The heartbeat was clearly fading, so why did she look so at ease?

Adele’s face was more serene than it had ever been. She seemed to radiate a sense of freedom and looked utterly unhurried. Like someone who had been released from every constraint in the world.

Adele opened her eyes, but the barely perceptible pulse and her tranquil expression remained unchanged.

To think that the technique of stopping one’s heart was this remarkable.

Adele, having demonstrated the perfect technique, smiled with satisfaction and said.

“To be precise, it doesn’t stop. It’s about control.”

The moment Adele finished her explanation, her heart rate returned to normal as though nothing had happened.

“That’s incredible. Just now, Adele, you looked strange. No, not strange, more like…… should I say you looked like an adult?”

Hmph. This is what a true adult looks like. Getting this excited over something so minor. Adele’s shoulders rose with pride. In a good mood, she demonstrated it once more.

“Now, I’ll try it again. Watch closely.”

Adele closed her eyes just as she had before.

Exhaling slowly and releasing as much tension from the body as possible. It felt languid, but it was different from feeling sleepy. It could also be seen as sharing the same quality as the presence-erasing technique, which involved becoming one with one’s surroundings.

However, it differed in that one focused solely on oneself rather than on the surroundings.

She wondered whether Vincent, who had only just begun his training, would understand this difference, but continuing to explain with patience was also part of a teacher’s duty.

As Adele’s heartbeat grew faint once again, Vincent could not help but be filled with admiration. To control one’s body so freely like that. Though the one thing he was curious about was……

“But why are you doing that right now?”

At the careful question, Adele answered as though it were obvious.

“To not be nervous.”

At her answer, Vincent understood. Adele was worried about him right now.

Before, she had taught him presence-erasing so he could escape from his father, and today she had taught him heart-stopping. Of course, the presence-erasing he had learned earlier had never once succeeded. But all of the abilities she was trying to teach him were for Vincent’s sake.

Vincent felt that his heart, which had been churning with anxiety just moments ago, was now swelling with a strange feeling. It felt somewhat like nausea, and his head was even spinning. Yet his body was not ill.

Just the day before, he had felt as though he had been struck by lightning upon seeing Adele, and now today he was being swept up in yet another new emotion. It was not a feeling that the still-young Vincent was equipped to handle.

Adele watched Vincent, flustered and unable to do anything about his own heart, and thought to herself.

There was still a long way to go.

Was this immature child truly the one who would one day stand as her equal? Since she had yet to find anything that could be called talent in him, Adele had even reached the point of doubting whether her own memories were wrong.

‘Wait. That means when I conquer the world in the future, there will be no rival to stand in my way?’

Having thought that far, Adele grinned. It seemed like it would be perfectly fine if Vincent had no talent going forward either.

Then she realized. There was no time for daydreaming right now. Adele recalled what she had overheard while hanging from the ceiling.

The duke had clearly said that the prince was coming to visit. The only prince Adele knew of at this point in time was one person.

“By the way, is the prince who is supposed to come today Rohide Pilonia?”

Vincent was startled by Adele’s sudden question. To think there was someone who would so casually call the prince by name like that.

The prince Vincent had met once was an extremely prickly character. If he had heard someone speak of him so carelessly, he would absolutely not let it go.

While Vincent was too startled to say anything, Adele recalled her past life.

Records about Vincent Rogato, who had been the villain, had been nearly impossible to find. There had been efforts to erase the figure who had threatened the kingdom, but above all, she had thought it was due to Rohide’s needless jealousy……

Yet as it turned out, Vincent and Rohide’s meeting had taken place even before they entered the academy. This was new information.

‘Then did Rohide dislike Vincent from the very beginning?’

Come to think of it, there was the way Vincent had once described Rohide as a half-witted fool, and how he had seemed to know him far too well.

The two had been at odds with each other long before Vincent fell for Layla.

In that case, perhaps Vincent had not met and fallen for Layla for the first time at the academy either.

In that instant, the image of Layla’s beautiful smile flashed through Adele’s mind.

If the meeting with the female lead was happening this early, it might not be long before Vincent was blinded by love and began showing signs of instability. Reaching that conclusion, Adele’s mood soured.

Vincent still had a great deal of training to do under her, and if he went mad with love and tried to break free, what was she supposed to do?

‘What do you mean, what. I’d just give up and go conquer the world myself.’

Conquering the world. It was a grand dream and the most remarkable thing in the world.

Even so, Adele’s expression as she thought of that goal was not a good one. Even forcing a smile felt difficult.

The conquest that should have made her heart race somehow failed to excite her. Conquering the world had always been her long-standing destiny.

At that moment, Adele realized something.

That was right.

She had just realized it, but it seemed she was a perfectionist.

If she did not see things through to the end, she could not help but feel unsettled about anything.

‘This is how one comes to know oneself a little more.’

In her previous life, she had lived as a supporting character and had never had the opportunity to know herself. She had existed as nothing more than a piece of the story, and beyond that, she had been unable to think of anything else.

This was what it meant to truly live.

Adele had gained a very great realization and smiled with a refreshed heart. Though it seemed there was still a somewhat unresolved feeling lingering within her.

In any case, the situation had more or less sorted itself out.

Rohide, who had been showing signs of obsession over Layla for whatever reason, had visited the estate of his future rival in love. Under the unlikely pretense of a tea party, no less.

However, the lonely Vincent had not been informed of anything. The culprit was likely the servant named Becky, who had been badmouthing Vincent in the kitchen.

Adele had clearly heard the duke say “Be” before hastily stopping himself.

Whatever kind of relationship those two had. Setting aside the question of how a high-ranking noble like a duke would even remember the name of a mere servant, the current situation needed to be dealt with.

The plan was to buy time for Vincent, who had been given no chance to prepare.

All of this was also part of what a teacher had to do.

“For now, you need to be practicing.”

“Practicing?”

Adele nodded.

“You need to at least be able to do something like heart-stopping before you can go around telling people you’re my subordinate.”

“……That’s something I can do right away, right?”

At Vincent’s skeptical voice, Adele nodded reassuringly.

“I’ll go hold Rohide off in the meantime. I’ll be buying you time, so make sure you practice well.”

How should she go about holding Rohide off?

Originally, he had been her lord. He was someone so high above her that even raising her head could be punishable.

He was the type who would immediately harden his expression and flare up in anger if she so much as said a single word. The only time he had acted strangely, calling her a close friend and the like, was when he had needed her for the war of conquest.

Her circumstances at that time had surely been newly created for that very purpose.

Having recalled all of that, Adele clenched her fist tightly.

‘Good. Anger has risen to just the right level.’

He may have been her lord once, but he was not anymore. For the sake of revenge, she could not go easy on him even if he was a young child.

The pain, the sorrow, the indignation, and the desperation of being thoroughly used and discarded at that time! She had forgotten none of it!

Before she knew it, Vincent had been pushed to the back of her mind, and this had become her personal revenge.

Adele retraced her memories and stepped out of the room.

By now, Rohide would certainly be in the drawing room. In the past, Rohide had always drunk only whiskey. He used to say it was a world he could not survive without being drunk. Young as he was now, he was probably drinking warm milk.

To think she would be seeing the young face of Rohide, the one who had put her through nothing but hardship.