Conspiracy (4)
"Hhic... sob..."
In the infirmary of Elysion, a priestess who had been summoned in the dead of night examined Hanna, who was hiccoughing and trembling like a leaf.
Thanks to a healing potion applied quickly, no lasting wounds remained, but her eyes were still dark with the fear of someone—or something.
Professor Jiya stood beside the hospital bed, biting her lip as she anxiously awaited the examination results. The other magic department girls nearby merely watched nervously, like guilty prisoners awaiting sentence.
"...I see no traces of corruption whatsoever."
Having at last finished her examination, the priestess rose from her seat and spoke.
"There's no adverse reaction to the holy relics, and no physical mutation or aberrant behavior of any kind..."
"Are you certain?"
Kallen, who had been sitting in a chair in the corner the whole time, suddenly interjected.
"Completely certain? You've looked closely enough?"
At the sound of his voice, Hanna curled herself up even tighter, like a cornered worm.
"H-hic."
"If anything, a small corruption would be *easier* to detect. It's always the great evils that give this school trouble, you see."
The priestess chuckled and shook her head as she explained.
"Moreover, Elysion is surrounded by a barrier—such enormous beings cannot invade in the first place. This young lady is quite clean. The same goes for the others."
"Hmm. Well, if you say so..."
Only then did Kallen nod to himself in apparent acceptance, and the priestess let out a faint sigh.
"Of course, in an emergency, physical shock *can* be employed in an exorcism rite... but even so, doing so outright when the situation is uncertain is best refrained from—"
"Yes, yes. I'll be more careful next time."
Kallen merely waved his hand with breezy unconcern.
"Well then..."
The priestess finished her examination, offered her farewells, and departed at once.
In the silent infirmary, only Hanna's intermittent sobs echoed through the air.
"Whew... well, nothing came of it after all."
Caring little either way, Kallen simply uncapped his hip flask and took a long swig.
"Honestly... when she suddenly started lifting her skirt and seducing me, I was dead certain she was possessed by a demon or something..."
His face twisted slightly, and then he shot a glance at Professor Jiya beside him and burst into a soft, needling laugh.
"How very fortunate, hmm?"
"..."
"Oh, was 'fortunate' the wrong word? My goodness. Back in my day, we couldn't even *imagine* doing this to a professor we looked up to as high as the heavens... The times, the times, I tell you... Whatever will become of the magic department's future, I wonder..."
"*Hoooh*..."
At Kallen's mocking voice—which almost sounded delighted—Professor Jiya let out a long, weary sigh.
She pressed her fingers lightly to her throbbing forehead.
Hanna, terrified out of her wits, had already confessed everything that had happened, and Jiya had pieced together the full story without difficulty.
"...You've crossed the line."
Before long she turned to face the students and spoke, her voice like ice.
"Crossed it... and crossed it *thoroughly*."
"...Hhk."
"Eep..."
Under the overwhelming weight of her gaze—a gaze that seemed to look down on them from a higher plane of existence—the girls could only bow their heads.
"Your senior, that Sharon, never even dared go this far..."
"Who's Sharon?"
"...A notorious troublemaker in her second year of the magic department. She barely scrapes past failing grades, has terrible relationships with her peers, and not long ago she got into a huge fight with classmates and was suspended."
"Oh-ho."
Jiya shot a poisonous glare at the interloping Kallen, then turned her head away primly and resumed her lecture.
"Especially you, Judith. I am truly, deeply disappointed in you. And here I thought you were conducting yourself with dignity and grace as a model student... To think you were scheming something like this behind everyone's backs—"
"B-but... I am a Vitelles."
Judith's face, as she protested, was still full of nothing but injustice.
"I bear the responsibility of upholding the Empire's discipline with my own—"
"Here, you are a single student, not a Vitelles. If you want to throw your family name around and lord it over people, then drop out this instant."
"..."
Faced with Jiya's fury, which looked ready to devour her on the spot, Judith had no choice but to hang her head.
