The Headmaster led me into his office, and I read the letter without a word.

  “Dear Jacob,” it begins in my mother’s handwriting. “The Celestial Tower has opened, but the Crown Prince of Verdia—one of the largest Elven kingdoms—has already reserved every available spot. I managed to secure two for you, yet the Prince demanded that an Elf accompany you as a supervisor.”

  I lift my eyes from the page. “This means I can’t bring my Squire.”

  “Indeed,” the Headmaster says, adjusting his golden frames.

  “I’m sorry, Headmaster. Why are you personally giving this to me?”

  “Fate,” he says with a smile. “I am very interested in seeing your fate unravel.”

  The old bastard still doesn’t have anything better to do than satisfy his own voyeuristic tendencies like this, King Baalrek mutters in my soul.

  I clear my throat. “But… there’s no Elven Champion, and I don’t really know many Elves. None I’d trust for this, at least.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I turn, and someone stands by the door of the Headmaster’s office.

  “I took the liberty of calling Lady Nimirea,” the Headmaster says. “She asked me to help her repay her debt of gratitude for when you saved her life during the trial by combat.”

  I see him appoint her as my help, and I give a slow nod.

  “That makes sense. Well, Lady Nimirea, let me arrange a few things and then we can leave as soon as possible—within a few hours, perhaps.”

  * * *

  Nimirea is looking down everyone on the boat. She took herself up with the hoisted sail—something this boat doesn’t really need since it’s propelled by pure magic. And from here, she observes an unwitting Jacob converse with a few sailors.

  How stupid. I can’t believe this. This has been so much easier than I imagined… how stupid of you to trust me like this, Jacob Cloud.

  Nimirea can’t believe how stupid everyone is at the Academy.

  She had expected her plans to, at least somehow, not go the way what she had imagined would happen. She had fully expected for a wrench, minor or major, to be thrown in the midst of what she had concocted.

  Yet, from start to finish, everything had seemingly fallen into place so perfectly she was now reconsidering her own genius.

  She can’t kill Jacob yet, but that’s because she wouldn’t be otherwise able to absorb the Rainbow Skill that he’s hiding, one of the most precious—the one she’s coveted since she was told by the Prophet that Jacob has it.

  The Grimoire Extraordinaire.

  A Skill so powerful, so incredibly powerful that it dwarfs many other Skills. And it’s not just because it allows one to read the flaws of the world, but because of its weight on Karma.

  Many idiots would prefer to receive something to obliterate their enemy, or, if cowards, to shield themselves from them, perhaps to hide, or perhaps to empower their allies in order to receive praise. Yet, no one understands how powerful The Grimoire is. It might very well be the strongest Skill I know of.

  Not even the Prophet, in Nimirea’s opinion, had fully understood just how strong such a Skill was. How could he? He was dead-set in following Asmodeus’s ways without ever questioning whether he truly aligned with them or not.

  Not like her.

  Nimirea, the Guide of Darkness, the leader of the Dark Champions, truly understood why monsters were so valuable, why they were not just valuable, actually, but needed.

  And she had guided the other Dark Champions—the True Champions, as she liked to think of them—to understand the same truth.

  They were those who were ready to do anything for justice, for balance.

  Once I have absorbed the Skill from his dead body, I will be unstoppable. Nothing will be in my way ever again. And I’ll start by razing Verdia to the ground for what they did to my father.

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  In a world where the good guys have allegedly won, how come there are so many injustices? How come that her father, refusing to slaughter his own peers, his equals, those whom he had fought alongside for so long, gets branded a traitor, and someone like the Headmaster, the supposed very antithesis to the God of Monsters, or the Monster God—two interchangeable words—let injustice reign supreme?

  She knows just how strong the Headmaster was. She knows perhaps better than even his Vice Principals. For the Prophet answered her every question since the day he saw her as the only way for Asmodeus’s return.

  So she knows how scary the Headmaster truly is—she knows that he could be the grantor of peace everywhere.

  But that won’t happen.

  And Nimirea doesn’t doubt for a moment that she’ll be instrumental in the Monster God’s resurrection; perhaps she will be the very reason Asmodeus will resurrect. She doesn’t doubt it at all. But now, knowing how strong the man who always wears gold on his face is, she wonders just why he doesn’t do anything.

