Chapter 60
Chapter 60
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 60
Chapter Title: 7. Is the Back of Your Head Safe? (7)
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#10 Their Circumstances: The Circumstances of the Imprisoned
“What is it this time?”
“Hmm… No traces on the surface. Shall we try infusing it with mana?”
“Yeah, then fire, then water.”
Blank sheets of paper in various forms were discovered all over the place.
Some were in the shape of textbooks, some were just plain sheets, and others were tucked into letter paper that looked like love letters.
And the results were mostly…
-Boom! Better luck next time!
-Whoops, but no prize!
-Congrats, you won… or did you think so!
Most were duds! The ratio was such that for every one hit, there were about twenty misses.
“I found it!”
“This letter is ‘cheon’! ‘Cheon’!”
“So far we have ‘gil’, ‘da’, ‘e’, ‘cheon’? That’s four in total?”
“Yeah, and we’re closing in on nearly a hundred duds.”
“Are we just unlucky, or are there that many duds?”
“Probably both?”
“Yeah, right. If we were lucky, we wouldn’t have gotten into Yuglasia Academy.”
“True, or we would’ve graduated before Professor Niserwin arrived.”
Nodding vigorously in agreement with that sentiment, they checked the papers they’d collected so far.
There were four types discovered so far.
The type where rubbing powder or dirt into a small gap revealed letters, like the first one I found.
The type where letters appeared when mana was infused.
The type where letters showed up when wet with water.
And finally, the type where letters emerged when singed with fire.
With just these four types, they could reveal the text on any blank sheet!
“New type discovered! This paper doesn’t respond to any of the methods we’ve tried so far!”
That was the case until just now!
“Damn it! Any other ideas worth trying?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know…”
Vice President Karen muttered as she slammed her head onto the desk.
The day was already coming to an end.
There were no windows here, but thanks to those with watches, they could tell the current time.
“It’s 7 p.m. now…”
“Night self-study would be over by now.”
“We’d be waking up from passing out and having dinner together around this time.”
“…Now that you mention it, I’m hungry.”
“…Huh?”
The conversation turned to dinner, and that’s when I suddenly realized something odd.
“Hey, has anyone found the cafeteria here?”
This place was small, but it had various academy facilities intact.
There were classrooms, a faculty office, and even special rooms for experiments.
But.
“We haven’t seen one.”
“Same on our side.”
“Ours were all classrooms.”
“So how are we supposed to eat here?”
“R-Right…”
After a brief silence, a flustered voice from Karen broke through.
“Wait! Has anyone seen a bathroom here?”
“There isn’t one?!”
“There was a nurse’s office, so there must be bathrooms.”
“Well, we haven’t seen any.”
“They must be there. We just haven’t found them.”
“Yeah, even Professor Niserwin wouldn’t go that far… We haven’t seen them, but…”
With those words, an even heavier silence descended.
The essentials for human survival are often summed up as clothing, food, and shelter.
But what was available here?
Nothing.
What about shelter?
No. This was a prison, not a comfortable living space.
Food? Did anyone think there was anything edible here? No cafeteria?
And finally, clothing.
They were wearing clothes. Pajamas, sure, but decent ones that everyone was embarrassed by at first but fine now!
But why wear clothes?
To cover their bodies, right?
And why cover their bodies?
To hide their embarrassing parts!
But no bathrooms?!
What humiliation!
“President! We found the bathrooms! There are bathrooms!”
“Oh, good.”
Fortunately, Professor Niserwin hadn’t strayed too far from human decency yet.
That didn’t change the fact that she’d locked them up here, though!
“Alright, back to square one. How are we eating?”
“We checked again with everyone, right? No one found the cafeteria?”
“Yes, no cafeteria.”
What was Professor Niserwin’s intention? Did she think they could escape before?
Or maybe she really planned to starve them.
One clear fact: Professor Niserwin knew how to torment people well.
Right before break, some even suspected she might be a member of the evil organization Howling that was destroyed last year.
The timing matched perfectly. It was a reasonable suspicion.
No, seeing what she was doing now, the suspicion hadn’t faded!
“For now, assume no food and search for clues quickly. Don’t just stick to classrooms—check toilet paper too.”
“Can we escape by tomorrow?”
“It’ll be tough, but we haven’t had it easy all year, have we?”
“True…”
“President, doesn’t that just crush our spirits?”
“Yeah, it’s tough, and we’ve never succeeded.”
“Damn it, the Imperial Tournament. If we win that, this hell ends!”
My words stirred anger and vows to win the Imperial Tournament among the third-years, leaving me with mixed feelings, but what could they do?
“Imperial Tournament or not, we have to get out of here first. So let’s hang in there a bit longer.”
After that, the duds started appearing less frequently than expected.
Who would’ve guessed? Codes hidden even in toilet paper?
That’s how they found clues in toilet paper, classroom mottos and schedules, faculty office documents, handkerchiefs, and more. Combining them all resulted in:
- There is a way to escape in the ceiling of 1.
