The central plaza was no longer the academy I knew.
Enormous festival tents stood in overlapping rows, and between them, flags of every color fluttered, dizzying the eye.
The savory smell of oil and the sweet scent of sugar glaze rode the wind and tickled the tip of my nose.
Smoke rising from freshly fried meat skewers filled one side of the plaza in a hazy veil,
while the hawkers’ cries and the excited laughter of students mingled together and battered my eardrums.
From the swordsmanship department booth, the crisp sound of wooden swords clashing could already be heard,
and the night maze section run by the scouting department, despite it still being daytime,
gave off an oppressive air with its densely erected wooden walls.
If this were the original protagonist, this would have been the place where he walked these streets with the heroines,
sharing sweet snacks and raising relationship flags.
Seeing shyly smiling couples among the onlookers and students lining up in long queues to buy festival-limited menus,
I could fully understand why this had been the most popular event area in the original work.
But the scenery reflected in my eyes was completely different.
“……Those food carts lined up over there would completely block the evacuation route in an emergency.”
My gaze did not linger on people’s laughter, but on the wheels of the carts and the width of the narrow alleys.
The small magic lamps floating in the sky and emitting beautiful light
looked like potential bombs that could crash to the ground at any moment,
and the crowd filling the plaza appeared to me as a hellscape that would turn into chaos the instant an accident occurred.
An unpleasant cold sweat trickled down my spine.
“Yurian, don’t get distracted. The phase values of those magic lamps over there are fluctuating slightly.”
Erka murmured in a low voice as she looked at the detector in her hand.
Her gaze was fixed beyond the dazzling decorations, on the invisible lines along which mana flowed.
Nadia, too, was constantly operating her terminal,
busy comparing the route to the VIP seats with the ledger for incoming supplies.
I was grateful for their thoroughness, but the fact that the situation allowed so little room for ease made my stomach tighten.
The one who looked to be suffering the most was Mia.
She kept sniffling and twitching her ears.
All the intense smells of the festival grounds were mercilessly shredding her sensitive senses.
“Senior, there are too many smells…… The smell of meat, oil, and perfume are all attacking at once. My nose has lost to the festival.”
Mia mumbled as she clutched the hem of my clothes, looking truly drained of all energy.
The plaza was such a whirlpool of stimulation that even her normally sharp senses had been numbed.
I looked at her with genuine feeling and muttered.
“Must be nice, Mia. I wish even one of my danger-detection functions would shut off too.”
My throat was still burning dry.
Fortunately, there were no direct signs of an accident yet.
Whether it was thanks to the measures Nadia and Erka had taken in advance,
or whether we were truly just lucky, the peace on the surface was being maintained.
If the day could pass like this without anything happening,
I felt like I could gladly accept writing ten pages of reflection letters for Briana later.
‘Yeah, maybe today really will pass safely.’
It was just as that vague hope was about to lift its head in my chest.
Near the distant magic department booth, among the countless clusters of light, one particularly alien light caught my eye.
Among the dozens of magic lamps floating in the air, only one
flickered for the briefest instant, trembling in black.
It was an omen.
Suddenly, my vision distorted and the noise around me receded.
My heart pounded as if it would burst, and pain surged up as my stomach twisted.
Along with the sensation of cold air piercing my lungs, I faced a fragment of a future I should not have seen.
The enormous magic lamp that had brightly illuminated the central stage twisted grotesquely, then began devouring the light inward.
A resonant sound blanketed the plaza, and the magical flowers that had been blooming beautifully turned into fragments of pitch-black mana and scattered.
The faces of the cheering people were stained with screams and terror,
and as the crowd tried to flee, they tangled between the narrow carts, creating a scene of pandemonium.
“……!”
My breath caught, and I returned to reality.
As my legs lost strength and I staggered, Mia reflexively caught me.
My fingertips trembled violently, and cold sweat poured down like rain.
What I had just seen was not a simple illusion.
The starting point of destruction.
With unfocused eyes, I glared in the direction of the magic department booth
where that magic lamp had just flickered black.
The magic department booth was already filled with people’s exclamations of admiration.
Located in the middle of the plaza, it gave the illusion that a celestial garden had been transplanted there rather than something from the earth.
Dozens, even hundreds, of magic lamps floated in the air, slowly rotating as they emitted different colors according to intricate formulas.
Some burned red like freshly bloomed roses,
while others shone transparently like lilies holding dawn dew.
Whenever petal-shaped particles of mana fluttered through the air,
applause burst from among the spectators.
At the center of that dazzling banquet of light, overseeing the exhibition, was Seria Molt.
She was waving a magic tool shaped like a conductor’s baton, adjusting the overall flow of light.
But the moment my footsteps reached the vicinity of the booth, her baton trembled faintly.
Seria’s eyes, upon discovering me, were instantly filled with wariness.
The incident where I had pointed out a dangerous magic lamp before seemed to have left quite a deep imprint on her.
After hurriedly giving instructions to a student beside her, Seria approached me with a stiff expression.
“Yurian? What brings you here? Don’t tell me…… there’s another problem, is there?”
