This Time, You're Not Alone.
This Time, You're Not Alone.
The Knight of Embers walked through the heart of Berkel.
The violet mist remained fatally toxic, yet the lady knight stepped forward without a moment's hesitation. She bent the entire region's atmosphere to her presence alone—a living flame, beyond debate.
"...."
She walked, and walked on.
And then Scarlett discovered the darkness. A black mountain.
"You."
She called out to it. Anyone watching would have thought she was talking to herself in front of a mountain.
But it was not so.
Scarlett called it by its name.
"Dead Dragon."
A race acknowledged as the undisputed supreme since ancient times. A transcendent being—revered by some as a god, feared by others as a demon.
A dead dragon. The Dead Dragon.
The black mountain was its colossal body. Even reduced to black bone, every individual bone was monstrous in scale.
The single demon beast worth the most points in the Subjugation Festival.
The Dead Dragon opened its mouth.
"...Another year has passed, then."
Its jaw joint clacked and rattled. Violet breath exhaled, and the poisonous mist spread in all directions—venom potent enough to melt an ordinary human's entire body away.
Scarlett nodded calmly.
A being that could neither truly live nor die. The Dead Dragon revived once each year, and every time the Subjugation Festival came around, it was the Knight of Embers who snuffed out this demon beast's breath.
"Indeed."
"So it is."
At her words, the Dead Dragon nodded in turn. Even that slight motion made the surrounding magic power ring out loudly.
Its skull's empty eye sockets slowly peered into Scarlett. "Looking" might not have been the right word, yet the Dead Dragon was unmistakably piercing straight through something in her.
"Even having revived... I remain so terribly bored."
Its voice resonated, reverent and solemn. The bedrock shuddered and shook.
"Do not fret so much. I will kill you again soon enough."
Scarlett spoke as she leaned against a boulder.
The Dead Dragon emitted a lethal poison mist merely by breathing. For the safety of Berkel's residents, it was a demon beast that had to be destroyed without fail.
The Dead Dragon's jaw clattered. A laugh.
"Knight of Embers. Are you to be my conversation partner again this year?"
"Yes. In any case, no one else is coming this year either."
To be more precise, no one else could come.
Scarlett's pauldron, and the Dead Dragon. The two elements that could earn the highest points in the Subjugation Festival—and yet no one ever challenged them.
The reason was simple. It was nearly impossible.
Reaching the heart of a danger zone where simply standing upright was a struggle, and then fighting upon arrival—by all common sense, these were not stories that applied.
But at that moment.
"Human. Scarlett Yudit."
What the Dead Dragon said to Scarlett was this:
"This time, you are not alone."
Something completely unexpected.
Scarlett turned the words over in her mind for a moment.
And in the next instant.
"...!"
Deep in the danger zone, she sensed another presence.
◈
A day had passed since Plan had taken the representatives and vanished into the danger zone. The incident had drawn an avalanche of attention, and it was now generating a flood of debate.
Inside the academy, which oversaw the Subjugation Festival, meetings were held dozens of times a day on how to handle this unprecedented event.
Because of this, the academy's operations were temporarily paralyzed.
The shops, the library, the Magic Tower, the Knight Department—everyone's attention was fixed on the Subjugation Festival. That was only to be expected.
"We must take immediate action. Surely there are representatives who were dragged into the danger zone against their will?"
"Even if they did not wish it, one cannot say they were not prepared. Did they not sign a written agreement before the Subjugation Festival even began? Furthermore, Plan used no underhanded tricks."
The twenty-seven conference halls shared by the Magic Department and the Knight Department. The topic in every single one of those spaces was now perfectly uniform.
The controversy surrounding Plan: the man who had moved alongside them into the danger zone.
"It was exceedingly high-level magic. Even setting aside the short range, the very fact that he transported such a large number of people is staggering."
Even those who thought Plan had done something reckless acknowledged the level of the magic circle itself.
"But the way he applied it is vicious. Does it not essentially mean 'let's all die together'?"
Yet what fueled the controversy was the manner of its application.
Because in all the records of the Subjugation Festival, there had never been a student representative who had instantaneously transported so many people at once while setting the destination to a danger zone.
"Going on about representatives entering a danger zone... Your mindset, framing it that way, is far more vicious. Do you see the representatives as little children?"
Since reporters could not relay the situation from the danger zone, people were busily spreading the wings of their imagination and moving their mouths more than ever before.
As a result, Märchen Academy became exceedingly crowded. The floating population swelled as people flocked to pick up even the smallest scrap of news.
"You heard anything?"
