Rewards and Consequences
I was on my way to class as usual when a professor suddenly appeared and told me the dean was looking for me, so I should head to the dean’s office right away.
“Huh?”
When I asked what to do about the lecture, he said he’d take care of it himself and that I should go to the dean’s office first.
“Alright. I’ll head over now.”
“Good. I’ll let your homeroom professor know myself.”
I gave a light bow, turned around, and made my way to the dean’s office.
Knock knock.
The crisp sound unique to wooden doors echoed down the hallway. Soon after, the dean’s aged voice came from inside the room.
“Come in.”
“Excuse me.”
I bowed politely and stepped into the dean’s office. The dean, whose face was covered in deep wrinkles, stood up from his seat to greet me.
“Plea, I’ve heard plenty about you. Having a student like you shine a light on our academy brings me more joy than I can express as dean.”
“Thank you.”
“Especially regarding that little incident during midterms—I want to express my deepest gratitude. If not for your help, it could have become far more than just a simple mishap.”
“It was nothing. As a student of this academy, it was only natural for me to do what I could for my alma mater, right?”
I flashed a bright smile, mixing in a healthy dose of flattery—okay, a lot of flattery. The dean smiled in satisfaction and continued.
“Indeed, indeed! As expected, your mindset is on another level, Plea… As dean, I must reward a student who accomplished such a great deed. Tell me anything you want. With my authority, I can grant most requests.”
“A reward?”
Huh… In the original story, there was never any reward for taking down demons…
The sudden offer caught me off guard, but only for a moment. Considering how much this demon raid incident had diverged from the original plot, it actually made sense that the dean would offer compensation.
In the original game, the demon raid was just a single C-rank demon that happened to be on the uninhabited island. It ended with the amplifier being lost by bad luck. But this time, things had escalated quite a bit. The number of attacking demons had increased from one C-rank to two—one C-rank and one B-rank (who was actually an S-rank). And instead of the amplifier being lost, I had managed to retrieve it after the demon tried to steal it.
With the incident blown up to this scale, there was no way they could brush off my contributions with simple praise or a certificate of appreciation.
“Yes. Feel free to ask for anything.”
For a second I considered asking to borrow the amplifier, but I quickly shook my head. I realized it wouldn’t help my current specs at all.
Amplifiers do increase the power of abilities, but since they’re physical objects, there’s a limit to how much they can amplify. When I took the amplifier from the demon, I immediately tested my ultimate technique—Mini Sun—on it. The result was terrible. At best, it only increased the power by about ten percent. Considering how S-rank professors’ abilities became several times stronger, that was laughably insignificant.
In other words, the amplifier was basically useless to me. It was like a white elephant.
What surprised me even more was that, among everything the dean could offer, the amplifier was the highest-tier item available. In simple terms, no matter what I took from the academy, none of it would directly help my personal growth.
Still, I wasn’t disappointed. Just because the academy’s items wouldn’t help me didn’t mean they wouldn’t help my friends—Siwoo, Aria, and Camilla.
I thought carefully about which item among those the dean could provide would best help my companions grow. As I pondered, a light bulb went off in my head. Among the items available at this point in time, one stood out as the most useful.
“Dragon Demon’s Brain Fluid…”
“Dragon Demon’s Brain Fluid? What is that?”
It was an elixir that playable characters couldn’t obtain at this stage, yet it boasted the highest performance of any item available right now. Later on, a demon known as the Second Dragon Demon would devour all of it and awaken as an S-rank demon. So if I could get my hands on it, it was absolutely worth securing.
With a hopeful feeling, I searched for a few internet articles and showed them to the dean.
“It’s an elixir made from the brain fluid of the S-rank demon called the Dragon Demon, which was jointly subjugated by the Alchemy Nation of Elimaton and the Holy Kingdom. It has an effect called Inner World Expansion and is said to help break through to the third awakening of an ability.”
“Third awakening…? Hmm… For an elixir of that caliber, it might be difficult…”
The dean began cautiously reading my expression, so I waved my hands and gave him a bit more detail.
