Chapter 85
Chapter 85
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 85
Chapter Title: The Last Supper? (2)
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“Are you insane? You’re throwing away the supply crates just like that?”
Dillon didn’t respond to my words.
Instead, he simply shrugged.
As I grabbed the coat I’d hung by the door for outings and prepared to follow him out, Theodore trailed right behind me.
“You two stay inside. This is Wooden Cross business—no need for you to get involved.”
“Whether it’s Wooden Cross or Thorn Crown, it’s getting hard to pretend we didn’t see what’s already happened.”
I really wished Theodore wouldn’t get tangled up in this.
Truth be told, the way we kept getting drawn into this felt like some elaborate trap.
‘No, it’s definitely a trap.’
Why had Yvon chosen to nest at Aegis Academy of all places?
What made us so appealing to his existence?
One predictable thing was that the future where we all died—the one barreling toward us—was no accident, but a meticulously prepared catastrophe.
“Fine, come along then. Just think twice before using any magic.”
“Yes.”
Even as he said that, Theodore smoothly slipped a piece of chalk into his pocket.
I wondered whether the spells he had memorized for self-defense would be more lethal against humans, or if the ones he freshly drew and cast with that chalk would be deadlier. But this wasn’t the moment to ask such things calmly.
“Arthur, you stay here.”
Arthur, who had been casually buckling on his sword belt as if it were the most natural thing, froze.
“I think two people would be better.”
“You’d draw too much attention.”
Arthur predictably looked dissatisfied with Theodore’s response, but I agreed with him.
“Go on in.”
Surprisingly, Arthur meekly obeyed Theodore, unbuckled his sword belt, and sat on the sofa with his legs crossed.
“Watch Cookie while we’re gone.”
“……”
Cookie, who had been excitedly thinking he was coming along, let out a pitiful whine.
I wasn’t sure if it suited a puppy, but he looked positively crestfallen, his face all scrunched up.
“Ready? Let’s go. Sigh, this really feels like it’s shaving years off my life.”
Dillon reached to scratch the back of his head like always, but touched the spot that had been beaten bloody last night and winced, shoulders hunching.
He seemed a bit foolish, but I figured he had some conviction strong enough to refuse infirmary treatment.
“Hey! What the hell do you all think you’re doing?”
The moment Theodore and I stepped out the door, Dillon bellowed at the cadets hurling supply crates toward the first-floor entrance.
Beyond the initial two groups, several more had already tossed theirs, leaving the entrance littered with shattered wooden crate fragments, dented cans, and food spilling out everywhere.
“Have you all lost your minds after just one week of hunger?”
Dillon dashed over and snatched a supply crate just as it left the hands of Annie Drew Carpenter from across the hall—probably a spear arts major.
“Damn it, Dillon! Don’t interfere. We have to throw this out! We don’t know what’s in it…”
“Of course there’s something in it—enough food to last you and your roommates a week! What the hell’s wrong with you all? Why are you doing this?”
Dillon’s nerves were already frayed from the recent bizarre, hard-to-control incidents.
Of course, getting beaten badly by an acquaintance last night probably didn’t help.
Either way, the key point was that Dillon had been putting up with these eccentric Wooden Cross folks just as much as I had.
“Dillon.”
I placed a hand on Dillon’s shoulder as he started to yell again.
Could he calm down in this situation?
No, probably not.
The only certainty was that Dillon needed someone to hold him back before he crossed a line.
“Fine. Hey, you lot! Throw those, and you’ll get demerits in the order you’re caught. Remember, there’s still a week left in the semester. You could get held back anytime.”
At Dillon’s stern warning, a few cadets who’d been eyeing us warily shut their doors and retreated inside.
Watching them, I realized this bizarre idea of chucking supply crates out the door hadn’t come from just one or two people.
Their reasons for getting excited or panicking might differ, but the way they expressed it was eerily similar.
Cadets as fickle as a storm, destructive crowd psychology bursting forth.
‘It’s getting harder to control.’
That’s why, on one hand, I couldn’t shake the thought.
Machina Christie had been right.
As Machina said, if everyone’s anger had been directed at me, this crowd psychology would have stayed within manageable bounds.
If one person became the sacrifice, the group stayed calm.
But with no sacrifice decided, the fear, disgust, and rage bubbling up from the group festered inward, eventually exploding in unpredictable directions—
“Arma Cruise.”
—bursting out…
That’s when Theodore’s voice reached me.
“Oh, Theo. What’s up?”
“We were talking about heading to Dana Wood’s.”
“Right, we should check on Cadet Wood’s condition first.”
Detective games weren’t my thing, but among people foaming at the mouth and heaving while tossing food crates, I was probably the closest thing to a detective.
