"Cough, kehuk……!"
The academy’s highest-grade VIP dormitory.
The moment the door closed and I was alone, I grabbed the sink and vomited bright red blood.
[Warning! Vitality has fallen below 5%!]
[System penalty due to excessive performance as the “Dark Lord” is being calculated.]
[Status abnormalities: extreme mana depletion, full-body muscle pain, severe anemia]
"Insane…… One bit of acting and it nearly kills me……."
Roughly wiping the blood from the corner of my mouth, I staggered toward the bed, practically crawling.
I didn’t even remember how I’d managed to get out after causing that whole mess in the underground labyrinth.
It had been fine up until I sat there posing like some cool bastard on that musty bone throne and sent my subordinates away, but right after that, the tension drained out of me and I literally ended up on the verge of fainting.
All the way back to the dormitory, escorted under the guise of being supported by the heroines, I had to grit my teeth and struggle not to let out a single groan.
Because if I collapsed there going, “Oh no, I’m dying,” the image of an “unapproachable dark mastermind” I’d so painstakingly built up would shatter into pieces.
Thud—.
Collapsing face-first onto the bed, I stared blankly up at the ceiling.
"Still…… I survived."
In the end, Lumen was safe, the black mages who’d set the trap had run away on their own, and I had preserved my life without severely twisting the course of the original story.
I had gotten a little tired, but if I rested properly for a few days, even this sunfish-like body of mine would somehow recover.
Just as I was turning that positive circuit in my head and sinking into the swamp of sleep—
Bang—!
"Young Master Kailan!! Are you unharmed!!"
"Kailan……! Your body, how is your body?"
"Hmph, you look terrible. Move aside. I will examine him first."
The door flew open as if it were about to break, and the three uninvited guests who had come to disturb my sweet sleep stormed in like a tempest.
Ellara, unable to even sheathe her blue sword aura; Sylvia, with tears hanging at the corners of her eyes; and Princess Aurelia, who had even brought along an imperial exclusive healer.
"……Do you people not know what knocking is?"
When I barely managed to speak in a cracked voice, Ellara stomped over and knelt on one knee beside my bed.
Her gaze burned like that of a fanatic looking up at a holy icon.
"How could I dare delay my lord’s noble rest with something as trivial as knocking! You must have suffered grave damage to your august body while suppressing the demonic energy of all those black mages underground by yourself!
I shall immediately infuse my aura and open your blocked meridians!"
"Hey, wait, Ellara! Don’t recklessly put sword energy into my body, you crazy……!"
Despite my urgent attempt to stop her, Ellara had already gripped one of my legs tightly and begun pouring in her scorching aura.
As her fierce energy surged into my stiffened muscles, a strange pain alternated between the sensation of fatigue washing away and the feeling of being burned alive.
"Ellara, move! What if that brute-force sword energy damages Kailan’s delicate mana circuits!"
Sylvia shoved Ellara aside and burrowed in toward my upper body.
With a tearful expression, she clasped my cold hand between her fingers, then began sending her cool, refreshing frost mana toward my heart.
"Ahh, Kailan……. How much it must have hurt. To think you sat on that disgusting Demon King’s throne, enduring this terrible mana backlash inside to protect us. I’ll cool it all down for you."
‘No, I only sat there because my leg cramped…… And it’s even colder now because you’re putting cold stuff into me?!’
I screamed inwardly, but I didn’t even have the strength to say it out loud. As Ellara’s hot aura and Sylvia’s cold chill swirled inside my body as if they were dancing taijiquan, cold sweat poured down like rain.
Princess Aurelia, who had been looking down at that maddening scene with her arms crossed, snorted.
"Foolish creatures. Do you think your shallow mana can fill the vessel of a man who rules the abyss?"
Aurelia strode up onto the bed, then settled herself as if climbing right onto my chest.
The most dizzying, dangerous distance. Her enchanting red eyes filled my vision.
"Hey, Aurelia…… What is a member of the imperial family doing in someone else’s bed without permission……."
"Shh. Shut your mouth, you arrogant mastermind. You carried yourself quite like a king underground. Enough to make even my heart tremble."
She smiled languidly and placed her palm directly above my heart.
In that instant, the heavy and noble pure-white mana unique to the imperial family began explosively seeping through my blood vessels.
"Kgh……!"
Ellara’s heat, Sylvia’s cold, and Aurelia’s massive mana collided, and miraculously, they began to restore the ruined balance of my body.
