The grand corridors of the Imperial Academy were a testament to the obscene wealth and unchallenged power of the Rosania Empire. Sunlight streamed through massive, floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows, casting vibrant, kaleidoscopic patterns of crimson, gold, and azure across the polished marble floors. Suits of enchanted silver armor stood at perfect attention between every arched doorway, their polished surfaces gleaming. The air itself smelled of expensive floral perfumes, old parchment, and the faint, ozone tang of high-tier ambient mana.
It was a place designed for the elite. A sanctuary where the future rulers, generals, and archmages of the continent were meant to stroll with unhurried, arrogant grace.
Damien, however, was currently sprinting through these hallowed halls like a bat out of hell.
His polished leather riding boots slapped frantically against the marble, entirely disregarding the academy's strict rules against running in the corridors. His midnight-blue blazer flared out behind him, and his silken cravat was already coming undone, flapping wildly against his throat.
'Move, you pathetic, spindly legs! Move!' Damien screamed inwardly, pushing his newly acquired body to its absolute physical limits.
It was an incredibly frustrating experience. In his previous life, as a hardened veteran and the Captain of the Wombat Squad, his body had been a meticulously forged weapon of war. He had possessed the stamina to march for three days straight through a monster-infested desert without sleep. He had the explosive agility to dodge strikes from SSS-Rank anomalies.
But this body? The body of Rudeus Maximilian Blackfyre? It was a disaster.
Despite being seventeen years old, the boy was severely malnourished, possessing the cardio capacity of a sickly Victorian poet. His lungs were already burning as if he had inhaled finely ground glass, his heart was hammering a frantic, terrifying staccato against his ribs, and his leg muscles were flooding with lactic acid after a mere two minutes of sprinting.
'Goddamnit, this kid is weak! Did he survive exclusively on tea and self-pity?!' Damien thought, gritting his teeth as he rounded a sharp corner, his boots skidding dangerously on the slick marble.
He was desperately searching for Professor Vane's lecture hall. According to the fragmented, pain-inducing memories he had forcefully extracted from the original Rudeus's brain, Vane was a notoriously strict, sadistic disciplinarian. Being late to his "Fundamentals of Mana Core Theory" class wasn't just a minor infraction; it was an open invitation for public, crushing humiliation that would echo through the noble gossip circles for months. And for the "Defect" of the Blackfyre Duchy, any excuse to be mocked was eagerly seized upon by the student body.
Damien didn't care about noble reputation, but he absolutely despised drawing unnecessary attention to himself while he was still trying to figure out the basic mechanics of this new universe. He needed a low profile to formulate a survival plan.
As he tore down the Central Atrium hallway, his blurred vision registered an obstacle ahead.
A large gathering of students was clustered in the very center of the wide corridor. They weren't moving. They were a flock of peacocks—young lords and ladies adorned in glittering jewelry, tailored uniforms, and perfectly coiffed hair—all fawning over someone in the middle of their protective circle.
Normally, a student would slow down, politely clear their throat, and request permission to pass.
Damien was not a normal student, and he was currently running out of oxygen.
He didn't slow down. He didn't have the coordination in this frail body to execute a sudden, sharp evasion maneuver without snapping his own ankles. He just lowered his shoulder and braced for impact, hoping his momentum would part the sea of aristocrats.
-BAM!
The collision was brutal and entirely undignified.
Damien plowed directly into the outer edge of the gathering, clipping shoulders and elbows. But his momentum carried him straight through the fragile human barrier, resulting in a direct, heavy impact with the person standing at the very center of the group.
He felt the sickening crunch of colliding collarbones. He caught a sudden, overwhelming lungful of a sickeningly sweet, incredibly expensive perfume—something that smelled like crushed Glacial Lilies and morning dew.
The person he hit let out a sharp, breathless gasp and was violently thrown backward by the force of his sprint, tumbling to the hard marble floor in a flurry of ruffled skirts and flying textbooks.
Damien stumbled, his weak legs nearly giving out from the sudden deceleration, but his veteran instincts allowed him to catch his balance just before he face-planted. He didn't stop. He didn't turn around. He didn't even pause to assess the damage he had caused. The ticking clock in his head was louder than the gasps of the crowd.
Rather than offering the customary, groveling apology expected of a noble in his position, the battle-hardened, foul-mouthed soldier within Damien simply snapped.
