“......”
Nia Filoni. As the professor in charge of the Illusion Magic Program, she was unusually examining the barrier core with a cold expression.
The core, which resembled a small stone monument, had been created by senior mages hundreds of years ago. In recent years, it was also something she had helped manage.
That was why it was not difficult for her to realize that someone had tampered with the stone monument, artificially twisted the zones, and loosened the barriers between certain zones.
‘Who in the world?’
Professor Nia thought of the few people who could access the barrier core.
The president and chairman were not mages, so they were excluded. The professors of the Knight Department had likely forgotten that the core even existed, so they were excluded as well. Even among the professors of the Magic Department, those in programs unrelated to barriers were excluded for the time being.
‘...That leaves the Enchantment Department, the Illusion Magic Program, and the Spatial Magic Program, I suppose?’
Professor Nia considered the professors of the three programs one by one, then soon straightened her crouched knees and stood.
Normally, she could understand someone manipulating the barrier core.
Of course, that did not mean it was not a crime. Mages were always a breed driven mad by research.
However, the situation was different now.
The chairman who had established the Special Department was personally leading students through the Exam Forest.
If someone had independently manipulated the barriers for an experiment, they would receive severe punishment. And though she did not want to imagine it, if they had done this to target the chairman and students....
‘I-I must tell the president.’
She would absolutely tell the president and make them regret being alive.
Because she was too scared to act directly herself!
“Ah, I finally finished... Huh?”
As Professor Nia restored the barrier to its original state, she suddenly noticed a patch of ground that glittered more than anywhere else and bent her knees.
What entered her lowered field of view was pink powder, smaller than grains of sand.
The strangely colored powder, which clearly did not seem naturally made, was familiar to her.
“Gerbera Daisy Powder...?”
Gerbera daisy, also called the African chrysanthemum. It was a pink flower, and its powder was used as a catalyst for illusion magic.
True to her position as a professor of illusion magic, Nia recognized the powder’s identity and was horrified.
‘G-Gerbera Daisy Powder is prohibited!’
Gerbera Daisy Powder infused with mana was a reagent classified as a narcotic substance that gave pleasure and illusions to anyone who came into contact with it.
Possessing or using it was illegal unless one was a mage authorized by the Imperial Magic Corporation.
Above all, there was not even one mage at Calyps Academy authorized to use Gerbera Daisy Powder. Not a single one....
KRAAAASH——!!!
...Huh?
A thunderous blast erupted from far away, accompanied by an enormous amount of mana.
Feeling a shock comparable to grand magic and mana spreading throughout the entire forest, Professor Nia’s complexion turned pale.
Already, visions of every sort of newspaper company coming to the academy and spewing sensational articles were blooming wildly in her head.
However, that lasted only a moment.
True to her position as a professor of illusion magic, she quickly escaped those futile illusions, gathered up the Gerbera Daisy Powder scattered across the ground, adjusted the barrier, and ran toward the epicenter with all her strength.
Then she found them.
The Central Zone of the Exam Forest, where the Lycanthrope had lived. There sat Emma with a face mixed with bewilderment, anticipation, elation, and confusion, while the chairman stood beside her.
It was not the worst situation Nia had imagined, but the situation was still far from good.
“...Professor Nia. You are late.”
The chairman who called her was in severe condition, no matter how generously she looked at him.
There was a little dirt on his outer clothes, and his face was slightly paler than usual. He appeared fine on the surface, but a mage of Nia’s level could sense another person’s flow of mana.
The flow of mana inside the chairman’s body was such a mess that it looked as though someone had twisted his mana circuits around and used them as a jump rope. He seemed ready to burst at any moment.
‘The surroundings are... a mess too....’
When she rolled her eyes around, Nia could see that the chairman’s surroundings were just as horrible as his mana circuits.
The Exam Forest had been cleanly vaporized in a straight line, enough to make her wonder whether a Dragon had appeared and fired its breath. Even part of the Lycanthrope’s corpse had become black charcoal.
‘How did this...?’
She could not understand.
The Lycanthrope had not dropped below Grade 6 in hundreds of years. With its agile speed and sharp claws, it was a magic beast called the Knight Slayer.
