Chapter 154: Everyday Lessons
An endless sea of fire spread in all directions. Scorching heat swept through the air, carrying with it the remains of human bodies. Crimson-black drifted between heaven and earth, piling up as though forming a small hill.
The deaths of those humans had been horrific. In the flas, they hadn't even had ti to resist.
Even from a distance, Auréliane could sll the charred scent drifting from the corpses.
She stared blankly at the devastation before her, and then suddenly—covered her mouth with both hands.
Her eyes went wide. Her body folded forward.
The brutal scene was sothing she found, for a mont, completely impossible to accept.
In this mont, she didn't dare look at her teacher.
That terrifyingly powerful War Magic had reduced those warriors to ash in the space of a single instant.
Auréliane had killed Magical Creatures with her own hands before.
But when faced with human corpses—appearing before her in such a grotesque and horrifying state—
Her heart couldn't help but churn with nausea and dread.
Killing Magical Creatures and killing humans were two things that simply could not be compared.
The discomfort spread gradually through her entire body. Her stomach began to clench.
If she hadn't been using pure willpower to force herself under control, she might have already been sick.
Why did she have to witness this revolting, unbearable scene?
Why had Professor Viktor killed them?
But Auréliane didn't ask that foolish question aloud.
She had lived in the Imperial Palace for over a decade.
In those years, she had witnessed far too much scheming and backstabbing.
It had taught her how to appear as a well-behaved child in others' eyes, how to conduct herself in a way that won people's approval.
She wasn't foolish enough to criticize Viktor.
Those people had co without so much as asking a question, raising their mysterious, Magic-driven weapons and spraying blue bullets at her teacher.
He had done nothing but fight back.
Auréliane understood this deeply.
She had no standing to pass judgnt on Viktor's actions.
But...
She felt terrible. She wanted to be sick.
It was as though Auréliane were seeing Viktor this way for the very first ti.
Cruel. rciless.
This side of her teacher felt, all at once, strangely unfamiliar.
Suddenly, she heard Viktor's voice—cold and detached—ring out beside her.
"Swear your loyalty. Or."
"Be buried alongside them."
Auréliane watched that scene with an expression of soone struggling to accept what was in front of her.
Before all this, that female guard had accompanied her all the way here from the Royal Capital.
She had always carried herself with a cold, hard exterior.
But now.
Elsa raised her head and looked at Viktor, trembling.
Every trace of defiance inside her had already been extinguished. The awe had gradually curdled into fear, burying every other emotion beneath it.
She had never, before this mont, encountered anything so terrifying.
A 4th-Tier Mage? No...
She couldn't call him a 4th-Tier Mage.
Elsa had known many Mages.
Even back in her days as an Adventurer, she had once fought alongside a 4th-Tier Mage as a companion.
But not a single one of them had ever been anything like Viktor.
He was like the embodint of violence and destruction itself.
He was not a Mage.
He was a monster wearing the shell of a Mage.
Elsa's body wouldn't stop trembling. Whatever courage she had carried before had long since been spent.
Slowly, she lowered her head and knelt on the ground.
"...Yes."
As Elsa knelt upon the ground and swore her loyalty to Viktor—
Viktor rely cast her a cold glance, then lifted his gaze again without a word.
He didn't care in the slightest whether Elsa would agree or not.
To Viktor, this had only been one of the rare monts he found genuinely entertaining.
He didn't even try to comfort Auréliane. He simply looked at her with detached indifference as she fought to suppress her discomfort.
Her current state was, admittedly, far from ideal.
But...
This was sothing she, as the 'Eternal Witch'—the future Sol IX—would inevitably have to face.
Viktor was simply fulfilling his responsibility.
Teaching.
"Playti is over, Lady Cassana."
Viktor turned his gaze back to Cassana—to this forr Princess who could not co to terms with reality.
"It's ti to wake up."
The words fell. Cassana slowly raised her head.
She sat there with her hair in disarray, her face drained of color—looking utterly like a broken, hollow figure.
"My Lady, anger cannot resolve anything."
"We could have handled this far better."
Viktor looked down at Cassana from above.
"Unfortunately, this outco is one you chose yourself."
Viktor stood before her, then slowly shifted his body to one side—almost deliberately—as though to ensure Cassana had a clear view of the sea of flas behind him.
To make her see those terrible, grotesque remnants of corpses.
Cassana's eyes went wide. She sat on her knees with the air of soone who had gone mad, and let out a hollow, broken laugh:
"Viktor—even now, you still co to mock ."
"My Lady, I only wish to make you understand the gap between us."
Viktor tugged at the collar of his Coat with both hands, his tone utterly flat.
"Even if the entirety of the Rether Family's forces had been here today, it would have made no difference."
"My power does not stop here."
The mont those words left his mouth, the sky-reaching sea of fire slowly began to die down.
Tender green shoots pushed through the scorched earth, sparse and fragile at first—then spreading, reclaiming the extraordinary indoor forest one patch at a ti.
The charred remains of the dead seed to beco fertilizer, wrapped and buried by encroaching roots. Thick trunks thrust upward from the ground.
