It had only been a week and a few days since academy life began.
And there was already an attack.
Fuck, they really don’t give us any time to rest.
The Empire had said it would take measures, but as expected, it failed to prevent the attack.
Space tore open, and people came pouring out from within.
Vines tore through the clubroom, scattering its equipment and bookshelves into complete disarray.
"Ah... ah... ah."
Having witnessed that horrific sight, Eileen seemed to have completely lost her mind and words alike.
Her eyes rolled back as she staggered, about to faint, but Kafka sprang out from the shadows and caught her just in time.
It was only natural. The clubroom had been overrun by a dungeon and turned into a total mess.
And all the materials they had gathered on the Ancient Documents Club were on the verge of being wiped out.
Looks like it was already too late for some of them, thanks to the vines.
The people who had emerged from the dungeon were, true to their terrorist nature, each carrying at least one explosive.
And, true to their long-established organization, they had a few mages among them as well.
There were several Aura users too.
And they had one thing in common: apparently, every last one of them had chugged a bowlful of drugs. Their bloodshot eyes practically advertised, ‘I’m insane,’ and their robes or arms bore tattoos of a dragon coiled around a sun.
Disturbers of the peace with three hundred uninterrupted years of causing trouble behind them.
The Liberation Army of Katai Kingdom.
The mooks who would serve as fodder for this academy attack event.
"Well, aren’t we lucky? To think we’d find Astoria’s First Imperial Princess here."
A hooded mage appeared, cackling in a phlegmy voice.
His lackeys cackled along with him as they stared at Eileen with lust-filled eyes.
Talk about rotten luck.
I clicked my tongue as I looked at the mage who appeared to be their leader, cackling at the front.
Us?
Well, the unconscious Eileen beside me certainly had bad luck, if you wanted to put it that way.
But I was talking about those Liberation Army bastards in front of us.
Those guys really had the worst luck imaginable.
Of all the places they could have chosen, why did it have to be here...?
Looking at the skull before me, I offered my condolences to those extras.
#
The lofty plan of those troublemakers to terrorize the academy failed right from the outset.
There were swordsmen and mages in their forties, level-wise, but what exactly did they think they could do?
There was a monster here on par with the academy headmaster.
As if to prove it, the terrorists were sprawled on the floor, vomiting blood.
As for how that happened...
The troublemakers had been about to begin a briefing, résumé in hand, to introduce themselves and explain why they were here before starting their terrorism.
"Rejected."
Before they could even open their mouths, Professor Luke casually stomped his foot.
After that, every member of the Liberation Army coughed up blood and collapsed.
That was it.
"Their insides have been turned upside down, so they won’t be able to stand, use magic, or use Aura for a while."
Having performed that bizarre feat, Professor Luke dusted off his hands as though it were nothing.
Then, without warning, he opened his jawbone wide and shoved a hand inside.
When he withdrew it, he was holding something long.
It was a rope.
Apparently, he was hollow inside and used his body to store things.
The rope looked fairly long just from what I could see. I had no idea how he had swallowed it.
Professor Luke tied up the terrorists’ hands with the rope he had pulled from his body, then removed the explosives from them.
Then he opened his jaw again and proceeded to shove every single explosive into his body.
One by one, the bombs passed through his jaw and into him.
There were many terrorists, so naturally, there were just as many bombs.
But...
Professor Luke stored all those explosives inside himself as though it were nothing.
Everyone except the half-unconscious Eileen stared open-mouthed at his bizarre act, and even Angelica, who had maintained a blank expression the whole time, showed a faint look of shock.
Seriously, was his body some kind of inventory?
"Then I suppose the situation is resolved for now."
Professor Luke spoke calmly.
No. It absolutely was not over.
The most important person had yet to appear.
Scaramuccia, the boss, was supposed to have emerged alongside the terrorists.
And...
The Oath of Chivalry still had not ended.
But only the terrorists had come out of that dungeon.
Could it be... there was more than one dungeon?
