The Intruder (2)
“Still no mana interference?”
“The flow of mana has been completely severed!”
“How many magic circles did we install, and you’re telling me they all cut out at once? Does that even make sense?!”
“What about contact with the students?!”
“Impossible! No matter how much mana we pour in, there’s no response!”
Startled by the news that an intruder had appeared, the two of them rushed into the room serving as the exam supervision headquarters to report it—only to find the professors already racing about in a frenzy, voices raised.
“Ah, Professor Remillion! And Professor Felix as well!”
“What’s going on?!”
“The connection to the Artificial Dungeon has been completely cut off!”
“...What?”
Remillion asked the professor who had recognized them what the matter was, but the answer that came back made her face harden in an instant.
In all the years they had run the Artificial Dungeon exams, nothing like this had ever happened. A full-scale disaster had just erupted.
And it wasn’t simply that some part of the system had failed—the interaction with the Artificial Dungeon itself had been severed entirely. This was no ordinary problem.
“Have you contacted the Headmaster?”
“The Headmaster went up to the capital for the regular report. Of all the times for something like this to blow up…!”
To make matters worse, the crisis had struck while the academy’s highest magical authority was away.
“The students’ safety is the biggest issue. It’s not just that contact’s been lost—we can’t even grasp the situation inside…”
“Do you know why this happened?”
“That’s exactly what’s driving us crazy! The magic circle maintenance period hasn’t even passed yet!”
“Then what are we supposed to do now…?!”
They had come running in a panic only to find an even greater catastrophe waiting. Remillion froze on the spot, utterly at a loss for what to do next.
The other professors were no better off.
Then—
“Just a moment.”
Felix, who had remained silent until now, stepped forward.
He approached the magic circle most critically linked to the Artificial Dungeon and laid his hand upon it.
The moment Felix moved, the pandemonium inside the room fell quiet. Every gaze converged on him.
In the past, they might have barked at him for playing games when they were this busy. But every professor present now knew full well that Felix was no empty title bought with money—he was an exceptional mage in his own right.
After all, he had proposed the greatest number of improvements for this exam and had been the one responsible for the core magic circles of the artificial monsters.
So a flicker of hope rose in them. They held their breath, waiting for whatever Felix would do next.
Remillion, standing right beside him, was no different.
“...This is—!”
“W-what’s wrong? Have you figured it out?”
“Do you understand it?”
Felix opened the eyes he had kept closed, a look of surprise on his face, and the questions poured in at once.
“This isn’t simply a severed mana connection.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“It looks as though the flow of mana has been cut, but in truth it’s been cleverly concealed. Someone deliberately set a trap.”
“On the surface it appears completely broken, yet the connection is still there.”
“How did you… even notice that? The rest of us couldn’t detect a thing.”
One professor muttered in a daze, caught between admiration and sheer disbelief that Felix had read a mana flow none of the others had been able to perceive.
“M-more importantly! Well? Can it be restored?”
They quickly pulled themselves together and asked the only question that truly mattered—whether the system could be recovered for the students’ safety.
But—
“...They put a great deal of work into this. The overlaid strokes go beyond double or triple layers. You could say it reeks of malice…”
“Th-then! Is this the work of that intruder?”
“Intruder? What are you talking about now?”
Even Felix clicked his tongue at the sheer malice of the magic he had uncovered, unable to give a firm answer. At that, Remillion remembered the existence of the intruder she had momentarily forgotten in the urgency of the moment.
She began explaining to the startled professors why the two of them had come here in the first place. The longer her explanation went on, the more the color drained from the professors’ faces until they were deathly pale.
“...If that’s true, then this is an even bigger problem! If it isn’t a simple accident but a deliberate attack targeting the students…”
“The longer the breach takes, the more danger the students are in!”
In truth, this was far from the first time incidents targeting students had occurred at the academy. As a gathering place for nobles from across the entire empire, all manner of trouble was inevitable—succession disputes, feuds between rival houses. The academy’s history was stained with more than a few bloody affairs.
Yet thanks to the academy’s steadily improving defenses, almost nothing of the sort had happened in the past fifty years.
Which made the present crisis utterly unprecedented.
Nearly a hundred students still remained inside the Artificial Dungeon, including heirs of high-ranking houses. Professor Felix’s own younger sister, Lady Rosaria Evergarden, was among those still trapped within.
An incident involving this many students at once had never once occurred in the academy’s entire history.
“Hah…”
While the other professors began to panic, Felix only focused harder.
Why is this happening? Nothing like this ever appeared in the original story! Why?
Inwardly, Felix was thoroughly rattled. An event of this scale would certainly have been mentioned in the original, yet as far as he knew the Artificial Dungeon had continued operating without issue even the following year, after the protagonist enrolled.
That meant this was a complete divergence from the original plot.
