An Unusual Night
Even though spring had arrived, the night air still carried a chill.
I threw on some clothes, grabbed a lamp loaded with a mana stone, and walked with Professor Laen toward the entrance of the Whispering Forest.
“Professor.”
“What is it?”
I broke the silence first.
“If a guard has gone missing, isn’t that a serious problem?”
A person had vanished.
Of course, there were places like the northern territories—still locked in conflict, where lives were lost to monsters and the value of life felt thinner—but this was the Academy, right at the heart of the Empire.
Strange incidents happened often enough, yet a missing person was a heavy matter.
“As I said earlier, it’s on the verge of becoming a serious problem. That’s why we need to act before it does.”
“So this is the cover-up and downplaying I’ve only heard about…”
“Watch your wording, Lutes.”
“Just joking.”
When I answered with a straight face, Laen looked at me.
“Aren’t you nervous?”
“Nervous?”
“Yes. We’re heading into a dark forest, and we might get tangled up in something enormous—yet here you are cracking jokes.”
“Well…”
It wasn’t that I felt no tension at all. But dark places like forests? I’d hiked mountains at night when I was younger.
“With the professors here, won’t it be over before I even get involved?”
“An optimistic thought.”
Professors far more skilled than I were right there. What chance would I have to step in?
“Lutes.”
“Yes.”
Laen asked a question.
“Do you remember the guards’ appearances?”
I cast my mind back for a moment.
Rotwell, with his helmet off, I remembered clearly enough… the others only in rough outline.
“Uh… roughly, yes. Just the big features…”
“Describe Rotwell’s appearance.”
The sudden demand caught me off guard.
“Rotwell…?”
“Yes. Everything you can recall.”
At the words “everything you can recall,” I turned the memory over carefully, trying to bring his face into sharp focus.
“His cheekbones stuck out. Curly hair, damp with sweat, brown… and a large scar drawn across his left cheek.”
“Left cheek.”
“Yes.”
Laen quietly corrected the fact.
“Rotwell has a scar on his right cheek.”
I stopped dead.
“What?”
“Not the left. The right cheek.”
“…Oh.”
Had I misremembered?
But the scar on the left cheek had been so vivid—the strongest detail burned into my mind.
How could I have made a mistake like that…?
“Illusion magic.”
“Illusion…?”
“Yes. Illusion. Used lightly, it’s cheap and easy to spot, but perfect for a quick deception.”
Illusion magic—magic that fooled the eyes.
Yet even the most refined illusion could never perfectly copy someone, so it was always used only for brief sleight of hand.
Which meant the Rotwell that Valrod and I had met was a fake.
“So the people we met… were fakes?”
“Rotwell’s last report was at ten o’clock. You made contact at eleven. I already thought the odds of a fake were high, but after hearing your account, it seems certain.”
He murmured as if reconstructing the incident.
“I never even noticed the magic was being used…”
“The chain mail the Academy guards wear has a basic effect of blocking magic—both outward and inward.”
So even the magic they cast, we hadn’t felt at all.
“Then why didn’t they deal with Valrod and me right then?”
Assuming the Rotwell we met was a fake.
Even if there were two of us and we were mages, there had clearly been moments when they could have subdued us without resistance.
“If I had to give a reason… to delay pursuit as long as possible.”
“Pursuit…”
‘Are you on patrol?’
That was why he had asked.
Students on patrol had to return and report no matter what. If Valrod had come back late, suspicion would have fallen immediately.
“Who are they, then? Why the Academy…?”
I voiced the question.
The Academy held plenty of magical knowledge, yes, but in the end it was an educational institution.
‘What would they gain by invading a school…?’
Security was tighter than most places, and even if you broke through, there were almost no rare artifacts worth the risk. So why?
In the past, when security had been weaker and valuable magical artifacts still lay around, such things had happened—or so I’d heard…
“Lutes.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the most absurd criminal motive I ever faced during my days in the Inspection Bureau?”
“What was it?”
“Crime for the sake of chaos.”
“Chaos as the goal?”
“People who cause disruption blindly, with no cause, no purpose, no reason. Even the Dawn Moon—that criminal organization—at least draped themselves in some half-baked philosophy while they operated… but every so often you meet those who commit crimes simply because they enjoy watching society fall into disorder.”
I understood.
In short… they just liked stirring the pot.
“So the intruders’ goal right now might be chaos?”
“I don’t know the details, but we can’t rule out a reason like that.”
Laen spoke as if merely floating a hypothesis, yet the weight of years spent in the Inspection Bureau gave his words a gravity that could not be ignored.
While we talked, the forest gradually came into view.
The night made the place feel especially desolate; the woods wore an atmosphere utterly different from the morning.
When we reached the entrance, three other students turned their heads toward us.
‘Hmm.’
Two faces I barely knew, and one that was a nuisance.
‘Abel… Kreis, I think.’
A boy with slicked-back hair and glasses was looking at me with cool indifference.
Abel Kreis.
A member of the student council. We hadn’t crossed paths often, but every time we had, the memory was less than pleasant.
“This is Lutes Roperto. He’ll guide you to the lakeside. You all know his face, I assume?”
Laen stepped forward and introduced me. The two students bowed their heads; Abel only gave a stiff little nod.
“The four of you will head to the lakeside. Deliver this document to Professor Sigmund, who is there.”
