The Every Library Incident (5)
Luid rubbed his bleary eyes.
So this is what it feels like to fall.
He'd cast the spell in a panic after being ambushed out of nowhere, so it had come out far stronger than intended. Even so, he never imagined the floor would actually break.
Then again, even if he went back and did it over, the same thing probably would have happened. The knight statue had simply been harder than the floor beneath it. There was nothing to be done.
"Luid Christopher!"
Clifford bellowed at him. Luid shifted his gaze ever so slightly away. He had no intention of mentioning the secret passage — the odds were high that admitting to it would only invite a mountain of hassle.
"...I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I was here."
"What?"
Clifford stared at him with an expression of pure disbelief. And yet, somehow, he found himself believing it. He let out a long sigh.
"...If you possess that kind of power, then put in the effort to control it, you loafer."
He clasped his hands behind his back.
"Punishments regarding this incident will be announced separately."
Luid looked up at him with an expression of utter disgust.
"And you're not getting punished, Headmaster?"
"?"
"You watched the whole fight too, didn't you?"
Clifford's face flushed scarlet. He was just about to roar at the impertinent brat for talking back when—
"...!"
A revolting stench stabbed at the tip of his nose. The Headmaster and the professors froze in place.
It was a presence no magician could ever mistake. They exchanged looks with one another.
"This is—"
"...Impossible."
Clifford's face turned graver than it had been all day.
"That is the lingering residue of black magic."
His clairvoyance active, Clifford was staring up at the ceiling.
"How dare they — how dare those things set foot in the Academy without even understanding their place."
Black mages. Enemies of the world who pursued nothing but destruction, committing atrocities that stripped them of any right to be called human.
If they had truly infiltrated the Academy, this was not a matter to be taken lightly. It meant the Academy's barrier had been pierced.
Clifford hurried off at once. Every thought of the library had already vanished cleanly from his mind.
After Clifford ascended to the upper floors, Hershey came up to Luid.
"Where on earth did you go?"
"Sightseeing."
"...I knew you'd say that."
Luid held out a small hand, and Hershey took it, pulling him to his feet. He scratched his head at the crowd of eyes fixed on him.
This is uncomfortable.
He felt like an audience member who had crashed a film premiere uninvited.
"Hershey, let's go."
Unnerved by all the attention, Luid tried to make his escape. Hershey nodded quickly.
"But... do you really think black mages have appeared?"
She gazed up at the ceiling, worry written across her face.
"I doubt it."
Luid shook his head. In the shock of the moment he hadn't registered it, but by now he had a pretty good guess as to whose handiwork that 'black dog' was.
He looked over at Nia, snickering in the corner.
"Probably just someone's idea of a prank."
There was an episode for this. Before Rach's Orb was ever summoned, Nia Lion — under the banner of a harmless prank — would raise a black mage's servant into a chimera. However clever a schemer she was, she'd make sure she herself slipped cleanly out of the list of suspects and pinned the whole thing on someone else.
On Catherine, to be exact.
Catherine sat in a position practically designed for misunderstanding, and her prickly personality meant she had hardly any friends to speak in her defense.
Though the episode's gotten tangled up somewhere along the way.
Luid shook his head. In any case, he had no intention of stepping in after this incident. It was enough to keep the broad strokes on track. Justin had talent — that was all that mattered.
Hand him the right trials and he would grow strong and sturdy, and one day he would cut down the mastermind without fail. If the villain ever proved too much for him, then Luid would step in.
After all, all Luid needed was someone to deal with the villains of an original story that ran a thousand chapters long.
What remained was peace. That was what Luid sincerely believed.
KWOOOROOM!
"Kyaaah—! What is that thing?!"
Something like pitch-black ink spread through the empty air. The ink stretched and shrank like a slime, over and over, and the ominous mass taking shape before Catherine — who had been trying to wake Justin — slowly began to form itself into a body.
Luid channeled mana into his eyes and traced the thin, gossamer thread to see where it led — in other words, he found the caster.
Nia Lion.
It was unmistakable; he could feel the mana of Adrane's Flower flowing through that bizarre creature.
This, of all things, was enough to genuinely startle even Luid.
Then... what on earth was the chimera I caught earlier?
"Grrrrr."
The black wolf-man let out a low growl and glared at the people around it with murderous eyes.
The commoners still inside the building fled in terror.
"M-Move!"
"Run!"
"This is an enemy we can't handle!"
The other students ran, but the Expert Class did not. As one, they raised their wands, faces taut with tension.
For once, Luid had to admit the commoners were the smart ones. Because that thing was—
An individual far too powerful for them to contend with. So powerful that it beggared belief Nia Lion had managed to create such a chimera at all.
"J-Justin! Don't move, it's dangerous!"
Justin was struggling to his feet with everything he had, staring down the black wolf with a face carved from resolve. He was clearly on the verge of death — the sheer force of his will was staggering.
