Covert Operations for a Lonely Child
Every single night at 2:22 AM, Orknodi had climbed to the second floor of the Main Building to wait for her.
Completely oblivious, Hestia had given up earlier, writing the task off as impossible, and had planned on getting a good night's rest. The crushing weight of guilt now gnawed at her heart.
Orknodi had slipped past the instructors and navigated the razor-sharp security cordon into the Main Building in the dead of night simply because she wanted to play. And yet, Hestia had left the poor child waiting in solitude until dawn.
She must have been so lonely.
No one truly understood the biting chill of waiting for someone who never arrived unless they had endured it themselves. To keep watch over an empty house when you knew your family was dead was agonizing enough, but how much more tormenting was it when you knew they were alive and well, yet simply never came?
Was I abandoned?
Is she tired of me?
Am I boring?
Orknodi, curled up alone in the pitch-black room, drowning in every miserable thought imaginable as she waited, only to trudge back to her dorm in defeat. And then, whenever Hestia spoke to her through the wall, the little girl had answered cheerfully, as if nothing was wrong. Hestia could not begin to fathom the quiet ache behind that small, fragile facade.
"Hey, Zhuang."
"...Did you come here to mock me?"
"No, it's not that."
Hestia made up her mind. She would have preferred to keep this a secret between the two of them, but Gift Academy’s night security was simply too airtight. Trying to breach it on her own was an exercise in futility.
"Orknodi goes to a secret room somewhere in the Main Building every night at 2:22 AM."
"Why on earth would the academy have a secret room like that? How does Orknodi know about it? And how do you know about it, enough to tell me?"
"Orknodi is my next-door neighbor. She's always known things regular students don't... and I'm sure she told me because she wanted us to play together. But the patrols are too tight. I can't reach her on my own."
"Go figure it out yourself. What does that have to do with me?"
"Aren't you curious? About what she's doing in there? Or whether you can sneak past the same security Orknodi slipped through without breaking a sweat?"
Hestia needed a guide and a stealth specialist, and she knew exactly how to reel her in.
Zhuang’s eyes sparked with undeniable intrigue.
"...Are you sure that was the real Orknodi?"
"Probably?"
"Whew. I don't get the whole picture, but that makes it bother me even more. I doubt the Orknodi I saw was a fake, but if that ghost-like professor was involved, maybe I was tricked..."
"Ghost-like professor?"
"Never mind, just someone weird. Anyway, leaving things like this leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so I'll go with you. What's the exact location?"
"I'm not telling. It’d be a problem if you ditched me and went ahead by yourself. Once we get inside the Main Building together at 2:00 AM, I'll tell you."
Built like a bear, yet she thinks like an enforcer, Zhuang clicked her tongue inwardly.
"Meet me at the gazebo outside the annex first. If you can't even make it that far on your own, this whole thing is pointless and I'm heading straight back to bed."
With Zhuang's condition echoing in her ears, Hestia slipped out into the hallway, her heart hammering against her ribs.
I kept my ear glued to the wall listening all evening. The patrol cycle for the first-floor corridor is once every hour.
An instructor inspected each floor every sixty minutes. Even clearing the hall was hardly the end of it; another instructor stood guard in the central lobby, blocking the path from the grand staircase to the main exit. Through the windows, two more swept the exterior grounds, while a sweeping searchlight mounted on a nearby guard post tracked across the lawn. How many more instructors and reserve personnel were waiting inside that post?
The manpower committed to the curfew was absurd. Given the prestige and danger of Gift Academy, it was hardly excessive, but to an infiltrator tasked with piercing it, the deployment felt cruel.
I have to dodge both the instructors and the spotlights.
An instructor had warned them earlier: the academy at dawn was dangerous for first-year babies. From the perspective of the "baby" in question, however, it seemed like grotesque overprotection.
What, do ghosts crawl out of the woodwork?
Step by agonizing step.
Hestia wiggled through an open ground-floor window, flattening her massive frame against the damp earth as she slipped into the bushes. The gazebo outside the dormitory stood two hundred meters away. At a crawling pace of three meters per minute, the journey would take over an hour.
It bordered on paranoia, but memories of her past capture compelled utmost caution. And that vigilance swiftly paid off.
The same detection wards bandits use around their mountain strongholds!
A faint, glimmering filament of mana stretched horizontally just high enough to ignore small woodland creatures while instantly snagging a passing human. It was the sort of security array that would make Orknodi's eyes light up with shouts of "A laser grid security system!"
That explained why she had been spotted so easily the previous night. She had carelessly sauntered through the yard after climbing out the window, tripping a mana wire that drew the watchtower's searchlight and the instructors right to her.
This is killing me.
She would have preferred smashing her way through a fortress wall. With her hulking mercenary build, evading tripwires demanded excruciating care. Worse, right along her crawling vector, a detection beam ran exceptionally low to the ground.
Detouring meant wandering blindly into unknown paths. While visible upon close inspection in the dark, the magical threads were dim enough to vanish from sight beyond ten meters. If she detoured, she might just stumble into an identical low-slung beam elsewhere. Better to squeeze beneath this one.
Clench!
Hestia tensed with all her might, compressing her glutes and pulling her pectorals taut. Shrinking her profile by sheer muscular contraction, she wriggled forward millimeter by millimeter, just barely skimming beneath the lethal hum of the ward.