Dillon had already rolled up his sleeves and started down the stairs to the first floor.
I hurried after him.
“Watch your step—the floor’s a mess.”
The entrance already looked like a war zone from the crate debris.
I was even worried about thorns slipping between my shoes.
Dillon irritably shook his feet side to side, piling the debris in the center, then passed through the main entrance into the hallway toward Dana Wood’s room.
—Bang bang bang.
“Dana Wood!”
—Ooooh urk…
“Hey, open this door.”
—Wrarararak!
‘Is this really a human sound?’
It was like raw sewage gushing from a gutter on a stormy day.
Dillon didn’t wait any longer. He grabbed his shoe and smashed the door handle right off.
Proving that the most efficient way to unlock a door was to break the lock entirely.
“Dana Wood! We’re coming in!”
“Oooeeek! If you come in, I’ll kill you—weeek!”
“Not the time to worry about pride, is it?”
“You die, I die—uwheek!”
I grabbed Dillon, who looked ready to charge into the shower room, and dragged him back outside.
Dana Wood was still coherent enough to respond and was vehemently refusing Dillon’s entry, so storming in now wasn’t wise.
“…Theodore, there’s a girl named Isaiah in Dillon’s room. Could you fetch her?”
“Understood.”
By the time Theodore returned with Isaiah, Dana Wood’s retching had somewhat subsided.
“If she keeps puking like that, she’ll suffocate. Or dehydration might hit first.”
“We’ll get her to the infirmary before that.”
Dillon said so, but outside the building was already under the storm’s onslaught.
Getting Dana Wood to the infirmary would require carrying her, and the downpour overwhelming the drains made it far from easy.
“Isaiah, could you go in and collect the food Dana Wood ate?”
“Got it.”
It was an unexpected dirty job, but Isaiah showed no hesitation.
She even seemed to enjoy being entrusted with it.
“Dana—did you eat the food in here?”
“Is that Isaiah Allison? Kueeek! Oook!”
“Yeah, Isaiah Allison, instrumental music major. So, did you eat the food in this box? Where’s the rest?”
“Oook! On the fire—”
“Fireplace hearth, got it.”
Isaiah slipped on some white cotton gloves from who-knows-where and entered Dana Wood’s room.
Now that the door was open, I could finally see inside—and it was eerie.
The large garden-facing window was completely blocked with papers and cloths scribbled with strange symbols.
The nicely wallpapered walls were entirely hidden by them.
The only light source was the flames leaping from the fireplace inside, not the window.
‘Living locked in darkness. No wonder she’s sick.’
I naturally recalled the bright interior of the sanatorium from my childhood and its all-white patient rooms.
Isaiah scanned the dim room, found a small wooden tray, then retrieved a small pot from the makeshift hearth over the fireplace, along with white bread and jerky with packaging removed from the food crate, and piled them on.
“This is it. But it looks totally fine. Dana Wood puking her guts out is the suspicious part!”
“No, that’s not acting…”
I hadn’t seen the disaster site myself, but no performance could match that intensity and realism.
“But Isaiah’s right too. The food looks perfectly fine on the surface.”
Dana Wood had eaten dinner and started vomiting like mad, and the cadets who saw it started yelling about poisoning and dumped all their new rations in the entrance.
Already on edge from days of hunger, they were ripe for crowd psychology.
I slowly surveyed Dana Wood’s room.
‘Obsessed with sorcery.’
Just like the entrance blockade a few days ago, the room brimmed with sorcery circles and suspicious tools to the point of madness.
Crudely drawn circles on colored papers, silver star-crosses, stakes, knives, string-woven dolls, and more…
I poked Theodore’s side as he impassively scanned the interior.
“What do those sorcery circles look like to you?”
“Inverted protective charms. All of them.”
“Inverted again?”
“We should look for misrecorded magic theory books or sorcery tomes.”
This time, Dana Wood’s inverted protective charms had probably backfired.
Theodore stood before the largest paper blocking the window, pulled out his chalk.
—Tap, tack, tap.
And began correcting the sorcery circle on it without hesitation.
“W-Wait, messing with it like that—”
“This is close enough to an actual magic circle to have real power. Better to fix them. Though none are strong enough to cause puking like that directly.”
Like an autoscribe designed to draw circles, Theodore etched the pattern swiftly and flawlessly, placed the final dot, and turned.
All magic circles repeated a fixed halo-like pattern.
For a moment, it felt like a halo glowed behind his head as he turned.
Maybe that’s what a true saint looked like.
I stared for a bit, then replied.
“Yeah, it’s not the sorcery circles.”
I carefully examined the utensils Dana Wood had laid out for her meal.
The knife and fork stained with food, the table runner soiled from the overturned plate, and the water in the glass faintly cloudy.