“Hah-ha!”
The Toy Soldier looked at Kawin and shrugged.
“Judging by your expression, something has come to mind!”
“Yes. Thank you, Headmaster.”
Kawin bowed his head toward the Toy Soldier.
As if a hazy fog had been sucked up by a vacuum cleaner, his head felt clear.
It was a hint that would never have been given without goodwill toward Kawin.
Even so, a question remained.
“It’s true that I caught the Astallon spy, but is it all right for you to give information like this to me alone?”
“Hah-ha! It’s hardly grand advice. It’s an idea any mage with a rich imagination could come up with!”
As if feigning disinterest, the Toy Soldier abruptly turned its body toward the window.
“There’s no need to look so grateful, Kawin! My hint is only half a hint, after all.”
“Half……?”
“Astallon is the eternal archenemy of our Illumina Empire! The fact that one of their spies was rooted out will surely please the Imperial Household. I will go to the Imperial Household and report it in person. A report that a spy was caught, but that we don’t know who caught him.”
“Ah.”
Kawin blinked a couple of times.
Tesca had allowed a spy to enroll.
And then it had eliminated the spy.
But it didn’t know who had caught him.
Would the Imperial Household reward Headmaster Dorothy, or discipline him?
Just like……
“It’s similar to my own situation right now.”
“Hah-ha! As expected, talking with you is a pleasure, Kawin!”
He had entered the Forbidden Zone, but he had also earned merit.
In a way, Kawin and Dorothy could be seen as being in the same position.
“If it hadn’t been for you, Kawin, Bane was scheduled to be caught sometime next month.”
“Pardon?”
Scheduled to be caught.
At that definitive tone, Kawin’s eyes widened.
“If possible, it would have been better to haul in his contact along with him in a single cast of the net, but an unexpected situation arose.”
“Then……”
Kawin recalled the previous night.
The Auditorium in the Academy’s main building.
It was a Forbidden Zone with a considerable number of penalty points attached, but the warding magic itself wasn’t all that dense.
It was at a level where one wouldn’t get caught as long as one carefully stepped over a few lines.
That was why he, and the Astallon spy as well, had been able to come and go so easily……
“Ah!”
Only then did Kawin realize.
There was a reason the watch had been lax.
On the contrary, it was a scheme to dig a trap and deal an even greater blow to Astallon!
It wasn’t that they couldn’t catch Bane. They had been choosing not to.
“Then……”
Kawin asked, with a somewhat apologetic face.
“Now that I think about it, I ruined your plan, didn’t I?”
“Hah-ha! No need to think of it that way. There was no firm guarantee that we would catch the contact as planned. Catching someone when you can is also a good choice.”
CLACK!
The Toy Soldier’s body turned back toward Kawin.
“The plan didn’t fit together perfectly. But I’m pleased. Tesca Academy’s supernova defeated no less than a Swordmaster Expert! And a freshman at that! How to put it, it feels as though we made the first move in the battle of next-generation prospects? Hah-hah-ha!”
The Toy Soldier held its stomach and laughed, creak, creak.
Not knowing how to react, Kawin simply stayed still.
“Kawin. I only gave you a hint. I did not provide the method.”
“By method……”
“Before long, you’ll be able to understand what that means.”
The Toy Soldier ran, patter-patter-patter, and before he knew it, landed on Kawin’s shoulder.
Then it whispered in a tiny voice.
“I cannot reveal my position officially. But in my heart, I will be cheering for you to obtain what you want.”
The Toy Soldier sent him a playful wink.
Kawin closed his eyes for a moment.
And he used his specialty.
However,
‘It’s meaningless.’
This Toy Soldier had no breath, nor the distinct smell of a person.
A being whose true feelings he couldn’t read, the first he had encountered in a very long time.
A moment later, the light in the Toy Soldier’s eyes went out.
Dorothy’s Puppetry had ended.
“…….”
Kawin looked down at the Toy Soldier for a moment.
Without magic power dwelling in it, it was nothing more than a simple toy.
A very, very simple and childish toy.
That was why handling this toy as though it were a person required magic power beyond the norm.
‘What kind of person is Headmaster Dorothy?’
In the original work, there was no part that described the Headmaster in detail.
Only that the puppets he showed in the war were ruthlessly strong.
Even his real name and appearance had never been directly revealed.
Kawin had obtained one Grimoire, but he couldn’t picture himself fighting Dorothy and winning.
‘Doesn’t matter. Wasn’t I living on borrowed time to begin with?’
If Dorothy had meant to kill him, he would have done so already.
Even if he was only watching for a while, nothing would change.
Either way, if Kawin failed to obtain the Grimoire, it was all the same whether he died at the hands of the protagonist or to an unseen force.
So,
‘I’ll find the Grimoire and decipher it, even a single day sooner.’
CLICK.
Kawin carefully set the Toy Soldier down on the table.
As Dorothy had said, the hint had already been given.
Now it was time to find the method.
***
“It’s not fair.”
Clear drops of water flowed down blotchy red skin.
Frasel Illuma.
She was shedding endless tears in front of the mirror.
“Why…… now of all times?”
It’s not fair.
Something like this was not fair.
On her already wrecked face, a flush had been added.
The inflammation and breakouts that had already settled there took on an even redder hue.
It had always been that way, but now it was in a state she could never show anyone.
“I finally met some decent people.”
A sigh heavier than a lump of iron flowed from her mouth.
The reason Frasel’s skin had worsened even further.
No matter how she thought about it, there was nothing other than that.
‘It’s because of that Challenge.’
During the Challenge with Kawin.
His Lightning magic had struck Frasel’s mask.
It was a blow powerful enough to knock loose, for a moment, the mask firmly fixed in place by magic.
