A breeze swept over the mass grave, where the entire area had been burned to bare earth. The two men standing amid the piles of corpses faced each other in a deadlock, and the silence was eerily strange.
"Professor, are you really going to kill your own student?"
Facing Elias, whose wand was pointed at him, Roy sighed helplessly.
Elias tightened his grip on his wand. His eyes held a trace of complicated emotion as he looked at Roy. After a moment of silence, he asked Roy one final question.
"I really was a terrible professor, wasn't I?"
Roy shook his head and looked sincerely at Elias across from him, hoping his genuine feelings could move the other man.
"No, Professor. I'll give you the most direct, blunt, correct, straightforward, and to-the-point answer possible."
"Oh? What is it?"
Elias did not rush to attack, but his wand remained aimed at Roy.
"If you let me go today, you'll still have a chance to turn over a new leaf and become a good professor again. Of course, if you're determined to kill me today, then you're a hopelessly rotten person."
Upon hearing Roy's answer, Elias actually considered it seriously for two seconds. Roy thought his silver tongue had worked, but instead of words of mercy from Elias, a spell came flying straight at him.
Roy reacted quickly, rolling agilely out of the path of the spell before scrambling to his feet in a rather sorry state.
Elias, as though toying with the badly injured Roy, did not rush to press the attack. Every movement he made radiated utter ease, as if he did not take the wounded Roy seriously at all.
"What a pity. I stopped being a good person long ago. I was the real culprit behind Connor's attack, and