Hidden Event
What I had to do at the entrance ceremony was clear.
Stop the first villain, Crople, from harassing the protagonist Basil.
But stepping in directly was practically suicide.
Like any third-rate villain who picks a fight with the protagonist over something trivial on first meeting, one wrong move and my head would roll long before Basil ever saw a bad ending.
I spent the entire night turning over plans in my head, simulating dozens, hundreds of scenarios.
Thousands of failures had piled up inside me like big data written in blood.
“This time… with my own hands… I’ll turn this hell into a happy ending.”
The scenery I had only ever seen on a monitor now stood right before my eyes.
The vast auditorium was packed with freshmen, their anticipation and excitement so pure it turned into mana and heated the very air.
Light poured through the enormous stained-glass ceiling like a galaxy. Even the dust motes floating in the beams sparkled like stars in a night sky.
It was unrealistically beautiful—exactly like a scene from the game.
I claimed a spot in the least noticeable corner and began locating the key characters among the crowd.
Finding them was easy. Unlike the faceless extras, they possessed the kind of looks that screamed “massive capital poured into the illustrations”… or rather, into their faces.
The first to catch my eye was, of course, the protagonist of this story—Basil.
His presence was overwhelming, nothing like the flat 2D image on a screen. Soft green hair that seemed to hold sunlight, a smile free of any wariness toward the world—just standing there, he warmed the atmosphere around him.
He was smiling that kind, open smile now, but thinking of the tragedies the scenario would soon throw at him left a bitter taste in my mouth.
And diagonally across from him, leaning against the window, was a golden-haired girl.
Ricotta.
The main heroine of this damn game, and the young lady whose temper ranked among the worst in the entire setting.
Golden hair glowing softly in the sunlight, a corset cinched so tightly it emphasized her slender waist, and a posture so rigid it refused to tolerate even the slightest disorder.
Arms crossed, she stared coldly out the window as if the noise around her didn’t exist.
Exactly as I remembered from the lore. No—more than that.
In the flesh, she radiated a cold aura and lofty presence no illustration could ever capture. Even that arrogant gaze looked like an accessory that only enhanced her beauty.
“Wow… if it weren’t for that godawful personality, she’d be perfect…”
Lastly, today’s villain—Crople.
He swaggered down the aisle with his hangers-on, deliberately taking up space and rolling his shoulders, flaunting his presence in the cheapest way possible. His face might as well have had “I am an arrogant, foul-tempered high noble” written across it.
Any second now.
Just as the game scenario dictated, Basil was walking and chatting briefly with the person beside him when he lightly bumped into Crople’s shoulder.
“Ah, I’m sor—”
Before Basil’s polite apology could finish, Crople sneered as if he’d been waiting for it.
“I was wondering what lowborn trash this was—oh, it’s the commoner special-admissions student? Do you wear those eyes just for decoration?”
It was such a classic early-game third-rate villain line, yet every gaze in the vicinity snapped toward them at once.
Enjoying the attention, Crople raised his voice even louder. Basil, flustered but still wearing that good-natured smile, bowed his head again.
“I’m truly sorry. I didn’t see you.”
“Sorry is enough? My clothes are dirty now. You should get on your knees and lick them clean, don’t you think?”
It had been nothing more than a light bump. Nothing had even gotten on him.
But truth held no power here. The only thing that mattered was hammering one fact into everyone’s minds: a commoner special-admissions student was a worthless existence who could be forced to kneel before a high noble whenever they pleased.
Hundreds of eyes locked onto Basil. Pity, curiosity, mockery.
None of it helped him.
Among all the people gathered here, not a single one stepped forward for the protagonist.
That was how it was supposed to go.
But this time, I would help him.
A way to draw that bastard’s aggro without revealing myself…
Crople had no personal grudge against Basil. He was just a third-rate actor who wanted to trample a weakling in front of a large audience and show off his power.
So the solution was already decided. Steal the stage, the lights, and the audience from that third-rate actor completely.
The moment Crople’s vulgar voice echoed through the auditorium, my gaze naturally lifted to the ceiling.
The enormous chandelier.
Not ordinary lighting—a complex, precise magical device that stabilized the mana of the entire hall. In this world’s lore, devices like that reacted sensitively even to the slightest external mana interference.
Especially here, where the excited freshmen’s mana was surging everywhere—conditions were perfect.
While planning last night, realizing I could still handle mana in this new body—however clumsily—had been a stroke of luck.
