While Cassian was busy enforcing a mandatory and grueling study session on his juniors much to his own exhaustion—the shadows around his private residence violently twisted.
Damian Reinhardt slipped through the perimeter fence, his body coated in a high-tier stealth spell. His breath was shallow, his heart hammering against his ribs as he clutched the chained, obsidian box containing The Whisperer of the Shadows.
'This is it,' Damian thought, his eyes gleaming with a manic, vengeful fervor.
'The guards are rotated. The monster prince is away. I just need to slide this under his mattress, and the latent shadow mana will do the rest.'
Using a practiced noble pick-lock technique, Damian bypassed the rear window lock and slipped silently into Cassian's dimly lit bedchamber. He let out a low, breathy chuckle, kneeling down beside the plush royal bed frame to slide the silver-chained box into the darkness beneath.
"The craftsmanship of the Reinhardt family's stealth arrays has truly degraded over the past years," a freezing, monstrously deep voice rumbled from the dark corner of the room.
Damian's entire soul violently short-circuited. He froze mid-kneel, his head slowly, stiffly turning toward the shadows near the wardrobe.
And out from the darkness stepped Sir Lucien Arden. He wasn't wearing his ceremonial cloak; he stood in his bare, silver-plated vanguard armor, his ice-blue eyes glowing with a raw, murderous holy light that instantly incinerated Damian's stealth spell. The sheer weight of a Swordmaster's bloodlust crashed into the room, pinning Damian to the floor before he could even draw a breath.
"S-Sir... Sir Lucien..." Damian stammered, his face turning an instant, ghostly shade of white as he dropped the obsidian box. "I... I was merely—"
Lucien didn't let him finish. In a fraction of a millisecond, the Knight Commander closed the distance, his massive, leather-gloved hand clamping around Damian's throat like an iron vise, hoisting the young noble entirely off his feet and slamming him against the stone wall.
"Ugh—!" Damian choked, his legs kicking uselessly in the air as his vision began to blur.
Lucien reached down with his free hand, picking up the chained box. His holy mana instantly flared, burning through the silver chains and popping the latch open. His eyes locked onto the swirling, volatile mass of dark, unholy violet energy resting inside the velvet lining. As a Holy Knight, he recognized its vile nature instantly.
'The Whisperer of the Shadows!?' Lucien thought, his jaw locking with a rage so pure it nearly cracked his own teeth.
'What is such a vile thing doing in the hands of the Duke's third son?'
Lucien looked back at the gasping, suffocating Damian, his expression turning entirely unhinged. The original, chivalrous Knight Commander of the Holy Empire would have arrested the boy and brought him before the High Court. But the current Lucien wasn't solely moving for the church, but for the royal family as well....if he doesn't think things right, this could turn into a political situation for Cassian Valemont against the Duke.
'Wait...why do I care?, if it turns out that way then won't things turn out for the better for me?....the fact that they were going to plant the Whisperer of the shadows in Prince Cassian's room definitely means that the prince truly has darkness inside of him.'
'If I take this boy to the church, Cassian's true nature will be revealed and I would have fulfilled my goal!'
"Go back to your father, little serpent," Lucien whispered, his voice a freezing death sentence as he leaned into Damian's face. He snapped the box shut, shoving it violently into Damian's trembling hands. "And tell Duke Reinhardt... that if a single molecule of shadow residue enters the Prince's residence again, I will not wait for an imperial decree. I will march into your estate and I will paint the walls with the blood of your entire lineage. Do you understand me?"
Lucien released his grip, and Damian collapsed to the floor, gasping for air, clutching the box to his chest in pure, unbridled terror. Without looking back, the young noble scrambled out of the window, fleeing into the night like a scalded dog.
An hour later, Cassian finally returned home from his classes, yawning loudly and loosening his uniform collar. He glanced around his pristine, silent room, completely oblivious to the near-assassination that had just occurred.
"Elias!" Cassian complained, tossing his blazer onto a chair. "Why do my pillows look slightly shifted? Did you change the linen without my permission? You know I hate the smell of the palace lavender detergent!"
Standing outside the window sill, hidden in the branch of a massive oak tree, Lucien watched the prince complain about his pillows, a soft, unbelieving chuckle escaped his lips.
'If he truly knew what nearly happened to him, he wouldn't be complaining right now... arrogant bastard.' Lucien clicked his tongue jumping down from the tree and walks around to use the front door.
'But as for me though...why am I hesitating to suppress him when the truth has become clear about his dark mana?'
"I must be really going crazy."
*****
The following day.
For Cassian to firmly solidify his new ScumbagRehabilitation strategy, he decided to take his methods public. He hijacked the academy's central courtyard, setting up an open-air, improvised seminar right under the massive marble statue of the First Emperor his great ancestor.