It was not a magic beast that the chairman, a Grade 2 mage, could possibly defeat....
‘...No, no. That is not the problem...!’
With a chilling sensation as cold sweat flowed down the back of her neck and across her back, Professor Nia realized that she stood at an important crossroads.
To summarize the entire situation, the foul-tempered chairman had thrown himself in harm’s way to protect a student, while she, the examiner, had been doing something else elsewhere.
Of course, it was the chairman who had permitted her to leave, but when had the world ever operated rationally?
If the chairman known as a scoundrel put his mind to it, her life as a mage would be over.
The thought made her hiccup involuntarily.
Hic—
The enormous salary she received while working as a professor at Calyps Academy. The countless investments she could secure merely by holding the title of professor at a prestigious academy.
If she lost all of that and had to return to a poor life in a small territory, spending only a single gold coin a day, she would not be able to endure it....
“...Let us return.”
“Y-yes?”
“I will lead. Professor Nia, look after this one. Once you are ready, depart immediately.”
Amazingly, instead of pouring out his anger, the foul-tempered chairman merely said that they should return.
He had ordered her to look after Emma, who had collapsed unconscious at some point, but that was only natural. She could not tell the chairman to carry a student himself.
‘Huh...?’
Still tense and shrunken, Professor Nia lifted Emma with telekinesis and followed behind the chairman, who walked down the forest path without the slightest disruption to his bearing.
Step. Step.
The chairman walked on without reproach or irritation.
The dissonance created by those short words confused her so much that Professor Nia could not even ask what had happened.
She only looked at the chairman’s back as they moved from the Exam Forest to the medical room.
She came to her senses after laying Emma down in the medical room, when she arrived in front of the chairman’s office.
‘...W-why did I follow him all the way here?’
Just as she was about to be startled by her own incomprehensible actions, the chairman spoke first.
“You did not need to follow me this far... Still, you worked hard. You may act freely until your next lecture.”
“Y-yes... Th-thank...!”
“Did you find anything strange with the barriers or the forest?”
There was no time to feel displeased at the question interrupting her greeting.
Professor Nia spun her brain, stiff from tension, as hard as she could and remembered the bag of soil mixed with Gerbera Daisy Powder that she had tucked into her clothes. She held it out to the chairman.
“Ah, th-there was this in the f-forest....”
“What is this?”
The chairman looked into the bag containing the mound of soil and barely furrowed his brow.
Professor Nia grew even more frightened and quickly explained.
“It is G-Gerbera Daisy Powder, used as a catalyst for illusion magic...!”
Her tongue was twisted, making for a clumsy explanation, but the chairman nodded as though he understood without difficulty.
Then, rather than say anything further to her or offer a farewell, he opened the chairman’s office door and entered.
Click.
The door closed softly, like a curtain descending as a play came to its conclusion.
She stared blankly at the door like an audience member immersed in a play, then belatedly realized what she had done and was horrified.
...?!?!
She truly could not understand it.
At President Pionia’s request, was she not supposed to be watching the chairman to see whether he had some hidden scheme in the Special Department?
Rationally speaking, her job had ended after placing Emma in the medical room. Exactly there.
However, Professor Nia had not only seen the chairman off to his office, but had even tried to thank him when he said she had worked hard.
She had even handed over the main evidence of the barrier manipulation incident—the suspected cause of the Lycanthrope’s release—to the chairman rather than the president!
Even after moving away, she searched for a basis that could justify her actions, and reached one conclusion.
‘Could it be because he is the chairman...?’
Saving a student in danger. Not losing his dignity even while not hiding his disheveled state.
Taking a student to the medical room while not even examining his own wounds.
All of it was the very ideal Noble Bloodline, as though painted.
That was why she might have unconsciously followed behind the chairman.
She did not know whether he had changed or whether this was a side he had always hidden, but Professor Nia raised her opinion of the chairman slightly in her heart.
At the very least, she could not have done that herself, even if she had suffered injuries severe enough to shatter her mana circuits with no one to help her... Mana circuits!
RATTLE!
