# Romance Fantasy Male Lead Alliance (Collapse)
When the heartfelt curses of the black mages filled the air, everyone's gaze turned toward Acid.
Flustered, Acid shook his head and shouted with genuine sincerity to those around him.
"It wasn't me."
At his abrupt denial, everyone took a step away from Acid.
"I'm telling you, it really wasn't me!"
Ellen Leon of Leon Kingdom.
Arwen Dale of Dale Kingdom.
As royalty from two nations known for swords and magic respectively, they were both recognized as extraordinary geniuses in their kingdoms.
They were born with talents unmatched by anyone in the history of the two royal families that had produced countless swordsmen and mages.
Because of this, they hardly knew what defeat meant.
They had never experienced the emotion of fear.
"......"
"......"
But now, both Ellen and Arwen felt afraid.
'I've been hearing rumors about Acid lately.'
'Was this all part of his plan?!'
Before them was a scene that could become a lifelong trauma for some people.
Of course, since they were all black mages,
the fact that black mages were in such a state at the academy's testing grounds also meant they had been plotting something.
Objectively speaking, Acid's action(?) deserved praise.
"I-I understand."
"If black mages were scheming something in my country, I would have been just as determined."
Though Ellen and Arwen said this,
the physical distance between them and Acid was gradually, yet noticeably, increasing.
Of course, not as quickly as the emotional distance was growing!
"I'm really telling you, it wasn't me!"
Acid felt wronged.
But there was clear evidence in the form of the victims' tears of blood.
"Argh! If I could just be fully summoned, I would sacrifice my soul to kill you, Acid!"
A black mage with only half his face vertically protruding screamed in rage.
He painfully raised his wrist—the only other part of him that had been summoned—and shouted:
"Look at this wrist that you cut off!"
"...Me?"
"You despicable bastard. I saw your face!"
When?
Acid felt so wronged.
"......"
"......"
But his so-called friends,
whether they understood his feelings or not...
"Hey."
"......"
"......"
"Hey!"
Watching them move away faster and faster, Acid barely managed to hold back his tears.
* * *
The table was already set.
Even the spoons had been washed clean and placed.
All they had to do was pick up their spoons and enjoy the meal.
"They're being quite picky about the side dishes."
These romance fantasy male leads were still in complete disarray.
"Would you want to eat if the side dishes were squirming around alive?"
I pondered briefly at the words of Master Arwen, who had snuck away.
"When the performance bonus gets duplicated, you're not going to eat this?"
Though black mages kept popping up around the romance fantasy protagonists as if they were respawning, a black mage is still a black mage.
Except for the Imperial Academy and around the romance fantasy group, finding them was still extremely difficult.
They were preparing dangerous activities for the continent from hidden locations, causing various intelligence agencies to spend astronomical amounts of money and manpower searching for them.
And now, not just one but over a dozen black mages were neatly packaged and prepared?
For an ordinary agent, this would be an achievement worthy of at least two promotions. Who could resist that?
"The prince seems to be holding back well."
"Perhaps being royalty means he's already well-fed."
But who am I?
I am the education officer of the Leon royal family.
As someone who should be able to pick up a spoon and feed royalty if they're being picky at the table.
Though the imperial royalty isn't my responsibility, I needed to endure this level of annoyance to protect my chastity.
"I have no choice."
I casually took out the artifact I had prepared.
"...What's that? Wait. It looks familiar."
Master Arwen tilted his head as he looked at the button-shaped artifact in my hand.
"Of course. You gave this to me."
When I nodded, Master Arwen thought for a moment before exclaiming, "Ah!"
"Isn't that an explosive artifact?"
"That's right."
A trap-type bomb artifact.
I usually received potions, but since Daisy appeared and provided higher quality potions, I had been extracting artifacts like this instead and sharing them with Violet.
"But why that?"
"To use it, of course."
Click.
As soon as I pressed the button with my finger, there was an immediate response.
BOOM!
"An explosion?!"
"Argh! Is it a black mage attack?!"
"AAAGH! Acid! You bastard!"
"Acid?"
"N-no! It's a black mage trap! It wasn't me!"
"How fitting for someone with dirty royal blood. Creating this mess and trying to blame it on us!"
"Even a three-year-old child wouldn't believe your lies!"
BOOM!
"I'll curse you from hell, Acid!"
"I'm telling you, it really wasn't me!"
The screams of the black mages and Acid's protests echoed together.
"......"
Master Arwen looked at me with an expression that suggested he had much to say, but...
"Let's call Prince Erild soon."
I decided to move on since there was still much to do.
"...I already did."
"You're quick."
I refrained from making the snide comment about wishing he had been this quick when the academy was breached.
