The rumor that Dark Magic professor Lee Mijeong had died spread so quickly that there was hardly anyone in the entire Academy who did not know about it.
The Academy suspended regular classes for safety until the culprit behind the incident was caught, so I was enjoying an unexpectedly sweet vacation.
However, one inconvenience had come up.
Slurping my drink through a straw, I picked up my phone, opened the group chat, and typed a message.
[Kim Jongseok : Check in.]
[Yoon Sia : Check.]
[Lee Yeowoo : Check.]
[Moon Mujin : Check.]
[Lee Hyunwoo : Check.]
[Yeon Hye…….]
Except while we were sleeping, we had to do a kind of attendance check every hour to report whether we were still alive.
Doing it every hour was quite a hassle, but I put up with it while thinking about how much more troublesome it must be for our homeroom teacher to keep track of every single one of us.
“Hyunwoo. But do you think it’s really true? That the professor died….”
Yeowoo approached me as I lay on the sofa, looking uneasy.
I scratched my chin and said,
“Well, they say smoke doesn’t rise from a chimney without a fire, so isn’t it probably true?”
“…What does that mean?”
“It’s a saying. There’s a saying like that.”
“Are you looking down on your big sister right now?”
“No. That’s not what I meant….”
Professor Lee Mijeong, who had gotten angry at me, was dead.
For me, it was rather uncomfortable news.
Death had been such a familiar thing in my previous world that it had not bothered me much, but death in this world was not something I was nearly as accustomed to experiencing.
“They said it was murder, and usually people get murdered because they earned someone’s grudge. Does that mean I’m on the list of suspects too?”
“List of suspects?”
“You at least know what a suspect is, right?”
“…I don’t.”
I might as well talk to a wall. If Sia were here at a time like this, she would explain it in simpler terms for her. Haaah….
[Moon Mujin : Teacher, I’m scared ㅠㅠ If I type HELP in an emergency, will you come save me?]
[Kim Jongseok : Teacher is scared too.]
“Heh heh.”
Man, this guy. He had a talent for making me laugh.
He was a B-rank Hero ranked among the top 784 in South Korea, and he was scared?
[Kim Jongseok : Given the situation, Teacher will tell you something scary.]
[Moon Mujin : Ohhh, I like scary stuff.]
[Yoon Sia : Ah, I don’t ㅠㅠ I’m alone right now, so if I hear something scary, I won’t be able to sleep later.]
[Kim Jongseok : The Academy will remain closed indefinitely until the culprit is caught, and however long that lasts will be deducted from your vacation.]
[Jeon Nayeon : Ah, that’s a little…… (crying emoticon)]
[Moon Mujin : (screaming emoticon)]
[Yoon Sia : (trembling-in-fear emoticon)]
Ohhh. This looked fun. I should join in too.
I opened the emoticon window and picked the highest-quality one among the default emoticons.
[Lee Hyunwoo : (winking alien emoticon)]
“Huh. Was that the wrong one….”
But the emoticon had already been posted in the group chat. Yeowoo saw it and joined the emoticon parade as well.
[Lee Yeowoo : (mental-breakdown emoticon)]
[Kim Jongseok : Ah. And one more thing. I don’t know when this situation will end, but you have a quiz coming up soon. Make sure you prepare in advance.]
I stopped reading there and put down my phone.
Then I stretched, got up, and checked the storage containers where we kept our food.
“Huh? Sis! We’re completely out of food.”
“Already? Then let’s go buy some soon.”
Yeowoo answered while tapping away at her smartphone, apparently engrossed in KakaoTalk.
“I’ll go now. Anything you want?”
“Huh? But it’s dangerous right now.”
“It’s fine. The store’s right next to the dormitory anyway.”
“Hmm~ Then I want Honey Butter Chips!”
“Got it.”
I left through the front door and waited for the elevator.
Unlike usual, the inside of the elevator was completely empty. Normally, there would be at least one or two people inside no matter what.
I went down to the first floor and headed to the supermarket.
