Chapter 132
The main facilities on the school's second floor were the first-year classrooms, the science lab, the music room, and the art room. Ian and Seo-ah started by checking the classrooms.
“Wow, look over there, Ian. The whole class hung themselves and died? What’s the rope attached to?”
“1st through 3rd are all out. As for 4th class... ugh, better not look. Maybe because it’s number 4, they died in the filthiest way.”
“5th class is the same. Looks like they headbutted each other or something—their heads are all smashed in.”
“Just in case, let’s search them one by one. I’ll start with 1st class.”
They went in.
“……Nothing here.”
It wasn’t just 1st class. There was nothing special in any of the first-year classrooms. At best, a human head was displayed in a locker like a cake topper. The rest were all just simple mass suicides or murder scenes. There were no anomalies.
So Ian quickly stopped searching the classrooms and moved to the science lab. While moving, he also checked the lockers in the hallway, but nothing special turned up.
“……You came.”
In the science lab, Lea was sitting there. She had been reading The Hand of Re-Creation at a desk, but when she spotted Ian, she closed the cover.
“You’re later than I expected. Weren’t you coming straight up?”
“I checked the first-year classrooms. There wasn’t anything special.”
“I checked too. The music room and the art room were the same.”
She stood up. With a clatter, the painting leaning against the desk wobbled slightly. Lea casually set the book down and lifted the painting to show Ian and Seo-ah.
It was the Mona Lisa. But unlike the original, the Mona Lisa on the canvas was sobbing, tears streaming down her face.
Blue paint ran over the surface, pooled at the frame’s corners, and dripped down. The blue paint soaking the floor spread outward like insects.
Crunch!
Lea stomped on the paint. Then the blue bugs bubbled violently, popped like soda, and evaporated.
“This is a painting I found in the art room. I personally liked it, so I kept it.”
Lea said, tapping the frame with her finger. Strangely, even though her hand touched it, the frame didn’t burst, melt away, or vanish. Apparently the anomaly’s true body was the painting or the paint, not the frame.
[Kill…… me…….]
For some reason, it sounded as if those words were coming from the crying Mona Lisa, but he ignored it. There was nothing dumber than listening to an anomaly’s voice.
“You know we can’t take that out with us, right?”
“It’s fine. It’s not that big a deal.”
Lea showed no hesitation as she casually dropped the painting on the floor and walked up to Ian. Then she leaned her face into the nape of his neck and sniffed.
“Hmm... looks like you haven’t been sticking together too closely. All I can smell is you.”
“……Don’t do stuff like that. It’s creepy.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can accept that. You should have at least a few things you can give up on, shouldn’t you?”
And then she added, placing her hand over Ian’s heart.
“When I get close to you, your heart beats faster. A fear response? No. The rhythm is different from that.”
“…….”
“If I had to put it another way... heh, it’s a pleasant thrum.”
“……Enough. If you didn’t find anything, let’s go up to the third floor. How much time is left until midnight?”
Ian sighed as he pushed Lea away.
It was exactly 11:00 p.m. In one more hour, midnight would arrive. It was the time when Nuut and Hecate were at their strongest, and the time when the next day dawned by the world’s reckoning. Since they didn’t know how the school would react once the date changed, it was best to solve this as quickly as possible and get out of there.
“Let’s go.”
They went up to the third floor. A girl with her lower body blown off was crawling up the stairs, dripping blood, but Seo-ah exorcised her without even glancing at her. The girl whose head rolled away died without even managing a scream.
The third floor had second-year classrooms and slimes waddling about. Despite their cute appearance, the slimes made of hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and nitric acid were slowly moving along, melting the hallway.
Strong acids that would melt skin and muscle, and even bone, if touched carelessly. But ghosts had no blood or flesh, and not even anything for the acid to dissolve.
“Hah.”
[Kkyiiiiiik!]
The slimes were wiped out by a group beating from the ghosts. They screamed pitifully, but sadly there was no hero to save them. Only ghosts were there, cackling as they stomped them flat.
Thus, the slimes vanished. Lea looked at their remains and made a nonchalant face.
“There’s a lot of unnecessary work here. Is this the limit of the magic humans have created?”
“Looks impressive to me.”
“Then again, hearing that from someone who handles two kinds of foreign-god magic stings my pride a little.”
Lea muttered while looking back at Ian. Ian shrugged.
“It’s a matter of perspective. If I’d touched that just now, my hand would’ve melted.”
Re-Creation magic couldn’t be used remotely. You had to make physical contact somehow to activate it. It was a tremendously powerful magic, capable of killing any opponent in one blow if you wanted, but its weakness in close combat was clear. It was a poor matchup against strong-acid slimes.
Lea seemed to know that too, and folded her arms with a blank expression.
“……That’s the only safeguard. If you’d created magic that worked with no contact at all, just by sight, you wouldn’t be able to endure it. Even now, don’t you get headaches as a side effect?”
“Well, whatever the reason, it still has its strengths and weaknesses. I mean, necromancy isn’t something you can just dismiss.”
“……Hmm.”
Lea fell silent. On the surface, she seemed to understand Ian’s words, but in truth she was only pretending to. She had clammed up because she didn’t want to argue with Ian any further. In her head, she was displeased that he would place her own magic and that kind of magic on the same level.
It wasn’t strange. In terms of rank, the magic she had personally created was far superior. Ian knew that well too. But apart from that, it still had limits. After all, bad matchups existed everywhere.
“Ah, senior!”
At the far end of the third-floor hallway, the Master of the Outer Sea was sitting there. Seated on the floor and drawing with chalk she must have found somewhere, she sprang to her feet.
