Wide-Area Provocation
Kyra Bell Arenas
While I was half out of my soul, cursing the author as if I wanted him dead, Kyra continued her explanation in a soft, gentle voice.
“Even if you can keep your mouth shut, the moment you open it you’re forced to speak only the absolute truth. That’s my power.”
“… Whew. I understand for now.”
I let out a hollow laugh of pure emptiness.
Was this some kind of room of truth?
No wonder my unfiltered true feelings had been spilling out without passing through my brain since earlier.
And if it was a transcendent’s unique authority, intervening with people like this would be easier than eating cold porridge.
Of course, understanding was one thing, but the shame flooding in still made me want to bite my tongue and die on the spot.
Kyra looked at my face for a moment, then smirked as if she found it adorable.
“But student Erevan is pretty fascinating, you know? Usually in situations like this, everyone comes up with grandiose reasons. To save the world, or some grand design to prevent destruction.”
She continued, folding her arms and tilting her head.
“But you… yes, it’s quite refreshing. That your own romantic prospects matter more than the continent’s destruction.”
“No, that’s not— I wanted to stop the destruction too….”
I opened my mouth to elaborate, then hurriedly shut it again, terrified my true feelings would spill out once more.
Kyra chuckled as if she found even that cute.
“Well then, situation assessment complete.”
Her gaze settled calmly once more. The playfulness vanished, and the intellectual air of a headmaster returned.
“You’re not an Outer God worshipper, nor a terrorist. Just… a male student starved for romance, consumed by jealousy and loneliness.”
“… Please don’t hit me with facts.”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? Though the problem is that thanks to it, humanity nearly went extinct.”
She sighed and brushed her hair back. Between the silver-gray strands, cyan and red lights flickered in and out.
Is she getting pissed again just thinking about it…?
“KJH. No—student Erevan.”
“Yes.”
“Honestly speaking, you know this is a situation where I could execute you right now and you wouldn’t have a single word of complaint, right?”
“….”
Saying something that terrifying with a gaze cold enough to raise goosebumps made my spine chill for a moment. Precisely because of that, I couldn’t refute a thing.
It was a fact that I was the cause. It was a fact that Argentina had vanished in the blink of an eye.
“But….”
Kyra dragged the word out as she slowly circled me once, as if determined to engrave every detail of my appearance into her eyes.
“You know more than I expected.”
“…….”
“My appearance complex… no, even the secret I’ve deliberately been hiding. You probably accurately stabbed at Serene’s, Arsiena’s, and Nemesia’s deepest deficiencies when you sent those letters. That’s why they reacted.”
She stopped in front of me.
“That’s not information a normal student could know. And when you factor in three years of moving like a shadow behind Leon, even more so.”
Kyra’s pupils narrowed.
“You—what the hell is your identity? Did you see the future or something?”
“.......”
At the same time as the question, the Truth Binding authority seemed to tighten around my throat again.
I couldn’t lie. If I opened my mouth, I had to speak the truth.
But if I said here, I read a book in my past life and reincarnated?
Would this woman believe it? No—she would believe it. If she trusted her own authority, she wouldn’t be able not to.
But if she fully believed that fact, she might start seeing me as a genuine experimental subject.
The moment that thought landed, cold sweat poured down my entire body.
Then Kyra smiled brightly and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Well, I’m not demanding an answer right this second. We have a more urgent fire to put out.”
She turned her head toward the direction where the academy had stood before we were transferred… the place that no longer existed.
Though it wasn’t visible from here, four nuclear bombs—no, four transcendents who hadn’t been satisfied with annihilating Argentina—would already have started fighting in earnest.
“Those old… friends over there. If we leave them alone, they’ll genuinely tear the continent apart. We have to clean this up somehow.”
Kyra looked at me again and spoke as if tossing out a proposition that was both alluring and dangerous.
“Help me, student Erevan.”
“Me… you mean?”
“Yes. If you provided the cause, you have to resolve it yourself. You seem to know their weaknesses—no, how to move their hearts—better than anyone.”
“…….”
“If you cooperate, I’ll spare your life. And….”
She paused, then added with a mischievous smile,
“The romance you so desperately wanted—I might be able to help with that too?”
