Chaos at the Entrance Ceremony (1)
“[You are all ready to go, yes?]”
“Yeah.”
In the end, it was none other than me who had to drag Stella out of her dead sleep the following morning and send her off to the entrance ceremony. Honestly, I had anticipated it would come to this. In the original timeline, the only reason she had crossed paths with the demon in the training grounds on orientation day was that she had overslept and subsequently gotten hopelessly lost. This time, however, I gave her precise directions to the auditorium, woke her at the crack of dawn, helped her get ready, and sent her on her merry way. There was no chance of her running into a demon now.
“Aren’t you coming?” Stella asked, adjusting her collar with an expression that screamed everything in the world was a chore.
If she found breathing to be such an inconvenience, why even bother asking? The question crossed my mind, but since it showed she actually cared about me, it put me in a rather good mood. I offered her a serene smile.
“[I was suspended yesterday for intervening in that scuffle, remember?]”
“…”
Huh? What was she doing?
Without warning, Stella pressed her palm against my shoulder and focused her mana. Caught off guard, I took an instinctive step backward and asked in mild fluster,
“[Is something the matter? Why are you suddenly spacing out like that…?]”
“It’s nothing,” she muttered, lowering her hand. “You said you broke up a fight, so I just wanted to check if you were hurt.”
Ah… was that it? Come to think of it, I hadn’t felt a single thing, making it hard to believe she had channeled mana into me at all. If I hadn’t physically observed her reaching out, I never would have realized she had touched me with mana. Well, maybe that was an exaggeration—I would have felt the physical touch of her palm regardless.
“Anyway, I’m heading out first,” Stella said.
“[Take care~]”
Stella bid me farewell and stepped out the door. Once it clicked shut, I stood there contemplating the strange sense of dissonance that had just washed over me. Something felt off.
‘Heading out first…?’
What did she mean by that? Was she messing with me? I had just explicitly told her I was suspended and couldn't attend, so why phrase it as if I were going to show up later? Wait… don’t tell me… Did she figure out I was planning to secretly exorcise that demon?
…No, impossible.
I hadn’t breathed a word about subjugating a demon. Who in their right mind would suspect a demon had infiltrated the academy? If I had arrived as an official state VIP, someone might have harbored doubts about potential foul play, but that was the extent of it.
‘There’s no way.’
She probably just misspoke. I decided to brush it off. Right now…
‘It’s almost time.’
The entrance ceremony was about to begin.
After sweeping the surrounding area with my divine awareness, I made my way toward the storeroom where my belongings were stashed. It was highly unlikely I would lose against that fiend, but as with all things in life, unexpected variables could arise. It was always best to fight at peak condition. And more importantly…
“[Found it.]”
The reason I had gone to the Demonic Realm in the first place.
Primarily, it had been to strengthen my abilities and grow accustomed to my divine power. If one wished to master the manipulation of sacred power, the simplest method was to go where it was needed most. That was why I had headed to the northern frontier, where maimed soldiers lay strewn about waiting to be healed. Naturally, I couldn’t deny there was a healthy dose of self-indulgence involved—fulfilling my personal masochistic desires through empathetic damage transfer—but there was a secondary objective as well.
I looked down at the necklace resting in my palm, a deep crimson gemstone set at its center, and broke into a broad grin.
The academy’s entrance ceremony was always conducted on a grand scale. As the most prestigious educational institution in the Empire, drawing applicants from across the globe, failing to make it a spectacle would be seen as an insult to the nation's dignity. Why every incoming student was obligated to sit through such an inefficient, hollow parade of vanity was beyond Stella’s comprehension.
“We shall now commence the 254th Entrance Ceremony!”
The booming announcement was instantly accompanied by a dazzling display of high-tier fireworks and illusion spells that painted the sky in brilliant hues. Most of the freshmen erupted into cheers, awed by the intricate magic that professors and senior students had spent months preparing solely for this occasion. Stella, however, felt utterly indifferent. What purpose did magic serve if it existed merely to amuse the eyes?
Far more pressing was the memory of Aria from earlier this morning.
Closing her eyes, Stella began to gather her mana.
‘Time to activate it.’
It had all begun as a coincidence.
Starting yesterday, she had picked up on several odd sensations. In truth, it was nothing more than a faint distortion of mana she had sensed while walking past the training grounds. Given Stella’s peerless innate talent for mana perception, she had detected an imperceptible hairline fracture in the spatial fabric. It was the sort of microscopic warp that most people walked past hundreds of times in their lives without ever noticing, so she had initially paid it no heed. Even if the fissure had been massive, she likely would have dismissed it out of sheer apathy. Whatever happened to this academy was none of her business.
