A Web of Variables
“By order of Saintess Dana. Withdraw.”
At those words, Late's face twisted into something grotesque. The woman in priestly robes continued.
“These are the Saintess's words: do not let a trivial matter ruin a great endeavor—return at once. Should an incident break out here, she said, then beyond this point—”
She lifted her eyes.
“‘I could no longer hold you back myself.’ That is what she commanded me to say.”
“…….”
Late let out a low, derisive snort.
“Has the coward's disease spread to that woman now, too?”
Thud!
He drove the Cross Blade in his grip down into the ground, and the massive weapon began to shrink, smaller and smaller.
“Fine. If I've already reserved a seat at the bigger table, I suppose I can wait.”
His eyes rolled back, turning toward the rear.
“Let's kill and be killed on a grander battlefield, you heretics.”
Late and the priest turned their backs and departed. In the direction they walked, a holy spell unfolded before them—one that brought a gate to mind.
One of the necromancers approached Aaron and asked in little more than a whisper.
“Y-you're truly letting him go? Late is right there.”
Aaron shook his head, his expression weary.
“There's no need to fight with the wounded and the students' lives held hostage. Besides—it isn't us letting him go. It's him letting us go.”
Aaron turned and shouted.
“Cease attack! The battle is over. Devote yourselves to treating the wounded.”
Only then did the necromancers cut short their dark incantations and scatter to their tasks. The students, who had been watching the situation from a distance with their hearts in their throats, finally released sighs of relief.
Aaron turned fully around and looked toward the twin Ancient Undead, Lin and Rune.
“Thank you both for coming to our aid in an emergency.”
“Oh, please~ we barely lifted a finger. Right, Lin?”
“That's right, Rune!”
Lin and Rune should ordinarily have been stationed on a different battlefield; their appearance here had been Nephthys's arrangement.
Needless to say, the mere presence of the two of them and their troublesome abilities had played no small part in convincing Late to withdraw and leave.
“Professor Aaron!”
“Professor Lin! Professor Rune!”
With the crisis resolved, the Summoning students who had been holding back came rushing over.
“Are you all right, Professor?”
“I'm fine. Everyone make it out safely?”
A faint smile crossed Aaron's face as he looked over his students, and Lin and Rune chatted idly with the young faces they hadn't seen in so long.
In the meantime, the teaching assistants from the Materials Studies class who had been managing the students came hurrying over in a fluster. Aaron looked at them.
“Casualties?”
“Thankfully, all the students are unharmed. However……”
The head assistant of Materials Studies lowered her head.
“Professor Grelion and two of the teaching assistants were badly injured. The professor especially, from Late's—”
“I see.”
Aaron squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again.
“I'll go see him myself.”
“He's receiving emergency treatment in the infirmary ward. This way.”
Aaron and the head assistant walked swiftly. Then, as if something had just occurred to him, Aaron stopped mid-stride and turned back to the students.
“If you have even a minor injury, report it so you can receive treatment. All Summoning Department students—we return to Roke Island.”
“Yes, sir!”
The students all returned to Kizen unharmed.
Late's appearance had caught everyone off guard, and there had been moments when they might have been captured or left stranded in Federation territory—but looking purely at the outcome, Aaron's mission this time had been a success.
Every student had come back safe, and they had all secured the paladin's remains, the core material for the Corrupted Death Knight.
The only official casualties were Grelion and the two assistants. The battle-hardened Grelion, for his part, reportedly brushed himself off and got up, grumbling that he'd been through far worse in his younger days.
His recovery was expected to take about two weeks, while the two assistants who had been strung up on the cross alongside him were granted several months of paid leave.
Simon had in fact sustained minor injuries of his own while fighting Late, but he decided that checking himself into the infirmary would only stir up rumors of a student wounded on an official mission—something that would reflect poorly on Aaron. So once back on Roke Island, he quietly received treatment from Parahan, the professor of Holy Defense Studies.
And so, in the wake of the incident, Simon, Lorraine, and Serne—the defense team who had faced Late directly—were summoned for questioning by Kizen Headquarters.
There, before the headquarters staff, they recounted what had happened at the site and whom they had fought.
“We understand that the torture museum in Efnel was completely destroyed.”
The headquarters official pushed up his glasses and held out a photograph.
Scorch marks from a black explosion were visible, along with the shattered skeletons of collapsed buildings.
“The explosion bore traces not of divinity, but of Jet-Black. Professor Grelion was unconscious at the time and cannot recall the events. If either of you knows anything, I ask that you speak here and now.”
