How to Turn the Worst Into the Best - 2
“Ugh. Damn it. I still can’t shake this disgusting taste.”
“Tell me about it. First time I’ve had Monster Cuisine, and it sure lives up to being the sort of garbage only lowborn scum would eat.”
“The Grand Duchess’s palate must be truly deranged. And yet that bastard Elden wolfed it down like it was nothing.”
The three of them had finished their first audience with the Grand Duchess and now huddled in a corner outside the great hall, still fighting down the lingering nausea.
Kyle spoke as if addressing Blund and Deron both.
“More importantly—did you see how the Grand Duchess only smiled at that bastard Elden?”
“Smiled? She said she was ‘glad’ to meet him again. She didn’t so much as glance our way.”
Kyle’s sulking was genuine; Blund piled on at once, signaling the start of a full group thrashing.
Sensing the opening, Kyle raised his voice with even more passion.
Bonding over a shared enemy was a classic trick of villains.
“And that’s not all. He told us he was withdrawing, then went and got a private audience with the Grand Duchess behind our backs.”
“Is that the half of it? He even smirked at us while we forced down that garbage food.”
“Exactly. He announced his withdrawal to us, then deliberately acted like that trash tasted good. He was clearly trying to score points with the Grand Duchess.”
“He made fools of us. Used that withdrawal declaration to lull us into dropping our guard, then ran some scheme behind the scenes to curry her favor.”
Having vented the humiliation they felt toward Elden, Kyle and Blund turned their eyes on Deron, who had remained silent.
It was the look of foot soldiers waiting for their boss’s orders.
This might have been an engagement contest where rank was supposed to be set aside, yet the hierarchy forged back at the Academy had naturally reasserted itself as an organizational structure.
Of course, it was a glass-house relationship—one hairline crack and the whole thing would shatter.
Arms folded, Deron finally broke his brooding silence.
“That complete idiot could never have cooked up such a cunning move on his own. He must have a rather capable head butler.”
“Right? Without Your Grace’s patronage, that bastard never would have graduated top of the class.”
“Which is precisely why you’re the angriest, isn’t it, Deron? Even a beast knows the hand that feeds it. That animal is worse than a beast.”
Blund gathered a thick wad of phlegm and spat it onto the floor.
With no evaluation committee around, there was no need for restraint.
Even so, the sticky, unpleasant residue refused to leave his mouth—partly from the grotesque food, partly from the freak named Elden—and it burned like a fire that had to be put out.
He was pretending to speak on Deron’s behalf, but Blund himself found Elden’s solo breakaway thoroughly galling.
He leaned closer to Deron and asked,
“We can’t just sit here and take it, can we?”
“Exactly, Young Master Deron. A fool who doesn’t know his place needs a lesson in where he belongs.”
“…….”
Deron held his tongue.
A reckless approach could invite disaster.
And when something refused to make sense, there was always a reason buried underneath.
Elden’s withdrawal was baffling enough, but the Winterfell Grand Ducal House refusing to accept it and leaving the matter pending was equally incomprehensible.
Whether the Grand Duke or the Grand Duchess had ordered the delay, the only way to learn the truth was to force a confrontation.
“Hmm…….”
Especially since Elden Raphelion had been acting like a completely different person ever since declaring his withdrawal—spouting nonsense about self-reflection and even words that seemed to rebuke their shared past.
He had always been an eyesore one way or another; now that the shackles of the evaluation committee were gone, a meeting was overdue.
Elden Raphelion.
Perhaps he had noticed something and struck first.
It had been strange from the start that four classmates from the Royal Academy had ended up as the final candidates among so many applicants.
Moreover, the Grand Duchess’s voice had somehow felt familiar, and the way she had forced that grotesque meal on them had been far too deliberate.
Whether Elden’s withdrawal was an escape because he had caught on, or a strategy to seize the lead, the only way to find out was to meet the man himself.
Deron uncrossed his arms and started walking.
“We’re going to see him. Come along.”
To their eyes, Elden Raphelion pacing alone in the sealed training ground made perfect prey.
“What an honor. Three distinguished gentlemen gracing me with their presence. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
The moment Deron stepped into the training ground, he strode straight toward the casually bantering Elden.
Give a beast an opening and it stopped thrashing and started lounging with leisure to spare.
The sneering face was so irritating Deron wanted to punish him on the spot, yet he clenched his trembling fists and forced out a mocking tone instead.
“Reading, training… You’re remarkably at ease, Elden.”
Of course his patience ran dry after only two exchanges—thanks to Elden’s irritating little shrug and smile.
“I’m a dropout, after all.”
A three-against-one standoff.
Of course “standoff” usually implied evenly matched parties trading nerves, yet in pure presence Elden refused to yield an inch to the three of them.
“Does this dropout have some business with all of you?”
At Elden’s words Deron stepped forward himself, a sneer twisting his lips.
“You keep harping on about withdrawing, withdrawing. Yet the man who won the Grand Duchess’s favor and even pretended that disgusting garbage tasted good just to stay in her good graces—can he truly call himself a dropout?”
Elden let out a disbelieving laugh.
