Whispers Behind the Wall
Snowfield Castle.
Thud!
"Why can't I go back?"
Mayrin slammed her fist down on the table, her face contorted with fury. The stack of documents bounced up and settled back down. She jabbed a finger at something behind her.
"You told me to gather five hundred ice monster hearts! And I gathered every single one of them!"
Where she pointed, a hill of frozen carcasses had been piled up. It was the fruit of three straight days away from Snowfield Castle — camping out in the snow and hunting through the nights without sleep. Her obsessive determination to finish early and return in time to study for exams would have chilled anyone to the bone.
"Miss Mayrin."
Yet the elder of Snowfield Castle facing her shook his head with perfect composure.
"You were instructed to collect ice monster hearts. Not once did anyone say that collecting all of them would end your dispatch. Next, we require the hearts of Freeze-Knees, a Class-3 danger monster—"
"Oh, come on!"
She hammered the table again and again, her frustration boiling over.
"Expecting five hundred hearts in five days was absurd to begin with! I nearly died dragging them all back, and now you're handing me a brand-new assignment?"
"The plan was always to assign tasks in stages."
Watching the elder mutter this with a shameless face, Mayrin felt her anger rise all the way to the tips of her hair.
"Why are you doing this to me, of all people?"
She gritted her teeth.
"Don't tell me this is because I humiliated Lord Raheim back in first year — Snowfield Castle's own lord!"
"Snowfield Castle knows nothing of the lord's school days or his private life, and it has nothing to do with this dispatch."
"I'm filing a complaint with Kizen! I'm being subjected to unreasonable demands at my posting!"
"Adjusting the terms of a dispatch to match ever-shifting conditions on the ground is the right of whoever assigned it."
The elder of Snowfield Castle said it coldly, then fixed her with a wide-eyed stare.
"I will say it again, Miss Mayrin. Until the work is done, you cannot return to Kizen."
The home bastion of the Ivory Tower faction.
The topmost floor — the Tower Master's office.
"An interesting report came in today."
Whoosh.
There stood the Tower Master of the Ivory Tower, long-bearded and gaunt-faced, holding an open dossier.
"A sudden historical reenactment erupted on the 68th floor. However, the defense held thanks to the efforts of Student Council President Simon Polentia and Rank 4 Merida Hugh Ikel. The situation is currently being contained."
He set the papers down and smiled.
"Just as you said, Serne. The boy truly is indispensable."
Viiiiiing—
Her dazzling ivory hair streaming around her, Serne sat perched on the windowsill, gazing down at the world beyond the tower.
"Didn't I tell you? That boy is exactly the kind of talent the Ivory Tower needs."
"But it is far too late."
The Tower Master leaned deep into the back of his chair.
"We should have reached out back when he was a nameless first-year. He has already served as Student Council President — his loyalty to Kizen must be thick as blood by now. And more than that—"
The Tower Master's eyes turned toward Serne.
"If he ever learns what we intend to do, he will draw his blade against us without a moment's hesitation."
"..."
"Has the time not come to give up?"
She had been staring out the window, expressionless, but now a faint smile crossed her lips.
"You engineer a situation where I have no choice but to give up, and then say that to me~? Aren't you being awfully cruel, Father?"
"Serne."
The Tower Master folded his hands, his face a mask of cold resolve.
"There is no time."
"I know."
"I indulged your stubbornness once, but not this time."
A chill crept into his voice.
"We cannot save everyone. Some sacrifice is unavoidable. At the very least, let one person go."
"..."
She slid down from the windowsill.
"Why the sudden rush? You promised you would wait until Mayrin and I graduated."
"There is no time."
The Tower Master repeated it once more.
Serne's eyes swept across the office. In the wastebasket, she glimpsed a crumpled tissue soaked bright red with blood.
"Is your health failing?"
"I've carried this trifling illness for twenty years. The issue is the timing of the great work. Great undertakings are not, by nature, cut to fit our circumstances at a moment convenient to us."
His eyes blazed.
"My daughter, the chance to wipe the Kizen we despise from the face of the continent exists now, and only now."