But all the mid-bosses from the game had just come out of this dungeon.
What was I missing?
"First, I’ll go check whether dungeons have spawned elsewhere as well. The attack may not be over yet, so all of you should quickly return to the dormitories..."
Kwwaaaang—!!!
Then, at that moment.
An explosion rang out from another building.
"It’s an attack—!!!"
Not long afterward, an extra’s scream rang out, heralding the academy attack event.
#
Most of the faculty had already gone home, and most of the cadets had headed into their clubrooms, so the hallways that had been bustling only a short while ago were now remarkably empty.
And an elf walked through those quiet corridors with a scowl on his face.
It was Silves, the professor who had been saddled with night duty once again and was in an exceptionally foul mood.
He walked with a frown, mentally chewing up Professor Luke, who had dumped the night shift on him yet again.
After walking for some time, Silves eventually reached the lobby.
The lobby was empty, but his deeply furrowed face relaxed as he turned around with a grave expression.
He glared at a particular spot and spoke.
"Sorry, but it’s quitting time. Could we postpone the private consultation until later?"
Naturally, there was no response.
After all, the place Professor Silves had addressed was nothing but empty air.
But...
"You seem to possess quite an advanced stealth technique."
Silves spoke to the empty air again, almost mockingly.
Then he raised his spirit power, as though preparing for battle.
"Your tricks have already been exposed, so you would do well to come out quickly."
"As expected, academy professors are different."
The empty air twisted, and a man emerged from the distortion.
He wore the sort of mask one might use at a ball, and his short black hair and blood-red eyes were striking.
In his hand, he carried a long lance plated in gold.
It was the sort of long lance one would use in a joust.
It was a glittering golden spear that looked more fitting as an ornament than a weapon.
"To think this stealth, which even Moji failed to see through, would be discovered so easily."
"You may evade human eyes, but you cannot evade the eyes of spirits."
Silves clicked his tongue, seemingly recognizing the identity of the man before him.
"The Dawn Troupe."
"Correct."
The man’s smug answer made Silves’ face scrunch up even further.
He poured all the stomach medicine the headmaster had given him into his mouth and chewed it up.
"Yggdrasil help me. Why does trouble always break out on the days I’m assigned night duty?"
Bemoaning his lot in life, Silves raised his spirit power with force.
Responding to his spirit power, high-ranking spirits began to reveal themselves.
A wingless fire dragon, Salamander, the spirit of fire, spewed flames behind Silves.
Undine, a water spirit in the form of a mermaid, gathered water and formed it into a spear.
When Sylph, a wind spirit in the form of a gigantic bird, spread its wings, the windows shook.
Finally, behind the man appeared Gnome, taking the shape of a giant knight made of stone. It planted a stone sword in the floor, blocking the man’s retreat.
These were the high-ranking spirits that constituted Silves’ full strength.
The lobby, which had already seemed cramped, became even more confined in the presence of the spirits.
There was only one enemy.
Summoning four high-ranking spirits against that single opponent might have seemed excessive.
But Silves did not see it that way.
Through the spirits’ eyes, he could see the man’s body bound as though in shackles.
That man was currently restrained by dragon speech.
There was only one person in the academy capable of using dragon speech.
The academy headmaster and the Red Duke, Ash Bell Drayg.
Which meant...
The man before him had survived even after facing the headmaster.
The headmaster was not dead.
If she had died, the academy’s barrier should have collapsed.
But the headmaster’s barrier remained intact.
So although she had placed dragon speech on this man, she had failed to kill him?
The Red Duke had failed?
It was a contradiction.
If he had not been able to kill the headmaster, there was no way the headmaster could have failed to kill the being before him.
And if he were powerful enough to kill the headmaster, there would have been no need for him to use stealth.
Even if he simply rampaged through the academy, who could stop him?
But regardless of which possibility was true...
The fact remained that the man before him was a monster who had survived an encounter with the headmaster.
That was why Silves believed he had to go all out from the beginning.
As he manipulated his spirit power, Gnome swung its greatsword and Undine launched a massive spear.