"GODDAMNIT! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY!" Damien screamed at the top of his lungs, his voice raw and echoing thunderously down the silent, opulent hallway.
He pushed off his back foot, instantly resuming his frantic sprint toward the lecture hall, leaving a wake of absolute, stunned silence behind him.
For a span of three seconds, nobody moved. The young nobles were entirely paralyzed by the sheer audacity of what they had just witnessed. Did the notorious, cowardly Defect of the Blackfyre house just assault someone and swear at them like a common street thug?
Then, the collective shock broke, shattering into a cacophony of outrage and panic.
"HEY! WATCH WHERE YOU'RE GOING, YOU FILTHY BRUTE!" one of the male students, a young baron with slicked-back blonde hair, bellowed at Damien's retreating back.
The baron immediately dropped to his knees, his face pale with terror as he reached out to help the young woman who had been violently thrown to the floor.
"HE-HEY! COME BACK HERE AND APOLOGIZE!" another student shouted, though none of them dared to actually chase after the deranged, screaming boy.
The blonde baron hovered his hands nervously over the fallen girl, too terrified of breaching protocol to actually touch her without permission.
"Are you alright, Your Highness? Princess, please, speak to me! Are you injured?!" the baron pleaded, his voice trembling with the very real fear that he might be executed simply for failing to catch her before she fell.
The woman Damien had just tackled like a rogue linebacker was none other than Veronica Adnelia Van Rosania. The 4th Princess of the Rosania Empire. The darling of the royal court, and the untouchable jewel of the Imperial Academy.
Veronica sat on the marble floor, her perfectly arranged silver-blue hair now slightly disheveled, a few strands falling across her flawless, porcelain face. She blinked, momentarily stunned by the physical impact. It was the first time in her seventeen years of existence that someone had dared to lay a violent hand on her, accidental or otherwise.
Slowly, she placed her delicate, gloved hands on the floor and pushed herself up to a kneeling position.
"Yes... yes, you should not worry about me. I am quite alright," Veronica said, her voice a melodious, gentle chime that sounded like ringing crystal.
She gracefully stood up, waving away the panicked, hovering hands of her sycophants. She meticulously brushed invisible dust from her pristine, custom-tailored academy blouse, smoothing out the wrinkles in her pleated skirt with practiced elegance. Her oceanic blue eyes were wide, projecting an aura of innocent surprise and gentle forgiveness.
"That damn bastard was impossibly clumsy! You should punish him severely, Princess!" the blonde baron spat, his face red with secondary rage, eager to earn points with the royalty. He pointed a shaking finger down the hallway where Damien had vanished. "How dare a pathetic boy like him show no respect to the Princess! The Favorite Daughter of the Sun of the Empire, His Imperial Majesty, Gherman Isodel Van Rosania! He should be flogged for treason!"
Veronica turned to the baron, offering him a soft, angelic smile that could melt the coldest glaciers in the north.
"Hush now, Lord Valerius. It is all alright," Veronica said soothingly, raising a delicate, pacifying hand to calm his outrage. "There is no need for such harsh words or violence. It seems he was simply in a terrible hurry. Perhaps he had a family emergency or a pressing academic matter. We must be understanding of our fellow students' plights."
The gathered nobles immediately swooned at her display of unparalleled mercy and grace.
"Oh, the Princess is too kind!" a duchess whispered behind her fan. "To show such forgiveness to the Blackfyre Defect... she truly is a saint walked among us!" another muttered in awe.
While the other students continued murmuring among themselves, praising her boundless benevolence and simultaneously condemning how a wretched guy like Rudeus could dare to disrespect the Princess, Veronica kept her serene, beatific smile firmly in place. She reassured them all that she was perfectly fine, that no harm was done, and that they should all proceed to their respective classes before the bells rang.
But inwardly, beneath the flawless mask of the perfect, merciful royal... she was absolutely seething.
A dark, venomous fury coiled in the pit of her stomach. Her oceanic blue eyes, which appeared so warm and forgiving to the crowd, were entirely dead and cold on the inside.
'That damn, useless bastard!' Veronica screamed in the privacy of her own mind, her mental voice a stark contrast to her gentle spoken words. 'How dare he! How absolutely dare that green-haired stain on the aristocracy lay his filthy hands on me! And to yell at me like I am some common tavern wench standing in his way?! He didn't even stop to grovel! He didn't even look back!'
Her impeccably manicured nails dug sharply into the soft flesh of her palms, hidden by her white silk gloves.
