Magic Academy's Bastard Instructor - Chapter 246

Capítulo 246: Youthful Beautiful [1]

“Ugh…”

Irene fluttered her eyes open. The damp smell of concrete entered her nose at once. Water dripped from somewhere in the corner, with each drop echoing through the cramped darkness.

She pushed herself up, disoriented for a moment, until she remembered where she was.

“Vanitas…!”

The rage in her chest rose so quickly it nearly choked her. She was imprisoned beneath the Imperial Palace, her own childhood home.

Cold iron bit into her wrists when she moved. She tugged once, twice, only to feel the reinforced chains refuse to budge.

She clenched her jaw.

It had only been four days since she was dragged into this place to suffer at the hands of Vanitas, the man she once trusted. Every time she woke up in this hellhole, the same disorientation struck her, the same nauseating wave that made her head spin.

It was a trauma she relived every morning consecutively.

All at once, the stench of her own vomit from yesterday seeped back into her nose. The moment it hit her, her stomach lurched, and she doubled over, retching again.

“Blergh…!”

When she finished, she wiped her lips with her free hand, the only one left unbound so she could at least feed herself. The aftertaste of vomit still lingered on her tongue.

“Vanitas!”

Every day, without fail, she called for Vanitas every hour, yet the man had never once appeared. The only ones who answered were the guards stationed outside her cell, indulging her cries with the kind of amusement that made her skin crawl.

She was the only prisoner here. That fact alone made the humiliation unbearable. No, it was practically degradation in its purest form. A princess of the Empire, reduced to an exhibit in a filthy underground cage.

If the world had been right, the guards should have been the ones kneeling before her. But instead, they were the ones in control.

And she was the one trapped behind iron bars.

——How have you been, Irene?

She looked up. Standing just beyond the bars was a single man, his golden-blonde hair catching the torchlight. It was the color she never inherited. Instead of their father’s bright gold, she had received a strange blend of her father’s blond, mixed with her mother’s pink, settling into a muted red.

His eyes, however, were deep red, just like their father’s, staring down at her. Irene met his gaze, her own golden eyes narrowing.

It was him. Franz Barielle Aetherion, her older brother. The former Crown Prince of Aetherion, now Emperor. The man who once carried her on his back when she was small. The man who had pushed her out of Aetherion and ruined her life.

“Franz… you motherfucker!” Irene spat. “When I get out of here, I swear I’ll kill both you and Vanitas!”

Yet her older brother only regarded her with a cold smile. Irene’s threats did not shake him. They merely filled the hollow silence between them as he watched his sister struggle against her bindings with a fury that bordered on madness.

For Irene, it was a declaration born from pain and the last shred of her pride. For Franz, it was nothing more than the outburst of a caged animal.

Franz gave a brief look toward the guard. Without a word, the guard unlocked the cell, stepping aside as Franz crossed the threshold. The heavy door opened. Irene glared up at him.

“Irene, do you remember the north?”

“Get me out of here, you piece of shit!”

“The northern plains,” Franz continued. “Where we used to visit every summer to escape the heat with our mother. Grandfather and Grandmother would spoil us the moment we arrived.”

“What? You’re regretting it now?” Irene spat. “It was you, bastard, who suppressed them. You stripped them of their rights and kept them isolated in the north! You and Father, both of you pieces of shit!”

Franz did not react. If anything, the calmness in his eyes only infuriated her further. He stepped deeper into the cell as the guards backed away, leaving the siblings alone in the darkness.

Irene pressed her back against the cold wall, her breathing coming in heavy gasps.

“Don’t you dare pretend you’re reminiscing! Don’t you dare act like we had some happy childhood! Because I didn’t! Because of you, my life was hell!”

“Irene.”

“Fuck you!”

“I never hated you.”

“Well, I did! So get me out of here before I kill you myself!”

“Are you aware of our mother’s sins?”

For a moment, Irene’s boiling rage was replaced by an onset of confusion.

“Who do you think is the murderer with the most confirmed serial killings?” Franz asked. “The former Great Power, Mikhail Aubert? The Dark Mage, Chiron? Or the rising star recently, Jack the Ripper?”

“….”

“It’s none of them. It is Julia Barielle. Our mother.”

“You dare disrespect—”

“Because of her,” he continued, “I had to make a decision. I isolated her family from ever finding out. Better to let them believe she had abandoned them than let them bear the truth that their daughter was a monster. Because of her, I could only loathe Astrid for being Mother’s reason to commit what she did. Because of her, I had to silence several fools who tried to use her sins to drag our name through the mud.”

He looked down at her, remembering the blood he had spilled as a boy.

“It was I who erased every researcher. I, who cleaned up every trail. I who made every unpleasant decision when I was barely old enough to be considered a man.”

He crouched, lowering himself to her eye level.

“And you, my dear sister, are hardly sinless.”

“Shut up—”

“That day Alianna died, I blamed you. And I still do.”

“….”

Irene felt the ground tilt. The memory was one she had long forced herself to forget.

“I’ve been telling you for eighteen years,” she said. “I was a child. How would I ever think to kill my own sister-in-law?”

“Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps you didn’t kill her. With your own hands, at least.”

“….”

“My dear sister,” Franz said, “because of you, because of your tongue, they found the opportunity to kill her. The nobles who despised our engagement with Alianna. Those who wanted to hurt me. They moved because you gave them the chance.”

“I. Have. Done. No. Such. Thing!”

“Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?” Franz chuckled, more to himself than ever. “You handpicked the driver they offered you. You followed the route they whispered in your ear. You insisted on the vehicle they provided. Every step you took played into their plan.”

