Welcome Ceremony
I had faced a group of thugs who had attacked me that day, and while they burned to death, I escaped the investigation completely untouched.
*“It’s only natural I can’t use something as ridiculous as Hellfire, which is an 8-circle magic. Even they must think I’m delusional to claim I could cast it.”*
Most students in the Magic Department had had their training grounds restricted by suppression artifacts, so no one inside could cast magic. Except for the one person who wasn’t even a demon god in the first place.
*“Besides… because those idiots burned to death, Seibul’s condition improved far more smoothly than expected.”*
My power, Death Spear Bee, never showed itself on the surface, so to anyone else Seibul had simply been a normal person who took a sword to the neck and fell.
Of course, if he survived longer they would have discovered his body no longer responded to healing magic… but there was no way I could have known whether they would figure that out.
Who on earth would think someone with a power so pathetic that the family would abandon him had anything to do with it? They would never have connected the dots.
*“Hng~ Great. Been a while since I got to use real magic without holding back. And I cleared the trash so neatly.”*
After the full day of investigation I headed home. Pelican stood by the entrance, staring at me with a suspicious expression on her face.
*“No matter how I look at it… I still don’t understand.”*
“Ugh? What don’t you understand?”
I kept my gaze locked on her while she tried to play innocent, then continued.
“Yesterday’s spell… it was definitely instant cast, right? So you could have immediately used an enormous grand magic… but why didn’t you use it on me?”
“That was because I didn’t think I’d be knocked out in one hit by Master’s attack. Who would’ve guessed that even the Demon God herself could fall in a single strike?”
“……But you knew exactly how powerful my power is. So what gives?”
“That? I just wanted to test it out on a whim.”
“…Hah. That’s good enough for me.”
I tried to keep pressing her, but she slipped away from every question with perfect grace. Finally I gave up and shifted my gaze to the calendar hanging on the wall.
“So tomorrow’s welcome ceremony… I can attend, then?”
“Will you be participating?”
Because of yesterday’s chaos the Sword Department students had been given a full day off. I had spent that time wrapping up my investigation.
The next event was the academy’s annual new-student welcome ceremony—the moment the real story of **Palette’s Flower** began.
*“It’s pointless now that they’ve already regressed… or maybe not. Maybe something completely different will unfold.”*
In the original timeline and the novel itself, the welcome ceremony always brought Karl and the heroines together, sparking a chain of events.
The turning point was Karl discovering a hidden black mage and wiping her out completely. From that moment he was branded as the protagonist.
Other than that, nothing much happened. In the original Karl didn’t need to attend, but…
*“Something feels off. The leader of those black mages, Karl himself—they’re all off.”*
The black mage’s infiltration wasn’t random; it was the deliberate work of a carefully organized organization.
That group was none other than the Black Dawn, the revolutionary faction of dark mages led by Chris von Philias—the strongest black mage who had thrown herself into the shadows out of hatred for the current crown prince.
*“If Master is going to be there, then Chris probably regressed too, huh.”*
“Yeah. Chris could never beat Karl and his bunch. Only after I matched her weak point against the situation I had prepared did I finally take her down.”
Chris, the leader of Black Dawn and one of the main villains of **Palette’s Flower**, had died in circumstances that were almost pitiful.
Her black magic was terrifyingly strong, but she had one fatal weakness.
*“She was blind.”*
“Blind? So does black magic rely on detecting mana?”
“Right. That’s why she scattered mana in every direction and deliberately disrupted her own senses.”
Without a chance to take revenge on her mother or even on the protagonist, she died pointless.
“But in the end she was included in my regression. She had past memories… definitely different from before.”
According to Pelican’s guess, since Chris had already lost once to the Karl group, she might not act the same way this time. I needed to rethink my entire approach.
“If I were Chris, what would I do?”
“If I were Chris…”
I took Pelican’s question seriously and started reasoning through the scenario.
In the original timeline Chris and her group would have slowly built up their strength and waited for the right moment.
But now she knew about her own weakness and about the Karl group’s existence. And unlike her before, they were clearly weaker right now.
“I’d kill them. Before they make things any more annoying.”
“So… this welcome ceremony should be pretty interesting. There’s no way they’d send worthless idiots to something this important.”
“I’m bringing this up because of Karl… he’s definitely acting weird too.”
“Huh? What’s so weird about the hero?”
I explained about Karl, and Pelican’s eyes sparkled with curiosity.
“Karl was definitely in the Sword Department… but I didn’t see him yesterday.”
“Really? Then he must be alive… but what happened?”
Karl’s absence in this world wasn’t something that could just be shrugged off.
The world Karl had been reincarnated into had already accumulated enough sins that it should have been destroyed long ago.
*“Class promotion? Dream on. Black magic suppression, everything except the Sun Church that worships the sun—everything was suppressed. And with endless invasion wars, relations with neighboring countries were completely destroyed.”*
The Philias Empire, supposedly the most powerful country in the world, was rotting from the inside out.
Every citizen’s grievance had taken root in the corners of their hearts, and that hatred was about to become the trigger for the [Great Catastrophe] that would follow.
It was Karl and his group who had saved this empire that should have perished.
In the previous life Karl’s actions had calmed the people’s anger, but if he didn’t act like the protagonist this time, it would cause me real trouble.
“They have to fall at my hands and be crushed. But I can’t just let nature take care of it. That’s too merciful, isn’t it?”
Revenge would be mine—mine alone. I would stand above them all and make them pay for their sins for the rest of their lives.
But first I had to take minimum action against anything threatening the empire. Otherwise my revenge would never be complete.
“I’ll find out at the ceremony… if Karl isn’t there either, I’ll have to do something else.”
With that decision I prepared for bed early so I would be ready for tomorrow’s welcome ceremony.
The grand magic that announced the party lit up the banquet hall beside the academy.
A woman in a black cloak watched from the shadows, then slowly shrugged it off and stepped into the hall in an evening gown. She murmured to herself.
“It’s been five years since I set foot in here.”
Her dead eyes showed no life as she walked slowly through the entrance.
“Please present your academy identification—”
“*Infiltration.*”
“…Enter.”
The knights who tried to stop her suddenly lost focus and stepped aside as she passed.
Chris entered the banquet hall and slowly inspected the mana control stones arranged around the room, then smiled faintly.
“I put out some pretty pointless devices… nothing with real meaning.”
She clenched the interference stone hidden in her chest and began an extremely precise magic that no one could detect.
“*Paralysis, corruption, manifestation.*”
The interference stones around the hall instantly transformed into reinforcements that would amplify her black magic.
She confirmed the effect and smiled quietly. Then she sensed a sudden, chilling presence.
“…What was that?”
But the moment passed, and the atmosphere calmed again. Chris refused to let her guard down and looked around.
At that exact second Louis Fel, president of the academy and now a fourth-year crown prince, appeared in the central hall. Chris’s expression hardened.
“To all new students of Palette Academy, on behalf of the empire that founded this academy and as its president, I extend my sincerest welcome.”
Chris could not hold back her rage. The man in front of her had done unspeakable things to her mother and me—and now he was smiling as if he were the kindest person alive.
“…He dares… to touch my mother… to ruin my eyes… and call himself the representative of the empire? That bastard—!”
She raised her hands to unleash magic across the entire hall to kill him.
Suddenly two hands blocked her.
“…?!”
“Stay still. If you don’t want to get beaten again.”
It was Dullahan. He had been watching her every move from the start.