"Listen up, you pampered, silver-spoon aristocrats," Cassian announced, lounging lazily in a grand chair at the center of the pavilion, his crimson eyes scanning the crowd of curious nobles who had gathered to watch the spectacle. "Your professors teach you how to fight wars with grand, clean spells and historical formations. That is why you will all die within ten seconds if you ever step into a real shadow trench. Today, we are discussing Remedial Practical Survival."
Cassian spent the next hour utilizing his 50 years of collective past-life mercenary knowledge. He taught them how to use minor, low-tier earth magic to create jagged spikes in dirt roads to cripple enemy mounts; how to mix common wild herbs to create a makeshift, non-magical blinding powder; and how to slice a shadow fiend's secondary tendons to incapacitate it without wasting high-grade mana.
To Cassian, it was basic, practical survival logic from his past lives and his mercenary days. But to the arrogant, traditional nobles of the academy, these brutal, unrefined, and highly efficient methods sounded like a terrifying display of "dark, forbidden arts."
"This is absurd!" a sharp, arrogant voice cut through the courtyard.
Standing at the edge of the pavilion was a high-ranking senior noble from the Crown Prince's faction—Lord Judicata. He strode forward, his face twisted into a smirk of pure disdain. "Your Highness, these methods are entirely classless and barbaric! Slicing tendons? Blinding powder? This is the methodology of a cowardly rat, not a glorious prince of the Valemont line! Are you trying to corrupt the minds of our students with such vile, dishonorable tricks because your own royal magic is too warped to face a foe head-on?"
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. The nobles smirked, waiting for Cassian to explode into a typical, violent royal rage that would prove Julian right.
Cassian merely leaned his head on his fist, letting out a slow, thoroughly bored sigh. He opened his mouth to deliver a lazy, crushing modern insult that would ruin the boy's social standing—
But before a single syllable could escape Cassian's lips, a sudden, heavy, and terrifyingly synchronized rustle echoed across the courtyard.
The entire group of junior prodigies—both commoners and nobles whom Cassian had mentored over the last two days—stood up from their benches in perfect unison. Their faces were entirely devoid of childlike innocence; instead, their expressions were completely hollow, cold, and unhinged.
Leo stepped to the front of the kids, his jaw clenched as he glared at Judicata with a terrifying, mini-tyrant expression. Behind him, the frail commoner girl who had wept over the mana potion took a heavy step forward, her fingers twitching with a sudden, pressurized accumulation of elemental mana.
The twenty junior students formed a literal, terrifying human wall in front of Cassian's lounge chair. Their eyes were locked onto Lord Judicata with a creepy, hyper-loyal, and murderous intensity that made the senior noble instantly freeze, his face turning entirely pale.
"If you insult our Big Brother again," Leo spoke, his voice dripping with a cold, protective malice that mirrored Cassian's default tone perfectly, "—we will ensure your family's knights are permanently banned from our training sectors. Retract your words, Lord Judicata, before we make you do it on your knees."
The junior commoners didn't even speak; they simply cracked their knuckles, their eyes burning with a cult-like devotion to the prince who had given them resources and fixed their forms.
Lord Judicata took three frantic steps back, his sweat dripping onto the cobblestones as he looked at the wall of creepy, hyper-loyal kids ready to tear him apart in broad daylight. "Y-You... you people are insane!" he stammered, turning on his heel and sprinting away from the courtyard in a blind panic.
Cassian sat frozen in his lounge chair, his arm still propped up against his cheek, his crimson eyes staring blankly at the backs of his junior students. His internal monologue had completely, utterly flatlined in profound existential horror.
'Wait a minute...' Cassian's modern soul was violently screaming in pure panic.
'Why on earth do these kids look like a radicalized, hyper-violent cult?! I didn't ask for a private militia! I just wanted to pass the semester, upgrade my reputation to a baseline level of 'not a monster,' and secure an insurance policy! Why am I suddenly looking like a ruthless mafia boss running a junior syndicate?! At this rate, Lucien is definitely going to decapitate me for starting a domestic rebellion!'
Cassian slowly shifted his gaze toward the side of the pavilion, checking to see if Lucien's sword was already drawn.
But Sir Lucien Arden was merely standing there, his arms crossed, a look of profound, deeply satisfied pride shining within his ice-blue eyes as he stared at the loyal children. He looked toward Cassian, giving the prince a slow, solemn, and fiercely supportive nod.
'I must say...you have trained them well, prince of Edrath,' Lucien thought, his heart softening up with admiration.
'A true monarch does not need to speak to silence his critics. Your army is growing... But I hope that you won't use these kids for your vile ambitions.'
Cassian slowly buried his face in his palms, letting out a long, thoroughly miserable groan. 'God help me. This fifteenth timeline is completely broken....Why does it feel like Lucien Arden is getting closer and closer to me?'
'No, he needs to go. He still scares me'
*****