She knew exactly who he was. Rudeus Blackfyre. The pathetic, whimpering boy she had been politically chained to by her father's decree. The boy who constantly stared at her with those disgusting, pathetic, lovestruck crimson eyes from across the dining halls. The boy she intended to completely crush and discard the moment she secured her own political standing.
'Tch. I will make him pay for this public humiliation,' Veronica vowed silently, maintaining her angelic smile as she nodded to a passing professor. 'I will talk to him soon. And I will ensure he begs on his hands and knees for the insult he has delivered today.'
***
Imperial Academy.Lecture Hall 4B - Department of Arcane Theory.08:32 AM.
Damien finally found the heavy, brass-studded oak doors of Professor Vane's lecture hall.
He didn't bother knocking or trying to slip in unnoticed. He was too exhausted for subtlety. He grabbed the brass handles and shoved the heavy doors open, stumbling into the room.
The sudden noise caused all seventy students in the tiered, amphitheater-style seating to turn their heads simultaneously.
Damien stood in the doorway, bent double, resting his hands on his knees.
"Haah... haah... haah..."
He was gasping loudly, his chest heaving like a bellows, his green hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
Standing at the front of the hall, standing before a massive chalkboard covered in complex, glowing magical equations, was Professor Vane.
Vane was a tall, skeletal man with severe, sharp features and silver hair pulled tightly back into a strict tail. He wore the dark crimson robes of a Senior Arcanist, and his eyes—cold, calculating, and unforgiving—locked onto the wheezing boy in the doorway. The entire room held its collective breath, anticipating the legendary, soul-crushing reprimand that Vane was famous for delivering to latecomers.
Professor Vane pulled a silver pocket watch from his robes, clicking it open with a sharp, metallic snap that echoed in the silent hall. He looked at the face of the watch, then looked back at Damien.
He sighed, a long, drawn-out sound of profound disappointment.
"Mr. Blackfyre," Vane began, his voice dry and cutting as a scalpel. "You are late. Precisely two minutes and fourteen seconds late."
The professor snapped the watch shut and slipped it back into his pocket. He narrowed his eyes, studying the sweating, disheveled boy.
"You are notoriously punctual when it comes to my subject, Rudeus. In fact, your terrifyingly desperate adherence to the schedule is perhaps your only redeeming academic quality. What, pray tell, happened today to disrupt your perfect attendance record?" Vane asked, his tone laced with genuine, albeit cynical, curiosity.
Damien didn't cower. He didn't stammer or look at the floor like the original Rudeus would have done. He simply stood up straight, ignoring the burning ache in his lungs, and met the Professor's gaze dead on.
"I apologize, Professor," Damien replied immediately, his voice still slightly breathless but entirely steady and devoid of fear. "I experienced an unforeseen problem with my morning time management and encountered a physical obstruction in the central hallway. It was a tactical error on my part. It will not happen again, sir. You have my word."
The classroom fell into an even deeper silence. The students exchanged bewildered glances. Where was the stuttering? Where were the pathetic excuses and the groveling apologies? Why was the Defect speaking like a junior military officer giving a situation report?
Even Professor Vane was momentarily taken aback. He was a notoriously strict disciplinarian who derived a certain grim satisfaction from publicly humiliating stragglers, breaking their egos down to build them back up. He had fully intended to dress Rudeus down for a full five minutes.
But the boy's completely unflinching, straightforward acceptance of fault, devoid of any emotional fragility, completely derailed Vane's usual tactic. There was no fear to feed on. The boy's crimson eyes were cold and perfectly composed.
Vane let out another, slightly more confused sigh, and decided to let it slide. It wasn't worth the effort to berate a stone wall.
"Fine," Professor Vane said, waving a chalk-dusted hand toward the tiered seating. "Your apology is noted, Mr. Blackfyre. You may come in and find your seat now. Just ensure you do not make a habit of this tardiness. Next time, I will not be so lenient. We are discussing the foundational lattice of elemental mana cores today. Do not fall behind."
"Understood, Professor. Thank you," Damien nodded curtly.
He walked up the carpeted stairs of the amphitheater, his eyes scanning the rows of desks. He was searching for his assigned seat, relying on the fragmented memories of the original Rudeus to guide him.
He found his designated spot in the third row, near the edge of the aisle. A prime location for taking notes without drawing attention.
However, there was a glaring problem.
