When the evil god of this world and its creations invaded and wrought destruction, humanity split into two factions.
One was the guardians, who sought to protect mankind and the world with the Hero at their fore.
And the other was the traitors, who worshiped the evil god and its creations and turned against their own.
The power bestowed by the evil god and its followers was immense.
Monsters became even more savage and powerful.
That power, which transcended all limits, was nothing short of an alluring and addictive divine gift to humans who craved strength.
And for that power, there were greedy humans who would gladly betray even their fellow men.
Those humans gathered and formed an organization.
“The Followers of the Abyss.”
Taking as their banner the name “Abyss,” the passage to another world that the evil god and its creations were said to have ridden through, they were said to have fallen alongside the evil god when the Hero and his companions drove it back to its original world.
But humans were beings who, by nature, would willingly sell even their souls if it meant satisfying their desires and greed.
Those captivated by the alien power the evil god had bestowed still remained even now, long after the evil god’s retreat, lurking and scheming in the darkness of the world.
“‘With the Hero, the Abyss shall descend once more.’ That was your style of greeting, wasn’t it? Ah, did you change it, perhaps?”
Mel spoke the slogan used by the hidden villainous organizations of this romance-fantasy world.
The man, a Follower of the Abyss, widened his eyes as he watched Mel recite their slogan.
That ominous presence was unmistakable hostility.
‘He caught up to us this quickly and killed that man in just two blows. What the hell is he?’
The follower had far too many questions about Mel, who had appeared out of nowhere.
A pursuer this fast—there were not many groups capable of that.
Even within the academy, it would not be easy to find someone like him.
At minimum, a Class Two professor—no, perhaps a Class One professor would be needed.
But no matter how he looked at him, this man was not a professor.
Even if he were a Class One professor, seeing how his comrade—though weaker than himself, still skilled enough to face a Class Two professor—had died without being able to do anything showed that this man easily surpassed even the strength of a Class One professor.
‘More importantly, why the hell is my body acting like this?’
No matter how tense he was, this was especially severe.
It was rare for him to become this nervous in the first place,
but wasn’t he frozen stiff like prey before a beast of prey?
‘Wait, a beast of prey? And five years ago…?’
The follower recalled five years ago.
Five years ago, when he had infiltrated the Seronis family as a spy.
The time when, under orders from above to infiltrate the Sword Duke’s family and gather information, he had slipped into the Black Lion Knights as an agent.
There had already been several spies besides him planted there long before, and together with them, he had leaked information on the Sword Duke.
There had not been the slightest sign of exposure.
Neither the Sword Duke nor the Black Lion Knights under his command had shown any indication of suspecting him.
How much had he laughed inwardly at their stupidity?
Everything had gone smoothly, and he thought it would continue that way.
He had been happy then, thinking of the rewards that would be bestowed upon him once he carried out his orders.
And then, in an instant, everything had fallen apart.
“All right! It’s time for a grand cleaning! To think we’ve left these filthy rats alone until now! As a servant of House Seronis, this is a grave insult!”
The spies who had been planted over many long years were all rooted out in a single moment.
“Sweep them all away! Disinfect! Incinerate! Use every method possible to erase their existence from the family! Just thinking about how many nights I lost because of these damn rats makes my blood boil!”
“I’m sure you lot don’t know how hard it is to entertain the young lady, but I’m the one who had to do it without even getting any sleep, so I feel like I’m about to lose my mind right now.”
It had not ended with their exposure.
A brutal grand cleaning, as though truly cleaning away dust and filth, had taken place throughout the entire family.
The sight of spies who had been hiding there dying like literal rats.
And the purple-eyed man commanding it all from the front.
Beneath the eyes of the young man in butler’s attire, whose youthful face made him seem not yet an adult, dark shadows hung heavily.
With an utterly exhausted face, he cut down fleeing spies with the sword in his hand, beat them to death with his fists, and trampled them underfoot.
He looked like an ill-tempered beast of prey tearing apart everything in sight.
“Ah, you were here too, weren’t you?”
“?!”
Though he had left no traces or clues whatsoever, the boy somehow pointed him out precisely.
“Stay right there. I’ll catch you now and tear you into a star shape. Then I’ll look at that star and sleep like a baby tonight.”
“A growing young boy needs proper sleep, but since you interfered with that boy’s slumber, you’re no different from a vicious child abuser. So you’ll have nothing to complain about even if I beat you to death right now, will you?”
