"Leiv Fletch is dead," Prince Adrien said as he walked around the room.

I had discharged myself from the House of Healing, but before I could leave the royal palace, Adrien's personal guard had ambushed me and 'invited' me to a reunion with the prince. The dark circles around his eyes and his displeased expression were enough for me to get an idea of the situation.

"Leiv Fletch is dead," he said again, rolling up his sleeves, revealing tendrils of faint black corruption down to his elbow, before rummaging through a drawer in his desk.

Prince Adrien's bedroom had been turned into a small library. There were piles of books wherever one gazed. Even his desk was covered in rolls of parchment and loose sheets. Considering the titles of the books, he had been digging into the story of Runeweavers and the research of System scholars.

Our connection to the purple potions was gone.

"When?" I asked.

"We found him the day after the explosion."

"So he was one of them…"

"What are you talking about? And didn't I tell you to wait?"

The prince looked at me like he wanted to slap me. I started telling him about the night of the explosion before he could act on his desires. The Red crystals stored at the Zealot Cloister, the Red Shrine, the ritual, and the corruption coming out from the cultists' bodies. Prince Adrien listened in silence, nodding from time to time. Despite the multiple sheets of paper on his desk, he didn't take a single note. It was better that way. Some things were better not to be recorded.

"Leiv Fletch moved to the East Ward from the Cloister, retrieved the Red Shrine at the ruins of the Red Hawk Trading Company, and protected the ritual with a skillset that countered yours," Prince Adrien said, putting the puzzle together. "Then, they blew the thing up before you could get your hands on it… but you were found far from the center of the explosion, weren't you?"

I nodded.

"The Sound Bandit might have carried me away."

"The Sound Bandit isn't real."

"A person in a mask that uses sound to throw people off balance might have dragged me away from ground zero."

"There is no such skill recorded anywhere, you know that, right?" Prince Adrien said.

"I felt it firsthand, twice," I replied. "There is a good chance he was a Zealot as well."

Prince Adrien finally found what he was searching for inside the drawer, a liquor bottle. He poured himself a glass of amber liquid and downed it in a single gulp. The sharp scent of spirits reached my nose as he poured another.

"Rebels, corrupted potions, red crystals…" the Prince muttered to himself. "I presume you know something about the red crystals, Runeweaver?"

I was still getting used to the folkloric connotations of my Class.

Prince Adrien credited me with more knowledge than I truly possessed.

"I'm sure your myths and legends grossly overstated the importance of Runeweavers across history but… I have seen something similar before," I replied, wondering how much more I could tell Prince Adrien.

Zealots hadn't come at me yet, so that was a good sign.

Prince Adrien lowered the glass before it could touch his lips.

"Start speaking, dammit!"

"Less than a week of travel west of Farcrest, there was a walled orc city called Umolo. I stayed there during the Lich's Monster Surge while I was fleeing from Sir Janus. The thing about Umolo is that the city resisted the Monster Surge thanks to the Greyfangs, elite warriors with magical powers," I said.

Prince Adrien sat down.

"If I recall my lessons correctly, Farland Orcs don't use the System," he pointed out.

"That's normally correct. They don't, but they still used powers which vastly surpassed those of a non-System user," I continued. "They wanted Wolf to join them, so of course, I did some digging."

Prince Adrien rolled his eyes.

"They used a System Shrine to perform a ritual to strengthen the Greyfangs. They forced captive orcs into the warrior's rage. Their bodies released huge amounts of magic, getting corrupted in the process, but that magic was transferred into the Greyfangs. I think something similar was happening with the Red Crystal. The cultists seemed to be recharging the Crystal itself."

Prince Adrien closed his eyes, deep in thought.

"What do we make of it?" he finally asked.

I doubted for a moment.

"There is a common factor between Umolo and Cadria. Someone who knows about the System even more than I do," I said, wondering if I was going to regret telling Prince Adrien later. "Samuel Byrne."

It took him a moment to process the name.

"The Grand Archivist of the Arcane Circle?"

"Yes," I said. "He's my countryman, and he is also a Runeweaver."

The glass shattered against the ground.

"When were you planning to tell me this?!" A mask of anger had replaced Prince Adrien's tired expression.

"When it became necessary. It now has," I replied. "Byrne fell from grace with the System because he disagreed with its methods."

"Pretty much like you, Scholar," Prince Adrien pointed out. He rubbed his eyes and clenched his fists repeatedly, trying to control his fury. "Now there are two of them… I might as well ask him for his opinion on the matter! How does he plan to save the kingdom?"

Prince Adrien wasn't having a conversation anymore; he was demanding answers.

