Infiltrating the Octagon (Part 1)
"...I still can't wrap my head around it."
To think that I was someone with Mizar-type mana... My mind remained a tangled mess of disbelief.
Yet the mana curling around my fingers still brought back the vivid tactile sensation of cleaving Arisphea in two. I clenched my fist tight, then released it, watching the color slowly seep back into my blanched palm. It wasn't an illusion. This was cold, hard reality.
"Heh, still having trouble getting used to it, are you?"
"...Professor Muniher."
He must have noticed me standing there, opening and closing my hand over and over as if checking whether I was awake.
"It is an accomplishment forged by your own hands. Why deny what you yourself have achieved?"
Well, how could I not? All my life, I had been relegated to the mundane vanguard. Now they were telling me my mana shared the exact same fundamental nature as Goden, the powerhouse leader of Tembris. Being placed in the same breath as him was jarring enough, but when I heard the names of historical figures and living legends who possessed Mizar-type mana, I nearly choked.
"I was just told my mana is identical in type to yours, Professor. How on earth am I supposed to take that in stride...?"
To share a classification with the venerable professor standing right before me, the undisputed pioneer of magical engineering, and the Imperial Chancellor himself... No ordinary person could just nod, murmur an easy agreement, and move on. Not that I had the arrogance to consider myself their equal—far from it. It was simply awkward to the extreme. If someone had told me I was destined to remain an unremarkable vanguard, a useless piece of driftwood as I had been for most of my existence, I would have accepted it without batting an eye. But when something so completely surreal fell into my lap, estrangement was the only natural reaction.
"...Is there any chance the testing apparatus malfunctioned?"
"Good grief, boy. Doubting it to the bitter end, are we? Do I truly strike you as that untrustworthy?"
"No, no! It's not that I don't trust you, sir... I wish I could just accept it smoothly, but it feels so alien that I can't help myself."
I scratched the back of my head sheepishly. Professor Muniher let out a hearty chuckle at my lackluster response.
"Well, when the time comes, you will understand. More importantly, Denise should have returned recently. Have you received any instruction from her?"
"She did instruct me briefly, but... our training session didn't last very long. She said she was exhausted."
Right about the time Professor Jake came to fetch me, she had grumbled that she was worn to the bone from working herself half to death over the past few days, flatly declaring she wouldn't be teaching anyone for a while.
"To think she would slack off like that. I shall have a word with her later. And what of your mastery over the Magic Armament you manifested?"
"Ah. About that..."
I seized the opportunity to ask about the specific technique Denise had glossed over during our sparring match, the one she had left entirely to my own devices without offering a single hint. But Professor Muniher merely shook his head.
"I am afraid I cannot answer that either."
Wait, seriously? Where did all these supposed mentors go when I actually needed them? Were they really telling me to figure out everything through self-study? I began to wonder what the point of having instructors even was. As my inner grievances threatened to show on my face, Professor Muniher seemed to read my thoughts effortlessly.
"It will do you no good to rush ahead of the curriculum here. Sometimes, walking slowly yields far better results than sprinting ahead. Take your time, review your fundamentals, and proceed with care."
With those parting words, Professor Muniher clasped his hands behind his back and turned toward his office, leaving me to my thoughts.
Don't rush. Take it slow.
It was the exact same advice I had received before my regression. And just like back then, my answer remained unchanged.
"...I can't help feeling rushed, Professor."
Because if I don't prepare for what's coming, I'll be no different from the utterly helpless fool I used to be.
Class 1's Mana Typology lecture had long since concluded. I stood alone, staring into the distant expanse until the reddish glow of sunset cooled and bled into pitch-black twilight.
"...For now, it seems Cain is the only one."
When I had scouted the main thoroughfares surrounding the capital city of Revrant a few days ago, Cain was the sole enrolled student making regular excursions into Mirpark Province.
Mirpark Province was widely recognized as the Principality's advanced industrial district, housing the nation's secondary capital right behind Revrant. On the surface, it glittered with technological promise. But beneath that polished veneer lay an oily, rotting sludge. Because the vast majority of its residents were wealthy lords and aristocrats who had hoarded power and riches for generations, its criminal underworld was far darker and more ruthless than that of any other administrative territory.
Illegal gambling, slave trafficking, narcotics distribution—every conceivable crime banned under Principality law ran rampant. Yet whenever an investigation threatened to expose them, their contacts quickly conspired to sever the loose ends, making it virtually impossible for the atrocities buried in Mirpark's shadows to ever see the light of day.
The foulest pit among them was the underground gambling den.
Tucked deep beneath the sprawling parlor lay an arena built solely to satisfy the decadent bloodlust of nobles: the Octagon.
"Phew. If students weren't getting dragged into this, I wouldn't have to spare it a second thought."
At first glance, a corrupt noble fighting ring might have seemed completely divorced from academy students. In truth, the two were intimately intertwined.
The high-stakes trade agreement between the Principality and the Empire had fallen through in the wake of the recent typhoons. That failure had triggered soaring inflation across the board, driving impoverished students from the lower classes to scramble desperately for any work they could find. To the vultures operating Mirpark's underbelly, these destitute youths were prime prey.
