......That's Not How You Draw It.
......That's Not How You Draw It.
"At least we're headed in the right direction... so let's not worry too much."
"Yeah, yeah. We're doing just fine."
The members of Becky's Group 5 encouraged one another. Their teamwork was top-notch, so no matter how they performed, the atmosphere was genuinely warm.
Their progress was fairly excellent as well.
Observation, Danger Detection, Leap... . Group 5 had built their strategy around avoiding combat at all costs and equipped their scrolls accordingly. The strategy had worked splendidly — even now, having broken through this far, they showed no signs of fatigue.
"There's a checkpoint built like a maze. Let's aim for that one."
One teammate nodded at Becky's suggestion, but the other tilted her head.
"Still... something's off. The Witch scroll's markings should be accurate this time, but..."
"For real."
There was, however, one problem: the markings on the scroll's surface were wrong more often than they were right.
They had already visited three checkpoints, and all three had been complete duds. Either something was wrong with the Witch scroll, or something was wrong with the labyrinth — one or the other....
"You didn't grab the wrong scroll, did you?"
"Hey, absolutely not. Do you know how hard I worked to get this..."
Just as her teammate was inspecting the Witch scroll from every angle—
Kugugugugu—!
A tremendous roar suddenly erupted from beyond the right-hand wall of the passage. It was impossible to tell precisely what was happening, but something unmistakably was.
Shocked, Group 5 pressed their ears to the wall and focused.
Kieeeeeek—!
A spine-chilling sound. Becky shook her head vigorously.
"Ugh... gives me goosebumps. Not going for a direct breakthrough really was a great call for us."
The other teammates nodded. They followed the passage onward — for how long, they couldn't say.
Kugugugugu—!
This time, the right-hand wall began collapsing outright.
"Wh-what the hell? Why is it doing that?"
"But it didn't feel like a trap triggered? What's going on?"
While they stood bewildered by the sudden phenomenon, the figures of another group simultaneously came into view.
The first thing that caught Becky's eye was Plan.
"Oh, hey. Plan...."
She'd meant to greet him casually, but the words caught in her throat.
First, she belatedly remembered that the exploration assessment was a competition. Second, it wasn't just Plan's group she saw — Hailey's Group 1 was also visible.
Perhaps because of the bizarre phenomena inside the labyrinth, no one's expression was particularly bright.
The three groups silently observed one another. For a moment, an awkward silence hung between them.
From the looks of it, all three groups had been thrown into confusion by the collapsing wall.
"Hey, guys~ hi."
Hailey was the first to break the awkward silence, stepping forward with her usual easygoing air.
She poked around, peering at this and that, clearly interested in the other groups.
"Everyone doing okay? But isn't the labyrinth's condition kind of weird? This feels way too different from what we were originally briefed on."
Hailey drew closer toward Becky, probably because Becky was Group 5's leader. Left with no choice, Becky parted her lips.
"I mean... we're managing."
Brushing it off vaguely, Becky inspected Hailey's group as well.
Hailey's Group 12 was composed of Louis and a new transfer student who had joined to fill the vacancy Aria left.
Since Louis was a teammate, they seemed to have navigated the crises without much difficulty. In reality, that was almost certainly the case.
More than that, Becky found herself distracted by the transfer student's strikingly pretty face. She was close to Plan, too.
I can do anything for Lord Plan.... She recalled the girl saying something along those lines.
Becky guessed that the person Plan kept in contact with via Trivia was probably this transfer student.
"Ah~ Lord Plan! There you are!"
The transfer student, pale as snow, went pattering straight toward Plan.
At a glance, it looked like she'd tried to throw her arms around him, but Plan nimbly sidestepped, leaving her to embrace empty air.
Yet the transfer student didn't wilt in the slightest and simply kept talking.
"Have you been doing well~? I've been fine thanks to my excellent teammates! And if it helps, would you like to use this?"
The transfer student held out three of her own scrolls toward Plan. Louis, following right behind her, let out a deep sigh.
"Yushia, those are scrolls our group is supposed to use. What do you think you're doing, giving them to another group?"
Yushia. So that was the transfer student's name. Becky filed those three syllables away in her memory first.
Meanwhile, even while scolding someone, Louis kept a kind smile and a gentleman's demeanor. Truly — he possessed no malice whatsoever toward others.
"Ah~ I wasn't allowed to give them to you? I didn't know!"
But then, unexpectedly, Trixie suddenly stepped in and directed a remark at Yushia.
"Offering a bribe is illegal. Go away."
"A bribe...? My elder sister is fond of those...."
"Fight fair. I said go."
Neither Yushia's attitude nor Trixie's was something Becky could immediately parse.
However — Plan, surrounded by two girls who looked like works of art, remained utterly unruffled.
It was a situation that would ordinarily delight any man, yet Plan showed not a trace of pleasure or tension.