The heavy, enchanted oak desk was there. But the chair was completely missing.
Damien stopped in the aisle. He looked at the empty space, his brow furrowing.
'Damnit!' Damien thought inwardly, an immediate, familiar irritation flaring in his chest. 'Is this some petty high school bullying bullshit? Was it one of Rudeus's lovely siblings again?'
He slowly turned his head, scanning the immediate vicinity.
His crimson eyes locked onto a figure sitting two desks away.
It was a boy of the same age, sharing the exact same sharp aristocratic facial structure as Damien. However, unlike Damien's dark green hair, this boy possessed the immaculate, shimmering ashen-white hair that was the true hallmark of the Blackfyre bloodline. His eyes were a pale, icy grey.
It was Aemond Blackfyre. Rudeus's legitimate half-brother.
Aemond was currently sprawling lazily across not one, but two chairs. He was sitting in his own, and he had his polished boots resting casually upon the cushioned seat of the chair he had clearly stolen from Rudeus's desk.
Aemond noticed Damien looking at him. He didn't look guilty; he looked gleeful. A cruel, arrogant smirk spread across his handsome face.
Damien didn't say a word. He simply turned and walked slowly toward Aemond's desk.
As he approached, the students sitting nearby shifted uncomfortably, anticipating the usual routine. Aemond would mock Rudeus, Rudeus would silently take the abuse, head bowed, and then he would awkwardly stand at the back of the classroom for the entire two-hour lecture, enduring the snickers of his peers. It was a well-established dynamic.
Damien stopped right in front of Aemond's desk, looking down at the white-haired noble.
Aemond raised an arrogant eyebrow, crossing his arms over his chest.
"What are you looking at, Defect?" Aemond sneered, his voice loud enough for the surrounding rows to hear clearly. "Are you lost? Looking for somewhere to sit?"
Aemond let out a short, mocking laugh.
"Well, it's my footrest now, you dumbass. You should go find another one. Oh, wait, that's right... you can't." Aemond grinned maliciously, gesturing to the perfectly arranged, fully occupied classroom. "There are no extra chairs in Vane's hall. I suppose you'll just have to stand at the back of the room for the next two hours. Just as usual. Like a good little servant."
A few of Aemond's lackeys sitting nearby snickered softly, covering their mouths.
Damien stood perfectly still. He looked at Aemond's smug, punchable face. He looked at the boots resting on his chair.
He clenched his right hand into a fist by his side.
He knew exactly how evil this motherfucker was. As he accessed Rudeus's traumatic memories, a flood of dark, miserable moments washed over him. Aemond wasn't just a bully; he was a sociopath in training. He always did petty, humiliating things like this whenever he was bored in Professor Vane's class, knowing the Professor wouldn't intervene in "noble house disputes." He loved to watch Rudeus suffer in silent, impotent rage.
The original Rudeus would have lowered his head, bitten his lip to hold back tears, and walked to the back of the room, accepting the humiliation as his unavoidable fate.
Damien was not the original Rudeus.
Damien was a man who had stared down a Demon God. He was a man who had lost his arms, had his eye crushed, and still kept fighting. He had absolutely zero tolerance left in his soul for the petty, high-school cruelty of a spoiled, aristocratic brat.
Damien didn't yell. He didn't snatch the chair away in a fit of teenage rage. He didn't punch Aemond's arrogant face, although the temptation was incredibly high. That would be messy and draw Vane's wrath.
Instead, he did the unthinkable.
Damien casually reached into the breast pocket of his blazer. He pulled out a long, freshly sharpened graphite pencil.
He held it loosely in his right hand, his grip relaxed but incredibly precise.
He locked his crimson eyes onto Aemond's icy grey ones.
And then, with the terrifying, blinding speed of a master assassin striking a vital point, Damien moved.
-BAM!
The sound was shockingly loud, like a gunshot in the quiet room.
Damien drove the pencil downward with pinpoint, terrifying force. He didn't stab Aemond. He slammed the graphite point directly into the solid oak wood of Aemond's desk, burying the pencil an entire inch deep into the incredibly dense, magically reinforced timber.
The pencil struck the wood less than half an inch away from the space between Aemond's spread fingers, which were resting on the desk.
Aemond violently flinched, his heart leaping into his throat, a sudden, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead. He stared at the vibrating pencil embedded in the wood, realizing how easily that strike could have gone straight through his hand and pinned it to the desk.
