Episode 714
Episode 714
"Here, take Wardanaz with you too. It'll be a good chance for him to observe."
"Huh?"
At the suggestion from the other club members, Sebius frowned as if asking what nonsense they were spouting.
"You know I always move alone when teleporting."
"Just this once. We're asking as a favor."
"That's right. He's already proven his skills by raiding the Skeleton Principal's villa. He won't hold you back, Senior."
Seeing the club members stubbornly insisting unlike usual, Sebius realized they genuinely wanted Wardanaz to join.
If he sees firsthand how much we profit, he'll understand the appeal of this club.
'If he wants to join, he can. Why are they being so pushy...?'
Sebius, whose philosophy was "don't stop those who leave, don't hold back those who come," found the way Einrogard's clubs forcibly recruited juniors frankly distasteful.
But as a fellow club member, he couldn't completely ignore their enthusiasm either.
Recalling how these same members had never backed down from danger and always stepped forward, Sebius slowly nodded.
"...Fine. If he wants to come, let him follow."
"Perfect!"
"Wardanaz, this is a great opportunity. You'll learn a lot."
'Can you even call this something to learn...?'
Lee Han, who had been silently listening to the seniors' conversation, found himself suddenly roped into tagging along.
Not that he minded coming, of course!
"Invisibility magic?"
"I know how to use it."
"!"
Sebius, who had been walking toward Einrogard as dusk fell, stopped in his tracks and gave Lee Han a slightly surprised look.
A junior who'd only been a second-year for a short while knew how to use invisibility magic?
So the kid who raided the Skeleton Principal's villa really is different.
"Let's wait here for a bit."
Sebius stopped at the stairs leading from the 7th floor to the 6th and sat on a nearby flat rock.
Lee Han was puzzled.
'Weren't we supposed to raid a secret warehouse?'
The only reason he'd followed this senior on his thieving expedition was to gather information.
At Einrogard, the lower your year, the more you became prey for the seniors—that was the basic food chain.
The gap in magical ability was one thing, but the disparity in knowledge was just as vast.
Seniors knew all sorts of bizarre locations and rules that juniors had no clue about.
Lee Han had planned to pick up intel on the seniors' favorite warehouses or workshops while assisting Sebius.
So why were they waiting here?
"Is there another way down from the 7th to the 6th floor?"
"Quite a few. The 7th floor is huge, so there are all kinds of strange shortcuts and side paths. I've even heard there's one that leads to the Skeleton Principal's room."
"Really?"
"How should I know? I've never seen it... Wait. Someone's coming."
Sebius tensed as he spotted a White Tiger Tower student walking toward them from a distance.
"Invisibility magic."
"Got it."
Both quickly cast their spells. Sebius was taken aback when he noticed how much faster and different Lee Han's incantation was.
'Where did he learn that?'
Most Einrogard students commonly used Lesser Invisibility, a 3rd-circle spell that created a thin layer of optical camouflage around the caster. It was the easiest invisibility spell to learn and cast, making it widely popular.
But the spell his junior had just used wasn't Lesser Invisibility. The incantation was different, and so was the structure. Sebius was genuinely curious where he'd learned it.
'Ah, focus.'
Even the simplest theft required full attention. Complacency was a thief's deadliest enemy.
"Prepared illusion, come forth."
Sebius tore open a scroll and muttered under his breath. From the lower stairs, an illusion began to emerge.
Shockingly, it was the Skeleton Principal's Death Knight.
-You thief, halt right there!
"Eek— Aaah!"
The White Tiger Tower student, upon seeing the Death Knight, screamed and fell backward.
Then, in a panic, he threw all his belongings aside to lighten his load and clutched a single sword in his hand.
"Tch. How did you know? Since it's come to this, I won't go down without a fight! Come at me! Sword, transform and block the enemy!"
The White Tiger Tower student's sword rippled like liquid metal before transforming into a wave that surged toward the Death Knight.
At that moment, the Death Knight illusion vanished. The White Tiger Tower student's eyes widened in shock.
"What the... Who the hell would pull such a prank... Damn that Skeleton Principal bastard! Just wait till I graduate! I'll track him down and ambush him!"
The White Tiger Tower student, apparently convinced the Skeleton Principal had laid this trap to torment students, cursed vehemently while fuming with anger.
Then he gathered the belongings he'd thrown aside and trudged away grumpily.
"!"
As the invisibility magic dissipated, Sebius was holding a book in his hand.
Lee Han was astonished.
In that brief moment, Sebius had approached the White Tiger Tower student's discarded belongings and retrieved only the targeted book.
"That's incredible!"
"Basic skills. You don't need flashy magic for relocation work. Just knowing how to read your target's movements is enough."
Sebius was well aware that White Tiger Tower students would discard their belongings to the side when entering combat.
If you could just make them think the Skeleton Principal's minions had appeared, they'd throw their things aside—making it child's play to snatch the book.
'No wonder he's a senior.'
Lee Han gazed at Sebius with newfound respect mixed into his expression.
He'd thought of him as just a greedy wizard who sold books through the Library Club and retrieved them via the Teleportation Club, endlessly duplicating gold coins...
"Let's move. We've got a few more books to retrieve."
'Hmm... Actually, "greedy wizard duplicating gold coins" still seems accurate.'
As Lee Han followed Sebius, curiosity got the better of him.
"But Senior, you said the most important thing about theft is not getting caught."
"Right. Not getting caught is paramount."
"But won't they notice something's off if books keep disappearing?"