No — he didn't even seem to register that someone had latched onto him in the first place. Even now, he was entirely absorbed in examining the Witch scroll.
Feeling strangely unsettled for reasons she didn't understand, Becky stomped hard on the poor ground beneath her feet.
"Hey, Becky."
At that moment, Hailey's voice reached her. Becky shook her head sharply to shake off the stray thoughts and answered.
"Yeah. What?"
"Can we talk, just the two of us for a moment?"
Becky silently consented to Hailey's proposal. The two put a little distance between themselves and the rest of their teammates.
"What is it?"
"Don't you want a high grade?"
"I mean, everyone does."
"Then, want to... do it together with us?"
Hailey used her eyes to indicate Plan's Group 11. Becky, following that gaze, scrunched up her expression before she could stop herself.
"Do what?"
"The labyrinth is all messed up right now~. If luck doesn't go their way, Group 11 could end up having an accident too, couldn't they?"
"Hey... No."
Becky shook her head back and forth.
Hailey was talking around it, but in the end she was proposing a pincer attack. And Becky had no taste for that kind of method.
[ Everyone, can you hear me? ]
Right then, Professor Violet's voice suddenly resonated through the labyrinth's interior.
The students' gazes drifted naturally through the empty air.
[ I'll proceed on the assumption that you can. The current internal state of the labyrinth is highly irregular. ]
Most students nodded as if they had expected as much. They had already felt firsthand that something was wrong inside the labyrinth.
[ At present I cannot observe the interior, so the assessment is suspended. I will return you all to the outside directly, one by one — do nothing and wait. ]
Violet's voice was twice as firm as usual.
[ I warned you clearly. Right now, even the protective magic likely won't activate. If an accident occurs, you die on the spot — so absolutely do nothing. ]
In an instant, a heavy atmosphere weighed down upon them.
Wasn't this the same as saying: if during this exploration assessment they suffered damage severe enough to cause death, they would simply die?
"Returning... how long until we're returned?"
"What if an accident happens while we're just standing still and we get caught in it? Are we supposed to just die without being able to do anything?"
The gathered students began to grow agitated. Louis was the first to step forward and soothe them.
"Everyone calm down. Everything will be fine."
But pacifying the students with a few brief words like that was asking too much.
The fear of death was, by nature, greater than imagination — and there wasn't a single student here who wished to die.
What finally settled the students was, in the end, the Return Magic itself.
"Huh...? What the—"
A pure white light wrapped around Martin, and he vanished from sight, the first to go.
"Ah, thank goodness!"
"Me too!"
After him, white light began wrapping around the other students' bodies one by one. Becky's two teammates were the first.
As they were returned one after another, relief spread across the faces of the remaining students.
"Oh... Lord Plan! I'll be going ahead first!"
Yushia was returned.
"Everyone will be safe. I'll see you outside."
Louis was returned. And so, as one by one they were sent back, the last ones left were Hailey, Plan, and Becky. Just the three of them.
No one spoke to each other among the three.
Plan, from the very start, was solely absorbed in his own thoughts and paid neither of them any attention. And Becky couldn't easily open her mouth because the look in Hailey's eyes as she gazed at Plan was altogether too loaded.
[ Only three left now, correct? ]
[ The labyrinth's condition is growing stranger the further it goes.... Professor Leonard, can these students currently hear my voi— ]
[ —ce right n— ]
Violet's voice grew faint, then scattered completely.
"Looks like something's not going right~"
Hailey remarked, sweeping her hair back. Then she glanced over Plan and Becky with an odd look.
"I'd rather not die wedged between a pair of lovers. Hmm."
"Wh-who's supposed to be lovers?"
Becky shot back at Hailey's words instantly. But Hailey merely shrugged her shoulders.
"Would Plan think so too? Plan, what do you think of Becky?"
"What are you going on about all of a sudden...!"
Even as she raised her voice in a burst, Becky rolled her eyes to steal a glance at Plan.
What did Plan think of her? Honestly, it would be a lie to say she wasn't curious.
But in that moment.
"......!"
Eyes flying wide, Becky inadvertently stepped backward. The Danger Detection scroll she'd kept inside her coat had begun to vibrate.
Kugugugugugu—!
The instant she registered something, before she could even begin to react—
The ground beneath the three of them collapsed entirely.
There was no time to scream or to respond nimbly.
Every surface of the labyrinth scattered apart like puzzle pieces, and the three began plunging into the endless darkness below.
ㅡㅡㅡ.
This was wrong.
Her train of thought shut down. The certainty that she was going to die flooded her mind completely.
Becky simply stared wide-eyed, fixed on the light growing further and further away.
◈
I'd expected it.
The flow of mana inside the labyrinth had been anything but ordinary, and the ground in particular had been unstable — it hadn't been difficult to foresee.
