Ignoring Professor Tuvan, who looked as though his soul had left his body at the Chairman’s sudden appearance, I swept my gaze over the wrecked office and spoke.
“As it turns out, the Chancellor’s office is not very far from this office. About thirty minutes on foot.... Considering the size of the academy, that makes it practically the next room over. In other words, sound leaks easily.”
“C-Chairman... Why are you....”
“I had a need for a loyal secretary and was wandering through the academy when some pointless talk reached my ears.”
I gave Professor Tuvan, whose face was crumbling in shock and confusion, a bright smile.
He had said he would reveal everything to the Chancellor and finish off the Chairman—me.
It was certainly something that could be done.
Chancellor Pionia had noticed the Chairman’s embezzlement but left it alone because the Chairman held more shares in the academy than she did.
And because the Marquess House possessed influence so vast that it could not even be compared to that of the Count House.
‘But touching students changes the story.’
If the truth spread that the Chairman had fabricated a crime out of jealousy toward a student.
Then the countless students enrolled at Calyps Academy—or, more precisely, their parents—would join the House of Count Ratio in an attempt to bring down the Chairman.
Calyps, the empire’s foremost prestigious academy, was overflowing with children from other noble houses.
That was why I could no longer retreat.
“You said you would reveal the truth to the Chancellor. Do as you wish. However, I swear on the name of Calyps that you will not remain unscathed either.”
The words came out faster than I had expected.
As though I had said things like this countless times, my mouth moved before my mind had even decided what to say.
I shuddered at the strange sensation, but accepted that there was no other choice for now.
“Above all, in the worst case, all I need to do is resign first.”
This was a bluff.
The moment I left Calyps Academy, controlling Medio, who would enroll three months later, would become entirely impossible.
But it would sound completely different to my opponent.
“If I resign as Chairman, I will return to being merely a marquess. A marquess who can effortlessly crush the paltry network and connections you have built as a knight.”
I had to make his fear of retaliation outweigh his irritation at not receiving compensation.
I had to make his fear of an uncertain future outweigh the humiliation of being threatened.
I had to make him clearly understand that even if he staked everything to stab me, all that struggle would be meaningless.
Yes, I was already imitating the Chairman’s way of speaking, actions, and expressions.
“If you wish to keep your professorship even by revealing the truth, you may do so.”
Did I have the right to stop someone from doing what they wanted? No such right belonged to me.
“Everyone, including me, will praise your sincerity. For perhaps a week, I will offer praise with all my heart—enough for you to live drenched in illusion and admiration. But that will be the end of it.”
However, I had the right to turn what he wanted to do into a complete mess.
“After that hollow praise has passed, all that will remain for you are titles such as ‘a professor who joined in framing a student’ and ‘a professor who reported the Chairman, his high-ranking noble superior.’”
A voice far too excited for the situation flowed toward Professor Tuvan.
“The colleagues who praised you will gradually distance themselves, and the students who admired you will gradually lose interest.”
I might be hurt, but you would die.
With a smile blooming to its fullest, I gave him advice from the heart.
“The Chancellor cannot protect you.”
“.........”
I drove the final nail into Professor Tuvan, who looked at me with trembling eyes.
“Going to the Chancellor or quietly waiting for compensation. Choose whichever you want.”
Lose everything, or keep silent.
The choice of a corrupt professor who had sold out a student for his own sake was obvious.
“I did not see anything—no, I... I did not see anything....”
Just as I was about to savor my victory over Professor Tuvan, who had lowered his head deeply, the status window reacted.
[ Quest progress has increased. ]
[ ◆ Evade the First Danger. (20%) ]
The quest progress had risen.
At the same time as the professor’s surrender.
That fact threw me into confusion.
Why had the progress of a quest, which I had not even found a clue for, increased?
Professor Tuvan? The secretary? Was one of the two related to the letter?
Could one of them be connected to the letter’s sender?
Or was it advice that I would gain a new clue through this matter?
[ Trait - Possessor’s Composure activates. ]
The one who saved me from my shock was Possessor’s Composure, the final trait the Chairman possessed.
