Jason Clarok was in the midst of a hectic stretch of days.
It was because, thanks to having chosen the right side in the struggle for the throne, he had been promised quite a number of interests.
To the point that he could now operate openly in the light of day.
Of course, he had no particular intention of doing so.
“I thought this opportunity would let me reach deep into the imperial palace.”
Just because the war had ended in the princess’s victory did not mean Sylvia would become emperor and that would be the end of it.
Jason knew better than anyone that it was not such a simple matter.
That was why he had planned to use this as a chance to extend his reach deep into the palace, and he had been confident.
Because Jason had the experience and ability to do just that.
But the result had been disastrous.
The nobles’ attitudes had changed overnight.
Bound together by loyalty, they left not the slightest opening, and forcing one’s way into a place with no openings was bound to cause trouble.
In fact, his intelligence network within the palace had become worse than before.
It was not terribly difficult to guess the reason for this.
“It must be the princess’s hidden ability.”
Had Jason not remained by the princess’s side throughout the civil war as well?
It was easy enough to tell that the princess had a terrible chronic illness, and that it was connected to her hidden ability.
“Hio Pavlenko didn’t support the princess for no reason. He must have known she had an ability like this, and helped her with certainty.”
The more one learned about him, the less comprehensible he became.
That man called Hio Pavlenko.
“At any rate, leave the imperial palace aside…”
There were countless other matters that required his attention.
His territory had expanded, and the amount of information delivered to Jason had increased accordingly.
As he was rummaging through documents containing all manner of intelligence—
〔Special Grade〕
Red lettering that stood out conspicuously.
Information worthy of special-grade classification.
It meant the information was either that important or that urgent.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Jason tore open the sealed entrance and checked the contents.
- Vicinity of Baal Forest.
The furrow between his brows deepened.
- Black Fang sighted.
It was the first report of the black fog being witnessed.
* * *
Red hair moved briskly down the hallway.
Claire was on her way to Sirvert’s room.
“Something’s definitely strange. I have to ask.”
It had already been several days since Hio had disappeared from the empty basement.
She was going because she thought that perhaps Sirvert might be able to explain the situation.
Hio had told her not to tell anyone if possible, but she felt it would be fine to tell Sirvert, and wouldn’t he know where Hio had gone and whether there was any problem?
As she was heading toward Sirvert’s private faculty office, someone familiar was walking toward her from the opposite direction.
“Assistant Professor Hopen.”
A man with a haggard face, looking somewhat tired.
It was Hopen.
“I came to see Professor Sirvert. Would he be inside?”
Claire asked Hopen as he approached, and Hopen’s gaze turned toward her.
Then the corners of his eyes curved sharply.
“Hello?”
A friendly greeting, unlike Hopen.
“Ah, yes… hello.”
Claire accepted the greeting in bewilderment, but Hopen’s strange behavior continued.
“So you’re Claire?”
His attitude was as if he were seeing Claire for the first time.
“Hm… you are pretty, but… aren’t you a little too much like a child?”
As he muttered incomprehensible words, his gaze swept Claire up and down, and his manner of speech was feminine.
Feeling goosebumps rise for no reason, Claire sidestepped away from Hopen.
“Um… I’ll be going now…”
She was slowly trying to back away when—
“Do you perhaps know where Hio Pavlenko is right now?”
At that question, she had no choice but to stop dead in her tracks.
Hopen was covering his mouth with one hand and smiling with his eyes.
At the sight of Hopen like that, something she had never seen before in her life, Claire reflexively shook her head.
“N-no. I don’t know…”
“Hmm? I saw you with him at the end, though?”
“Ah, that was… we only exchanged greetings briefly, and after that, I don’t really…”
At that answer, his expression briefly went cold, and Hopen thrust his face close to Claire’s.
“I really hate children who lie.”
“I-it’s true… I don’t know where Hio is right now either.”
“Hmmm… Is that so?”
Hopen straightened back up from where he had bent forward and began smiling again, ho ho.
His gestures were so feminine that goosebumps rose over her again.
“All right. Claire. Let’s meet again next time, shall we?”
Hopen turned and left just like that.
Claire stared at his back for a moment, then rubbed her goosebump-covered arms and ran toward Sirvert’s room.
* * *
“Hio suddenly disappeared from the basement?”
Sirvert, too, was just as clueless.
“And Hopen asked about Hio Pavlenko’s movements.”
That was strange enough to be suspicious.
What reason would Hopen have to look for Hio?
Without even telling him, at that.
“Was there anything else strange?”