Clear tension laced her voice.
I fiddled with the pass token inside my collar and answered, pretending to be as calm as possible.
“No, I’m just passing by. I’m going around the plaza because of inspection duties.”
“If you’re just passing by, then that’s a relief, but…….”
Seria still did not withdraw her suspicious gaze.
To her, I might not have been an ordinary student, but some ominous sign that foretold accidents simply by appearing.
My throat went completely dry.
In truth, I was the one who wanted to pass through this place without anything happening.
Feeling the pain of my stomach tightening, I scanned the inside of the booth.
Then, among the crowd, I saw a familiar head of blond hair.
It was the protagonist of the original work, Kyle Lucen.
He was looking around the magic lamp exhibition with his classmates, uttering sincere admiration.
“Wow, this is really amazing. To think magic can create such a beautiful scene.
The friends in the magic department really are incredible.”
When Kyle spoke with a smile, even the air around him seemed to brighten.
That dazzling halo unique to the protagonist was peerless even amid the splendor of the festival.
He looked our way for a moment and gave a light wave,
then turned his gaze back to another exhibit.
Wherever Kyle stayed, a peaceful and warm atmosphere overflowed.
If events followed the original work, this moment should have remained a pleasant memory for everyone.
Standing beside me, Erka looked at the scene and muttered in an unimpressed voice.
“Structurally, it’s quite an inefficient waste of mana.
There are far too many parts where the formulas have been forcibly twisted for visual effect. When phase frequencies overlap like that,
resonance phenomena become easy to trigger.
Seria is far too optimistic.”
Though Erka acted indifferent, she quietly recited how the mana circuits inside the magic lamps were intertwined,
and at which nodes interference might occur.
Her analysis was precise, and thanks to that, my anxiety transformed into an even more concrete shape.
It was at the very moment the cheers of the people reached their loudest.
At the center of the exhibition, one of the largest and brightest blue-white magic lamps began to fall ever so slightly out of rhythm.
While the other lamps changed colors in a steady rhythm, only that one increased the density of its light as though sucking mana inward.
My danger detection pricked sharply at my fingertips.
If left alone, that lamp would devour all the light like a mana stone on the verge of explosion, then burst all at once.
Dripping cold sweat, I approached Seria’s side.
If I openly shouted that it looked like it was about to explode, I would be branded as the culprit who ruined the festival atmosphere and get another line added to my incident report.
I swallowed dryly and gave a very ambiguous, vague excuse.
“Hey, Seria. That blue lamp over there. It seems a bit more enthusiastic than the others.
Doesn’t it look like it’s trying too hard to shine all by itself?”
“……Pardon?”
At first, Seria blinked in confusion.
But soon, her complexion turned pale.
It seemed she had recalled how the strange things I said before had soon led to an actual accident.
She immediately raised her baton and reduced the output of the magic lamp in question to the minimum.
Beside her, Erka snapped her fingers as though she had been waiting.
The auxiliary formula she cast wrapped around the distorted phase of the magic lamp and stabilized it.
From the outside, it looked like one of the intended effects,
with the light briefly condensing inward before spreading out softly again.
The spectators instead applauded even louder, saying, “Wow, the light folded in and bloomed again!”
As the omen of explosion vanished, Seria let out a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
She turned back to me, her voice still trembling.
“Yurian, you…… say truly strange things, but somehow, those strange things keep turning out to be right.”
In her gaze now, there was a peculiar trust and awe that had gone beyond mere wariness.
Enduring the pain of my twisting stomach, I shook my head.
“I’m not getting it right because I want to, please.”
My heartfelt cry was once again buried in the commotion of the festival.
As if taking steps toward an execution ground, I dragged my heavy body toward the next inspection area.
The exhibition continued, and the light was still beautiful, but all that remained along my spine was clammy cold sweat.
The afternoon heat was far hotter than the morning’s.
The area around the swordsmanship department’s public sparring arena was packed with people,
and the heat emitted by the audience mingled with the dull sounds of wooden swords colliding, ringing against my eardrums.
Normally, in this chaos, at least one person would have crossed the line and been pushed into the inside of the sparring arena,
but now the situation was different.
The safety line I had stubbornly insisted on moving far back during the preparation period
was holding firmly in place even during the main event.
In front of that line stood Dylan Mark.
At first, he had grumbled about moving the safety line,
but now he was controlling the audience with a more irritable expression than anyone else.
“Step back! If you cross this line, sparring or not, I’ll throw you out first!”
Dylan raised his voice and pushed the crowd back.
Overwhelmed by that fierce momentum, people grumbled, but still withdrew their feet beyond the line.
Watching the scene from afar, I let out a sigh of relief.
At least that area was now functioning without me having to intervene in every little thing.
It felt like one item had been crossed off my work list, and the pressure crushing my stomach eased ever so slightly.
Soon after, the heat of the plaza reached its peak.
One of the original work’s major events, the public sparring match between Kyle and Serena, had begun.
As the two walked out to the center of the sparring arena, cheers erupted.