Watching this, Kallen couldn't help but let out a low whistle of admiration.
Her ferocious discipline spared no one—not even her own magic department students.
It was a glimpse, however indirect, of why Professor Jiya was called the Queen and could keep an entire student body in line.
"Didn't occur to you that a *student* has no business trying to endanger a professor? However pathetic and hopeless that man may be, that is not a matter for the likes of you to judge."
"...What?"
At the words that followed, however, Kallen's expression promptly turned sour.
Professor Jiya didn't even spare him a glance, simply continuing her merciless interrogation of the students.
"And I hear that in broad daylight, several of you threatened swordsmanship students with magic as a group?"
"..."
This too was something Kallen had passed along to her, mostly just to needle her.
Judith flinched, raised her head—and for an instant, her eyes met Kallen's.
At the glare of indignant protest, Kallen answered with a light, provoking smile playing at his lips.
And then, from Professor Jiya's mouth fell words like a bolt from the blue.
"You've long since passed the point where I could overlook this with a smile. You... would deserve expulsion, every one of you, and you'd have no grounds to complain."
"Wh-what?!"
"N-no, Professor, please...!!"
"If only you'd thought of that at home...!"
The girls' faces drained corpse-white in an instant.
"Enough. This is not a decision I can make on my own."
Despite their weeping, begging pleas, Professor Jiya cast them off without a shred of mercy.
"Your punishment will be decided according to the wishes of the injured party."
And Jiya's gaze went, without warning, to where Kallen sat.
"...Huh?"
Kallen's eyes went wide.
"Me?"
This was a development he had not anticipated in the slightest.
*Honestly, I figured she'd let it slide... But she really is absurdly, disgustingly strict.*
In the span of a heartbeat, the scheming girls before him found their fates hanging from a single word of his.
"P-Professor... we were wrong... waaah...!"
"Hhic, I-I'll never do it again..."
"Please forgive us, just this once... please...!"
Left as they were, they were headed for an ignominious expulsion from Elysion, without question.
And what punishment a thuggish degenerate professor would hand down to students who had tried to make a fool of him—anyone could guess.
At the girls' desperate pleading, Kallen frowned in bewildered exasperation.
It wasn't as if he bore them all that deep a grudge in the first place.
He had simply, genuinely believed he was facing a demon when confronted with a seduction beyond his wildest imagination.
*That said, letting it all go entirely leaves a bad taste in my mouth...*
And so Kallen settled into a brief moment of deliberation.
"Wh-we're s-sorry..."
Judith, the ringleader of the whole affair, approached belatedly and stammered out her words, fidgeting excessively.
"We're... s-sor...ry..."
Eyes squeezed shut, unable to force the rest out, her face still radiated nothing but wounded innocence.
*Well, look at that.*
And at the sight, Kallen suddenly hit upon an idea.
"...Hmm."
Coming to a decision at once, Kallen nodded gravely, as if deep in thought, and spoke with great seriousness.
"Well, I suppose kids make mistakes and play pranks as they grow up."
"Ah...!"
"What kind of petty professor would I be to make a fuss over something like this? Hmm?"
Professor Jiya's eyes went wide with shock at the unexpected answer.
The mischievous smile spreading across Kallen's lips was stirring some vague, uneasy premonition.
Before long, he leaned back with lazy arrogance and, with a careless tilt of his chin, spoke.
"As they say, a disciple's faults are the master's faults. If I receive a sincere apology from the homeroom professor, I'll forget today's little commotion entirely. How about it?"
"...!"
And Professor Jiya's face flushed crimson with naked humiliation.
Her unusually pale skin made the turmoil within her all the more dramatic.
Glaring icily at Kallen, Jiya at last, slowly, parted her lips.
"Truly... if I apologize... you will spare... my students?"
"I don't say two things with one mouth."
"Ughh..."
At Kallen, lounging back and waggling his fingers with insufferable ease, Jiya suppressed yet another shameful groan.