Damien leaned forward slowly, placing both his hands on the edge of Aemond's desk. He brought his face down until he was mere inches away from his half-brother.
"Give me back my chair," Damien whispered.
His voice was terrifyingly calm, barely above a breath, yet it carried the weight of an executioner's final decree.
But it wasn't the words or the speed of the strike that made Aemond freeze in absolute terror.
It was Damien's eyes.
The young Duke's crimson eyes had widened slightly, no longer the pathetic, watery pools of a bullied victim. They were abyssal. They were empty of all humanity.
In that microsecond, Damien unleashed a focused, tightly controlled burst of pure, unadulterated [Killing Intent]. He didn't let it leak into the rest of the room. He channeled the horrific aura of the Black Death, the memories of mountains of corpses and shattered gods, and funneled it directly, exclusively, into Aemond's psyche.
Aemond began to tremble uncontrollably. His breath hitched in his throat. He felt as though the temperature in the room had plummeted below absolute zero. He wasn't looking at his pathetic, green-haired half-brother anymore. He felt as though he were staring into the gaping maw of a primordial beast that was patiently debating whether or not to rip his throat out right there in the middle of the lecture hall.
The killing intent was so thick, so heavy, that Aemond genuinely believed he was going to die in the next second if he made the wrong move.
Aemond swallowed hard, his arrogant smirk entirely vanished, replaced by a mask of pale, sweating panic. He gave a stiff, jerky nod.
"Ye-yes," Aemond stammered, his voice cracking embarrassingly. He scrambled backward in his seat, hastily pulling his boots off the stolen chair. "Here! Take it! Here!"
He violently shoved the chair out into the aisle with his foot, eager to put distance between himself and the terrifying entity standing before him.
Damien didn't thank him. He didn't gloat. He simply stood up straight, his face an emotionless mask, and snatched the chair by the backrest, dragging it away.
'Motherfucker,' Damien said inwardly, retracting the killing intent and letting the normal atmosphere of the classroom return. 'You're incredibly lucky I'm not in the mood to gouge those arrogant gray eyes out of your skull today. Be thankful I'm tired.'
Damien dragged the chair back to his designated spot, sat down heavily, and leaned back, getting comfortable as he pulled a notebook from his bag. He crossed his arms and began to listen to Professor Vane's discussion on mana core lattice structures, genuinely interested in the magical theory of this new world.
A few desks away, Aemond sat frozen, his heart still hammering wildly against his ribs. He stared at the back of Rudeus's green head with a mixture of profound confusion and lingering terror.
'What... what the hell was that?!' Aemond thought, his mind racing frantically. 'How did that pathetic defect dare to retaliate?! To me! A legitimate son of the Grand Duke! And those eyes...'
Aemond shivered, rubbing his arms.
'It felt like he was actually going to murder me. But... he's just Rudeus. He's weak. He has a crippled mana core. It must have been a fluke. A trick of the light.'
His terror slowly began to curdle back into familiar, toxic arrogance and wounded pride. He couldn't let this stand. He couldn't let the Defect humiliate him, even silently.
'I'm going to make him pay for this later!' Aemond vowed internally, his fists clenching beneath his desk. 'I will break him. I will make him wish he was never born!'
Aemond sat there, stewing in his own ignorant hatred, completely lacking the situational awareness to realize the truth. He had no knowledge that the pathetic "Rudeus" he had bullied his entire life was completely gone. The entity inhabiting that body now was not a crying teenager, but a mass-murdering veteran whose tolerance for disrespect was zero, and whose bloodlust was unfathomable if genuinely angered.
By swearing revenge, Aemond was blindly, aggressively courting his own brutal demise.
***
Two Hours Later.The Academy Corridors - Post Lecture.
The heavy bell tolled, signaling the end of the morning lecture.
Professor Vane dismissed the class with a sharp wave of his hand. The students immediately began packing their expensive grimoires and filing out of the tiered seating, chatting excitedly about the upcoming magical practicals.
Damien gathered his things slowly. He wasn't in a rush anymore. He had survived the first hurdle of his new life. He stood up from his seat, completely ignoring the venomous glares Aemond was shooting at the back of his head from two desks away, and joined the flow of students exiting the hall.
He stepped out of the heavy oak doors and back into the brightly lit, opulent main corridor. He took a deep breath, stretching his arms above his head, ready to figure out where the cafeteria was located. His malnourished body was screaming for calories.