“Aren’t we short a few letters?”
“It doesn’t specify exactly which ceiling.”
“1? Should we check based on Class 1 and Class 10?”
“Or maybe the first floor?”
“No. When Lisens fell earlier, the scream came from pretty far below. Definitely not the first floor.”
“Then half of us search ceilings in places with ‘1’ in them, and the rest look for more clues.”
The message was nearly complete, but knowing the escape route didn’t mean they could escape.
No, it probably meant the actual escape would be even harder, given how easily it was revealed!
And after checking every room and building with a ‘1’, even all the buildings here…
“There’s no escape route in the ceilings.”
They still hadn’t found a way out.
#11 Their Circumstances: Lisens de Roa’s Circumstances
-Still not awake?
-What if he’s really dead?
-Leave the body! Find clues first!
-Damn, another dud!
Faint voices reached him in his hazy consciousness.
Familiar sounds.
Just like… yeah. The flustered voices of the student council around the time he woke up after getting beaten by the silver devil during night self-study…
‘Huh? Why am I hearing this?’
He was definitely on break.
So hearing these shouldn’t be normal, right?
Then why was he hearing them?
-Hey, contractor? Enough escaping reality—wake up already.
Loki’s voice echoed in his head.
Escaping reality? What did that mean?
-You tried to run, got smacked by that silver monster, and passed out.
Ugh… some memory he didn’t want to recall was surfacing.
Right. That’s what happened. He woke up suddenly, saw the vice president’s face, student council officers around…
The video magic device showed Professor Niserwin in a weird mask saying let’s start the game.
-If you say that, professors will be swarming when you open the door, right?
Yeah, so he smashed the wall and jumped down…
-H-Here!
-Bad kid! Follow the rules when playing games!
-N-No!
Yeah, as he fell and spotted where they were, surprised, that devil appeared.
-For kids who don’t follow rules, justice’s judgment! Justice poke-poke!
-What nonsense is that?!
That’s how the silver devil beat him senseless… and he passed out?
-Knowing that, stop moping and get up.
“Ugh…”
His whole body ached, but he grabbed his head and sat up.
Before him was the ordinary classroom sight any student saw daily.
But the students inside weren’t in uniforms—mostly pajamas—and running around frantically with pale faces. That was the difference.
All that frantic running meant the game Professor Niserwin mentioned wasn’t progressing much.
Pale faces suggested something urgent… a devil coming?
“Vice President, you’re awake?”
“Lisens is up!”
“Call the president quick!”
Seeing him rise, a few student council officers dashed off urgently, and soon the president and vice president came.
“Lisens, you okay?”
“Yeah, more or less. But President, any progress on Professor Niserwin’s game?”
“We’ve found almost all the clues, but no escape route.”
The president grimaced and tilted his head back, looking a bit off.
“Why so urgent? If we’re late, the devil shows up?”
“No, not that…”
“No food.”
The vice president answered for the hesitant president.
“Food?”
“Yeah. We searched everywhere, but nothing edible.”
“No food, huh…”
No food meant they couldn’t hold out long-term.
Was Professor Niserwin just punishing them short-term for skipping academy?
He doubted it.
If it was just punishment, there’d be no need to kidnap the entire student body to classrooms secretly.
Doing something this bothersome when there were easier ways to retaliate was odd.
So she must have a specific goal…
-Loki, why cut off food while saying let’s play a game?
-Huh? Obviously to use food as a game tool.
-Tool?
-Yeah, tool. Use food to drive the game. Like enabling purchases, or rewarding actions with food.
Th-That method! But no way to get items here, so probably rewarding certain actions with food.
“President, seems like she’ll make us do something using food.”
“Could be.”
The president nodded in agreement.
Then what they needed to do was clear.
Escape before Professor Niserwin gave them some absurd mission!
“What clues have you found so far?”
“There is a way to escape in the ceiling of 1. There might be more parts before it, but that’s all for now.”
“We’ve searched every ceiling possible, but nothing.”
The two wore serious expressions.
But he gained a different realization.
A way to escape in the ceiling of 1?
And they searched all ceilings and found nothing?
Of course.
Because there was nothing in the ceilings here.
“President, do you know where we are?”
“No, classrooms like Yuglasia’s, but this isn’t Yuglasia.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
For once, he denied the president seriously.
This was definitely Yuglasia.
The reason they didn’t know was because after Professor Niserwin arrived, even the student council was barred from here.
“President, this is Yuglasia, the rooftop.”
The view he saw jumping down.
The usual interior of Yuglasia Academy!
Yes! This was a space created on Yuglasia’s rooftop!
“Probably, combining all clues gives: There is a way to escape in the ceiling of the 10th floor. Meaning, there’s a path in this floor.”
And thirty minutes later.
They discovered a secret staircase leading down from the floor of one classroom.