The Thief

After fleeing the utterly trashed greenhouse, April ducked into a nearby empty room and finished penning her report.

She had her doubts about whether the higher-ups truly wished to receive an intelligence report like this, but she quickly reminded herself that getting caught back there would have completely ruined her life. A sudden wave of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠indignation welled up inside her, sparking fierce resentment toward the Foundation's brass, who sat comfortably in total safety while assigning her nothing but miserable, grueling tasks.

So what if this isn't the report they wanted? If they're so salty about it, why don't they haul their own asses into the field and be spies themselves?

In the morning, it was sweeping floors alongside a barking dog beastfolk. At noon, it was wiping down windows while a bird beastfolk chirped and squawked non-stop. In the evening, it was shoveling horse manure in the stables to the tune of endless whinnying. On top of enduring the relentless schedule of a cleaning maid, playing spy on the side meant risking her very life whenever she ran into a sudden crisis on-site.

And when she barely managed to survive all that torment, all she got in return was a handful of gold coins and another brutal day on the cleaning roster.

Money only felt nice when I first got paid. Being dragged into doing work where you could die at any second without ever knowing when you can retire completely kills the joy of a paycheck.

Considering the sheer toil required to keep this espionage gig going, headquarters would just have to tolerate a little margin of error in her information accuracy.

I should head back.

On the path back toward the stables, a thought suddenly crossed her mind.

Oh, right. The tail.

April dug into her handbag and pulled out a cat tail. Having passed the academy's cleaning maid recruitment by exploiting the minority beastfolk quota, she was publicly recognized as a cat beastfolk, which meant she had to keep a tail on display. Under normal circumstances, she simply mumbled that she kept her tail tucked beneath her skirt or trousers while leaving it stashed in her bag, but whenever she moved through crowded areas, she had to make sure it was properly attached.

Naturally, transformation magic was difficult, and wasting mana to sustain such a spell was an utter waste. That was why the Foundation had produced this cost-effective disguise prop for its undercover operatives: the Cat Tail Plug.

"Haaah."

Leaving this thing in for too long feels so weird back there.

Grumbling bitterly under her breath, April faithfully inserted the Cat Tail Plug into place.

"Jackpot. Out of all the patterns, I actually rolled the best one, didn't I?"

Once summer vacation drew to a close and the first-year second semester began, the academy was slated to face a brand-new chapter boss and an accompanying catastrophe. Usually, three different potential crises vied fiercely against one another to see which would emerge as the true chapter boss, and one of those three candidates was none other than this very mandrake.

"Ung-ae."

Submerged in a jar filled with nutrient fluid, the Baby Mandragora lazily paddled the water with rootlets that looked uncannily like tiny hands. Right now, the little critter was undeniably adorable, but if it grew unchecked, it would stretch roots across the entirety of the academy grounds and shatter the Student Council Building as it rose into a Gigantamax Mandragora.

How tall would that thing have been? Around two hundred and thirty meters? Honestly, I felt a little envious.

The root cause was Special Culture Fluid X-13, concocted by the Chemistry Club. During the peak of first-semester midterms, upperclassmen scrambling against assignment deadlines often launched raids against clubs in the Student Council Building to scrounge up missing reagents or experimental compounds. When the dice rolled a Chemistry Club raid event, it was inevitably followed by a script where students hastily buried whatever chemicals they didn't need into the dirt.

Whichever plant extended its roots into that fateful Special Culture Fluid X-13 first would trigger an absolute game-changer.

The Gigantamax Flora event!

If a spore plant reached it first, it would release gargantuan spores across the entire campus, kicking off the Colony of Giant Spore Plants event. If a tree drank it up first, it would shoot skyward into the stratosphere, unlocking the Jack and the Beanstalk event.

However, if a Mandragora touched it first?

Worst-case scenario: straight down the pipeline to total campus obliteration!

The moment that Gigantamax Mandragora—born purely out of innocent coincidence without a shred of malice—let out its inaugural shriek, thousands of students would drop dead on the spot. If Professor Weird, who looked the part of a living nature spirit clad in vines and leaves, unleashed the true might of a dryad, the crisis could be resolved safely.

Yet if the 600:300:99:1 Law threw an unfair wrench into the works?

"An incident has broken out in a club overseen by some backwater nobody. We cannot entrust this matter to someone of questionable competence, so leave the resolution to us Imperial professors."

The Imperial faculty would step in, demanding to take charge. Cleaning up the aftermath in her stead wasn't necessarily a bad thing, given that the Empire did boast capable instructors. Even if frontier-born professors lost standing, Imperial professors grew more arrogant, discrimination worsened, students suffered, and countless conflict flags were planted, at least nobody would die right away.

...Unless the game decided to screw everyone over yet again.

What if an incompetent Imperial professor took the reins? A minor miscalculation would easily lead to tens or hundreds of students perishing alongside a couple of faculty members. That would create a tantalizing vacuum, making foreign dignitaries and shadowy syndicates drool over the chance to slip fresh assassins into the faculty roster. The campus atmosphere would turn sinister, with students attending lectures mysteriously vanishing, while others suffered ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠lower abdominal pain and morning sickness.

Even so, the situation would still be somewhat salvageable. At the very least, death wouldn't be immediate.

...Except what if an undercover agent from a world-ending cult happened to seize that golden opportunity to step forward? On that very day, the entire academy would detonate. You were looking at a 0.1% chance of total annihilation.

To summarize, the branch tree looked something like this:

Ugh, gives me chills just thinking about it!

