Chapter 1

At the magic academy’s party, I overheard my werewolf boyfriend in the lounge saying he was going to destroy me.

"Alexander, her magic core is merely experiencing a temporary disruption. According to the academy infirmary's suturing protocol, her magical output will fully recover in three days. Why did you lie and tell her the core is necrotic and must be dug out?" the school doctor asked.

My werewolf boyfriend's deep voice was as cold as silver salt scraping across glass—

"If she doesn't drop out of the Magic Scroll Championship finals, how can Vivienne win?"

"I cannot let her destroy Vivienne's dream!"

I froze in the shadows of the corridor, my fingertips going numb.

It turned out that the love I believed in, the protection and the future he kept promising me, were nothing but him treating me as an obstacle to his childhood sweetheart's success.

If that’s the case—

I don't need this man anyway!

Chapter 1

At the academy party, my werewolf boyfriend, Alexander, was suddenly called away by the school doctor. I followed him in confusion, only to accidentally overhear a conversation that broke my heart.

"Was it you who tampered with the experiment, causing the magical backlash that damaged her magic core?"

The room's door wasn't shut tight. School doctor Sloane's questioning voice smashed through the wooden panel and into my ears. "Alexander, her magic core is only temporarily disrupted. According to the academy infirmary's protocol, her output will recover in three days. Why did you lie to her that the core is necrotic and must be extracted?"

I stopped dead in my tracks, freezing in the corridor’s shadows. The scene from half a month ago flashed through my mind:

Inside the experimental tower, silver magic-conduits were wrapped around my ankles, and the testing crystal was blindingly bright.

"Don't be nervous." Alexander stood behind the console and curled his lips into a smile at me. "I'm right here."

He swiped a finger across the crystal panel, and the parameter curve abruptly spiked.

Before I could even ask, my chest felt like it had been set on fire from the inside out—the runic circuits screamed and fractured. All I could hear was my own frantic heartbeat, and my vision was reduced to a blinding white light and the afterimages of exploding runes.

The next thing I knew, I woke up in the infirmary. He was holding me, his eyes rimmed red, saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't keep a close enough watch on the testing console. I almost lost you."

I believed him then.

But hearing him now, it seemed the truth was far from what Alexander had claimed.

From behind the wooden door, Alexander's deep voice sounded as cold as silver salt scraping across glass.

"If she doesn't drop out of the Magic Scroll Championship finals, how can Vivienne win?"

"I cannot let her ruin Vivienne's dream!"

Sloane suppressed his anger: "And what about Elena's future? She has always dreamed of becoming an archmage."

Alexander chuckled, cold and dismissive. "What future does she have? She's a scholarship student from the Lower City; no matter how hard she works, she's destined to script away at the bottom tier of some workshop. Win the championship? Become an archmage? Let her keep dreaming."

My chest violently seized, as if I had been dealt a heavy blow.

"She is your girlfriend." Sloane gritted his teeth. "Is that how you see her?"

"Girlfriend?" Alexander scoffed as if he’d heard a joke. "Don't give that word too much weight. She sleeps with me, obeys me, and helps me draw a few magic scrolls—she's been a very good girl. But did she really think she could be compared to Vivienne?"

Vivienne.

The eldest lady of the noble Whitmore wizard family, and Alexander's childhood sweetheart.

He had personally told me once that Vivienne was just a friend, and that the person he loved most was me.

My fingertips unconsciously tightened, crushing the scroll tube in my palm out of shape.

Sloane laughed out of sheer fury: "For the eldest daughter of the Whitmore family, you are actually going to send your own girlfriend to the operating table with your own hands?"

Alexander didn't bother hiding his true nature; he even sounded a bit annoyed. "Don't make it sound so ugly. I'm just conveniently getting rid of a hindrance. Vivienne needs to win the championship, she needs to advance, and she needs a perfect data core—so we'll just use Elena's. Saves us the trouble of buying unclean ones from the black market."

My mind exploded with a deafening boom.

Take my... magic core?

A magic core is not merely the source of a wizard's magic; it encapsulates all their skills and knowledge.

If my magic core was transplanted into Vivienne, she would acquire all of my scroll-making techniques.

Sloane slammed his hand on the table with a muffled thud. "Do you realize what you are saying? Magic cores are absolute contraband strictly forbidden from being traded by the Council. Once you're caught—"

"Let them catch me first," Alexander interrupted, not caring in the slightest.

But with his next sentence, his tone turned vicious.

"You don't need to worry so much. Just shut your mouth, do nothing, and once the family hospital removes her magic core, I'll build you an entirely new medical tower. But if you dare blab—"

He paused for a fraction of a second, his dangerous aura seeping out through the crack in the door.

"—Sloane, you know how fast a werewolf can snap a man's throat."

The corridor suddenly grew terrifyingly quiet.

I could hear my own heartbeat pounding painfully in my eardrums, like a drum being violently beaten to the point of cracking.

Pushing down his fear and anger, Sloane said, "She trusts you."

"So what?" Alexander sneered. "Without her magic core—she might cry and throw tantrums, but in the end, won't she have to rely on me to provide for her anyway? Isn't that great? She won't have to face any real wind or waves for the rest of her life."

Hearing this, I could no longer hold back the tears; they poured from my eyes uncontrollably.

So, the future he painted for me was one where I would be a "cripple"—kept by him, receiving his charity, and tucked away in a corner like a pet.

He never intended to let me achieve my dreams.

He only ever wanted to destroy them, turning me into Vivienne's stepping stone.

There was the sound of someone standing up inside the room, and the next second, the door handle shifted slightly.

I abruptly turned around and hurried downstairs toward the party hall, fleeing for my life as if monsters were on my heels.