Glass Marble
The moment school ended and I finished escorting Yulia to the specialized class, I left campus at once.
“Whew… the sunlight…”
Fortunately the sky hung heavy with dark clouds, so the sun never quite broke through. I hadn’t brought a parasol; without that cover I might have been trapped at school until nightfall. As it was, I was free to go.
I flagged a taxi near the gates and rode straight to the Wittelsbach family manor.
“Oh? Back already? Where’s Lady Yulia?”
“Sh-she’s feeling a little under the weather today.”
“Ah, first day of the new term—nerves, maybe? All right. You’re not about to collapse or anything, are you?”
“Nothing like that. I just wanted to come home early and rest a bit.”
“Got it. Tell me if anything comes up.”
After a brief exchange with the maid I’d grown close to over the years of living in the manor, I climbed the stairs to my room.
There, the various electronic devices I’d bought with years of accumulated bonuses and performance pay filled every available surface. The familiar scent of the place settled my mind and body at once. I powered on the computer tower.
“Laplace, ready?”
Preparations were completed the moment contact was received via mobile. The following is a compiled document of incidents and related cases concerning District US-TK-07.
True to an artificial intelligence that accelerates the more it develops, Laplace had achieved growth so vast over the past few years it bordered on the absurd. Document organization that had once been clumsy, every secretarial duty, and the overall quality of conversational AI had all leapt forward; its hacking capability, too, had advanced so far that comparison with its former self was meaningless.
When I first reincarnated into this world, Laplace possessed a processing power of one hundred and produced results of two hundred. Now it held hacking ability that approached a thousand—perhaps even ten thousand—essentially brushing the singularity.
“So, what’s your take?”
Similarity between the individual described by the client and the recent incident in District US-TK-07 is estimated at 85.12% or higher. Next is a photograph of a woman secured from roadside CCTV one hour prior to the subsequent incident.
Barely four kilometers from the blast epicenter—far too precise a location to dismiss as coincidence. And the woman captured on the low-resolution footage bore a striking resemblance to the description the client had given.
The resolution’s a shame, but the blonde hair is clear enough. Weapon looks like a lance…
If you continue watching the subsequent footage, you will observe that she appears to be pursued. The number of pursuers ranges from a minimum of several dozen to several hundred, with the possibility of even greater numbers not ruled out. Moreover, given that individual members possess unique abilities, the proportion of villains is estimated at no less than 30%. Among criminal organizations capable of mobilizing such forces, only two meet even the minimum criteria.
One was Behemoth, among the supreme ruling powers of the underworld. The other was Glare, which had been lying low ever since its defeat in battle against Leviathan.
One of those two almost certainly knew the full story behind this incident.
Should I ask Yekaterina…?
Leviathan, too, ranked among the underworld’s highest powers; every scrap of information eventually flowed its way. If I tapped the intelligence channels under Yekaterina’s control, I might at least snag one or two usable leads.
In that instant an idea sparked.
“Search the mercenaries registered with Leviathan for any drone units that can deploy immediately. Preference for ones already as close as possible to the incident site.”
Deploying mercenaries without prior negotiation may incur an average surcharge of 50–100%.
“We’ve got money to spare.”
Throwing in a drone unit would almost certainly make the cost outweigh the gain—but what choice did I have? Nothing else promised results this certain or this effective.
Less than two hours later, the contracted drone unit lifted off toward the skies above District US-TK-07.
While Seo-hyun unleashed the drone unit, seized the local network, and raised every kind of hell, Yulia sat through the specialized class’s lecture.
Haaah… so boring…
The specialized class was undeniably useful. As befit a middle school ranked among the elite, the teachers were excellent and the students threw themselves into the lessons with real passion.
Yet Yulia still felt little excitement—and the reason was none other than Seo-hyun.
It’s all stuff Seo-hyun already taught me… I expected more from a prestigious school…
Until now Yulia had always believed she possessed little talent for study. Looking at her siblings in the family, they had already been learning academy-level subjects in elementary school; Seo-hyun in particular, despite never having an environment that allowed her to focus solely on academics, still held knowledge that never fell short of any official assistant’s.
Surrounded by such people, Yulia tended to undervalue herself even when her own academic achievements outstripped those of her peers.
“I say, student—are you finding my class rather uninteresting?”
“Y-yes? I mean—no!”
“You’ve been wearing a thoroughly bored expression for some time now.”
“I-I’m sorry, Teacher.”
“Hmm…”
The middle-aged man considered for a moment, then began writing something new on the blackboard.
