The Stolen Research
The party had reached the end of the hidden dungeon known as the Great Magic Cave, located beneath the Academy’s underground grand library. Just as Sera had planned, they were supposed to answer the quiz posed by the ancient mage’s lingering spirit using the player’s knowledge, then claim the reward—Double Casting.
They were not supposed to slice the spirit in half with a single sword strike and then ransack the secret laboratory he left behind.
“This is…”
Yuri let out a gasp of awe mixed with admiration as she stared at the revealed mage’s laboratory beyond the collapsed dungeon wall.
Sera, who relied on the System and status windows to cast magic like some kind of fake mage, wouldn’t have understood. But to Yuri, who had studied and mastered pure magic the traditional way, this place was nothing short of a treasure vault left behind by a predecessor of genius.
“Incredible—”
Almost as if possessed, Yuri naturally stepped deeper into the laboratory. The moment Sera tried to warn her to be careful, a magic circle inside the lab glowed and fired an intercepting spell straight at her.
“Whoops.”
Boom—!
Kyle casually swatted the incoming spell out of the air with his hand, told Yuri to watch herself, and walked into the laboratory with her.
Sera, who had been staring blankly from behind, finally snapped out of it and hurried after them.
Inside the lab, Kyle found piles of documents written in ancient runes he couldn’t read.
“What does it say?”
“Just a moment.”
But Kyle didn’t need to decipher them himself. Just as the others had let him swing his sword to cut down ghosts in their place, the mages who could actually read would handle this for him.
Yuri began skimming through the research materials left by the mage. She let out a soft hum of concentration and grew completely absorbed in the documents.
“This is… I see, so that’s why… Doing it this way here makes it possible…?”
As she muttered words that made no sense to the others, mana began leaking from her body. The mana that flowed out gently wrapped around her, then started spinning.
Kyle recognized the sight of the mana whirling round and round. He immediately moved to guard her, keeping watch over their surroundings so nothing could disturb her moment of enlightenment.
“—I understand.”
Flash—!
The instant Yuri’s lips parted, the mana bursting from her body exploded outward in every direction. While Sera and Arthur, who had come running at the intense flash of light, stared at her in a daze, Yuri spread both hands and began calculating two spells at once.
“Come forth, resonance of the heavenly thunderbolt—”
“Run, run, run—”
Like a motor had been attached to her mouth, Yuri chanted two spells simultaneously. She succeeded in manifesting both of them in her hands.
Rumble—!
A spear of crackling lightning and a blazing sword of flame. Both were the hallmarks of a 3-Star mage, meaning she had now reached the Expert level—as a 3-Star mage.
“Congratulations, Yuri.”
“…Yeah.”
With a dazed look in her eyes, Yuri stared into empty space for a moment before dispelling the magic and collapsing with a thud. Kyle caught her as she fell and realized she had passed out from mana exhaustion.
The moment he hoisted her onto his back, the entire dungeon began to collapse.
“Ah, no!”
At Sera’s frantic shout, Kyle and the others were swallowed by the dungeon.
“Oww…”
“Ugh, ugh—”
When they opened their eyes, they were back in the Academy’s underground library. The fact that Yuri was still unconscious and cradled in Kyle’s arms proved that what they had just experienced wasn’t a dream.
“Nooooo…!”
Realizing they had returned to the surface, Sera dropped to the floor and began to despair. As she sat there in an OTL pose, tears dripping down her face, Kyle asked why she was crying so miserably.
“What’s wrong? Why are you so sad?”
“We didn’t get anything!”
“Yuri reached 3-Star and even learned Double Casting.”
“That’s because she read the research notes! We didn’t manage to bring back a single page of the actual materials!”
Hearing Sera’s outburst, Kyle tilted his head and asked again. They hadn’t brought back any of the research materials? What was the problem with that?
“Can’t we just have Yuri write it down again?”
“What?”
“She read it and gained enlightenment, so she must remember the general contents. She can just copy it all down.”
Sera stared at him with wide eyes, as if she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of such a simple solution. The moment she realized, she began frantically searching for a pen and paper. She wanted to have Yuri write everything down the instant she woke up, before her memory could fade or become distorted.
