The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"What is this?! You expect me to put this kind of low-grade garbage to my lips?!"

A wine glass shattered with a deafening crash.

The young girl glared with eyes blazing, breath coming in furious gasps, while five or six people knelt at her feet with their heads bowed low. Around the woman closest to her, fragments of shattered glass lay scattered across the floor.

Natalia Milited had struck the human's head with the glass with all the strength she could muster — yet instead of the skull bursting open, it was her own hand that throbbed as though it had been torn. She clenched her teeth.

"I can't stand the sight of you! Get out, now! Disappear from my sight before I kill every last one of you!"

At Natalia's venom-laced screech, the people whose minds had been crushed crawled out of the room on their knees. Without sparing them so much as a glance, she snatched up the bottle, poured the glass full of wine, and threw it back in one gulp — as if to drown her rage.

"Ugh, bleugh! Hck, hck!"

A bitter taste swirled in her mouth, her tongue went numb.

The sharp alcoholic fumes stabbed at her nose and throat, and she heaved the wine back out as though coughing up blood.

It was unmistakably the wine she'd always favored.

And yet she couldn't swallow a single mouthful, much less the bottle.

The wine hadn't spoiled. Her tastes hadn't changed.

What had changed was her body.

"Aaah, aaaaaah! Alice — Aliiiiice!!!"

The girl swept her arm out again, knocking the wine and the glass aside.

The glass shattered, the bottle tumbled across the floor, and the red wine bled into the carpet. Even so, the back of her hand throbbed where she'd struck the bottle, and the pain was unbearable.

"How dare she — how dare she pull this kind of trick on her own mother! That ungrateful little bitch — tearing her apart wouldn't even be enough — how dare she do this to me…!"

She couldn't even begin to fathom where it had all gone wrong.

Being taken in by that Jin Ye-seul girl's cheap trick, losing her ankle and suffering the humiliation of having her body stolen.

Going to tie down the Ten Powerhouses at Gracius's request, only to run into that loathsome Alice Blesbuck.

And then — her daughter, that worthless bitch she should've torn apart long ago — used Natalia's own ankle as a medium to cast a spell on her.

Weakened and stripped of her power, she'd run straight into a holy knight, the worst possible matchup, and been captured outright.

Her soul ripped from her body and forced into this feeble, pitiful little girl's body — a body of a homunculus, of all things, the most disgusting vessel imaginable.

Every bit of it was a disgrace. None of it should have happened. None of it could be believed.

Who was she?

She was Natalia Milited — the last surviving member of the True Ancestor bloodline in this world, the noble blood with every right to stand at the head of all vampires.

She was not someone who endured humiliation of this kind.

And the fact that the one who'd inflicted all of this on her was a mongrel — barely worthy of being called a vampire — her own daughter, Alice Blesbuck — that, she absolutely could not accept.

"Aaagh, aaaagh!!"

If she could, Natalia Milited would turn back time and personally dig out the brains of every single person who'd had a hand in making her what she was now.

No — she swore she would.

"A worm like you — a filthy mongrel like you — daring to humiliate me like this…! I won't let you off, I'll cut your limbs off and throw you into a pigsty, and you'll spend the rest of your life rolling in your own blood and filth! That disgusting homunculus you dote on so much can keep you company!"

She was hurling curses at the empty air when someone stepped slowly into the room.

He picked the wine bottle up from where it had rolled on the carpet and set it carefully on a shelf.

"Pull yourself together, Natalia. This is shameful."

At the low, level voice, she snapped her eyes up viciously.

"Shut your mouth, Landschi! If you really think about it, this whole mess is your fault!"

Her venomous outburst didn't faze him in the slightest. Landschi simply set about tidying the wrecked room.

His unshakeable calm only made Natalia grind her teeth harder.

Even in her original form she'd been no threat to him whatsoever.

In this current shape, there was nothing more to be said.

"If you'd moved even a little faster, if you'd just handled your end of things properly to begin with, I never would've had to step in! And I never would've ended up in this disgrace! How exactly are you planning to take responsibility for this, Landschi?!"

"…Once Milited awakens, all of this will be resolved. So sit quietly and wait."

At Landschi's words, delivered with a tired sigh, Natalia jerked as if she'd been struck by lightning.

Then she was nodding rapidly, her voice trembling with rapture.

"Y-yes…! When the master awakens… it'll surely show me mercy…! How — how could I have forgotten something so obvious…?"

A second later, her expression turned anxious and she began gnawing on her fingernail.

'Mixed with a young human's blood, settled into a homunculus body with a fragile mind and soul — she's already starting to sync with it.'

Even at the sight of her grossly unstable state, Landschi just took it in stride.

"I — I may have made a scene, but the master will never abandon me… Y-yes! Think of how many years I served, how loyally I've devoted myself to it! Of course it'll grant me mercy and bestow grace upon me. And so…!"

She rounded on Landschi immediately.

Her tone was almost like that of a superior addressing a subordinate, but neither of them bothered to mind.

"L-Landschi! How are the preparations coming? Have you gathered all the sacrifices? The date? Everything's going well, right? Tell me everything — how the plan stands right now!"