The only thing was that Violet's Return Magic had encountered complications, throwing my plan slightly off course.
There were two others falling besides myself. Not far away, I could make out Becky and Hailey.
After a moment's deliberation, I poured the entirety of my remaining mana into maintaining my defenses.
My plummeting body tore through the darkness at a terrifying speed. The sound of air being ripped apart felt as if it would split my eardrums.
Even so, my body did not flail about in any unsightly manner. A densely woven film of mana does not permit the body to lose its dignity.
Thanks to that, I could observe Becky and Hailey's conditions with clarity.
Hailey had long since passed out — her head lolled to one side — and Becky had her unfocused eyes fixed vacantly open.
When I had at last exhausted the full amount of my mana.
"It's impossible, isn't it...."
Becky murmured something with those unfocused eyes. The moment I heard those words, a laugh of sheer disbelief escaped me.
"Pathetic."
I slipped my hand inside my coat and grasped the artifact. The mana contained within this crystal orb I'd received from Violet was by no means small.
The moment the distance between me and Becky closed to right in front of my nose—
Crack—!
I clenched my fist and shattered the crystal orb.
◈
Becky caught a fleeting glimpse of Plan.
In truth, none of that mattered anymore. Her worries were all numbing over.
She was slowly coming to accept that death stood right before her.
In the next life, I want to be born a magic genius. If that's too greedy, then at least I want to be born into the nobility.
If even that's too greedy... then I don't want to be reborn at all.
Plan's figure still filled her vision.
The distance between him and her was shrinking at an abnormal rate. What was even more astonishing was that even in the middle of this fall, his dignity and refinement remained utterly beyond reproach.
......Yes. The 'magic genius' was standing right before her eyes.
"If I could... be like you..."
Becky murmured without knowing she'd spoken. The boy's image was reflected in the girl's vacant eyes.
"And use magic well. That would be nice."
But still.
"Forever... impossible, isn't it...."
Even the sound of slicing through the air gradually grew familiar, and Becky quietly shut her eyes.
Facing death with open eyes was, as she suspected, terrifying. She closed her eyes and simply waited for this modest life to end.
"Pathetic."
Crackle.
Flash—!
A dazzling burst of light slammed against Becky's closed eyelids. In the same instant, the sensation of falling vanished completely.
The sound that had seemed like it would burst her eardrums was gone, too.
Am I finally dead...?
The moment she cautiously opened her eyes at the strange sensation, Becky's train of thought came to a dead halt.
"......Huh?"
She was floating.
The falling chunks of rock, Hailey deposited limply atop a slab of stone debris — no, everything around her.... As though time had stopped, it all hung suspended in the void.
Blue-hued specks of light scattered like stardust, illuminating the entire surrounding area. At that fantastical scenery, Becky's mouth fell open before she knew it.
"What the... why...."
She gulped and turned her head to look around.
Examining it a second time confirmed the same thing. As if time had frozen, everything floated in the void, arrested at a particular moment.
And then, in that moment.
"Becky."
That cool voice came from above. There — wreathed in blue light — was Plan.
Even in this void of nothing but darkness, he remained completely composed.
Plan pointed a finger, and Becky's body levitated.
Up until the very moment her body rose and their eye levels naturally aligned, Becky couldn't understand a single shred of this entire situation.
One of the rocks that had been fixed in the void bonked Becky on the head.
"Ow!"
It hurt so much she immediately rubbed her head, but because of it, the sense of reality — that she was alive — came rushing back. Becky studied Plan's figure with one eye squinted shut.
He was as resolute and calm as ever.
"Where is 'impossible' for a mage?"
"Uh, huh...?"
[Ah, can you hear me? Three remain, correct? Wait just 3 minutes.]
Violet's voice began coming through again.
"Three minutes, is it...."
Plan murmured quietly, rubbing his chin.
Then, without any preamble, he thrust his hand inside Becky's uniform jacket.
His hand brushed across Becky's chest as if it were nothing at all, and a beat late, Becky's face flared bright red.
"Ee, eek...?! Hey! Wha, wha, what are you doing!"
"Three minutes is enough."
Plan smoothly extracted the Trivia that had been in Becky's inner pocket. Then he began flipping through the Trivia's pages with irritable speed.
"Observe, Becky."
He called Becky's name once more.
His crimson eyes were glinting. His sharp features, wreathed in blue energy, looked... genuinely striking.
Before Becky's face, staring blankly at Plan, he thrust the open Trivia forward.
A page filled to the brim with the Magic Missile formula.
These were the formulas Becky had drawn based on her rough impressions after watching Plan's mock battle.
"This formula...."
In this blue space, where everything had stopped and hung fixed like a fragment of art,
in this strange moment that seized even time itself,
Plan quietly parted his lips.
"......That's not how you draw it."