Chapter 29
“Since today is the first lecture of the semester, I’ll let you out early. Those with questions may stay behind and ask me freely. That concludes our first class. Thank you.”
The quiet lecture hall was instantly filled with a buzz of voices. A few students even came down to the lectern and asked me several questions, but most of them concerned the schedule for future lectures rather than the class material.
Even as I answered the other students’ questions, my thoughts were focused somewhere else entirely.
‘Kate didn’t come after all.’
Of course, students were free to be absent. I couldn’t guarantee them the freedom to avoid receiving a failing grade, though.
Still, there could be some reason. Perhaps she was in too much pain to come because I had subdued her too forcefully, or perhaps she was simply holed up in her room for no reason whatsoever.
Whatever the case, she had been the first regular student I met before my first class at the academy. From the moment she came to see me, claiming she had something to ask, her existence had already taken up a place in my mind without my permission.
Even after I learned that it had all been a deception directed at me, she was still my student.
Perhaps I was too softhearted, but I didn’t want to punish her mercilessly without a second thought.
Because I knew better than anyone how cruel someone blinded by revenge could become.
That was precisely why I wanted to stop her before she went that far.
If someone had been there beside me back then… perhaps I wouldn’t have done those things either.
I was seeing my past self in Kate.
“…Professor! Instructor Haru!”
“Ah, I’m sorry.”
I had been so deep in thought that I hadn’t even heard the student’s question. I turned to her and asked,
“What was your question?”
“It’s about the student who was absent today.”
Looking closely at the color of her tie, I saw that she was a freshman.
“The absent student… Miss Kate?”
“Yes. The thing is, we’re Kate’s roommates.”
The Intermediate Class at Manus Academy used three-person dorm rooms. The Lower Class had four students to a room, while the Advanced Class and Practical Class had two. They appeared to be first-year Intermediate Class students who shared a room with Kate.
“Actually, we haven’t been able to contact Miss Kate at all since the weekend.”
“What?”
“After she headed to your office, saying she had something to ask you before Monday’s lecture….”
She trailed off and shook her head.
“…Yes. She did come. To my office.”
My mouth went dry. I slowly nodded and asked,
“Have you told any of the other instructors about this?”
“No, not yet.”
The students shook their heads. I nodded and told them,
“Go straight to the dean and tell him.”
“T-the dean? Right away?”
“Yes. You may tell the other instructors as well, but you must tell the dean.”
After repeatedly urging the students to do so, I left the lecture hall at once.
“Professor!”
Ignoring the flustered students’ calls, I immediately left the academy.
“It says the location is inside the academy…?”
Furrowing my brow, I set off in the direction indicated by the signal from the tag.
The signal was still slowly moving around inside the academy. Had turning off the tracking magic during the lecture so it wouldn’t be a distraction caused this?
On the weekends, she had seemed to wander normally around the royal capital, and nothing strange had come through in the conversations I heard.
‘…No way.’
An uneasy thought washed over me. I forced myself to shake my head and walked in the direction from which the location signal was coming.
“…She’s not here.”
It was the central fountain in the middle of the lecture building.
But Kate was nowhere to be seen.
“No way….”
That was when I remembered the blind spot in the tracking magic.
Tracking magic was an application of wayfinding magic, and its operating principle was as follows. First, at least two butterflies were sent out. One was flown into the sky above the area being tracked.
The other was attached to the target, allowing its position to be tracked on a flat plane.
To check the target’s location, mana was condensed directly in front of my right eye, projecting the surrounding terrain and the target’s position in the form of a minimap.
In other words, there was no way to determine elevation from anything except the terrain contours rendered by the butterfly overhead.
“Underground…?”
A chill ran up my spine. Something had happened to Kate. Without a doubt.
“I’m sorry, Headmaster. I’ll write a report later…!”
I apologized to the headmaster in advance as I drew the sword from my waist, though he couldn’t hear me.
Then I drew the blade and, wrapping it tightly in mana, drove it through the ground.
