A Devil Lives in the Academy. (2)
Peace... had not exactly reigned at the Academy of late, and a chill wind blew through its halls that was unlike anything the school had seen before.
A rumor had begun to circulate — one that could hardly have been avoided.
The rumor that the Imperial Inspectorate was dispatching an inspector to the Academy.
And it made sense, too.
Between the string of murders that had shaken the Imperial Capital in recent weeks and the string of ugly incidents that had unfolded within the Academy itself, word had come down from the Palace that His Majesty the Emperor was displeased.
So while it arrived as a rumor, it was not the sort of thing that would die as one.
The Imperial household was not in the habit of telling lies that didn't even land just to celebrate a April Fools' Day long past.
And so I spat out,
"Oh, for fuck's sake."
Because it was, in fact, fuck's sake.
Even at my reaction, Niger addressed me with perfect calm.
[...Please refrain from profanity.]
The situation is this dire, and he's telling me to watch my mouth.
Is that what they call professional killer composure? Is that the thing?
The attitude of a madman who never panics, never rushes, no matter the circumstances — who only ever gets excited when it's time to actually murder someone — was honestly kind of admirable.
[And please stop with the strange fantasies while you're at it.]
"No, but seriously, Professor Niger. They're sending an inspector from the Imperial Inspectorate. Aren't we screwed?"
The Imperial Inspectorate was not something you could dismiss as a strange fantasy.
A special agency that carved out every filthy corner of the Empire — an organization whose mercilessness drew comparisons to the Heresy Inquisitors of the Church of Elohim.
When an outfit like that sent people to the Academy, it didn't mean they were worried about our safety. It meant they intended to scrub out the stench wafting off this place.
And by all rights, the inspector shouldn't be arriving yet.
Showing up this early had to be because of the two incidents I'd involved myself in.
The death of the Academy terrorists, and the deaths of Professor Henry and two other professors this time around.
In the original story, none of them had died the moment they were caught.
They'd suffered in the detention camp until well into the later stages of the plot, and it was only when the mass breakout from the High Security Prison occurred that Niger's mace came down on their skulls.
And if I wanted to keep going — they were probably at least a little suspicious of the recent serial killings of the prostitution ring that had rocked the Capital, and the mass slaughter of the Street of Liberty criminals too.
"Maybe I should've killed the far-off ones first, damn it."
I was going to kill them all anyway, so last time I did it in the Capital — next time, maybe I should've done it in a satellite city, then hopped over to the city next door, and so on.
Working my way around the map, executing criminals district by district. That's how it should've gone, apparently.
No, wait. Mister Professional Serial Killer.
When I told you to only kill the ones nearby, you were supposed to stop me. What did you do instead? Nothing.
As I was thinking this, I heard Niger sigh.
Even he seemed to find repeating himself tiresome — his voice carried an unfamiliar note of annoyance.
[You are not screwed, so kindly break the habit of cursing at the first sign of trouble. Please.]
I'm about to lose my mind over here and you're just sitting there in perfect serenity.
"...If it comes down to it, the moment we get captured and tortured, I'm swapping us out immediately."
[By all means, do as you please. I can handle a little torture, so kindly stop whining. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?]
He shot me down like it was nothing at all.
He said it so flatly — like a man who'd actually been tortured before.
"Oh..."
Wait, what?
He's been tortured before?
Well, he is a professional serial killer. He really is built different.
Actually, come to think of it —
Back on the Street of Liberty, I did watch him grin like an idiot with knives buried all over his body. Surviving torture didn't seem all that implausible for him.
Just remembering that moment made me...
"You really are a lunatic, no two ways about it..."
[...?]
"Ah. Sorry."
[Since you feel so strongly about it, if we're ever captured, you may receive the torture personally.]
Oh no.
I've gone and said the one thing I should never have said.
The inspector had arrived.
A woman in the uniform of an Imperial official had entered the Academy and was now facing off against the Chairman.
Cold sweat ran down the Chairman's cheeks.
"Haha, welcome, welcome. Was your journey not too taxing?"
"No, not particularly. It was right in front of me, after all."
"Haha, quite true, quite true. Ahem... would you care for some tea, then?"
Under Imperial law, the Chairman of the Imperial Academy technically outranked her — and yet the man wore an expression of pure unease.
He swallowed a sigh.
Because the moment he let one out, he was certain he'd be listening to the Chairman's formal apology.
Why was a man of his considerable age acting like this?
I answered in a comfortable, reassuring tone, as if to put him at ease.
"...You needn't be so tense. I haven't come to hold you accountable. The Inspector General simply dispatched me out of concern for the Academy's safety."
"Haha... hoo-ah... That is a mercy, truly. With so many incidents cropping up inside the Academy lately, I couldn't help feeling as though I'd committed some terrible crime."
Well, if that counted as a crime, it was a crime all right.
The crime of sitting in the Chairman's chair while dangers ran rampant through his Academy, doing nothing effective about any of them.
But for the same reason as before, I swallowed the words.
Grinding the Chairman down would produce nothing but the tears of a doddering old man, at the end of the day.
"So I simply intend to walk the Academy's grounds and keep watch so that no new dangers arise. Which brings me to a question."
"Yes, of course, Inspector. Please, speak."
I held the Chairman's gaze steadily.
