The Client and the Underground Expedition (1)
Alkanium was full of secrets. Raised by the ancient mages of Creation, its buildings remained immaculate despite never once being repaired, and even after taking in countless students and faculty, its spaces went on expanding without end whenever the need arose.
"Haa.... It feels like I've fallen into a monster's belly."
The trouble was that most people had no idea what made Alkanium what it was. A woman was picking her way with care down a corridor of pitch-black brick—ominous at a glance, and so long she could not see where it ended. She had been through more than her share of trouble, and she had always prided herself on being unafraid.
Whoooosh—!
"Eek!"
A chill wind rushed at her from behind, and she hunched her shoulders before she had time to resist it. Why the sound of the wind should carry a beast's cry, she could not begin to understand.
"...You took the request. So why aren't you here?"
The air of the place left her no choice but to mutter to herself, something she almost never did. She wanted to cry. She wanted to seize Ivy's petite body the way one seizes a beloved stuffed toy, crush her close, and cling.
"Breaking the wall... would be impossible, wouldn't it?"
Ivy had been murmuring nothing but the name Levian, looking so ominous that Mira could not guess what was wrong, and she had set out boldly to catch her. Boldly—and then Ivy cast Spirit Form, and Mira lost her in an instant.
After that, she came back to herself in the middle of a corridor where neither entrance nor exit could be found. At this point she almost wished she had stuck on a lost-child sticker, the way Ivy had suggested. Not that she had any intention of going around with a bright yellow chick plastered on her!
What stung was that she had not been able to bring herself to ask Ivy for help outright. And if, on top of that, she posted a task under her own name as a teaching assistant—someone please come save me—then...
The others would tear into me. Can't even memorize a single path through the academy, they'd say.
People who would tease her and make a misery of her were everywhere. She had no choice but to wait like this for the nameless stranger who had taken the request off the anonymous board.
"Haa.... I'm hungry."
How many times had her stomach already growled? Every time the sound ran the length of the corridor and came back like thunder, a shame she could not have spoken aloud climbed hot into her face. Perhaps she ought to count it a mercy that the shame put warmth back into cheeks the cold had drained. By now she could hardly walk at all.
With no other choice, she set her back to the cold wall and sank down, meaning to wait where she was.
Step—
"...?"
A low footfall came from beyond the dark. Her face, already pale from the cold, went whiter still. Goosebumps prickled up her arms and along her back.
Another step. She snapped her gaze toward the sound, but there was still nothing to see. Could it be that the ghost the other assistants kept talking about—the one they swore haunted the underground—had actually appeared?
Another step, and this one heavy. Heavy enough that she could guess the other's height and build were considerable. A man, at the least. Or a woman of enormous size. It was time to prepare for a fight.
The steps drew closer. Mira drew the staff she had kept against her chest and leveled its tip down the dim length of the corridor. Half a day without food had the end of the staff trembling miserably, but this was no moment to care about that.
Closer still. She remembered going out to clear a dungeon with Ivy, and the moment they realized it had not been a dungeon at all, but a tunnel dug by spies of the Eastern Union, a trap meant to draw them in. The week they had endured and fought in that horrible burrow, where not a shaft of sunlight reached, was still vivid. But this was only the academy. She did not believe she would lose in a place where half-grown students came and went.
Ghost or ancient troll, I only have to hold until the one who took the request gets here. Then I can get out.
As if she had Ivy hidden at her back, she drew a calm breath, steadied the tip of the staff, and fired.
A thin whine split the dark. Light burst outward, fierce enough to dazzle, and the figure hidden within it was laid bare.
"Ah. That's bright."
"...?"
A familiar face, somehow. A solidly built man in a black school uniform came striding through the glare, the light at his back. Ash-gray hair grown into a mess, blue eyes: Levian, the student from the inferior class.
With the corridor lit, Levian could make out the woman as well.
"Found you at last. Were you never taught the rule? If you lose your way, you stay where you are. Your position changed. I searched for quite some time."