Sylph summoned a gale to disrupt the opponent’s balance, while Salamander opened its jaws wide and spewed fire.
Kwwaaaang—!!
With a thunderous crash, the lobby shook and the windows shattered.
But...
Wooooong.
The man took the combined attack of all four spirits head-on with his vibrating golden lance, then wrapped the lance in sword aura and swung it powerfully.
Slice.
With a chilling sound of severance, Gnome’s left arm was cleanly cut off.
Silves stared in disbelief.
As Silves was its contractor, it was a high-ranking spirit that could exert one hundred percent of its power even in the human realm.
Yet that high-ranking spirit had suffered a devastating injury without being able to counterattack even once.
And it had been cut cleanly in two by a swung lance, a weapon meant for thrusting rather than cutting.
As far as Silves knew, the only being capable of such an absurd feat was a Sword Master.
And there was only one Sword Master in the Dawn Troupe who wielded a golden lance.
"Scaramuccia."
An executive of the Dawn Troupe who wielded a vibrating golden lance.
But...
Had he always been powerful enough to survive against the headmaster?
And then...
"Ravicano."
At his single word, a white horse with a red mane appeared nearby.
Like Rocinante, the Irregular contracted to Dolnesia, it was a spirit possessing the powers of wind and fire.
That spirit, which would not have been out of place among the high-ranking spirits, had formed a contract with Scaramuccia.
It was impossible for one without spirit power to contract with a spirit.
Judging by the bit in its mouth, it seemed to be controlled through that.
Damn it. A Sword Master who controls spirits? There should be a limit to how unfair this can get.
Still, there was hope.
He did not use an Aura Blade... no, he could not use one.
He could have summoned an Aura Blade and completely sent Gnome back, but instead he had cut Gnome with the inferior technique of an Aura Sword—sword aura.
It seemed the dragon speech placed on him by the headmaster had sealed off his Aura Blade.
The probing exchange was over.
Silves sent lesser and mid-ranking spirits far and wide to help the cadets evacuate, while directing the remaining high-ranking spirits to clash with Scaramuccia.
Droplets formed around Undine, before streams of water capable of cutting through anything poured forth.
Fragments gathered at Gnome’s severed arm and restored it to its original form. Then Gnome gripped its sword with both hands and brought it down.
Sylph honed the wind into razor-sharp blades, grinding up the entire area around the man along with the man himself.
Salamander charged him with its body engulfed in fire.
The result was this.
Gnome fell silent.
Its stone sword and body had both been pierced by the man’s demonic lance, leaving it kneeling and unable to rise.
Salamander vomited flames like blood.
Pierced in a single strike by the man’s demonic lance, its flames peeled away like fruit skin, and it spewed fire-like blood from its mouth.
Undine was sent back after losing her head.
Her streams, which could cut even through the academy’s walls, struck his body but could not cleave him like a wall. Instead, she was severed by his demonic lance, her head falling away.
Sylph plummeted with its wings broken.
The storm it had created could not even halt the man’s advance, and a swing of his demonic lance snapped its wings, sending it crashing from the sky.
In that fleeting instant.
The high-ranking spirits, strong enough to trade blows with a Sword Master to some extent, had all been defeated without inflicting a single wound on him.
Impossible. The spirits couldn’t harm him at all?
The high-ranking spirits’ attacks had definitely struck him, yet they had failed to injure him.
Those were high-ranking spirits capable of dealing at least some damage even to a Sword Master.
Mounted on the spirit called Ravicano, Scaramuccia slowly approached Silves.
He had withstood the combined assault of four spirits and defeated them.
He must have thought Silves had no cards left to play.
But...
It was not as though Silves had no cards at all.
There was a reason he had kept throwing spirits at Scaramuccia.
It was to call in the one person who could resolve this situation.
"Damn it, if you’re going to dump the shift on me, at least get here on time..."
"...?"
At those words, glass shattered with a crash.
And a single skeleton burst in.
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