Chapter 16
Alice.
A naturally frail girl, with an air as though she might break at any moment.
It was pure coincidence that led her to peek into a secret.
‘He... helped me...’
Anthropophobia.
Alice feared contact with people—and even the outside air itself.
She had enrolled in the academy thanks to the dean's consideration, but a place teeming with children her age was no different from poison to her.
She had even refused to attend despite the semester having begun.
If there was a reason she had ventured outside, it was merely a passing whim.
Since she did not want to worry the dean, she had left the dormitory with a great deal of resolve.
‘M-my neck, the necklace... I got it from Yeriel, but, uh, where did it go?’
Yet her clumsy outing had produced only the worst possible result.
She had lost something more important than her own life.
It was a precious item that could not be exchanged for anything in the world.
She had been searching through bushes here and there with a woeful expression when—
-Hello?
A boy held out his hand to Alice.
The top student in Class E, the class she belonged to.
Victor, was it?
He was a boy distinguished by the bizarre mask he wore.
‘A s-scary person...!’
After the entrance ceremony, Alice did not attend the academy for several days.
Even so, since she had used her ability to observe the academy from time to time, she had grasped at least the general atmosphere of her class.
In her classification, Victor was a frightening person.
She knew at least that he bullied his classmates.
Thus, she had been too quick to let fear take hold.
She had guarded against the boy before her and let her fear show.
-Shall we calm down first? I understand you've been startled, but...
-Ta-da. Wipe your tears with this.
-Flowers are a gift.
But contrary to what she had expected.
The boy had not treated Alice in a forceful or frightening manner.
His gentle tone, the handkerchief he kindly offered, even the balloon flower...
He treated her as though she were a fragile glass vessel.
-Please don't be so wary.
-I am extremely well-disposed toward Miss Alice.”
Softly- .
The thorns she had raised in her heart folded away, and her wariness likewise faded before she knew it.
Alice had finally stopped trembling.
The boy did not stop there.
-May I ask what you lost?
-Don't worry, Miss Alice.
-Victor and his friends will help you.
This time, he mobilized manpower, and together they even found her necklace.
-It's all right. I simply helped on my own initiative.
-You said we're classmates. Now that our paths have crossed like this, how could I not help you?
No matter how she tried to show her gratitude, he only waved it off, saying it was fine.
When Alice grew restless at that, he tossed out a word, as if to ease her burden.
-Then how about this? You could become friends with me from now on.
Become friends.
It was something she had not heard in an extremely long time—perhaps something she had never heard in her life.
-The semester only just began. As it happens, I didn't have any classmates I got along with, so I was just looking for someone to spend the semester with.
-Yes. Or... do you dislike me, Miss Alice?
Her twisted life had never allowed relationships with others.
Alice herself had never once been dissatisfied with that.
‘A loner.’
The girl had considered it only natural.
She thought it was a fate she would share forever, just like her nightmares.
The goodwill of others was unfamiliar, and at times it even felt frightening.
But.
-See you tomorrow, Miss Alice.
The boy had breezed right past that boundary.
It had surely been a casual kindness offered without any particular meaning.
But that casual gesture left a great ripple behind in Alice.
Kindness directed at her.
And so, even after returning to the dormitory, the girl remained immersed in its afterglow.
“······.”
Alice lay still on her bed.
Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
“His name was Victor, wasn't it...”
Just...
He had somehow caught her attention.
Because he had readily shown her kindness despite it being their first meeting.
A frightening yet kind person.
That was how Alice remembered him.
“Hmm...”
It was growing late.
It had not been intentional.
As her consciousness drifted toward sleep, her ability had activated on its own.
Oneiric Form (異形一夢).
Using dreams as a window to see another person's world.
‘Even if it activated in the first place, there was no way it could succeed against him...’
The conditions could not have been met.
Just because she felt goodwill toward the other person did not mean the other person felt the same way.
Nor had she done anything—or had the time—to win that person's favor.
Therefore, she should not have been able to see anything.
And yet...
‘Huh?’
She could see.
Once the ability activated and her eyelids fell shut, an unfamiliar field of vision appeared.
The backs of a black-haired boy and a silver-haired girl walking down a dark corridor.
The scene was somewhat hazy, but one of them was unmistakably Victor.
The unusual mask made him easy to distinguish.
‘W-what happened? How can I share his field of vision...?’
It was a bewildering situation.
Though shaken, Alice soon sneaked a glance at the scene before her.
