No Dark Secrets In This Book

Episode 3

‘Da, damn it. Why is he so handsome.’

My heart was beating like crazy.  

When I faced a handsome person, a radar that shoots out electricity would ring sharply, making my head feel like it’s splitting, and all the fine hairs on the back of my neck would stand up. 

The protagonist had roughly half of his black hair slicked back like he just ran his hand through it, the other half flowing down his impressive forehead. His eyebrows, the same color as his hair, were thick and dark, and the bridge of his nose continuing next to them was amazingly straight, with deep-set eyes that made dark shadows painted under his blue eyes.  

Below his wide and firm shoulders, muscles bulged, connecting to thick arms and a waist that looked relatively slender thanks to his superb born physique. His whole body was splendid. It was like looking at a statue sharply sculpted out of marble.

It was a face and body that couldn’t be more perfect.

Would it be a mistake to glimpse a strangely gloomy, exhausted, and unpleasant air from such a man who was the embodiment of testosterone itself? He had his eyebrows raised and his lips sealed in a straight line, and his eyes were a blue color with a strange light like will-o’-the-wisp described in the novel.

A tension rushed over me as if I had a tiger in front of me. Something seemed to have plunged him into a passionate rage like a raging wave. 

But at that moment when I closed my eyes for a second and opened them.

“……?”

There was no one in the place where the late winter wind was blowing.

If it weren’t for the distinct throbbing beating my heart, I would have suspected I had seen a hallucination to the point where I doubted it.

‘Wha, what, why are you leaving so quickly.’

Show me your face a little more.

I should have stared closely, as if licking every inch, and imprinted each and every element of his features in my mind, but I was too startled to do so. A terrible sense of defeat hit my chest.  

It was a shame. It was enough to drive me crazy. Even though I knew we would be attending the same academy, it was regrettable that I couldn’t focus more and see him properly. He was a handsome man that made me feel that way.

‘If we become roommates, it would be fucking awesome, crazy…..’

Of course, the protagonist belongs to the Sect and I am from a great family. They are factions known for their bad relationship, so unless we make a special request, they will naturally separate us.

That’s the implicit rule of this world setting. 

And causing Cassice Demillang’s character collapse is suicidal. Damn it, character destruction is not allowed. But if we could just be roommates……

‘It would be fucking amazing….’

Unlike the sound of extremely vulgar inner thoughts, the bright purple eyes were showing off their beautiful appearance as if wet with sadness.

Fortunately, at least the outside was neat.

Anyway, thanks to leaving early, I was able to go watch the entrance exam without being late, while half-dazed and thoroughly recalling the whole body of the protagonist from head to toe in my mind.

According to the original work, the entrance exam of Areah Academy is conducted through duels.  

No matter what, professors don’t appear in the entrance exam, but how well you display your skills in a 1-on-1 duel with an assistant professor or associate professor determines your pass or fail.

And I, Cassice Demillang, was someone who had already confirmed my admission early on thanks to connections and abilities. 

There was only one thing that meant.

Unlike the other prospective students struggling below, I was ‘spectating’ hundreds of dueling arenas with the professors from the upper floor.

‘The life of a freeloader is the best!’

I was a bit worried that the social etiquette of this world might be different from what I knew, but fortunately, that wasn’t the case. It was to the extent that I, the youngest son of a chaebol family, and I, who had thoroughly read the original work, could sufficiently handle it.  

While having a pleasant time chatting with the professors like that,

“That person over there……”

Suddenly, the hall began to buzz.

I looked down with a strange premonition. And I gasped.

As expected, the protagonist was standing there.  

“……”

But there was also something unexpected.

With his wet hair adding a decadent beauty, the protagonist’s eyes, burning with a blue will-o’-the-wisp light, seemed to be looking at me.

As if he was looking at me.

‘What is it? Is he trying to pick a fight?’

…… Ah, oh no. Did I go too far?

But it was such a persistent gaze that it made me mistakenly think that way. Forgetting the fact that I shouldn’t cause character destruction, I was unwittingly continuing to make eye contact with him, when, 

Thanks to the voice I heard next to me, I barely came to my senses.

“That person received the alias of ‘Guardian’…?”

“I heard he inherited all the secret martial arts of the Hanra Faction.”

“Rumor has it he defeated the Prince of Arabia……”

They spoke as if they were anticipating it, then suddenly, as if remembering Cassice’s presence sitting next to them, they looked at me.

I just smiled silently, but,

“…… Ah, of course, it is not comparable to the prestige of the great families.”

“Yes, what an obvious thing to say.”

“……”

No, you idiots. It is comparable. The protagonist is a fucking monster who tramples all over the great families.

Of course, Cassice Demillang does fiercely smack the back of the protagonist’s head. Although I couldn’t see the rest of the story… Well, I guess the protagonist managed to win somehow.  

Right?

‘There’s no way a novel with a protagonist’s defeat + destruction ending would exist in the world.’

At that time, the hall was in an uproar again. To be precise, the uproar that gradually grew like a wave was enough to completely shake the world, and at the end of it was Ryuseong. There was the tip of the sword Ryuseong stretched out.

And the person the tip of the sword was pointing at was Cassice Demillang……

…… Huh?  

“What did you say, applicant number 019284?”

“I want Cassice Demillang as my duel opponent.”

Wha, what……? 

I’m a fucking low-level though……?

‘Isn’t this the protagonist’s character destruction?’

Why are you suddenly wrecking the development……?!  

***

Let’s take a moment here. Let’s look back at the past.

In the end, Cassice Demillang was victorious.

The world was destroyed.

And Ryuseong regressed. 

―From Cassice Demillang and the destruction of the world.

