Upheaval
Before I knew it, only a week remained until the midterm exams. It was around this time that the students all started losing their minds.
"You know Yuha's been in a bad mood lately?"
The elf, apparently a little off her rocker herself, finally broke the ice and struck up a conversation with me — something she'd been awkwardly avoiding for a while.
How should I put it? We weren't exactly close friends, but we'd reached the point where we could at least talk to each other.
Ever since we came back from the dungeon field trip, she'd been gradually loosening up around me, and now we were here.
Looks like she cleared up that misunderstanding with her sister.
From my end, there were a lot of things that would've been awkward to bring up, so it was a genuine relief.
It was obvious we'd all keep hanging out together with Cheon Yuha in the middle, and I couldn't exactly keep up a vow of silence forever.
But while things with Elenor had improved, something had gone a little wrong on Cheon Yuha's side.
It wasn't that our relationship had gotten worse.
We still ate lunch together like always, still went out and hung around together.
On the surface, everything looked perfectly normal.
But from the perspective of someone close to her, unsettling little things had started piling up, one by one.
Elenor Andersen rested her chin on her hands and murmured with a grave expression.
"Yuha's stopped eating snacks."
"What?"
"During class, at home too — other than lunch and dinner, she won't touch anything."
…Oh, that was serious.
Come to think of it, she used to eat quite a lot between meals.
It wasn't like a warrior of her caliber would be watching her figure, so something must have shifted in her heart. And that, too, seemed to trace back to the Training Dungeon.
"Haha, you really are remarkable."
After clearing every trial, Cheon Yuha and I had run into each other, just the two of us, in the dungeon plaza.
She'd merely been lost in thought for a moment. She recovered quickly enough and offered her congratulations with all her usual hearty bravado.
But the face she made while saying it was impossible to hide — she looked utterly shattered.
And since then, she'd never once asked me for a sparring match again. So whatever the cause, it was almost certainly me.
After all, the duel-obsessed Cheon Yuha would never have gone this quiet without a reason.
Cheon Yuha… lost her spirit? Her?
The very Gwangcheonma herself?
There were parts I found baffling, to be sure, but one thing was clear: Cheon Yuha had changed. She didn't touch her snacks anymore, never mentioned sparring, and lately she'd been spacing out in class more and more often.
Could she actually be depressed?
As her friend — and the instigator of the whole thing — I found myself worrying for no particular reason.
Don't tell me the future is about to change again.
A world where Cheon Yuha fell into despair? My head was already starting to spin just thinking about it.
The changes were already enormous. How much bigger a butterfly effect could they set off from here?
With the exams right around the corner, I had far too much on my mind for no good reason.
And this despite the fact that I'd been diligently preparing. I'd even caught myself thinking absurd things — like wishing a bomb would drop on the school tomorrow, and that only I could see the answer key.
That was the kind of nonsense my brain had started producing.
"Ah, I really hope I don't lose it somewhere."
The research lab of the Magic Tower, in the Witchcraft Quarter.
Life has a funny way of turning out.
Lately, Professor Pumpkinhead had been learning the true weight of that saying firsthand.
…I nearly had a heart attack when the research wing blew up.
But thanks to the clue he'd obtained there, he was now making progress on an entirely new line of research, so it had all worked out fine in the end.
Because his workplace had gone up in smoke, he'd been forced to call in Combat Department cadets one by one, tips and all — but still.
"Once this is finished, that pocket change won't mean a thing."
Professor Pumpkinhead gazed at the crystal inside the flask, his eyes glittering.
The violet shard gleamed radiantly — a monster of a thing, its magic power so potent that it seized the gaze of any living creature that laid eyes on it.
A crystallized essence, artificially condensing the mana in the air and the primordial energy at the root of all inner force: Origin Force.
"Almost there."
Inner force and mana drives. Origin Force. And its crystal.
How many papers and byproducts could he squeeze out of the research he was running right now? Forget the research budget — if he leveraged it into a business of his own, money would come pouring in overnight.
But more than any of that, the next stage was what mattered now.
Professor Pumpkinhead gathered his focus once more.
Raise the crystal's purity and density even further, and shape it into a perfect sphere. Then he would be able to craft an Orb — the signature piece of a mage's equipment, a true instrument of the craft.
Given the purity of the mana in this fragment, merely possessing the thing might hold the potential to gaze upon the next realm of the Archmage.
"…If only this works—"
Let the world do whatever it pleased after that.
He was exactly one step away now. One more step, and he would finally slip free of the shackles that bound all living things.
"Good. Everything's in place."
The professor adjusted the laboratory's equipment to his liking and stepped outside.
