The moment I read the invitation, written in crooked letters on red paper, a hollow laugh escaped me.
It was not a simple surprise. It was the absurdity of having no idea who could have sent this letter.
I distorted the Chairman’s chiseled face as much as I could and muttered.
“Wait. I was distracted by the shop for only a moment, a very brief moment. Someone placed something like this here in that short time? And I did not even notice it, nor do I know who sent it?”
The main story had not begun yet; I was merely waiting for the right time. I had been confident that, after three months, I would make proper use of my knowledge of the original story.
That confidence was now shaking from the roots.
And the status window, which had dangled the carrot of the Trait Shop and new traits before me, immediately took out the whip as though rebuking me for realizing it only now.
[ Quest Created! ]
[ ◆ Evade the First Danger. (0%) ]
[ Reward: Sita Calyps’s Notebook ]
[ Penalty: Trait - Appraiser’s Eye removed. ]
After reading the Penalty entry that had appeared beneath the rewards section, I became certain of one thing.
This damned status window had no intention of letting me rest easy.
Though, compared to the gravity of its contents, there was something slightly funny about that. I had not been planning to rest easy either.
‘Three months until Medio enrolls. Once the main story begins, Calyps Academy will quickly fall into chaos. It is not as if I would want to relax just because I completed one quest....’
With a bitter smile, I turned the letter over in my hand before realizing something.
Who had sent this letter, what message it contained, and what kind of danger the quest had mentioned at precisely the right time.
The answer to all those questions lay in the Chairman’s past, which I did not know and which had been buried forever in darkness when I possessed the Chairman’s body.
“This is difficult....”
I sighed in a stiff voice.
Though the quest appeared to say, ‘Evade the danger,’ I realized that its true nature was entirely different.
There could be no effect without a cause. Considering that the quest’s ‘danger’ had likely not appeared overnight, but was rooted in the karma accumulated by the Chairman....
“Find out the Chairman’s past.”
...Yes, that was practically the quest’s real objective.
“I want to say, ‘Why would I care about a villain’s past?’ but....”
If I did that, even the status window I had would be taken from me, and Medio would cut off my head.
As I considered how I could learn about the Chairman’s past, I suddenly thought of the person whom the wastrel Chairman trusted enough to entrust with the report that exposed his weaknesses.
The Chairman’s secretary. Could he know the Chairman’s past, something even I, a reader, did not know?
Until the previous Marquess of Calyps was alive, Tia had been one of the maids responsible for cleaning the marquess’s residence.
Her wages were by no means low, the everyday benefits were varied, and merely serving at the residence of a high-ranking noble did much for one’s reputation. She loved her job.
However, after the previous Marquess died in an unexpected accident and his successor became the new Marquess, her world completely changed.
From today onward, the maids responsible for cleaning the marquess’s residence will also be responsible for cleaning the academy.
She still could not forget it.
The order the Marquess had given in a voice as cold as frost after gathering every servant of the Marquess House: clean the residence at night and the academy during the day.
Tia and her colleagues had been bewildered by an order that effectively told them to work all day. Still, believing that it would be resolved if they endured only a few difficult days, they bore the hard labor of traveling between the residence and academy.
But as though telling them to abandon that useless hope, the Marquess cut nearly half their wages and took away even the benefits everyone had envied.
The servants, including Tia, despaired at their workplace, which had become hell in an instant. Yet they could not leave the Marquess House.
Even if they wanted to move to another residence, no one would hire them without a proper recommendation. They also lacked the courage to seek new work.
The only thing Tia could do was resent the new Marquess while sweeping floors and washing windows all day....
“Good morning.”
......?!??
At the morning greeting she heard while cleaning an academy corridor, Tia froze on the spot.
It could not be helped. The person waving a hand and greeting her was the Chairman she had been resenting until moments ago.
Tia’s perfectly rational mind could not properly accept the situation of a ‘foul-tempered, eccentric’ Marquess ‘greeting her normally,’ and she missed the chance to bow and show proper respect.
