By the time the incident had more or less been brought to a close, the sounds of monsters that had been coming from the outskirts had, at some point, fallen silent.
The fishy stench of blood that pricked the nose and the lingering trace of burned mana had erased the splendid floral fragrance of the festival,
yet, strangely enough, what filled the area around the plaza first was not silence, but sighs of relief.
I forced strength into my staggering legs and headed away from the crowd, toward a place with few people.
Then I leaned my back against a collapsed pile of crates and sank to the ground.
I raised my head and looked at the plaza.
The scenery of this night that I had seen in the original work had not been like this.
The magic lamps that should have embroidered the sky had fallen to the ground, becoming sparks for a tragic fire, and students who failed to find evacuation routes had scattered while screaming.
The main characters had each been separated and forced to struggle alone, ultimately ending this night after losing something precious.
That night had, quite literally, been a great disaster recorded in the academy’s history.
But the scene before my eyes now was different.
The safety line I had forced Dylan to move while browbeating him had become an excellent barrier that delayed the monsters’ advance,
and the maze route I had forcibly dumped onto Rowen became a lifeline guiding panicked students to the safest corridor.
The magic lamps that Erka had readjusted despite her irritation lit the sight of those gripped by fear, leaving the monsters no room to hide in the shadows.
The festival did not end peacefully.
There had been an attack, and there were injured people.
But it was not a catastrophe.
I watched students under the magic lamps burst into tears as they confirmed one another’s safety.
This place was not simply a stage inside a game I knew.
The student over there weeping until their sleeves were soaked, the child groaning in pain with trembling hands, and those guys who showed me absurd goodwill.
They were all real people, each bearing their own weight, breathing and living.
I did not want to become the protagonist.
Even now, that thought had not changed.
Standing before others and receiving praise, shouldering the fate of the world—such grand roles were not a weight my frail bones could bear.
But at the very least, I did not want the people whose names I knew, whose faces I had met, and with whom I had spoken, to become cold corpses on that frigid ground.
I did not want to watch that scene helplessly from behind.
That was a tiny bit of sincerity that came just slightly ahead of my cowardly survival strategy.
“Yulian.”
Before I knew it, Briana had approached and was holding out a terminal with an expressionless face.
Fatigue lingered in the eyes behind her glasses as well, but her voice was as dry and clear as usual.
With trembling hands, I held up the terminal screen.
A record updated in red letters entered my vision.
[Monster Appearance Incident on the Outskirts During the Final Night of the Academy Festival]
[On-site Reporter: Yulian Valter]
[Indirect Contribution to Evacuation Route Adjustment and Discovery of Contamination Markings]
[Remarks: Maintain Special On-site Inspection Assistant Record / Continued Management of Observation Target Required]
There was no grand word like merit anywhere.
Nor were there any sentences wrapped up as heroic tales.
It was merely a cold list of facts left behind under an administrative reporting system.
But at least this time, no tags like “accident of unknown cause” or “poor attitude” had been attached beside my name.
That alone was a result far beyond what I deserved.
“……Is it over now?”
“Yeah. The situation has ended. The rest will be handled by the faculty and the student council.”
Briana retrieved the terminal and added briefly.
“You worked hard during the festival. Go get some proper rest now.”
As if her words had been a signal flare, a sensation washed over me like every nerve in my body that had been forcibly holding on was snapping all at once.
I staggered to my feet.
Before Miana or Rine could spot me and come over, I had to get out of this noisy scene.
I could not even remember how I managed to walk back to the dormitory.
I think I leaned against the walls and stopped several times to catch my ragged breath.
My narrow view of the corridor kept blurring, and each time I climbed the stairs, my knees buckled as the strength left my legs.
The moment I opened the door to my room and stepped inside, the familiar smell of dust greeted me.
Without even turning on the light, I collapsed straight onto the bed.
The instant the hard mattress caught my frail body, every warning alarm screaming inside my brain was forcibly shut down.
My heavy eyelids closed, and my vision went dark.
I survived.
That one page of an uncertain future from which my scheduled withdrawal date had been erased—I had somehow turned it, stained with blood and dust.
Amid the distant temptation of sleep that felt as though I were sinking to the bottom of the bed, I finally let go of all my tension.
Above me, as I slept as if I had passed out, the last remaining magic lamp of the festival cast a pale light through the window.
When I opened my eyes the next day, the first thing I sensed was the strange silence filling the room.
The sounds of instruments that had shaken the entire academy until yesterday evening, the cheers of the people, and the monsters’ roars that had seemed ready to tear my eardrums apart had vanished as if they had been a lie.
As I lay still and exhaled, a throbbing pain swept through my entire body.
It felt as though the strength had drained from my legs and I was sinking beneath the bed.
I tried to force myself up, but because of my screaming muscles, I dropped my head back onto the pillow.
Cold sweat seeped down my spine, and the inside of my throat was burning dry.
I barely managed to reach out and check my terminal.
A notice announcing that the “situation had ended” was already displayed on the screen.
I stared blankly at the ceiling and let out a sigh of relief.
The calendar of my fate, where my scheduled withdrawal date had been written, was now a blank page.
In the place where the original scenario had twisted and torn away, I was still breathing.
