Meanwhile, seated comfortably on the couch like a spectator watching a tragedy unfold, Rael let out a slow sigh.

'So… she spared him, huh?'

It wasn't the outcome he had hoped for but expectations usually led straight to hell of disappointment, so he hadn't expected much to begin with and it wasn't like being fired was meaningless.

At the very least, it bought him some time.

Still, things were far from over because Azriel had to make it worse.

"Why… why… why…" Azriel muttered, his voice was fractured but almost fanatical. "Why are you doing this? I know you better than anyone… I know everything about you."

The words themselves were ordinary but the effect they had was anything but ordinary.

The temperature in the room seemed to plummet as Morvana's already cold gaze darkened even more as Rael saw a hint of something dangerous.

Rael's lips twitched.

'Ah… that was the wrong thing to say.'

Still, everything was unfolding in his favor, so Rael didn't interfere. He simply kept watching like a silent glorious spectator.

"Oh? And what exactly do you know about me?" Morvana asked.

Her voice was calm… too calm but eerie enough to send chills down Rael's spine, even though he wasn't even the target of that icy gaze.

'Damn… that guy messed up big time.'

Rael had no idea what Azriel meant by knowing Morvana "the best," but one thing was certain, those were the last words he should have spoken after all the paranoia Rael had so carefully and ever so deliberately planted in her mind.

In his defence, Azriel had no idea of what was going so… he continued cluelessly.

—-

"I knew it from the moment I laid eyes on you." He lowered his head as he spoke. "Nobody could ever know you better than me…"

With every word, Morvana's frown deepened but Azriel pressed on without the slightest hesitation.

"…My entire being saw it, the real you. The one always hiding behind that cold gaze." His voice remained steady and unwavering. "You may be Morvana, the cold principal, to everyone else, but…"

Azriel didn't know what the boy had done to her but one thing was clear, he could no longer hold back his feelings. Especially not now, when he was about to leave the academy.

If this was his last chance, then he would take it.

So he began to speak the words he had imagined countless times in his mind… the words he had carried in his heart for far too long.

He didn't care that she was the wife of the Demon King or about titles, consequences or the madness of it all.

He only wanted one thing, to let her know that he loved her.

"…to me, you were and always have been—"

My Goddess and the one I loved.

But before he could finish, pain exploded inside his head, his vision turned red and then darkness started swallowing his vision.

As his body started tilting backward and his concentration fading, Azriel thought.

'What is happening?'

'Why is my mind feeling so light?'

His hands instinctively rose toward his head but… there was nothing at that place.

His body hit the floor with a dull thud and before he could understand what was happening, darkness swallowed his consciousness whole as one of the prodigies of the Demon Realm met his end just because he said the wrong words at the wrong time.

—

Standing a short distance away from Azriel's now lifeless body, Rael controlled his urge to vomit.

Not because he felt even the slightest pity for Azriel's sudden and grotesque death but because chunks of brain matter and warm blood from Azriel's exploded head had splattered all over him.

'Disgusting…'

When Azriel had started rambling on about knowing Morvana so well, Rael had almost laughed with amusement and thought. 'What the hell is this guy even saying?'

But as Azriel's words neared their end, that amusement vanished as Rael realized something terrifying.

He had misunderstood everything.

'Azriel had never loved Arza… that nutcase loved Morvana.'

That was the only explanation for the bullshit Azriel was spouting.

But Morvana didn't know that.

Rael had manipulated her into believing Azriel would somehow know her true identity in future.

So when Azriel started speaking in those cringe lines which could easily be misunderstood as him knowing something…

… Morvana only saw a threat of her identity being revealed and so, she exploded Azriel's head out.

'…Yeah. This went worse than expected but at least I won't have to worry about his revenge. So that's a plus, I guess.'

Rael didn't move for several seconds.

'Tsk… if only I had known this bastard was in love with Morvana, I could have resolved this without so much trouble.'

He thought as he wiped the disgusting mush off his face.

The only reason he had even planned Azriel's death was because he believed the man was in love with Arza, who was engaged to him.

Rael couldn't break the engagement outright, nor could he afford to act strangely in front of Morvana without raising suspicion.

Because of all those circumstances, Azriel's death seemed like the only logical conclusion.

But… If it had been Morvana all along, he could have neutralized everything easily by acting like a lovesick fool obsessed with Arza.

Even as he felt a twinge of pain over wasting the Veluna identity card, something he could have used on some other bastard, he didn't blame himself.

'Oh well, not my fault.'

After wiping his face clean, Rael lifted his head and looked toward Morvana who was seated behind her table casually as if she were merely thinking about what to eat for dinner.

She didn't even care about how she had just exploded head of an S-Rank Resonant before he could even feel it.

Hell, Rael didn't even know how she had done it.

One moment, that bastard was about to say something.

The next, Rael was covered in gray blood as Azriel collapsed to the ground, his body twitching and his hands reaching toward a head that no longer existed

It was terrifying but Rael didn't focus on that. Instead, something else caught his attention.

'There were other ways she could've killed that bastard… especially without dirtying him or the room… So why choose to blow up his head?'

The thought annoyed him, mostly because he was still covered in disgusting brain matter and grayish blood but the answer came almost immediately.

'She is warning me.'

This was her message of what happened to those who dared go against her and a deliberate reminder of just how overwhelmingly strong she was.

Rael's lips twitched but he didn't care in the slightest.

"Why did you kill him, mom?" He asked casually like a clueless man as if he couldn't understand why she killed him all of a sudden.

Morvana looked at him but unlike usual, her eyes seemed distant.

"I had long suspected Azriel of being a spy working for A.S.S." She said, "So when you mentioned him acting strangely in the future, that suspicion only grew stronger."

She paused, letting out a quiet sigh.

"Even so, I wanted to give him a chance and merely fire him. But…"

Her gaze darkened slightly.

"…while he was trying to keep us distracted with his words, I sensed mana similar to A.S.S from him as if he was trying to summon something unfamiliar."

"So I had no choice but to kill him."

As she spoke, a faint trace of sadness crossed her face as if she genuinely regretted having to kill one of her trusted subordinates.

Rael's eyebrows twitched.

'If I didn't know any better… I might've actually believed her. She is definitely as good actor as me.'

But of course, he kept that thought to himself.

"I see—"

Before Rael could offer a few words of fake reassurance for what were probably fake emotions, she interrupted him.

"Can you please leave now? I… need some alone time." Her tone was calm as if she was forcefully holding her emotions back.

'Okay… I take that back. This woman might actually have more acting talent than me.'

With a quiet sigh, Rael simply nodded and turned to leave the room.

Mostly because he wanted to get away as well.

'After all, who would willingly stay alone with a woman who had just exploded the head of a man who had been trying to confess his love, all because she thought he was saying something else?'

'Yeah. No thanks.'

—

As Rael walked back toward his dorm under the now night sky of the demon realm.

His mind still filled with exploding heads and dealing with monsters far stronger than himself had completely forgotten about someone else…

Someone who had been lying low in ambush on Azriel's orders…

…without knowing that the man who had promised them support was already dead.

Two students, Varek's underlings, were hidden in the forest beside Rael's dorm, waiting for his arrival.

The moment they spotted Rael walking back casually, they moved without any hesitation because it was now time to repay the humiliation their boss had suffered because of him.

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