Chapter 2
“Aaaaargh!”
My eyes shot open. A horrifying scream burst out.
The aftersensation of a cold touch remained vivid, as though I had just felt it. Gooseflesh rose all over my body. I looked around like a madman. All I could see were stark-white walls faintly tinged with the scent of medicinal herbs and a yellowish partition draped around the bed.
“T-the infirmary?”
Yes, it was the infirmary. Not that bastard’s secret hideout, nor the freezer beneath the bed, but the infirmary.
The very sanctuary of cutting class, freely available to every student in the Saint Petrus dormitory.
“It was a dream….”
A sigh of relief escaped me. Right, even so, sneaking into a freshman’s room only to be attacked by a corpse was taking things too far.
Apparently, I must have been hit by a flying HomeRun Ball snack on my way to the first-year dormitory. Or maybe I slipped on the stairs.
No wonder last night’s dream had been so unsettling. With a deep sigh, I pressed a hand to my forehead and swept my disheveled bangs back into their usual slicked-back style…
“……Huh?”
My hand stopped mid-motion as I was about to push them back. Something was strange.
Wasn’t it… a little too long? I stopped the hand that had been brushing up my bangs and cautiously looked upward. What I had caught in my hand was a bundle of unusually silky hair. I carefully tugged it downward.
‘……Gold?’
Wait. Time out. I squeezed both eyes shut and pulled myself together. When I raised a hand to smooth my unconsciously furrowed brow, an absurdly oversized sleeve slid down under its own weight.
‘What is this?’
Naturally, there was no way the color of my hair, inherited from the proud bloodline of the Friesna family, could possibly be gold.
Nor could the sleeves of my personally tailored uniform, made to order every month, hang this loosely.
So there were only two possibilities I could think of.
Either I was still wandering through a dream… or the freshman who had found me unconscious because of the corpse had done something to my body.
“That lunatic?”
My eyes snapped wide open again. I kicked off the blanket covering me and threw myself off the bed.
An eerily cold chill seeped through the soles of my feet. I was barefoot. Where on earth had my expensive wool socks gone?
But compared to the situation at hand, socks were truly a minor concern. I roughly flung open the yellowish partition and stepped out of the ward. The familiar infirmary stretched out before me, while the world outside the window was submerged in pitch-black darkness. After confirming that no one was in the room, I approached the tabletop mirror on a desk in one corner of the infirmary.
With a sinking feeling that this couldn’t possibly be true, I looked at my face in the mirror.
‘This is fucking crazy….’
In the mirror stood a dazed-looking girl, frozen awkwardly in place.
And it was… a strangely familiar face.
‘The corpse?’
My brain froze, unable to catch up with reality. My legs wobbled as they lost their strength. I set down the tabletop mirror and barely managed to grab the desk. An impossibly pale, delicate hand came to rest on its surface. I drew a deep breath and squeezed both eyes shut once more.
‘Stay calm, I have to stay calm. Evan, take deep breaths.’
Let’s calmly organize the situation.
The fact that the corpse was here suggested that the series of events I had experienced in the freshman’s room had been real. And with the soles of my bare feet stinging against the floor, there was zero chance this was a dream.
[This is not a dream. I lost consciousness because of the corpse in his room.]
Taking that as a premise, let’s reconstruct what happened… It must have gone something like this.
‘That corpse definitely had a safety mechanism in place to guard against intruders. At the very last moment, it even mentioned the word ‘emergency’.’
I couldn’t say what that safety mechanism was, but one thing was certain: it had knocked me unconscious.
‘After that, the freshman must have returned from dinner and found me unconscious and the corpse that had been dug up. Along with the room being left in complete disarray….’
And then… just imagining it sent chills down my spine, but what happened next was all too clear.
‘That lunatic… transferred my soul into the corpse’s body.’
I remembered something my father had told me long ago. What Saint Petrus had achieved—the materialization and free movement of the soul, and the realization of immortality through it—was the longstanding dream of the Friesna family.
The Ministry of Magic classified the materialization of the soul as tenth-tier magic, ‘Miracle’, but my family had secretly passed down that it could actually be reproduced with eighth-tier magic.
‘No, I have to stay calm… There’s still another possibility.’
Even if my father’s words were true, there was no way that first-year had mastered eighth-tier magic. After all, the last person in the Empire to reach the eighth tier had been the archmage Rinkel, who vanished without a trace twenty-three years ago.
Besides, even if that guy had truly mastered the materialization of the soul, there was no reason for him to use such an incredible spell on me.
The truth is always what remains after every impossibility has been ruled out.
Now was the time to search for any possibility other than the impossible idea that he had used eighth-tier magic.
‘At his current level… yeah, maybe transfiguration?’
Transfiguration, which freely changes a target’s appearance, was fourth-tier magic. It was still absurd, but compared to eighth-tier, it was a more realistic kind of ‘absurdity.’
Even considering the enormous gap between the third and fourth tiers, someone like him might be able to clumsily imitate a portion of fourth-tier magic.
‘But… why?’
Well, why indeed?
Whatever the reason, it was far more realistic to assume that transfiguration magic had been cast on my body than to believe that my soul had taken up residence in the corpse.
Once I reached that conclusion, I calmed down a little. I glared at the dim corridor beyond the infirmary door.
‘That psycho bastard….’