More accurately, I could already sense people approaching from a distance.
"Let's escape."
Though the chances of being caught were slim, nothing was absolute in the world of romance fantasy.
To completely eliminate variables, we decided to leave the scene.
* * *
Prince Erild and his entourage, who had been investigating black mages in Rias, urgently halted all their work and rushed to the testing grounds after receiving news that black mages had appeared where academy students were taking their exams.
"Black mages at the testing grounds?"
That's impossible.
The professors guarding the entrance to the dungeon couldn't help but be bewildered.
This dungeon was a "closed dungeon" provided by Rias, with its structure and monster patterns already perfectly understood.
It had been used for decades to train new soldiers and harvest dungeon by-products.
As long as they guarded the entrance before them, there was no way to enter from outside.
How could black mages have infiltrated?
"I don't distrust you. But I trust my agent's report just as much."
Prince Erild reassured the confused professors and requested entry to verify the situation.
The professors naturally made way for the imperial prince.
Thus, Erild and the imperial agents
quickly moved toward the reported location, checking the dungeon map they had been provided.
And what they saw upon arrival was...
"......"
A horrific scene.
The smell that tickled their nostrils was the unpleasant odor of something rotting.
Signs of explosions were scattered everywhere.
But even more terrible was the state of the bodies.
Fragments of hands, feet, and faces strewn about—a sight difficult to bear even for trained imperial agents...
"Urgh!"
"W-what?!"
Erild and his agents, who had been taking in this grim scene, couldn't help but be startled when they saw a half-remaining face open its mouth.
"So it is a black mage!"
Black mages weren't infamous for nothing.
They were troublesome alive, refused to die peacefully, and even after death, they could cast curses or summon grotesque beasts with their souls.
But to see just a face moving like that!
"No, wait."
Even in this chaotic situation, Erild calmly assessed what was happening.
Perhaps this was only natural.
Except for his gender identity, he was a person without flaws.
That's why he was the closest candidate to becoming the imperial crown prince!
"Look at the cross-section of the face."
"...Ah!"
At Erild's words, the agents examined the cross-section of the half-remaining face of the presumed black mage.
"Magic circles..."
They weren't dead.
This was an accident caused by a flawed space magic that was rarely seen nowadays.
"I've heard about it, but..."
Time and space.
Since ancient times, mages had strived to conquer these fields.
Unlike time, which still yielded no results,
the realm of space had seen success thanks to a few once-in-a-generation geniuses.
The problem was the process.
"Uh, well."
"It worked when I did it like this..."
Space magic had theories, but they weren't really theories in the traditional sense.
In other words, conditions and values were determined through the intuition of a few geniuses.
But why those conditions and values were necessary, no one knew.
Some mages tried to figure it out, but...
What history recorded was the numerous side effects of space magic and
the conclusion to just shut up and use space magic exactly as instructed.
As a result, there hadn't been any side effects of space magic for decades.
Since even imperial agents had never seen it in reality,
they naturally thought these were black mages who had been brutally slaughtered, not victims of space magic gone wrong.
"...Huh?"
"...What?"
That's why the agents couldn't help but be even more confused.
Scenes of brutal human slaughter, while not common, were occasionally witnessed.
Despite being in a relatively peaceful era, localized conflicts still occurred.
Sometimes, terrorists from old kingdoms would use themselves as mediums for suicide attacks.
In other words, what was rarer than such tragic scenes was a disaster caused by space magic.
If this had been caused by the black mages' mistake, they could simply mock the foolish black mages.
"......"
"......"
"......"
Perhaps due to the explosion, several people were standing far apart from each other.
They were faces very familiar to the agents.
Royalty from Leon, royalty from Dale, promising talents from influential imperial families...
And was it just their imagination, or was the imperial royal Acid at the center of them all?
"Hmm..."
Was it just a feeling?
It seemed like they were avoiding Acid rather than the explosion.
"Acid, are these your subordinates?!"
"Argh! Just kill us! Don't humiliate us by keeping us alive!"
As if to prove this true, some of the scattered black mages who could still speak were cursing Acid.
"......"
"......"
Erild silently looked at Acid.
Acid also looked back at Erild with a half-resigned expression.
"Brother. It wasn't me."
"......"
Though Acid wanted to prove his innocence at least once, seeing that it wasn't working at all, he sighed deeply and said:
"Fine. I did it."
...As expected!
After glancing at the shocked expressions of the surrounding students, Acid chuckled darkly and shouted:
"I don't know how, but I did it!"
His bizarre demeanor strangely matched the equally bizarre atmosphere around him.
-The Blood Prince.
At that moment, a new line was added to the imperial intelligence bureau's records on Acid.