“No, from what I’ve heard, the effect on third awakenings has only been proven in theory. After all, you know how rare third awakening users are worldwide, right?”
“That’s true…”
It’s easiest to think of the third awakening of an ability as the final evolved form in the game. The first stage is manifesting one’s ability with the help of mana. The second stage involves handling the power of the inner world, which is the source of that ability. And the third stage allows the inner world itself to manifest in reality.
There’s supposedly a fourth stage in the setting, but only the Holy Maiden and the final boss have ever reached it throughout the entire history of this world, so there’s no need to think about that. Even for third awakenings, there are fewer than ten people in the entire world. In the country I belong to, Helline, there are only two.
The missing First Seat… and the Third Seat, Dana. Those are the only two third awakening users in all of Helline.
“Since even in Helline, only Professor Dana and the missing First Seat have reached the third awakening, it makes sense that there are no clinical results. If there are no clinical trials, it shouldn’t be too much of a burden. So, how many bottles do you need?”
“Four bottles. If that’s too difficult, even two would be fine.”
If he only brought two, Camilla and I wouldn’t get to drink any, but if everything went according to plan, even just those two drinking it shouldn’t cause any major problems.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get four bottles.”
“Thank you.”
It seemed his pride wouldn’t allow him to settle for only two, so the dean decided on four. Well, whether it was two or four didn’t really matter to me as long as he got them.
“It’s no trouble at all. Oh, by the way, there was someone who wanted to speak with you privately, Plea.”
“Speak with me?”
When I tilted my head in confusion, the dean gave an awkward smile and picked up a black crystal orb that had been sitting on his desk.
What’s he doing?
Just as that thought crossed my mind, the black crystal orb let out a crackling noise. Then a voice I knew all too well flowed out.
"It's been a while, Plea."
“…Director?”
"You still remember my voice. I was worried you might have forgotten after more than a month of silence… but it seems that was a needless concern."
“Haha, how could I forget the director’s voice?”
His voice was etched into my mind for so many different reasons that even if I wanted to forget it, I couldn’t. Honestly, the moment I heard his voice coming from that crystal orb, I felt like smashing it to pieces and going back to a normal school life. But if I actually did that, not only would any hope of a normal school life disappear, my entire time at the academy would go up in smoke. So I only smashed it in my imagination.
"Hmm… From the look on your face, it doesn’t seem like you remember me fondly. Well, I wouldn’t expect you to have any good feelings toward me, so I’ll skip that and get straight to the point. Before that, Dean, could you step out for a moment?"
“If it’s a request from her guardian, of course I must.”
The dean gave a warm smile, stood up from his chair, and left the office.
“…It looks like even the dean isn’t higher in rank than you, Director.”
"You could say that. Unlike me, his hero career ended at S-rank."
“S-rank?”
"Yes. The reason he became dean in the first place was because he was injured in battle against an S-rank demon, retired, and then became a professor at the academy. Despite being an S-rank hero, he rose quickly and was even given the position of dean."
“Huh…”
It seemed our director didn’t think very highly of S-rank, which was supposed to be the pinnacle of heroism. From the way he spoke, it sounded like during his hero days he had gone beyond S-rank… As far as I remembered, in Helline there was only one rank higher than S-rank.
So the director was one of the 5 Greats… There wasn’t much known about the 5 Greats before the original story began, so it makes sense that I didn’t know.
If he really was a former member of the 5 Greats, it explained how he had been able to subdue me when I went berserk after defeating Dana, even though I had been half out of my mind at the time.
"…That’s enough about the dean. I said I’d get straight to the point, yet I’ve been rambling. My apologies."
“Ahaha… That can happen when you’re talking.”
"Ahem… Plea, I heard a demon broke into the academy during midterms."
“That’s right. Though it was only a C-rank and a B-rank, it’s true that they broke in.”
"Yes. Only a C-rank and a B-rank. To you, they weren’t even worth calling opponents. However, the higher-ups in Helline seem to have interpreted it a little differently."
“…Pardon?”
"I’m sorry. It’s an order from above… From now on, you will be under 24-hour wiretapping and surveillance, Plea…"