As for Hio suddenly disappearing from the basement, well, he was an inherently bizarre fellow, so Sirvert could accept that as possible.
Rather, it was Hopen’s behavior that struck Sirvert as even more questionable.
Had he not already felt that Hopen had been acting strange lately?
“Something strange…”
Claire pondered Sirvert’s question.
There were too many strange things, and she was wondering what to mention first.
“How should I put it… his way of speaking and his gestures were feminine? It felt as if he wasn’t the Assistant Professor Hopen I knew.”
“It felt as if Hopen wasn’t Hopen…”
One assumption suddenly flashed through his mind.
“Could it be… Airaitz?”
Airaitz, the Supreme Heavenly Demon’s dreadful stalker.
Sirvert did not know Airaitz’s exact ability, but he had heard in passing that he could control others.
He knew at least that his skills and traits were mental-type.
Could that Airaitz really have—
If the man they had already expected to have sided with Black Fang had done something to Hopen?
No, before even that…
‘Airaitz is… a woman?’
That Airaitz had reached even someone right beside him.
That alone was already shocking.
But Airaitz was actually a woman?
That was even more shocking than the previous revelation.
“Airaitz…”
He could not be certain.
Even so, he had to keep the possibility open and consider it.
Then, assuming Hopen was Airaitz.
What was the reason?
He had hidden well and kept watch until now, so why would he suddenly reveal himself to Claire?
Sirvert turned the matter over in his mind, but only one thing came to him.
“Because his identity will be exposed soon anyway?”
Wouldn’t that mean he no longer cared if his identity was revealed?
Other than that, no particular reason came to mind.
“Professor…? Who is Airaitz…?”
Claire cautiously asked Sirvert, who had fallen into thought while muttering to himself.
She had not wanted to interrupt, but how could she not be curious?
But Sirvert shook his head.
“You needn’t concern yourself with it. Focus on the joint exam tomorrow.”
This is not a level you can get involved in.
It was as if Sirvert was saying that.
And so she was rendered speechless.
In the end, she had obtained no answers at all.
Where Hio had suddenly gone.
Whether he was all right.
Even Sirvert seemed not to know that much.
All she had gained was the name Airaitz and more questions.
“Yes…”
Claire had no choice but to answer like that and leave the room.
Something… something was happening, but there was nothing she could know.
Even if she did know, she could not be sure there would be anything she could do.
A sense of helplessness she had not felt in a long time.
After entering the academy, she had gained confidence from her steadily rising abilities, but this was reality.
Was she not still powerless?
Just like that day when a Black Fang executive had appeared before her eyes.
Her fists clenched tightly of their own accord, strength entering them.
She could not feel that helplessness again.
In the end, she had no choice but to become stronger.
“Claire!”
As Claire trudged away from Sirvert’s room, Ravena appeared in front of her.
“What did the professor say? Did he figure out how that person suddenly disappeared… I guess he didn’t.”
Even without asking, she could guess from Claire’s powerless gait and expression, so Ravena offered comfort.
“It’s okay! If he didn’t say anything in particular, then it probably isn’t a big deal! First, let’s go have lunch and cheer up! We have an important exam tomorrow, so you can’t be this down!”
Ravena encouraged her with an energetic cheer and led Claire along.
The two headed to the student cafeteria, settled lunch, and then moved to attend their afternoon lecture.
There was nothing special.
Well, Roland popped out from somewhere again and picked a fight, but by now, his words hardly even entered her ears.
After attending the afternoon lecture, there was a separate period for physical training.
It was an era in which skill users, like knights, had to train their stamina, strength, agility, and so on.
Even if not to the same extent as students in the knight faculty, they still needed to possess a physical spec above the basics.
Up to that point, it had been a day without any particular issues.
The gloomy events of the morning had already been forgotten to some degree. The higher and harder to reach the goal, the brighter Claire’s will burned like a flame.
After pushing herself harder in training and pouring her effort into conditioning, it was time for dinner.
When she returned to the dormitory, washed up, and came out, Ravena greeted her as always.
“I’m hungry! Let’s go already!”
“Okay.”
They had dinner and walked along the academy streets, which had grown dark before they knew it.
They walked beneath the light of streetlamps lit here and there, chatting softly.
They talked about tomorrow’s exam.
They talked about other professors. They talked about what had happened today, and so on. And without fail, Roland blocked the two of them with a thud.
“Where is that lowborn stench coming from…”
How did he know where the two of them were and appear like a ghost every time?
At this point, one could even suspect that he was secretly following them around.
