"We would like to serve our future king as best we can. Drenheart and Phionheart would like to serve you, my lord." A guy with broad shoulders and brown hair said.
He deeply bowed as he said it, enough that the tips of his polished boots caught his own reflection.
It was natural in the world the Prince lived in.
To get a good reputation in society and gain influence, wealth, and power, they usually started licking the boots of royalty.
That’s how pathetic their noble system was.
However, the current Prince, who had transmigrated into this novel, same as its author had, was not the kind of person who would enjoy such a ridiculous system.
But for what he truly wanted to kill the author, he needed to have support from different families.
He was not the same person as before regression.
"And I can be your second or third wife, if I’m not asking too much from Lord Prince," the red-haired girl beside him said.
Her black coat draped over her shoulder blew softly in the wind.
Prince almost laughed out loud. Barely a day into his second chance at life, and he already had marriage proposals coming from strangers he’d known for all of five minutes.
If this was how fast ambition moved once people smelled real power behind a royal title, he could only imagine how quickly things would spiral once he actually had something worth fighting over.
"You sure know how to please your future king." Prince faked a chuckle. "Shall we discuss our next test then?"
’That’s correct. I need to be the future king if I don’t want to follow the same fate before regression.’
"Next test?"
Of course, he knew what the next task would be tomorrow, and the right time to talk about it was now.
"I’ll tell you what the next task we will be assigned is. So instead of supporting your class, support me. And if you dare to tell anyone about this, what fate your family will meet will be worse than you could imagine."
They didn’t hesitate for a second and agreed with Prince.
The task will be a head-on one, where every class needs to compete with each other, together.
He invited Resy Prestina into his plan too.
After hearing the plan Prince had come up with, Resy seemed a little hesitant.
It wasn’t that she doubted him, exactly.
If anything, that was the problem. She’d trust him enough to jump off a cliff if he asked nicely.
But she didn’t like the idea of helping him win by breaking the rules.
"Can you do this?" He asked.
"Of course we can." The brown-haired guy and red-haired girl agreed.
"Umm... Lord Prince, isn’t this cheating?" The kind-hearted girl, Resy Prestina, didn’t seem to like the plan.
"No, there’s no cheating in it," Prince replied.
"Still. Lord Prince, I-I... can’t do this."
Unlike the other two, Resy hesitated to go along with what Prince was asking of them.
"Then why did you come here, you fool!" The red-haired girl lashed out at Resy.
"Wait, you don’t need to scold her. I personally invited her to come." Prince said.
"Lord Prince did?" The red-haired girl blinked in confusion.
"Yeah. You idiots, don’t make my dear friend do your work! Move your asses and do your own work! If I see her again doing that, then the outcome will be worse than you could imagine."
The brown-haired guy and red-haired girl were startled upon hearing the words coming out of Prince’s mouth.
"Uh-Yes! As you command, Lord Prince."
Resy stood frozen for a moment, caught somewhere between embarrassment and something warmer.
She couldn’t tell what exactly it was.
Nobody had ever stepped in to defend her like this before.
"By the way, you both haven’t told me your names yet."
"I’m Ray Drenheart," the guy with brown hair said.
"And I’m Hiliya Phionheart," the red-haired girl said.
As their conversation ended, Prince turned his back to them and raised his right arm in the air.
"Well then, we will meet on the battlefield."
With that, they all went their separate ways.
Tomorrow was the day for the second task, and Prince still hadn’t practiced anything yet.
At night, he was awake, and not only that, he wasn’t even in his room.
Prince was actually following someone. It was Snow. He was on his way to his dorm room after finishing his dinner, but then he saw Snow; she seemed to be going toward the backside of the academy, all alone.
And that’s how Prince ended up following her.
’Where is she going?’
’Is she meeting with her boyfriend?’
’She never told me that she had any boyfriend in the past.’
With a puzzled mind, he quietly followed her and stopped when she reached the short tree at the back of the academy.
Two other students, and a few others, were waiting for her.
Prince gritted his teeth as he saw those two students.
His mind immediately went to the worst possible reasons Snow would have any business meeting these two in secret, at night.
Somewhere no one else would think to look.
None of the answers he came up with sat well with him, and every second he spent watching from a distance instead of walking straight over made his chest tighten more little by little.
One of them was Cerus, a black-haired guy who always looked sad, and the other was Elisha, with purple hair with sharp calculating eyes and cleverness clearly reflected on her face.
Indeed, they both were the hero’s party members, and also the ones who witnessed the Prince’s miserable death.
Prince wasn’t close enough to clearly hear what they were talking about, so he just watched them from afar.
"What is she doing here? What business do they have with Snow?" Prince muttered.
What Prince saw next really made his blood run cold.
Every careful thought in his head emptied out at once, replaced by a single, blinding urge to close the distance between them and make someone pay for it.
Elisha Dumien first slapped Snow Quen’s soft cheeks hard.
Then Elisha cast her dark magic spell on Snow, binding her hands and legs; the spell is used to trap enemies.
’Why is that bitch doing this?’