Return
“That was rough.”
If I had to sum up today in a single word, that would be it.
A day that left me shaking in my boots.
The midterm exams.
I'd figured it would amount to a growth event for Eva — who knew the Part One final boss would crash the party?
Yes, the results were good, but it was an achievement I could never have claimed if I hadn't been training relentlessly all this time.
I grabbed the wheel, promising to carry everyone through, and nearly flipped the whole bus over in the process.
If I'd beaten the Celestial Clan easily, then sure, I could call it an easy win.
But I wasn't exactly thrilled about it.
Sizzle!
“Ow, ow! That stings like hell.”
The smell of grilling squid wafted off my own body.
Patches of skin everywhere had turned an angry red, as if raked by fingernails, and a sharp, stinging pain pulsed across them.
When I laid the back of my hand gently against my arm, a heat radiated off it like I'd been sitting too close to a hearth.
So this is what happens when you overextend with a Divine Artifact, huh?
I'd pulled out more power than I should have to counter an enemy relic, and my body had paid the price in burns.
The scorched skin flaked off like dirt when I rubbed it, so the sensible thing was to go get treated, and fast.
Let's get out of here.
The Living Earth.
There were two ways out of this dungeon.
One was to force open the passage Vital had left behind and return to the Max Republic.
But I'd already wrenched that door once on my way in.
If things went wrong, the dimensional seam could rupture, and I might end up a stranded wanderer, drifting forever through nameless space — a nomad of the void with no way home.
Rather than shoulder that needless risk, the second method was clearly the right call.
“It should be around here, right?”
The tallest tree in the dungeon.
Its size and height rivaled a national landmark — a monument built as a country's pride and symbol, standing as proof of how many centuries it had lived through.
I circled around the tree, scanning slowly for what I was looking for, and then—
“Bingo.”
There it was: a firmly sealed iron door.
A gate leading back to the present world.
On its surface, someone had thoughtfully written, a place to return to.
— The Way Home —
It might have looked suspicious, but this was a marker some kind soul had left behind long ago, so that wanderers caught up in the dungeon wouldn't lose their way.
It was also, in its way, evidence that the gods once loved humanity.
I threw my full weight against the iron door.
Screeeech!
The massive door dragged against the floor, and the gap that had been sealed shut yawned wide open.
A passage connected to the unknown — the same kind of dimensional seam as before.
At times it shimmered with rainbow hues; at others, the backdrop shifted to a darkness utterly bereft of light.
There was no room for hesitation.
I stepped straight through the door.
Whooooosh!
My vision flickered and strobed.
A dizzying vertigo surged through me in the blurring dark, as if I might pass out at any moment, but I held on to the very end.
By the time my senses returned, a familiar landscape was waiting to greet me.
Dilmun.
The island at the edge of the world.
The place where the otherworld and the mortal realm touched, the starting point of everything that had happened, and the ground upon which Purity Academy stood.
The dungeon's gate — its final destination was always here.
“H-h-halt right there!”
Tweeeeet!
A whistle shrilled against my eardrums.
Kicking up a whirlwind of dust, armed special police officers surrounded me in an instant.
Granted, a gate swinging open out of nowhere with a student stepping out of it would startle anyone.
“Y-you shameless pervert!”
Why are they all acting like this?
They leveled suppression batons crackling with blue electricity at me, glaring with wary eyes.
Their faces had flushed tomato-red from ear to ear, and their pupils were darting wildly left and right.
One hand shielding their eyes, they were visibly stricken with embarrassment.
Weren't they reacting a little too sensitively?
“Y-you you you! Show identification, now!”
“Solis, first year, Class A, Purity Academy.”
“ID! ID card! Hurry!”
“My ID? Right here, then…”
The student ID tucked in my wallet would prove my identity to them, so I reached to pull it out and show them.
“Ah.”
And only then did I take stock of my own appearance.
Stark naked. Not a stitch on me.
So that's why the cops were looking at me like that.
They hadn't been wary of some unidentified thug emerging from the gate at all.
They'd come to arrest a public degenerate — a pervert wandering around in violation of every social convention.
So I incinerated myself without even noticing, huh.
My belongings. My clothes.
I never in a million years dreamed they'd fail to withstand the power of a Divine Artifact and burn away to nothing.
Losing my phone to the fire, too, was a colossal blunder — but then, my opponent hadn't been anywhere near weak enough to fight while moderating her output.
Better for my mental health to chalk it up as an unfortunate accident and move on.
“I'm sorry. I don't have anything on me to prove my identity right now. If you're going to arrest me, go ahead.”
I held both arms out in front of me, signalling plainly that I had no intention of resisting.
“...”
“Could you arrest me quickly, please? If you keep staring like that, it's going to get awkward for me too.”
“S-sorry.”
They couldn't even bring themselves to slap the cuffs on me, left me standing there in the buff, and were directing their gazes downward instead.
And under that sticky, lingering stare, my goods rose to attention without my permission.
Gulp.
I hardly knew what to do with myself under the ardent interest of our lovely lady officers guarding Dilmun.
A tree that had grown so enormous it punched through the roof of a greenhouse was bound to draw all the more attention in full bloom.
Once again, the fact that this island held not a single other man hit home.
My scepter, the thing any woman was duty-bound to take an interest in.
Everyone was busy drinking in the sight of me, at the height of its glory.
“Stand down.”
And then, the heavens opened.