"Everything's proceeding smoothly. So calm down, Natalia."

In the face of her frantic questioning, Landschi didn't so much as blink as the lies left his mouth.

"The sacrifices are coming along well."

It was a lie.

The only one actually prepared was Isaac McDowell.

Counting himself, that made two.

The crystal he'd needed to use as a sacrifice had been seized; Gracius was gone; and the lump of dragon-heart flesh they'd been cultivating for centuries was unstable beyond hope.

…Natalia Milited had been the last sliver of a possibility, but reduced to her current state, there was no way she could be used as a proper sacrifice now.

"……"

His gaze drifted over her, faint and unreadable.

There was something deeply thoughtful in his eyes, but caught up in her anxiety and paranoia, she didn't pick up on a thing.

The faintest hint of a smile crossed his face and vanished, and he nodded.

"The work of weakening Yu Ji-hyeok and his faction is proceeding smoothly as well."

That was a lie too.

Yu Ji-hyeok.

The faction surrounding the man he considered their greatest obstacle hadn't weakened in the slightest.

If anything, by some means he couldn't begin to trace, the people who might have served as his own hands and feet were vanishing day after day.

Unlike him, the man must have capable allies and subordinates at his side.

A bitter smile crossed Landschi's lips and he gave a small shake of his head.

Gracius was dead, Natalia was nothing but dead weight now. Belluna had defected, and the only one left was him.

When had the once-feared Children of Milited fallen this low? At the wretchedness of it all, a dry chuckle escaped him.

Na Il-seong. Lee Yun-seong. Ender Freeman. Ichinose Kohei.

Every one of the people he'd placed even a shred of hope in was dead, missing, or stripped of every base of power they had — useless.

He also knew that Rogers Nael, Lee Eun-gyeong, and the petty little nobodies Choi Jun-hyeong had bragged about — the ones the man had paraded as proof of his intelligence-gathering reach — had nearly all gone silent.

Choi Jun-hyeong.

He was the only one left who was still in one piece.

'…To think this Landschi's circumstances would grow so pitiful.'

Even so, he wasn't cowed or shrunken in the slightest.

"But, there isn't much time left."

Truly, just as he'd said, there wasn't much time left.

It would be over soon.

That single fact was what kept him moving without a moment's hesitation.

"…Now then."

Landschi drew several photographs from inside his coat and laid them out.

The pictures weren't of Yu Ji-hyeok — they were of the people around him.

Han Su-yeong. Choi Hyun-woo. Lee Ye-eun. Jin Ye-seul. Lee Yu-na. And Ivan Hunt.

The ones he believed to be Yu Ji-hyeok's closest inner circle — the people he could call closest to him.

After staring at the photographs for a long while, he finally nodded, as if his decision was made.

The best way to bring a group down was to make them collapse from within.

And he knew well that once doubt and mistrust took root, they had a way of feeding on themselves and growing.

"For now, I went along with what you said, Ji-hyeok, but… I still don't know whether it was really the right call."

Returning to the Academy after a long leave of absence, Kath Ryle murmured the words while looking at me.

He had bandages wrapped around one forearm, but I knew perfectly well that they were purely for show.

"In what way?"

"We really shouldn't have let that woman go. We should've just killed her."

He let out a small sigh.

"You know this as well as I do, Ji-hyeok — losing by a hair's breadth is harder than winning outright. What's the term — taking a dive? Anyway… it was hell trying to act in a way that wouldn't tip those guys off."

I'd warned Alice Blesbuck that her facility would almost certainly be attacked — close to a hundred percent.

Breaking Milited's seal required four alchemists, and they hadn't secured the number of sacrifices they needed. There was no way they'd leave an alchemist of Alice Blesbuck's caliber — the one who'd taught Alice herself — sitting untouched.

Striking a place protected by the World Tree clan would be flat-out suicide, so by process of elimination it was obvious they'd hit her facility.

'You'd need at least a Seven Calamity-level being to even try the World Tree.'

While I was thinking that, Kath Ryle took a sip of his bottled water.

"We created an opening so they could pin down our location, made the Ten Powerhouses leave under the pretext of urgent business… Honestly, I didn't think they'd actually charge in that fast. It was clearly a trap to anyone with eyes."

"That's how desperate they are. Landschi — that's his name, right? From his perspective, something he's spent centuries preparing for is about to fall apart in front of him. More importantly, are you and the professor okay? I heard a fair number of them broke in."

"Yeah. The professor's fine. So am I. If anything, the bigger hit is that the research facility got trashed."

A small smile crossed his face as he nodded.

"Anyway, for the time being I'll be sticking by you and helping out, like you asked. So if there's anything you need, just say the word…"

He drew a small box from his coat and held it out to me.

"Here — the thing you asked the professor for."

I took it and tucked it into my coat.

In its place, I pulled out a single ring and held it out to him.

"A ring? Just the energy coming off it tells me it's no ordinary thing… why?"

"It's yours, senior. Take it."

Kath Ryle put on a strange expression, then accepted the ring from me.

