Behind the Rogue's Smile

Cazien failed. Despite his terrifying mastery as a shadow assassin, he was a second too late to save his master, Orenzia, from a brutal assassination. Broken and grieving, he receives a strange, blood-stained parcel on the anniversary of her death - a temporal hourglass that catapults him back to his first year at the Marrowglass Conservatory. Determined to save her, Cazien buries his melancholy beneath a shameless, cheeky persona, masquerading as a trash-tier rogue. He happily endures the mockery of Instructor Zarvel, a sadistic teacher who favors wealthy nobles, while constantly clashing with Velloris, a rigid honor student investigating a series of bizarre dimensional rifts. Told in alternating perspectives, the two rivals soon realize their quests are intimately connected. The horrifying twist dawns: the rifts Velloris hunts and the assassins Cazien seeks are the exact same plotline, orchestrated by elites to summon a monstrous entity. His slacker paradise shatters during a corrupted assembly. When the mind-controlled Conservatory Director unleashes a lethal ultimate attack on the students, Cazien drops his cheeky facade, casually swatting the apocalyptic spell into oblivion. With his terrifying true power exposed, how will the 'weakest rogue' explain himself?