Simon made an awkward face.
The destruction had been the result of a failed power adjustment on Prince's Corpse Explosion.
What do I do about this?
Should he admit that the Legion Commander of Betrayal had fought Late, and that he had witnessed the battle?
No—there was no need. The mere fact that the Legion Commander of Betrayal had been here was suspicious enough as it was.
While Simon was still deliberating—
“I did it.”
Lorraine raised her hand. Simon stared at her, wide-eyed.
“During my engagement with Late, it seems I failed to hold back my output. I apologize.”
“Lady Lorraine…… no, student.”
The official pushed his sunglasses up his nose.
“For a single student's power to have caused this level of destruction……”
“Me too.”
Serne chimed in.
“I was fighting near the museum, and my fire magic splashed over a bit. It must have brought part of the facility down. Is that really such a problem?”
Even Serne……
The official's gaze flicked back and forth between the two women over the rim of his glasses before he finally let out a small sigh, jotted a few notes in his ledger, and nodded.
“Very well. I'll note it as such. Next question.”
Thanks to the two of them, it seemed the issue had somehow been smoothed over.
Simon exhaled a long breath of relief in his heart and sent the two of them a silent word of thanks.
The questions passed without further incident, and before long the investigation was concluded entirely.
“What a drag.”
On the way out of the building, Serne stretched her arms high overhead.
Simon offered his thanks once more.
“Really. Thank you both.”
Lorraine smiled warmly.
“Don't be. Out there, if anything, it was me who was saved by you, Simon.”
Serne's eyes curved into crescents.
“Anything for our dear, fragile Legion Commander of Betrayal~”
The three of them walked across the campus together, trading small talk. Simon, in particular, asked about the things he'd been wondering.
“What's the word from the Holy Federation?”
He was worried that the museum's destruction might become the spark for a war or some other conflict.
“Oddly enough, nothing at all.”
Lorraine answered in a calm voice.
“Efnel seems determined to bury the whole affair. They're covering up the museum bombing on their own initiative.”
“That's a surprise.”
Serne's lips curled thoughtfully.
“Normally, an incident like this is exactly the kind of thing the Holy Federation exploits—setting up an external enemy to shore up internal unity. That's their playbook.”
“It is. My guess is they've judged that letting it be known the border defense line was breached so pathetically would be too damaging—”
Lorraine folded her arms and continued.
“—or perhaps there was something important inside that museum. A holy relic, for instance.”
“I don't buy that.”
Serne shook her head.
“I checked that museum through the Ivory Tower's intelligence network—the public opinion among Federation citizens toward it was actually quite bad. Word was that the exhibits were so grotesquely cruel they were damaging the image of both the Holy Federation and Efnel, and there'd been a lot of criticism. No way they'd keep an important relic in a place like that.”
Simon nodded quietly along, weighing the intelligence from Kizen against the Ivory Tower's.
Then Lorraine asked, “Did you secure the paladin's remains, Simon?”
“Ah—yeah.”
They were the real deal, right? The paladin, I mean?
Simon scratched the side of his head and forced a smile.
“Probably.”
That the very remains he had brought back were the reason the Holy Federation had clamped down on all information—
Simon had no way of knowing yet.
The affair settled back into calm.
With Grelion injured, everyone in the department was keeping a low profile out of consideration—yet beneath the surface, the Summoning Department's morale had climbed remarkably high.
They had crossed the border safely, and on top of that, they had shaken off the pursuit of the infamous Late. As the story spread, even the other departments began talking about it.
Simon's exploits, of course, but also the Summoning Department's campaign as a whole had unmistakably become a topic of attention across the academy.
And then—
“Damn it all.”
There was one man who despised every bit of this narrative.
Overall rank 6 and Department Representative of Spirit Studies.
Now overall rank 5 and Vice President of Kizen—Sota Psyche. He sat in an empty café in Rochest, waiting for someone.
“Why is it all so infuriating? Why does every single thing about him get under my skin?”
Everything grated on Sota.
Simon Polentia's meteoric rise. The way every situation seemed to slip slyly around his plans.
Just recently, he had moved Parahan's teaching assistants in an attempt to smash Simon's Dragonian—only for it to backfire into a spectacle that elevated Simon's name and reputation in front of a large crowd.
He had set Will Douglas on him to break Simon's spirit, and even that had failed when Leonard, the Summoning Department representative, wrapped himself around Simon like a shield.