-KRAAAASH!!!
With a deafening roar, the ground collapsed, opening a hole large enough for one person to pass through.
“Aah!”
“W-what is that?! What’s happening?!”
“Instructor Haru! What is this…?!”
Passersby stared at me in horror. I shouted at them,
“I’m sorry! I have a reason! I’ll write a report later!”
“No, that’s not the issue….”
I immediately jumped down through the hole. Beneath it was a sewer.
Water trickled along the floor, and several rats scurried about.
…
Kate’s location signal was coming from directly in front of me.
If I remembered correctly, I had wrapped the mana cord around Kate’s left arm.
I muttered as though spitting the words out,
“…No wonder I couldn’t find her.”
And right in front of me lay a person’s left arm, roughly severed and abandoned.
Its wrist was tied by a cord to the body of a rat as large as a human face.
=
My severed forearm throbbed. Thanks to the anesthetic injection, I felt little pain despite the fucking awful job they had done of staunching the bleeding.
If anything, I even felt a strange surge of euphoria. They must have used a narcotic anesthetic.
“You fucking bastards….”
Bound all over, I rolled my eyes toward the man who had taken off his hood.
A demi-human whose entire body was covered in thick, coarse fur rather than hair.
“Did you plan this… from the beginning?”
…
“You deliberately deceived and manipulated me.”
I ground my teeth in fury. I knew it was too late to regret what had happened, but I was still furious. I had been held up by bastards like these, and now I couldn’t even carry out my revenge….
“Deceive you?”
The demi-human asked quietly in return.
“I’m sorry, but there’s a slight flaw in that statement.”
“…What?”
“I have never once lied to you.”
He calmly spouted nonsense. I twisted my body and screamed.
“Don’t give me that bullshit! You claimed that you were victims of that bastard Kalud too, trying to deceive me! You tricked me with sweet words…!”
“As expected, you’re still young.”
The cloaked demi-human clicked his tongue as though amused.
“But think about it. Kalud Lucilante. His epithet is the Iceblade Knight. He was a veteran knight who fought alongside Rex, the White-Flame Knight, on the Western Front.”
“…Damn it.”
Only then did I understand. They had never actually lied to me.
Of course they hadn’t. Kalud was a veteran knight who had fought on the Western Front! The number of demi-humans that must have been cut down by the tip of his sword, at a mere wave of his hand… It was obvious without even thinking about the specifics.
“Do you understand now, little miss? The one who was deceived is the one at fault. Everything, from beginning to end, was the result of choices you made yourself.”
The demi-human sneered at me. I shut my mouth and glared at him in silence.
That was all I could do. I couldn’t even argue with the bastard. As he said, every word he spoke was true.
“Everything I told you was true. That we were all victims of Kalud. That the elixir and straight sword I gave you were the fruits of our brethren’s blood and sweat. Every bit of it is an undeniable fact.”
“All that talk of our brethren, our brethren… I should have realized from the start.”
“Ah, you don’t need to worry about that part.”
The demi-human shook his head and chuckled.
“You’ll soon become one of us too.”
“Are you planning to turn me into a fucking furball?”
“Of course not. Unfortunately, we haven’t reached that level of technology yet.”
The demi-human shook his head and drew an unidentified, faintly reddish drug into a syringe.
“Instead, I can correct that insolent mentality of yours to some extent.”
“…You’re going to brainwash me?”
“I don’t particularly like that negative expression.”
The demi-human clicked his tongue and said,
“Why, there’s a saying like this, isn’t there? Rather than saying that only half the water remains in a cup, saying that half the water remains is filled with much more positive energy… or something like that.”
He babbled something whose sincerity was impossible to discern. I stared at him with cold eyes. Holding the syringe, he trudged around the room and said,
“It’s the same thing. Rather than the negative expression ‘brainwashing,’ let’s use something much more positive… Yes, how about the word ‘guidance’?”
“You crazy bastard.”
I clenched my teeth and muttered. I twisted my body and tried bending my arms and legs, but it was utterly useless. They had tied me far too tightly.