"Is there anyone within the Academy who strikes you as suspicious? If someone's behavior has changed, or seems off in any way, I would like to put them under concentrated surveillance."
"Uh... hm."
Look, I had no intention of staying at this Academy long anyway. Would it kill him to recommend one person I could haul off as a rough approximation?
And to my quiet hope, the Chairman rose to the occasion, in his way.
"There are no suspicious individuals, but if you mean a change in behavior... Professor Niger has begun teaching his students with a passion quite unlike his usual self. A wonderful development, haha!"
"Hmm. I see. I'll make note of that."
Niger Caritas.
Priest of the Elohim Order, and professor of Sacred Arts at the Academy.
And.
Mace wielder.
I opened the door of the lecture hall.
"Greetings, Brothers and Sisters. I am Niger Caritas...?"
Or at least, I tried to offer my usual greeting.
But the tail end of my sentence rose without my permission, and my head tilted slightly to the side, because —
"Yes. A pleasure, Professor Niger Caritas. I am Scarlett Brahe, the inspector newly assigned to the Academy. Would you mind if I observed your lecture?"
— the woman in the Inspectorate uniform, Scarlett Brahe, had just bowed her head toward me.
Still, one could hardly afford to look nervous as an innocent subject of the Empire, so I summoned a smile as naturally as I could.
"Ah. Yes, welcome, Inspector. You needn't ask — please, take any seat you like."
I bowed my head in return and headed for the podium.
And she, with unhurried steps, made her way to the empty seat beside Bellatrix.
"It's been a while, my lady."
"...Has it."
Bellatrix's eyes lingered on her for a moment — then swung around and bored furiously into me.
Worried and flabbergasted in equal measure, her gaze was a genuine cauldron of emotions.
So if I dared to guess what was going on inside Bellatrix's head, it would be something along these lines:
'What on earth did you do this time, Professor, to earn yourself surveillance from the Deputy Director of the Imperial Inspectorate herself?'
But, well.
I hadn't expected her to come straight for me first thing, either.
In any case, the lecture had to go on.
It wasn't as though I could skip class just because an inspector was watching, and with exams approaching, there was plenty to cover.
Because.
Professor Niger had declared that if things continued as they were, the exam difficulty would be far too brutal — and that for the students' sake, he needed to go through the exam-relevant circuits with them.
He said that if the exam were left as written, everyone except Bellatrix would stall on the very first question.
Which struck me as unfair. Our students didn't seem that stupid to me.
"I intend to set a divine spell applying this circuit as a question on the final exam, so I trust you will all commit it firmly to memory."
""Oooh.""
Maybe it was because I'd just pointed out a circuit that would appear on the test, but a murmur of gratitude-laced awe rippled through the hall.
"Hey, hey... now is not the time to be impressed, you idiot. That means the question's going to be hard enough to fail even though he told us everything."
"...Ah, right. We're simply fucked."
I could hear the students whispering, glancing at me with naked anxiety.
I ignored those looks as best I could and drew the next circuit.
"The next circuit. In its original form, the Curse Dispelling circuit is a circle containing a dispelling prayer inscribed within it."
Divine concentration for the dispelling.
Reinforced regenerative power.
Curse-attribute focusing.
The standard Curse Dispelling spell worked by packing in a whole constellation of circuits like these to drive the curse out.
"That said, this is rather difficult. Partly because dispelling itself is a high-order divine spell, but also because the method has stagnated — it remains trapped in the old ways, with no progress made in centuries."
The fact was that almost no black mages or evil spirits made use of curses anymore, in the present day.
Back when the Church of Elohim was still rising, attacks from such beings had been commonplace — but as the Order's power steadily grew and the strength of the wicked waned, the spells built to counter them declined along with them.
My thinking, however, was different.
As the story moved into its later stages, black mages and evil spirits would inevitably resurface. Curse Dispelling was a spell we would sorely need — and this convoluted thing, a headache even for me to cast, needed streamlining.
"So strip out every circuit this spell doesn't need. This one — and this circuit too. Neither is necessary."
I dismantled the circuit.
Reinforced regenerative power.
Useless.
Any healing could be handled afterward simply by casting a restoration spell.
I pulled out everything related to bodily protection as well.
Presumably included to guard against the backlash of dispelling — but so what if your body took a little damage?
Give a little ailment with the cure, as they say. If a joint or two popped out of place, you just cast a healing spell over it afterward.
Healing spells, unlike dispelling, had never stopped evolving, after all.
With that in mind, I tore down every auxiliary circuit cluttering the design, and began reassembling it from scratch.
"The focus is dispelling the curse, and nothing else. For a man dying of a curse this very moment, the only thing he needs is the divinity to drive it out."
I stretched the curse-attribute circuit long, and threaded the divine binding circuits through it at intervals.
Concentration, pure and single-minded, on nothing but driving out the curse.
"And with that, you arrive at this — a circuit that looks almost absurdly simple. Is this clear so far? Because I intend to put this exact circuit on the exam."
"""...."""
The students answered with silence.
I heard Bellatrix sigh, and beside her, Scarlett tilted her head.
What? Why?
Wasn't this massively simpler than before?
As I was puzzling over the same question, Niger's voice drifted up.
[...Brother. Your intentions are undoubtedly good — but do you happen to remember the name of this course?]
Uh, hm.
Introduction to Sacred Arts, sir.
Oh.
Right.
Lol.