Knowing the original well, Felix had always enjoyed a certain degree of leeway, able to roughly predict what would come next. But a sudden incident like this left his mind in turmoil.
What’s their goal? What do they want…? No—set that aside for now.
The real problem is how to break through. Focus on that.
There was no time to waste on speculation. With every passing second the students’ situation grew more dangerous, and his own sister Rosaria was still inside the Artificial Dungeon.
Hiding strokes this thoroughly and striking the moment the Headmaster is away—this isn’t some spur-of-the-moment accident. It’s a meticulously planned crime prepared over a long stretch of time.
Let’s see… There’s no major damage to the circuits themselves, but I have to somehow break through the magic circle that’s covering them.
Simply reverse-engineering the circuits won’t cut it. If I try to solve it that clumsily it’ll take days on end…! That’s far too late.
Felix examined the circuits the intruder had installed once more.
In principle, he could cancel them out by drawing opposing magic circles that utilized Dispel. But to do that he would first have to map every single stroke of the magic circles the intruder had planted throughout the Artificial Dungeon, then activate the counter-circles one by one.
Fully analyzing that vast array of mana circuits alone would take more than a day, and then there was the problem of actually inscribing the enormous counter-circles. The time left to them was absurdly short.
Even now the students were facing a grave crisis at the hands of some unknown entity.
Damn it…! Damn it…! What am I supposed to do?
If I could force it open with sheer mana volume, smash through, and install a new warp gate… but how…?
Even if I gathered every professor’s mana here, it would still take time.
No matter how hard he thought, no viable solution presented itself. Cold sweat had already begun to bead thickly on Felix’s forehead.
“W-well? How does it look?”
“...It’s no good. No matter what method I use, it’ll take several days at the least.”
“I-isn’t there any other way?”
“As far as I know… no.”
“Th-that can’t be…!”
Felix shook his head at Remillion’s desperate question, as if to say there was nothing to be done.
“...If even you say so, Professor Felix, then I suppose there’s no way unless we bring a dragon or something.”
“...Wait. What did you just say?”
“W-what?!”
Remillion had let out a long, resigned sigh and muttered the words half to herself. In that instant a jolt of electricity seemed to race through Felix’s mind. He seized her by the shoulders in a rush.
“W-what on earth has gotten into you all of a sudden…?!”
“I said, what did you just say?!”
“Th-that there’s no way unless we bring a dragon…?”
“...Ha, haha…! Hahahaha!!!!”
“A-are you all right?!”
Hearing Remillion’s words again, Felix hung his head for a moment—then threw it back and burst into wild, unrestrained laughter.
“...It’s not your fault. There’s simply no way to—”
Startled by the manic edge in his laughter, Remillion assumed the guilt of failing to protect the students had finally driven him over the edge. She managed to offer a few words of comfort.
But—
That’s right—why didn’t I think of that? There is a dragon! And she’s right here!!
Felix’s laughter was not the laughter of despair.
It was the laughter of pure joy at having found the critical “key” that could break this situation wide open.
“Professor Remillion.”
“Yes?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
“W-what is it?”
Felix wiped the smile from his face and looked at her with utterly serious eyes.
“Would you bring someone for me?”
“Someone…?”
Caught by the gravity in his gaze, Remillion grew serious as well—then immediately wondered if she had misheard.
“Hehe… This batch came out pretty clean, didn’t it?”
Tene hummed with delight, swaying her hips as she lifted the laundry she had just finished washing.
Several weeks had already passed since she arrived at the academy.
At first she had been so unused to a servant’s work that she had torn the laundry more than once while hand-washing it. But she had gradually grown accustomed to the task and could now wash everything neatly without putting a single hole in the fabric.
Feeling a quiet pride at having taken another step toward becoming a first-rate maid, Tene was about to bask in the satisfaction—
“...Wait. Is this really something to get excited about?”
—when a sudden realization made her mutter under her breath.
The whole reason she had come to the academy was to see with her own eyes the amazing classes of a place that felt just like Hogwarts.
Yet what Tene had seen most since arriving was neither wondrous lessons nor fun times with friends her own age.
Instead she had been confronted by mountains of laundry. The skill that had improved the most was not magic but hand-washing technique. Tene let out a bitter sigh.
Of course she had volunteered as a servant so she could follow along, but she had completely forgotten her original purpose and was simply rushing through each busy day as time slipped away.
“Ugh… At this rate I might as well have stayed at the mansion…”
Feeling the full weight of her reality, Tene heaved another sigh.
Just then—
“Hey! You there!”
“Uh… yes? Me?”
“You’re Tene… right?”
“Uh… I am, but is something the matter?”
A maid dressed in the same servant’s uniform as herself came running up in a hurry and asked for her name. Tene tilted her head, wondering what this was about.
“Well… someone’s looking for you.”
“...Who?”
The answer that followed only made Tene tilt her head even further in confusion.