Same Dream, Different Beds
The Lions' Legion, home to Darose—the main villain of Same Dream, Different Beds. It was a place crawling with ambitious types, making it the perfect breeding ground for corruption. The Truth Research Society. The mages here couldn't be corrupted through ambition. But if their thirst for knowledge was properly stimulated, there was a solid chance they could fall. The Element Followers. The spirit users here couldn't be corrupted by either ambition or academic zeal. Still, if you tempted them with the promise of contracting a superior spirit, they might just take the bait.
In short—
“This is a real headache.”
There was no way to tell where the Evil Dragon Cult would make their move. Would the original storyline hold, with Darose going berserk and causing chaos? Or had the cult started acting far too early compared to the original, rewriting everything—plot be damned? Nothing was certain anymore.
What choice did I have? From now on, I’d have to keep all three factions under surveillance.
So starting that day, Rachel and I had no choice but to act a little suspiciously.
“Asbel. What are you doing?”
“Secretly observing.”
The school bell tower. From its rooftop, I slowly scanned the academy grounds with a telescope I’d bought at the shopping district. Being the highest point, it offered a perfect view of the entire campus. It was the ideal spot for observation or spying, and many players used to frequent it.
I carefully swept the telescope across the academy, paying special attention to the seventh-year training grounds. Everyone was training hard for the class president duel happening in a week, showing off their skills.
“The Lions’ Legion looks normal. And that Darose guy… is doing exactly what I expected.”
He was acting like he owned the place, hogging nearly a third of the training field all by himself and throwing his weight around. It was classic Darose—nothing new there. At least there were no signs he’d been infected by a Fragment of Corruption yet.
“Now, the Truth Research Society…”
They were doing research, giving feedback, and rationally evaluating their own abilities like always. I focused on a few strong characters who seemed like they could be corrupted, but none of them were acting out of the ordinary.
“The Element Followers are the same as usual too.”
Among the seventh-years, there was one particularly sharp and powerful woman—Jeroko Lusfontia. She was glaring with wide eyes, evaluating the students’ skills while delivering a passionate speech about how the class president had to come from the Element Followers. She was putting them through mental training. If anyone inside that group had a Fragment of Corruption, Lusfontia would’ve noticed first.
I kept at it from morning till evening, even skipping classes, occasionally patting the bored-to-sleep Rachel on the head. But no matter how long I watched, I couldn’t spot anyone who looked like they might possess a Fragment of Corruption.
That could only mean one thing.
“There’s no quasi-Demon in the seventh year?”
The seventh year only had a few dozen students. I’d checked all the key members of the three major factions. If none of them showed signs, then there were none. Which meant the Evil Dragon Cult had given the Fragment of Corruption to a student from another year—or maybe even a professor.
‘Not a professor. That much is certain.’
The professors here were thoroughly vetted by the Empire and constantly monitored. If the Evil Dragon Cult had approached any of them, the Imperial Intelligence Bureau would’ve caught wind of it first. It wasn’t impossible for a professor to fall, but given how early the cult had started moving, it felt too soon. It was far more likely they’d targeted students who couldn’t make sound judgments yet.
“It won’t be the lower years.”
Even if they turned a lower-year into a quasi-Demon, they’d be too weak to cause any real trouble.
“So it has to be someone from the upper years. Fifth or sixth year.”
Combined, the fifth and sixth years numbered in the hundreds. Unlike the highly selective seventh year, there were quite a lot of them. The problem was that checking hundreds of students one by one within a week to see if they’d been infected by a Fragment of Corruption was practically impossible.
Even setting aside how blatantly suspicious that would look, if there really was a quasi-Demon among them, they might notice me searching and go into hiding.
Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.
“This is getting interesting.”
Oddly enough, this completely different situation from the predictable Karnadan I’d always played was actually exciting me. I racked my brain, combining every piece of information I knew about Karnadan to figure out who the Evil Dragon Cult might have given the Fragment of Corruption to.
‘Someone mentally unstable. Someone easy to corrupt. Even I don’t know every single extra character. But they wouldn’t give something like that to a total nobody whose name I’ve never even heard. So it must be one of the somewhat well-known students in the fifth or sixth years.’
I recalled the names of notable students from those years—extras or characters who had at least been mentioned in the original story and had some recognition.
‘Roughly thirteen or fourteen names. Out of those, maybe two or three who are mentally unstable enough to have room for corruption.’
They were all characters who had side quests attached to them.
‘Betsy, that girl from the magic department. She’s in a really unstable period right now. Her mother’s sick, so she’s under a lot of emotional strain. But she’s a character who recovers if you give her the medicine that cures her mother through a later side quest. Besides, she’s just heartbroken—she’s not twisted enough to fall into corruption.’