“H-Hiiik!”
When those purple eyes, thickly shadowed beneath, pursued him, he fled with every ounce of strength he had.
Even thinking back on it now, he had no idea how he had managed to escape back then.
Driven solely by the thought that he had to get as far away from that monster’s den as possible, he had fled without eating, drinking, or sleeping, and he had survived.
But the memory of that day five years ago remained a tremendous trauma to him even now.
“D-Deputy Head Butler Mel…?”
The personal butler who had always stayed by the side of Siseune, the Sword Duke’s daughter.
Despite his young age, he held the incredible position of deputy head butler of a ducal household.
And he was another beast of prey—no, a monster—lurking within the den of beasts known as House Seronis.
“So it was you… Sir Hansen? It has been five years, hasn’t it? Ah, you’re no longer a knight now, so I suppose there’s no need for the ‘sir.’”
Mel recognized the man before him as someone he had met before.
A Follower of the Abyss named Hansen, who had long hidden within the Black Lion Knights and worked as a spy.
Originally, his role had been to sow discord between the Hero Azelan and House Seronis, making them turn against each other.
‘Of course, at this point in the story, the Hero simply thought he was a knight of House Seronis who had come to avenge Siseune in her stead after I humiliated her.’
Because Mel had known the plot of that romance-fantasy story in advance, he had made the first move, but Hansen was still alive here.
‘I couldn’t pursue him any further after he was buried under the debris of the burning building, and I thought even his corpse had burned away. So he survived?’
In the romance-fantasy novel, Hansen had at least been described as young and fairly handsome, but his current appearance was hideous.
With burn scars covering his entire face, Mel had almost failed to recognize him at first, but after hearing Hansen mention his name and his former position, he realized the man was Hansen.
“It’s been a while since that grand cleaning. I was sure I had disinfected all of you, but to think none other than you remained.”
He might not have known about the others, but this was the one man Mel had wanted to deal with personally, yet somehow he had survived.
It felt as if the universe itself had helped him.
Of course, at the time, Mel had stayed awake for two whole weeks and had even been taking care of Siseune in the midst of it, so his mind and body had not been in any normal state.
But this was clearly a blunder.
“W-Why are you here…?! D-Did the Sword Duke send you?”
‘Looks like he doesn’t know I quit being the family’s butler. Well, I suppose the followers wouldn’t have dared come near after that.’
It was at that moment.
“!?”
Claaang!
Hansen suddenly charged in and swung his sword at Mel.
It was an unexpected ambush, but the result was far from impressive.
It failed to cut Mel down and only forced him to retreat a short distance.
Crack!
At that moment, a large fissure ran through the sword in Mel’s hand.
‘Quite fast and heavy.’
If this had followed the original story of that romance-fantasy novel, Hansen would already have spent several years as a member of the Black Lion Knights, making him a skilled knight capable of using their techniques.
But Mel had driven Hansen out five years ago.
He had only just joined the Black Lion Knights as a new recruit then.
That meant he did not possess the Black Lion Knights’ techniques.
And yet the reason Mel had been pushed back for an instant was…
‘Abnormal muscle strength.’
An ordinary steel sword without even mana wrapped around it.
Realizing that Hansen intended to cut him down along with his sword using pure physical strength, Mel stepped back and let the impact flow away.
Pure strength, without a shred of technique.
Even so, the sword in Mel’s hand had fulfilled its purpose in a single exchange.
“Heh heh heh!”
Seeing that, Hansen let out a twisted laugh.
“As expected, the power of the Abyss is incredible!”
Hansen could not hide his joy when he saw that boy, who had planted trauma in him five years ago—and who had now grown into a young man—retreat from a single attack of his.
“To think even that brat from back then can’t do anything before this power! Khahahaha! The fear that tormented me for five years disappears this very moment!”
The incident at the Seronis mansion, which still sometimes gave him nightmares.
And after confirming that the one responsible for those nightmares had now been pushed back by him, Hansen burst into mad laughter.
“Are you confused, Deputy Head Butler? By the fact that the man who fled so pathetically back then has suddenly become far stronger than you?”
“……”
“This is the grace of the Abyss. Back then, five years ago, I had yet to receive its grace, so I fled. But now it’s different. You, who beat us to death like rats back then, are the one destined to die by my hand!”
“So you call it grace when you inject your body with alien mana extracted from the Abyss?”
