"The entire mechanical process may be a bit too advanced for your current baseline, but I trust that you will all do well," Cassian announced, his voice smooth, clear, and perfectly projected as it bounced off the high, vaulted stone ceilings of the training hall. He paced slowly in front of the semi-circle of seated junior students, his dark royal uniform crisp and immaculate.
"After all, you are the hand-selected prodigies of this academy, and it is not every day that you have a genius royal prince personally dismantling high-tier theory to teach you like this, so you are bound to do well."
'So arrogant,' Lucien thought, folding his massive, armored arms from his dark vantage point in the corner of the room. His ice-blue eyes narrowed, tracking the fluid, lazy elegance of Cassian's movements.
'He speaks as if the laws of magic are mere toys he invented over breakfast.'
"Now," Cassian continued, entirely ignoring the heavy radiation of holy disapproval from the corner. He tapped a complex array of geometric magical arrays drawn upon the portable blackboard. "Let us take it back to the first formula of elemental compression. Pay attention to the matrix rotation."
His voice echoed effortlessly even to the deepest ends of the massive training grounds. As usual, the underclassmen were exceptionally well-behaved in front of him. They sat with their backs perfectly straight, their eyes wide and burning with an eager, almost desperate hunger to learn.
With the Headmaster's explicit permission—and a massive dose of curiosity regarding the second prince's sudden burst of talent—Cassian had been granted his own specialized class to mentor. But what the Headmaster didn't fully comprehend, however, was the true scope of the curriculum. Cassian had been given the authority to not only teach advanced mana manipulation to his students, but also high-level swordsmanship, complex continental etiquette, cutthroat imperial politics, elite athletics, and... absolute, unyielding loyalty only to himself. Though, to be completely fair, Cassian didn't actually know about that last part yet; his modern brain was simply trying to build a reliable, hyper-competent shield network of future leaders to protect him from getting executed down the line.
It was already glaringly evident that he had gathered a profoundly talented group of kids. He had pulled prodigies from both the most prominent, high-ranking ducal houses and the poorest commoner districts, utterly refusing to discriminate based on bloodline or wealth.
From his silent post in the shadows, Lucien found himself gradually getting used to this strange, daily routine. In fact, against his own rigid will, the legendary Knight Commander was actually learning a few things alongside the children. He was discovering the subtle, intricate ways of a world that existed outside the brutal confines of total war, endless vanguard casualties, and forming heavy cavalries to fight off hordes of grotesque monsters.
"Leo!" Cassian's voice suddenly barked, sharp as a whip, cutting through the ambient hum of the training field. He strode over to where his younger stepbrother was practicing a physical stance. "What kind of absolute nonsense of a stance is that? Your center of gravity is completely skewed! Correct your footing this instant, or die by my hand."
"Kiek!— I'm sorry, Older Brother!" Leo yelped, a cold sweat bursting across his brow as he frantically shifted his weight, slamming his boot into the correct position. "I'll do it right this time, I swear!"
Naturally, Cassian treated his royal brother with the exact same merciless, high-standard drill-sergeant intensity as the rest of the commoner kids. In his mind, a slacking Leo meant a dead Leo in the future plotlines, and he refused to let his prime insurance policy fail.
"Your Highness, if your standards are truly so exacting, why don't you demonstrate it through a live duel between you and I?"
Lucien's deep, resonant voice cut through the arena like a sudden crack of thunder. He stepped out from the shadows of the pillar, a provocative, and thoroughly wicked smirk plastered across his handsome face. He rolled his broad shoulders, his heavy leather gloves creaking as he loosened his wrists. "Perhaps the children will grasp the concept of perfect footing much faster if they see it in motion. And besides... my hands have been itching for a genuine bout for quite a while now."
"Hell no!" Cassian fired back, his answer exploding from his lips without a single millisecond of hesitation.
'This absolute, unhinged brute!' Cassian's internal monologue was throwing a massive, terrified tantrum. 'Does he think I'm stupid?! He wants to drag me into a live duel, and 'accidentally' let his sword slip, he will decapitate me right in front of the children, and then claim it was a tragic, structural training mistake! I know your tricks, Lucien Arden! I've seen them fourteen times!'
"No,"
Cassian stated firmly, his expression locking into a deadpan, aristocratic scowl. "My hands are entirely full with the education of these children, so I do not have the leisure to entertain your whims, Sir Arden. Go twitch your hands at the other side of the training ground."