Judging by its name, it was clearly a trait given not to the Chairman, but to me, the possessor.... But that did not matter.
With that brief notification, my overheated mind cooled in an instant as though cold water had been poured over it. I shuddered at the artificial composure circling through my mind, but did not miss my chance to speak.
“Professor Tuvan. I will soon seek out a skilled enchanter, so do not make any rash moves and wait quietly.”
Professor Tuvan, who had already yielded once, obediently nodded. Only the secretary remained.
“And you... come to the chairman’s office tomorrow morning.”
“Was there not an urgent matter?”
“No. Now that I think about it, it is not that urgent. We will meet tomorrow morning instead.”
“Understood.”
Fortunately, rather than objecting to my sudden change of mind, the secretary nodded as well.
According to my original plan, I should have immediately asked about the Chairman’s past. But now did not seem to be the time.
First, I had to consider which of the two—or what—had become the trigger for the quest.
After the Chairman arrived like the wind, stirred up the office, and vanished, Professor Tuvan realized that he had stood at a crossroads between life and death moments ago.
At first, his head had burned with anger at the thought that a commoner who had lucked into a secretary’s position was threatening him, a professor. That was why he had responded emotionally even to the Chairman who appeared afterward.
But once the heat in his head cooled and he slowly replayed the conversation from before....
He had nearly made an enemy of the worst wastrel at Calyps Academy.
The Chancellor cannot protect you.
The corners of the Chairman’s mouth had risen to their limit, as though he was too delighted to contain himself, and his smile had bloomed.
It was clearly filled with the wicked desire for his opponent to cross the line and give him a reason to cause trouble.
If Professor Tuvan had not taken the warning as a warning, if he had taken the Chairman’s words as a simple bluff and crossed the line the Chairman had drawn....
‘...Then exactly what he warned me about would have happened.’
An unpleasant... no, a chilling sensation so dreadful that it made the word ‘unpleasant’ insufficient rose from his toes to the top of his head.
There was no mistake in the Chairman’s words. Even if he reported the Chairman’s corruption, the Chancellor could not protect him.
The upright professors of the Knight Department would praise him for doing what was right, yet still look at him suspiciously for reporting his superior. And there was no need to mention public opinion among the students, who swayed like reeds.
There was no future left for Professor Tuvan after reporting the Chairman.
Calyps Academy’s wastrel was, in the literal sense, a villain with the power to sever a person’s head.
If an assassin came for him while he slept, if the soup he ate without a thought contained poison, could he, a man who had retired long ago and become washed-up, survive?
“Damn it....”
Despite being in his own office, Professor Tuvan muttered in a low voice, afraid someone might hear him.
Fortunately, he had not chosen the worst option. Still, even a passing dog could see that he had caught the Chairman’s attention.
If he had committed no sin, it would have been different. But he had already become an accomplice to the Chairman’s evil deeds. To survive, he had no choice but to leave the academy, even if only for a while.
He decided that the moment dawn came the next morning, he would tell the administration office that he intended to take a sabbatical.
The chairman’s office was beginning to feel more familiar than my real home.
Suppressing the suffocating frustration that churned my insides, I tapped the table with my fingertips.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
With the regular sound, my scattered thoughts began to organize themselves.
‘The contents telling me to evade danger appeared suddenly, but it also bothers me that a penalty has appeared when the first quest did not have one. The quest is clearly pressuring me.’
The first thing that came to mind was the quest itself, which was pressuring me unlike the first one had.
When it urged me to earn a student’s trust, it had waited leisurely without a single penalty. Now, it was pushing me onward.
It was as though the ‘danger’ the quest referred to would not end with mere injury.
‘The quest appeared when I found the letter. Its progress rose when Professor Tuvan yielded.’
There was no need to investigate the cause of the quest. It was the letter.
The bloodlike red stationery, the contents with too many suspicious parts to interpret at face value.... That letter had to be the cause of the quest’s appearance.
But the quest’s progress had risen when Professor Tuvan, who had nothing to do with the letter and whom I had only met while searching for the secretary, surrendered.
That fact was muddling my thoughts.