There was a reason for the saying "A long tail gets stepped on."
If only books kept vanishing from their belongings, even the dullest person would inevitably point suspicion at the Library Club.
'Is he planning to settle things by force?'
Lee Han recalled the bear-kin priest Illeg, their senior in glasses.
With that level of combat prowess, suspicions and complaints wouldn't matter much.
After all, even the Skeleton Principal thrived despite all the suspicion and resentment directed at him.
"They won't notice."
"Huh?"
"They won't notice. These bastards don't care about books at all."
Though usually curt and indifferent, Sebius now wore an unusually intense expression of hostility.
"People who take books from the Library Club fall into two categories. The first actually reads them diligently. Those don't matter. But then there are those who just use them as pillows or alchemy pot stands. Mostly White Tiger Tower bastards..."
'...'
I should keep the Library Club members away from Gainen.'
"...Those kinds of people don't deserve to have books. I retrieve them from such people. That's why no one notices. Even if they do later, they'll just assume they lost them while moving around."
"!"
Lee Han stared at Sebius in shock.
He'd assumed his senior was just gold-obsessed, but there was actually a reasoning behind it.
'Stealing back books from people who don't even read them... That's justifiable—no, wait, it's still weird, but it's a weirdness I can accept.'
A comprehensible madman always feels slightly more relatable than a plain madman.
Lee Han was just relieved his senior wasn't the latter.
"What if the Library Club set some rules? Like, you have to treasure the books you take and read them diligently."
"You think they'd follow that?"
"What if you put a curse on the books?"
"......"
Sebius stared at his junior with a look of utter shock.
At first, he thought it was a joke, but the junior's face was deadly serious.
'This guy might actually be insane.'
Come to think of it, his polite and reserved demeanor had made him forget, but the junior in front of him was a talent every club wanted to recruit.
Outstanding talents in Einrogard always harbored a touch of madness somewhere.
Sebius felt his wariness toward the junior rise anew.
"...That would just lead to club-wide fights. And Senior Illeg wouldn't allow it anyway."
Illeg, the president of the Library Club, was a tolerant and generous person.
So much so that he would forgive even those who took books out and didn't read them or damaged them.
"The Einrogard library will disappear, and the ruined books will be remade and placed back on the shelves."
"But Senior! Those bastards used the books as firewood because they were cold!"
"Let's forgive them. They wouldn't have done such things if they knew the joy of books."
But even if Illeg forgave them, Sebius had no intention of doing so.
"Next... this bastard again."
"Who is it?"
"Balpatan from the Moradi family. This guy borrowed the same book and lost it three times. If he were a Library Club member, he'd have been subjected to Bookcase Punishment by now."
Sebius gritted his teeth as he read the name written on the paper.
Balpatan, a fellow student in the same year, had always been one of the people who infuriated Sebius the most.
Just the fact that he was from White Tiger Tower was enough to make him dislikeable, but losing The History of Imperial Swordsmanship three times was the last straw.
The fourth request to retrieve the book was only accepted because the Library Club members were about to ban him outright, but Illeg intervened and barely allowed it.
"......"
At the mention of a familiar senior's name, Lee Han managed his expression and averted his gaze.
"Even so, you retrieved it for him a fourth time. Surely he'll read it now?"
"Last I heard, he was using it as a pillow. Let's go."
'Hmm. Seems like the other seniors are at fault too.'
Sebius descended to the sixth floor.
Unlike the seventh floor, which had an atmosphere so different it felt like another world, the sixth floor resembled the main school building Lee Han was familiar with.
Endlessly long corridors, windows, classroom doors, and magical lamps hanging from the ceiling.
'Don't let your guard down.'
Generally, the higher the floor in Einrogard, the more dangerous it became.
Lee Han steeled himself, ready for monsters to leap out from any door or window at any moment.
"This way."
Sebius opened a window and leaped out. Lee Han was startled, but surprisingly, a staircase began forming in midair.
'Sixth floor, Staircase in the Void.'
As Sebius walked down the stairs, he stopped in front of another window and pulled out his wand. He then began chanting a spell to unlock the sealed window.
"Reveal the hidden secret..."
Sebius clicked his tongue as the magic failed.
"Is there a problem?"
"Seems like the White Tiger Tower bastards upgraded their defenses. It won't unlock."
"Let me try."
"Forget it. Let's back off. They must've placed a pretty expensive spell—"
BANG!
"It's open. Do we just go in?"
"...Yeah."
Sebius shot his junior a look mixed with shock, suspicion, and confusion, but true to his reputation as a professional teleportation expert, he didn't waste time with unnecessary questions.
He could ask later.
Click!
"This is one of the storage rooms the White Tiger Tower guys use."
Various suits of armor and swords came into view—each one an enchanted artifact.
Of course, not all of them were masterpieces. Some of the weapons clearly felt like failed experiments.
"Don't touch anything else. Find the book first."
"Understood."
Lee Han was impressed by Sebius's patience. Even after seeing all this, he wasn't tempted to take anything else.
Sebius retrieved The History of Imperial Swordsmanship. Unsurprisingly, it was being used as a whetstone stand in the corner.
'I'll kill him for real...'
"Senior, who's next?"
At his junior's question, Sebius responded in a slightly less curt tone than before.
There was no denying that he had been genuinely helpful this time.
"Professor Verdus."
"Excuse me?"
"Professor Verdus. If you're scared, you don't have to come. You've done enough—"
"No. I definitely want to go."
"...?"