He turned it over in his fingers for a while, then shrugged at me.

"If I'd known, maybe I should've come visit in my female form."

"It's nothing like that, so don't get any weird ideas, senior."

"…So you're saying the current look is fine?"

"Should I tell the professor that's the kind of taste you've got?"

He cracked up at that, laughing hard.

Then he slipped the ring onto his finger.

"…Huh?"

He flinched and stared at me with an expression of pure shock.

"…Dragon, World Tree, spirit. And on top of that, is this — ?"

"Going by your reaction, I don't think I need to explain."

He kept turning it over and over between his fingers, unable to believe it.

"…I made a separate request to Evangelline. The rings should've reached the professor and Jin Ye-jeong by now too."

"I don't know about the rest, but I get why you told us to let that woman go now."

He nodded quietly.

"Thanks to it, all the worry and doubt sitting in my chest is gone… Except for one thing."

"What's that?"

"A traitor."

Kath Ryle waved a hand quickly as he said it, as if telling me not to misread him.

"Don't get me wrong. I'm not suspecting the people around you, Ji-hyeok. What I'm trying to say is —"

"I know, senior."

I knew exactly what he was worried about.

A traitor.

More precisely — someone planting suspicion and distrust within our group.

In the original story, there were exactly two beings who pulled that kind of stunt — Sbeungali was one, and the other was Milited herself.

A few days ago, Jin Ye-seul had said something to me.

You should take a good look around you, Ji-hyeok.

I just went through the memories of that Lee Eun… whatever-his-name was — the guy who used to be my fiancé — and it looks like Choi Jun-hyeong's been picking out and meeting only people connected to people close to you.

And behind him, without a doubt, are Milited's children.

What did he say… right. They told the guy that once you were dealt with, they'd arrange for him and me to be together. Apparently Landschi has some power that strips a person's mind and brings them to heel… so it's not just me. It'd be the same for the others.

With Su-yeong or Hyun-woo, it'd be their master; with Yu-na, the orphanage and the kids; with Lee Ye-eun or Ivan, the clan and the people of their houses they have to protect… There's no shortage of pressure points.

Their methods are so persistent it's disgusting.

So watch yourself.

"…You don't have to worry. I've already taken precautions."

In fact, handing the rings out to everyone had been partly to prepare for exactly that.

On top of that, I'd already spoken about it the day everyone gathered.

"Well, if that's the case, that's a relief…"

He nodded.

"Still, it pays to be careful. To put it bluntly — I could turn around and betray you tomorrow. Don't ever let your guard down."

I smiled at his concerned advice.

"With Professor Alice on my side, you'd really betray me, senior?"

In casual terms, you could call him Alice Blesbuck's biggest devotee.

If she asked, he'd probably throw himself into a lava pit without a second thought.

The reverse was probably true as well.

"…No, that isn't the point right now."

His face flushed slightly with embarrassment.

"Anyway, since you already know, I won't say any more about it… But really, it doesn't hurt to be careful."

He muttered the words quietly.

"There's nothing more devastating than being betrayed by the person closest to you."

"Gh — agh…! Let go of me, you bastard…!"

A blond male student was thrashing on the ground with his arm wrenched up behind his back.

A different male student had a knee pinned into his back, looking down at him with cold eyes as he pulled a short blade from inside his coat.

"…Say what you said earlier. One more time."

"Wh-what the hell — you crazy — heek?!"

The cold, sharp sensation against his neck made the blond student, Rogers Nael, flinch and freeze. Choi Hyun-woo shifted his grip on the blade slightly, opening a thin cut along his neck, and murmured in a dead-still voice.

"You were talking about Su-yeong. What was it you said you were going to do to her?"

Choi Hyun-woo barely held his rage in check and pressed the blade in a fraction deeper.

He remembered every word the man had just said over the phone — clearly.

You're sure I really only have to do what I'm told.

You're sure you'll really hand Han Su-yeong over to me.

I don't trust you — show me, right now, what she looks like with her mind crushed.

And make her follow my orders…

By the time he came back to himself, he'd already taken Rogers Nael down and had a knife to his throat.

But he didn't feel a flicker of regret or panic.

He just wanted to know which gutless little shits had dared to spew that kind of filth about someone's precious sister — about his family.

"How exactly did you say you were going to handle Su-yeong?"

He bit out the words in clipped, jagged pieces, the way his anger wanted them.

Han Su-yeong was someone who'd been with him for as long as his memory stretched back.

And about a person like that, this man had run his mouth in that way.

On top of that, Rogers Nael had been suspicious in more ways than one for a while now.

There was nothing left to give him pause.

"You're not talking?"

Rogers Nael didn't react at all to Choi Hyun-woo's threat.

He nodded as if to say fair enough, and was about to draw the blade in his hand across the neck without a moment's hesitation —

"He can't say anything right now."

A low voice came from somewhere.

"I crushed his mind."

At the deliberate, measured tone, Choi Hyun-woo turned his head quietly.

There stood a hulking man, watching him.

"Could I have a word with you?"

A smile spread across his face — ominous and twisted.

"I'm called Landschi."

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