"..."
At the word Kizen, sparks flickered to life in her pupils as well.
"They will pay the price of their sins, and the age of the Ivory Tower will dawn. Back to how it once was — the Ivory Tower that ruled the continent. Everything will proceed smoothly."
He spread out his palm.
"I need your help, Serne."
"..."
Slowly, she took her adoptive father's outstretched hand.
After Simon and Merida's rousing performance, dawn arrived.
Complete darkness had settled over the tower.
Swish. Shh.
Simon, as ever, gathered Jet-Black into the soles of his feet and climbed the stairs, making as little sound as he possibly could.
I hope nothing's gone wrong.
He wore a tenser expression than at any moment since arriving at the tower.
The next Kizen mission destination was the 76th floor — the very place where the mass murderer Girdon was hiding.
The Ivory Tower was currently sealed from the 70th floor through the 90th. Simon would have to pierce the tower's defenses, avoid Girdon, and reach his destination on the 76th.
Simon pulled his robe over his head and masked his face with the one he'd used as 'Pion'.
First, he rode the spiral staircase up to somewhere near the 70th floor.
Ah.
The stairs leading to the 70th floor had been blocked off with a wall. 'No Entry' lines dangled everywhere around it, and defensive magic circles were visible at every turn.
The only gap was the space where the magic-circle elevator could rise — and above it, guards stood packed shoulder to shoulder.
Having taken stock of the situation, Simon dropped down one floor into the 69th.
[My lord.]
Flap!
Akemus flew in through the window and bowed his head with precise formality.
[Every window from the 70th floor to the 90th has been sealed. Not a gap remains wide enough for a single ant to pass.]
"...Just as I suspected."
Girdon was a necromancer who specialized in spatial dark magic. Capable of stretching and compressing his own body, he would have led the Ivory Tower to block even the tiniest of openings.
Akemus added that a 'great barrier' had been deployed around the tower's exterior, wrapping it in a shell. Flying out through the air was impossible; movement was limited to clinging to the tower's walls.
[It blocks communication and teleportation alike. No interference from outside is possible. Only passage within the tower itself.]
Arms crossed, Simon sank into thought as the report ended.
"Getting out is impossible. So what do we do now, Pier?"
[Kheheheh. What about turning Girdon's own infamy against him?]
Pier's avatar grinned slyly as he continued.
[The man is famous for throwing caution to the wind. So use that fearsome reputation of his to shake the guards loose.]
Simon's head snapped up.
"Oh, that's a great idea! Keep going, please!"
The 70th floor.
The Ivory Tower's guards had sealed off the entrance. They rubbed their sleepy eyes and traded idle chatter.
"Another all-nighter, huh."
"I even used my annual leave for the Festival of Time. How the hell did it come to this?"
The Girdon affair had innocent bystanders suffering for nothing.
Just as the guards were grumbling through their litany of complaints, a group of people approached with crisp, orderly footsteps.
"Shift change."
Finally, sleep.
The guards on duty gathered their gear with weary faces, and a few of the replacements exchanged light small talk as they took over.
"Any word on catching him yet?"
"Nope. Seems he's gone deep to ground. They're searching every single room, combing the gaps and patterns in the walls themselves — no luck so far."
"That so."
"Stay sharp. Quite a few people have already been carried out soaked in blood."
They were trading updates and preparing to rotate shifts when—
KRRRRUUMBLE—!
The floor lurched with a deafening roar.
"What was that?"
"Some anomaly from a demolition experiment somewhere, probably."
RRRRUUMBLE!
KABOOOOOM!
But the noise was growing louder. And closer.
The eyes of the guard captain holding the 70th floor bulged wide.
"It's Girdon!"
"What?"
"Damn it, what else could it be! He's obviously trying to blast his way out through the floor!"
At the name Girdon, every face hardened at once. The captain drew his staff.
"Everyone follow me — leave only the bare minimum to hold the entrance!"
"Yes, sir!"