“You were actually secretly following us, weren’t you?”
“Wh-what are you talking about? Why would I follow lowborns like you…”
“You don’t have any friends, do you?”
“…I am Roland Bernstein…”
A streetlamp shone above their heads.
The magic stones in the flowerbeds on either side were also glowing, making the path rather picturesque.
Claire, Ravena, and Roland were gradually moving away from that road.
If they followed the path, they would have to go quite a long way around, so they were heading toward a dark but quick shortcut.
It was a path they always used, and nothing had ever happened there.
However, today, someone was waiting for them in the middle of that dark path.
“You’re here now?”
A somehow chilling voice.
The unnatural sound of a man imitating a woman’s way of speaking and voice.
“Assistant Professor?”
It was Hopen.
At his sudden appearance, Ravena and Roland looked at him in puzzlement, while Claire tensed and stopped walking.
Because the only one here who knew Hopen’s condition was not normal was Claire herself.
She stared warily at Hopen as he approached with that same smile.
“No, the more I thought about it, the stranger it seemed.”
That way of speaking and acting.
That person was not the Assistant Professor Hopen Claire knew right now.
The name Sirvert had muttered.
“Hm? Children. On the day Hio Pavlenko came here, he met the three of you, didn’t he?”
Airaitz.
“So, I just want to ask one thing.”
Hopen slowly approached.
Eyes curved like a fox’s.
A meaningful smile.
“Do you know the name Supreme Heavenly Demon?”
Roland and Ravena wore expressions of complete confusion.
And Claire, who flinched without realizing it.
“Ah…?”
Hopen’s head slowly turned toward Claire.
“You know, don’t you?”
A chilling flash of crimson light gleamed.
* * *
“Hmm… is this all?”
Six magic books lay before Hio.
Basic 3rd Circle magic.
Lock, which locked doors, boxes, and the like.
Unlock, which opened things that were locked.
3rd Circle wind-attribute magic.
Levitation, which sent objects or targets flying.
Feather Fall, which made the speed of a falling object or target featherlike.
Illusion, a 3rd Circle illusion magic.
They were all 3rd Circle magic books he had obtained while going around the Magic Tower.
He had enough attack skills, so if possible, he had narrowed them down only to things that would be useful without triggering the penalty of his hidden trait, and these were the results.
And added to them was the final magic book he had brought on Furnell’s recommendation.
- Cancellation. It cancels magic or cancels abnormal statuses caused by magic.
“Is this useful?”
In an age when magic had vanished, he was being told to learn magic that canceled magic.
It felt like a waste, so he asked that, but Furnell was firm.
- You need to broaden the scope of your thinking a little more. Do not only think of the fixed effects of the magic you have learned; grasp its principle.
In short, he was telling him to understand and apply the principle of magic—in other words, the principle of Cancellation, which cut off the opponent’s mana.
Even if it was not magic, skills were activated through mana, after all.
- You will not be able to cancel skills that are openly instant-cast or skills that require a great deal of mana, but thinly connected links, or long-lasting continuous skills, you should be able to sever well enough.
He could not get a sense of it just from the explanation, so it seemed he would have to learn it to know.
Still, there had always been a reason when Furnell spoke so firmly. He was worth trusting.
“Then that makes six in total, including Cancellation.”
Six magic books, carefully filtered and selected to minimize unnecessary waste of patterns.
The rest were mostly attack magic, or magic he could not learn with only the realm of a mere 3rd Circle.
Though he had become a formal mage, this meant he was still only at the starting stage.
Among them, the one he looked forward to most was, as expected, illusion magic, Illusion.
Illusion magic was one of the methods by which he could attack an opponent without triggering the penalty of his hidden trait.
How many tricks had he thought of in order to get around the hidden trait?
One of them had been obtaining a mental-type skill.
「Hidden Trait - Violence Is Not Allowed!」
「You must not commit violence against any sentient life-form.」
「If you inflict physical wounds or harm, a penalty will be applied.」
「Penalty - Deletion of all skills」
The hidden trait regarded only physical harm as violence.
If it had counted psychological harm as violence too, he would not even have been able to speak carelessly. It would have become verbal violence.
In any case, for that reason, Illusion would become the magic that suited Hio best.
“I’ve learned Phantom Steed, as well as how to summon Ghosts and Wraiths… Once I learn this, I suppose my 3rd Circle magic will be roughly complete.”
- The birth of an unprecedented hodgepodge mage, indeed. Heh heh heh.
While exchanging that conversation, Hio opened the first book.
The beginning was illusion magic, Illusion.