Secrets of the Silent Witch - Volume 4 - Chapter 8

CHAPTER 8

Heartless Witch

As the student council president, it fell to Felix to question those in charge of the play. While the audience had considered it a delightful spectacle and the powerful performances a rare treat, those behind the scenes knew that it had been one unexpected event after another.

According to his investigation, the explosive powder used for special effects had been blown over by a sudden gust of wind. The support staff all insisted that it had been fixed tightly in place, but given how spectacularly the stage had collapsed, it wasn’t clear if they were telling the truth.

Thankfully, it hadn’t resulted in a full-blown fire, but if Glenn hadn’t known how to use flight magecraft, he and Eliane would both have suffered terrible injuries.

“Oh, sir, I was just so frightened.”

Once he finished asking questions, Eliane drew close to him. She looked up at him, beautiful tears trickling down her face, clearly wanting him to comfort her.

That was enough for Felix to more or less guess what had happened. Ah, so she’s the one. And she was probably behind the previous Ralph’s injuries, too.

How foolish, he thought, his gaze cold. Still, he made a show of being considerate. “But the play was a success, thanks to your and Dudley’s skilled acting. Your performances as Ralph and Amelia were quite fitting for the kingdom’s first couple.”

“…Thank you so much.”

“Oh, speaking of Dudley. Where is your hero?”

“I wouldn’t know, sir.” This mention of Glenn caused Eliane’s mood to visibly drop.

I feel bad for Dudley, but making him the stand-in was the right choice.

Felix had known since the day Glenn transferred in that he was an apprentice to one of the Seven Sages. That was why the prince had recommended him for the role—if Eliane were to try anything, he figured Glenn would be able to handle it. And the oblivious boy had met Felix’s expectations wonderfully.

The Barrier Mage has been snooping around my business, so I was wary of his disciple…but he has proven quite useful, thought Felix. Pondering this in the back of his mind, he ordered the play staff to remove the ruined set. Eliane looked at him like she wanted attention, but the prince was a busy man. He didn’t have any time for her.

But when he turned to leave, intending to finally help set up for the ball, Eliane tugged on his sleeve. “Prince Felix, I… Would you do me the honor of dancing with me this year?”

Felix almost laughed. This year, indeed. Eliane came to him every year, wanting his first dance. It was an annual event at this point.

And turning her down wasn’t an option. She was his second cousin and leading marriage candidate, supported by Duke Clockford himself.

“Of course,” he replied. “If you should wish it, I shall accept.”

That was the safe reply, and normally, it would have satisfied her. That day, however, she was being awfully persistent. “I’d like a promise, sir… Something visible.”

It was clear what she was asking for—a traditional floral decoration. She was pleading for one.

Felix had never once participated in this tradition. Not only was he busy, he also needed to change dance partners as the situation demanded, and sometimes guests would take priority. Moreover, if he gave someone a floral decoration, it could be taken as a sign that he’d decided on his marriage partner.

For a moment, an image of a certain girl flashed through his mind. Monica had told him, with that stilted smile of hers, that the white rose at her breast was a charm to prevent her from embarrassing herself.

He wondered what kind of face she’d make if he told her it was actually an invitation to dance.

If Felix gave her a yellow rose tied with a blue ribbon and asked her to dance with him, how would she react?

Her cheeks wouldn’t flush red like Eliane’s. In fact, she’d probably turn white as a sheet and shake her head so hard, it would practically fly off, all the while stammering that she couldn’t do it—that it was far too much for her.

A charm, Cyril? That’s playing dirty. And when Felix didn’t even have the freedom to give someone a rose…

He heard a scraping at the back of his mouth. Oh no. I can’t put on an attractive smile if I’m grinding my back teeth, can I? he chided himself, re-forming a pleasant expression for Eliane.

I’ve no particular interest in those floral decorations, but…

Behind his smile, he was thinking of the girl who had played with his heart that night in Corlapton.

“Right now, I’m a ghost! I don’t exist. I’m just a ghost named Monica, so…!”

Her small hand, extended to him in embarrassment.

That gentle, awkward invitation she’d made out of consideration for him.

“Let’s enjoy the rest of the night as ghosts together, I-Ike!”

If he was going to give anyone a flower, he wanted it to be her.

Wouldn’t that be so much fun?

Once he’d dealt with Eliane, Felix stopped by the school building to do the final pre-ball checks. It was nearly winter, and the sun set early. The sky outside the windows was already dyed in the orange hues of early evening.

Before long, the bells would ring to signal the end of the public portion of the festival. The students would all go back to their dorms, get dressed, and head to the evening’s ball. He’d be heading back to his dormitory, too, as soon as his final inspection was finished.

The prince was headed down a hallway on the first floor, thinking about the evening’s arrangements.

“Sir,” came a voice from behind him.

Felix stopped. A slender young man with silvery hair tied neatly behind his neck was hastening toward him—the vice president, Cyril Ashley. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him much today, thought Felix. In years past, he’d always stuck by the prince’s side, insisting on guarding him.

“Hey, Cyril,” he replied. “I haven’t seen you around much today.”