Luid looked blearily back and forth between the wolf-man and Justin.
"Hmm."
He ran the numbers on Justin's odds of survival. Single digits at best. And yet he hesitated — because it wasn't zero.
There existed something even Luid's calculations couldn't account for: the protagonist buff.
But logically speaking, it was undeniable. No matter what Justin did, his chances of beating the wolf-man were nonexistent.
Luid had to choose: sentiment or logic.
The answer came easily. Luid was the sort of man who saved up money for lottery tickets rather than buying them.
"Fox."
[Yes, sir!]
Miho's fur bristled straight up.
Luid stared straight ahead and spoke.
"Show me the power of a Great Spirit."
[Hehe. Just leave it all to me!]
As if she had been waiting for this very moment, Miho opened her jaws wide. A sphere of pure white light formed in her mouth.
Shaaaaa—
Luid felt an immense torrent of mana draining out of him and rubbed his belly absently. He blinked once, then hastily threw out a hand.
"Wait, that's way too stro—"
PEEEEEE—!
A shriek of ringing ears — and Luid threw up a powerful barrier over every single person present.
BOOOOOOM!
A colossal explosion erupted. For the briefest of moments, a mushroom cloud rose into view, and above it, a pillar of pure white light surged high toward the ceiling.
"......"
Luid surveyed his surroundings with a hollow look in his eyes.
Except there was no library left to survey.
...Half of Every Library had been blown away.
[I did good, right? Right?]
A fox's tails wagged back and forth beneath that adorable voice.
"This is..."
A blinding white light had surged up directly behind Clifford. Wherever that light passed, nothing remained.
He had barely managed to stay standing amid the half-collapsed library, but neither the Headmaster nor a single professor could find their voices. They simply stared at something in the distance, frozen.
Second floor of Every Library. The very end of it. A space walled in by transparent glass.
It was the sight beyond that wall which had stolen their words.
"...Servants of the black mages. No — calling them servants doesn't quite cover it."
Clifford walked forward, step by deliberate step. He wanted to see more closely. He reached out his hand — and a powerful repulsive force pushed back from the translucent wall, refusing him entry.
But that hardly mattered. Through the transparent barrier, the space beyond was laid out in perfect clarity.
Twelve knights. And driven into the dead center of each of their hearts, a spear of pure mana — still burning.
The knights hung suspended from the wall, pinned at precise, even intervals, looking for all the world like the judgment of God. Like a single work of art.
From the knights radiated traces of immense, overwhelming black magic.
He reached toward the spears once more. They were right in front of him, yet untouchable.
Clifford's clairvoyance drank in the structure of the mana spears — and every single one of those twelve spears existed.
They were not mana momentarily held in place by will. Every last one of them was, without a doubt, a physically real relic. Ten years, a hundred years would pass, and those spears would remain exactly as they were.
The problem was what he sensed within them: mana. With no medium whatsoever, mana was being generated naturally, sustaining the spears' form on its own.
"...Luid Christopher."
Materializing an object out of mana alone was impossible. Creation — that was the domain of creation, a power forbidden to mankind. A divine prerogative, granted to God alone.
Shaaaa—
Could any living creature possibly survive being struck by those spears? And yet the black magic still clinging to the knights was vividly, unmistakably present. Clifford reached a conclusion: if those spears lodged in their hearts were ever drawn out, the knights would rise again and move once more.
In other words — an enemy beyond the reach of even the loftiest magic, save only the domain of creation itself, had proven impossible to kill and could be nothing more than sealed away.
And if that thing had fallen upon the Academy?
We could not have survived it.
Clifford closed his eyes against the dizzying thought. Looking down at Luid, standing below without a care in the world, he murmured:
"...Just what kind of battle did you fight alone, boy?"
Gulp.
The sound of the professors swallowing hard rang out, clear as day. Not one of them could read the situation with Clifford's precision, but this much they all understood:
Luid Christopher had conjured magic that verged on the divine.
Delin's Lake.
He'd been through plenty of hardship lately, so he was treating himself to a picnic by way of consolation. Today's menu: sandwiches. Granted, there was nothing between the bread but mushrooms and fresh sprouts, but he'd managed to conjure up mayonnaise, so it was more or less edible.
Luid poured orange juice into his cup, and Hershey's curiosity was immediately piqued.
"Luid, what is that refined-looking cup? I don't think I've ever seen it before."
The white goblet in Luid's hand looked expensive at a glance. No — expensive didn't begin to cover it. Less an ordinary cup than... something resembling a holy grail.
The true identity of this cup was the Chalice of Mana, which Luid had pieced back together. It had seemed too good to throw away, so he'd decided to use it.
"It's an antique."
"...An antique?"
Hershey's eyes went round. Luid answered with perfect confidence.
"Yep. Found it lying around somewhere."