The captain and his soldiers raced toward the source of the noise. The remaining guards watched the 70th floor's entrance with tense faces.
They were watching the front, the sides, above.
KWABOOOM!
The explosion came from nowhere — from the entrance on the 69th floor below. In an instant, the area vanished behind a haze of smoke, and the guards dissolved into confusion, coughing and choking.
"What the—? All of a sudden?"
WHOOOOSH—!
In that split second, something shaped like a bundle of feathers burst up through the smoke from the entrance and soared into the air. The guards never got a clear look at it.
"D-did you see that?"
"See what?"
"Something pitch-black—!"
That very moment.
From the murky darkness of the ceiling, pillars and furniture began to rain down. The guards threw up defensive magic circles in unison.
"I-it's Girdon! It has to be Girdon!"
"He's attacking the entrance with spatial magic! Requesting reinforcements!"
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
CRASH!
Chaos erupted in full.
All the while, Simon was flying through the air, cradled in the arms of winged Akemus. What had just dropped from his sub-space was the furniture and stonework he'd gathered from the floors below.
And the thunder from below? That, too, had simply been the sound of zombies he'd planted down there detonating in a Corpse Explosion.
"Worked exactly as planned, Pier!"
[Kheheheheh! But the guards on the 70th will only grow more vigilant now.]
"Then let's finish the job fast and get out."
Propelled by Akemus's high-speed flight, Simon reached his destination — the 76th floor — in the blink of an eye.
"Reinforcements! Requesting reinforcements!"
"Girdon is attacking the 70th floor!"
The guards sweeping the 76th floor heard the commotion below and cleared out on their own.
Simon hid behind a pillar until they were gone, then walked forward carefully.
It's pitch dark in here.
Not a single light anywhere — nothing but blackness. Akemus's flight would be useless in a place like this.
"I'll move on my own from here."
[Understood, my lord.]
The powerful Jet-Black Akemus radiated risked giving them away to detection magic. Simon sent him into his sub-space and walked alone into the dark.
Hm.
The 76th floor.
Oppressive blackness.
A vast, utter silence without so much as a whisper of human presence. The knowledge that this stretch belonged to Girdon was enough to set his nerves on edge.
Simon crept forward as quietly as he could manage.
Room 10 on the 76th floor, right?
He was taking his time, picking through the rooms one by one, when—
...?
He saw a pool of yellow liquid on the floor.
Drip.
Plip.
The same liquid was falling from the ceiling as well. Something foul hung in the air.
Wait. Hold on. This is—
Simon slowly lifted his head to look up at the ceiling the liquid was dripping from.
!!
Something pitch-black clung to the ceiling.
Feeling as though his heart had stopped, Simon flattened himself against the wall.
G-Girdon?
The blood in his veins ran ice-cold. He craned his neck for a second look — and mercifully, it wasn't Girdon. What hung from the ceiling was the corpse of a Tower of Time monster.
Its face had been caved in completely.
Wait — who shoved that into the—
[Kizen.]
A voice like iron scraping across iron.
[I smell you.]
It wasn't coming from the ceiling. It was coming from beyond the wall. A chill crawled up Simon's spine.
[Stop hiding. Come out.]
Thud. Thud. Thud!
Footsteps echoed from somewhere not far away. Simon bit down hard on his lip and raised his Jet-Black.
Ugh, if I use the Legion's power I can fight him off, but—
Fighting here meant being discovered. Every last one of the Ivory Tower's guards would come swarming to this spot.
But he had no choice. Just as Simon gritted his teeth and readied for battle, something caught his eye.
That's—!
A rabbit mask was hanging on the wall.
A signal from the Ghost of Time!
Keeping his body swallowed by the shadows, Simon broke into a run toward the mask. It clung to the wall in a neat line, sidling along the surface as if pointing the way.
Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!
But the footsteps on his heels were quickening too.
At this rate, they'd catch him.
Simon stamped on his Jet-Black and leapt upward into a narrow passage — and the instant he entered it—
?
WHOOSH!
At the same moment, two hands shot out of the wall and clamped themselves over Simon's mouth.