“I’m sorry, sir. My hands have been rather full,” said Cyril, lowering his brows apologetically. Then something caught his attention, and he gasped. “Excuse me, sir, but…there’s a bug in your hair.”

Just as he reached out toward the prince’s head, something black jumped through the window and onto his arm. The creature hissed sharply at him. It was a black cat with golden eyes.

“A cat? It must be a stray…,” said Cyril. “Please wait a moment, sir. I’ll chase it away.”

With a troubled look, the vice president lowered his arm and tried to catch the cat. Unfortunately, as he knelt and reached out his hand, the animal used his head as a springboard and leaped, rushing past Felix.

“Why, you…!” Cyril cried out in irritation before catching sight of something behind the prince. His eyes went wide.

Felix had heard footsteps as well; slowly, he turned around. As the evening sun’s orange light filtered in through the windows, a petite girl with light-brown hair walked toward them. It was Monica Norton, the student council’s accountant.

The cat ran to her, and she scooped it up without a word before letting it out the window.

Is it just me, thought the prince, or does her expression seem awfully blank right now?

Felix was about to call out to her, but Monica spoke first. She looked at Cyril standing behind him. “Lord Cyril,” she said, “um, there’s something I wanted to talk about. Can we go to another room…?”

“Has there been some trouble?” replied Cyril.

Monica scampered up to them and played with her fingers. Her plodding way of running, childish gestures, and nervous, downcast expression were the same as usual.

“Um, no trouble,” she said. “But there’s something really important I have to tell you before the ball…” She clenched a fist in front of her chest, then looked up at Cyril with an urgent expression. “It has to be you, Lord Cyril! P-please!”

Her desperate eyes were fixed on Cyril alone—as if she had something important to reveal to him. She didn’t even spare a glance for Felix.

The prince unconsciously clutched the fabric at his chest. He felt something deep inside him spark and smolder.

“All right. I’ll hear what you have to say,” said Cyril.

“Th-thank you. Um, I don’t want other people to listen in, so, over here…,” said Monica, tugging on the hem of Cyril’s jacket.

It was very rare for her to reach out for anyone, much less tug at their clothes. Why do I feel something twisting in my chest? thought Felix.

“All right,” said Cyril. “We’ll do this immediately. Please excuse me for a moment, sir.”

“Sure,” said Felix, unconsciously raising a hand and covering his mouth.

He didn’t want them to see that he wasn’t smiling like the calm, kind, perfect prince he usually was.

Monica led Cyril to an empty classroom and faced him, her back to the windows. The light from the evening sun shone from behind and cast a shadow on her face.

Cyril squinted against the brightness. “What did you need to talk about?” he asked.

“……”

Monica said nothing. Her childish face was expressionless—like when she was confronting equations or a chessboard. Cyril furrowed his brow in irritation.

Just then, they heard the ringing of bells. The festival was now closed to the general public, and the students would start returning to their dorms, leaving few people in the school building.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong…

With the final ring came a dry, crackling noise—the kind of sound only heard when someone cast a lightning spell.

Before the sound of the bells had faded, a golden light emerged around Cyril, and he quickly found himself locked inside a cage of lightning.

“What… What’s the meaning of this, Lady Norton?!”

“Lord Cyril would never call me Lady Norton. He always calls me by my full name or my student council title.”

The evening sun cast her youthful face in shadow, and yet her eyes sparkled with a hint of green.

In a voice devoid of all emotion, she quietly asked, “Who are you?”

Monica liked it when Cyril called her Accountant Norton. It made her feel like he’d acknowledged her as a student council member, and she automatically sat up straight when she heard it.

So when the man in front of her called her Lady Norton, she felt an awful twist in her heart.

“You would put me in a cage just because I called you something different?” he demanded. He glared at her from inside the prison of lightning, looking for all the world like the real Cyril. His strong-willed expression, perfectly neat silver hair, and slender build—in terms of numbers, he was almost exactly the same.

But Monica knew better. “Have you been wearing that ribbon tie since this morning?” she asked.

“…Why? What about it?”

“Because Lord Cyril’s ribbon is right here.” Monica touched the floral decoration at her breast with a fingertip.

Even more damning was the broach the man was using to fasten the ribbon. Cyril was afflicted with mana hyperabsorption, and he wore a magical broach to release excess mana.

“Lord Cyril’s broach is a magical item,” she said. “But that one isn’t.”

She could tell in an instant by using a detection spell. It was well-made, but it was ultimately a surface-level fake.

Monica continued dispassionately, as though cornering an opponent in chess. “I saw Lord Cyril by himself in the audience during the first half of the play. But he told me he was working with Lord Maywood at that time.”

The Cyril she’d seen in the audience was, in all likelihood, an imposter. This man must have been biding his time, waiting for a chance to get close to Felix.

Monica had a vague idea as to who he was, too. “Why did you think this lightning cage was mine as soon as you saw it? I never chanted a word.”

Most people, upon seeing unchanted magecraft for the first time, assumed that someone hidden nearby had used the spell. There was only one person in the world who could cast without an incantation, and not many people would see Monica and make that connection. But this man had been certain the lightning spell was hers.