One down.
‘Crio. A knight-born male student who’s self-conscious about his rugged looks. He has a huge complex about it, which makes him pretty prickly and sharp-tempered. But I remember there was a girl who fell for him because of that rugged face and his outstanding swordsmanship. If you get those two together, he becomes happy again.’
He was just temporarily depressed because of his plain, blunt appearance. This wasn’t a situation or personality twisted enough for corruption either.
‘Then there’s only one left…’
My thoughts finally landed on the last candidate. The moment I recalled his name, goosebumps instinctively rose across my skin.
“Fankel Brown.”
The guy who’d been pestering Cassandra. The one who’d been rejected twelve times. He was a one-off villain, but he had such a twisted mind that there was even a side quest later where he stalked Cassandra to an almost criminal degree and you had to resolve it.
“That bastard. He hasn’t been expelled yet?”
I hadn’t heard anything about him being kicked out. This had to be it. The only character who fit every single condition was Fankel Brown.
“Ugh. I’m so tired.”
Cassandra had just finished cleaning up the lab and was stepping out when she spotted the man waiting for her in front of the door. Her eyes widened.
“Asbel?”
Because of the end-of-month evaluations, she hadn’t had time to see him lately. He was an impossibly attractive man—the kind you didn’t meet in a lifetime. But he already seemed to have a sticky relationship with that Rachel girl. Cassandra had thought about pushing Rachel aside to claim him, but Rachel’s strange reactions had left her unsure what to do.
“What’s going on?”
Still, her crush was undeniable, so Cassandra’s cheeks flushed faintly. She tucked her hair behind her ear and asked the question.
But unlike Cassandra, who had asked with a hint of romantic expectation, Asbel’s reaction was surprisingly urgent.
“Lady Cassandra. It’s been a while. I came to ask you something. Has Fankel Brown… been following you around lately?”
His sudden, incomprehensible question made Cassandra’s eyes widen. But she soon nodded.
“Yeah. He’s still tailing me these days. I thought he’d get expelled after what happened last time, but thanks to his family’s influence or whatever, he’s still here. He’s not as aggressive as before, but he keeps watching me from a distance.”
She spoke with clear annoyance, then flashed a bright smile and looked at Asbel meaningfully.
“Are you worried about me?”
“Yes. I was worried, so I came to check. Has he shown any other strange behavior? Like trying to threaten you?”
“Nothing besides that. Why?”
After listening to Cassandra, Asbel lowered his head with a serious expression, seemingly deep in thought. Then he looked at her with a grave face.
“For the time being, it would be best if you stayed with Rachel and me. The three of us together.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Just… I have a bad feeling. Let’s stick together. At least until the class president election is over. I’d feel better if we moved as a group.”
Cassandra’s eyes widened at Asbel’s words. She never expected him to be this proactive. Of course, Asbel’s simple reasoning was that if Fankel really did fall to corruption, he wanted to stay close to the person the guy would target first. But from Cassandra’s perspective, it was more than enough to misunderstand.
“For me… that’s fine? Just the two of us?”
“Rachel will be with us too.”
At that, Cassandra pouted her lips.
“Can’t it just be the two of us?”
Asbel was about to firmly insist that all three of them had to stick together, but then he nodded.
“Alright. Just the two of us, then.”
The probability that Fankel Brown had received a Fragment of Corruption was extremely high, but it wasn’t confirmed yet. To check whether he really was the owner of the fragment, the most accurate method was to provoke his emotions violently.
Fankel Brown was obsessively fixated on Cassandra, and he had already been publicly humiliated by Asbel in front of everyone. If Asbel and Cassandra started walking around together openly, it would be more than enough to make the guy lose his mind.
That was the real reason behind Asbel’s suggestion—he wanted to confirm whether Fankel was truly a quasi-Demon. But of course, Cassandra interpreted it in a completely different way.
“Perfect timing. My end-of-month evaluations are over, so I’ve got plenty of free time. How did you know? Alright. Let’s go around together, just the two of us.”
Cassandra grinned slyly. The chance to enjoy alone time with Asbel without Rachel around? She was determined to make serious progress no matter what it took. Asbel was far too good a man to let Rachel steal him away.
‘I’m going to make him mine.’
She made that firm resolution deep in her heart.
‘This time, I’ll find out for sure whether he’s a quasi-Demon or not and take him down.’
And Asbel, for his part, was thinking something entirely different.
In that state of same dream, different beds, with the two of them harboring completely opposite intentions, the class president election drew nearer.