Fists clenched tight, trembling with rage, she finally let out a long, shuddering sigh.
"I'm... sorry."
And with that, she bowed deeply at the waist before Kallen, who sat there utterly at ease.
"This is all... my failing, for having failed to properly educate my students... Please... forgive them..."
"Oh-ho."
At the sight, Kallen's eyes rounded and an admiring exclamation escaped him of its own accord.
And then a contented smile spread across his face.
"Well then."
Rising lightly to his feet, Kallen stood before Jiya.
Nodding repeatedly with magnanimous condescension, he spoke.
"Yes, yes. What can I do? A magnanimous man like me simply has to let it go."
Then, with an exaggerated stretch, he started walking toward the infirmary door and threw out one last barb over his shoulder.
"Let's do better from now on, hm?"
"Hnngh..."
By the time Professor Jiya raised her head again, a few small teardrops had gathered at the corners of her eyes.
Steadying her breath with a heavy exhale, she reverted to her usual stony expression in an instant, as if none of it had ever happened.
"...Don't think this is the end of it."
Then, in a voice even lower than before, she addressed the girls.
"You will all be unable to escape major disciplinary action. And Judith."
"Y-yes?"
At the sudden call, Judith flinched and stammered.
Professor Jiya, smoothing her disheveled hair, looked down at her and continued with perfect calm.
"I intend to contact the Vitelles family by the end of today. There will be a parent-teacher conference soon, so prepare yourself."
"P-Professor...?"
"I hear Duke Vitelles is ill in bed. In his place, I intend to receive the young lord Dorian, the acting head of the house. He and I will be having an in-depth conversation about your education. Understand?"
"W-wait a moment! A parent-teacher conference, out of nowhere... Professor...!!"
Despite Judith's plea—her face, for some reason, gone deathly pale—Professor Jiya did not reverse her decision.
"Professor Jiya... please...!"
"This matter is concluded. All of you, go back and quietly await your punishments."
She simply pronounced the dismissal like an ice sculpture delivering its verdict.
Walking out of the infirmary, Kallen took in the entire scene with vivid clarity.
And just before the door closed, his eyes met Judith's—desperately clinging to Professor Jiya's arm.
He flicked his tongue out in a teasing lick.
"...!"
With Judith's face contorted in full fury as his final view, Kallen left the infirmary.
His face was split ear to ear with a grin.
"Good. Very good."
An insufferable woman and an upstart brat. Serving a helping of comeuppance to both at once—there was nothing quite like it for lifting the spirits.
"Well, major discipline instead of expulsion—they're getting a valuable life lesson at a bargain price, really."
This was a scheme Kallen had cooked up in a flash, once he'd taken the measure of Professor Jiya's ironclad nature. He'd generously forgiven their petty prank, so he felt no particular guilt about it.
"For all that fiery temper of hers, the moment it concerns her students, she bows her head without hesitation..."
Then, suddenly recalling the tears that had gathered in Professor Jiya's eyes, Kallen murmured quietly.
"...Unlike a certain someone, she really is a teacher at heart."
He was still chuckling to himself with a lonely sort of smile when—
His right hand gave a sudden prickle as he habitually brought the flask to his lips, and his face scrunched up at once.
"What the—already drained it dry?"
Tipping the flask upside down, he felt only an unnervingly light weight.
"Damn it... Have I been working too hard lately? Drinking through something this expensive already..."
Kalen heaved a deep sigh of lament.
"I'll have to go buy more tomorrow..."
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
If one were to name the greatest threat to the survival of the Empire and humanity itself, the answer was unmistakably the Demon Gods of Pandemonium and their underlings, the demons.
Naturally, demonology was a mandatory course at Elysion for every department without exception, and so the demonology lecture hall was always buzzing with throngs of students.
For Garnet, this was not exactly a pleasant state of affairs.
Attending demonology class meant enduring the stares of not only the swordsmanship department but the magic department and every other faculty besides.
