The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

"Ugh, cough! Cough...!"

At my request, Minerva reluctantly released her grip on Alice's neck.

She then pulled over a chair, sat down on it, crossed her legs, and silently began glaring at Alice.

It was a posture meant to put pressure on her, and it was certainly doing that to Alice Blesbuck.

I held out a hand to her, still slumped on the floor and coughing harshly.

Alice looked at me for a moment, then took it and pulled herself up.

"...Quite the, cough. Quite the housemate you've got."

"You noticed?"

"No, I didn't know. But I could roughly guess. ...Cough."

"If I didn't have at least that much intuition, I'd have been caught and killed long ago."

She muttered with a touch of displeasure and sat down in a chair as well.

I perched on the edge of the bed and looked at her.

Alice Blesbuck.

Natalia Milited's child, a half-vampire, and the alchemy professor at Orhe Academy.

She had real depth in alchemy, but conversely she was short on social experience, and—as one would expect of a young vampire—had immature aspects in several ways. Still, the fact that she'd been on friendly terms with Lee Myeong-jun spoke to her general disposition. She had a quietly stubborn streak, but she wasn't the type to dig her heels in unreasonably.

Which meant that, depending on how I played this, I could persuade her and bring her around to my way of thinking.

Wondering how to begin, I rolled my tongue inside my mouth and carefully started the conversation.

"But Professor, just a few days ago, didn't you say Milited had to be killed?"

She slid her eyes over to look at me.

I continued in a calm voice.

"From what you're saying now, though, it sounds like your thinking has changed completely..."

"Because I dug through every corner of my mother's—Natalia Milited's—memories."

Alice Blesbuck muttered in an anguished voice.

"Who would refuse the chance to kill a Seven Calamity if it were handed to them? Especially when they were the one who ruined my life and Ryle's—the child I have to atone for. Just like you said, Ji-hyeok, at first I looked for every possible way to kill Milited. But..."

She bit her lip hard and shook her head.

"...I ran simulation after simulation. I ran the numbers on every method I could think of. And I came to a conclusion. 'Right now, there is no way to kill the Seven Calamity Milited.' No one can. Not even if Myeong-jun and every one of the Ten Powerhouses came together."

She let out a self-mocking laugh and muttered,

"How do you kill something that has no substance? Milited—they were, quite literally, a monster no different from a phantom."

A sigh.

She fiddled with the lip wound Minerva had given her moments before.

"My mother was one of their followers for ages. That's why she knew the creature's abilities in extraordinary detail. Milited—they're a monster who's practically immortal in the truest sense of the word. There's no way to win against something like that..."

Watching her—she looked half-resigned—I gave a small nod.

I understood why.

Milited.

A Seven Calamity called by countless names, a Seven Calamity with no fixed shape.

If Margot's motif was demons, Sbeungali's was birds and trees, and Minerva's was dragons, then Milited's motif was slime.

The creature had no fixed form. It could shift between solid, liquid, gaseous, and countless other states. It could reconstruct its body to match any opponent and evolve without end.

The reason I'd worked so hard to bring Lee Yu-na onto our side despite all the early conflict was to prepare for Milited.

For a creature that endlessly reshaped and adapted itself to an opponent's mana qualities, weapons, and abilities, Lee Yu-na was a perfect hard counter.

Her ability was creating various weapons and armaments out of mana.

That made her better at flexible, situation-specific responses than anyone, and she could rain down unpredictable, irregular attacks without pause.

More importantly, just like in Professor Abel Grossman's class in the past, or when her mana scars had been treated, she could change the very nature of her mana on the spot in an instant by ingesting mana-infused tools or materials.

In short, no matter how Milited reshaped and evolved its body to counter an opponent, none of it would work on Lee Yu-na.

"..."

And on top of that, a variable I couldn't have imagined a few days earlier had entered the equation.

The weapons forged from my scales.

I carried the energies of the Seven Calamities, the World Tree, dragons, spirits, and countless others—and my scales did too.