"Byrne's solution is to steal Cadria and hide it elsewhere until the Corruption Cycle finishes," I simply said.

This time, my words seemed to bounce against Prince Adrien's skull.

"How…?" he asked, but stopped before he could finish the sentence. "A teleportation circle?"

I nodded.

"That's impossible," he said.

"I think he can. I've seen his blueprints, and it is technically possible. Don't panic yet. I have him under surveillance. The teleportation of such a huge area requires a lot of preparation. He can't just flick his fingers and send us away," I reassured him.

Prince Adrien usually took well to anything I threw his way, but I felt I was reaching his limit.

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"We need to kill him," Prince Adrien said, pulling a new glass from under his desk. "Why haven't you killed him?"

"I was hesitant about doing it because I didn't know how strong he is. Now I know. Think of the biggest monster that had devastated the kingdom in the past century. Byrne is even worse."

I recalled our meeting early that day.

How he had forced me into the magical plane.

How he had fixed my mana pool like it was nothing.

The amount of magical power that surged through his astral body was hard to fathom.

I also learned several new things in a painfully short time. Mana pools weren't just our connection to the System, but a concealment tool to remain hidden from the Big Bad Monsters that inhabited the magical plane. Byrne didn't need one. He was so confident in his powers that he moved freely without fear of encountering one of those ancient beings whose influence could only be compared to the Fountain itself.

"Why did this have to happen during my reign?" Prince Adrien lamented.

"Byrne is still human," I calmly replied. "He can be killed."

I uttered the words in such a dispassionate way that I surprised myself.

Prince Adrien rubbed his temples and muttered something about heresy and killing a Runeweaver.

"Are you certain he's involved with the Red Crystals?" he asked.

"No, I'm not. But I don't want to wait to see the aftermath if I'm right," I shrugged. "I'm sure you understand the feeling."

Prince Adrien nodded slowly.

"I can ask Vedras for a… concoction."

"No. Byrne might be able to detect it better than a Sniffer, or even counter the poison's effect—and that's if he even got around to drinking it. He has to die before he realizes he's been attacked," I replied. "Please contact the Grand Archivist of the Artisans Circle and make him sign every single secrecy hex you can."

I wasn't sure how much control Byrne had over the System, if he had any, but it would be better if we did everything we could to conceal our movements.

"Grand Archivist Jea? Why?" Prince Adrien asked.

"We are not going to kill Byrne with magic, but with physics," I replied, grabbing a piece of paper and using [Magical Ink] to draw a blueprint of the parts I needed.

* * *

Right after my reunion with the prince, I left the royal palace and took a carriage to the East Ward. I was worried about Wren. After the explosion, security must've been tighter than ever. However, Prince Adrien must be a public relations specialist because things had changed since my last visit. People were back on the streets, and the presence of the city guard had been diminished considerably.

Town criers shouted with magically amplified voices from every corner with well-rehearsed speeches about unity and peace, and the new reign of Prince Adrien. The city guards had changed their halberds to shovels and were helping with the cleaning of the rubble. Members of the royal army managed camps and soup kitchens around the disaster area. Still, among the soldiers and helpers, I recognized individuals who were clearly there to spy and sniff.

The destruction was greater than I expected. The explosion had devastated a whole block and damaged the surrounding buildings with a rain of rubble and debris. The subsequent fire destroyed an even greater area. Considering how big the ring of destruction around the epicenter was, the death toll was rather low.

I dismissed the carriage shortly after crossing the inner gate and continued on foot to the spot where the ritual had taken place. The place where the warehouse was had been turned into an esplanade. The area had been flattened out by the explosion, save for a few small piles of debris. Any trace of the ritual or the cultists was gone. No matter how much I examined the place, not even dust remained from the Red Crystal.

I scratched my ear. The tinnitus was still there. I couldn't tell if it was getting better or worse, and it was making me feel uneasy. Closing my eyes, I entered the meditation state and examined my mana pool. The runes on the walls were just as I remembered them. Byrne hadn't bugged or modified them as far as I could tell.

"Did you see that?" I asked.

The System Avatar didn't respond, but I checked for anything strange for the tenth time.

I opened my eyes back to the material world. Past the corner, Fenwick, Cedrinor, and Genivra were shoveling rubble into a handcart. Fenwick and Cedrinor were shirtless. Cedrinor's shirt was tied around his waist, while Fenwick's was nowhere to be found. I hoped it wasn't stolen, but my hopes were low given how skillful Kili's band was.

