Cockroach
Cockroach
Until then, Sheryl's daily routine at the academy had been exceedingly simple.
Classes and training. It wasn't as though she had no interaction with others whatsoever, but she had never gone out of her way to socialize first.
It wasn't because she looked down on them or thought them beneath her. It was simply that, despite her own talent, she felt a sense of urgency and naturally focused on her studies. In the end, that attitude came across as someone who, despite outstanding talent, also possessed diligence, and the general assessment of her solidified into someone a bit stiff but not unlikable.
Perhaps it was because she had introduced a change to a daily routine that had been maintained for nearly two years like that, but even with sudden requests and demands, her classmates readily extended a helping hand. Of course, one could say the provocative elements of demons and traitors being involved played a part... but since the results were not bad at all, Sheryl was quite satisfied. And so, she sank into contemplation, having tacked the results of those three days onto the wall.
Personally, she hadn't been keen on it at all, but as Eldmia had said, asking Griwills for help had been a very wise choice. The simplified academy floor plans she could see right before her eyes and the documents outlining the rough overview of the underground waterways identified so far had mostly been obtained through his efforts. Among them were not only public materials but also personal documents containing his own know-how.
She had only known him as a merchant's son, and when she mentioned that he was surprisingly well-connected, she received looks from her friends saying that was too much, which bothered her a little, but it got glossed over in the end, so she couldn't ask why. Had Eldmia known about this?
"...Well, that doesn't really matter anyway."
Sheryl, having revised her assessment of Griwills from a sinister bastard to a capable sinister bastard, began to focus on the main issue again. The information they had uncovered over the three days was by no means little, and the time given to them was highly likely to be short.
The kingdom strictly and thoroughly managed the underground waterways beneath the city, but at the same time, with the exception of some important security-related information, it was freely disclosed to the public. Thanks to that, Sheryl had been able to scrape together decent information just through the connections of the many nobles at the academy.
Of course, the kingdom hadn't made a foolish mistake out of ignorance of the information's importance. It was merely a method to plant the perception in everyone's minds that the underground waterways were not a dark place but an open one, by exposing them since they were too large to hide anyway.
In reality, through information disclosure, the kingdom had successfully instilled in the public the perception that the underground waterways were never the optimal place for concealment and hiding. Not only that, but under the pretext that they were a part of the city requiring management, they were able to justly collect additional costs and labor from the nobles. Furthermore, by systematically commissioning work to services including the Adventurer's Guild based on the disclosed information, they were able to maintain the waterways much more accurately and cheaply.
Going further, they could show off the royal family's competence by displaying the confidence that they managed it so thoroughly that disclosing that level of information posed no problem whatsoever—a business deal with nothing to regret in many ways. In truth, there had never been a time in the kingdom's history when the underground waterways had been exploited to embarrass them, so until recently, that hadn't exactly been wrong.
Yeah, until recently.
As briefly mentioned before, nobles residing with mansions in the capital had the obligation to periodically provide funds and manpower for waterway management, with no exceptions.
Naturally, that included the nobles purged for treason this time, and Envelde was no different.
Unlike other nobles who fulfilled their duties with rather generous gold coins, there was now no one who didn't know what Envelde's intentions had been in consistently committing high-quality manpower to underground waterway management. The problem was that the period had been far too long. As soon as Envelde's death was announced, the royal family personally stepped in to carry out a massive purge, and even the Noble Council joined in to thoroughly investigate the underground waterways down to the last detail, but they still hadn't uncovered everything about what the personnel hired by Envelde had hidden there over the years of managing the waterways, or what secret spaces they had created.
Most of the close associates believed to have played core roles had had their heads cut off by Eldmia.
They were conducting large-scale inspections even with the help of dwarves, but progress was slow, and since they were investigating starting from residential areas where citizens with zero combat ability lived, the academy had still not been inspected.
"Would they have built a hideout?"
The possibility was slim.
A rebellion rising up in the capital was usually a short-term decisive battle. Recording passages for rapid movement was one thing, but there was no reason to suddenly build a hideout under the academy. The only somewhat plausible thing was establishing a supply route using the waterways and building a supply base for it, but the academy district, uniquely jutting out sideways compared to other districts, didn't fit the conditions.
