Reborn As An Overpowered Villain

Bianca stood still as a statue with her back pressed against the front wall of the classroom. She stood beside the board, currently busying herself by watching Lucien who moved through the aisles between the classroom's desks, checking on each student who was practicing the formation of a mana sphere. She could see how, as he moved across the rows, and the students whom he passed through, who were seated at their desks would freeze or stiffen, and sometimes their mana spheres would collapse entirely, forcing them to start all over again.

The reason was simple: they were too scared of Lucien. Lucien was looking at everyone with his impassive face.

Lucien had removed his coat, and honestly, Bianca had mostly seen him without it, as though he despised wearing one despite the fact that he looked quite handsome in a coat nonetheless. Even now, without the black coat, he looked dashingly handsome. He wore a white shirt with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, tight black trousers paired with polished black leather shoes, and his pitch-black hair was slicked back perfectly. He had left the top button of his shirt undone, revealing the line of his neck and the curve of his collarbone.

Bianca had to resist the urge to look too long at his face, because he was so extremely handsome that it was almost as though his features had been sculpted by the hands of the gods themselves. From every angle and in every manner, he was extraordinarily handsome.

Bianca had never once seen anyone so handsome in all her life, and it was quite embarrassing to admit that when she had first laid eyes on him on her first day at the academy, she had been utterly awestruck by his beauty.

But that awe had quickly faded, as though a cold bucket of water had been poured over her shoulders, when she witnessed the ruthlessness of his teaching and the bluntness of his speech, where he would, without any sugarcoating, tell a student plainly just how weak they were or how much they were lacking.

His language and his personality had felt so surreal to her at first in comparison to his beautiful face. She had expected him to be at least somewhat kind, though she had also expected him to be like other nobles who mostly targeted commoners, and had braced herself to be belittled by him as well, given that her family had been stripped of everything and reduced to commoners. But instead, Lucien had complimented her talent and had even gone so far as to say that she showed genuine promise, though he had poured ice over it at the end by adding that she was still weak and would need to train harder if she ever wished to grow stronger.

Regardless, he was someone entirely unlike the other nobles. Well, Lucien was similar to them in the sense that he looked down on others, but while nobles mostly looked down on commoners, Lucien looked down on everyone. He did not care whether they were the children of high nobility or whether they were the children of lowly farmers. He would taunt, scold, and embarrass them over their failures, though he would always add at the end an explanation of how to improve and the precise reason for their failure.

Lucien was a complete maniac, if Bianca had to be honest about it, because his personality was something entirely unique that Bianca had never come across in her whole life. He would belittle someone first and then explain the reason for their mistake, or he would open with lavish praise only to pour the same cold remark at the end about how they were still weak and needed to push even further.

But something was different this year. Something inherently different about Lucien that Bianca could not quite put into words. He was less cold than the previous year.

Bianca was not entirely sure whether she was seeing things or imagining it, but he seemed less distant and more approachable than he had been before. She did not know why she felt this way about him, but something deep inside her kept insisting that Lucien might have changed in ways she could not fully see, and it was a welcome change, because if he was more approachable and less cold than he had been the year prior, then it meant there was some small, hopeful chance he might be willing to write her a strong recommendation at the end of her time at the academy, and with his name behind her, a top guild might be willing to pour considerable resources into her development.

But then again, what if she was imagining all of it? What if she was only seeing his changes because she desperately needed to believe in them, and she was only walking herself into a delusion? Bianca understood very well the possibility that the changes she thought she saw were fleeting, or worse, entirely something she had mistaken. Even so, she would cling to the hope that he had changed, and that he would be less demanding and less cruel than he had been the year before.

Bianca's thoughts came to a sudden halt as her eyes landed on something she had not expected. Lucien had stopped before Prince Jasper, and he was holding the prince's wrist, examining the mana-restricting bracelet strapped around it with a coldness in his expression that was even sharper than anything she had ever seen from him before. For a moment, Bianca clutched her own hands tightly, her breath drawn in, bracing herself as though anticipating a fight to break out at any second, because the prince, who was always so kind and bubbly and never without a smile on his face, was staring back at Lucien with a look so fierce that she almost believed the prince would lunge at Lucien at any moment.

"Student Jasper," Lucien began evenly, his eyes still fixed on the bracelet, "I can see you are struggling because of the bracelet. Would you like my assistance? Or, perhaps decrease the difficulty?"

The prince attempted to pull his wrist free, but Lucien appeared to have gripped the bracelet so firmly that Jasper could not quite manage it. "Professor, I can do it on my own," the prince replied, his face easing back into its familiar calm, the dangerous look dissolving from it as though it had never been there at all. He brought his other hand over slowly and, with a measured, steady pressure, pushed Lucien's hand aside. "Forgive me, Professor," he continued pleasantly, "but I dislike being touched without my consent. You of all people must know how fragile my body is."

Lucien gave a small nod of his head, and for just a breath of a moment, Bianca thought she caught a smile on Lucien’s lips. "I am aware," he replied, "of just how fragile you are, given that you are still sitting at Elite [Lower] rank." He rested his hand on the prince's shoulder and added, with the same quiet steadiness, "Let me know if you require my assistance."

The prince smiled and shifted his shoulder with a gentle ease, freeing himself from Lucien's touch. "Of course," he replied pleasantly, his eyes holding Lucien's. "I will."

Lucien resumed his unhurried stride and continued his inspection of the remaining students. Bianca stood watching him go, and she could not understand why he was so cold toward the prince, who was nothing but agreeable and polite to everyone around him. For a brief, ridiculous moment, she had the strange feeling that Lucien had somehow heard her earlier thoughts about him becoming less cold, and had deliberately chosen that exact moment to prove to her just how thoroughly wrong she was.

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