“Given the circumstances, there is a high chance that the sender of the letter is the culprit behind the ‘danger’ the quest mentions. But the chance that Professor Tuvan is the culprit is too low....”
If he was the type to yield before a threat like mine, one that merely imitated the original Chairman, he never had the courage to touch me in the first place.
Of course, I would have nothing to say if Professor Tuvan was an enormous schemer preparing a knife to stab me in the back. But I knew that was not the case.
“He was not that kind of man in the original story.”
Professor Tuvan was an extra villain who challenged Medio and exited after only a few chapters. He was never someone who could target the Chairman.
That naturally meant the person who had affected the quest’s progress was the secretary....
I continued tapping the table as I organized the information I knew about the secretary.
“He is businesslike, but he seems to have at least some loyalty toward the Chairman. According to the original story, he does not seem to possess much combat ability either... Hmm....”
It was obvious all over again, but I knew nothing about the secretary.
That was only natural. The protagonist of <I Became the Academy’s Final Boss> was Medio.
The Chairman was one of the major villains, but knowing even the information about his secretary was too much to ask of someone like me, who had read the original story merely to pass the time.
“Then, if I assume the secretary is the trigger, what is the ‘danger’? Is he planning to assassinate me?”
As I agonized over a problem that seemed close to being solved yet was not, one that seemed connected somehow but would not easily reveal its true nature, a knock suddenly sounded.
Knock, knock.
A sound knocking on the chairman’s office door.
I turned to the clock and realized that dawn had already passed. It was now the ‘tomorrow morning’ I had mentioned to the secretary.
Grateful for Possessor’s Composure, which had held together my reason after I had remained awake for more than a full day, I opened my mouth.
“You may come in.”
The door opened the moment I gave permission, and the secretary—one of the major suspects—bowed in his usual businesslike posture.
“Good morning, Chairman.”
From his ordinary appearance, like one that could be found anywhere, to his tired eyes like those of an office worker worn down by fatigue, to the businesslike demeanor prepared to deal with an eccentric superior.
The secretary truly looked too ordinary to create a ‘danger’ severe enough to threaten my personal safety.
He possessed an aura of ‘ordinariness’ that even a gatekeeper guarding a city gate, or an investigator pursuing a crime, would not suspect.
‘...Perhaps the trigger for the quest was an event rather than a person. The chain reaction caused by Professor Tuvan’s surrender may have affected the progress.’
That was why I shifted my thinking rather than suspecting the secretary.
Compared to the utterly ordinary secretary, it seemed more plausible that one of the chain reactions created by the event of ‘Professor Tuvan’s surrender’ had happened to touch the quest’s progress.
At least, it did until I checked the secretary’s status window just in case.
[ Trait - Appraiser’s Eye reveals the target’s information. ]
[ Secretary (■■■■ ■■■) ]
[ Traits / ■■■ ■■, Prepared Office Worker, ■■■ ■■, ■■■ ]
[ Special Note / ■■■■ ■■■ ■■■■ ■■■■■ ]
“.........”
After checking the secretary’s status window, I was speechless for a moment.
From his true name and traits, all hidden beneath black squares, to the Special Note that could not be read at all.
The status window, which was tightly concealed as though it wanted to hide itself, was paradoxically the most decisive proof that the secretary was connected to the quest’s progress.
I suddenly realized that I had never heard the secretary’s name even once.
‘Even in the original story, the Chairman called the secretary only “Secretary,” never by name.’
The secretary was always the secretary, and his name had never even appeared in passing.
A person I expected to have affected the quest’s progress.
A person who could have delivered the letter that had appeared after breaching the chairman’s office security more naturally than anyone else.
A person who could not be identified even through the status window that no one had ever been able to block.
「 When the moon has passed overhead. At Gentle Morning. With Persona. 」
Somehow, I felt as though I knew the secretary’s name, hidden behind the squares.
I slowly parted my sealed lips.
“...Persona.”
Persona. The name on the invitation, one I had never heard even in the original story.
The moment that name was spoken, the secretary’s tired eyes gleamed with a dangerous light.