  Why doesn’t he stop famine and war? Why doesn’t he kill the undeserving aristocrats who rule this world with their selfish desires? Why doesn’t he do anything at all?

  Because he’s a crook. A greedy crook.

  The Headmaster, as Nimirea knows very well, is just yet another tyrant who is content with the status quo as long as it lets gold and all kinds of riches pour into his pockets.

  He could stop everything at a moment’s notice, or at the very least order his followers to follow him on a crusade that could mend every wrong in the world. Yet, he doesn’t. He wields all this power and doesn’t do anything with it.

  That selfish bastard, Nimirea thinks, smiling back at Jacob and waving kindly at him, not forgetting to add a little wink so that he might even get a little flustered, so that his attraction to her will actually blind him even further. Self-righteous bastard.

  Yet, she knows that there’s one person in the entire Academy that could stop her from her plan, from finally showing the world that the Champions are just a bunch of useless pieces of crap, some fake idols that are worshipped only by fools.

  Destroying the current order requires that people start by seeing the truth of the world. And to do that, I need the Champions to fall. And for the Champions to fall, I need one person away from them.

  Jacob Cloud, the Fake Champion, the Guide of the Champions.

  He’s weak, the weakest of all the Champions.

  If she has some doubts that taking someone like the Highblood or the Dragonkin might be hard, she has no doubt that she could snap Jacob’s neck in the blink of an eye once she used her true powers.

  The powers of a Dark Champion.

  Unlike him, she isn’t just the leader—she’s the strongest.

  She wields not just one Rainbow Skills, and none of those are as strong as the most powerful weapon in her arsenal, a Skill belonging to a Rank that has been forgotten even by the Headmaster himself.

  But she doesn’t plan on using it on Jacob—it’s useless. He’s not worth that power; he’s not worth the price that she had to pay for it.

  “Food’s ready!” Jacob shouts from below as Nimirea wonders when exactly she’ll kill him. She still can’t. The Karma has not aligned for her to reap the Skill from his body—if she did it now, it would wreck her future. Nor the other Champions can yet die if her and her companions are supposed to take away the Rainbow Skills that unjustly ended up in their hands.

  The Rainbow Skills that should have belonged to those who truly deserve them. Instead, they are in the hands of a bunch of arrogant idiots who got them because of…

  Because of pure Luck. Because of a twisted version of Karma that assigns things at random, just like the Headmaster. There’s no merit. There’s no earning them. They just were born like this, into someone who would get the right thing at the right time and never have to even worry about not deserving the power they’ll wield so mindlessly for the rest of their life. Once I take everything that was supposed to always be mine, I’ll change this. I’ll bring an order—a true meritocracy to this world.

  “Delicious,” Nimirea says, tasting a broth that barely tastes like anything.

  “So, I’ve made a few inquiries. I haven’t told you yet, but did you know that we’re going to deal with the Crown Prince of your people?” Jacob asks.

  Not my people, Nimirea thinks.

  “No,” she twists her face into a complicated expression. “That… that changes everything. I—I’m not sure I want to enter.”

  The Crown Prince is just a fly that I’ll kill when I am bothered to waste enough time to look at him.

  “Listen, I know… the Headmaster should have probably picked someone else. And I know this is selfish from me, but there’s something in there that I really need. Do you think you can do this?”

  I planned for this. I am the whole reason that useless Crown Prince, a collector and treasure hunter, is even coming to this Elite Dungeon.

  “I—I don’t know. Those are the people who tried to kill me, Jacob. I don’t think they’ll let us be.”

  They won’t. And I’ll use them to stall you going back to the others until the tournament is done. At the tournament, the Dark Champions will appear and humiliate all the other Champions—I’ll also make it so that we’ll return just in time for you to run to their side while they’re bloody and broken, and then tell you that you fell for my plan like an idiot. That will break your confidence. Beating you physically wouldn’t do much—you already know how weak you are. You’re just under the illusion that you’re more smart than powerful. But you’re equally a weakling and an idiot.

  “I’ll make sure they won’t bother us. We’ll just not interfere. I’m after a Secret Room, anyway. Once I get there, we can say goodbye to them. I’ll just be quickly in and out, ok?”

  “I’ll try my best,” Nimirea says, trying her best to look discouraged. “I hope everything will be alright.”

  “It will be, don’t worry.”

  Not for you, Nimirea thinks. You have no idea what’s coming.