What mattered here was that they carried the energy of the Seven Calamities.

Humans or weapons that carried Seven Calamity energy could deal meaningful damage without needing to strike a Seven Calamity's weak point.

It meant that, beyond Lee Yu-na—whom I'd originally been counting on—the number of people capable of attacking Milited had grown.

And unlike the original work, Milited's many followers had all been wiped out. Only Landschi remained.

The conditions couldn't have been better.

I quietly organized in my head the words I needed to convince her, and glanced over at Minerva.

"...Before we get into the real conversation, may I ask you one thing first?"

"What is it?"

"How did you notice Minerva?"

At my question, Alice Blesbuck looked at me as if to say what are you talking about?

"You said just now that you didn't know who she was, but when Minerva first emerged from my shadow... the look on your face wasn't the look of someone who was actually surprised."

To put it more precisely, it wasn't the expression of someone seeing something appear out of a shadow for the first time. At my question, Alice Blesbuck fell silent.

Then she let out a small sigh and grumbled, almost to herself,

"Turns out you're pretty observant, Ji-hyeok. And full of questions, too. ...Couldn't you have done that in my class instead? The kids never ask anything, and I was starting to wonder if I was just that bad of a teacher. It made me really sad."

She chuckled, then glanced briefly at Minerva.

"It's the smell."

"The smell?"

"Yes. Blood and mana."

She tapped her nose with a fingertip.

"Every time I see you, Ji-hyeok, your scent's been different. The very quality of your mana keeps changing—how do I put it, the very essence of who you are keeps shifting...? Mm, it's hard to explain... anyway, I'm sensitive to that sort of thing."

She glanced over at Minerva again and shrugged.

"When I saw you again the other day after a long while, your shadow carried your blood scent along with the scent particular to dragons, plus some other strange one I couldn't place. So I figured something was there. ...Though I didn't expect a summoned creature on that scale to be hiding."

I gave a small nod.

In short, she'd noticed Minerva's existence but didn't know what kind of being Minerva actually was.

'What should I do...'

After thinking it over for a moment, I decided it would be best to confront her head-on.

There was no point in dragging it out.

"Let me introduce her, Professor. Her name is Minerva."

"Why introduce her now... well, Minerva. That's a lovely name."

"And she's the Seven Calamity that was sealed at the center of the Five Streets."

"......What?"

For a moment, Alice Blesbuck seemed unable to comprehend what I'd just said.

Minerva uncrossed her legs casually and asked me,

"Are you certain it's all right to tell this mongrel, my dear?"

"Yes. To convince her, this seemed like the best way."

With those words, I drew a branch of the World Tree from my right arm.

Then I forcibly pulled out Sbeungali, who had been keeping quiet. He let out a sharp click as if displeased, his eyeball rolling about.

"W-what is that...?"

"His name is Sbeungali."

I shifted my arm so she could clearly see my right hand—she was watching it now, horrified but composed.

Sbeungali's eyeball rolled and locked onto Alice.

"He's the Seven Calamity that appeared in the World Tree's domain. And as you can see, he's living parasitically on my body."

[Pleased to make your acquaintance, bastard of the vampire.]

He spat the words out with a twitch of his eye.

It came across like a sneer. I watched him for a moment, then looked at Alice Blesbuck—her face had gone bone-white—and added one final thing.

"There's one more, called Margot, but... unfortunately, unlike these two, that one isn't in any condition to hold a conversation."

With that, starting with the ring Belluna had given me, I let down just a little of what hid my own energy.

The moment Alice felt the unfiltered energy of the Seven Calamities pouring out of my body, she reflexively rose to her feet and stumbled back several steps.

"Sit down."

Minerva spoke quietly from where she sat.

"And use that head of yours to consider why he would bother revealing this at all."

For just an instant, Minerva's eyes flashed crimson.

She looked ready to lunge at Alice Blesbuck any second, and her words came out sharp as blades.