‘T-This is bad...!’
A mere servant had ignored a noble’s greeting. It was not something even the kindest noble would forgive.
Hoping desperately that it would end with a slap or humiliation, rather than dismissal, Tia hurriedly dropped to her knees.
It was far too late, but she hoped that if she begged forgiveness now, her punishment might be lessened.
“M-My Lord Marquess! I was foolish and failed to show proper respect! Please forgive me...!”
As she begged over and over as though her hands and feet might wear away, she squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself for the shock that would soon come.
The previous Marquess might have been different, but the current Marquess had the sort of personality that made it unsurprising for him to strike servants.
Yet what followed was perfectly—truly perfectly—the opposite of what she had expected.
“...It is all right.”
Instead of throwing a punch at her, the Marquess patted her shoulder once with an inscrutable expression and walked away.
The transformation of an evil employer who had halved wages, removed benefits, and given impossible orders.
Tia blankly watched the Marquess’s retreating back. The moment she came to her senses, she threw away the rag in her hand and ran down the corridor.
‘T-The Marquess has gone mad!!’
It was the beginning of the rumor that the Chairman had gone mad, a rumor that would spread from the servants of the Marquess House and cover the entire academy.
Unlike with Gess, I had not threatened her or worn a petty smile.
I had merely greeted a passing maid because I wanted to improve my reputation, which had fallen into the abyss.
Yet instead of returning my greeting, she dropped to her knees and begged for forgiveness.
‘...Do I really look that frightening?’
Alone in the empty corridor, I sulkily touched my face and sighed.
If there was one thing I liked about possessing this body, it was that the Chairman’s looks were inversely proportional to his character.
His appearance was so incredible that I could have written a paper on why someone with beauty capable of drawing every gaze within a hundred-meter radius had such a shitty personality.
The maid’s reaction had been shocking, but I had no time to dwell on it. I had work to do.
‘The secretary should be in Professor Tuvan’s office by now.’
The secretary was in Professor Tuvan’s office.
Just a moment earlier, I had ordered him to tell Professor Tuvan to forget everything concerning the scroll.
Putting aside my sorrow over the maid’s reaction, I headed straight for Professor Tuvan’s office. As a result, I came across a rather ridiculous scene.
“I am telling you to provide proper compensation!”
“Professor Tuvan... had you not already received your compensation?”
“I suppose these days, giving something and taking it back is called compensation? The scroll was an item I desperately needed as well! Handing it over was already absurd, and now you are telling me to forget about it entirely!”
“Your voice is too loud. Please speak a little more quietly....”
“Then just hand over the scroll!”
The conversation leaked through the slightly open door.
As I listened, it seemed Professor Tuvan had desperately needed the scroll he received as payment for framing Emma. Because of the Chairman’s order, he had no choice but to give it to Gess.
Now the secretary had not only failed to compensate him for the scroll, but had told him to forget about it entirely. It seemed that was why he had exploded.
“I only accepted such an unjust request because of that scroll! Had it not been for that scroll, do you think I, a former member of the , would have helped with something like this?!”
Ah, this was not right.
I frowned and slowly shook my head.
Even if a necessary item had been offered as payment, the moment he threw an innocent student’s life into the mud, he had betrayed himself as a knight.
The secretary appeared to think the same way.
“Professor Tuvan, I understand that it is deeply regrettable for your honor to be tarnished... but there is nothing we can do about what has already happened, is there?”
The calm voice continued.
“Even for the Marquess House, obtaining a scroll of the same grade as the one issued to you is difficult. We will seek out the most skilled enchanter we can, so please wait.”
There was a faint awkwardness in the secretary’s voice as he said it was deeply regrettable.
And there was no way Professor Tuvan, though retired, had not once been a knight. He would surely notice that faint awkwardness and understand where it came from.
“Are you looking down on me?”
I abandoned my plan to immediately pull the secretary out and decided to watch the two converse a little longer.
