The Meeting
A meeting was convened at the Academy on account of the attack during the 2nd Exam. Faculty from every department attended, along with Emily, Baba Yaga, Lionel—and me.
"Hunter Lionel, am I sitting in on this as well?"
I had figured I would give a brief statement and be done with it. I had not expected to be pulled into the meeting itself. They even confiscated my terminal, on the grounds that none of what was said in the room could be allowed to leak.
"As the most vital witness we have, you are more than qualified to attend. I would take it as a personal favor."
I knew that already, in a way. The subject of the meeting was intelligence I had uncovered; it would have been stranger if they left me out. And when someone older than me, sitting in a far higher seat, bowed his head first and asked in earnest, turning him down got a little awkward.
No helping it, then.
"If you put it that way, I suppose I haven't much choice."
"You have my thanks. This will not go unrewarded."
Whoa, Tiss. Look at you moving up in the world—sitting in on an Academy meeting as a mere examinee.
Moving up, my ass.
If anything, I was screwed, to put it bluntly. I could already hear this whole thing going off the rails, and it hadn't even started.
This was Baba Yaga's snowball, no mistake. I had never agreed to any of this, and before I knew it I had a label stuck to me that ran from teaching assistant at the low end to apprentice at the high end.
T-to be honest, Baba Yaga isn't even the problem… i-isn't it that Tiss pulled a-aggro in the 0th Exam by burning through resources like crazy?
Shut up. You were having the time of your life too.
You're an accomplice, Shan. An accomplice! Making that chocolate waterfall had to have eaten at least ten percent of our mana, easy.
I've… got nothing. Hehe.
Was sticking out that squishy tongue and offering a sheepish little laugh supposed to settle it? Looking at her, maybe it was. The irritation flared—then fizzled out with a puff.
Ugh. Just drop it.
Lionel had briefed me on the main items beforehand. How to answer the attack that would come on the day of the Academy's Entrance Ceremony, and what to do about the Geas—those were the heart of today's agenda.
"You've gotten even fluffier since I last laid eyes on you, Fluffball. I heard the news. Outstanding acting, and then you even stopped the ringleader besides—it seems fate itself has decided you must be my apprentice."
Her nickname for you e-evolved from Modubu?
Guess her affection meter went up.
I already knew that. The softer and cuter her forms of address became, the more Baba Yaga's fondness showed through, whether she meant it to or not.
"I have no intention of becoming anyone's apprentice."
"Keh-keh-keh. Still playing hard to get, are we?"
I am not playing hard to get. I genuinely don't want to. And please stop looking at me with that proud face.
She plopped me into the seat beside her as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and every gaze in the room—from the Academy instructors to everyone else in attendance—swung toward me.
"Is that… the girl?"
"That's her. From the 2nd Exam."
"I heard her acting was extraordinary."
Ugh… th-they're all staring this way. I think I'm going to be sick.
Yeah, me too this time. Secret me a little sedative.
Mm.
I kept my face carefully blank, but even the faintest whispers reached me without a single word lost. There was no way not to feel the weight of it.
Baba Yaga clapped her hands. Lionel and I were the last to arrive; with us here, everyone who needed to attend had assembled.
"Then let us begin."
"Where's that Headmaster brat?"
"He is still at Central, ma'am."
"What? Still?"
Baba Yaga clicked her tongue at the news.
"That idiotic Headmaster brat. This old woman cannot for the life of her see how any of this is being handled as if it were normal. He climbed all the way to that seat and still can't tell what actually matters?"
The Headmaster of the Academy was appointed by the Bureau Director who led the city of Neo Sion. That the Director's influence ran deep in that office was a given—but the fact that the Headmaster was in Central at all, Baba Yaga snarled, was his failure.
"The Headmaster who is supposed to lead the Academy isn't even at the Academy, and this old body of mine is sitting here as his proxy. I cannot comprehend what they think they're doing in the middle of the most important event for recruiting new students. Has that vaunted Management Bureau still not found whatever 'seditious movement' they're chasing?"
She spat the criticism without a flicker of hesitation, even at the Management Bureau—a domain most people treated as inviolable. An S-Grade hero was a convenient classification and nothing more. Baba Yaga was a great witch who had walked the earth since the twelfth century, a guest member and advisor of the Hero Party, and everyone in that room knew she was someone even the Bureau Director could not treat carelessly. The instructors met the elder's grievances with silence, pretending they hadn't heard a thing.
"Then the Acting Headmaster is the Dean of the Hunter Faculty—the kitty, is it?"
"Yes. I shall convey his views in his stead."
"Well, it can't be helped. There isn't another talent of your caliber."
Baba Yaga's cheeks puffed out with how unhappy she was about the whole arrangement, but she nodded, conceding that some things simply had to be let go.
"We'll start with what matters most. Reinforcements?"
"Given that even Watcher Emily has already been dispatched, further support will be difficult."
"My cute kitty. Isn't it only natural that this situation should take priority over that unidentified unrest of theirs?"
"I think so as well. Unfortunately, I haven't the power to change their minds on my own."
"True enough. Complaining at you won't change a thing. Hah."
Lionel was only a proxy. He had no authority to overturn a Management Bureau directive.
"It isn't as if they don't know how precious the lives of these sprouts are—the children in this place who will become our next hunters and heroes…"
She stopped, as if something had just occurred to her.