Yet the moment Aria mentioned her suspension, that peculiar distortion flashed back into Stella’s mind.
The Saintess suspended. A bizarre rift in space. A warped weave of mana.
The emergence of both the Hero and the Saintess, paired with the grim rumors of demonic activity steadily trickling in from the frontiers. Two years ago, the Holy Kingdom had formally announced a divine oracle declaring that the Demon King would soon awaken alongside the Saintess's descent. Though Stella had zero interest in worldly affairs, the impending resurrection of the Demon King was a catastrophic truth even she knew by heart.
Her intuition as an archmage, combined with the uncanny alignment of recent events, crystallized into a chilling premonition. Something catastrophic was about to strike the academy. And the Saintess had deliberately gotten herself suspended to prevent it.
If she was wrong and nothing happened, so much the better. If Aria had truly cast holy magic merely to break up a petty brawl and suffered a suspension for her meddling, Stella would simply roll her eyes and chalk it up to her usual saintly overzealousness. But brushing it aside felt far too dangerous.
That was why, right before leaving the dormitory under the pretext of checking her condition, Stella had planted a surveillance trace on Aria’s body. Respecting Aria’s privacy, it wasn’t a continuous scrying enchantment; rather, it was a precise spell circle that left an undeniable residue of mana, legible only to a trained mage, granting a vivid clairvoyant glimpse when pulsed.
‘I’m sorry, Aria. I’ll apologize later.’
Hardening her resolve, Stella closed her eyes and triggered the matrix.
‘To think I’d go this far for someone.’
She had long grown bitter and misanthropic after her disillusionment with the Red Magic Tower. In all her life, she had never known genuine warmth or affection. Her memories held only the suffocating pressure of the elder council demanding she ascend to greater magical heights, and the endless, lonely research she had conducted to survive their scrutiny. That was why the gentle kindness she had received from the Saintess over the course of a single day—a girl who was practically a complete stranger—had struck Stella like a tidal wave. That brief touch of warmth shone so brightly it rendered her wretched years in the Magic Tower completely insignificant.
If Aria was in danger, Stella fully intended to run to her aid.
The moment her consciousness linked with the surveillance beacon, the scene snapped into focus.
‘The training grounds…?’
Aria was standing inside the academy’s secluded training grounds. Before Stella could even wonder why she had gone there, her entire body seized at the sight of a foul, grotesque darkness bleeding into her field of view. Though she had never seen it with her own eyes nor felt it in her flesh, she recognized it instantly. The vile black haze writhing across her clairvoyant sight was unmistakably…
‘Demonic energy…!!’
The lifeblood of demons, the dark antithesis of humanity’s mana. Stella slapped a hand over her mouth in sheer horror.
‘A demon…!!’
It was a demon without question. Two curving horns crowned its head, its skin was the shade of bruised obsidian, and even through a scrying spell, the demonic energy it radiated reeked of rot and carnage. A humanoid demon was, at the very least, an Advanced entity—a Superior Devil. A high-ranking officer of the Demon Realm.
‘No…!!’
Even a Saintess had her limits when fighting alone. Facing a Superior Devil in solo combat was nothing short of suicidal. Worse yet, through the magical lens, Aria was visibly being overpowered. Gaping wounds carved by corrosive demonic energy marked her flesh, unhealed, and she was panting heavily as if pushed to her absolute limit. This was fatal. At this rate, Aria was going to die—
‘…?!’
A grating, malevolent voice boomed directly inside Stella’s mind, followed by a violent backlash of mana ripping through her magical pathways. Acting on pure mage instinct, she severed the spell link before the shockwave could rupture her core.
“Haaah… haaah…”
Stella leaned forward, drenched in cold sweat, gasping for breath. This was bad. An Advanced demon inside the academy walls was beyond unprecedented—something was fundamentally rotten. Yet if a mere student were to stand up and scream that a Superior Devil had infiltrated the grounds, not a single soul would believe her. Stella gritted her teeth.
‘…There’s only one way.’
Her razor-sharp intellect deduced the sole viable solution in an instant. Rising abruptly from her seat, Stella pushed past the throngs of students entranced by the magical spectacle and sprinted toward the exit. A startled teaching assistant shouted after her, asking where she was going, but she threw out a hasty excuse about needing the restroom and burst into the courtyard.
‘Please… don’t be late…!’
Praying with every fiber of her being that she wouldn't arrive too late, Stella spread her mana outward to prepare a teleportation sequence.
“…”
Completely unaware of the figure silently tailing her in the shadows.