The next morning, what forcefully booted my consciousness back online was a knocking sound that sharply scratched against my eardrums.
Knock, knock, knock.
That regular, monotonous pounding was like the sound of a hammer striking my brain directly.
I huddled under the blankets, struggling to refuse my return to reality, but
the figure outside the door seemed to have no intention of stopping until my system's power-saving mode was disengaged.
"……Yurian, I know you're awake."
Erika Bertia's dry voice passed through the door crack.
"……If you don't open it, I'll break down the door."
It was an easy decision.
I immediately got out of bed and opened the door.
As expected, Erika was standing outside.
She looked me up and down as I stood gripping the doorknob with a half-asleep face, and drew a short conclusion.
"You look like hell."
Erika answered nonchalantly and gestured with her chin toward the hallway.
"If you're up, move immediately. Today's schedule is long."
I roughly nodded and looked around the room.
Then, a bottle placed on the nightstand beside the bed caught my eye.
It was the restorative Line had given me yesterday.
It was something she had fervently told me to make sure to take,
and it seemed I had fallen asleep with it left on the nightstand.
Just imagining the process of washing, changing clothes, and walking to the cafeteria already made me feel like my stamina was draining away.
To be honest, I wondered if I couldn't just skip breakfast and leave after drinking only that restorative.
The moment I lifted the restorative with that thought, Erika grabbed my sleeve.
Her grip was slender, but it secured enough friction to drag me along.
In the end, I was dragged to the cafeteria without even washing my face properly.
The cafeteria was already filled with the heat of students who had stayed up all night preparing for the festival and busy people since early morning.
In one corner of the tables, a silhouette that seemed to be draped in a sacred radiance was visible.
It was Line Arbel.
Before her, as expected, were bowls containing unidentified liquid.
"Good morning, Yurian."
Line welcomed me with a benevolent smile.
But the moment her gaze fell upon the bottle of restorative I held in my hand—the one I hadn't drunk yesterday—a faint cloud passed through those clear eyes.
"……You promised to drink it yesterday, yet it's still there."
Her voice was calm, but hidden within it was an algorithm that stimulated a sense of moral debt I couldn't refuse.
The disappointment of a saint candidate was a fatal debuff that froze my stomach cold.
I broke out in a cold sweat and made an excuse.
"No, it's…… I was too tired and forgot. I'll drink it now."
"You mustn't. You must drink this nutritional meal now. If you drink a restorative on an empty stomach, it excessively raises the permeability rate and can become poisonous instead."
In the end, unable to overcome Line's sad gaze, I had to stuff the sticky-textured nutritional meal into my mouth.
'This isn't a meal, it's torture.'
I screamed internally and emptied the bowl.
Only then did Line smile in satisfaction, and Erika scanned my state as if conducting a precision scan before nodding.
"Now we go to the square."
Central Square had transformed into a far more complex map than yesterday.
Colorful tents looked like curtains that would muffle screams,
and the beautiful magic lanterns hanging in the air felt like embers that would soon burn people.
The students' joyful laughter pierced my eardrums like a prelude to the coming tragedy.
While going around every corner of the square with Erika, checking the phase values of supplies, we arrived at the Swordsmanship Department's public dueling arena area.
Giant wooden pillars soared toward the sky, and around them, the framework of spectator seats was being erected.
"Hey, Yurian Valteur!"
A familiar, rough voice stopped my steps. It was Dylan Mark.
He had thick ropes slung over his shoulders and was supervising the work of fixing the safety lines for the spectator seats.
"Don't come rolling into the dueling arena this time."
Dylan showed off, swinging a wooden sword.
I answered without hiding my exhausted expression.
"I've never thrown my body that way because I wanted to. That was a problem of gravity, not my will."
At the center of the dueling arena, Kyle Rusen and Serena Rubenhart stood facing each other with wooden swords in hand.
A rehearsal for the main event on the day of the festival was about to begin.