There had been no particular pain, but she had felt a tingling sensation across her whole face.
Then, after a day or two had passed,
“For my skin to even peel like this……”
She didn’t know what the principle was.
But the surface of her skin, which had turned bright red, was gradually peeling off.
That there was still room for it to get worse.
Even to herself, it was absurd.
But the reason she despaired even more lay in something other than her skin.
‘Kawin Anper.’
The only one at the Academy who had witnessed her true appearance.
The one who had treated her the same even after that.
Kawin was the only one who had proposed doing something together after seeing Frasel’s face.
Even if it was a fight where they traded blows, she had yearned for even such a proposal.
But,
‘If my condition gets any worse than this, I won’t be able to keep my promise.’
It wasn’t a matter of whether she did the Challenge or not; it was doubtful whether she could even keep attending the Academy.
The heat rising more and more.
The deepening flush.
And the peeling skin.
In the mirror she was gazing into, a wrecked monster was shedding tears.
“This is…… too cruel!”
She had thought she had finally made a friend.
When even the single thread of hope she had barely found shattered, Frasel ended up doing something she should never have done.
She tore off, with her hands, the skin that was peeling in real time.
“Kyaaaah!”
A scream rang out through the Academy Dormitory.
“Wh-what the fuck?!”
“What’s going on?”
“Where’s that sound coming from?”
The atmosphere was already on edge because of the Astallon spy.
Students who had been resting in their rooms shot to their feet and looked out their windows.
But after that, the scream vanished as if washed away.
“Who was that?”
“It was definitely a girl’s voice.”
“That scared me……”
The place the scream had come from.
A faint moan burst out from Frasel Illuma’s room.
But it wasn’t a voice of pain.
“H…… how could this……!”
Frasel touched her face with trembling fingers.
Under normal circumstances, it was a taboo she must never break.
The things that had sprouted on her face were not a simple illness but the result of a curse.
Until now, every means in the Empire had been mobilized to treat Frasel’s skin.
Numerous renowned physicians, and even shamans, had been brought in, but
the conclusion they reached was absurdly meager.
-The symptoms may worsen, so you must avoid stimulating your face as much as possible.
Considering the time and devotion invested, it was advice that might as well not have been given, but Frasel followed it with a desperate heart.
She kept her skin ventilated and moisturized even while wearing the mask,
and morning and evening she generously applied everything said to be good for the skin.
But for her skin, quite literally, a hundred medicines were of no use.
That had definitely been the case, but
“It…… it…… hic!”
She was so startled that a hiccup came out before any words.
Calming her ragged breathing, Frasel finally poured out what she wanted to say.
“It’s gone down! It definitely has! Hic!”
A wish she had held all her life but that had never once come true.
The inflammation and breakouts on her skin had calmed down.
It was a very, very faint change that could only be noticed by pressing close to the mirror.
But Frasel could definitely feel the difference.
“How did this happen?”
Frasel took a deep breath. Whoo.
She calmed her startled heart and turned her mind rapidly.
And she arrived at the same conclusion as before.
‘It’s the same. Nothing special happened other than the Challenge with Kawin, right?’
The flush worsening her breakouts.
New skin growing in as the old skin peeled.
All of it had started after she met Kawin.
“Even the Imperial Household’s mages and healers couldn’t do this……”
How had Kawin been able to pull off something so miraculous?
Frasel had no way of knowing that a similar treatment existed in Kawin’s past life.
Her gentle eyes suddenly turned toward her desk like a wildcat’s.
On it was a calendar recording the Academy schedule.
“Wh-when is the next Challenge?”
Just hypothetically.
If she did Challenges with Kawin often.
And if these symptoms kept improving as a result?
The desperate longing that had piled up all this time became fuel, setting her heart ablaze.
Kawin Anper.
Someone special simply for having already reached out his hand to her.
But the Lightning magic Kawin had cast was, to her, another kind of ‘salvation.’
***
It was a day when every student had spent a happy day thanks to an unexpected cancellation of classes.
Deep in the night, when the slender moon was completely hidden by clouds, Kawin appeared at the main building.
‘The Headmaster was right.’
Headmaster Dorothy, who had deliberately left the spy free.
What he had said was clearly the truth.
Unlike previous nights, hundreds of invisible strands of warding magic densely filled the corridor.
So much that it looked more like barrier magic than warding magic.
The ability Kawin possessed,
Electron Perception, lit up with a red warning light.
However,
‘Doesn’t matter. This is my specialty.’
Crossing invisible obstacles.
It was something he had done in his past life until he was sick of it.
Even if there were a mage with the same ‘Electron Perception,’ it would be impossible for them to handle it as skillfully as Kawin.
Kawin felt a strange feeling.
Wasn’t it as though the Grimoire’s abilities had some connection to Kawin’s past life?
‘Focus. This isn’t the time to get distracted.’
Kawin closed his eyes and entrusted his body to the senses of Electron Perception.
When dealing with invisible magic, it was actually better to close his eyes.
Sneak, sneak.
At times he bent his back like a cat,
and at times he stood on tiptoe and hopped, hop, hop.
He thought it was a relief that no one was watching.
If anyone caught him twisting his whole body to avoid invisible lines like this, he might have died of shame rather than by Astallon’s sword.
“Piece of cake.”
Indeed, he had reason to boast.
Kawin evaded all the warding magic in one go and entered the Auditorium.
In a single night, the traces of the fight with Bane had vanished as if it had all been a lie.
The Mana Stone lights and glass windows had all been replaced with new ones, and another sculpture had taken the place of the missing statue.
“Let’s begin.”
What Kawin did, with a rather solemn face, was take off both his shoes and socks.