Since it had activated anyway, she decided to watch for just a moment.
The boy strode down the dark corridor.
‘Where is this...? Wait, is that a warning notice?’
Warning notices they passed time and again.
Only then did Alice realize that this was the underground dungeon called ‘Purgatory.’
‘P-Purgatory? And on the 70th floor? I heard entry was forbidden! How did they get in? No, more importantly, I have to stop them...’
There were no faculty members accompanying them, either.
The only one standing beside him was a silver-haired girl who looked roughly his age.
While Alice floundered, the boy flung open the massive gate to the 70th floor.
He entered without hesitation.
“Ah...! No...!”
This is going to kill him.
Someone is going to die.
Alice sprang up from her bed.
Without time to think, she was already running out of the dormitory.
‘This is impossible... The master of the 70th floor, th-that thing can't possibly survive...!’
The one standing as master of that room was a dragon.
It was a dragon that exuded overwhelming force despite having been degraded into an undead.
The contents of the warning notices flashed through her mind.
Regular expeditions had failed time and again, and countless expedition members had been sacrificed.
Setting aside whether they were students or not, even professor-level powerhouses had been swept away.
‘I have to tell someone! B-but who should I tell? The dean? Sister Jaber? Or anyone else...!’
She had to report this situation and obtain help.
Just as she was fleeing the dormitory in a panic with that thought in mind.
Alice felt the field of vision flowing into her flash.
“Ugh...!”
Her brow furrowed.
It had perhaps been about two minutes since the boy entered the room.
After confirming the scene that followed, Alice had no choice but to stop right there.
“······Huh?”
It was gone.
Half the dragon.
“W-wha, whaaat...?!”
It happened in an instant.
The boy snapped his fingers, and immediately afterward, the figure was sliced in half.
Its massive body shrank, while green runoff splashed and stained everything around it.
The dragon was dealt with without even a dying scream.
“W-what...?”
What had she just seen?
It was dead.
He had killed it.
With a single gesture, the master of the 70th floor—a dragon.
Split precisely in half, as though he had been playing with it.
“······.”
Alice felt a grotesque wrongness, as though her existing common sense were being rejected.
Regardless, the boy merely cleaned up afterward, calm as ever.
As though a sight like this meant nothing to him.
Just as the situation was about to be sorted out.
“······?”
Their eyes.
Met.
“······What?”
It was not merely her imagination.
Beyond the hazy field of vision, the eyes behind the mask.
They were staring directly at her.
-Heh heh.
He was smiling.
The mask wore its usual grotesque grin.
Alice could not breathe beneath the overwhelming sensation.
It felt as though that smile might split open at any moment, with hundreds of clusters of tentacles crawling out.
It felt as though writhing death were tightening around her throat.
“Haa, haa...”
He had noticed her.
And the other party was laughing as if mocking her.
As though he had known from the very beginning that she was watching.
The masked boy grinned.
He grinned.
“Gasp...!”
Immediately afterward, the severed field of vision finally broke.
Alice could only draw ragged breaths.
It still felt as though that killing intent lingered along her spine.
Panic set in.
“O-our eyes met...? H-how? That has never happened before...”
Her blue eyes trembled violently.
He was someone who had torn even a dragon apart with a single gesture, a single glance.
There was no way such a monster could possibly fail to see through her.
‘I've been marked.’
The boy had been hiding his strength.
But why? Why?
Had he intended to infiltrate the academy?
Why had he deliberately settled in as the top student of Class E?
Why had he conquered Purgatory?
For what purpose had he hidden his strength?
Countless questions flashed through her mind, but none of them mattered to Alice right now.
“He noticed me!”
Whatever the reason, he was a suspicious individual hiding his power.
She had learned the truth about such a person.
And he had caught her discovering the truth.
She remembered the smile the mask had directed at her just before the field of vision was cut off.
“Ah, aaah...”
There was only one outcome that came to mind in a situation like this.
She had learned too many secrets, and now she had been marked by him.
“I-I'm going to die... He'll kill me, he'll silence me...”
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
The girl's face had gone deathly pale.
"Sniff, wh-what am I going to do..."
The girl's trembling did not stop for a long while.
***
The next day.
The faculty had noticed the anomaly on the 70th floor as well.
An emergency was declared among the professors from early dawn.
“What? Purgatory's 70th floor was conquered overnight? What the hell are you talking about?”
An emergency meeting was convened immediately.
Every professor sat there with a deathly pale face.