The fighting spirits of the two geniuses pulled the air in the square taut.
If this were the original story, it would be a scene where thousands of spectators roared with cheers, witnessing the beginning of a legend.
The moment the two's wooden swords crossed, cutting through the air, the surrounding noise disappeared as if in a vacuum for an instant.
But I had no leisure to admire those splendid movements.
The moment I fixed my gaze on a specific support pillar in the corner of the dueling arena, an emergency siren blared inside my brain.
Danger detection.
This time, it wasn't the smell of an explosion someone had intentionally planted.
'The pillar isn't going to explode.'
My vision flickered bizarrely, pulling out fragments of the future.
The minute shockwave generated when Kyle and Serena's sword pressures collided head-on.
That vibration would shake the connection points of the spectator seats' railings,
and the moment that recoil matched the resonance frequency of the decorative magic lanterns hanging from the top of the pillar—
not the pillar collapsing, but a horrific afterimage of the upper decorations pouring down toward the spectator seats due to the vibration's aftermath flashed past.
I looked at the two people burning with fighting spirit in the middle of the dueling arena.
I couldn't speak directly to them.
My mental durability was at rock bottom, unable to withstand Serena's cold suspicion and Kyle's dazzling goodwill.
I approached Dylan, who stood nearby with his arms crossed, watching the arena with satisfaction.
"Hey, Dylan."
"What now! Didn't I tell you to just watch?"
"The safety line is too far forward. Have them move it back about two meters."
Dylan bristled and turned toward me.
The muscles in his thick forearms tensed tightly.
"What? What do you know about arena safety to be telling me what to do? This was installed according to Student Council regulations!"
"I don't really know. But if you stand in the front row there, I think you'll get crushed too. That pillar…… it's shaking in a bad way for some reason."
I looked into Dylan's eyes with the most indifferent and frightened expression I could manage.
Dylan's pupils shook briefly.
That bizarre memory of avoiding a trap thanks to the timing I had stopped at during the mock training seemed to stimulate his brain cells.
He started to curse but stopped, eventually clicking his tongue and calling nearby subordinates.
"Hey! Push that safety line back further! Two meters back! Recheck the railing supports too!"
The members grumbled as they moved the ropes back.
Dylan added as if to make me hear:
"This is because it'd be a hassle if anything happened, however unlikely. Got it?"
It was right after that.
Kyle and Serena collided head-on in the middle of the dueling arena.
*Kwang—!*
An enormous roar that couldn't be believed to come from wooden swords clashing shook the square.
The sword pressure erupting from the tips of their swords spread in all directions like waves.
*Screech, crack.*
The railing supports embedded in the ground couldn't endure the shock and screamed.
The very spot where Dylan had originally drawn the safety line creaked and loosened from the aftermath of the sword pressure.
The magic lantern decorations at the top of the pillar shook violently, and a screw popped out, falling toward the front row of spectator seats.
No accident occurred.
Thanks to Dylan having moved the safety line back, the flying piece merely struck the empty floor.
Dylan's face stiffened instantly.
He looked alternately at the screeching railing and the piece that had fallen to the floor.
If he had been standing in the original position, he would have undoubtedly been hit in the head by that fragment.
He slowly turned his head to look at me.
That gaze was now close to shock at facing an unidentifiable being, beyond mere doubt.
"Just…… what are you?"
"Sickly weakling."
I answered immediately and hid behind Erika.
"I know that too, you bastard!"
Dylan shouted in disbelief, but his voice lacked the disdain it had before.
He had now caught the scent of bizarre luck hidden behind my pathetic floundering.
I made eye contact with Serena Rubenhart, who had been watching the scene from afar.
Having sheathed her wooden sword, she was coldly filing away the entire process of me talking to Dylan and making him change the safety line.
Her blue pupils sank deeply.
'He never speaks directly. But he always changes someone's position.'
I could feel Serena's gaze stabbing into my back.
