The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"Hold on a moment, Professor. Just calm down a little."

I deliberately didn't approach her. Instead, I took a step back as I spoke.

Just in case, I raised both hands high above my head, as if surrendering.

"..."

But Alice Blesbuck didn't react at all. She just kept her back against the wall and stared at me with wary eyes.

She was on guard against everyone—me, Minerva still seated in her chair, Sbeungali cackling away from my right hand, and even Rauné, who had retreated to its water tank and was watching the situation unfold with a sullen look on its face.

I had a pretty good idea why.

In her head right now, I'd probably become the mastermind behind everything.

Honestly, anyone would react the way she did at the sight of someone with two Seven Calamities bound inside his body. It was a perfectly reasonable response.

She forced a smile.

"What for? You planning to turn me into one of your familiars too? Two Seven Calamities weren't enough?"

"That's not—"

"Right, if you've already devoured Seven Calamities, breaking a mongrel half-vampire would be nothing."

She burst into a brittle laugh, and I waved my hands as if to plead my innocence.

I quickly pulled Sbeungali, who had been sticking out of my right arm, back to where he came from.

[Hey, wait a moment. I've barely been out and you're already—!]

I couldn't have cared less about his protests.

If he'd just kept his mouth shut from the start, the misunderstanding never would have gotten this deep. I couldn't help but scowl.

"That's not what this is, Professor. Please believe me. If I'd really meant something like that, why would I have brought all this up in the first place?"

"Well, how am I supposed to know that?"

She was still wary, baring her teeth like a wild animal with its hackles up.

True to her vampire blood, the fangs she exposed were razor-sharp.

"My mother was the same way. She did things I couldn't make sense of no matter how I tried. There was a time she put a dagger in my hand when I was little, pulled her own heart out where I could see it, and urged me to stab it. Said if I struck right there, all her pain would end—just give it a try, she said. She genuinely enjoyed watching weak people squirm."

A sigh slipped out of me at her words.

She'd misunderstood, and badly.

The first thing I needed to do was settle her down and bring her back to herself.

And right as I resolved that I absolutely would not let Sbeungali off lightly—

"Hngh!"

"Ugh!"

Light exploded from Alice's hand.

The burst spread like a flashbang, and before I knew it I'd turned my head and thrown my arm up to shield my face.

A flash-grenade burst of light, my vision blocked.

I caught on right away to what she was planning.

"Tch..."

If she managed to escape now, things were going to get extraordinarily annoying.

Just as I decided I'd need to use force, however rough, to keep her here—

"Aaght—?!"

"And just whom do you think you're baring those vulgar fangs at?"

A crash, then a scream.

A moment later, I could see Alice sprawled face-down on the floor with Minerva straddling her.

Minerva had caught Alice mid-escape and pinned her.

Both her arms were wrenched back and bound by Minerva's tail. Alice thrashed, but she stood no chance of overpowering Minerva.

Minerva crushed her down firmly, snorted once, and without hesitation slipped her finger into Alice's mouth.

"Ngh, urk—!"

"Shall I yank out every one of these teeth before you understand your place? Or perhaps..."

The sharp tip of Minerva's tail traced slowly down Alice's cheek.

A thin line opened across her face, and blood ran down in a steady trickle.

Minerva smirked. This time she shifted her tail to aim it precisely at the center of Alice's chest—right over her heart.

"A vampire dies when the heart is pierced, yes? Care to find out with this one whether the same goes for mongrels?"

"Hngh, kk—!"

"Minerva."

At my call, Minerva froze her tail mid-motion and turned a sulky look on me.

Her pout seemed to ask why I'd stopped her, and I let out a small breath of relief.

If I hadn't stopped her, something terrible would absolutely have happened.

"Thanks for the help. I'll take it from here."

"...Mm. Very well. It would be unbecoming of me to remain involved beyond this."

Minerva, whose tail was still wound around Alice's body like a rope, slowly rose to her feet.

Alice jerked once or twice trying to move, then bit down hard on her lip. Minerva snorted with derision.

"What, surprised you can't use your power as freely as before? Of course. There's power woven into this Minerva's scales and venom that disperses mana. You won't twitch a finger until tomorrow at the earliest."

With that, Minerva dissolved into my shadow as if she had no further business there.

It was the attitude of someone declaring that staying any longer would only get in the way.

Only two of us remained in the room now: me and Alice Blesbuck.

"...Kill me."

She muttered quietly, still sprawled on the floor.

Minerva's venom had clearly already taken effect. She couldn't move a single finger.

"If you ever, even for a moment, truly thought of me as your teacher... please, just kill me here, cleanly. I'm begging you."

The sight of her—completely resigned—pulled a deep sigh out of me.

I had no idea how things had spiraled this far, but I at least knew who'd buttoned the first button wrong.

[Gyaaaaaaack!!!]

With Sbeungali's all-too-familiar screams playing in the background, I carefully drew out the World Tree's branch.

I lifted Alice from where she lay face-down, propping her up gently, and settled her onto a chair.

She kept her lips pressed tightly shut, eyes closed too.

She looked exactly like a death-row inmate awaiting the verdict, and a wronged-sounding voice came out of me before I could stop it.

"...Professor, this really isn't what you just imagined it was."

"...?"

She cracked her eyes open slightly, as if asking what I meant.

I sighed again at her, deep and heavy, looking genuinely put-upon.

"What I just did... that was, what's the word. I was trying to show you there's a way to kill Milited. I was trying to prove I could kill them, basically..."

I sat down in the chair too and kept up the act of someone heaving sigh after sigh from sheer frustration.

Jin Ye-seul would have seen through any lie I told. Lee Ye-eun would have learned the truth through communion between World Trees. But Alice Blesbuck didn't have abilities like that.

Thankfully, though, I knew Alice Blesbuck well.