“Does this situation make any sense? The 70th floor of Purgatory was surely a sealed-off floor!”
“And they succeeded in conquering it... How on earth did things come to this?”
“How did anyone even enter Purgatory? Were the guards just slacking off?”
The meeting hall was in an uproar.
The professors each raised their voices to express their concerns.
“It's difficult to accept. Even regular expeditions failed several times. Throughout the academy's history, far too many members have died in the line of duty.”
“That's why it was decided twenty years ago, wasn't it? To seal off Purgatory's 70th floor.”
“And yet... that very 70th floor was suddenly conquered overnight?”
“Fuck, what the hell is going on...”
The 70th floor had stood unconquered throughout the academy's history.
The longer a faculty member had served, the harder it was for them to readily accept this incident.
They had heard enough of that floor's infamy to be sick of it.
“Purgatory is the most heavily guarded place in the academy. It's hard to believe it was breached head-on. In particular, I heard that according to the captain of the guards, there were no visitors or intruders last night. Not even an ant crawled through the entrance to Purgatory.”
“Then what does that mean? Are you saying there is some kind of side passage leading to Purgatory?”
“That's absurd! We conduct regular inspections precisely because of concerns like that. It's been that way throughout the academy's history. There has never been a side passage leading to Purgatory.”
“This makes no sense at all...”
It was enough to make even ghosts wail.
The 70th floor had been conquered, yet no one had entered Purgatory.
Not a single person—not faculty nor anyone else—had approached it during the night.
“You've all checked the data, I assume.”
That was not all.
Screens were provided one by one before the faculty.
““······.””
What appeared on the screens was the 70th floor in utter disarray.
At its center lay a massive lump of flesh.
The professors each failed to suppress a groan.
“Good heavens, the dragon was... split in half.”
“Professor Lecan, can you do something like this?”
“Do you think I could? Even if you brought me the captain of the imperial knights, he couldn't do it.”
“Are we certain it's a dragon?”
“Yes, we have completed the autopsy as well. Though it was degraded into an undead, a dragon is still a dragon. Its cause of death is exactly as you saw on the screen. It appears to have been cleaved in half in a single strike. The other half vanished without a trace.”
“Good heavens, oh my...”
The faculty's gazes turned cold.
Along with the chill running down their spines, someone swallowed hard.
“That means...”
“So they're in this academy right now? Someone who can not only breach the heavy security and infiltrate Purgatory, but also cleave an undead dragon in half with a single strike? You mean someone like that could be hiding in the academy?”
““······.””
Spoken aloud, the implications felt even more serious.
As the faculty struggled to find their bearings, the white-haired old man finally spoke.
It was the dean, who had silently watched the situation unfold.
“For now... we will not inform the outside world of this incident. Until we understand the situation, we will control information regarding Purgatory.”
““Yes!””
“And... I ask each of you faculty members to conduct your own investigation. We need to identify the person responsible for this incident and determine whether they pose a threat to the academy. You must not overlook even a single suspicious detail.”
““Understood!””
The faculty answered with military discipline.
Among them, only one person's attention was elsewhere.
She was Chief Investigator Jaber.
“······.”
Green eyes blinked quietly between locks of fallen red hair.
The woman silently stared at the screen provided as evidence.
Her eyes moved back and forth several times, comparing it with the profile of someone in her hand.
Her gaze seemed devoid of emotion.
Scratch, scratch-.
Additional notes were written over the profile.
On the stiff file, the subject's name was written.
[Victor]
A boy wearing a mask.
Even after the faculty meeting ended, Jaber continued to stare at it in silence.
***
A bright, refreshing morning.
After the previous night's hard work, it was a day without a single thing to worry about.
The weather was sunny, and for no particular reason, my spirits were high.
‘I obtained the dragon scale, and the refining supplies as well...’
Everything was going smoothly.
All that remained was the freshman welcoming exam arriving tomorrow.
There were no lectures today, so I could simply lie back and rest at my leisure.
That was how I would spend the day, waiting for tomorrow's schedule.
“······.”
Yes.
I thought that would be enough.
“Student Victor.”
“Yes, Professor Jaber.”
At least, until things turned into this.
The red-haired woman had come by around lunchtime without warning.
She sat in the chair across from me, looking this way with inorganic eyes.
Lifeless green eyes.
“I'll ask you directly.”
“Go ahead.”
“Was it you? The one who cleared Purgatory's 70th floor.”
“······What?”
I asked back, dumbfounded.