“Haha, well now… It’s rather hurtful to be slandered for simply eating something because it was delicious, Young Master Deron.”
“Enough with the jokes. Do you still think we haven’t realized your withdrawal declaration was a ploy to make us drop our guard? There’s a limit to how much we’ll look the other way, so stop clowning around.”
While Deron rained down accusations, Kyle and Blund stood behind him, eyes locked on Elden, ready to jump in and crush their common enemy the moment the signal came.
The object of all that attention, Elden, instead took a single step closer to Deron.
The sudden eccentricity made Deron flinch.
Elden stared straight into both of Deron’s eyes and put force behind his own gaze.
This was the opening move of a carefully planned operation—and the brief window in which he would return to being the madman Elden of old.
As I said earlier, a bad reputation has its uses.
“Look into these honest eyes. Do they look like the eyes of a man playing tricks?”
“……!”
It was open mockery.
The sole heir of a declining baronial house was openly mocking the second son of a flourishing ducal house.
Deron felt his teeth grind.
The upstart who had never known his place had finally crossed into open, taunting provocation; a firestorm had no choice but to roar up from inside him.
Besides, Elden had been nothing more than one of the beasts Deron used to keep on a leash.
A wound from a beast you once commanded had to be repaid double before it would heal.
When a beast you once commanded dared bare its fangs, the proper response was a thrashing.
Even so, Deron tried to keep his composure.
There might be a reason even a worthless insect would show such nerve.
“Don’t make me laugh. That disgusting dish tasted good? Even a passing animal wouldn’t have looked twice at it.”
“Seems my palate simply matches that sort of thing.”
“More importantly—you declared your withdrawal, so why is the Grand Ducal House delaying its decision?”
“I have no idea myself. If you’re that curious, why not ask the Grand Duke directly?”
“Are you giving me orders now?”
“I merely pointed out the easy way to find an answer.”
The beast’s momentum refused to yield even an inch.
If anything, Deron felt himself being driven onto the back foot with every exchange; he ground his molars and flicked a glance behind him.
Kyle and Blund.
The underlings he used to command were watching.
If he backed down now, he would lose face completely.
“I’ll ask just one thing. Answer carefully. Depending on what you say, your future could change.”
A razor-edged warning and threat in one.
Elden accepted it willingly and with perfect calm.
“What is the question?”
“Are you saying there was truly no hidden meaning behind that belated withdrawal declaration? That it was genuinely for the sake of stepping down, and not a strategy to deceive us? There’s no evaluation committee here, so speak frankly.”
“I’ve already told you several times. I simply finally grasped my place and chose to withdraw…”
Deron cut him off.
“No. That answer is wrong. Right now you still don’t grasp your place.”
Then he continued, fresh anger flooding his voice.
“You should have spilled every truth to me just now, apologized for deceiving us, and bowed your head the way you used to. That is your place.”
But to Elden, who had become a cunning old snake, even that secondhand intimidation could not land a scratch.
“I never deceived anyone, and I have nothing to apologize for, so I didn’t. Contrary to appearances, I do grasp that much about my place.”
Deron’s brow knotted to the extreme.
The nauseating words spilling from a turncoat’s mouth.
A shamelessness that stirred the same disgust as Monster Cuisine.
His fist clenched of its own accord.
The humiliation of being snubbed by the worthless heir of a declining house, a rootless orphan with no bloodline left to protect him, ignited an unendurable rage.
Deron honed fighting spirit into his green eyes.
“I’ve held back until now only because this is the final evaluation. If you try to disgrace me one more time, you’d better be ready. There are no eyes watching and no ears listening here.”
“There are one, two, three, four pairs right here, actually.”
Even then Elden’s banter refused to stop. Finally Deron, bloodshot with fury, rolled up his sleeves and closed in on Elden.
From the way his exhaled breath trembled, it was exactly the extreme rage Elden had been waiting for.
Rage fierce enough to strip away reason, blur situational judgment, urge him to settle scores now rather than later, force instinct over intellect—the rage that would flip the worst situation into the best.
Just as planned, it had erupted from Deron Kellid.
And for that, Elden had chosen an empty training ground.
For that, he had lured the men tailing him to this place.
For that, he had deliberately provoked them.
And for that, on the very first night of possession, he had made a special request of the old head butler: an identical copy of the Mana Record that the original Deron Kellid had always carried, the one he had obtained from the underworld of the northern Winterfell territory.
Villains always have dirt under their nails, after all.
And he had never doubted they would rise to the bait.
The situation was vastly different from Academy days.
Fortunately, Lee Junuw had the wit to turn that difference to his advantage.
“Hrmph…… Looks like you’ve completely forgotten how things worked back at the Academy.”
Whoosh!
In an instant Deron’s fist shot toward Elden’s face.
Thud!
Just before impact it was caught in Elden’s hand. The moment the meaningful words left Elden’s mouth, Deron finally understood why the beast had shown such nerve.
Only then did he realize he had danced to the tune of a worthless insect he had always scorned.
“Did you really think I’d just stand there and take it like the old days?”
Elden’s lips curved into a crooked grin—truly the savage, deranged smile that suited the infamous battle maniac and absolute bastard to perfection.