“I’m serious. I could have simply buried you there, but I thought that would be a waste. You had talent.”
“…Talent?”
“I really mean it. Do you know how rare it is to awaken magic—and a unique magic at that—through nothing but your own talent, without any prior knowledge?”
The demi-human spread both arms wide and spoke in an exaggerated tone.
“That’s incredible talent even among humans! If we can bring someone with that talent over to our side… we’ll take one step closer to our brethren’s long-held wish!”
“What is this ‘long-held wish’ you keep talking about?”
“Ah, if that’s what you mean… you’ll come to know naturally from now on.”
As he pressed the syringe’s piston to expel the air, the demi-human spoke in a low voice.
He approached me with some kind of syringe in one hand.
“Damn it.”
I thrashed wildly. I didn’t know what I was tied to, but whatever I was lying on creaked and groaned with the sound of metal.
“Try to relax. Let your body go limp and empty your head. Stay calm.”
“Could you do that if you were me?!”
“It’s all right. Even after the guidance is over, I’ll make sure you can carry out your revenge with your own hands.”
He forcibly held down my arm and whispered as he brought the syringe toward me.
“Nothing will change. You’ll simply have a few more comrades you can trust….”
For a moment, his promise that I would still be able to take revenge nearly swayed me. I was tempted. I even thought that perhaps I could simply accept it.
Then, suddenly, I remembered what Instructor Haru had said.
‘Revenge that loses its proper direction will only eat away at you in the end.’
Had I been letting my own desire for revenge eat away at me without realizing it?
To the point that I genuinely thought it would be fine to join those furry bastards as long as I could get my revenge?
And that wasn’t all. I had been consumed by revenge and tried to lay hands on someone who had nothing to do with it… simply because she belonged to the same family.
And now I was pretending I wouldn’t cross the line, pretending I was clean?
“Let go! I said let go!”
A cold syringe touched the forearm of my remaining arm.
I shook my body with all my strength. The tip of the syringe lifted ever so slightly away from my skin.
“No, get the hell away! You fucking furry bastard, let go!”
“If you keep struggling like that, you’ll only make the wound worse.”
“Help, please! Somebody!!”
“No matter how much you scream, nobody’s coming. This is an abandoned building in the deepest part of the slums. No one would pass through a place like this unless they were insane enough to treat it as a test of courage.”
I kept struggling and screaming regardless. Was it because of my pride, or because I didn’t want to provoke that demi-human? I had held back from using this method until the very end, but now that I was cornered, none of it mattered.
Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes. I stared through my blurred vision at the syringe needle approaching again and thought,
Where had it all gone wrong?
The answer came surprisingly quickly.
From the moment I went after Ayla, someone who had nothing to do with it. From that moment on, everything had begun to go wrong of its own accord.
‘I’m telling you because I know. If you realize it too late, you’ll definitely regret it.’
Instructor Haru’s voice echoed once again.
‘Was that what you meant? Did you know this would happen all along?’
I regretted it. It sounded ridiculous, but if I had known it would end like this, I wished I had never started my revenge in the first place.
‘You must come to class on Monday.’
I was exhausted from shouting with all my strength. With my voice hoarse, I squeezed out a mutter,
“…Please, save me.”
“I told you, nobody’s coming.”
“Instructor… Haru…!”
-KRAAAASH!!!!
At the same time, the ceiling collapsed.
“W-what?! What the hell is…?!”
Behind the bewildered demi-human, someone standing in the middle of the cloud of dust let out a cough.
“…Cough, cough. Jeez, what is this? I made an entrance like that just to look cool, and this is what I get. At my age, with my bronchial tubes already so weak, too.”
It was a familiar voice. A thin, light, ditzy voice that was still vivid in my memory.
“Well, anyway. Since you called for me, I suppose I have to answer, right?”
The shadow in the dust swung an arm. The dust swept away in a rush, revealing her face.
“I’ve come to rescue you, Kate.”