It was painful, but at the same time, I could feel my vitality, which had hit rock bottom, recovering at a terrifying speed.
[Vitality is recovering. 15%… 30%… 50%!]
[Three extreme forms of mana have fused, unlocking the hidden trait “Mana Receptor”!]
‘……Huh?’
Some unexpected stat had been unlocked.
But the situation unfolding behind it was practically comedy.
Using my body as a medium, the three women were engaged in a terrifying battle of wills.
"Your Highness. Even so, I believe climbing onto the bed crosses a line. Please get down."
"Hmph. Is a mere count’s young lady objecting to an imperial prescription? If you have a problem with it, you can climb up too."
"Both of you, be quiet! Kailan is suffering!"
The three women bickered atop my body, pushing away one another’s mana.
The room was dazzling with mana of different colors, and in the middle of that vortex of mana, I was being wrung out like laundry.
‘Please…… Just let me sleep, you fanatics…….’
In the end, unable to overcome my fatigue, I slowly closed my eyes.
At the same time.
The First Training Ground on the outskirts of the academy.
"Kraaaaaaah—!!"
With a rough roar, red sword energy split the air.
The massive boulder in the training ground shattered into dozens of pieces as if it were tofu being sliced, but the face of the man who had swung the sword was filled only with deep despair.
The protagonist of the original story, Lumen.
His palms had already burst open and were covered in blood, while his entire body was a mess of cold sweat and dirt.
"Not enough…… With this pathetic level of strength, I can’t even touch a single hair on that monster……!"
The scene Lumen had witnessed earlier in the underground labyrinth was seared into his mind like an indelible brand.
Kailan, who had made dozens of black mages tremble with a single word.
Those languid and arrogant eyes looking down at him from atop that hideous throne made of bone and flesh, calling him a “toy.”
‘Kailan von Cliff……. He could have killed me from the beginning, and yet he kept me alive for his own amusement.’
Humiliation and helplessness tore Lumen’s heart apart.
He realized to his bones just how much of a frog in a well he had been. Top of the year? Hero of Light? Before that absolute Lord of Darkness, those were nothing but childish games.
"I must become stronger. Until I can sever that arrogant demon’s leash……!"
From the tips of Lumen’s red hair, a vivid and alien golden aura that had never appeared before began to rise, crackling with sparks.
It was the “Sprout of the Transcendent,” which should only have awakened in the latter half of the original story.
The immense fear Kailan had unintentionally planted had, paradoxically, accelerated the hero’s growth to a maddening degree.
And the next morning.
The headmaster’s office, on the top floor of the academy’s main building.
"……So you are certain that the ‘Black Dawn’ is behind Cadet Kailan von Cliff?"
Ignis, the great mage and headmaster of the academy, spoke gravely as he stroked his beard.
Before him, the leader of the imperial shadow corps dispatched by the palace was kneeling.
"It is certain. As a result of analyzing the traces of demonic energy left on the throne discovered in the underground dungeon…… it was not a one-time trap.
It was an absolute seat of power, meticulously carved over several months solely to welcome ‘one single lord.’"
Cold sweat rolled down the forehead of the shadow corps leader.
"According to the report, when Young Master Kailan sat upon that throne and made a single gesture, dozens of black mages vanished like smoke.
He is not a simple mastermind. He may be the one who controls all the darkness rooted beneath the empire…… the ‘Lord of the Abyss.’"
The headmaster’s eyes flashed sharply.
"The good-for-nothing of the Duchy of Cliff was, in truth, building a kingdom of darkness……. What did His Majesty the Emperor say?"
"His imperial command is to avoid all-out war."
"Oh?"
"By making use of the fact that he has deep relationships with Lady Ellara, Lady Sylvia, and Her Highness Princess Aurelia…… the order is to bind that monster to the ‘camp of light’ as much as possible."
At that moment.
Without even dreaming that he had been officially reported to the empire as a “cosmic horror-class mastermind whom even the emperor feared to touch”—
"……Hey."
I let out a deep sigh as I looked at Sylvia and Ellara, who had each hugged one of my arms and were sleeping soundly, and Aurelia, who was dozing with her arms crossed at the foot of the bed.
‘My arms are going numb. Seriously.’
Hearing my low grumbling in her sleep, Sylvia unconsciously rubbed her face deeper against my arm and murmured.
"Mmm…… Kailan……. I’ll protect you. Don’t hurt alone in the darkness……."
The academy life of a terminally ill villain was, somehow, drifting billions of light-years farther away from peace with each passing day.