"So that was it."
Her face slipped back into its usual cast a moment later, but the shadow that had crossed it was tremendously heavy.
What did Baba Yaga just figure out?
Most likely, the reason the Headmaster couldn't come was something to do with a Calamity. In the original game, they had been stacking buildup for a new one right around this time.
"Enough. He'd only have gotten in the way even if he were here. We'll set the matter of reinforcements aside."
She cleared her throat, her expression turning grave, and the declaration fell.
Canceling the Entrance Ceremony because of an attack, Baba Yaga said, was out of the question. She would force it through. A murmur ran through the room, but no one spoke against her.
"The Headmaster is of the same mind."
Lionel nodded as well.
The Management Bureau's situation was bad enough that they had been reduced to using examinees as proctors. Attacks and terror of this kind could be treated as an annual tradition, something that had gone on without pause since the Bureau's founding—but canceling the Entrance Ceremony was another matter entirely. The Headmaster was already absent, and Baba Yaga had come in as Chief Examiner to fill the gap. If the ceremony itself were canceled or postponed on top of that, it would not merely be the Academy's prestige that suffered. The Management Bureau's credibility would take the hit.
"Then what do you intend to do about the students bound by the Geas Scrolls? There isn't enough time to revoke them through official procedure."
The Geas Scroll was an artifact, which meant it could be lifted. The procedure, however, was a little involved. The subject entered a special facility that blocked mana and abilities, drank a draught that reduced their present mana to zero, and was rendered temporarily free of every magic and power. The mana required to sustain the contract, and the party to whom it was linked, were registered as completely gone—and the Geas was nullified in full. To do that, they would have to be taken to a Management Bureau branch that housed such a facility, or else to Central. Moving this many examinees as a group and processing them all before the Entrance Ceremony was simply not possible.
"Don't you worry, kitty. This old woman has a method."
She flicked her fingers through the air, and a document case sailed onto the table. It opened with a click. Inside were Geas Scrolls.
"This is…?"
"Evidence the examinees seized after they wrecked those villain bastards who came charging in. Impressive, isn't it? There are quite a few children who stood out besides Fluffball."
For some reason, her smiling gaze seemed to land on me.
"The Geas Scroll is a dangerous artifact, but it is by no means omnipotent."
Snap. Baba Yaga flicked her fingers, and the letters peeled off the scroll and drifted into the air. She stripped away the fake ink on the surface, and the true contract—steeped in mana—showed itself. Words like attack, riot, Entrance Ceremony writhed in the space above the table.
Attack
Riot
Entrance Ceremony
"A Geas Scroll grows stronger according to the oath the user swears themselves—which means a proper binding only takes effect when the one who swore it fully understood the contents. And you can detect those discrepancies, can you not?"
Following Baba Yaga's gaze brought me to Emily, who was smiling.
"Yes. That's correct."
Emily possessed a peculiar sensory gift. The same way she could tell Shan and me apart by the sound of a heartbeat, she could layer a hunter's ki-sense over the rest of her senses in place of sight. If she started looking, she would be able to pick out every Geas-bound examinee without anyone setting foot in a facility.
"As Lady Baba Yaga says, an incomplete Geas has means by which its rules may be circumvented."
What's that supposed to mean?
It means exploiting a hole in the rules. Say the Geas is set to trigger an incident on the day of the Entrance Ceremony—all you'd have to do is declare that today is the Entrance Ceremony.
That declaration alone would cause the Geas binding the examinees to register its conditions as fulfilled.
E-eh? That's possible?
A hair's difference in wording is all it takes.
Same as the witches' prophecy in Macbeth.
"That, however, is only a countermeasure against the Geas itself. What do you intend to do with the examinees who fell under it?"
"Are you asking because you don't know? They all fail, of course."
"If you do that…!"
Half of them—no, two-thirds—would be gone. It would be the smallest incoming class in Academy history.
"We weed out the chaff. Have you forgotten the first principle I announced at the 0th Exam? This is my judgment as Chief Examiner. If the Headmaster's opinion differs, you may tell him so."
"No. He instructed us to follow the Chief Examiner's opinion."
"Then there's no problem at all. With numbers like that, we won't even need a 3rd Exam."
In Baba Yaga's view, putting a signature on that thing because one's life was in danger was no different from yielding to the villains. Under her opinion, the room settled on a simple conclusion: no retest, no 3rd Exam. The people still standing would be the final accepted class.
The attack on the 2nd Exam grounds had, it was true, thrown the testing schedule somewhat off. But active heroes and hunters had already finished vetting the qualifications of most of the students—and a proactive response in a crisis, they judged, was a virtue any hunter or hero had to possess.
S-scary.
Baba Yaga's exams always produce hellish results like this. If fewer people had been filtered out this time, something even bigger would have been waiting in the 3rd Exam.
If anything, we were lucky the entrance exam had ended early. There would be pushback, no doubt—but "we only take the best" was more than enough justification for an Academy like this one to ride it out.
"Next item on the agenda…"
"A moment."
One of the instructors in attendance raised a hand.
"Instructor Bumblebee. You have something to say?"
"I do. I have concerns regarding the examinee seated over there."
Eh?
Suddenly me?
"I find that examinee suspicious."