Lucien's smirk only widened, turning lazy and dangerously sharp. He slowly pivoted his gaze away from Cassian, looking down at the wide-eyed, highly expectant children sitting on the benches.
"Are you perhaps scared, Your Imperial Excellency?...Mhm if so then what a tragic shame... your students could have learned a lifetime's worth of advanced parrying loops from this single sparring session."
'This guy...' Cassian's teeth ground together, a hot spike of irritation piercing his chest. 'For a highly revered, legendary Holy Knight, he is remarkably wicked! How on earth does a righteous hero know how to taunt someone in such a dirty, unorthodox way? Aren't knights supposed to be insufferably chivalrous and bound by rigid honor?! But damnit... my pride is genuinely taking a hit here. If I back away from a challenge in front of these kids, they will never respect my authority again. Then the whole 'mentor' facade will crumble even before I started.'
Behind his stoic expression, Lucien's eyes were burning with anticipation.
'Now, what are you going to do, my vile prince?' the knight thought, his blood pumping with a thrill he hadn't felt since the northern trenches. 'I do not usually resort to such cheap psychological taunts as a chivalrous knight of the Holy Empire, but you leave me no choice. I will never get a better, more natural opportunity to test the true depths of your strength. An arrogant, self-absorbed being like you could never stand being looked down upon in public. Now... show me what lies beneath that beautiful, cold mask.'
Cassian let out a long, controlled sigh, his crimson eyes narrowing into lethal slits. "Very well. For the sake of these growing lambs, I will briefly indulge your presumptuous request. A light spar. But... with wooden training swords only."
Lucien offered a deep, mocking bow, his voice smooth as silk. "Thank you for graciously indulging this humble knight's request, Your Highness."
'Urgh!..fuck you Lucien Arden!' Cassian screamed internally.
He clicked his tongue audibly, turning on his heel to stride over to the equipment racks. He grabbed a standard, heavy oak practice sword, checking its balance with a swift, subtle flick of his wrist. Lucien did the same, a brilliant, genuine smile spreading from ear to ear as he gripped his own wooden weapon.
The exact millisecond both men stepped into the center of the ring and assumed their respective combat stances, the ambient air pressure around the entire training ground violently shifted. The playful, academic atmosphere evaporated, replaced by a suffocating, dense aura of absolute lethality.
'This is a literal Swordmaster,' Cassian thought, his modern soul going dead silent as his mercenary instincts took total control of his nervous system. 'One wrong move, one single micro-second of lag in my reaction time, and he will completely incapacitate me or break my ribs with that wooden block.'
"Your Highness," Lucien spoke, his voice dropping into a low, rumbling register as he held his sword upright, completely steady. "To show you my deepest gratitude for indulging my shamelessness... I shall grant you the honor of the first move."
'My smooth, swift swordplay knows exactly how to deflect and counter his heavy, standard holy strikes...' Cassian analyzed, his eyes locked onto Lucien's boots. 'But this giant brute is terrifyingly fast and possesses a century's worth of raw battlefield experience.'
'No, there is no more time to think. I have fought this exact monster dozens of times across my past lives. I may have miserably lost every single one of those encounters, but at the very least... I know exactly how he moves. I know how to evade his blade.'
"Sir Lucien Arden," Cassian whispered, his posture dropping into a razor-sharp, low-slung mercenary stance. "Here I come."
Lucien's smirk flared.
*BOOM.*
Cassian exploded forward, his body blurring across the stone floor with a speed that left the junior students gasping. The wooden sword cut through the air with a sharp, whistling shriek.
*CLANG! CLANG! FLASH!*
The sounds of heavy oak impacting oak rattled the walls of the arena. Cassian moved like a shadow, his blade weaving through the air in a series of highly unconventional, fluid parries and sudden, erratic lunges.
"Wow! His Highness is so incredibly cool!" one of the commoner prodigies shouted, gripping the edge of the bench. "He is actually holding his own against the War Hero of the Empire!"
"That's my brother right there!" Leo snorted loudly from the sidelines, crossing his arms and puffing out his chest with a boastful, arrogant grin. "He is really strong! He's just been hiding it from all you peasants!"
In the center of the ring, Lucien's mind was reeling. Every time he launched a heavy, pressurized strike meant to shatter Cassian's guard, the prince didn't block it directly—he deflected the kinetic force at a precise, perfect angle, his body slipping past the danger with millimeters to spare.
'Yet he is still holding back,' Lucien thought, a spark of deep, territorial frustration igniting in his chest. 'Is this prince undermining me right now? Is he treating a duel with me as a mere joke? Well... time to get serious.'