Her analytical way of thinking was adjusting its trajectory toward the variable that was me.
I screamed internally and quickened my steps.
'Please don't look. Please don't analyze.'
I just wanted to survive.
I only wanted to get through this hellish festival safely, without anyone's attention, without being recorded in anyone's notes.
But my desperate wish was brutally trampled at the entrance to the hallway leading to the Student Support Center.
Between the busy footsteps of students in charge of academic administration, what awaited me was a chilling silence and a firm call.
I was eventually dragged not to the dormitory, but into a closed meeting room inside the Student Support Center.
When the heavy wooden door closed, the square's commotion was cut off at once.
Already inside the room were familiar faces waiting for me.
Nadia Lowell, Briana Iris, and in the corner of the room, Mia Ren was sitting on the floor, wrinkling her nose.
On the table was spread a huge map of Central Square.
Several points were marked clearly on it in red ink.
Nadia elegantly twirled a quill pen and smiled at me.
No matter when I saw it, that smile couldn't stop the cold sweat from running down my spine.
"Yurian, you're finally here. We've just completed a very interesting map."
On the map Nadia pointed to, every trace I had passed through during the festival preparation period was preserved intact.
The double-layered box at the back gate inspection station, the ominous purple powder at the magic lantern tuning site, the contaminated mana stones, the barrier stake positions at the Sacred Department's treatment booth, the bottleneck routes in the Reconnaissance Department's outdoor maze, and the safety line and resonance pillar at the Swordsmanship Department's dueling arena from just now.
Nadia connected those points one by one with the tip of her pen.
Surprisingly, all those lines converged toward the heart of Central Square.
"The forged seal remains found at the back gate, the contaminated mana stone powder inside the magic lanterns, and the distorted mana flow of the barrier stakes you pointed out.
All of these points were clear abnormal signs threatening the festival's safety.
But you see."
Nadia's pupils curved narrowly.
"Your name was recorded at every single one of these abnormal points. Or witness testimony came out that you were at that spot."
Briana added in a cold, mechanical voice from beside her.
She tapped her terminal and brought up the administrative records I had left during that time.
"Back gate inspection accident records, magic lantern tuning intervention reports, treatment booth supply relocation confirmation forms, Reconnaissance Department route modification requests, and the Swordsmanship Department safety line change report just received.
Yurian, your name appears too often. The probability of one student being directly involved in so many abnormal signs during this short preparation period is statistically impossible."
I grabbed my head. My stomach felt like it was tightly bound with a rope.
My mouth was so dry that even moving my tongue was painful.
"I know. I hate seeing my name stamped all over the place more than dying."
Despite my aggrieved protest, Briana's gaze didn't soften one bit.
Erika flipped through the mana analysis records on the table and added a phenomenal doubt.
"You found minute phase distortions in mana stones that even the Magic Department's precision detectors couldn't catch, simply because they 'felt unpleasant.'
This isn't within the realm of simple intuition. You clearly perceive something that we cannot see."
In the corner of the room, Mia sniffled and muttered in a low voice.
"From Senpai, I always smell a burning scent mixed with a fishy odor. That rotten smell from your body gets stronger whenever you're near danger. It's the same now."
Walls on all sides.
Information, administration, magic, and even instinct.
Every system in the Academy was classifying me as an extraordinary variable and tightening the siege.
I had wanted to bury myself in the background as an extra, but paradoxically, the struggles I had thrown out to survive had dragged me out under the brightest spotlight.
"There were opinions that you should be isolated or detained for investigation."
Nadia put down her quill and stared at me intently.
"But we reached a different conclusion. Because apart from you, there is no one who can pinpoint the exact locations of these extensively spread contaminated mana stones.
Without your unpleasant sense, we might have no choice but to watch the square be engulfed in flames on the day of the festival."
I narrowed my eyes and tried to grasp her intent.
"Then what do you want? I just want to serve my volunteer hours normally."
"That's why we've decided."