I gathered mana at my fingertips. A tiny fragment so pathetic it barely deserved to be called magic.
Beep—!
Hidden Event is occurring.
Do you wish to proceed?
I casually ignored the red warning window that appeared before my eyes.
That was exactly what I wanted.
Without hesitation, I launched the mana fragment toward the chandelier.
My plan was simple. Slightly twist the mana flow of the chandelier.
Then the delicate magical device would fail to hold and cause a temporary anomaly.
When the mana-sensitive academy students instantly forgot the petty shoulder-bump drama and poured all their attention on the ceiling, Basil could quietly slip away in the chaos.
Crackle—!
Just as I expected, the chandelier’s light flickered unsteadily.
But it didn’t stop there.
CRACK—!!
With an ugly rupture of sound, the chandelier lost all its light at once. The mana in the air screamed, and a crushing pressure swept over us as if the entire hall’s mana flow had reversed. The mana stabilization device had temporarily shut down.
…Did I overdo it a little?
Well, it had definitely succeeded in drawing attention.
I forced myself to believe it would be fine.
Everyone murmured in panic. Crople, too, looked up at the ceiling with startled eyes.
That was when it happened. An unbelievably powerful wave of mana erupted from somewhere.
Its source was the golden-haired girl standing by the window—Ricotta.
Crack—!
I watched as the small earring at her ear flashed and shattered into pieces.
“…Ah.”
I knew what that was.
Information I had only learned after seeing countless bad endings on Ricotta’s route. The Magic Suppression Earrings she always wore to control the mana she couldn’t contain.
The mana backlash from the chandelier’s rampage had overloaded those delicate earrings fatally.
“Kyaaak!”
Ricotta instinctively clutched her ears, but the device had already scattered like dust and vanished.
Then the mana that had been suppressed inside her exploded outward in a violent crimson storm.
It raged like a starving beast, devouring the surrounding mana. In the chaos, that power instinctively sought the nearest source of mana. And unfortunately, that direction was… Crople, who had been gathering mana to threaten Basil.
“Wh-what the hell?!”
Crople stared in horror at the crimson mana storm hurtling toward him. He frantically tried to cast a defensive spell, but Ricotta’s rampaging mana tore through his flimsy barrier like paper.
“G-Gyaaaaah!!”
Flame-like mana raked across Crople’s arm. The expensive fabric of his sleeve instantly turned to ash and scattered, and he collapsed to the floor clutching a horrific burn.
The situation spiraled into the worst possible outcome in an instant.
A simple shoulder-bump quarrel had twisted into a historic scandal: the duke’s daughter attacking the marquis’s son with magic.
And standing awkwardly in the middle of the disaster, having done nothing, was Basil.
Even as he writhed on the ground, Crople’s eyes burned with rage. Reflected in them were Ricotta, who had attacked him, and the commoner special-admissions student standing between them—Basil.
The worst misunderstanding seemed to be forming in his head: that the commoner had picked a fight to draw attention, and in that opening the duke’s daughter had struck him. An absurd delusion.
Ricotta’s face was pure panic as well. On the very first day of enrollment, she had exposed her secret and weakness—uncontrollable mana rampage—to everyone.
Eyes mixed with shame and fury swept the surroundings, then locked onto Basil standing at the center of the entire uproar.
“You… this is all your fault!!”
“Huh? I-I didn’t do anyth—”
“If you hadn’t been loitering there, if you hadn’t picked that pointless fight…!”
Rage, humiliation, terror.
Tangled in negative emotions, Ricotta was dumping every bit of responsibility onto the easiest target, like a child who refused to admit her own mistake.
Ahhh…
I was screwed.
I was completely, utterly screwed.
I had only tried to stop an event that would lower the protagonist’s favorability. Instead, I had forcibly triggered the premium event of the main heroine—the duke’s daughter’s “mana rampage.”
Crople would now swear revenge on both Basil and Ricotta, and Ricotta had begun despising Basil while shifting the blame onto him.
In trying to erase bad-ending flags, I had planted far larger, more tangled ones.
“Haha… hahaha…”
Only hollow laughter came out.
A protagonist-screwing event of a level I had never once seen in the early game across thousands of playthroughs.
My grand project—Happily Ever After Basil ♡ Please Get Along With Ricotta—had shattered into pieces right in the prologue.
“This is… seriously next-level bad-game railroading…”