“?!”
The reason the Followers of the Abyss existed.
It was because of the alien mana said to have originated from the evil god.
Just as monsters became abnormally strong and savage when they inhaled the mana of the Abyss, the same was true for humans.
“It might seem nice for the moment, but if you keep accepting such dangerous, alien power, the end is truly horrific. Surely you didn’t just gobble it up without knowing that. No, even if you didn’t know, you should at least have suspected something that granted such great power so easily…”
As a reincarnator, Mel knew the true nature of the grace of the Abyss from the setting of this romance-fantasy novel.
The Abyss, the passage to this world that the evil god was said to have crawled out of, existed beneath Sigrien Academy.
Consuming mana that was utterly different from the mana of this world was what they called the grace of the Abyss.
Immense mana, and the abnormal physical abilities enhanced by it.
If one looked only at that much, it might seem quite convenient, but common sense dictated that there was no way such a thing would come without side effects.
“The more you use that mana, the more dependent on it you become, and the more often and the more intensely you crave it. But without the initial sense of satisfaction, you’ll simply keep craving it like a starving ghost, lose your reason, and eventually become a monster.”
“Nonsense! The power of god is omnipotent!”
Hansen denied Mel’s words.
Of course, Mel had no intention of going out of his way to turn Hansen’s denial into acceptance.
Craving easy power without making any real effort, only to bring about one’s own destruction, was a common cliché found anywhere, in any age or land.
Mel had no desire to waste time persuading an imbecile who did not even understand that.
“If you were going to die off on your own, that would be one thing, but you’ll cause trouble everywhere until the very end. Like filth.
“So it’s only proper to discover you early and immediately exterminate you before the situation grows worse.
“Although I’ve laid off for the past few years, I think I’ll be able to regain my old touch soon enough.”
At Mel’s words treating him like filth, veins bulged on Hansen’s forehead.
“Hmph! What laughable bluffing…! What can you possibly do?”
Hansen shouted that and charged at Mel.
Mana mixed with the power of the Abyss granted far more explosive strength than ordinary mana.
And on top of that, his physical abilities had likewise been amplified.
Even a knight who had reached the level of an upper Sword Expert, the same level as himself, would absolutely be unable to block this.
What could that deputy head butler possibly do with a sword that was on the verge of breaking?
Craaaack!
Sure enough, the sword in Mel’s hand shattered in an instant as soon as it clashed with Hansen’s blade.
Thinking that all he had to do was cut in two the fear that had tormented him for five years, along with that sword, Hansen put even more strength into the hand swinging his blade.
Hansen’s sword did not merely break Mel’s sword; it even caved in the stone floor, clearly displaying its destructive power.
“How simple.”
Mel had lost his sword—no, to be precise, he had deliberately abandoned it.
The sword he had been holding was nothing more than bait to lure Hansen into attacking.
He had predicted that a man drunk on his own power would surely try to cut him down along with the sword, and that prediction had landed beautifully.
Hansen’s attack had come down in a huge swing, without any notable technique.
It was a powerful strike capable of cutting a person in two along with his sword.
But if it missed, all that remained was an enormous opening.
Mel turned his body, adding the centrifugal force generated by that motion, and swung his leg toward Hansen’s face.
Thud!
“Kraaaagh!”
The attack, infused with mana through his body, was sharp and heavy, inflicting pain.
Mel’s spinning back kick struck Hansen between the brows and stole his sight for an instant.
For an ordinary person, it would have been an attack that shattered the skull and killed them.
However.
“Kraaaagh!”
Hansen, whose body had been strengthened by the mana of the Abyss, did not even faint and was only briefly stiffened.
In any case, the man had no weapon. Even if he infused them with mana, mere punches and kicks could not kill him.
By the time Hansen had judged that much, his vision quickly returned.
And what entered Hansen’s eyes as he regained his sight was…
Mel, gripping a silver-white sword that had flown through the air.
The silver-white sword that Azelan, lying collapsed over there, had used.
And…
Flaaaash!
And the vivid violet aura enveloping that blade.
Recalling that aura, which was generally blue, took on a unique color, and that the clearer and deeper the color, the higher the realm it indicated, Hansen murmured without realizing it.
“Sword Mas…!”
His words could not continue to the end.
“Biting Gale Flash.”
A violet biting gale, like the scythe of a god of death, split Hansen’s body, which had begun to mutate, together with his sword.