[Classroom Overlord] showed me that Cedrinor and Genivra had gotten a level up during the selection exam, which meant they had killed someone. I chastised myself for being too absorbed by Byrne and the anti-nobility movement to notice. Death was way more common in Ebros, and the two cadets were from a frontier town like Farcrest. They certainly were used to life and death situations. However, as a teacher, I had to make sure they were okay.

Taking a life wasn't easy.

"Working hard?" I greeted them.

The three stopped shoveling and gave me a solemn greeting. For once, Fenwick had no clever remarks. The surroundings weren't the place for joking.

"Rup is shoveling over there. Why won't you go help her, Fenwick?"

The boy nodded and came down the pile of rubble they were working on.

Cedrinor and Genivra exchanged a glance I couldn't decipher. As far as I knew, they had no detection skills such as [Awareness], but they seemed to understand there was an underlying reason to send Fenwick off.

"How are you two doing?" I asked, sitting on a collapsed beam.

Students seemed to believe that a standing teacher was a serious one.

"Fine? It's hard work, but we can manage. It's not like we haven't shoveled before. I'd be more worried about Yvain and Malkah," Genivra replied.

"I was chosen by the System for brute work, it seems," Cedrinor added, not entirely joking.

Berserker was an almost pure combat Class, after all.

It was impossible to miss the stiffness in their words, but I attributed it to the fact that I was the teacher and they were the students.

"I'll cut to the chase," I said, trying to sound casual yet reliable. "I have a title called [Classroom Overlord] that allows me to see your Class and Level. I know you two got a level from the selection exam… I have an idea of what could've happened, so if it bothers you, I'm always open to talk about it."

Cedrinor and Genivra exchanged a look I could only interpret as relief.

"It wasn't our first time," Genivra finally said. "Trade is a complicated matter between the Vedras and Herran territories due to their border disputes. Bandits and smugglers use Ascombe as a safe way to smuggle. We have had our fair share of raids before coming here… I mean, it was the city guard or the army, and the city guard sounded a lot safer than going into the Farlands."

I nodded. Surviving near the border wasn't a trivial matter.

Cedrinor and Genivra had it similar to the kids at the orphanage.

"Those weren't bandits during the selection exam, though," I pointed out.

"They wanted to steal from us and our companions for their own benefit; they are no different from bandits," Cedrinor pointed out.

I wanted to say no, but Ebrosian Rob continued to grow on me. Second chances were dangerous. As much as I wanted to teach the sensitivities of Earth, part of me warned they might be dangerous for someone in Ebros, where life and death situations were way more common.

"I don't see anything reprehensible in wanting the best for you and your companions," I said, thinking of how much the lives of commoners could change after becoming Imperial Knights. The outcome was obvious. Astur had set up everyone for violence.

Still, there was a moral to take from the situation.

"Do not allow anyone to put you in a position where you might harm another. Don't let anyone turn you into a bandit for another man," I said.

Genivra shrugged.

"It's not like we can control Astur or the nobles."

I couldn't help but smile. Controlling what one could control was a great way of keeping oneself alive. I was going to take those words to heart.

"Not yet, but if you become Imperial Knights, you might," I said, standing up and turning around. "I'm not taking more time from you. Keep up with the good work."

Cedrinor stopped me.

"Are you certain you aren't going to continue as our instructor next year, Mister Clarke?"

"I have to return home, and I have important things to do, Cedrinor, so no, I won't be an instructor of the Imperial Academy next year," I replied.

I had already made the decision to become a full-time Runeweaver with the aim of stopping the corruption cycle. It wasn't something anyone else could do, not even the System Avatar.

"Don't say anything stupid!" Genivra pulled Cedrinor's ear.

I didn't expect her to be so angry.

"I'm not!" he replied. "But I think it would be best for Mister Clarke to remain here until we graduate. Everyone is talking about his place by Prince Adrien's side. Wouldn't it be better politically for you to do so?"

I couldn't help but smile. Every time I changed jobs or my time as a substitute teacher ended, there were kids who came up with every excuse for me to stay. I didn't take Cedrinor as one of them.

"Talindra will take good care of you. She already knows most of my teaching tricks, and I plan to teach her the rest before the end of the year," I said.

"B-but the prince…" Cedrinor stuttered, failing to come up with anything else.

"I'm sure Lord Vedras, Lord Kigria, and Lord Jorn will fill my place," I said, stifling a laugh. "Politics are tiresome, and they are not for me. I'm sorry, but if you wanted a plug into the royal palace, I'm not the man for you. You'll have to show what you are made of for the next two years."

Cedrinor and Genivra exchanged a somber look.

"One last thing," the girl said, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. "The anti-nobility movement contacted me the other day. I was invited to a rally."

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