Belatedly remembering the chairman’s injuries, Professor Nia immediately ran to the chairman’s office, but—
“H-He is not here....”
The chairman was nowhere to be seen in the vast office.
Click.
The moment the door closed, I slid down to the floor.
[ Trait - Noble Bloodline activates. ]
The strict Trait that had arbitrarily corrected my walk and gestures from the Exam Forest to the chairman’s office seemed unwilling to permit even collapsing from exhaustion, but it had no chance.
‘...This is really my limit now.’
A Trait needed stamina to control me as well, did it not?
For a body that had lived its entire life far from training, holding Grade 6 mana, releasing it all at once, maintaining unnecessary dignity, and pretending to be fine demanded far too much exhaustion.
Even as my vision blurred more and more, Traits like Possessor’s Composure and Noble Bloodline were unable to exert any power at all.
If I paid attention, it also felt as though horrible pain was about to rise from throughout my body.
‘I need to rest for a moment.’
Slowly....
My eyelids, now as heavy as a thousand pounds, could not overcome gravity and fell shut.
It was an ordinary floor, not even a bed or a sofa, but I felt as though I could sleep comfortably even here.
In my sinking vision, I noticed the doorknob of the chairman’s office turning. I tried to rise again, but—
‘Too much....’
My body was no longer mine, so I used the notification sound of the status window as a lullaby and finally fell into a deep sleep.
Ding!
[ Quest progress... ]
When I opened my eyes again, a brilliantly white ceiling entered my view.
‘Hm.’
The only room at the academy with a ceiling clean enough to be nearly pure white was the medical room. And if I saw the ceiling the moment I opened my eyes without having to bend or lower my body, that meant I was lying down.
Therefore, to summarize, I was lying in a bed in the medical room, staring at the ceiling. Such... Such....
...Hoooo.
I stopped the useless thoughts I was continuing as an escape from reality.
No matter how much I looked away, the fact remained that someone had moved me to the medical room after I lost consciousness in the chairman’s office.
Perhaps because I was the chairman, or perhaps because I was a high-ranking noble, I had been laid in a deep part of the medical room where others could not see me. Still, that did nothing to make me feel better.
After all, the only person besides me who could enter the chairman’s office was the secretary.
‘I was already being careful because of what happened in the Exam Forest and the Special Department. To make a mistake like this....’
I still believed that the danger mentioned by the Quest was a scheme by the mastermind who had the secretary under their command.
The more I failed to act like the chairman, the deeper the mastermind’s suspicions would grow, until my head finally fell. That was how I understood the situation.
A sigh naturally escaped me.
Hoo....
“It would have been dangerous this time too, if not for Palakia.”
The demonic sword Palakia. No matter what anyone said, it was the greatest contributor to resolving the Exam Forest incident.
If that golden dagger had not granted me Grade 6 mana, I could never have defeated the Lycanthrope or saved Emma.
Of course, it was only able to offer that kind of reward because it came with the enormous risk of “having one’s mind controlled.”
[ Possessor’s Composure ]
[ Grant me the blessing of a cold mind and calm actions. ]
[ You will never lose reason in any situation. ]
I had something I trusted as well.
If not for Possessor’s Composure, which protected my mind in any situation, I would never have chosen Palakia.
There was nothing I could do about my body giving out before my mind, but should I not be happy that I had handled Grade 6 mana, even if only for a few seconds?
After trying to list the positive points, I soon covered my face with both hands and muttered.
“I hope the Quest progress has not fallen....”
I could do nothing about what had already happened, but if I had one wish, it was for the progress to remain unchanged.
If the progress I had painstakingly raised to 25% fell to the bottom, my actions would inevitably be restricted as well.
So I checked the Quest with trembling eyes, then blinked.
[ ◆ Avoid the First Danger. (25%) ]
-> [ ◆ Avoid the First Danger. (100%) ]
[ Quest Complete. ]
[ As a Quest Completion Reward, ‘Sita Calyps’s Notebook’ is granted. ]
Plop.
A single notebook formed as the glow of the status window scattered and gathered together.
I blankly stared at the notebook that had appeared out of nowhere and landed on my knees.
...What?