Right as she finished that torturous contortion, the clatter of a window bursting open echoed through the courtyard.
Hestia froze.
Who opens a window with that much noise?!
Terrified of drawing the patrol's eyes, she buried her nose in the dirt. Familiar voices carried on the night wind.
"If we want more flags, tonight's our only chance, nya! Hurry up and climb out, Nun, nya!"
"The Lightning Holy Heavenly Sect does not condone skulking through shadows like common cutpurses."
"So you’d rather let the Empire snobs look down on us for collecting fewer flags, nya?! Even your sect's divine deity would curse out an incompetent believer who loses face like that, nya!"
Even in the pitch darkness, that distinctive feline lilt was unmistakable. It was Jenya, the beastman martial artist and fellow member of Group A’s Upper Class. True to her nocturnal heritage, she sounded brimming with energy despite the ungodly hour.
"...As a nun of the Lightning Holy Heavenly Sect, I cannot bring shame upon Lord Madeus of the Holy Light. Lord, please forgive my sin of sneaking through the shadows like a rat."
Nise, a devout nun clad in mail, was paired with Jenya in collecting flags for class. Thursday’s third period—the Headmaster’s hellish lecture—was looming, so their boldness in trying to harvest flags before sunrise was admirable, but their timing was disastrous.
Already, the sluggish, yawning presence of an instructor snapped to alert in the distance.
Flash! Flash!
Twin beams from the searchlights converged on the careless trespassers.
"You two! Go back inside and get some sleep! Since this is your first offense, you get off with a warning, but if you're caught again, you'll be fined in Points or sent to the disciplinary chamber—"
"Split up and run, nya!"
"Lord Madeus, grant this servant feet swifter than the instructors'."
One unleashed the explosive agility native to feline beastfolk, while the other surged forward under a divine buff that enhanced her physical speed. Blown away by the sheer audacity of Upper Class students fleeing right before his eyes, the instructor blew his whistle.
Fweeeeeet!
"Catch those girls!"
"Runaways? You mean the free hundred Points per head kind?!"
"Halt right there, you walking Points!"
Dozens of night patrol instructors and off-duty guards poured out from the guardhouse and dormitory annex like angry hornets.
That goddamn stray cat!
Hestia fumed in silent rage. Thirty minutes of agonizing mud-crawling threatened to go down the drain all because of a nuisance cat girl. If she got dragged down because of them, she would never forgive her!
"Tie that rope tight."
"Nyaaaah! My tail hurts, nya!"
"Quiet down! Once you're caught, you surrender like a good student! Who told you to run off, huh?"
"Hyaaaah!"
Bound tight in heavy ropes, Jenya shuddered and whined with every tug the instructor gave to her tail as they dragged her along. Following right behind them came Nise, her heavy chainmail clanking beneath a noose looped loosely around her neck.
"Look at the nun, hanging her head in shame. At least she has enough sense to know she did wrong."
"Take notes from her, you stray cat! Come quietly! Take that, and that!"
"Heeuuungh!"
"Wait, isn't her waist trembling a little too much?"
"Is it just me, or does her face look kind of... lewd?"
I hope you get reported for sexual harassment, Hestia cursed them under her breath. But just then, Nise, who had been staring blankly at the grass, turned her head slightly and locked eyes straight with Hestia in the brush.
Hestia's heart skipped a beat. Her pupils quivered in frantic panic.
You're not going to rat me out, are you?
"Instructor," Nise called out.
"What is it, Nun?"
"Jenya's tail is an erogenous zone. Gripping and tugging on it in such a manner is functionally equivalent to fondling her private parts."
"What?!"
"Are you attempting to exploit your position of authority to sexually harass a student?"
"N-No, absolutely not! I just thought her reactions were funny, and yeah, her face looked a bit suggestive, but that was never my intention!"
The other instructors glared at him with undisguised suspicion.
Calm and deadpan, Sister Nise struck her bargain.
"If you pretend you never saw us and let us return to the dormitory, I will refrain from reporting that a group of instructors sexually assaulted an underprivileged beastfolk girl from the frontier."
"Are you kidding me—no, wait, hah..."
"Damn it, man! Look at the mess you've gotten us into!"
"It's over, forget it. Just let 'em go."
Scowling in miserable defeat, the instructors untied the ropes and sent them off.
Before leaving, Nise threw one last glance over her shoulder at Hestia and raised a single finger.
—You owe me one.
The modest nun's voice resonated squarely inside Hestia’s skull.
Hestia flinched and offered a quick, frantic nod. Tucking their heads low, the two caught students trotted back toward the dormitory's front doors.
Whew... I really thought I was a goner.
"What took you so long?"
"Some other students made a ruckus, so the instructors were swarming all over the lawn."
"We have a lot farther to go to reach the Main Building. Hurry up and follow me."
Reaching the gazebo, Hestia reunited with Zhuang.
How much longer would it take to sneak all the way into the Main Building?
Amidst all the chaos, Hestia suddenly realized that they hadn't caught so much as a glimpse of Orknodi.
As expected.
An assassin bred by a high-ranking noble syndicate was on an entirely different level compared to a clumsy alley cat.
Recalling the sinister rumors surrounding the girl, Hestia nodded to herself in profound, solemn respect.