Every single one of those sprawling disaster chains was cleanly nipped in the bud today. I had destroyed Special Culture Fluid Prototype X-1, the progenitor of X-13, and in case any lingering residue allowed them to reproduce it, I had also abducted the Mandragora. It had long been verified that feeding Prototype X-1 to a Mandragora would never trigger sudden gigantism.

"Still, it'd be nice if you grew up quickly!"

When raised in soil, a Mandragora screeched when pulled, but yielded a priceless miracle cure. On the other hand, when cultivated in water, it grew placidly without killing anyone; while the plant itself lost its elixir properties, the water it grew in turned into an extraordinary restorative tonic.

"Hehe. You like the water attribute better than earth too, don't you?"

"Ung-ae."

Just like that, I had acquired a new leafy companion for my dorm room.

The Mandragora was gone.

Orcatch, President of the Plant Club, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠felt the blood vessels in the back of his neck seize up as fury boiled within him. Barring the impossible notion that the plant had grown legs and walked out of the soil on its own, an intruder had undoubtedly stolen it.

"President, none of the specimens inside the main greenhouse were touched."

"It seems the thief only broke into your private, high-security booth, sir."

"Just what kind of ultra-rare flora were you keeping in there for an intruder to strike before dusk?"

"None of your business."

A Mandragora was an apex-tier specimen whose rarity would make even the Plant Club drool, given their pride in cultivating all manner of exotic flora. Orcatch was certain that if word got out that he had been secretly raising a Mandragora, his own club members would have raided his private security booth with trowels in hand long ago.

"Be honest with me. Was it you guys?"

"Come on, we didn't even know what was in there! How could we have stolen it?"

As unreliable as his club members were, none of them were audacious enough to pull something like this.

There were two sets of tracks left behind.

One set belonged to a lookout positioned at the entrance. The other belonged to the culprit who breached the booth and committed the crime. The truly bizarre detail was that neither set of footprints gave away their shoe sizes—the tracks were utterly misshapen.

"President, the bastards from the Alchemy Club look suspicious."

"Right! Those jerks took our commission to brew fertilizer and still haven't delivered our culture fluid on time."

"Wait, wasn't today the promised delivery date?"

"They claimed they already handed it over."

"We searched everywhere, and there wasn't a trace of it!"

"...Those scoundrels! They must have heard our place was burglarized and claimed they delivered fluid they never even brewed!"

Fuming amongst themselves, the club members stormed off toward the Alchemy Club. Left entirely alone, Orcatch stood dazed in the middle of the garden, staring blankly up at the sky in sheer desolation.

This wasn't the handiwork of some run-of-the-mill club burglar.

Determined to seek answers, Orcatch sought out the personal laboratory of Professor Bronze, renowned across the continent as an unrivaled master thief.

"Excuse me. Are you inside, Professor?"

"Come in."

Following the calm voice from within, he pushed the door open. Perhaps intending to take an early evening nap, the professor was lying stretched out across the sofa. Yet, even fast asleep on a couch, a woman of such striking beauty looked like a masterpiece painted on canvas.

Her pristine white suit jacket hung over the back of an armchair, leaving her reclining languidly in her dress shirt and slacks. While the chic motion of lifting the silk hat covering her eyes with a single slender finger was stylish enough, Orcatch couldn't help his eyes wandering toward the generous, pronounced swell pressing tightly against her dress shirt.

"You're not one of the students enrolled in my lectures."

Her mild remark served as a sharp reminder, prompting Orcatch to hastily drag his gaze away from her chest and up toward her face. For a figure of her caliber, there was no way she had missed where he was looking. The fact that she hadn't openly scolded him was mercy enough.

"I came to seek your counsel."

"Lay it out, and I'll consider it."

"Just a short while ago, an ultra-rare plant I had hidden and cultivated in the deepest sector of the Plant Club was stolen."

"What was your security setup?"

"I had set up a Nodding Flower, vine snares, and blood-sucking parasitic vines, backed by a Mana Board locking mechanism. The intruder bypassed all three biological traps and smashed the lock to pieces with a rock."

"...With a rock?"

"It was a fairly sizable boulder. The culprit must be an upperclassman with the inside knowledge to pinpoint my prized plant, the stealth to infiltrate undetected, and the sheer audacity to smash the lock open with brute force."

"An upperclassman, you say."

"A habitual thief, without question. Otherwise, there's no way they could have slipped away in the twenty seconds it took for my club members to arrive on the scene."

A faint, meaningful smile played across Professor Bronze's lips. Having humored him with occasional nods, she suddenly went quiet. No answer followed.

Had she lost interest? The longer the silence stretched, the more anxious Orcatch became.

"I'll look into it on my own."

"Phew."

Professor Bronze gave him a silent look, silently urging him to take his leave.

"Thank you so much. Um, as for the stolen goods, could you please...?"

The silence stretched out once more—this time far more ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ominous than the last. Looking at the deepening curve of the professor's lips, Orcatch could read her intentions clear as day.

Of course. Why on earth would a master thief dutifully hand back stolen property once she found it?

"You're supposed to be a chivalrous thief, Professor."

He uttered the plea in a desperate bid to appeal to her conscience, only for the professor to effortlessly deliver a devastating counter:

"You were staring at my chest earlier, weren't you?"

His face flushing beet red, Orcatch yelled, "Pardon the intrusion!" and bolted out of the room. It was an interrogation far too intense for a virgin male student to withstand.

Rather than watching Orcatch flee down the dim corridor, Professor Bronze's eyes gleamed with brilliant amusement as another face surfaced in her mind.

"Hmph."

Making Orknodi her prime disciple—the opportunity to achieve that very goal had presented itself far sooner than expected.