Just as the aristocratic patrons were growing bored of watching the same battered slaves hack each other apart, the prospect of fresh academy students entering the pit made their mouths water. Barred from openly touching academy pupils due to previous crackdowns, the nobles simply used mountains of coin as bait. And the students who bit were, inevitably, the struggling underdogs who had only just begun to climb the ladder of growth.
Frontliners, or support specialists capable of stepping up as temporary vanguards—the exact personnel destined to form the operational backbone of the Schytz Great Subjugation Campaign.
"Once they get sucked into the Octagon, it's game over."
In the previous timeline, Charlotte had caught wind of the operation and Senia had followed the scent to dismantle Mirpark's underground syndicate, but by then, the damage had been done. Ground down like disposable livestock in the fighting pits, the students' bodies were thoroughly ruined. When the Schytz Great Subjugation Campaign began, they were slaughtered in droves, unable to fulfill their frontline duties. That catastrophic shortage of vanguard fighters triggered a horrific domino effect, allowing the demonic beasts to swallow over half of Schytz Province.
Calling it 'half a province' was putting it lightly. It practically wiped out a quarter of the Principality's total military might and sovereign territory. The Schytz campaign had been the first falling domino in the snowball that brought about the nation's ruin.
Which meant I had to move before history could repeat itself. With Cain already frequenting the arena, other desperate students would soon follow suit out of sheer panic.
"The fighting pit known as the Octagon, was it?"
It was a cesspool of danger, but if I played my cards right, I could flip the situation to resolve every single problem currently weighing on my mind. Cain was throwing himself into that pit because he desperately needed coin, which meant the arena paid substantial prize purses. That made it the perfect stage.
My fighting style was built on obscure, hard-to-read techniques refined through life-and-death experience—more than enough to captivate the jaded noble audience. Moreover, the brutal nature of the arena offered an ideal proving ground to test my newly awakened abilities, and I might even uncover structural vulnerabilities within the syndicate's gambling ring to exploit later.
Money. Skill evaluation. Internal exposure.
With those three objectives firmly locked in my sights, I set out for the Octagon.
Flap, flap.
Beating its wings vigorously against the evening breeze, the carrier pigeon returned to its roost. Having unrolled the slip of parchment tied to its leg, Senia knew this day was bound to arrive eventually, yet confronting the reality sent a prickle of cold anxiety through her chest.
They've finally decided to abandon the settlement.
The first semester's Start-of-Semester Evaluation had been scrapped and rescheduled. Even after that, practical exams had repeatedly been pushed back due to the Canolatl subjugation and the emergency defense against the Orthoptera swarm. Add to that the isolation incident at Ripol Gorge, the annual academy festival, Count Coutelli's kidnapping of a student, and the terrorist attack on Dubhe Hall... With regular lectures repeatedly disrupted, the fraying lifeline she had clung to had finally snapped.
I thought I could finally find a solution once the Alchemy lectures started... but it's too late.
The letter brought grim tidings: the Sirens could no longer hold their ground against the relentless tide of Devourers and were abandoning their stronghold to relocate elsewhere. With an unacknowledged line of defense completely gone, those grotesque demonic beasts would soon pour directly into the rugged borderlands of Scheat.
Yet she could not share this truth with a living soul. When demi-humans like elves and dwarves had integrated into human society, they had done so on the righteous foundation of having aided mankind through countless trials. The Sirens enjoyed no such goodwill. On the contrary, they remained branded with the false accusation of having harmed the Principality's citizens. Not a single soul in this nation would ever believe their side of the story.
"Senia-unnie? You were taking so long that I came looking for you. What are you doing out here?"
"Oh, nothing. Just lost in thought for a moment."
"You say that, but you looked really upset just now..."
Even with their youngest teammate standing before her, even as a member of Team Tembris, Senia could not confide in her. Putting on a calm, nonchalant smile, Senia gently pinched Charlotte's cheek.
"Our adorable little sister. It's really nothing to fret over."
"Mmh... are you sure?"
"Of course. They suddenly told us to attend that Mana Typology lecture, so I was just debating whether it was worth going."
Her expression was so smooth, so entirely composed, that Charlotte couldn't detect the faintest trace of deceit. For Senia, masking her inner turmoil before others was second nature. It was a defense mechanism she had honed to absolute perfection, a personal survival strategy born from the vow that she would never allow herself to be victimized in the same manner again. A sharp edge, a gentle smile, a deadpan gaze—every single one was merely a mask crafted to conceal what lay beneath.
Had Charlotte seen through the facade?
—"Senia! We need to head over to the Mana Typology lecture!"
"Ah, that's Erika-unnie's voice."
Naturally, she hadn't. The sudden notice assigning them to Class 2 for Mana Typology swept away whatever microscopic doubts Charlotte had harbored. All Senia had to do was play along with her usual sly nonchalance.
"Ugh, seriously. Why do they keep tossing extra lectures onto our plates? Maybe I should just skip it."
"You can't do that! Starting this semester, unexcused tardiness and absences rack up penalty points without mercy... Ah, wait, this isn't the time to dawdle! Unnie, hurry up!!"
"Alright, alright. I'm coming."
Even Charlotte, endowed with the sharp, unerring intuition of an elite merchant, could not unearth Senia's buried secrets. The day those hidden truths would finally come to light lay far, far in the distant future.