The sharp sting of alcohol and disinfectant pricked my nose.
But over that cold smell, three scents that could never blend together pressed down heavily.
Princess Aurelia’s rich, sensual scent of black roses.
Sylvia’s cool, crystalline scent of the northern eternal snows.
And the scent seeping from Ellara’s armor—the tang of blood and cold metal.
‘……So this is hell.’
It had been a good ten minutes since I regained consciousness. But I couldn’t bring myself to lift my heavy eyelids.
Because the instant those three monsters surrounding my sickbed—the VIP room of the Academy’s special ward—realized I was awake,
I didn’t even want to imagine what insane thing they might do next.
[Status: Maintaining 6% vitality.]
[Warning! Extreme collision of mana and aura detected around the body. Stress levels rising.]
Even the system was screaming at me to save it.
Under the blanket, I didn’t make so much as a breath, maintaining my batlike act of playing dead.
“I have summoned the highest-ranking healing priests affiliated with the imperial family.”
The one who broke the silence of the hospital room was Princess Aurelia, standing at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed.
Her voice was languid, but it was steeped in an arrogance cold enough to chill the bone.
“Whatever curse this mad dog is carrying, the imperial family’s power will suppress it.
After all, one way or another, he is my possession, destined to enter the student council and pant beneath my feet.”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
From the right side of the bed, Sylvia snorted coldly.
“What possession? His fiancée is alive and watching with both eyes wide open. Do you really think I, heir to the Northern Magic Tower, would allow the imperial family’s quack priests to lay a hand on my man’s body without my permission?”
“Do not speak of my lord.”
Ellara, standing on the left side of the bed, growled.
“My lord’s noble curse is not something that can be washed away by the meager miracles of the imperial family or the vulgar magic of the Magic Tower.
I shall personally sever the head of the Duke of Rothschild—Kailan’s birth father—and with his blood, cut off the root of the curse.”
At the three women’s dreadful battle of nerves, the hospital room window began to rattle.
(The three women’s synchronized thoughts)
‘Kailan. You’re carrying far too much.
To think you would hide such terrible pain, even if it meant making yourself the villain hated by us.
But now that I’m by your side, I’ll strip away that arrogant mask of yours and make it so you can only breathe in my arms.’
Please, I’m begging you, don’t forcibly strip off my mask. If it comes off, I’ll seriously die from the system penalty!
Inwardly shedding tears of blood, I lay there completely unable to move.
At this rate, the entire Academy ward was going to be blown away. Just as I was wondering whether I should get up and roar at them—
Click.
The heavy door to the hospital room opened soundlessly, by the tiniest crack.
Taking advantage of the lax security, intoxicated by the killing intent and mana the three women were emitting, someone had stealthily infiltrated the room.
‘Who is it? An assassin?!’
The dark mages beneath the Academy should already have become my lackeys. Was this an assassin sent by the imperial family’s opposition?
“……Found you, root of evil.”
A hushed voice.
The moment I heard that voice, chills shot down my spine.
It was not an assassin’s voice. It was the fresh yet resolute voice of a hero burning with righteousness, determined to save the world.
It was the original protagonist, Lumen!
With his sword drawn, Lumen slipped into the hospital room like a shadow.
Most likely, after the humiliation he suffered yesterday in the plaza and the student council room,
and out of a sense of crisis that he had to eliminate the “mastermind who corrupted even two geniuses and the princess—Kailan” as soon as possible, he had sneaked into the hospital room.
‘No, you lunatic!! You just crawled into the tiger’s den with your own two feet!!’
My eyes still shut, I freaked out internally.
There was no way those three women, top predators of this world, wouldn’t notice Lumen’s presence.
Sure enough.
“How dare you.”
Along with Aurelia’s cold voice, the air in the hospital room suddenly pressed down with the weight of tens of thousands of tons of iron.
“Kuh, hkk……?!”
Lumen, who had been about to undo his stealth magic and approach, was crushed by the overwhelming imperial mana pressure the princess emitted and dropped to his knees on the floor.
“A rat chased out of the student council room dares crawl into my possession’s hospital room?”
Aurelia opened her fan and smiled coldly.
“For the crime of barging into my lord’s chambers with a sword in hand, I shall punish you with dismemberment.”
Ellara drew her longsword, raising a blue sword aura.
“It would be better to make him into an ice sculpture and hang him in the Academy plaza.”
Sylvia also summoned dozens of sharp icicles at her fingertips, aiming them at Lumen’s throat.
“Kh……!”
Spitting blood, Lumen collapsed face-down on the floor and cried out in anguish.
“You pitiful souls who sold yourselves to a demon……! Even if I die here today, I will at least sever Kailan del Rothschild’s wicked life before I go!!”
Squeezing out the last of his strength, Lumen tried to break through the mana pressure directed at him and leap toward my bed.
But Ellara’s longsword was about to fall like lightning and send Lumen’s head flying.
If Lumen died here, the original story would be destroyed, and the system would kill me!
