Thinning Sense of Morality
I never imagined I'd run into him this soon.
Leo must have been desperate as hell.
Well, if he didn't want to lose his sword, he had to hustle.
Not that it'll do him any good.
I carefully stepped out from behind the flower pot.
He kept glancing around with obvious unease, looking for all the world like a man with something to hide. My certainty that he was plotting something only hardened.
"Dark Shadow Steps."
The moment I muttered the words, my body melted into the shadows of the corridor. Figuratively speaking, of course. When I'd first played the game, I'd scoffed at a wuxia-style skill showing up in a fantasy world. Now that it was reality, it was an absurdly convenient windfall. With the mask I'd just acquired on top of that, every last trace of my presence vanished from the hallway.
Still need to go see Master, though.
I began trailing Leo with care. He kept scanning his surroundings, but that pitiful level of vigilance would never catch me. Once we left the dormitory building, the risk of discovery dropped to zero. Streetlamps dotted the dark campus grounds, yet there was still more than enough darkness for me to slip into.
Leo Epsilt wasn't quite running, but his hurried stride made his urgency plain to anyone watching.
Where's he headed? What's he after?
He carried something that looked like a paper bag. I briefly wondered if he had a family collaborator somewhere inside the academy. But Leo met no one. Instead, the path he took was one I knew well—the same direction I'd taken right after the gargoyle subjugation when I'd gone to send a letter.
This is the post office route.
My guess proved correct. Leo's destination was the academy post office. The thing in his hand must have been a letter. After he disappeared inside, I lingered outside and weighed my options. Whoever he was writing to was none of my business, and I had zero interest in knowing. But a letter written immediately after challenging me to a duel, mailed while looking that paranoid? That changed things.
I made up my mind. I was going to check it. At the very least, I wouldn't walk into whatever scheme he was cooking while already half-expecting it. And even if it turned out to be some harmless personal letter, so what? I wasn't kind enough to feel guilty about spying on a guy who'd attacked me.
While I was still deliberating, Leo finished his business and stepped back out. His hands were empty. The post office would close soon anyway; they wouldn't dispatch his letter tonight. Rather than risk sneaking into a still-occupied building, I decided to keep following him first.
I'd hoped he might make some other suspicious move, but Leo simply returned to the dormitory without incident. I tailed him all the way, confirmed he entered his room, then waited in the shadows with my mask on, watching in silence. He never came back out. Convinced he wouldn't be cooking up anything further tonight, I headed back to the academy post office.
The night had grown deep; I passed only a single student on the way. Naturally, he never noticed me. Unlike earlier, the post office doors were now firmly shut. The staff had all gone home. I slipped around to the rear of the building, poured mana into my legs, and used footwork to leap onto the outer wall.
"Hup!"
I scaled the drainpipe and hung from a window on the top floor. Anyone watching would have seen a textbook suspicious figure.
Just as I thought.
Unlike the lower floors, the top-floor windows weren't properly locked. Who in their right mind would imagine some lunatic climbing into the academy post office through a window in the dead of night? I'd been prepared to force one open if necessary, so finding it unlocked was a relief. A righteous protagonist like me doesn't go around committing property damage.
I eased the window open without a sound. After that, everything went smoothly. I made for the storage room and checked the outgoing slots first, but his letter wasn't among them. So I began going through the ordinary mail one by one.
…Suddenly my situation felt a little pathetic. Even after monopolizing every opportunity and quest, Louis Wallenstein's body was so hopeless that plenty of people outside the academy were still stronger than me. And here I was playing thief and assassin. Thanks to the mask and the footwork, I wasn't even an ordinary thief—I was a first-rate one. Inside the academy, at least, my infiltration and tailing skills might well be unmatched.
I'm supposed to be the one who defeats the Demon King…
I was growing in some very strange directions. Amid those thoughts, my fingers closed around an envelope marked with a familiar crest.
There. Found it.
I exhaled in relief, removed the mask, and carefully unsealed the letter bearing the Epsilt family crest so that no trace would remain. The handwriting was elegant enough to suit a duke's son. I read it through. With every line, my expression hardened. When I finished, I spat a quiet word of contempt.
"Hah. And this is supposed to be a Hero candidate?"
I'd known for a long time that he was a rotten human being. But this? This was too much. Nauseatingly petty, and so simple it was almost pitiful. Any student facing a duel had probably entertained the same crude idea at least once. The only difference was that Leo actually had the backing to make it real.
"Potion, potion, potion, potion… it's all about the potion, huh."
A hollow laugh escaped me as I hummed the word and left the room. Reading the letter made me realize how unnecessarily wary I'd been of him. That was how disappointing his plan was.
No—I should count myself lucky. Not very entertaining, but…
It was fine. Using this to stage a thoroughly enjoyable performance was now my job. The items he'd requested in the letter totaled four: one potion, Swarlin Parchment, mana ink, and an alchemical solvent. The potion alone was enough to guess his scheme, but the other three looked plenty suspicious as well. I memorized their names, then gave the room one last check. Including Leo's, every letter was back in its place. I'd been as careful as possible not to disturb anything. The room looked no different from when I'd entered.
I put the mask back on and left the same way I'd come—through the window.
Perfect. A flawless crime.
And then, inevitably, the next morning arrived.
The previous night had held one slightly hair-raising moment. On the way back to the dorm, a sudden thought had struck me and I'd let my attention wander.
Wait. Did I really need to buy all those ridiculously expensive masks? Couldn't I have just stolen one?
The idea hit me like lightning. Theft was wrong, of course—but this would be part of a noble plan to save the world. And the body that would one day have to slay the Demon King was currently suffering from a serious cash shortage. I'd been wallowing in that brief regret when I finally snapped out of it.
No, Louis! How paper-thin has your sense of morality gotten, hanging around with those damn bitches?!
While I was scolding myself, I ran into a student wandering the academy grounds in the middle of the night—drawn by the very thought that had distracted me.
"Eek!"
A scream I'd been hearing a lot lately. I checked the hair first, half-expecting the someone who kept circling me these days. Fortunately it was brown, not white.
"W-Who are you?"
She stammered, trembling. Fair enough—anyone would jump at meeting a lunatic in a school uniform and a cat mask at midnight. The mask kept my identity safe, so I simply melted back into the darkness with my footwork.
In the end, it was still a perfect crime.
A new day began. Today mattered. Combat practice was on the schedule. Yesterday Leo had clearly said he would challenge me to a duel in front of the professor during the next combat class. I washed thoroughly, put on my uniform, and left my dorm room with a quiet smile. Of course I was smiling. Once a duel was declared, there was no taking it back. Cancellation was out of the question. Leo would walk into the trap today without the faintest idea that his entire plan had already been laid bare.
Honestly, I must have been holding onto more resentment than I'd realized. More than his sword, I was looking forward to watching my former party members apologize to me in front of everyone.
On the way to class I turned over the new questions that had surfaced yesterday. First: what were the other three materials besides the potion for? They looked related to alchemy, but my experience with the subject was too thin to be sure. They were definitely part of his duel scheme. He wouldn't have been that confident relying on the potion alone. And second: how exactly did Leo plan to get me to drink the potion before the fight? Not that it mattered—now that I'd caught him, it was impossible.