Prepare for Everything
Lola savored every bit of X's bewildered stare, puffing out her chest as she declared with pride.
"All of them!"
Unfortunately, that wasn't particularly helpful.
"I see. Duly noted. I'll just keep sitting here frowning and thinking, then."
"Hear me out to the end! I have a perfectly reasonable explanation!"
X regarded her with half-lidded eyes until she cleared her throat and pressed on.
"They're an organization, aren't they? They've already thought of everything we can think of."
"That's true, but preparing for every possible scenario is physically impossible."
Even picking a single approach left them staring at a wall, with no idea where to begin. Trying to cover every angle would only make things harder. In the end, they had no choice but to sink right back into the same dilemma.
"Well, of course it'd be nice if we could prepare a countermeasure for everything..."
Ridiculous as it sounded, Lola had a point. Stopping every possible threat, no matter what unfolded, was the safest and most ideal outcome. The problem was how.
Feels like a dead end... blocked. "Blocked"?
A phrase he'd heard countless times in consultations with authors suddenly surfaced in his mind: the plot's stuck. And with it came the advice he'd given as an editor, over and over again.
When you're blocked, smash it to pieces.
X saw a possibility.
Ruwendolin Brilli, professor of Understanding Magic Casting, was deep in research in her private laboratory when an unexpected visitor arrived. It was Jereon, a Class A student from her lectures—a young man she remembered well for his excellent grades, his dedication to his studies, and, not least, his handsome face.
And now that student had come to her with a rather unusual request.
"You need these medicines? What for?"
"I'm afraid I can't say."
The student was X, disguised with a transformation mask. He could hardly show up as himself to deceive a professor, so he'd come in costume.
Looks like she bought it. Good.
Ruwendolin looked over the list that "Jereon" had given her and found herself at a loss. These weren't the kind of substances an ordinary student should be handling.
"Never mind that—why come to me for this...?"
"I believe Professor Ruwendolin is the unrivaled authority in this field. If I need pharmaceuticals within the academy, there's no one else I could possibly trust. Of course I had no choice but to come to you."
"...Oh my."
The sudden barrage of praise flustered her, and she found herself smoothing her loosely tied hair and adjusting her clothes. Even so, she spoke carefully.
"Still, these are dangerous drugs for a student to handle. I could authorize them for research purposes, but... well, only under my supervision, of course."
Not as easy as I thought.
Ruwendolin's character setting was that she had no resistance whatsoever to men. He'd figured pushing hard would do the trick, but her guard was sturdier than expected.
Let's see if she can hold out against this, then.
X gently took both of the shy professor's hands in his. The sudden, unexpected gesture left her completely flustered.
"W-wait..."
"Professor, please trust me."
"No, hold on a second..."
"It's a situation I can't easily explain in words."
"Even so, there are procedures and rules..."
"I trust you, Professor."
X's earnest gaze struck Ruwendolin like a physical blow. With no resistance to men, she was thrown into complete disarray. Wild fantasies exploded through her mind, making coherent thought impossible.
If he'd pulled a stunt like this when his Charm stat was still low, he'd have been hauled before a disciplinary committee. Thanks to the transformation mask, he could get away with whatever he wanted.
"Fine, I get it, so could you please step back for a moment...!"
In the end, Ruwendolin prepared the medicines from X's list. He received roughly a liter of liquid potion along with a powdered reagent, offered his thanks, and made his escape from the laboratory.
"You scumbag."
The moment he stepped outside, Lola glared at him with a look of pure disgust. X protested, feeling somewhat wronged.
"My lady, I didn't have a choice. It was all for the greater good..."
"Are you going to tell the professor the truth later?"
"Th-that's..."
"You scumbag!"
X resolved then and there that he would never toy with a woman's heart again.
After a lengthy round of abuse, Lola's attention finally turned to the medicines he'd brought.
"So what is this stuff, anyway? What was so important you had to do that to get it?"
"This powder is a fast-acting sleeping agent, and this liquid is Mandrake Potion. It's a brew that induces powerful hallucinations and makes all five senses extremely hypersensitive."