A jet-black bob swayed as she shifted, and she was tall enough to be Professor Ivy's exact opposite. Casual formalwear, cut to a slim figure. Mira Shadow. The client who would be paying a hundred thousand florins.
"...What? How did you get here?"
It was closer to talking to herself, but Levian was kind enough to answer the woman paying him.
"I walked."
Reaching the underground floors had not been difficult.
It will keep expanding until the subject's need is met. Simply go down while thinking that you require a lower floor. There is an end somewhere, but we, at least, will never find it. This is the power of Creation.
It was something like that, for instance. Levian, thrown out of class and disliked by the other students, had needed a place to explore. Mira, not knowing where she was and pressing on without knowing where she meant to go, had simply gone on circling the underground.
"No, that isn't what I asked! How did you know I was here?"
He had been explaining it all, perfectly calm.
"Don't tell me you followed me!"
Mira started and made to swing her staff. One step closer and she looked ready to pour attack magic down on him.
She called for me herself. Why is she this wary?
He could not make sense of her at all. It was the limit of the anonymous board. Just as the client's identity was hidden, so was any information on whoever took the request, and she could never have imagined that person would be Levian. More than that, the very reason she had lost her way all the way down here was that half-wit, Levian. She knew it probably wasn't so, and still she watched for a tail, for a trap.
Levian, for his part, had come to know even things he was never meant to know, by way of a modification to the mana circuit. And so he could seek her out without a flicker of doubt.
"Did you not leave a request on the anonymous board, looking for a guide? If not, I'll go."
No. That freshman can't actually be the one who took it.
Mira's thoughts were a tangle. The disgrace she had already made of herself in front of him was far too great to admit the truth now. She knew this was not the moment, and still she could not stop pressing, trying to drag his intentions out into the open.
"...Wh-what request? Freshmen ought to be in their required classes right now!"
Levian answered as if none of it touched him.
"I had the class replaced with an assignment."
He had never cared what anyone thought of him, so there was nothing here worth hiding. More than that, a hundred thousand florins was a sum large enough to cover half the interest. He had no intention of failing this request.
"Hm... Freshmen can replace a class with an assignment too?"
"I believe so."
"Th-then how did you know I was here? I wandered half a day just getting down this far!"
It was nearly a whine. No sense of direction or not, failing to find a path some freshman had found was a matter of pride.
"I came because I know the way."
"...Well. I suppose you would."
"And because I know the way, I took the request."
He had hit the mark. Not another soul in sight, not even a shadow, and yet he had found his way here. That alone was as good as proof he knew the paths. A pointless sense of defeat settled over her. Suspecting a student who had done nothing wrong had been her mistake. As Ivy would have it, one was not meant to judge a person by looks alone. What mattered was that she had no proof Levian had approached Ivy with ill intent.
Plenty about him doesn't sit right. I'll just have to watch a little longer.
She could not stay in this gloomy corridor forever. Mira lowered her staff without another word.
"Tch. Really. To think you're the one who took it. I'll trust you for now. Lead the way."
Only then did Levian turn and start back the way he had come—not a word from him, just that unbothered certainty, as if he had known all along how this would end.
I have no idea what he's thinking.
She watched his back for a moment, then hurried after him, a beat too late. For a place that was only the academy's underground, the air was grim enough that something seemed ready to leap out at any second. The black walls ran on and on with nowhere to hide, and still she had the feeling she would lose the way again.
...He wouldn't just leave me and go, would he?
Only then did she flinch. Her shoulders jerked, and she scurried up to his side.
"Are you frightened? If you think you are, something really might appear."
Why did every word from a boy a full eight years her junior cut so sharp? She felt, absurdly, as if he had seen straight through her.
"Ahem. Hardly. I only wanted to get back quickly."
To her, it was a perfectly natural thing to do, and a perfectly natural excuse.
More timid than she looks.
Her jet-black hair swayed without rest as she glanced all around, and her eyes darted in every direction, like a gazelle watching for a predator. Levian had already seen straight through her.