The hour when all the lights of the academy went out one by one, and only the quiet moonlight illuminated the campus.
Lowell von Adrian’s day did not end even at that very moment when everyone else had found rest.
Attending lectures, conducting research, and keeping pace with others were, to him, nothing more than the bare minimum shell required to maintain his life.
After seeing off Celestia, who wore a look of regret, and even putting away the gentle smile he had shown her, Lowell finally returned to the cold air of the Bartholomew Training Grounds—his own fierce battlefield.
He rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, damp with sweat and dust, and opened the heavy door of the storage shed once more.
From the heaps of junk he had sorted during the day, he picked out conductors with traces of mana still faintly remaining, cleaned them one by one, and checked their mana conductivity with an old-fashioned measuring device. His eyes shone even sharper than they had in the daylight.
While others lay in the soft beds of their dormitories and wandered through dreams, Lowell was so absorbed in searching beneath the floorboards for even one more usable part that he did not notice the grime turning the undersides of his nails black.
“This much should be worth a fair bit of money...”
He bit at his dry lips as he repeated rough hammering and delicate craftsmanship.
His diligence, which did not cease even after he had perfectly completed the routine of the day, was not mere compulsion, but the kind of action only someone driven to the edge of a cliff could take.
After finishing a certain amount of maintenance, he headed toward a small stream near the training grounds to save on food expenses.
Moonlight stretched long across his back as he rolled up his trouser legs, stepped into the cold stream water, and clumsily drove fish together with his hands.
After struggling for quite some time in the frigid water, Lowell finally caught two fish the size of his palm.
The wet fabric clung to his skin, sending a chill through him, but the lively fluttering in his hands brought a faint smile to his lips.
Returning to the training yard, he gathered branches with practiced ease and lit a small campfire.
The crackling flames cast an orange glow over Lowell’s weary face.
He whittled a thin branch he had found nearby, skewered the fish, and carefully set them near the fire.
By the time the fishy smell gradually turned into a savory aroma, Lowell sank down beside the fire.
“Why is this harder than studying?”
Muttering to himself, he warmed his reddened hands over the flames.
They were hands so roughened that one could hardly believe they belonged to a student who had been rolling a pen between his fingers in a lecture hall during the day.
But Lowell did not dislike those roughened hands.
He tore off a piece of the moderately cooked fish and put it in his mouth.
It tasted bland, without even proper salt, but a meal earned by moving his own body filled him more solidly than any banquet could have.
Chewing the fish as hot steam rose from it, Lowell looked at the dark silhouette of the training grounds.
The wooden boards patched over broken windows, the creaking doorframe, and the junk parts he had cleaned all night.
To Lowell, all of these things were walls he had to defend.
While others dreamed of the future beneath the academy’s dazzling lights, he endured today and built tomorrow with only his own strength amid these ruins.
When the campfire gradually died down and the flames began to fade, Lowell cleaned up the remaining bones and rose from his seat.
Now that his stomach was filled, warmth returned to his body.
Though his body was exhausted enough to scream, Lowell’s eyes alone remained clear and unwavering.
He stamped out the last remaining ember and stepped back inside the training grounds.
Because before he slept, he had to inspect the parts he had found today one more time.
As he laid the unsorted parts across the desk, Lowell suddenly recalled the faces he had encountered that day.
Celestia and Chloe, whom he should have had no point of contact with at this stage—let alone any chance of meeting.
And even Lumina, whom the protagonist in the original work could only barely reach after solving several puzzles and painstakingly trying to approach her, was showing persistent interest in him first.
The ordinary relationships at the academy as he remembered them had already twisted in unexpected directions.
What would happen tomorrow, and what consequences these changes would bring—Lowell could not possibly gauge.
But Lowell soon shook out his damp hair and cast aside his distracting thoughts.
The reality he had to endure right now was far too fierce for him to worry about an unseen future.
Rather than vague unease, wiping the rust from the part in his hand was the way most suited to Lowell.
Moving a little more when others rested, taking one more step when others slept—an unforgiving diligence.
Lowell believed that this, above all else, was the only answer that would protect him within the whirlpool of a changed fate.
Kwagang—! Crash!
However, as if to mock that belief, a noise that shattered the silence shook the training grounds.
The parts Lowell had painstakingly cleaned all day scattered in every direction with sounds like screams.
The wooden boards he had fixed in place with clumsy hammering to block the bitter night wind crumpled like sheets of paper and rolled across the floor.
“Ha...?”
