Sidestory: Raum's and Acedia's conversation

It was a normal, tiring day in the mage tower.

Acedia forced herself out of bed to attend to her duties as the head of the mage tower.

It had been a year until Voidwalker retired and disappeared once again.

The only thing that she did since then was to cry every night, pissed about his sudden disappearance.

"You fucking dummy." Instead of doing her paperwork, Acedia buried her face in her arms, complaining about him once again. "How do you expect me to love you when you keep disappearing like this?!"

Pausing, she scratched her cheek as a quiet laugh escaped her lips. "...well, I still do..but still!"

Since then, every day just felt dull to her and didn't seem as enjoyable as it did before.

The only comfort for her was the bunch of audio devices that she had of his voice.

"You fucking cheater..!" Suddenly a wave of anger spread through her body at the thought that he possibly ran away with another woman, even though she had no reason to believe that.

Ring Ring Ring!

The sound of the telephone snapped her out of her sorrow.

At first, she wanted to ignore it, hoping that the other person would just give up, but they didn't.

Grunting, she reached her hand out to the phone, picked it up, and put it to her ear.

"Yeah? Acedia here. Kinda busy right now. Call me later." She monotonously responded, before hanging up.

However, she was stopped by a familiar voice.

-WAIT, ACEDIA!

The familiar voice of Raum, Seraphir's childhood friend and the heir of the Beelzebub house rang out.

As he kept coming over to their mansion very often, Acedia also knew him very well.

To her, he was no different from a little brother.

"Yes, Raumi?" she tiredly responded, trying to get it over with as fast as possible and get back into her suffering and self-pity. "Is there something ya need?"

-Yes, there's a rumor in the empire. You know that, right?

Raum's voice sounded hectic and worried. Acedia wondered what could make him act that way.

"Of course I do. Some mages are already investigating that rumor."

-Yeah, I already mentioned it to our professor.

Acedia raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I didn't expect that from you. He must be great."

Although she didn't have much time to talk to Seraphir lately, she often heard that Raum always trash-talked his professors.

It was surprising to hear that he would actually rely on a professor.

-Yeah, he actually is, which is like reaaaally fucking surprising.

"And?"

-So basically he said that he will investigate it and I wanted to ask you if you could bring someone else to like watch over him.

Acedia formed an amused smile, never expecting that Raum would ever request such a thing.

"Sure, Raumiboy. Anything else?"

-Hmmm...

Raum paused for a moment.

-Well, don't tell Mr.Voidwalker that I was the one who requested this.

Acedia froze up.

What did he just say?

Voidwalker?

"I'm sorry, but could you please repeat the name?"

-Huh? Mr. Voidwalker. He's our professor.

A maniacal smile formed on her face as her heart started pounding.

With trembling hands, she moved her finger to her lips, stroking it as she tried to suppress her smile.

"Black hair and grey eyes, Voidwalker? Is he that kind of Voidwalker?"

-Huh? How do you know him?

"Hehehe.." An ominous-sounding laugh escaped her lips, giving Raum shivers, as he heard it.

While he knew that Acedia was a weirdo, he never thought of her as 'creepy'. Hell, even if she did creepy things, due to her looks, it would probably look strangely charming.

-Acedia, you're creeping me out.

"No, no." Acedia suddenly talked in a dangerously sweet voice, giggling like a maniac. "Voidwalker, you say? I think I'll come to him personally and thank him for being suuuuch a good professor~!"

-Huh? But you don't even know hi-

"Doesn't matter." She responded. "Just tell me when he's planning to do the investigation.

-Uhhh...since he has a day off tomorrow...probably tomorrow morning? I mean, he does wake up really earl-

"Alright, alright! I got it! Bye byeee!" she cut him off, immediately hanging up the phone, before excitedly leaning back into her chair, threatening to fall off.

With a wide smile on her face, she kept laughing to herself, excited about the new piece of information she got.

"Hehehe...I got you again, Voidwalker...this time, I won't let you escape."

And on that day, unbeknown to Zenith, Acedia didn't sleep a wink and hid on the way from the academy to the empire, just waiting for a perfect moment to appear.