Irene stared at him, her mind fighting against memories she didn’t want to recognize. Being praised. Being flattered. Being used. Being too young to understand that she had been a pawn.

Franz watched her without malice, but without pity either.

“You didn’t wield the knife,” he said. “But you laid the path for it.”

And for the first time since her imprisonment, Irene felt something far more terrifying than rage.

She felt doubt.

“What is coldness and isolation compared to what you’ve done?” Franz continued. “Sending you away was mercy. It was to quench the rage I felt then. Had you stayed in Aetherion, I fear I would have strangled you myself.”

“….”

“And right now. I still feel it. This urge to wrap my hand around your neck, my dear sister.”

“Franz…”

“You lived your life indulged in gossip and noble schemes,” he said. “You acted without thought and believed yourself blameless. But consequences do not vanish because you were too naive to see them. Alianna died because you handed her to the wolves.”

“Stop…”

“Do you hate me now?”

“….”

“You should. You should hate me. It makes what comes next easier—”

———!

A sudden glint cut across Irene’s peripheral vision.

“Ukh…!”

Before she could register anything else, Franz, who had been too immersed in his own words and far too focused on her, suddenly paused as his eyes widened and blood poured from his mouth.

A single blade punched clean through his chest before his body collapsed onto the floor, crimson spreading across the concrete in a slow pool.

Irene stared at the attacker. “Z-Zia?!”

“I’m here, Lady Irene.”

Zia Rain stepped forward, lowering her weapon. “I’m here, Lady Irene.”

It was Irene’s right hand, Zia Rian, soaked in blood yet breathing a sigh of relief.

“I’m here, Lady Irene,” Zia said. “I’m sorry it took so long. It was difficult to blend in with the guards. I had to wait for the right chance. I’m sorry I had to watch you suffer these past few days, but it’s okay now—”

Before she could finish, an unseen force slammed into Zia, hurling her across the cell. As she hit the far wall, her sword rattled out of reach. Zia tried to rise, only to be pinned down by something Irene could not see due to the darkness.

She glanced down at Franz’s body again, and the moment she did, the reality settled in like a tidal wave, realizing that her brother, the source of her all trauma, had died far more anticlimactically than anything she had imagined in her life.

“Zia!”

Two sharp crimson eyes gleamed in the darkness, and from the shadows a figure appeared. Irenecouldn’t make out his face, but the glint of the blade he drove toward Zia was inevitable. Zia had been pinned down by another presence Irene still could not see.

“Lady Irene—”

“Zia!”

Her voice broke, but it was too late. With a single motion, Zia’s body went limp. Irene blinked, her eyes adjusting as the moonlight finally spilled into the cell and revealed the scene more clearly.

What she saw made her entire body freeze.

“F-Franz?!”

Two figures stood before her. The one with the blade dripping red. And the one who had pinned Zia.

Irene stared down, then back up, her mind unable to grasp what she was seeing. She had watched Franz die and had seen the light leave his eyes.

Yet standing there in front of her was undoubtedly Franz. And beside him… another Franz.

It was a scene born out of a nightmare.

Franz craned his neck. “It was only a matter of time before someone made a move. This was all worth it.”

“….”

It was at that moment that Irene realized.

Zia’s death had been in vain.

* * *

“Vanitas… is it not time yet?”

“No.”

“The Saintess… she—”

“She won’t die. They won’t kill her. They still need her body for the Black Dragon summoning ritual. Once they begin, that’s when I’ll take the Pope’s head.”

Soliette gauged him for a moment, then turned her focus back toward the cathedral. They had been waiting for more than ten minutes. It felt more like a hostage standoff than an organized assault.

The clergy, or whatever impostors were masquerading as such, moved back and forth inside the cathedral as though nothing was amiss, while the Great Powers blended into the ruins surrounding the courtyard.

It was then.

———!

A pillar of light burst upward from within the cathedral, swirling so intensely that the air itself seemed to bend around it. The ground trembled under their feet. Dust broke free from the cracked stone.

The clergy outside staggered, unable to process what had just happened. Shock carved deep lines across their faces. Some fell to their knees while others held on to whatever they could reach, staring wide-eyed at the blinding glow spilling outward.

Vanitas rose from where he had been sitting with his gaze fixed on the heart of the cathedral. The light continued to pulse, expanding and contracting like a living thing.

Selena was inside that storm.

Whatever was happening had begun.

“That’s the signal.”

Vanitas nodded once. “It’s starting.”

Just as Vanitas was about to take a step forward, Hughes Bolton turned to him with wide, panicked eyes.

The spirit that connected Hughes and Friedrich, who had discreetly slipped into the cathedral with Selena to ensure her safety and locate the imprisoned Sword Saint, relayed something that made Bolton drop all pride.

“We have a problem.”

Vanitas stopped. “What is it?”

“They were expecting us.”

“Astrea!”

Iridelle’s warning resounded in an instant before a blade sliced forward, aimed to cut them down where they stood.

A barrage of explosions followed immediately after. Iridelle had reacted swiftly and decisively, swirling a barrage of explosions that intercepted the incoming strike and forced the attacker back.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Smoke rolled across the courtyard, swallowing their vision as the Great Powers scattered into formation. The dust parted little by little, and what emerged from the haze made even them pause.

Before them stood colossal statues, shaped like armored paladins. Their blades were enormous, and their stone bodies towered above the cathedral walls. Each step they took fractured the ground with faint tremors.

“Tsk.”

Vanitas clicked his tongue.