What was left now?
Still staring blankly at the ceiling, I went through the main story of the original work’s first year one by one in my head.
Entrance into the academy. The first joint practical training. The midterm practical evaluation. The academy festival. And the first attack incident.
I had already made it this far.
Of course, it had been twisted into a subtly—no, considerably—different shape from the original work I remembered, but in any case, the broad outline still remained.
The final evaluation. Vacation. The start of the second semester. Minor incidents involving clubs, research societies, and the student council.
The interdepartmental competition. The field deployment class. The second semester midterm practical evaluation. The Holy Night Festival. And the second major incident.
Finally, the evaluation for promotion to the second year.
I quietly closed my eyes.
There was still a long way to go.
Just because I had passed my scheduled withdrawal date did not mean it was over.
On the contrary, there were still mountains of incidents left—events that only began to roll in earnest after I disappeared in the original work.
And the bastard who had lured monsters in during this festival.
The moment I recalled that name, I instinctively shut my mouth.
Not yet.
If I touched that now, the flow of the original work that I knew would collapse beyond control.
I pulled the blanket up and muttered softly.
“……Let’s survive the final evaluation first.”
I should deal with the problem right in front of me first.
As always, what mattered more than some grand plan was still being able to breathe tomorrow.
The academy’s morning began a little later than usual.
In the plaza where the dimness had lifted, the busy movements of those trying to erase the traces of last night continued.
Students gathered up torn decorative cloth, and workers loaded the wreckage of collapsed booths onto carts and carried it away.
Through corridors where the afterglow of magic lamps faintly lingered, professors walked with solemn expressions.
The official statement announced before noon was concise.
This incident was defined as a technical error caused by a temporary phase interference in the outer barrier.
It stated that, taking advantage of that gap, a small number of low-grade monsters had entered, but thanks to the swift and skilled response of the student council and faculty, they had been subdued with minimal casualties.
The record, dismissed as a minor disturbance that marked the end of the festival, was quietly filed away into a corner of the academy’s historical archive after going through administrative procedures.
Most students, steeped in relief that they had survived, accepted that announcement.
But somewhere beyond the reach of that brilliant sunlight, an entirely different record was being unfolded.
Deep within the academy, inside a dark room where thick curtains were drawn.
The flickering shadow of candlelight fell over a report placed on a desk.
It was not a shell polished for official announcement.
It was an unofficial copy, stamped clearly with the seal of confidentiality, that laid bare the hidden side of the festival’s operation.
The owner of the room turned the pages of the report without a word.
Only the rustle of paper filled the silence.
On the first page was written the name of Raul Becker, the executor of this attack.
But a thick red line had already been drawn across that name.
It was a verdict that he was nothing more than a severed tail, already arrested and rendered useless.
The person’s finger moved on to the next page.
His gaze stopped at “List of On-site Reporters and Interveners.”
There, the record of the failed final night of the festival had been reconstructed second by second.
On the surface, it had been an incident in which a few low-grade monsters ran amok, but the flow analyzed in the report was by no means simple.
A finger tapped repeatedly on a certain section of the report.
[Preemptive Discovery of Mana Stones Suspected of Contamination in the Supply Warehouse]
[Identification of Forged Seal During Rear Gate Inspection Process]
[Prior Warning Regarding Phase Misalignment of Central Plaza Magic Lamps]
[Correction of Barrier Anchor Points at the Sacred Studies Department Treatment Booth]
[Temporary Change to Night Maze Route and Evacuation Path for the Scouting Department]
[Safety Line and Escape Route Blockage at the Swordsmanship Department Public Sparring Grounds]
The locations were all different.
The situations differed as well.
But at the center of all those incidents was a name that appeared with almost dreadful repetition.
[On-site Reporter: Yulian Valter]
The person sank deep into the chair and murmured quietly.
“Yulian Valter, is it……”
A strange interest settled over the dryly spoken name.
According to the records, he was an insignificant existence.
Physical ability at the lowest rank, mana sensitivity below the standard, a failing student with no talent for swordsmanship.
If things had gone as they should, he would have been nothing more than an extra, ground away without a sound between the gears of this vast academy.
And yet that faint existence had been hammered like a nail into every turning point of the incident.
Where he stopped, traps missed their mark; where he cast his gaze, contaminated markings were discovered.
At the place where he fell in an unsightly manner, the attacker’s escape route was blocked; thanks to the route he had recklessly changed, the students escaped the plaza alive.
A trajectory far too persistent to be called coincidence, yet far too unimpressive to be called ability.
The purge of Raul Becker, placed on the desk, no longer held any meaning.
The failure of the festival could be covered up.
They only needed to prepare again.
But the existence of this uninvited guest remained as a sense of dissonance that could not be ignored.
“It seems confirmation will be necessary.”
The low, sunken voice scattered into the darkness.
The finger slowly traced over the letters spelling “Yulian Valter.”
It was not anger, but the touch of a predator taking pleasure in having found its prey.
Now, he was no longer simply “a sickly male student who required caution.”
He was a nameless crack that shook the board.
The person snuffed out the candle.
In the darkness where smoke rose thinly, a new gaze—the very thing Yulian had wanted so desperately to avoid—began to focus on him with precision.