"What do you mean, the senses get hypersensitive?"
"Want to try it?"
"Sure, go ahead."
He'd said it as a joke, but she took him at his word. X cracked the potion's lid just enough for Lola to get a good whiff of the fumes. At this dosage, there shouldn't be any lingering side effects.
"I don't feel any different?"
X tucked the potion away and raised both hands.
"Could you look over here for a second?"
The moment he had her attention, he clapped—hard.
A thunderous boom slammed into Lola's ears.
"Kyaaah—!"
To X, it was nothing more than a clap. To Lola, whose senses had been cranked to the extreme, it was a bomb going off. That was the kind of potency this potion had.
And that wasn't all.
"My lady, how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Ugh, what... five, obviously..."
"Nope. Six."
"H-huh? Wait, you're right? Why do you have six fingers?"
"Actually, it's seven."
"Wh-what?? One, two... seven? How?"
"It's five. Your senses are scrambled right now, so you can't make accurate judgments. That clap just now fried your sensory processing."
This was the effect of Mandrake Potion. He'd referenced an episode from the original novel where the Hero's party ingested it and had a thoroughly miserable time.
Afterward, he coached Lola through deep breathing until the potion's effects fully wore off. She was thoroughly sulky about the whole thing, but after a lengthy round of soothing, her mood seemed to recover enough to ask a question.
"...That Mandrake Potion is safe, right?"
"No. It's extremely dangerous. Drink it wrong and you could go insane. After ingesting it, the violent nausea and stomach cramps will have you suffering for a week. Some places even use it as a torture agent, that's how dangerous it is."
"And you made me take that?!"
"You only inhaled the fumes, so you're fine. Anyway..."
X examined the potion as he spoke.
"That's exactly why we're using it."
The rest of the preparations proceeded without incident. They went to Benedicto, the priest and professor of Classical Exorcism, and had the ring's curse purified. His question about where they'd acquired a cursed object was awkward, but they fudged it with a vague "we found it on the street."
After that, they went to Maria and requested an analysis of the magic inscribed on the ring.
"This ring has a one-time-use spatial teleportation spell engraved on it. Student X, where did you even find something like this?"
"I came across it while tracking rumors about a dragon."
"I-I see! I do hope it leads to good results!"
They already knew the ring had a one-use teleportation spell. What they needed to know was the destination—the location where the masquerade ball would be held.
In the library, X and Lola stared at a point on the map. It was the teleportation destination Maria had identified. Finding the location was good. The problem was—
"It's far."
"It certainly is."
It pointed to a mountainous region east of the academy. Walking there was physically out of the question.
"Even taking a gate to the nearest point, it'd still take two days. And it's so deep in the mountains you couldn't ride anything there anyway."
"Sneaking in ahead of time to sabotage the place isn't going to work, then."
One of their plans had been to simply destroy the venue before the masquerade could take place. Unfortunately, the ring's one-use teleportation magic appeared to be the only way to get there.
"Nothing we can do about it. Let's go over the plan we've prepared."
X organized his thoughts, then spoke.
"We have two objectives. First, prevent whatever incident is going to unfold at the masquerade. Second, identify whoever's behind the event."
He already knew who the mastermind was, but he saw no reason to mention it.
"The operation is simple. You and I infiltrate the venue. You wait in the hall, and when I give the signal, you act. Then you get out immediately."
"How do I get back?"
"Use this."
X handed Lola a magic stone—a one-use teleportation stone he'd half-blackmailed out of Maria.
"There's only one?"
"Apparently, imbuing something with teleportation magic isn't easy. We were short on time, so she only managed to make one."
Spatial teleportation was originally a 6th-Circle spell. It was powerful magic, which made enchanting an object with it extraordinarily difficult. Maria had only managed even one because she was a dragon; an ordinary mage would have taken twice as long, if not more.
Hearing that, Lola spoke with a hint of worry.
"What about you?"
One teleportation stone meant X had no way to escape. That was what worried her. Of course, he'd planned for that.
"You think I'd be crazy enough not to make an escape route for myself?"
"...Right. I was an idiot for worrying!"