‘It would not be bad to learn more about the two of them while I have the chance.’
Both in the original story and in my current view, the secretary was a businesslike but loyal person.
However, failure always grew by feeding on carelessness. There was no harm in confirming what the secretary was like when I was not there.
“A skilled enchanter. Ha! Then should you not have assigned that enchanter to Alep from the start?”
“......”
“What I wanted from was something powerful enough to cut steel with a tree branch. Is it not laughable, now that I think about it? Consuming a scroll of that strength for a duel between mere fledglings!”
“Chairman Calyps wished for Master Alep’s certain victory.”
“Rather than Emma Novician’s certain ruin?”
“How could that be? There were some circumstances requiring us to take action against Miss Novician, but the Chairman is someone who lies awake at night worrying about the students.”
“Circumstances ancient enough that a knight like me cannot understand them must exist for high-ranking nobles, I suppose?”
“...Who knows. But I do think it is certainly not something Professor Tuvan, who tried to obtain what he wanted by selling out a student, should be saying.”
I was slightly surprised at the fiery exchange between the two.
‘Professor Tuvan is exactly as he was in the original story, but the secretary is even more loyal than I expected. That is surprising.’
Professor Tuvan had appeared in the original story as someone who harassed the protagonist, Medio. Of course, he had approached clumsily and was quickly driven away by the overpowered Medio.
The secretary, on the other hand, had never shown anything particularly notable in the original story. At most, he ran the Chairman’s errands or handled various tasks on his behalf.
I had not expected that secretary to defend the Chairman even while clashing with a professor—
BANG!
“Do you truly want to die?!”
A roar loud enough to echo through the entire corridor leaked through the crack in the door.
At this rate, far from keeping a secret, rumors would spread everywhere that ‘the Chairman ordered Professor Tuvan to frame a student!’
Fortunately, I did not have to worry about that.
The students had spotted me standing in the corridor and all run away.....
The maid’s reaction from earlier overlapped with the sight of the fleeing students. Feeling a little aggrieved, I focused on the conversation inside again.
“Professor Tuvan, it would be best if you calmed down first. Please calm down....”
“If you wanted that, you should have done things properly from the beginning!”
“...Perhaps I became too excited. I apologize for insulting the honorable knight Professor Tuvan, so please calm down first.”
The secretary, who had been tearing Professor Tuvan apart moments earlier, had already returned to his original businesslike demeanor.
However, despite his efforts to calm Professor Tuvan in a whisper, apparently worried that their voices would leak outside, the enraged professor was racing ahead like a train without brakes.
“No. I will go to the Chancellor and tell her the entire truth as I am.”
“Professor Tuvan!”
“If I confess now, the Chancellor will surely show mercy in her handling of the matter. But you and the Chairman are finished. It is no secret that the Chancellor has been waiting to deal with you both!”
“Think rationally. There is no way the Chancellor will forgive us merely because we confess.”
Even while Professor Tuvan clutched him by the collar, the secretary tried to persuade him steadfastly... but there was no way that would succeed.
An attempt to stop a runaway train was destined to fail, and its end was always a massive collision.
“Shut up—!!”
At last, blue mana shone from Professor Tuvan’s fingertips: the power that allowed the human body to transcend its limits and humanity to subjugate the continent.
His breathing quickened, and his heart pounded.
Cold sweat beaded on the secretary’s face, while a thrill at having crushed his opponent slowly rose on Professor Tuvan’s face as he watched it all.
But that was as far as it went.
Tap.
There was no need to be flustered by a situation I had already expected. I lightly rested a hand on the shoulder quivering with tension and excitement.
It was far too light a weight to stop a rampaging knight, but it was enough.
“What the hell—?!”
Professor Tuvan turned his head, and his face changed from anger to irritation, from irritation to confusion.
The confusion swelled like a balloon before bursting, and fear settled into the empty space it left behind.
When Professor Tuvan’s face was finally colored with terror, I let out a brief laugh.
The Chairman truly was the academy’s unparalleled villain.