But his path was immediately blocked.
Standing in the center of the hallway, flanked by a phalanx of nervous-looking noble students and elite royal guards, was a young woman with stunning, light blue, silver-tinged hair.
She was glaring directly at the doorway, her oceanic blue eyes scanning the exiting students until they locked onto Damien.
It was the Princess.
She immediately broke away from her entourage and marched purposefully toward him. Her movements were crisp, furious, and radiating aristocratic authority.
Damien stopped, raising an eyebrow as she approached.
Before he could even open his mouth to ask what her problem was, she raised her hand.
-SMACK!
The sound echoed sharply down the hallway.
Veronica had slapped him across the face with everything she had.
The strike wasn't particularly powerful—it lacked any martial weight or mana infusion—but the sting was sharp. Damien's head snapped slightly to the side.
A collective gasp arose from the gathered crowd of students in the hallway. Absolute silence fell over the corridor once more.
Damien stood perfectly still. He slowly turned his head back to face her. His crimson eyes were wide, not with pain, but with genuine, profound shock.
In his previous life, if someone had struck him unprovoked, they would have been disarmed, thrown to the ground, and had their windpipe crushed before their hand even returned to their side. It took every ounce of his ingrained, iron-clad discipline to suppress the lethal muscle memory that screamed at him to retaliate violently.
He slowly reached up, his fingers lightly touching his stinging, reddening cheek.
'Who the actual fuck does this stuck-up bitch think she is?!' Damien questioned inwardly, his temper flaring dangerously from zero to a hundred in a millisecond.
"How dare you!" Veronica shrieked, dropping her angelic public persona entirely. Her face was flushed with righteous indignation. "How dare you barrel into me like a wild beast, knock me to the floor in front of half the academy, and not even have the basic decency to stop and say you are sorry! You didn't even offer your hand to help me up!"
Damien looked at her flushed face. He processed her words. The collision in the hallway earlier.
The memory clicked into place.
"Ohh," Damien said aloud, his voice dropping into a cold, flat, terrifyingly calm register. "You're the bitch who was standing in the middle of my goddamn way."
He didn't yell. He stated it as a simple matter of fact.
He then executed a flawless, exaggerated, deeply sarcastic aristocratic bow, sweeping his hand dramatically through the air.
"I offer my deepest, most sincere apologies for inconveniencing your stationary existence," Damien said, rising from the bow with a cold, mocking smirk playing on his lips.
The crowd of students collectively stopped breathing. Some of the weaker nobles looked like they were going to faint from the sheer secondhand treason they were witnessing.
Veronica's jaw dropped in absolute, unadulterated shock. The color drained from her face, only to return in a furious, crimson tide.
"You... you!" Veronica sputtered, completely losing her aristocratic composure. She pointed a trembling finger at his face. "How dare you call me—the Fourth Princess of the Rosania Empire—a bitch! I will have you hanged for this insolence! I will have your tongue cut out!"
Damien's eyes widened slightly as her full title finally registered in his brain.
'Wait... Princess?' Damien thought, his mental gears grinding as he analyzed her features. The silver-blue hair. The oceanic eyes. The insane level of arrogant entitlement.
The puzzle pieces fell into place with a resounding thud.
'Oh, fuck me. Am I screwed?'
He remembered her now. This wasn't just any random noble he had tackled. This was Princess Veronica Adnelia Van Rosania. She was Rudeus's politically arranged fiancée.
More importantly, in the meta-context of the game, she was the "Hidden Heroine" of The Chronicles of Adelina. She was the secret, incredibly difficult romance route that players could unlock in Arc 1. If a player chose her route and successfully romanced her, the resulting plotline culminated in Rudeus being publicly humiliated, stripped of his title, and permanently dropped out of the academy to clear the path for the protagonist's true love.
Damien stared at her. He might have been momentarily shocked by the realization of her identity and the political danger he had just put himself in, but beneath the shock, a deep, lingering, visceral hatred flared to life in his soul.
This hatred didn't come from the residual emotions of the original Rudeus. Rudeus loved this woman with a pathetic, desperate devotion.
No, this hatred came purely from Damien.
'Even though I hate that damn cosmic bitch Nesmeranda with every fiber of my being for torturing me and destroying my world...' Damien thought, his eyes narrowing into cold, lethal slits. '...Veronica is unironically my most hated character in the entire goddamn game!'