Almost as soon as Sera found the pen and paper, Yuri’s eyes fluttered open at the perfect—yet precarious—moment. She stared blankly into space.
“Where…”
“Yuri! Sorry to bother you the second you wake up, but write this down first!”
“…What?”
Still half-asleep, Yuri glared at Sera, who was shoving paper and a pen at her while shouting. But once she understood what was being asked, she immediately began scribbling away.
She looked so focused that it felt wrong to interrupt. Kyle quietly slipped away with Arthur, leaving the two of them behind.
“Honestly, it feels like they only called us here to deal with the ghosts in the first place, since we couldn’t even read the writing.”
“Yeah.”
“…That aside, I get why they needed me, but why did they bring you, Arthur?”
“W-well, I’m not sure?”
Unlike Kyle, who could mercilessly slice through ghosts or golems alike with his Aura Blade, Arthur was still just an Aura User-level cadet with a large reserve of Aura. The Academy was practically crawling with Users, so there hadn’t seemed to be any particular need to include her…
‘Does she have some secret I don’t know about?’
He couldn’t be sure. After all, he had failed to save her in the game. He had never bothered playing through a second round because it sounded like a hassle. Kyle shrugged at Arthur.
“We’ve got nothing else to do. Want to pick out some books and read while we wait?”
“…Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“You haven’t forgotten where we are, have you?”
“Hmm?”
Kyle glanced around and shrugged again, as if to say it didn’t matter where they were. An underground library filled with countless vengeful spirits, curses, sealed magic, and demons? Who cared? He was an Aura Master.
It wasn’t like the books were chained up with iron locks to prevent anyone from reading them, and the weak curses on the books in this section didn’t scare him in the slightest. When he casually opened a book, Arthur looked at him in horror—but when nothing happened, she tilted her head in confusion.
“…Why are you fine?”
“The stuff on this floor should be okay for you too, you know?”
“For me?”
“Yeah. If what’s inside you is the real deal.”
He tapped his chest meaningfully. Arthur hesitated for a moment, then picked up a random book as if deciding to trust him and sat down beside him.
Thump—!
A roar like a dragon’s cry echoed from her heart. After it passed, Arthur looked down at her perfectly fine body and glanced at him with a curious expression. Seeing that she really was unharmed, Kyle grinned as if he had expected it all along.
‘It actually worked.’
He hadn’t been completely sure it would. If she had been cursed, he could have just saved her, so he had tested it on a whim. It seemed the Dragon’s Heart had more abilities than he had realized.
With those idle thoughts in mind, they continued reading. Although they hadn’t been cursed, most of the books were advanced texts whose contents they could barely understand.
“All done.”
After who knows how much time had passed, Yuri finally succeeded in transcribing every detail of the research materials she had seen onto the paper. Only then were they able to leave the underground library.
The research materials they had brought out of the underground library were immediately taken to the headmaster. The headmaster greeted Sera like a beloved granddaughter at first, but the moment he saw the documents, his attitude changed completely—like a professor standing before a graduate student who had just submitted a doctoral thesis.
“Hmmm… How can I believe this is genuine?”
“—Like this.”
Yuri immediately performed Double Casting on two 3-Star spells at once. Watching her succeed at something even the 6-Star mage, Duke Walter, was said to be incapable of, the headmaster’s eyes sparkled with excitement.
Now that he knew the research was real, where it had come from no longer mattered. This was something that could overturn all existing magical theory and would lead the future of the academic world.
“Very well. I will personally deliver this to the Imperial Palace and the Magic Tower. It is far too dangerous for either side to monopolize.”
Having said that, the headmaster smiled brightly at Sera and Yuri.
“The two of you will receive rewards. Look forward to it. Discoveries of this magnitude do not happen often. Miss Sera may even be granted a noble title.”
“A noble title?!”
“Yes, though it would only be a single-generation peerage…”
Upon hearing the headmaster’s words, Sera began jumping for joy at the thought that she might become a noble. The rest of the party watched her with warm smiles.
Having safely handed over the research materials, the group left the headmaster’s office, thinking there would be no further problems. After all, if a Master-level mage like the headmaster held onto the documents, security would be perfect.
—Or so they thought.
The very next day, the headmaster quietly informed Kyle’s party that the research materials had been stolen.