Transfiguration magic, naturally, could be undone easily if its caster simply ordered it undone.
Of course, a fifth-tier mage such as the headmaster or vice principal could forcefully dispel it… but going to them in my current state would be no different from suicide.
‘Could this… be a warning to come to him quietly?’
If so, that roughly explained why the lunatic had gone out of his way to transform me into the corpse’s appearance. He really was crazy to the core.
‘Fine. I’ll take you up on that challenge.’
I wasn’t about to back down now. In any case, I was the one who had discovered the corpse he had hidden. I had the upper hand.
Looking around, I spotted the infirmary nurse’s cat-fur slippers. I shoved my feet into them, mentally sharpening my knives.
‘Wait for me, freshman… I’ll tear off that hideous mask of yours!’
※※
“No, student! I told you I’d just give you a lecture and let you off if it was your first offense! Tell me what dormitory, what year, and who you are, now!”
Damn it, I’d let my guard down. I should have remembered that the knights would be out on patrol at this hour before I set out….
“……”
The one fortunate thing was that, thanks to the uniform I was wearing, I had avoided being treated as an intruder… No, what am I saying? There was nothing fortunate about this.
Naturally, I couldn’t give the name ‘Evan Friesna’ while looking like this. But giving the name of another female student would bring a terrifying backlash first thing tomorrow morning.
As the knight had said, a first curfew offense meant only a warning and release. But anyone shameless enough to give a friend’s name would receive demerits and be sent straight to the class tribunal.
I—the eldest son of the great Friesna family—couldn’t receive demerits over something like this.
Rather than be dragged before the tribunal and face my father’s disappointed expression, it would be a hundred, a thousand times better to keep my mouth firmly shut and pray that the knight grew exhausted and collapsed.
“This is driving me crazy. Hey, Marie, do you recognize this student’s face?”
“No, I’ve never seen her before.”
“Then that means it’s her first offense. Ah, this is driving me insane.”
The knight, frustrated, roughly raked a hand through his hair and met my gaze.
“All right, then I won’t even lecture you. I’ll just send you quietly back to your dormitory, so please, tell me only your name and year. If you keep this up, you’re putting me in a real bind too.”
“Aren’t you pressuring her a little too much? She obviously looks like a first-year.”
The female knight called Marie stepped forward. She then bent down slightly in front of me and met my eyes with a gentle gaze.
“Student, is there some reason you can’t speak? Did someone force you to come out here in the middle of the night?”
I silently shook my head.
Marie murmured, “Is that so?” and gave me a faint smile.
“Then were you perhaps on your way to the cafeteria? Or the infirmary?”
It was true that I had come from the infirmary, but saying anything more was impossible. Once again, I remained silent and only shook my head.
But just then,
“Excuse me, is something the matter?”
The half-open door of the guard post swung wide, and an incredibly familiar voice reached my ears.
‘Gasp.’
It was Ms. Justina, the dorm supervisor for Saint Petrus. Her round face peeked through the gap in the door, followed by a cascade of shimmering blond hair that nearly touched the floor.
“Ah, dorm supervisor.”
I instinctively lowered my head to hide my face. The knight and Marie, who had been crouching in front of me, hurriedly stood and gave her slight bows as well.
“We caught a student loitering out front, but for some reason she won’t say a word. Do you happen to recognize her?”
The knight pointed at me as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
What the hell? Before I knew it, I had squeezed my eyes shut.
The dorm supervisor naturally knew the faces of every student in the dormitory, so it was only a matter of time before she discovered that I wasn’t one of them. My breath caught, and my fingertips began to tremble.
“The student?”
The click-clack of dress shoes echoed. Ms. Justina’s signature peony scent swept toward me in an instant.
“Eek….”
Without hesitation, she grasped my chin and tilted my face up. As my vision began to swim, I met a pair of brown eyes filled with puzzlement.
‘Should I tell her the truth about what happened this time?’
As a fifth-tier mage, Ms. Justina could easily undo transfiguration. Of course, I would have to confess everything that had happened with the freshman.
Ms. Justina studied me for a moment as I helplessly worked my lips without a word. Then she gently released my chin and nodded.
“Yes, she’s Rene, a first-year from our dormitory.”
“……What?”
What had she just said? I could only blink at her blankly.
The knight exclaimed, “Aha,” and the scratch of his pen across the scroll rang out.
“Rene, first-year, Saint Petrus dormitory… Yes, confirmed.”
The knight nodded in relief. Ms. Justina beamed and continued.
“Rene only transferred here recently. She must have gotten lost after studying late at the library.”
Then she turned to me and asked gently, “Right?”
‘That corpse had been a student at our school?’
I couldn’t give any answer or show the slightest reaction.
Ms. Justina warmly stroked my head and then said to the knights,
“Then could you escort Rene back to the dormitory? I have somewhere I need to get to urgently.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Marie took my hand without hesitation. Despite her gentle touch, I could feel considerable strength in her arm.
“Something urgent?”
The knight tilted his head as he asked.
Ms. Justina said, “Hmm,” and her expression briefly hardened. She stole a glance at me, leaned toward the knight, and whispered quietly.
“It seems… one of the third-year students was found unconscious.”
“Unconscious?!”
The knight asked again, startled.
Ms. Justina nodded, then carefully leaned toward the knight once more and whispered,
“Yes, the famous eldest son of the Friesna family.”