The supermarket was deserted as well. I picked up various things to eat and drink, along with ice cream and a few other things, then paid by card.
With my arms loaded down with bags, I returned to the dormitory building, only to find the elevator all the way at the top.
Damn it.
I set the bags down and waited for the elevator.
“Hmm….”
I stood there absentmindedly with my arms crossed, and when the elevator had come about halfway down—
I noticed a strange noise coming from the stairwell.
Something flaring, followed by loud crashing and banging? What is that?
I opened the door leading to the stairs and felt a violent surge of mana from above.
When I looked up, something came plummeting down.
Startled, I jumped aside and checked what had fallen.
It was a thoroughly scorched teddy bear.
A teddy bear that looked very familiar.
What in the world is happening up there?
I swallowed and started climbing the stairs.
I heard the elevator arrive along the way, but I could not bring myself to stop.
The farther up I went, the clearer the sounds of fighting became, and the flow of mana grew more violent.
When I continued upward and finally saw what was happening…….
“W-What are you doing?”
A red-haired girl was fighting against a group of teddy bears.
And she looked completely serious about it.
“Don’t talk to me. I’m busy right now.”
The girl, whose name I did not know, responded irritably without even looking at me and continued fighting.
But something was strange.
These things were definitely…… the same dolls from that Dark Magic class last time.
I checked just in case and found one teddy bear that still faintly contained my mana.
……What in the world is going on?
It contained my mana, but perhaps because someone had tampered with it afterward, a dense trace of another type of mana remained inside it as well.
Partly to help the girl and partly to calm the teddy bears rampaging like mad, I gave them an order.
“That’s enough.”
It was a simple command, but it was an incantation that condensed my will.
The teddy bear that received my will lost its life force, returned to being an ordinary teddy bear, and collapsed limply to the floor.
Once one went down like that, the other teddy bears began losing their life force one after another and fell as well.
The red-haired girl, who had been in the middle of fighting them, turned around in confusion.
“……What? Don’t tell me you did that?”
Then she became even more flustered when she saw me.
“A-A child?”
“…You look pretty young yourself.”
The red-haired girl was clearly young too.
She could not have been more than twelve or thirteen.
And yet, there was something almost aristocratic about the dignity she carried.
She was clearly young, yet somehow she did not feel young.
Overall, she had a mature air about her.
A young beauty.
“……Phew.”
She barely managed to compose herself before seeming to realize something belatedly. Her voice suddenly shot up as she pointed a finger at me.
“B-But how is there a boy here?! This is the women’s dormitory!”
“I live here.”
“W-What? You live here? Are you a stalker……? No, you’re probably too young for that.”
“My older sister and I enrolled together. That’s why I live here with her. I can see why you’d misunderstand.”
Perhaps my answer did not fully satisfy the red-haired girl, because she remained wary of me.
Eventually, however, she let out a deep sigh and shook her head.
“Well, you’re a child. I suppose that could…… happen? I don’t know.”
“By the way, your arm’s bleeding.”
At my words, she lifted her right wrist.
The teddy bear must have gotten her pretty badly, because there was a vertical cut that looked about five centimeters long.
She sighed again, bit her lip, and answered,
“It’s fine. It’s just a scratch.”
“Don’t leave it like that. If you’re unlucky, you could get tetanus, or it could leave an ugly scar. Let me see your arm.”
I happened to have something I wanted to experiment with as well, so I decided to do her a favor.
I approached her and grabbed her wrist.
“W-What are…… you doing?”
“I learned Healing Magic. I’ll treat you.”
“Huh? Y-You really don’t have to……?”
“It’s an experim— No, I just want to do it for you.”
Regardless of the girl’s reaction, I decided to use the magic I had recently finished testing.
I had already refined it several times, so there should not be another unfortunate incident where the magic vanished in less than a second like last time.
Quietly, I spoke the activation word.
“Hild.”
A faint spark crackled above my right hand, and a blue light appeared.
The girl recoiled at the sight of the sparks and asked,
“Th-That…… is Healing Magic, right?”