In an instant, wild grass grew with breathtaking density. The green swept away the despair of a mont ago as though it had never existed, and the feel of nature flooded in from every direction.
The Elves who had been quietly observing from a distance looked on at the forest that had suddenly grown up before them—and were equally stunned.
Amazent, reverence—a cascade of emotions welled up and spilled from their bodies all at once.
Rich, dense Natural Energy washed over everything. Cassana raised her head and looked at the greenery that had appeared like a miracle.
The flas around her seed to fade gradually beneath the green.
As though this place had never been a battlefield at all.
Viktor smiled quietly:
"Even if you were able to defeat —what of it."
"If I can enter this place, I can leave it whenever I please."
Cassana made no reply.
Because she knew that what Viktor said was absolute truth.
If Viktor hadn't deliberately revealed himself, she would never have had any chance of detecting his presence.
A 4th-Tier Mage who could appear before her at any ti, in any place.
For the Rether Family, this was undeniably a grave and ever-present threat.
Cassana's voice trembled slightly:
"What is it—exactly—that has made you so hostile toward the Rether Family."
"My Lady."
Viktor narrowed his eyes and looked at her with cold detachnt.
"Even you are willing to give everything for the sake of your family."
"..."
Cassana fell silent in an instant.
But Viktor's voice still didn't stop.
"My conditions haven't changed."
"Gather what I've asked for, and I will return your son to you."
Viktor slid one hand into his pocket and, with his other hand, lifted the dazed Auréliane by the back of her collar. Then he turned and walked away.
"One more thing—your guard is quite capable."
"She's mine now."
Elsa clambered shakily to her feet, shot Cassana a deeply guilt-ridden look, lowered her head, and followed behind Viktor as they slowly departed.
Cassana raised her head weakly and looked at Viktor's retreating figure.
Then, abruptly, she noticed the Crow perched on Viktor's shoulder.
It turned slowly, fixing its single eye on Cassana.
Within that eye, a flash of gold passed through its depths.
In a daze, all she could make out was the mockery flickering in the Crow's gaze—as though it were tittering to itself.
Just like...
A swindler who had stolen everything she owned.
And was now, right before her eyes, jeering at her with boundless contempt.
The next instant, a gust of black wind rose without warning.
Its color deepened to an almost abyssal darkness, as though it would swallow Viktor and his companions whole, sweeping them up in its current.
Cassana stared blankly at that black hurricane.
Until it gradually disappeared, and sunlight ca pouring back down.
And Viktor's figure—as though carried away by that black wind—
Vanished without a trace.
Cassana stared at the place where Viktor had disappeared, and recalled the faint shimr in the Crow's eye before it left.
She reached out a hand and tried, in the air, to summon her ability.
But no power at all answered her call.
In this mont, the emotions inside Cassana beca sothing impossibly tangled.
It felt like release—and at the sa ti, like loss.
Perhaps the curse etched into her very bloodline had finally been torn out by the roots, and she would no longer be dragged against her will into those wars she despised so deeply.
Or perhaps the fading of that power made her ache with longing for the glory that had once belonged only to her.
As though a web of contradictions had fallen over her, leaving her with nowhere to go.
Cassana lowered her head and sat down upon the ground.
Arms wrapped around her knees, utterly desolate.
The greenery around her began to grow, spreading wider. Countless Elves erged from the forests on all sides, making their way toward Cassana.
They encircled her, watching in quiet silence.
A sense of grief and loneliness drifted and wound around all of them.
Beneath the interplay of sunlight and green, it seed to deepen still further.
***
"Professor, I... feel awful."
Outside the Rether Family's gates, Auréliane could no longer hold back what she felt, and spoke it aloud to Viktor at last.
She had never been a cruel or heartless child.
When she had seen that brutal scene. When she had seen the desolation on Aunt Cassana's face.
Her heart, beyond a deep and aching unwillingness, had no more words left.
But Auréliane understood—the enmity between the Rether Family and her teacher had already passed the point of no return.
Still...
"Professor, why does it have to be this way."
Auréliane lowered her head, her spirits sinking.
"I thought that if I ca back with Aunt Cassana, I could stop the conflict between the two of you."
"In the end, I couldn't stop anything."
Suddenly, a large, steady hand ca to rest on top of Auréliane's head.
A deep, powerful sense of calm flooded through her, and her teacher's voice drifted quietly into her ear.
"Because she is your family—so your instinct is to side with her, to protect her."
Viktor looked straight ahead, taking in this City of the Vanguard that blazed with light even deep into the night.
Even with casualties within the Rether Family, it had not disrupted the city's operations in the slightest.
Standing in the glow of the lights around him, it was as though he had been carried back to the world he had once known.
"But I'm the sa."
Leah was his family too, in this world.
And so, within the bounds of what he was capable of.
Viktor would not allow anyone to cause her even the slightest grief.
Auréliane looked up in a daze at Viktor's stern, composed face.
Without quite knowing how or when—even she herself didn't understand why.
The words simply ca out.
"Then... will you protect , too? For the rest of my life?"
"..."
For no particular reason, the wind began to stir again.
As though carrying with it just a trace of wistfulness.
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