127. Let's Have a Sword Dance
127. Let's Have a Sword Dance
The Hunting Festival ended.
There should have been several events remaining—an awards ceremony, a campfire—but the situation was no longer conducive to such things.
The conclusion of the Hunting Festival was swiftly handled by the other faculty members who remained at the Academy.
Without even time to clean up, the students were forcibly sent to their dormitories.
The students of the Academy, who had been in the middle of enjoying the festive atmosphere, voiced their dissatisfaction about the sudden end to the Hunting Festival, but the unsettling mood kept them from openly expressing their unease.
The rough inside story became known to the students about a week after the Hunting Festival ended.
The students who had removed their rings and been transported outside the forest, as well as the faculty managing the Hunting Festival, had been affected by the Demon Archbishop's Authority. Every one of them, having lost their senses, was moving like a worker bee for some ritual.
Later, according to the results of the Heretic Inquisitor's investigation, the ritual was none other than a Great Demon Descent Ritual,
and it seemed they planned to use everyone who participated in the Hunting Festival as the necessary sacrifices for the descent of Belphegor.
The Demon Archbishop had been contacting many people and wearing the face of a professor to use the Power of Dominion on them,
but it is presumed that he stopped midway because of Emy and Liber, on whom his Authority did not work.
Even so, since it was a Great Demon Descent Ritual, thorough preparations must have been necessary. But had he succeeded in dominating everyone who participated in the Hunting Festival with the Power of Dominion, hell would have descended upon the Academy by the time the Festival ended.
The Inquisitor was appalled at the horrific plan to make the students and faculty who were to be the sacrifices prepare the ritual themselves and then take their own lives.
——————————————
After the hurried conclusion of the Hunting Festival, the Academy did not change drastically from before.
The Black Forest was far from the Academy buildings, so the students enjoying the festival at the Academy never even knew what had happened,
and even the students who actually participated did not remember being affected by the Power of Dominion, so they had no idea what they had almost gone through.
Very few among the students knew the whole truth about the incident.
The Academy had a one-week period to settle the matter.
That was because the people who had lost consciousness and been controlled by the Authority complained of headaches, the Black Forest had become a mess, and an investigation into the incident, including the professor who had been sacrificed and killed, had to be conducted.
As for Casey, who suffered the greatest injuries excluding the deceased...
"Mister, how long are you going to stay here?"
She had fully recovered overnight and was now clinging to me.
"Ugh, it's hot, what are you doing?"
I pushed her away slightly in disgust, but she had no intention of letting go at all.
She had been sulking ever since we reunited at the Academy, and it seemed it all melted away the moment she recovered.
"You used to do it so well for me when I was little..."
"That was when you were a little kid starved for love and attention... You hate it when I call you a little kid, but then you ask to do this."
"I'm still a little kid starved for love and attention, so stay like this a bit longer."
When I had first taken Casey in, I hugged her often, as my teacher advised.
He said that since Casey, right after being rescued from the facility, was like a doll missing something essential as a person, I should hug her often so she could feel body heat and the sound of a heartbeat.
He said something about filling her empty heart with love being the best, and that letting her hear a heartbeat was the most effective method for that.
After she grew up to a certain point, we hardly did it anymore, but it seemed she suddenly felt like doing it.
"Ah~ ah~ my head... isn't there somewhere to lean...?"
When I said something, she suddenly clutched her once-injured head and staggered, pretending to be dizzy.
Even though I knew she had completely recovered, she was being slick about it.
"The tiny one, only her petty tricks have increased."
"Oh, I learned it by watching you, Mister."
"When did I ever do something like that??"
I wondered why she was suddenly acting like this, but it was true that I had neglected her for the past few years.
No matter that Casey had become an adult, the time she spent with me in her life was extremely short.
It would be unreasonable to say that just a few short years together was enough.
Since she was acting cute, which she hadn't done before, it seemed right to just accept it quietly.
"Fine, go ahead and keep doing it then."
"I was going to even if you didn't say that."
"You just can't let anyone else have the last word..."
Giving up, I sat on a bench near the Academy's main gate just like that and stroked Casey's head the way I used to.
Normally, this would be the time when quite a few students would be walking around, but now, with all grades on break, it was very quiet.
The only thing visible was a few students occasionally going for walks outside.
I hadn't come out just to hang out with Casey; we had met separately because of work matters.
"About what happened in the Black Forest, I sent a report to the Director, and he said I might have to go there for an investigation."
"You're talking about the Bishop being dead, right?"