Lowell instinctively threw himself forward and grabbed the iron crowbar that had fallen to the ground.
Amid the thick cloud of dust, a massive silver-gray shadow appeared.
It was Silber, the high spirit who never left Celestia’s side for even a moment.
Ordinarily, to Lowell, whose mana sensitivity was low, a spirit should have been no more than a shimmer in the air.
But the Silber before his eyes now was so clear it seemed tangible.
It was because Silber had poured out an enormous amount of mana, enough to devour his own soul, and forcibly manifested in order to drive his existence into Lowell’s sight.
“Silber...?”
The name slipped from Lowell’s mouth, tinged with shock.
That noble spiritual beast he had only ever seen in game illustrations stood before him, caked in blood and dust, with none of its usual elegance remaining.
Silber’s ragged breaths struck Lowell’s cheek coldly.
But Lowell’s breath caught at the horrific sight that immediately followed.
In the wake of Silber’s massive body, the traces of effort Lowell had devoted himself to day and night had been trampled miserably.
The clean parts he had looked at with pride only a few hours ago had become crumpled lumps of scrap metal, and the shelves he had repaired whenever he found time lay smashed and scattered.
‘Ah...’
For an instant, one corner of his chest felt empty, as though hollowed out.
It had been a refuge he had built with his own hands amid the ruins.
Even if the undersides of his nails had turned black, and there had never been a day when the wounds on the backs of his hands fully healed, the comfort he had felt while tending to this humble space had been pitifully crushed beneath Silber’s claws.
Lowell’s eyes trembled as he stared at the fragments of broken wooden boards.
A terrible sense of loss rushed over him at the fact that the world he had tried to protect could collapse so easily.
At the same time, a strange translucent message appeared in the center of Lowell’s vision.
[ High Spirit Silber requests your help! ]
“Why... why is this happening to me...?”
Lowell stared blankly around the devastated training grounds.
A system notification.
It was a sight he had not seen once since coming to this place.
Moreover, Silber’s request was a direct plea for salvation from a high spirit—something even the protagonist of the original work could only obtain after clearing countless quests and building up favorability.
Looking at the things that had been smashed, Lowell bit his lip briefly.
It was a waste.
A truly, bitterly terrible waste.
But Silber’s desperate eyes and this unreal warning window told him that a catastrophe incomparably greater than the rust on the parts he had been cleaning had already arrived.
“Something happened to Celestia, didn’t it?”
At Lowell’s question, Silber lowered his head and let out a low cry.
Lowell stared fixedly at Silber’s damp fur and the desperate eyes beyond it.
Inside his head, the settings of the original work tangled together like a complicated maze, blaring sharp warnings.
In the original work, the decisive cause of Celestia’s corruption had clearly been Silber, right before his eyes.
On the surface, Silber wore the form of a noble high spirit, but in truth, he was a cruel being known by the epithet of murder fiend, one who gnawed away at his master’s mind and usurped their body.
The original scenario of destruction had been for Silber, after taking over Celestia’s body, to dye the academy in blood.
But the situation before him now meant that the established story had been completely twisted.
Silber, who should have consumed Celestia and descended as a murder fiend, had instead come to Lowell in a wretched state, as though driven out by his own master.
Yet when he thought about it, this twisted story did not apply only to Celestia and her incomprehensible behavior.
With the protagonist looking completely different from the one he knew, and developments unfolding that he had never seen before, the existence most distant from the original work was Lowell himself.
If he was the cause of this distortion, then he arrived at the conclusion that the only person who could clean up this abnormal tragedy was also himself.
“...Haah. Really, nothing is ever easy.”
Lowell erased the hollow look from his eyes and instead regained a cold, clear reason.
He tightened his grip once more around the iron crowbar he had dropped to the floor.
A sense of loss was already a luxury.
Lowell placed his hand atop Silber’s head as the spirit urged him on.
What came through his palm was not the terrifying murderous intent from the original work, but only the miserable trembling of a spiritual beast abandoned by its master.
“Guide me to where your master is. I don’t know what happened, but first, let’s save your master.”
The moment Lowell finished speaking, Silber raised his head and turned his body toward the academy.
His silver fur scattered in the night wind, stretching out like a single streak of light.
Leaving the wreckage of the ruined training grounds behind him, Lowell stepped into the darkness.
If the murder fiend who was supposed to corrupt Celestia in the original work had come to ask for help, then whatever had consumed her now had to be something far greater and more terrible—something even Silber could not handle.
Lowell and Silber began running toward the academy, where darkness lay thick and heavy.