He remembered playing her route as a teenager. He remembered the sheer frustration.
'It's because this girl is the absolute worst!' Damien mentally ranted. 'She is insanely prideful, unjustifiably arrogant, completely useless in a fight, and embodies the pathetic "damsel in distress" trope that I despise more than anything else in fiction! She demands the world on a silver platter and offers absolutely nothing but sneers in return!'
Damien felt the original Rudeus's lingering, pathetic affection trying to surface in his heart, trying to make him apologize and grovel to the beautiful princess.
Damien violently crushed that emotion into dust. He completely purged Rudeus's love from his system.
Damien immediately dropped the sarcastic, mocking smile. His face hardened into a mask of pure, unadulterated annoyance and cold, veteran anger.
He looked down at her, towering over the petite princess, his crimson eyes radiating a chilling indifference.
"If that is all you have to say, Your Highness, then I really should take my leave," Damien said, his voice as hard as flint. He didn't use a respectful tone. He spoke to her as if she were a particularly annoying insect buzzing near his ear.
He took a step forward, forcing Veronica to instinctively take a step back to maintain her personal space.
"I have absolutely no time to stand around in hallways talking to an entitled bitch," Damien stated coldly, emphasizing the insult, ensuring every noble in the corridor heard it clearly.
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice so only she could hear the final, devastating blow. He decided to use the meta-knowledge of the game to absolutely shatter her moral high ground.
"And I certainly have no time for a pathetic excuse for a fiancée..." Damien whispered, his eyes boring into her soul, "...who privately calls her own politically betrothed partner a 'defect' behind closed doors, while treating him as harshly as the dirt beneath her expensive shoes."
Veronica froze.
Her oceanic blue eyes widened to comical proportions. The furious flush on her face instantly drained away, replaced by an ashen, horrified pallor.
She stared at him, her lips parted in shock, her breath hitching in her throat.
She was completely, utterly paralyzed.
Because she hadn't called him a defect yet. Not to his face. Not to anyone. She had thought it, countless times. She had drafted the insult in her mind, preparing to use it to crush him on the day she finally broke their engagement. But she hadn't spoken the word aloud.
How could he possibly know? How could this pathetic, whining, lovestruck boy who normally worshipped the ground she walked on suddenly look at her with such terrifying, cold hatred, and speak the very worst thoughts of her heart back to her?
Damien saw the absolute horror and confusion written across her face. He saw her mind breaking as she tried to comprehend the sudden, terrifying shift in his personality.
As she stood there trembling, her fists clenching helplessly at her sides in impotent, confused anger, she suddenly noticed the peripheral environment.
The entire hallway of students—dozens of the highest-ranking young nobles in the empire—were staring at her. They were whispering behind their hands, their eyes wide with scandalous delight, watching the flawless Princess be verbally eviscerated and rendered speechless by the Academy's biggest joke.
Her pride snapped.
"WHAT ARE YOU ALL LOOKING AT?!" Veronica screamed at the crowd, her voice shrill and bordering on hysterical, completely abandoning her regal composure.
The students flinched, immediately looking away, suddenly finding the marble walls incredibly fascinating.
Veronica didn't look back at Damien. She couldn't meet his eyes again. She spun around on her heel, her skirts swishing violently, and stormed off down the corridor, her royal guards scrambling to keep up with her furious pace. She practically fled the scene of her humiliation.
Damien stood in the hallway, watching her retreating back until she turned the corner and disappeared from sight.
He let out a slow, satisfied breath, rolling the tension out of his shoulders.
He shrugged, completely unfazed by the social suicide he had just committed.
'Ehh. She absolutely deserves that, and much worse, for what she was destined to do to the original Rudeus,' Damien thought to himself, adjusting the collar of his blazer. 'At the very least, I managed to extract a little preemptive justice for the tragic demise he suffered in the original timeline.'
Damien turned away from the crowd of stunned nobles and continued his walk toward the cafeteria.
He smiled inwardly, a genuine, dark grin.
He felt a strange, profound sense of satisfaction. He wasn't just surviving in this new world; he was actively breaking the chains of the plot. He had just irreparably derailed the "pathetic simp" route. He felt a weird kinship with the fragmented soul of the original Rudeus that still lingered in his subconscious, and he made a silent promise to the dead boy.
He was going to give Rudeus Blackfyre a much better life. And he was going to start by refusing to play the victim.