Beyond that, Claudia, who led the protests of the first- and second-years, had become a considerable thorn in his side as well. The third-year professors who fed him information were too busy tiptoeing around her to move properly on his behalf.
What is it with everyone throwing themselves at that bastard's aid? We're the ones holding the power here!
Whenever Simon ran into trouble, helpers surfaced one after another, volunteering themselves. In a cutthroat meritocracy like Kizen, such a thing was nearly unheard of.
“Let's just head back, Sota. How much longer are you going to wait?”
A third-year classmate who had come to the café with him spoke up mid-yawn.
“It's been over two hours and she's a no-show. It's over. The woman's hardly the type to be moved by a letter that says ‘I'll wait as many hours as it takes for you to meet me.’”
“……Ugh.”
Sota let out a groan of anguish and closed his eyes.
This meeting had been arranged to draw the third-year ranked 2nd overall over to the Ballack student council's side. But she hadn't so much as shown her face.
They had moved first, before Leonard and Simon could reach out to her—and the result had still been failure.
“You're being awfully impatient lately. Not like you, Sota.”
His classmate rolled a marble idly between his fingers as he spoke.
“Don't you trust Ballack? Is all this tightrope-walking to keep Simon Polentia in check really necessary?”
“Of course it is!”
Sota gritted his teeth.
“You know it as well as I do! In the duel for Student Council President, Simon Polentia held his own against Ballack for a good while!”
“Only because Ballack was drained from taking down Eisel. And he had to keep the Greram family and Leonard in check the whole time, too.”
“I'm telling you, it's unsettling.”
Sota bit at his fingernails.
“Unsettling! Damned unsettling! I have to graduate as Kizen's third-year Vice President, no matter what! I've already had the story coordinated with everyone outside, down to the last detail. I will not tolerate even the slightest variable creeping into my goal!”
“All that effort, just to suffer for it.”
His classmate shook his head, but paying him no mind, Sota went on gnawing his nails with a haunted look.
Variables were loathsome. The plan built around 'Eisel,' carefully cultivated since their first-year days.
He had made the outwardly brilliant but inwardly fragile Eisel dependent on him, then steered him at will. Looking back on it, the plan itself had been flawless.
But minor variables had begun popping up one by one, piling on top of each other, and that flawless plan had started to slip, little by little, out of alignment.
He had laboriously arranged a long-term assignment for him—and Eisel, burdened by the presidency, pushed back his date of return. Then Phantasus, in one of his whims, elevated Simon to the presidency, and something in Eisel's character shifted after making contact with Simon, the very man he was meant to duel.
Variables. Variables. Variables.
Of course, if Ballack fought Simon, Ballack would win with overwhelmingly high probability—but there was a reason Sota was pathologically obsessed with cutting off every one of these variables.
Above all, Simon—who held the Challenge Right against Ballack—was the one thing he absolutely could not leave alone.
“So. What's the next plan?”
His classmate asked abruptly.
“Recruiting the Summoning Department dormitory caretaker got blocked by Leonard. The third-year professors are too busy holding Claudia back from mobilizing the parents. Your underlings say that second-year—Dick, or whatever his name is—has the whole grade locked down tight. And trying to leverage Headquarters connections is a lost cause with Lorraine Archbold in the way, no?”
Sota let out a long, heavy sigh before he spoke.
“What happened with courting that information broker, 'the Repeater'? If we can't land the rank 2, we should at least sink our teeth into him. Even if he is a second-year—he's still our schoolmate……”
“The Repeater? You mean Kazhan? He's close with Simon, you know.”
“What?”
“They were roommates in the same dormitory last year.”
SLAM!
Sota's fist crashed down on the table.
“How does any of this make sense?!”
It felt as though the world were going out of its way to whittle him down.
Just who did Simon think he was, that his network ran this vast?
The moment Simon Polentia became his enemy, the sheer scope of the relationships the man had built was enough to send a chill down his spine.
“You really made the most of your school life, didn't you, you bastard.”
His classmate said with a smirk. Sota shot him a withering glare, then opened his mouth.
“There's only one move left.”
“Which is?”
“The Group Exam coming up for the second-years.”
Sota gritted his teeth.
“That's where I drive Simon Polentia out of Kizen for good.”
That weekend, an empty lecture hall.
The regular study session of Class A.
Simon and his group filed into the vacant hall and settled in for their study meeting.
“Hey, guys—did you hear?”
Ten minutes into studying, Dick started grinning as he spoke up.
“The second-year Group Exam is about to begin.”