“It’s fine. It won’t hurt.”
Probably?
This was my first time using it in actual practice too, so I did not really know.
I slowly brought the Hild formed over my right hand against the girl’s wrist.
BZZZT—
Along with the crackling sound, her wrist began to glow.
Apparently it really did not hurt, because the girl stayed still.
I tried pushing Hild in a little deeper.
In other words…… I grabbed the injured area with my right hand.
“Eek……?!”
With the girl’s short shriek, Hild disappeared.
The wrist that had been marked by a long red line was now completely clean.
There was not even a scab on her pale skin. It was smooth, as though there had never been a wound there in the first place.
“Done. It’s fine now, right?”
“……Hmm.”
The girl rubbed her wrist, then looked down at me with a satisfied expression.
“It really is fine. Thank you.”
“Oh my. What are you two doing?”
At that moment, someone whose identity I did not know appeared behind us and spoke.
I turned around and saw a woman dressed in strangely familiar clothes.
She wore a sand-colored trench coat and stood farther down the stairs with her arms crossed, looking up at us with a sly expression…….
“As far as I know, dating inside the Academy is prohibited as a rule~”
“Th-This isn’t— I mean, it’s not like that!”
The girl I had treated visibly panicked and tried to explain, but the woman with her arms crossed seemed to pay no attention to the girl beside me.
She was staring only at me.
“Hello. Nice to see you again. You remember me, right?”
I remembered seeing her before.
Was she some high-ranking person from a guild?
Unable to decide what expression I should make at the woman who had suddenly appeared, I awkwardly nodded.
***
[Homeroom Teacher : Check in, kids~]
[Lee Minjun : Checking in!]
[Kim Seojun : Check-in!]
[Kim Geonwoo : Yes, checking in.]
[Yu Huina : Checking in.]
Yu Huina closed her phone and sighed.
“How long do we have to keep doing this?”
[Keep going! Keep going!]
“Be quiet, Sally.”
Perhaps displeased by Huina’s curt response, Sally, the Flame Spirit, manifested.
“I’m bored! Let’s go play!”
“No. Even if I want to go out, I can’t.”
“Why! Why!”
“I can’t play with you today, so go back in, Sally. I’m tired.”
“Hmph!”
Despite how she acted, Sally obediently disappeared.
Inside the house, which had grown pleasantly warm from the Flame Spirit’s manifestation, Yu Huina studied in preparation for the next exam.
She concentrated on underlining passages and writing notes for a while.
Then another spirit appeared in the room and shouted urgently,
“Huina! Huina! Something terrible has happened!”
“…Why? What happened?”
Apparently well accustomed to the Wind Spirit Sylphid’s fussing, Huina responded dryly without looking up from her book.
But Sylphid grew even more urgent, using the wind to slam the book shut as it spoke.
“An evil aura is rising!”
“…An evil aura?”
“Luna says that something with an attribute similar to its is coming up through the building’s stairwell!”
“…Luna said that?”
Luna was a Dark Spirit.
It was so timid and hated coming forward so much that it would not reveal itself even when Huina ordered or asked it to.
For a spirit like that to pass a warning through its friend meant something unusual was happening….
“There shouldn’t be anything like that inside the dormitory building. What is it?”
“That’s not the important part, Huina!”
Yu Huina tilted her head and looked at Sylphid.
Sylphid then explained the real point of the story.
“Those sources of evil energy are not particularly powerful. Luna says that if you handle them yourself, you should be able to defeat them easily! And…… um, what was it again?”
Sylphid thought for a moment before letting out an “Ah!” and continuing.
“It said that if it absorbs that evil energy, Luna might be able to grow stronger! Wouldn’t that ultimately be good for you too, Huina?”
“R-Really…? Luna’s going to absorb them?”
“That’s right! That’s right!”
[Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go defeat the bad guys!]
Sally eagerly joined in as well.
Huina stretched for a moment, then nodded.
“All right. It’s not like chances like this come around often.”
Then she left through the front door and headed for the stairs.
For Luna’s growth.