"If you just say Bishop, it sounds like I killed someone from the Church."
"But Demon Archbishop is such a long word."
I had glossed over the first two incidents by just sending reports, but as expected, with the third incident occurring in such a short period, there was a lot of talk on their end as well.
Originally, it would have just ended with a brief field investigation, but this time they said I needed to come up for once.
They said the Church's request was also a big factor this time.
The first time was a Great Demon that descended, the second was a never-before-seen type of Magically Infected Human, the third was a Demon Archbishop—
all of them are core assets of the Demon Church that the Church is searching for with fire in their eyes.
In a situation where we are even borrowing high-performance Holy Relics, it is only right to cooperate with this level of investigation.
"Mister, those people have to come here to investigate anyway... wouldn't it be more efficient to just say we'll do it here?"
"It would look very good to everyone if the investigator came and summoned us."
What would the other students think if they saw us being taken aside separately regarding that incident?
The distance from the Academy to the capital was quite far, but since distance meant nothing to me anyway, I had suggested we meet in the capital.
Still, the fortunate thing was that I had reached an agreement with the Director that only Casey and I would go.
When I told him that questioning other students wouldn't yield any meaningful results, he understood.
Casey was going as a knight, and I was going as a Shadow, so we had to wear armor.
As luck would have it, the Academy was on break from lectures anyway, so we decided to go and come back quickly.
"...Did you tell the people here that you were going?"
"I have to tell them now."
But how should I even say this... If I said I was going to the capital to be investigated as an important reference person for this incident, they'd be incredibly worried...?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
After sending Casey back and returning to my dormitory room, I took a piece of parchment out from my chest.
The parchment, stamped with the seal of the Imperial Knights, had already been opened to see the contents, so it slid open without any particular force needed.
Inside was written what I had just told Casey, and after that, there was something a bit different.
"...Those bastards are getting full of themselves."
The Demon Church's actions were strange.
Large-scale terror attacks were happening at the Academy to an extremely abnormal degree.
Continuous terror attacks against the Academy on this scale were not the schemes of individuals acting alone.
It had pretty much been decided by the heads of these bastards.
Being invaded about three times in two months made me wonder if this was right, but the Academy was one of the most heavily guarded places in the Empire.
To avoid being caught for the first terror attack, personnel incapable of combat had held their breath for a long period, risking their lives beneath the Black Forest and the dungeons to prepare the ritual.
The second terror attack involved turning a master from a neighboring country into a Magically Infected Human so as not to arouse any suspicion at all.
And this... third terror attack was when the Demon Archbishop personally entered the Black Forest, which the Academy could not manage, and caused the incident.
He infiltrated, targeting the moment most of the Academy's forces were concentrated in the Black Forest, and used his Authority.
It was an uncanny move, as if they knew every detail of the Hunting Festival's progress—something that had never been leaked outside the Academy, isolated as it was in the sea.
It was certain that there was an informant.
"During the first terror attack too, there were lackeys of the Demon Church hiding who were no different from ordinary people."
Besides professors and instructors, there were quite a lot of people working at the Academy.
Among them were the baristas at the cafe, the owner of the general store, the doctors at the hospital, and the cooks at the dining hall.
Golems handled most of the simple labor tasks, but people did everything that couldn't be solved by them.
There was a high possibility that a Demon Church lackey was still hiding among them.
Rooting out ordinary believers who weren't even Magically Infected Humans but just believed in the Demon Church was difficult.
"Do they still think this place is easy pickings?"
But I wasn't too concerned about the informant matter.
Anyway, the information accessible to ordinary believers, who weren't even Magically Infected Humans, was extremely limited, and since their large-scale plans had been thwarted twice, I figured they would lie low for a bit.
The Demon Church's situation wasn't good enough for them to expand their influence recklessly, making it hard to carry out these large-scale plans carelessly.
For the Demon Church, which operated strictly as a cell organization, planning and failing a scheme of this scale was akin to having one of the pillars of a specific Great Demon's faction pulled out, one by one.
Belphegor's organization, which had failed two of these series of incidents, had even lost a Bishop, so they were probably in shambles around now.
The Great Demons didn't have a good relationship with each other anyway, and I figured that if they kept getting completely screwed after ramming their heads in a few times, they would at least stop doing it at the Academy to preserve their barely-maintained power.
But it seemed it still wasn't enough for them.
If so, there was no choice but to engrave it definitively into them.
Just who they were making an enemy of.
"If you want, I'll dance with swords for you for the first time in a while."
It was time to return to the position of 'hunting' demons after a long absence.