Space tore apart, and through that seam an elderly old man emerged.
“H-Headmistress!”
“I will take custody of this child myself.”
Palad Autus, Headmistress of Purity Academy.
She had crossed the dimensional seam as her means of travel and rushed straight here.
Well, great. One more problem I have to deal with.
“Solis, follow me.”
Snap!
The moment she snapped her fingers, a uniform tailored exactly to my size materialized and dressed itself over my bare body.
Ohh, free school uniform. What a steal.
“Ahem. Do be mindful of your attire next time. Don't go causing a public nuisance.”
Having delivered her scolding, she stepped through the dimensional seam.
That expression just now.
She'd tried to brush past it calmly, with the composure befitting an elder, without letting anything show — but I saw it.
She was every bit as flustered as those lady officers managing the gate, her cheeks blooming with color.
If I weren't a possessor, a devoted reader of Academy Yuri Princess, I'd have sneered at the headmistress right here and now — what a creep.
Instead, my shoulders squared even further with confidence.
Hadn't I said it time and time again?
On this island, I was the only man.
“There you are. Have a seat.”
The place I followed her into was a spacious office.
It was worlds apart from the antique private study the headmistress of Purity Academy favored — a thoroughly modern interior.
The old woman settled into her chair and picked up where she'd left off.
“I have a great many questions for you. Can I count on you to answer honestly?”
“If it's about Vital, I'll tell you everything.”
At my words, her eyebrows twitched and trembled.
So that's what this was about. Of course.
“...You knew?”
“What would be the point of hiding it? Not when I'm walking around with this thing embedded in my chest.”
I undid the buttons of my uniform and showed her the resplendent green jewel set into my chest — the Divine Artifact, the First Heartbeat, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
“I'm sure you've heard the rumors. Talk of a green-haired middle-aged man who barged into the midterms and caused an uproar.”
“I have — but I heard he was defeated by the Academy students and fled.”
“I landed the finishing blow. He tried to tear open a dimensional seam and escape with his life, so I chased him down and beat him to death.”
As proof of that, the Divine Artifact had become mine.
At my calm, matter-of-fact confession, the headmistress leveled a wary gaze at me from within those haggard, wrinkle-crusted eyes.
Open hostility.
This was exactly why I'd hoped to keep the Divine Artifact hidden in her presence whenever possible.
My original plan had been to help the protagonist Eva through the finale of Part One, guiding her so that she could execute Vital and inherit his relic herself.
But he'd barged in during midterm season and thrown the plan into disarray, leaving me no choice but to take a fallback option.
Deliberation took an instant; decision came fast.
Better to lay out what I knew here and now.
“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I am not one of the Celestial Clan, nor am I their ally.”
“To think you even know of them. You were extraordinary from the moment you shattered the mana barrier on the entrance exam, and now that I see you felled him, it seems you possess more Divine Artifacts than just the First Heartbeat.”
“Only a legitimate successor, or the holder of the same relic, can kill a Divine Artifact's owner and take it. I'm well aware.”
The headmistress rested her chin on her hand, sinking into contemplation at my glib answers.
No doubt a dozen thoughts were churning behind her eyes.
She was running the numbers, weighing the odds.
My identity. The variables I represented. The influence I would exert on the Academy going forward.
If I left her be, she'd drag me through a tedious interrogation all night long, probing for every last detail.
Sorry, but I'll have to decline.
Nobody wants that dreary a plotline.
Riding this momentum, I decided to seize control of the conversation myself.
“If you want this Divine Artifact, I'll give it to you.”
“What did you say?”
“Not right away, of course — I mean that when the time comes, I will hand it over. To the true heir of this age, the one you truly wish for it to belong to: Eva Amethyst.”
“Don't spout nonsense. A Divine Artifact is not something that can be transferred so simply.”
She was right — there was only one way to pass a Divine Artifact to another.
For a qualified successor to kill the artifact's wielder and take it by force.
That was the succession the Celestial Clan had practiced for generations.
And the starting point of all this ruin — the attempt to sever that horrifying chain of death, or perhaps the terror of dying that drove one to become the God King.
“Which is exactly why I'm telling you, Headmistress.”
But the one person who had recently developed an entirely different method was sitting right in front of me.
“You are the only one who ever handed that 'eye' over to Eva without a single life being lost. I'll be asking you to do the same for me later, then.”
“How do you—!”
“There's a method, and I know it. Besides, I've been on my best behavior — so why don't you drop the mask now and show me who you really are?”
With that, I snapped my fingers with a gathered flick, like rapping someone on the forehead.
Snip!
The soft breeze drifting through the curtains by the window brushed past the old woman's face and slipped away.
The illusion cloaking her peeled away with it, and her true form emerged from beneath.
A mysterious woman with neatly arranged pink hair.
She wore a dress with long sleeves that draped clear past her hands — the picture of adorableness itself.
She was frowning at me as if sizing up a suspicious stranger, but even that scowl was lovely enough to adore.
Now THIS is a conversation worth having.
Talking face to face with that old-man disguise had been a snooze.
No wonder the air had gone pink and rosy around her. Lovely, simply lovely.
“Let's drop all pretenses and be honest with each other, Palad Autus. Or should I say — that's what people used to call you, long ago, isn't it?”
Palad Amethyst.
“...”
With her identity laid bare, she fixed me with a sullen, petulant stare, like a child denied her way.