"Anyway, I'll handle most of it myself. Once we expose the mastermind, we wrap the case up in your name, and that's that. Easy, right?"
"You make it sound so simple..."
Lola let out a long sigh. She was starting to wonder whether they should really be doing this at all. But something else weighed on her more.
"What are you going to do when it's all over?"
Lola was beginning to admit it to herself. From the moment she'd heard X's story and joined this secret society, she'd been having fun. When everything was finished, there was an ending she could already see coming.
"You're going back, aren't you?"
The question felt as though it encompassed far more than just this moment—as if she were asking about everything, from the beginning to whatever end awaited them.
Until now, he'd been running without rest, just trying to survive. From the very beginning, survival had been the only goal. This damned world, after all, was packed to the brim with futures that wanted him dead.
If she hadn't asked, I never would have even thought about it.
Having an ally had given him this small luxury of time. Thanks to that, X found himself considering, just a little, what came after everything was over. The consideration didn't last long.
"Logically speaking, going back would be the right call."
Lola's face fell at that answer. Was it the thought of a friend disappearing that made her so gloomy? Or was it the realization that this extraordinary stretch of days was only temporary?
But X wasn't finished.
"But I have no idea when I'd even go back. I've got a mountain of things to do. At this rate, I might just end up settling down here."
That was a somewhat special lie.
Until now, he'd avoided lying to Lola as much as possible, and when he did, he'd accepted the guilt that came with it. Even he didn't fully understand why. Maybe it was because he'd already been through one goodbye. Inflicting that kind of sadness on a little girl from another world—one nobody else would ever even know existed—felt a little too soon.
"Hehe."
Look at that. An empty promise, and yet she was already smiling brightly. Words really were mysterious things.
X let a small laugh slip out, then returned to reality.
"All right, let's call it a day. Don't forget tomorrow's meeting time. If you're late, I'll come find you."
"What do you take me for?! You think the young lady of House Lemercier can't keep a simple appointment? If you're late, I'll kick your door down!"
And with that, Lola returned to her room. Recalling her usual habits, X made a mental note to come out ten minutes early, then headed for his own room as well.
The dormitory was a bit of a walk, and the sun was just beginning to set—the kind of evening that invited deep thought.
"Hey."
He was walking along, refining tomorrow's operation in his head, when a voice came from behind him along with a pressure against his back.
"Who—mph!"
He turned around, and standing there was someone he never would have imagined. He swallowed the scream that had risen all the way to his throat.
"What's with that pathetic scream."
It was none other than Circe. She was glaring at him with her usual sharp, irritable expression. There didn't seem to be any particular hostility in it. But then, there was no particular reason for her to talk to him, either.
X froze, thrown by the sudden encounter. Circe watched him for a moment, then sighed.
"You."
She started to ask something, then closed her mouth. With a complicated, unreadable expression, she turned away, muttering.
"It's nothing. I'm done here."
And just like that, Circe went back to her room.
What she'd intended, what she'd been about to ask—it was all a mystery. The one silver lining was that she hadn't suddenly come at him trying to kill him.
"That took ten years off my life..."
X barely managed to calm his pounding heart and returned to his room. Whatever that was about, he'd think about it later. Right now, tomorrow needed his attention.
"That should do it."
Back in her room, Circe murmured quietly to herself. A small magical light flickered in her hand.
"I'll just have to find out for myself."
Circe focused on the magical light. Little by little, a sound began to leak through. Someone's voice.
If I go this way...
she'll be in danger. Scrap this one for now...
It was X's voice.
"Hard to hear... but the location tracking is working fine."
It was an eavesdropping spell. She'd planted it earlier when she put her hand on X's back. With his low magical ability, X hadn't noticed the change at all.
Circe had done this for one reason only.
"I need to find out why my memories of you were erased. Even now, when I try to remember... nngh..."
It was as if something enormous stood in her way. No matter how she tried, Circe couldn't recall the forgotten memories. This was absolutely not a normal phenomenon. Her knowledge as a Sage told her it was a type of Mental Barrier. The barrier activated whenever she tried to recall something specific. And the common thread in all of it was X.