“….”
Oh… is it finally time for me to get the most outstanding, insanely beautiful lover on the continent… no.
Hmm… what should I do?
I was already painfully aware that I had to clean this mess up myself. But the situation had long since hit the extreme and punched straight through the ceiling. In these circumstances, if I just announced, “I’m KJH. Everyone calm down and have a one-on-one conversation with me,” I’d probably be torn apart alive into four—no, five—pieces of Erevan.
“… Can I ask just one thing before I answer?”
“Anything. Even the color of the underwear I’m wearing right now….”
“I’ll pass on that.”
Is this woman insane? Suddenly offering to show me her panty color… I’m going nuts.
“It’s nothing else—how did you, Headmaster, figure out that I’m KJH?”
That had been the thing I was most curious about from the start.
Wherever this place was, if Kyra had grasped my identity, forcibly transferring me from anywhere on the continent would have been trivial. But to transfer me here she first had to accurately identify me. I had left absolutely no trace on those letters. That was why even the four transcendents hadn’t noticed me when I was right below them.
So how on earth had this woman figured it out? That was what I truly wanted to know.
“Hmm, is that even a question?”
A light purple hue began to swirl between the silver-gray of Kyra’s hair. Looking at me with an expression that said Do I really have to explain this myself?, she continued.
“Well, of course—since everything in Argentina is under my control, I just had to check one by one who used object-transfer magic in the last few days.”
“… What?”
“Want a kinder explanation? I compared the residual mana left after the magic activated against the mana of every student registered at the academy, one by one, and found you.”
“….”
Oh my god. How could this be.
She had uncovered my identity with that kind of brute-force method?
Mana reverse-tracking. I knew the concept well—it was necessary for counter-magic. You used it when dismantling traps, finding stealthed enemies, or analyzing and nullifying an opponent’s spell. But that only worked when tracking the mana of a specified few.
Add up every student, professor, staff member, and researcher residing at Argentina Academy and you easily cleared several thousand. In the last few days alone, the living magic, movement magic, and assignment magic those thousands had cast would number in the tens of thousands—no, hundreds of thousands of cases.
And she had… searched all of them?
Crazy. This isn’t hard labor—this is pure madness.
It was worse than watching tens of thousands of hours of CCTV footage at 1× speed just to catch a single blink of the criminal’s eye. And she said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
As expected, not a single person wearing the title of transcendent is in their right mind.
When I stared blankly with a thoroughly fed-up expression, Kyra covered her mouth with one hand and chuckled. A playful purple light flickered through her silver-gray hair.
“Your expression is quite the spectacle. Looking at me like I’m some stalker—I’ll take it as a compliment.”
“… It’s not a compliment.”
“Well, anyway. Culprit’s caught, so now we resolve it, right?”
Kyra clapped her hands lightly. The atmosphere shifted.
“Alright then—I’ll explain the operation. The most perfect and surefire method to drive those high-nosed sisters away in one go and save Argentina… no, the continent.”
Her eyes sparkled. I felt an inexplicable anxiety and swallowed dryly.
“What… is that?”
“It’s simple. ‘Wide-area provocation.’”
“… Yes?”
When I made a completely blank face of incomprehension, Kyra waved her index finger as if frustrated.
“Tsk tsk! It’s exactly what it sounds like. I declare war on them.”
She struck an elegant theatrical pose and continued.
“‘I found KJH! This man is mine now! You latecomers get nothing, so get lost!’”
“…….”
“And I take student Erevan and escape right in front of their eyes—very romantically! Of course, since it would be troublesome if the identity is revealed, we’ll cast recognition-interference magic!”
Kyra’s cheeks flushed pink. The purple light vanished from her hair; dazzling gold bubbled up in its place.
“Haa… how is it? Isn’t it perfect? Sort of like a love escape? The transcendents of the entire continent chase after the two of us, and we flee to the ends of the world avoiding their pursuit… Kyaa!”
Not satisfied with that, she covered her cheeks with both hands and started twisting her body. Every time her gold-streaked hair swayed, the excited Pleasure personality seemed to be spilling out.