“First day and all—perhaps nonstop lecturing isn’t the best approach. Wouldn’t you all agree?”
“Ooooh, Teacher, you don’t mean—!”
“Free time?! Or sparring?!”
“Heh-heh. Sparring can wait until I’ve gauged your abilities a little better. Today I thought we’d try a simple game.”
So saying, the man handed each student a small glass marble.
“Teacher? What’s this?”
“As you can see, a glass marble. No reinforcement of any kind. If you pick it up and smash it against the floor, it breaks, like so—”
Crash!
“—exactly like that.”
He gathered the shattered fragments from the floor and dumped them into the trash bin.
“Your task is to break the glass marble.”
“Excuse me? Break this?”
“That’s right. Throw it, use a tool, employ your unique ability—whatever you like. Just break the marble in your hand.”
The students eyed him with open suspicion. When no further explanation came, they began murmuring among themselves.
“We really just smash it?”
“Maybe we’re not supposed to break it at all? Like, don’t blindly obey your superiors or something…”
“Or maybe it’s insanely hard and won’t break no matter what?”
Most of them, convinced some trick must be involved, hesitated to touch the marbles at all. Sensing that hours might pass without progress, the teacher prepared bait they would find irresistible.
“Since no one seems eager to go first, let’s do this: anyone who breaks their glass marble within the next ten seconds will receive a glowing remark in their student record.”
The instant the words left his mouth the students sprang into action—Yulia among them.
This’ll be easy.
She used the mana flowing through her body to read the marble’s approximate natural frequency, then slowly drew up her unique ability. As the power manifested, the air currents nearby shifted; every eye in the room turned toward her.
In that moment Yulia matched the marble’s frequency and released a shockwave from her fingertips.
Kang—!
Shards of glass exploded outward in every direction.
“Wh-what?”
Startled by the fragments flying toward her, Yulia tried to gather them with wind—yet strangely the glass refused to be affected by the breeze.
H-how is this…?
“Kyaaah—!”
“Sh-shards are flying—!”
The children flinched or squeezed their eyes shut at the sound of shattering glass. But the fragments that had been streaking toward them simply hung motionless in midair.
“Wh-what?”
“How…?”
“All right, everyone, open your eyes. You may stop breaking marbles now.”
With an invisible force the man reduced every remaining marble to dust.
“W-what on earth…?”
“An i-illusion?”
Watching their bewildered faces, the teacher singled out one student.
“You there—do you understand why I asked you to break the glass marbles?”
“I… I’m not sure, sir.”
“Then remember this well from now on. Magical beasts and villains are no different from the glass marbles you just shattered.”
The monsters and villains that had once plunged all of humanity into terror… no different from glass marbles? The students leaned in, fully attentive, and the man launched into the lesson he always gave his pupils.
“Glass marbles look fragile, yet they’re surprisingly tough. Trying to crush one with grip strength alone is no easy feat.”
“But they break if you just throw them on the floor, don’t they?”
“Exactly. Magical beasts and villains are the same. Humanity has advanced far too much compared with the past. Fire a single nuclear warhead and there are precious few beasts you can’t put down.”
Of course there existed monsters that could shrug off dozens of nuclear strikes, but those had already stepped beyond the category of mere beasts into something closer to divinity; they could be set aside for now.
“But when you broke those marbles just now—what happened?”
“The marbles… broke, didn’t they?”
“Right. Let’s compare that shattering to the suppression of a magical beast.”
Suppose a nuclear strike were used to eliminate a beast that had appeared in the middle of a city. What would become of that city?
“When a glass marble breaks, shards fly. Those shards embed themselves in our bodies and leave wounds that are hard to erase. Cleaning up the broken glass takes effort as well—that much is obvious.”
The city is destroyed. Tens of thousands of its inhabitants die, buildings collapse, and the wound left behind far exceeds any damage the beast itself might have caused.
“That is why heroes exist. We are human, and we know how to control our power.”
Not to kill as many as possible, but to save as many as possible. That was the mission heroes had to carry, the very reason they existed.
“Yet every so often there are those who forget that principle.”
As long as the beast dies, the result doesn’t matter. As long as the villain is caught, the result doesn’t matter. Excuses spat out by people who could not master their own emotions and only widened the damage.
“I do not want any of you to become such people. That is why, while I teach you here, I intend to focus not on how to grow stronger, but on how to control the strength you already possess.”
That was the conviction of a teacher whose name Yulia did not yet even know.
Feeling her chest swell, she engraved every word deep into her heart.
Coming to school… was the right choice.
When she returned to the manor, she would have to tell Seo-hyun all about it.