"There's no way they tried to occupy the academy with those talentless bastards either... It's highly likely they only scouted the structure in case of a surprise attack, should the academy ever be besieged."
She spoke, organizing her thoughts, and moved her hands to write on the maps and documents stuck to the wall. She deleted the implausible hypotheses, and along with them, erased the areas where the hidden ones would likely have set up a base, based on those hypotheses.
The hypotheses and plans she had agonized over with her friends, racking their brains together even splitting their sleep time over three days, were erased one by one, but the more she did, the clearer what she had to do became. In that process, Sheryl felt a strange sense of elation, and thought it was because this was an opportunity to boast of her competence to Eldmia.
In her imagination, however, she was receiving praise from Eldmia rather than showing off, but Sheryl never noticed that subtle difference.
◈
"I think I've figured it out."
The morning of the fifth day since hearing the demon-related story from Eselua.
When Sheryl appeared in the professor's office in a more haggard state than any she had shown before and suddenly threw out that one line, there was no need to ask what it meant. I predicted it was about the cockroaches hiding in the underground waterways, and at the same time, she handed me a map along with documents presumed to be reference materials. But because her state was such a complete wreck, I shoved coffee and Laika at her without even a moment to open the documents.
"God, it's obvious you haven't been able to sleep properly. Here, drink this and pet Laika for a bit first."
"...The coffee aside, why Laika?"
"Ragnis says it feels mysteriously healing. The likelihood of it actually having an effect is high. I tested it on Seneran, too."
Seneran, who was, as usual today, petting Laika in a caterpillar-like state inside a sleeping bag as part of the clinical trial, grumbled in discontent at having Laika taken away without a word, but that wasn't what mattered right now. The kid was about to keel over from exhaustion—was a person just trying to chase away sleepiness more important?
Sheryl, having observed our reactions once, seemed to decide it didn't matter and took out a chair to sit and accept the coffee and Laika. I turned my gaze away from her and spread out the map. Then Seneran, who had crept over, subtly poked her head in.
Seeing her start reading with a moderately serious expression was utterly reassuring.
"What do you think?"
Since it wasn't content to be hidden anyway, we looked it over together for a bit, and when I asked for an opinion, Seneran stared blankly back and answered.
"I don't know. I was just looking because I was bored."
Fucking hell. Give me back my sense of reassurance.
Such a carefree reaction when the academy was standing at the crossroads of becoming my goddamn apartment or not. Still, with our mutually beneficial relationship, I couldn't quite send her a contemptuous glare, so I let out a short sigh and just decided to focus on the writing on the map.
The content, organized in Sheryl's elegant handwriting, was valid even when read by me, someone with no expertise in military science. Honestly, I hadn't had the faintest idea how to narrow down the locations, but just looking at it made me nod in understanding and acceptance.
From the rebel's perspective, the predicted base locations, narrowed down one by one by examining the underground waterways and assessing their utility, had been whittled down to ten based on rational grounds. Just as I confirmed that even possible ambush points and reconnaissance points had been predicted and marked using the attached explanations and materials, and felt the urge for a standing ovation, Sheryl added a supplementary explanation.
"It's the conclusion after multiple discussions with my friends, so at least one should hit. If we'd known the route the demon worshippers used to infiltrate the city interior, we could have narrowed it down more concretely... but that was classified, so I couldn't find out."
"This much alone is amazing. You've done underground waterway management requests too, so you know. I'm deeply moved right now."
When the official data and waterway blueprints they'd thrown at me turned out to be nearly sixty percent wrong, I'd felt the urge to just tear them up. That had been almost when I first arrived in the capital, so it was now a dim memory. Maybe recalling the shared memory, Sheryl let out a dry laugh this time too.
"When will we move?"
"First, I need to show it to Siegfried, and we have to coordinate the timing with the friends who participated in the team you organized, so at the earliest, it'll be after all classes are over tomorrow."
Since we had to align our stories and coordinate with the people involved anyway, today was impossible. In truth, even moving tomorrow was close to rushing it, purely because I had faith that I could handle it alone.
"So get a good rest today. I have no intention of leaving you behind."
Above all, I couldn't drag along a kid whose dark circles looked like they were about to reach her mouth. I ruffled Sheryl's hair and grinned. Perhaps because she was quite exhausted, Sheryl just smiled back.