Laen drew a scroll from his coat and handed it to Abel.
“Understood, Professor.”
Abel took the scroll and tucked it into his own coat.
“Professors and guards are already conducting a search deeper inside, but the forest is still vast, so stay alert. We need to use every available person as efficiently as possible. Deliver the document quickly and receive further instructions from Professor Sigmund on site.”
At Laen’s clear, concise explanation, they nodded.
“Lutes, I’m counting on you to lead the way.”
So now I was stuck taking a nighttime stroll as well.
Once the orders were given, Professor Laen hurried off somewhere.
Probably had plenty of other work to do.
“Lutes.”
I turned. Abel jerked his chin toward the forest.
“Guide us already. We don’t have time.”
A thoroughly dry, indifferent voice.
In my memory, that was Abel Kreis’s baseline.
He thoroughly ignored anyone he considered beneath him.
I’d never been directly involved, but watching from the side a few times had been enough to mark him as exhausting.
‘Of all people to run into…’
Hoping nothing troublesome would happen, I took the lead and stepped into the forest.
The forest had been dark even in daylight; at night, everything beyond the glow of the mana stone in my lamp was pure black.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been called out of nowhere. Complaints drifted from the students behind me.
“It’s still inside the Academy. How bad could it be?”
“Idiot, a guard went missing! How is that not a big deal?”
I quietly agreed.
“…Still, the professors are here, so it should be fine, right?”
“The professors aren’t here—that’s why we are.”
While the two students kept talking—
“Lindel. Haisa.”
“Yeah?”
“What?”
“Focus on the task we were given. Don’t waste thought on anything else.”
Abel’s icy rebuke shut both of them up as if on cue.
I ignored their conversation and kept walking at the front.
I moved as slowly as I could, letting my eyes adjust, checking for anything suspicious.
I was turning the lamp slightly this way and that to take in the surroundings when Abel muttered irritably.
“Lutes.”
I stopped and looked back. Abel stared at me flatly.
“Stop shaking the lamp. It’s annoying.”
A light dancing wildly in the dark night could certainly get on someone’s nerves.
But the three students behind me each already had a mana orb lighting their way, so my lamp wasn’t blocking anyone’s vision.
‘What a pain.’
In short, he was picking a fight over nothing.
How do you handle this kind of thing?
You just brush it off.
The moonlight kept it from being pitch-black, but checking what lay ahead was still essential when walking through a forest.
“I’ll try.”
Apparently my attitude didn’t sit well with him. Abel’s expression grew even more irritated as he glared at me.
“Not shaking the lamp is something you have to ‘try’ at?”
“It’s night. You have to watch your step. Securing your field of view is basic for walking in the dark.”
Abel let out a heavy sigh at my words.
“Hey, Lutes.”
His voice dropped a notch.
“What.”
“Shut your mouth and just stop shaking it when I tell you to. Don’t play word games just to protect your pride.”
The atmosphere turned ugly in an instant. Lindel and Haisa stopped walking and glanced nervously at Abel.
“A-Abel, why are you suddenly—”
Lindel tried to intervene, flustered, but Abel’s face twisted as he fixed his glare on me.
“Don’t you get that every second counts right now? We’re already in a rush, so stop dawdling.”
“I’m walking at a perfectly decent pace.”
When I answered calmly, Abel strode right up to me.
“Don’t talk back to every single thing, Lutes.”
“I wouldn’t if you spoke logically.”
Calling him illogical.
That, I suspected, was the surest way to get under Abel’s skin.
“…Ha.”
Abel slowly removed his glasses. A vein stood out on his forehead.
“Hey.”
“What?”
The situation was a hair’s breadth from exploding.
Abel glared at me with the whites of his eyes showing; behind him, Lindel and Haisa looked completely lost.
And farther back still—deep in the forest—
a shape appeared.
A black shape.
At first I thought it was just a branch swaying in the forest dark, but something black was moving like smoke.
…
I seized Abel by the collar.
“You crazy bastard…!”
The sudden move yanked his clothes roughly upward. He grabbed my hand, but the strength in his wrist was… weak.
I flung him sideways.
He hit the ground hard.
“Ghk!”
And with my free hand I raised a barrier.
A fierce clang rang in my ears.
“Kyaa!”
Lindel flinched and ducked her head.
Something bounced off the barrier with a metallic rattle, making me twitch.
‘Magic?’
It didn’t feel like magic—no resonant tingle of mana.
I slowly lowered my gaze. A sharply honed arrow lay on the ground, its tip broken.
“An… arrow?”
At Haisa’s startled words, Abel, still on the ground, lifted his head and saw it for himself.
A blunt arrow.
And it had just been flying toward Abel’s back.
‘…’
If it had hit, even missing the spine would have left a serious wound.
Abel seemed to realize it too—the color drained from his face—but that wasn’t what mattered right now.
I turned toward the direction the arrow had come from.
Between the dark trees, a single black shape was staring straight at us.
‘A monster?’
No.
I’d never faced a real monster outside of simulations, but the professors always said that if you ever saw one in the flesh, you would know it instinctively.
So what was that?
I couldn’t make out the details, but—
“It’s coming.”
Light flashed from the shape in the darkness.
A sharp whistle cut through the air, slicing toward us with vicious speed.