Lucien's stance widened, and a sudden, terrifying burst of pure white holy mana surged through his wooden sword, increasing his strike speed tenfold. He executed a blinding, upward thrust aimed directly at Cassian's shoulder.
'Whoa! That was way too close!' Cassian shrieked internally, his heart leaping into his throat as he violently twisted his torso mid-air, the wooden tip grazing the fabric of his uniform. 'Why on earth is he looking at me with those creepy, hyper-intense eyes again?! He's trying to kill me!'
Lucien pursued him ruthlessly, his sword becoming a blur of continuous, heavy slashes. Yet, with every single complex trajectory Lucien threw, Cassian shifted his body ahead of time, effortlessly evading the danger before the blade even arrived.
'This is impossible,' Lucien's internal monologue violently spiraled, his shock turning into a dark, dizzying awe.
'His Highness is evading my sword so flawlessly... he knows my inherent blind spots and recovery weaknesses perfectly. It is almost as if... as if he has fought me a multiple times before.'
Lucien's eyes flashed.
'I cannot let this be. I need to force him out of his shell. I need to see his entire strength capacity, his true fighting spirit. He is still holding back!'
Cassian's hyper-vigilant survival instincts instantly sensed the sudden, overwhelming spike in Lucien's bloodlust. He realized that if he kept successfully dodging a legendary Swordmaster, the entire imperial court would label him a high-level security threat by sunset. He needed a way out, immediately.
With a calculated, deliberate micro-movement, Cassian intentionally let his wooden sword slip slightly from his palm right as Lucien launched a localized abdominal thrust.
*THWACK.*
The heavy oak blade struck Cassian square in the stomach. Cassian let out a sharp, dramatic scoff, his weapon clattering to the floor as he dropped heavily onto his knees, clutching his midsection with both hands.
'This absolute monster...' Cassian thought, coughing slightly as he glared at the floor. 'That strike actually hurt! If I hadn't dispersed my mana to cushion the impact, he would have broken my ribs!'
"Stop, stop, stop! It is my complete loss," Cassian panted out loud, raising a single hand in surrender while forcing out a strained, exhausted smile. "You truly are strong... the undisputed Hero of the Empire indeed."
Lucien's broadsword remained extended in the air, his jaw clenching with immense, absolute displeasure. The sheer disappointment radiating off the knight was palpable.
"Your Highness... you dropped your guard and refused to evade that final strike on purpose, didn't you?"
"What are you—"
"I know you are strong, your excellency!" Lucien interrupted, his voice dropping into a dangerous, frustrated growl as he stepped closer, his boots clicking heavily against the stone. "I saw the way you handled my vanguard forms. You kept evading my sword with absolute precision. You were holding back your true capacity. Now... take up your sword again, and let us continue this bout properly."
"But I have already officially surrendered, Sir Arden!" Cassian argued, staying firmly on his knees, entirely refusing to pick up the wood.
"You did that on purpose," Lucien hissed, his eyes burning down at him. "In the code of the knighthood, that is called cheating!"
"Well...that only applies to knights right?"
"And besides this is not really cheating," Cassian mumbled, shrugging his shoulders as his modern brain frantically scanned the room for a plausible, face-saving excuse. His eyes locked onto the wide-eyed, utterly silent junior students staring at them from the benches.
"—Ah!" Cassian gasped softly, smoothly pushing himself to his feet and brushing the dust off his trousers. He turned toward the children, his face shifting into a grand, noble expression of pure, selfless mentorship. "This sparring session was only supposed to enlighten the minds of our young students, Sir Arden... not to casually indulge our personal physical vigor. If we had continued any further, the kinetic shockwaves would have gotten entirely out of hand, and these precious children could have been caught up and severely injured by the crossfire of our spar. I am certain that they have already learned exactly what they wanted to learn today... right, kids?"
Cassian slowly turned his head to look at the benches.
His chilling, deep crimson eyes suddenly narrowed into tiny, razor-sharp slits, giving the entire row of underclassmen a sharp, venomous sidelong glare.
The kids collectively shuddered, a massive wave of chills and cold sweat running violently down their spines. An absolute fear crept into their little souls just by looking at that demonic expression. They had deeply, desperately wanted the fight to continue—it was the coolest thing they had ever seen—but those terrifying crimson eyes silently promised to tear them limb from limb if they dared to say otherwise.
"Y-Yes! We learned so much!" the kids scrambled, hastily nodding their heads countless times in a frantic, synchronized motion. "The lesson is complete! Thank you, Prince Cassian!"
