gray eyes locked directly onto hers.
Ed’s steady breathing softly brushed her forehead, and the scent of dark leather and night wind flooded her senses.
A scarlet blush, much more intense and burning than the spiritual fire she had just extinguished, covered her face from her cheeks to the tips of her ears.
The lethal trance of the ruthless protector evaporated completely, leaving behind only an overwhelmingly shy girl who suddenly didn’t know where to look.
To make her embarrassment exponentially worse, the lesser elemental spirits, which had hidden in terror beneath the furniture from their contractor’s blind fury moments earlier, began to peek out.
Seeing that the imminent danger had passed and noticing the compromising romantic situation, they emerged from behind the chandeliers and the carpet.
A tiny, mischievous fire spirit let out a small noise that sounded suspiciously like a stifled giggle and gave a floating nudge to a wind spirit.
Within seconds, dozens of little spiritual lights were floating around them, gossiping shamelessly among themselves with high-pitched squeaks, tinkles, and faint flashes of warm colors upon seeing how absurdly close the stoic boy was to their flustered contractor.
Some light spirits even began to flutter about, forming clumsy, tiny heart shapes near the ceiling.
“E-Ed…
you’re…
v-very close…” Janica stammered, nervously fiddling with her fingers at chest level and lowering her gaze to the boy’s boots, feeling like steam was coming out of her ears.
“I-I…
I only followed you because I was worried about how fast you left the camp for the noble district.
And when I came up the stairs looking…
and saw those four people attacking you all together from behind with weapons and magic…
I…
I got really mad.
I didn’t want them to hurt you.”
Ed released her gently, taking a polite step back, feeling a genuine, logical relief at seeing that a catastrophic structural disaster had been avoided without unnecessary bloodshed.
“I appreciate the concern, but I was in no danger of being defeated, Janica.
I am merely fulfilling the strict terms of a perimeter containment contract,” Ed explained, keeping his tone serene, deliberately ignoring the annoying, glowing, gossipy spirits fluttering above their heads.
“There is absolutely no need to destroy the building’s facilities over this.”
Elvira, Clevius, Ayla, and Taylee watched them from the other side of the hallway, completely dumbfounded, their jaws practically on the floor.
They had gone from being on the verge of a death match against a human wall, to being a fraction of a second away from being burned alive by the academy’s best spiritual mage, and now, in an absolutely surreal twist, they were witnessing what appeared to be a romantic comedy surrounded by gossiping spirits.
“Even so…
it’s very dangerous for you to be wandering around this place completely alone, Ed,” Janica murmured, forming a small, adorable pout as she tried to regain a minimum of composure, fanning her face with both hands to cool her excessive blush.
“The whole place out there is an absolute disaster.
When I was looking for you in the south gardens, I had to hide behind some broken planters because the area is a total chaos of fighting students.”
Janica paused in her nervous explanation, furrowing her brow slightly and tilting her head, as if she had just remembered a peculiar detail that was entirely out of place in that war-like scenario.
“Actually, Ed…
while I was coming here and hiding, I saw something very strange that didn’t fit with the riot at all.
Behind the tallest main hedges, right in a hidden alley where there weren’t any protesting students, I saw a massively luxurious carriage parked and hidden in the deep shadows.
It had professional armed guards maintaining a perimeter around it.
And on the black door of the carriage, there was a large golden crown finely engraved into the wood.
I thought it was highly strange that such an elegant carriage would be standing there silently during this massive security issue…”
The world around Ed seemed to grind to an absolute halt.
The sound of the mischievous gossiping spirits, the heavy breathing of the intruders in the background, and the distant crackling of exterior magic completely vanished from his mind.
His analytical brain, always processing streams of tactical data, evaluated the provided information in a millisecond.
An absurdly luxurious carriage.
Professional armed personal guards.
And a prominent golden crown engraved on the door.
The Golden Crown was the official coat of arms, the unmistakable and universal symbol of the Elte Commercial Company.
And if that specific carriage was there, parked strategically and covertly outside the gates of Ophelius during this precise incident instigated by his daughter, it meant one single, absolute logistical truth.
Elte Kehelland was here.
The ruthless adoptive father of Lortelle and the supreme boss of the commercial company was not safely tucked away in the capital as everyone believed; he was physically on the dark grounds of the Sylvania academy, overseeing this tactical operation in person.
The pieces of the massive puzzle of political intrigue clicked together in Ed’s brain with the brutal precision and ruthlessness of a guillotine.
Lortelle had told him, with total commercial confidence, that she would meet alone with Head Maid Ellis in the depths to conduct the exchange for her corrupt ledger.
But if Elte was present in the building’s shadows, it meant Ellis never worked for Lortelle.
Ellis worked for him.
The head maid had betrayed the young merchant for the immense amount of pure gold she carried and with the solid promise of protection from the billionaire patriarch.
Lortelle had not descended into the underground vaults to execute a daring masterstroke; she had descended straight into a lethal death trap, blindfolded by her own overconfidence, surrounded by hostile maids in a space with no possible escape route.
His primary financial sponsor.
The person who guaranteed his abundant monetary funds and his future material stability in this world, was about to be murdered in cold blood or buried alive under the direct orders of her own adoptive father.
Ed’s demeanor underwent a shift so radical, physical, and oppressive that it caused the four students in the background to tense up and step back out of pure animal survival instinct.
The aura of stoic calm, indifference, and professional neutrality that the ex-monarch had impeccably maintained until now vanished entirely, replaced by a sharp, lethal, and absolutely resolute coldness.
He was no longer the simple security guard hired to hold back unruly students.
Now, he was the Martial Monarch who had just realized that the rules of his board had been violated, that someone had attempted to rob him right in front of his eyes, and that he needed to intervene with lethal force immediately.
Ed slowly turned toward Taylee and his exhausted group.
His right hand didn’t even make a motion to return to the hilt of the black katana.
“The protection contract for this hallway has been officially voided,” Ed announced in a deep, dark voice that permitted no reply, negotiation, or logical debate.
He began to walk with long, firm strides, passing directly through the middle of Taylee’s group, carving his own path through sheer presence.
He didn’t even bother to look at the blades of the weapons the kids still tremblingly held aloft, nor did he adopt a basic defensive stance in case they attempted a surprise attack.
He simply ignored them all with the crushing, arrogant, and absolute certainty that they no longer represented a relevant variable.
“You may pass,” Ed added over his broad, dark shoulder as he advanced at a rapid pace toward the other end of the hallway, heading inexorably toward the heavy double doors that granted access to the basement stairs.
“Go get your precious materials or do whatever you have to do.
I have to descend into the underground to correct a severe miscalculation.”
Ed accelerated his pace and disappeared down the dark service stairs, leaving behind a deeply confused and terrified group of friends, and a Janica who was still fanning her red face in embarrassment, surrounded by dozens of giggling spirits.
King Grey was done playing perimeter watchman; he was now going to dive directly into the darkness to dismantle and crush the trap they had set for his most valuable business partner.