Searching for the Protagonist (2)
I'd thought about it time and again since enrolling in the academy, but I'd dismissed the possibility. The Protagonist hadn't enrolled. No matter how much the academy's environment made it impossible for me to detect his presence, how could he not be here at all?
This is ridiculous.
A game without the Protagonist? Bread Academy wasn't some character-selection musou game like OO Dynasty Warriors, where you pick from a roster. Sure, you could tweak the initial setup when starting as the Protagonist—adding this or that element—but the core stayed the same: a male student enrolling on March 1st, Continental Year 997. That never changed, no matter how many playthroughs I ran.
Endings branched wildly—from a single line of text to hidden routes galore—but the starting point was always fixed. Bread Academy had tons of divergence points, but the prologue was a straight line. Choices in the prologue barely influenced later events or endings; at best, you'd rack up a bit of early affinity with characters you'd meet soon anyway.
And yet, no such player existed here.
...Why?
The Penril who'd been quietly slumbering inside me chimed in cautiously.
"Yeah."
What even is the Protagonist? Not just some guy bombing heroines with affinity points, nor merely the one who'd eventually crush me as Regiph. He wasn't someone to eliminate for those reasons alone.
"I never dreamed the puppet Heaven sent wouldn't show up."
The Protagonist was blessed by Heaven. A vanguard dispatched by the Goddess to the mortal world, infused with her divine grace. Before the Goddess unleashed annihilation on humanity and triggered the Apocalypse, she'd breathed her blessing into him as the final gauge of mankind's hope.
In-game, angels had unique ID codes. The Protagonist's was [LASTHOPE]. Last Hope, plain as day. Like that biblical tale where a higher power floods the earth but spares the most faithful soul, commanding him to build an ark—the Goddess had pegged the Protagonist as humanity's last shot before dooming us all.
And the method she chose is just mind-bogglingly perverse from my perspective now that I'm in this world.
Heaven's angels watched this seemingly ordinary guy, debating humanity's fate based on his actions. He was their proxy for vicarious thrills. The Protagonist chased romances with academy girls, and if that pleased the Goddess and her angels, the world rolled on smoothly. If not, an angel would possess a heroine, test him directly, and upend everything.
That was another face of the Apocalypse. Most apocalypses manifested as the angels' twisted visions of doom for mankind, but the glitchy ones? Those were usually some angel or the Goddess herself throwing a tantrum to probe the Protagonist.
That's why I needed to find him.
The Protagonist is just Heaven's plaything.
If their terminal died, they'd have no choice but to descend themselves to scout the mortal realm.
As long as the heroines' minds stay stable, angels can't wield full power—they'd be stuck possessing low-mana humans or other vessels.
Once they descended into clothes, armor, giant golems, or whatever, the rest was straightforward.
"Exactly."
He was the surefire key to luring angels down one by one. And he was missing.
"No way. I checked with my own eyes, and there were no absentees."
No Protagonist among the freshman boys. If he'd been an upperclassman, his name would've rung bells by now. Nothing.
Only one variable fit.
"He probably didn't enroll."
"Scared of getting mana-drained."
Mana Drain.
"He showed up for enrollment but bailed on the academy out of fear his mana would get sucked dry. Or maybe he flunked like Unia and went straight home instead of lingering at the terminal."
Without mana drain panic, no boy would've packed up and fled the terminal in a rush.
"Nah. I'm not shielding the guy, but he's just a lucky schmuck who got the Goddess's blessing by sheer bad luck."
He was an ordinary everyman. Then the Goddess and angels forcibly juiced his talents to make him their entertainment, granting him special powers and the dream of academy life.
In other words, the Protagonist was trapped in a cosmic reality show. Clueless that every move was broadcast, he chalked his gifts up to divine miracles, chasing youth at the academy while training to fight the world's threats. The Goddess and angels were the audience, occasionally "descending" to meddle and flip the script.
"He might even be dead by now."
"From Heaven's view, it'd be absurd. They pumped him full of good looks, a killer body, insane mana—all to let him charm pretty academy girls. And he ghosts enrollment?"
Penril pondered deeply for a moment.
"......"
"Fair point, for now."
No Protagonist as a freshman. That left just Heaven's vanguard, carrying those settings but not tied to Bread Academy.
"If he's leveraging those talents somehow..."
"Could be."
Who knew Heaven's tastes? Still.
"If their pervs decided to oppose the academy, they might nudge him toward them—spark a war by forming some anti-human cult."
Pure speculation, but high odds.
"The gumiho spreading mana drain, the succubus queen, countless demons worldwide."
"Yeah, that's probably the most likely. Hell, it might be exactly that."
Binyu Group. Gone from sight since I joined the academy, but they'd resurface during field exercises. The academy's enemies, seething with endless grudge. They weaponized mana drain—and to them, the Protagonist was an endless fountain of mana, a priceless gem.
"Yep."
Penril sent mana flowing downward from me.
Special ability: Endless stamina under moonlight.
"Don't call it infinite libido so bluntly—make it 'infinite vitality' or whatever?"
A special power the Protagonist had—and I did too. Mana vitalization. Under moonlight at night, I could unleash boundless vitality without tiring. Unless my mind gave out first, I could go all day from sunset to the next, fueled by that nocturnal charge.
Back in the demon realm, I'd once run a week-long no-sleep relay orgy against the seven dukes.
The Protagonist was the same.
Not for nothing did the original story feature that 1:17 scene.
His vitality overflowed by the same principle. But where mine stemmed from mana, his came from holy power—angelic essence, basically.
I'll hunt him down and kill him, no matter what.
If he knocked up some woman outside despite not being at the academy, that angel power would possess her, birthing more angels.
"Penril."
"Stockpile mana until the next field exercise. Time to focus on academy life for a bit."
With certainty locked in, execution was just planning. No Protagonist here? Then Bread Academy was my world.
"Daily massages for the girls, wild Cumming Dreams in their sleep."
And so.
"Pure, innocent academy undergrad by day... but in dreams..."
"?"
Whatever. Spinning wild fantasies in dreams to vent urges? Personal freedom, right?