I couldn’t pretend to sleep any longer. I snapped my eyes open and shouted in a cracked voice.
“Stop!!!”
Claaang—
At my thunderous roar that shook the hospital room, Ellara’s sword and Sylvia’s ice spears, which had been moments from touching Lumen’s neck, miraculously stopped.
Breathing roughly, I yanked out the IV line and raised myself from the bed.
My wounds hurt as though they were tearing open, but not a trace of pain showed on my face; it was covered by the perfect, cold “mask of a boss.”
“Kailan! You’re awake?!”
“My lord! You mustn’t strain yourself!”
Sylvia and Ellara hurriedly tried to approach me, but I irritably waved them off.
I roughly swept back my disheveled hair and looked down coldly at Lumen, who had been forced to kneel before my bed.
“Don’t try to swat a fly in my room without my permission. If it smells like blood, I can’t sleep.”
At my supremely arrogant words, Lumen, sprawled on the floor, looked up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“D-Don’t act like a hypocrite, you demon bastard……! Are you pitying me?! Just kill me instead!”
“Pity?”
I slowly got down from the bed and set my bare feet on the cold hospital room floor.
My legs trembled, but I endured through sheer spite and grit, approaching right up to Lumen’s nose. Then I roughly grabbed him by the collar and brought our eyes level.
“What reason would I have to pity a lowly commoner like you?”
I whispered low and chillingly into his ear.
“There is only one reason I’m leaving you alive, Lumen. Because that shallow sense of justice of yours makes excellent ‘entertainment’ for me.
No matter how much you struggle and train, you will never even reach the tips of my feet—I want to watch that despair clearly with my own eyes.”
I released his collar with a smack and threw him to the floor.
“As of now, you are still too insignificant for me to take your head. Crawl away and build your strength.
On the day you become useful enough to relieve my boredom…… I will personally twist that neck of yours and snap it.”
[Status: You have successfully proven the “overwhelming arrogance of a true mastermind”! Penalty waived!]
[The original protagonist “Lumen”’s hostility toward you and desire to grow have increased by 1000%!]
Fuck, if his hostility is up by a thousand percent, isn’t he going to drop a meteor on me the second he sees me later?
I was sobbing inside, but on the outside, I turned with leisure and jerked my chin toward Princess Aurelia.
“Princess. Remove that trash from my room at once.”
“……Khehe.”
Far from getting angry, Aurelia covered her mouth with her fan and let out an enchanting, deep laugh.
(Aurelia’s automatic internal translation)
‘Ahh…… That overwhelming composure of a ruler! To treat even an insect who came to assassinate him as nothing more than a toy, and bestow even greater despair upon him.
And on top of that, to command me so arrogantly with a body on the brink of death? This man truly excites me from head to toe!’
“Very well. If that is your wish.”
Aurelia snapped her fingers. “Knights. Drag that filthy rat out and throw him outside the dormitory.”
Even as the imperial knights seized both his arms and dragged him away, Lumen screamed at me with tears of blood in his eyes.
“Remember this, Kailan del Rothschild! That arrogance of yours will become your grave! I will grow stronger no matter what and return to rip you to shreds!”
Yeah, yeah. Hurry up and get strong so you can take care of the Demon King, please.
Lumen was dragged away, and once again, only I and the three beasts remained in the hospital room.
“You foolish man. Taking on the role of the villain all by yourself again.”
Sylvia, looking upset, wiped the sweat gathered at the corner of my mouth with a towel.
“I know everything. You deliberately let that boy—Lumen—go so you could make him stronger.
So that he could one day become someone capable of standing against the darkness of the imperial family or the Academy, right?
You intend to shoulder every burden and raise that child into a hero…… Did you think I wouldn’t see through that foolish plan of yours?”
“……Huh?”
I stared at Sylvia with a dumbfounded expression. No, that really wasn’t it.
“That is correct.” Ellara, too, nodded with reddened eyes.
“My lord has always taken disgrace upon himself to protect the weakest. That arrogant hero boy could never understand my lord’s profound intentions.”
Even Princess Aurelia stood with her arms crossed, wearing a strange smile.
“Hmph. Well, raising one impudent puppy like that isn’t so bad. But Kailan, in the end, the one holding your leash will be me, Aurelia.”
The three women, each in their own way, were perfectly misconstruing my actions as “noble sacrifice on a cosmic scale.”
I had a premonition that I would never escape this swamp of insane misunderstanding.
Barely supporting myself on a cane, I felt my stamina hit its limit and slowly collapsed back onto the bed.
“Ah, seriously……. Just leave me alone…….”
My pitiful, sincere feelings probably sounded in the ears of those three women like a tearful dying wish: “I’ll shoulder every burden, so the rest of you can rest easy.”
As I lost consciousness, the desperate echoes of the three women crying “Kailan!” “My lord!” rang in my ears.
The Academy ward life of a terminally ill villain.
This place was not a sanatorium, but the worst possible pandemonium, where the wild delusions of the world’s strongest ran rampant.