There was a lot to say. But putting everything aside, if we recall just one important thing,

Ryuseong came here to kill Cassice Demillang.

Cassice Demillang did not like Ryuseong. Ryuseong also despised and loathed Cassice Demillang’s personality.  

Nevertheless, they were the type who could somehow become comrades. At least the past Ryuseong thought so. That’s why the fact that Cassice Demillang was behind the world’s destruction was so deeply,

Terrible.

…… The only fortunate thing is that he regressed to a point 5 years before he began to plot the world’s destruction.

In the future, not in this timeline, Ryuseong crazily unleashed his energy to track down the one who would destroy the world in order to execute him.

Cassice Demillang. Damn Cassice.

He might be only twenty-one and not yet a monster, but in order to protect the world, he had to crush him from the root.

With that resolve to kill him, the Cassice he faced was,

“Before you go,”

“Ye, yes?”

“You do this.”  

Despite being a germaphobe, he was crouching on the dirty street, crumbling a sweet thing he didn’t even like.

Just to give candy to a young child.

So Ryuseong, looking at the one who hadn’t yet stained his hands with sin. Looking at the fetus of a monster whose growth was unknown.  

But looking at what might be human.

“……”

Had to swallow an emotion he couldn’t even name.

…… Although he never spoke it out loud, Ryuseong had figured out what kind of person Cassice was for a long time.

Because he thought of him as a being who could have become himself.

Because he thought that if he hadn’t been accepted into the Hanra Faction, he might have ended up like that. 

In short, because he considered him his kin, he found him even more repulsive in terms of personality. It was an emotion close to self-loathing. Therefore, when Cassice destroyed the world, Ryuseong simply confirmed that the bottom of his own self was so terrible.

But now, that guy was giving out candy to a little kid and,

“Thank you……! Tha, thank you, mister! I’ll definitely meet you again! I’ll… repay you!”

“I don’t need repayment. I have a lot of money, you know.”

He was brightly smiling.

“……”

To say it again, Ryuseong knew what kind of person Cassice was. He was someone who couldn’t tolerate a single doubt directed at him.

So he would most brutally crush and destroy the first person who cast a doubtful gaze at him, then display them in all directions. He would dissect them, put them in front of people’s eyes, and cunningly instigate fear, saying this is what happens to everyone who touches me.

That was the reason they came to oppose each other from the first moment they met at the academy. In Ryuseong’s eyes, it was clear that Cassice was trying to single out and crush someone to imprint his superiority.

Because it seemed like that’s what he would have done if he hadn’t changed, because it made him wonder if his own appearance would have been so ridiculous if he hadn’t met the Sect. 

Even though he himself found it cliché, he still spit out the right argument while scratching his insides. He put a dent in the superiority Cassice was trying to establish.

‘Is that why I couldn’t see that side of him?’

Was it because they were at odds from the beginning that he never witnessed it?

Perhaps Ryuseong had been turning a blind eye to the fact that Cassice could also be human.

Because the shadow left by his own remnants was long……

‘Damn it.’

So at the first moment the two intertwined,

Ryuseong turned around with gloomy eyes. 

It was an escape.

Running away from him, dashing to the academy, burying his head under the faucet and pouring cold water, only then did his mind coolly turn. The calculation of what kind of catastrophe the Hanra Faction would reach with the Demillang family if he killed Cassice was belatedly established.

Ryuseong had to protect the world.  

But at the same time, Ryuseong didn’t want to break the family who accepted him as human. He had no confidence that he wouldn’t break after seeing those who kept him from breaking like Cassice getting destroyed.

He had impulsively reached Cassice, but both emotionally and rationally, he had only reached the conclusion that he couldn’t kill him now.  

Still, he couldn’t leave alone the one who would destroy the world.

―Guardian.  

That was the alias given to Ryuseong from birth, and because he had already seen that alias would later become the ‘Guardian of the World’.

Ryuseong, dripping water from his jet-black hair, decided.

This was the result.

Just one more time.

That you can become a different person than then.

If you show hope.

I might want to let you live.

‘So, let’s determine it here.’ 

And Cassice Demillang, who stood at sword point, showed.

How he could live.

“My, my, to think an applicant who hasn’t even become a student yet so eloquently recites the desire to perfectly violate the academy’s rules?”

If it were the Cassice Ryuseong knew, he would have willingly come down to trample the one who not only pointed a sword at him but even threw a provocation. Thinking let’s crush the other person’s arms and legs so they can never recover.

But perhaps because their first encounter was different,

Cassice, who had not become his nemesis, was smiling with his eyes curved without being shaken at all.  

Leisurely and flexibly.

“Unfortunately, you haven’t been able to escape being a frog in a well. Is this what it’s like to pay the price of fame?”

“Are you afraid?”

“Stop with the childish talk, Mr. Ryuseong. No matter how much you force it, the right to change the rules is not yours. If you want to enter Areah, you must follow Areah’s rules, so with what arrogance does a disciple of the Hanra Faction open his mouth?”

“……”

“Oh, assistant professor, please do not feel displeasure towards me. This is entirely the applicant’s own reckless delusion, so no one who wants to distinguish between a student and one who is not will dare to stand in your place.”

Do you know that denying absurdity seems several times more noble than before? 

That it would have helped establish your position more than rolling on the bottom with me.

If I could have told you at some point, would such a thing not have happened?

Ryuseong suddenly became lost in thought.

Could the world have avoided destruction?

Were you someone who could change?

***

And right at that moment,

Inside Cassice Demillang’s head,

‘What the fuck? For now, I tried running my mouth but is this a crisis I can avoid? Why the hell is the development like this? Don’t tell me that bastard is venting his anger on me because he wanted to eat candy but couldn’t?!’

He was just having these fucking thoughts.