"Everyone, keep your distance. Absolutely no one sets foot inside the containment barrier."
Professor Armando, instructor of demonology, swept his gaze around the room and warned them in a stern voice.
"Ugh... uaaaah...!!"
At the center of the massive sealing circle drawn on the floor, someone bound head to toe in chains, eyes covered with a blindfold, was writhing violently.
"That is the possessed host of a lesser demon, captured by hunters three days ago."
When several students flinched at the sight, Armando's warning grew sharper still.
"I told you, didn't I? The person on the outside is merely a shell. The original soul was torn to shreds long ago by the demon that seized the body. Discard your useless sentimentality."
Professor Armando stepped casually up to the thing and drew a small vial from inside his coat.
Then he poured the liquid within directly onto the crown of the chained creature's head.
"Gyak! Gyaaak! GYAAAAAK!!"
With a searing hiss, the demon shrieked loud enough to shake the lecture hall from its foundations.
Before long, the noise subsided.
The thing slumped into a foul heap, its whole body shuddering as if gripped by chills.
Had it not been for the chains binding the soul to the host's body, the blow would have been more than enough to forcibly banish it back to the Illusion Realm then and there.
"As you can see, even dousing a demon in vial after vial of holy water saturated with divine power cannot annihilate it."
Professor Armando turned away without ceremony and resumed his lecture.
"Divine power is superb at healing wounds or purifying miasma—but in suppressing a demon itself or sending it back to Hell, its mechanism of action is fundamentally no different from any other magic."
He jerked his chin toward the demon at the back of the room without so much as a glance at it.
"Keep this in mind at all times: contending with demons—beings bound to the laws of concept—is no ordinary undertaking."
"Can't we simply pour more divine power onto it? Like the miracles Saintess Elise performed, for instance..."
At one student's question, excited gasps broke out across the classroom.
Saintess Elise was, in herself, a living embodiment of faith.
Wielding overwhelming divine power, she had reversed disadvantageous battlefields countless times, and she had already firmly established herself as an idol to every soul in the Empire.
Those who had met Elise even once would go on and on, until their mouths wore thin, singing her praises and professing their faith.
But Professor Armando shook his head firmly once again.
"This is a matter of essence, not quantity. Even if the Saintess poured out every last drop of her power, rewriting the laws of the world is impossible."
"Professor, then is the complete annihilation of a demon simply impossible?"
"Not entirely."
Shaking his head, Professor Armando walked on as he continued his explanation.
"There are, in fact, a few possible methods. It is merely that, in practice, they are extraordinarily difficult to carry out."
Then he picked up a piece of chalk and began writing across the blackboard.
"The first is the use of a Divine Relic."
At the words that followed, groans erupted from among the students.
At which he glanced back over his shoulder with a light chuckle.
"I told you, didn't I? Extraordinarily difficult to carry out in practice."
It was little wonder the students wailed.
The only Divine Relic remaining on the continent today was Prominence, inherited in an unbroken line by House Aramis.
"The second is to learn a demon's True Name and use it in an exorcism rite."
Armando wrote on once more.
"This too is no simple matter, for a demon's True Name is known, as a rule, only to the demon itself and to its creator, the Demon God who made it. Compared to the first method, however, there is at least a real possibility here."
Then he turned to face the students.
"Once you've pinned it down with an exorcism rite, you torture it for the name—or you pry it out through another demon."
"Another demon...?"
"Demons despise every living thing in the world, and they get along no better with each other. A few of the wretches will cheerfully sell out other demons' True Names for the right price."
At the tittering laughter that followed, he gave a light shrug and continued.
"Well, this method only works on lesser demons. If the demon you're facing is of higher rank, putting it into practice is all but impossible. All the more so if it's a calamity like a High Demon."
"Then what's the final method?"
"A Demonic Sword—and not just any, but one of Apeiron-class or above."
At that explanation, the atmosphere in the lecture hall sank in an instant.