“You’re late! I got tired of waiting!”
“Yeah, sorry. More importantly, what were you drawing?”
Ian asked calmly. She giggled and subtly stepped aside.
“Ta-da. It’s you, senior.”
Below the window where moonlight filtered in, the drawing in pure white chalk boldly revealed Ian’s face. For something drawn by a foreign god, it was a remarkably peaceful picture. Except for the fact that it was twitching a little.
“I drew it while looking forward to the day we’d live together someday. How is it? Pretty good, right?”
Beside Ian’s face, drawn with fairly high skill, was the face of a girl whose body was half-covered by hundreds of bizarre tentacles. And around them, strange Outer Sea creatures were drawn in tiny form. It was almost like a family portrait.
“…….”
“It’s what I’ll look like in the future. Do you like it?”
When Ian remained silent, the Master of the Outer Sea linked arms with him and smiled. A faint rose scent drifted over.
“It doesn’t matter even if you don’t like it. It’s a future that will happen in the end.”
“……You.”
“Now, let’s go. We need to start exploring the third floor, don’t we?”
She didn’t even wait for Ian’s answer, letting go of his arm and walking down the hallway with bouncy steps. Ian quietly stared at the back of her head, then let out a long sigh and followed after her.
‘When did I get roped into this?’
It was a monologue that didn’t even need deep thought. From the moment he picked up the grimoire, a connection to the foreign gods had formed. Maybe it had been a fate that was already decided.
Well, regretting the past now was ridiculous. With a wry smile, Ian explored the third floor together with the group.
“Ohhh, this classroom is full of water? There’s even a shark inside. How cute.”
“That’s right. It wouldn’t be bad if you went in too. Go on. I’m sure that one would like you too. You look alike, after all?”
“Ahaha, could you please shut up, old teacher? Do you want to be planted in the garden with just your head sticking out?”
“Try it.”
“Think I can’t?”
The exploration went smoothly. Separate from that, they didn’t find the grimoire on the third floor. All that was there were a wriggling Kune-kune and a dancing ballerina. The four of them took down both and went up to the rooftop.
The rooftop was packed with students throwing themselves to their deaths in droves. Seo-ah collected each of their heads before they hit the ground and rummaged through their belongings.
“Nothing here?”
“……Then we have no choice but to go underground.”
Ian let out a long sigh. If possible, he had hoped it would be over before they had to go downstairs, but it seemed there was no helping it now.
“Let’s go. We’ve got about thirty minutes left.”
The group went down to the first floor and stopped in front of the stairs leading to the basement that Seo-ah had found. From the stairs, where you couldn’t even see one step below, came a cold chill, the dragging sound of chains, and the cries of something.
No matter how you looked at it, they were signs of impending doom, but nobody was particularly tense. Without hesitation, they headed down to the basement.
“Eek! Senior, I’m so scared!”
The Master of the Outer Sea let out a cute shriek and clung tightly to Ian’s arm. Seo-ah snorted, and Lea grabbed her by the head, roughly peeling her away from Ian.
“If you’re scared, go back up. Don’t bother him.”
“Let go. You really want to die?”
“What’s so scary about a little mutt yapping? If you’re just going to be a nuisance, wouldn’t it be better to disappear? No, the smell you give off to begin with is disgusting. Do something about that fishy stench.”
“Ahaha, isn’t that better than dousing yourself in perfume just to look good like some idiot? And to a fool like you, it only smells fishy because I’m telling you to get lost. So let go and get lost.”
“If you promise not to approach him.”
“Why is my husband your husband?”
Leaving the bickering foreign gods behind, Ian was the first to step down the stairs.
The basement’s structure was more ordinary than expected. Like the other floors, a hallway stretched out, and all sorts of classrooms lined it. Ian spun the lighter he held between his fingers with practiced ease and strode down the hallway.
“Hm?”
Then he spotted a locker sitting all by itself right in front of him.
It looked no different from an ordinary locker. He didn’t feel any special aura from it either.
“…….”
Ian gripped the ‘Knowledge-Eating Paper’ in one hand so he could react at any time, and carefully opened the locker.
Inside was only a single book. But the moment Ian saw it, he realized it wasn’t an ordinary book.
Thin. A blue cover embroidered with gold thread. Short iron chains hanging from the corners.
And a title he could recognize as Hangul, even though it wasn’t written in Korean.
[Blue Shackles and the Book of Contracts]
“……Found it.”
Ian grinned and looked back at the others.
“I found the grimoire. Come over here.”
“Ah, you found it, senior? Lemme see, lemme see. Let’s take a look at what kind of damned thing it is.”
The Master of the Outer Sea, who had been snarling with Lea a moment ago, came up the stairs and stood beside Ian.
That was when it happened. The grimoire that had just been inside the locker vanished without a trace.
“……?”
Ian’s face crumpled. He stared silently at the empty locker, then said to the approaching Master of the Outer Sea,
“Wait. Go back up the stairs.”
“Huh? Why?”
“There’s something I need to check. Just for a second.”
“Hmm... Okay, then, I guess.”
She obediently went back up the stairs.
The moment she did, the grimoire reappeared timidly in the empty locker. Ian narrowed his eyes and parted his lips.
“……Lea, come down here for a second.”
“Yes.”
Click-clack.
As Lea descended the stairs one by one, the grimoire trembled more and more, then hid itself again the moment she stepped into the hallway.
“……Go up.”
“……? Yes.”
She went back up. The moment she disappeared from the hallway and set foot on the stairs again, the grimoire peeked out again.
“……Hah.”
Look at this bastard.