"From what I hear, you were his teacher, if only for a fleeting moment? If so, then you are sufficiently worthy of this Minerva's respect."

A low sound rolled out of her throat—not a human voice, but a dragon's roar.

"Worthy enough that I'll overlook the rudeness you just showed by directing aggressive mana at him. So while I'm still asking nicely, you'd do well to sit down."

[A word of advice, bastard.]

Sbeungali rolled his eye and spoke in a cheerful voice.

[Don't even think about trying to run. Not unless you'd like to be killed by this man, have your soul stripped from you, and be enslaved like the rest of us. He's a monster of a brat who's devoured three full Seven Calamities—creatures that once made the world tremble in fear, mind you.]

His eye curved as if in delight.

He was clearly relishing the chance to watch Alice Blesbuck come apart over a few of his words.

I'd nearly forgotten, but Sbeungali had always been the Seven Calamity who most enjoyed unraveling someone's mind with a few well-placed lines.

[Don't go thinking he'll cut you any slack just because you're a fellow bastard, or because you were once his teacher. Well... in any case, thank you for your service.]

He burst into cackling laughter.

Alice Blesbuck wasn't laughing.

She just stared at me with the steadfast expression of someone who'd made peace with her own death.

Seeing that look, I realized she'd seriously misunderstood, and I quickly held out a hand to calm her down.

"Professor, what I'm trying to say is—"

"...I'm sorry, Ryle."

All at once, she was begging Kath Ryle for forgiveness.

A bad feeling hit me and I shot to my feet, but I only realized that had been a mistake once I was already on my feet.

On top of that, only then did I notice that the right hand I'd extended toward her to calm her down—the hand Sbeungali had emerged from—looked grotesque enough that anyone seeing it for the first time would have fainted on the spot.

I was used to it, but honestly, even I had to admit my right hand looked threatening.

And I was extending that right hand toward her.

As if I meant to attack.

"And Myeong-jun—I'm leaving the rest to you."

Alice smiled faintly and murmured the words.

It came out like a final farewell. She extended a trembling hand toward me.

"I think... I'm going to die here today."

A single tear rolled down from the corner of her eye.

And yet her face carried the kind of steady resolve only someone who has truly accepted death wears, and the very first thought that came to me as I watched her was just one:

'Sbeungali, you absolute son of a—!'

I was going to wring Sbeungali's neck for stirring her up and feeding her these ideas.

"I really had no idea this was your true form."

Choi Jun-hyeong kept nodding in fascination as he muttered to himself.

A woman sat across from him in a relaxed posture.

"Who would've guessed there was such a pretty 'older sister' hiding under that obnoxious old crone's shell?"

The woman in front of the snickering Jun-hyeong—Lydia—wrinkled her brow in annoyance.

Choi Jun-hyeong met her gaze and whispered,

"Once Maxim got exposed as a spy, you had to know you were screwed too, right? If it were me, I'd have bolted with my tail between my legs. So which is it—are you stupid, or just full of yourself?"

"Hmm..."

Lydia spoke in her still-leisurely voice.

"Smarter than someone who licks crumbs off other people's tails and brags about it, at least."

Choi Jun-hyeong said nothing and just smiled.

Lydia smiled back at him.

"You don't need limbs to bawl out information, do you? I think I'd feel a lot better if I tore them all off first and watched you flop around the floor like a wobble doll."

He slowly started rolling up his sleeve, and the forearm that emerged was bent at a bizarre angle.

His right arm was several times larger than his left, and grotesque veins bulged across it, pulsing without pause.

Nothing like that figured anywhere in Lydia's catalog of Choi Jun-hyeong's known abilities.

Probably power he'd received from Landschi, she thought, slowly rising to her feet.

"...Get all the swaggering out of your system while you still can, baby."

The woman who had taken complete control of the massive organization once known as Red Case gave a small nod.

Then, as though a good idea had just struck her, she ran her tongue across her lips and whispered in a sultry voice,

"You, and the one you serve—you're all going to be crushed by Him before long anyway."

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