Across the lab's floor stretched a formation designed to condense the ambient energy of the air, and atop it had been laid a mountain of things that themselves brimmed with power — vast quantities of elixirs, mana stones, and the like.
Watching all of that evaporate in a single instant would, admittedly, be an act of staggering waste.
No one knew.
No one knew what would happen if you gathered energy to near its containment limit within a confined space.
And no one knew what would unfold if you then compressed it to the absolute extreme.
Just a little. All I need is a little.
With that wish, the pumpkin-headed mage raised his magic power and activated the laboratory's electrodes.
Crackle-BOOM—! A high-voltage current born of his mana swept through the laboratory, and the elixirs and mana stones caught in its path began crumbling away into the air bit by bit.
The energy that should have scattered naturally back into the world was instead, in that instant, drawn together and concentrated by the magic circle etched into the floor.
And then, if a high-ranking mage were to forcibly compress that gathered energy once more—
KRAK—KRRRK—!
In the empty air, a radiant jewel was born in the span of a breath.
The artificial crystallization of energy that had existed in a state of ether.
Embracing the immense mana and possibility of that crystal, Pumpkinhead murmured quietly.
"Just a little further."
Onward to the next stage. Beyond my own limits — advance the world itself one step further.
The professor, descending into that paranoid refrain, pushed his magic power even higher — and as if heaven itself had answered his prayer, the crystal began forming faster and faster.
KRAK—KRRRRK—!
The purple radiance grew brighter and brighter.
Blinded by his own success, Professor Pumpkinhead failed to notice, even for a moment, the anomaly unfolding in the empty air above him.
The experiment carried itself onward to the next stage on its own.
KRRRK——!
The air itself cracked.
"…What?"
Only then did the professor register the anomaly — but he could no longer stop the flow of his mana.
Control was beyond him now.
And through it all, the light filling the laboratory only swelled brighter and brighter, until at last it flared into a blinding blaze.
When Saturday morning came, the members doing the volunteer work gathered at the train platform, just as promised.
Cheon Yuha had joined the previous week as well, so she knew exactly what kind of volunteering this was.
Less "serving others" and more "thoroughly assisting with an experiment," as it were.
The only reason none of us complained was that there was separate compensation involved — and the train to the Witchcraft Quarter was so absurdly luxurious.
The more elixirs, the better.
On top of the Training Dungeon reward, I'd gotten my hands on an elixir from Hestia's workshop, so I figured I could feast on my stockpile one of these days and let loose.
Good, good. My luck was looking up.
Just as I was nodding to myself, Cheon Yuha — the very girl who supposedly wouldn't touch a snack — took her seat and immediately spread open the menu tucked against the wall. Somewhere along the line, it seemed.
"I could go for a tart today, come to think of it."
And then she just blurted it out, casual as anything.
Elenor and I rolled our eyes at each other and traded a look.
Hmm. Was this to be counted as part of a meal? Or was it just a snack?
Maybe her mood's improved a little.
If it meant one sparring request a day, honestly, I'd take that over the alternative. Sure, it would be a pain in its own right — but it beat worrying about her for nothing.
So that just leaves the exams, then.
I watched Cheon Yuha pounce on the egg tart that had arrived in our cabin and thought to myself that this girl seemed to be doing better now. All that remained was to get through the midterms.
I'd prepared well enough up to this point, so things would work out somehow.
I decided to just be optimistic about it. The memory was so old it didn't come easily, but it was an exam I'd sat through in my past life too.
Yeah. It'll work out one way or another.
Exams were the sort of thing you just showed up for and did well on the day itself — today, it made more sense to focus on today's business.
[ We have arrived at the Witchcraft Quarter. Passengers disembarking, please exit the train immediately. ]
Before we knew it, we stepped off the train at our destination and headed for the Magic Tower.
"Wonder what time we'll finish today."
"In my estimation, we must finish before sundown if we wish to enjoy a proper supper!"
"Right. This look suits you best, honestly."
"…And what is that supposed to mean, Gangjun?"
We traded that sort of pointless banter as we steadily covered the distance.
Then, without warning, I looked up — and saw it.
A colossal flare of light erupting from the upper reaches of the Magic Tower.
In this district, it was such a common sight that nobody nearby batted an eye. But watching it quietly, I felt it in my gut: something was very, very wrong.
"Get down."
"What?"
Unlike Cheon Yuha, who had dropped flat instantly, I grabbed the back of the elf's head and forced it down myself.
"…Hey, what the hell do you think you're—!"
Elenor's furious shout was swallowed whole by the thunderclap that followed.
KWAGAGAGANG——!
The upper floors of the Magic Tower blew apart.