Clear-cut about debts and grudges, stubborn but not unreasonably so.

It had been a misunderstanding, but when she learned I'd been subjected to human experimentation because of her, she hadn't tried to hide it—she'd confessed everything. And she'd been ready to give up her own life for Kath Ryle, who had also lived a wretched life because of her. That was enough to know what kind of person she was.

Above all else, she was easily moved by attachment to people she had ties with.

And fortunately, I was her student—and we had a relationship tangled up in plenty of incidents besides. So...

"It was... the first time I ever told anyone my secret..."

"...!"

The moment I murmured the words with a bitter look on my face, Alice Blesbuck's expression cracked for the first time.

This is a white lie. This is a white lie...

I muttered that to myself as I kept the performance going.

"I trusted you, Professor..."

"Ah...!"

"No, that... I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I've just dragged you into trouble for no reason..."

I muttered listlessly with my head bowed, and Alice Blesbuck gradually started responding to it.

Good. Just a little more.

Still slumped as if dejected, I sniffled.

Thanks to my heightened senses, I caught the way Alice Blesbuck flinched at the sound of that sniffle.

"I thought... if it was you, Professor... at least you would hear me out..."

For the finishing blow, I murmured quietly—but loud enough that she would catch every word.

"It was like that the first time, and with the purification potion too... that's why I thought, if anyone, you would..."

I left the moments we'd shared hanging quietly in the air, then fell silent.

Once Alice Blesbuck started carrying guilt about something, she was the kind of person who couldn't cut ties easily even when it cost her.

I felt like a swindler taking advantage of someone too good-hearted for her own good, but there was no helping it right now.

"Ah, I—I didn't mean it like that, I didn't—"

I sensed Alice flustering, unable to settle herself, and I was just curling up quietly when—

Sbeungali, who had been screaming nonstop until that very moment, suddenly cut off his scream like a knife slicing through it and muttered:

[Look who's calling people swindlers.]

He clicked his tongue disgustedly.

[Tch, lucky for you you've got that snake-faced mug on you. If you'd been even a little better-looking... tch, tch... it doesn't bear thinking about.]

Then, as if he'd just remembered something he'd nearly forgotten, he resumed screaming.

I just gritted my teeth and pushed out an even stronger pulse of energy to suppress him.

"And here I thought there'd be something to it. I got nervous for nothing."

Choi Jun-hyeong shook out his blood-soaked right arm and grinned.

Droplets of blood scattered carelessly through the air. He licked the blood off his lips and kept grinning.

At his feet lay the corpse of a woman, limbs twisted at impossible angles.

"You really thought you could kill me with that piddly little handgun? Did you think I was still the... what was it, the old Choi Jun-hyeong?"

He kicked the woman's head with the toe of his foot.

He kept toying with her, kicking her head over and over, and then slid his foot beneath her body and flipped her over.

The face of the woman who'd died of a broken neck came into view, and he laughed again.

He crouched down and peered at her face as if examining her, then sighed regretfully.

"Aah, looking at her now, she's really kind of my type. Such a waste... if I'd known, I'd have kept her alive at least as half a corpse. The blood rushing to my head when I get excited is my one and only flaw, I swear."

He grabbed Lydia by the hair, swung her around carelessly, and cackled.

"I've got a pretty good guess who this 'Him' you kept talking about is... aren't you embarrassed? A grown adult, seducing a naive kid and crawling into bed with him. An adult's supposed to look after children and protect them, you know. Tch, tch..."

"..."

He clicked his tongue regretfully and gave a nod.

"Tell you what—I'll give you one parting gift to take to the next life. You were going on earlier about how He was going to crush me, weren't you? Well, here's the thing: I already knew about all of it."

He cackled, sounding genuinely sorry he couldn't have told her while she was alive.

"You and Yoon Seul-hye were planning to team up, ambush us right back on the day of the festival, and wipe us all out in one go? Do you think I'm enough of a moron to fall for a scheme that shallow? Strutting around like big shots without even realizing every last one of you is already rolling around in the palm of my hand!"

He smashed Lydia's head down into the floor and twisted his face up as if he were going into convulsions.

"You thought that bitch could betray me? I'm the one who picked her up out of the trash—rooting through garbage cans for scraps to eat—and raised her into something halfway presentable! And punks who can't even put together that simple fact think they can look down on me? Me? Me? Dare to look down on me, Choi Jun-hyeong?!"

He slammed Lydia's head into the floor with a crack, crack, then heaved out ragged breaths.

"...Ah, I got mad again. This won't do. Really. I was gonna cut her head off and give it to our Happy to play ball with."

He muttered the words, looking down at the corpse—already too wrecked to be recognizable—and sniffed.

"Whatever. After this is all over I'll just have Yu Ji-hyeok's head torn off for him instead."

How was he going to clean up the mess of the room, he wondered, and—as if he'd already lost all interest—he punted the headless body across the floor.

"What are you doing, you idiots. Get in here and clean this up."

At his words, the people who had been waiting blankly came shuffling forward.

Hailey, Xiao Jie, and other former members of the Six Stars.

They had all been killed by Landschi, and now stood as undead bound to obey Choi Jun-hyeong absolutely.

"Hahh..."

The internal spies and traitors had all been cleaned out, and he'd planted a double agent on the other side. All that remained was waiting for the day of the festival as if he knew nothing.

"Not much longer now... almost there."

He murmured it quietly, but with a voice full of yearning.

And in a building hours away by car—

In one room of that building, a woman who had been lying as if dead quietly opened her eyes.

"...I should call Amelda."

She murmured, and closed her eyes again.

"Ahah."

Jin Ye-seul, palm cupped to her ear as she listened in on something, let out a small laugh.

"Traitor bitch."

She murmured softly.

"Found you."

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