“Doesn’t just thinking about it make you thrill? Forbidden love! Dangerous dash! In the end, turning the whole world into enemies and blooming the one true….”
…….
I lost my words. No—my jaw was about to drop from sheer absurdity.
This was an operation? It was just a proposal that we die together.
In a situation where diverting all the aggro from those four over there still wouldn’t be enough, she wanted to join the provocation and cast “he’s my man, don’t touch him”?
Then I wouldn’t be cut into five pieces—I’d be decomposed down to the molecular level for certain.
I’m really going crazy. There are only crazy bitches here.
I sank into deep despair and stared blankly at her. Did she feel my gaze? The movement of Kyra, who had been twisting her body while writing her private romance novel, stopped cold.
And then—
Whoosh—!
The swaying gold hair was instantly engulfed in bright red flames. It was the Anger I had seen at the beginning.
“Aang?”
She planted one hand on her hip and tilted her head crookedly.
“What’s with those eyes? Got a complaint?”
“… Ah, no.”
“What do you mean no! That’s clearly a face saying ‘what’s this crazy bitch talking about’!”
She strode forward and got right in my face as if ready to grab my collar.
“Hey! I’m racking my brains right now to save your ass! Don’t like the love escape? Don’t understand romance? Huh?!”
“Th-that’s not it—it just seems too dangerous….”
“It’s because it’s dangerous that we’re doing it! If we were going the safe route, why bother making an operation?! Just go say ‘I’m sorry,’ bash your head on the ground, and die!”
She huffed and pointed toward the direction we had been transferred from—toward Argentina.
“If you don’t like this method, say so. I’ll personally pick you up and throw you very kindly right into the middle of those four. How about it? Is becoming the five-piece groom your preference?”
“……!!”
Ugh!
Just imagining it was horrifying. Serene’s arrow, Arsiena’s greatsword, Nemesia’s black moon, Serapagnia’s dragon words—and Extra #1 dropping right into the middle of them. The result… well, no need to spell it out.
I immediately activated my survival instinct and almost dropped to my knees… but managed to stop at a ninety-degree waist bow and shouted,
“No! It’s a perfect operation! Love escape! I really think it’s romantic and the absolute best!”
“Right? Am I right?”
She cooled her anger just as quickly and withdrew the red again. Her hair returned to calm silver-gray, but I already knew: under that silver-gray lurked three more time bombs that could detonate at any moment.
“Hoo… good. I’ll take that as agreement.”
Kyra nodded with satisfaction.
“But just running away blindly is the worst plan. We need to draw their attention for certain, yet maintain enough distance that we don’t get caught.”
She stretched a hand into the air and drew a map with mana. The Rahelon Continent took shape in light.
“First, I’ll draw aggro with wide-area magic from here. At the same time I’ll overlay my mana on student Erevan to disrupt their tracking magic.”
Her finger pointed to the northern edge of the map.
“Our first destination is the northern Forgotten Snowfield. The mana flow there is unstable, so transcendents’ detection ability is halved.”
“Snowfield… when do we even get there?”
“Don’t worry. My teleportation magic is the best on the continent.”
Kyra winked and scattered the map.
“But there’s a condition.”
“A condition?”
“While we’re escaping, student Erevan has to thoroughly act as my lover.”
“… Yes?”
“I told you. It’s a love escape. We have to make them look at us and think, Ah, those two are so madly in love that they’re running away! So I want to snatch him even more! and get jealous—that way their attention stays locked on me.”
She gently lifted my chin with her right hand and whispered,
“Can you do it? If you’re a man who almost destroyed the continent because you were starving for romance, this much acting should be a piece of cake, right?”
Because of Truth Binding I couldn’t lie—but acting… that wasn’t a lie, was it?
I gulped and nodded.
“I will. If you just spare me—anything.”
“Good. Deal established.”
Kyra beamed and took my hand.
“Well then, shall we begin? A continent-scale game of tag.”
Four-colored mana suddenly exploded from her body as if bursting free. She was about to activate magic. At the same time she turned toward the vanished Argentina—toward the transcendents—and bellowed at the top of her lungs.
“… Yes?”
You crazy bitch!!