"Hmm, maybe two things?"
Barely a day had passed since the incident, and already a great change had come over the academy.
"Where'd you get that info from? Has it been verified?"
"High chance it's a scam... But I bought it anyway."
How much did one know about what was happening inside the danger zone? Did they know the detailed status of the representatives, not just the points? What conclusion had the meetings reached?
That information power established itself like both a trend and a form of authority. Groups sprang up that predicted the situation as if writing a novel, and people even appeared selling fake information.
Meanwhile.
At the Magic Department's popular tea house, 'Roin.'
"Another day's passed and the Magic Department's score hasn't risen. That could mean they're already dead."
The Third Imperial Princess Yushia was idly stirring her drink with a glow-in-the-dark straw, but her true attention was not on the beverage—it was on the conversations around her.
"They said a few regular knights have already been dispatched. And this is Plan we're talking about, not just anyone. He'll have a plan."
No matter where she turned her ears, it was talk of the teleportation magic circle, the danger zone, and Plan.
"Isn't that a bit too carefree? Looking at the point standings, Cheonchuk's score is still climbing like crazy even now."
"What I'm saying is, no matter how much we talk here, nothing's going to change. Let's just wait a little."
"Easy to say. The next event is overseen by the Imperial Household... If Plan isn't there, there's no one to go out there."
The Imperial Household. An authority that touched the heavens.
After the Subjugation Festival, those lofty bloodlines would begin to take a genuine interest in the academy's representatives.
"The Imperial Household... Ah, but is that actually true?"
"That the Second Imperial Princess showed interest in Plan?"
"Yeah. That."
"Even that much, I don't know. There are just too many baseless rumors going around."
...The Third Princess is interested too. She was about to leave her seat while muttering that to herself, but Yushia spotted a familiar face and stopped.
It was some male student.
"Ah, Yushia. Would you come outside and talk for a moment?"
"Yes. That is possible."
The moment they stepped out of the building, the male student's expression shifted, and he spoke in a deeply deferential, low tone.
"We have succeeded in infiltrating the danger zone."
Though outwardly disguised as an ordinary male student, this man was in truth also an operative of 'Gwangya.'
He continued his report in a measured manner.
"Several Gwangya operatives are currently deployed there, and Your Highness will be able to observe the Subjugation Festival proceedings to your satisfaction."
"Ah, that is excellent news!"
Even as she answered with a bright smile, Yushia suddenly found herself worried about Plan.
"Lord Plan... I wonder if he is all right by now...."
"Shall we relocate immediately?"
"Of course."
"Understood. Then I shall guide you."
The operative who was leading the way suddenly seemed to remember something and turned back toward Yushia with formality.
"Ah, Your Highness the Third Princess."
He put on a reasonably serious expression and asked,
"Did you, by any chance, participate in the prediction again this time?"
"Pardon?"
"You achieved a one-to-ninety-six return, did you not? Finding that intriguing, it seems Her Highness the Second Imperial Princess has also participated in the prediction this time."
The Second Imperial Princess. Aurora.
At that mention, a troubled look flickered very briefly across Yushia's face. But it was, true to the expression, only for an instant.
"Hmm... No. I did not participate."
"Ah, is that so."
"Let us be on our way first."
"My apologies. I prattled on unnecessarily."
The two began walking again.
Inside the princess's pocket, a single slip of fluorescent colored paper glowed.
◈
It was a cursed land.
A violet mist steeped in pure malevolence, grass and trees twisted into grotesque deformities, and the ceaseless cries of demon beasts echoing from somewhere.
I was in Berkel's danger zone.
Even the flow of mana possessed its own unique rhythm. I counted it and calculated the time.
A day had already passed even here in the danger zone.
"Hmm."
The magic circle had contained so many people that the teleportation had not been smooth. Everyone swept up in the teleportation would have been scattered in all directions.
However, the three representatives—I had paid attention to them until the very end and bound them to the same location for transport. As a result, I was the only one from our group who ended up slightly separated.
I had no concerns whatsoever.
Signaling, survival, composure. I had taught them all three, so joining up with them from here on out would be more than sufficient.
The only reason I had not moved for a day was that I had been wholly absorbed in two maps.
"...."
The phantom map, and the ancient rune map.
I had laid the two sheets on top of one another and quietly observed them.
Each map had borne no relation whatsoever to the other, but when actually combined, they formed yet another new map.
What this pointed to was also within Berkel's danger zone.
Something immense, connected to the ancient runes, was unmistakably slumbering here.
"What in the world could it be."
At last, I took a step forward.