Cicero: He Was Only a Child, a Mortal

"This is the ashes you wanted." Cicero stepped closer to Zhou Yun and handed him the wooden box in his hand.

In this room, Cicero, Zhou Yun, and the other eight teachers applying for the position of tutor were waiting.

Without a word, Zhou Yun accepted the wooden box from Cicero and gently opened it for a glance.

Inside were ashes streaked black and white, like the remnants left behind after an earth-scorching blaze. Zhou Yun could sense the power contained within them. From the perspective of the Warp, the flames on these ashes had never truly gone out.

Zhou Yun silently tucked the wooden box into his clothes.

Then, leaning back in his wooden chair, Zhou Yun asked Cicero, "Is Consul Jarlan one of you?"

"...?" Cicero gave Zhou Yun a startled look, seemingly unable to understand why Zhou Yun had suddenly asked that.

No?

Zhou Yun subtly used Telepathy School psychic power to sense Cicero's thoughts and discovered that Cicero was not pretending. He genuinely did not believe Jarlan was one of them.

Or perhaps Cicero's rank was too low, and he simply did not know whether Jarlan was one of them.

Zhou Yun could not help recalling the wager he had made with Consul Jarlan two days earlier. Was that luck, capable of rivaling Strange Luck, truly innate?

It was this very Consul Jarlan who would murder Roboute Guilliman's adoptive father, Conor Guilliman, in the future. Zhou Yun did not believe he had no connection to the cultists within Macragge City.

Yet he really did not seem like a follower of Slaanesh. Could he be with Khorne instead?

"Honored teachers, thank you all for coming to this recruitment."

At that moment, a robust man with a resonant voice and short blond hair strode through the room's doors and stopped before the ten teachers.

"Lord Quintus, you flatter us too much." One of the teachers rose to his feet and said to the man called Quintus in an almost fawning voice, "To be fortunate enough to participate in the selection for Lord Marcus's family tutor is already an honor. Even if we are not chosen, it would still be a great privilege to receive your father's guidance afterward."

Quintus Guilliman... Marcus Guilliman's eldest son and heir. He had already become famous throughout Macragge for his martial skill in his teens. In his twenties, he had led troops into battle, besieging and harassing the Illyrium Barbarians near Odin City until every last one of them was slaughtered, earning himself a fearsome reputation.

Zhou Yun found the identity of the man before him in Scholar's memories.

Hearing the teacher's fawning flattery, Quintus Guilliman merely sneered.

"Then you will be disappointed. The one interviewing you today is not my father, but my dear 'younger brother.'"

Younger brother... Quintus's words stirred a commotion among the teachers.

"Which of your younger brothers, my lord? Lucius, who is renowned for his art? Or Tiberius, who is physically frail but was praised by Lord Conor for his vast learning?" one of the teachers gathered his courage and asked.

"Of course, it is the fortieth son of my father—the one you will be teaching." Quintus spoke in a mocking tone.

"...Isn't that bastard child only six or seven years old?" An elderly teacher blurted out. Judging by his appearance, he was at least eighty.

"That's right. My six-year-old brother will be testing your knowledge."

Every teacher present looked at one another, seemingly still unable to comprehend what Quintus meant.

A six-year-old child, a foolish, ignorant, innocent child who could barely speak properly, was going to test them—the finest grammar teachers in Macragge? What kind of absurdity was this?

The expressions of several teachers had already darkened. This was practically an insult!

"Starting from tenth place, go in one at a time." Quintus waved a hand, signaling for the teacher ranked tenth to follow the attendant by the door.

That teacher had yet to recover from Quintus's words and still sat there in confused bewilderment.

"Go!" Quintus snorted, his gaze toward the teacher turning grim.

The teacher shuddered, evidently recalling Quintus's notorious reputation. He hurriedly followed the attendant away.

A few minutes later, the teacher returned pale-faced, as though he had suffered some kind of mental shock. Even as he sat back down, his body could not stop trembling.

Then came the next one. When he returned, his face was flushed crimson, his fingers clenched tightly, every vein on his body throbbing...

After that came the eighty-year-old teacher. His steps were unsteady when he returned.

"How dare a six-year-old brat—!!" the old teacher roared resentfully before collapsing into his chair. His eyes were vacant, and he looked utterly bereft of life.

The remaining teachers were nearly all in the same state. Their faces were either pale or red, their emotions shifting between rage, breakdown, and fear as though their minds had already crumbled.

"My turn." Even after seeing the shattered expressions of the first eight teachers, Cicero's voice remained confident.

Though he had suffered many setbacks at Zhou Yun's hands and no longer dared underestimate him, those eight ordinary scholars... Cicero still believed himself to exist on an entirely different level from them. He saw their disgraceful behavior as nothing more than the result of fools being foolish.

He knew the child's true identity. As that consul's adopted son, it would undoubtedly be foolish to regard him as an ordinary child.

But in the end, he was only a child, a mortal. No matter how far he surpassed children his own age, Cicero remained confident in his knowledge and wisdom. He believed he could enlighten him.

Madam Euten, Conor Guilliman's housekeeper, sighed softly.

She looked at the blond boy. His expression was perfectly ordinary, and the muscles in his face seemed to have undergone the most meticulous design, never revealing the slightest emotion. It was as though he had not just driven eight scholars to the brink and reduced them to hysterics.

Euten was even beginning to worry whether Lord Conor had been right to ask this child to choose a teacher for himself.

Euten did not question whether the child needed a teacher.

He... he was too immersed in reading. He had already read every book in Conor's private library, and among them, he favored works related to war most of all. He devoured great military treatises with more hunger than children his age read fairy tales.

Sometimes, when Euten watched his back as he read those massive military volumes, she felt as though she were looking at a god of war cast into the mortal world—a monster that considered everything through coldness, indifference, and pure logic.

Conor believed the child had to leave his books behind and learn from a real teacher. This was not so he could acquire more knowledge, but so he could understand how to become human.

Euten agreed... but Conor, the consul who had never failed in the political arena, had come out on the losing end in this contest between father and son.

After an intense negotiation, Conor had no choice but to agree that the child had the right to choose his teacher according to his own preferences.

The child's first demand was that he did not want a teacher of rhetoric, politics, or debate. He did not need such useless knowledge.

His second demand was that any teacher who passed the first round of selection had to submit to his interview and speak with him... and if not a single teacher suited him in the end, Conor would have to allow him to study by himself in the Macragge Grand Library.

Given the current situation, Madam Euten seriously doubted whether any teacher would be chosen by the child.

"The next one is Cicero. He is quite well-known in Macragge," Madam Euten said to the child beside her.

The child gave a slight nod and looked toward the one-way mirror before him.

The man named Cicero entered the room. He stood nearly two meters tall and wore a pair of red leather shoes. Looking at the mirror before him, he showed no strange reaction, merely offering it a slight bow.

For a moment, seeing Cicero's composed and proper movements, Madam Euten began to feel a trace of hope. Perhaps this one... no. He would not do.

Euten watched Cicero for only a moment before becoming certain that this man could never be the child's teacher. Beneath his polite exterior, she saw decadent thoughts and a profound emptiness.

And that child... that child seemed to have been staring at Cicero's red leather shoes all along.

"Mr. Cicero, welcome," the child said slowly.