"Now, shall we officially conclude the class for the day?" Cassian smiled pleasantly, his voice turning sweet and lazy again as he casually rubbed his abdomen where the wood had hit him.
Lucien let out a loud, heavy scoff, looking for all the world like a massive, sulking child whose favorite toy had just been snatched away. He aggressively marched off to the far side of the court, where Elias stood waiting with a fresh towel.
'Crazy, hyper-violent bastard,' Cassian thought, clicking his tongue in annoyance as he turned his back on the knight. 'Does he think we are all muscle-brained brutes who want to sweat out here all day? I'm going back to my room to sleep.' With a smooth wave of his hand, he led his thoroughly terrified, hyper-respectful students out of the training grounds.
*****
The very next morning, Cassian strode into the Junior Wing's auxiliary training field. His long elite cloak snapped in the wind, and Elias trailed two steps behind him, pushing a heavy wooden handcart loaded to the brim with high-grade leather armor, specialized textbooks, and pristine crystal vials of expensive mana-restoration potions. Behind them both, looking like an immobile monument of impending doom, walked Sir Lucien Arden. The Knight Commander's hand was still resting on his broadsword, his ice-blue eyes fixed entirely on the back of the prince's head.
The junior students, who were right in the middle of a self-study session, instantly froze like a herd of deer sensing an apex predator.
"Gather around, you miserable little sprouts," Cassian commanded, his voice a low, lazy drawl that easily cut through the morning mist.
The children scrambled into a tight, trembling semi-circle, their eyes wide with sheer terror. None of them had forgotten the chilling, razor-sharp side-glance Cassian had given them during yesterday's spar.
"Since your standard academy curriculum is clearly designed to keep you mediocre, I have decided to optimize your infrastructure while I still have the headmaster's favour to mentor all of you lambs.," Cassian said, stepping toward the handcart. He reached into a crate, pulled out a thick, leather-bound volume on high-tier mana compression, and aggressively shoved it into the chest of a trembling, commoner prodigy. "Read chapters one through four by tomorrow dawn. If you fail to grasp the core matrices, do not bother showing your face in my sight ever again."
"Y-Yes, Your Imperial Highness!" the boy squeaked, clutching the book to his chest as if it were a shield against an incoming executioner's blade.
Cassian then picked up a swirling, luminescent blue vial of premium, royal-grade mana elixir—a potion that cost more than a commoner family earned in a year. He leaned down, thrusting it directly into the hands of a frail-looking girl from a minor vassal house.
"Drink this," Cassian deadpanned, his crimson eyes narrowing slightly into their default expression of profound boredom. "You look utterly pathetic and malnourished. A soldier under my jurisdiction who faints from simple mana depletion is an embarrassment I will not tolerate."
The poor girl stared at the glowing blue liquid, her lips trembling violently. In her mind, the tyrannical Second Prince—a man famous for his cruelty—was handing her a mysterious, unlabelled magical substance and calling her pathetic.
'It's poison,' she thought, a tear violently cascading down her cheek.
'He's forcing me to drink poison because my family didn't pay him tribute!'
"T-Thank you, Your Highness..." she sobbed out loud, uncorking the vial with shaking fingers and drinking the incredibly sweet, premium elixir down her throat while weeping the life out of her.
Cassian shifted uncomfortably, his poker face remaining completely frozen while his thoughts threw a massive, confused tantrum.
'Why is she crying?! It's a premium mana potion! It tastes like blueberries and costs twenty gold coins! Why does everyone in this timeline act like I'm running a dystopian cartel?!'
From the edge of the field, Lucien Arden watched the entire display, his arms crossed over his massive chest plate. He observed Cassian hand-delivering priceless imperial resources directly to commoners, fiercely correcting a young noble's grip on his wooden training dagger, and forcefully elevating the baseline of the weakest students in the room.
A profound, chaotic shift flipped through Lucien's brain.
'He is building a private faction... out of children?' Lucien analyzed, his chest tightening as his newly awakened obsession flared.
'No... look at his eyes. He calls them pathetic, yet he shields them from the academy's neglect. He behaves like a tyrant, yet his actions entirely contrast his personality. His villainous, arrogant facade is nothing more than an iron shield designed to protect the weak in the shadows.'
Lucien's gaze softened into something incredibly dark, intense, and profoundly possessive.
'You truly are a fascinating riddle, Cassian. You claim you want to flee to another world... yet you are building a kingdom right here. And for once I am not against your choices.'
*****