“You knew it was me because you’ve seen my magecraft before—at the chess competition.”

The intruder who fled the competition had looked exactly like Eugene Pitman, the teacher from Minerva’s. Monica had assumed at first that the man just happened to look like him, but she’d been mistaken.

“Illusion spells can’t be maintained for very long while moving. But you’ve been using Lord Cyril’s appearance for some time now. Is it body-manipulation magecraft? Like the dragonshifting spell from last time?”

The man’s lips slowly curled into a crescent moon–shaped grin. His slender throat quivered with hoarse laughter. His voice was like honey boiled down and scorched—exactly the same as the intruder at the competition.

“Heh, heh-heh… Ah-ha-ha! Well, I suppose you aren’t one of the Seven Sages for nothing, Monica Everett. To be honest, I still can’t believe it. To think the Silent Witch is such a tiny little thing!”

Monica, too, was in a state of disbelief. As far as she knew, body-manipulation magic was mainly used for closing up small wounds or temporary bursts of physical strength.

But at the competition, this man had transformed into a whole other person using dragonshifting magecraft, and now he’d made himself look just like Cyril. He was even modifying his bone structure and pigmentation.

I’d heard rumors about the Empire’s body-manipulation magecraft, but…I had no idea it was this advanced.

She’d heard that the Empire started allowing research into body-manipulation magecraft about a year ago as part of its development of healing magecraft. Monica was a researcher of magic formulae, so she knew this man’s techniques were not something one could develop in a single year. The necessary research must have started much earlier—though she didn’t know if it was on a national scale or if this man had done it all himself.

What I’m more concerned about…is his objective.

If he was trying to assassinate Felix, there would have been other ways to do it. The man’s actions didn’t add up, neither here nor at the chess competition.

“Are you really trying to assassinate the prince?” she asked, not expecting a straight answer.

As she’d figured, the reply came in the form of mocking laughter. “Why not try and force the information out of me?”

“Then you have no intention of submitting?” she asked, her voice hard.

The man withdrew his grin. He shot her a cold-eyed glare, then said in Cyril’s voice, “Do you think you can attack me, Accountant Norton?”

Most people would experience psychological resistance to attacking a person who looked like their friend or loved one, even if they knew it wasn’t them. This man understood that and was using it to provoke Monica—adopting a voice and expression meant to trick her mind into believing she was facing off with the real thing.

But Monica didn’t hesitate. “Yes, I can.”

She fixed him with an impassive stare—the same one she’d direct at a chessboard—and spoke in a voice devoid of emotion.

“I just need to think of you as numbers.”

Purposely altering her perception, Monica absorbed herself in the world of numbers. All she saw was numbers—a human body made up of numbers. As long as she was off in her world of numbers and magecraft, she could be as strong and as heartless as she needed.

The man clicked his tongue and twisted his face in annoyance—Cyril’s voice and Cyril’s face. But none of this could shake Monica’s resolve. The sounds and changes in expression registered to her only as numbers.

Trapped inside the lightning cage, the man swung his right arm.

“…Then what about this?” he said, hurling a small vial he’d had up his sleeve at Monica.

Did it contain poison? Acid? Whatever it was, it flew between the cage’s bars, straight at her.

The man pretending to be Cyril—Ewan—smiled, assured of his victory. The vial held a highly volatile poison. When the glass broke, the poison would spread through the entire room, and anyone who breathed it in would begin to lose consciousness and fall to the ground.

Ewan would have no problems, since he’d built up a resistance to the poison, but this little witch wouldn’t stand a chance. Even if she put up a defensive barrier, the poison would melt into the air, easily passing through. And if she used one specifically targeting poison, she’d have to maintain it constantly.

While Monica was distracted by the vial, Ewan called his partner, Heidi, into the room; she’d been waiting just outside, wearing the Serendia Academy uniform and pretending to be a student. She’d almost finished chanting her attack spell in the hallway.

An arrow of lightning appeared at her fingertips. She aimed it at the Silent Witch.

How will she handle this? wondered Ewan.

The Silent Witch’s eyes were focused on the vial flying toward her. Just before it struck the floor at her feet, a gust of wind blew through, catching it. She must have decided to stop the vial before it broke, instead of using a barrier to block it.

It wasn’t a bad choice—but now Ewan was confident he’d won. He quick-chanted a spell and chuckled to himself. This is checkmate, little girl.

Battle was just like chess. You only had so many moves.

While there were a few exceptions, mages could generally only maintain up to two spells at once. Just like a knight fought with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other, mages tended to do battle by maintaining one offensive and one defensive spell at the same time.

Right now, the Silent Witch was maintaining the lightning cage pinning Ewan down and the wind spell to stop the vial. In other words, she was defenseless.

Heidi would finish her incantation and fire her attack spell. At the same time, Ewan would dragonshift to subdue and disable Monica. It was over.

“Strike, lightning!”

As Heidi chanted the final words of her spell, fifteen lightning arrows flew at the Silent Witch all at once. The attack was impossible to avoid.

Monica didn’t move. She just looked at the arrows, no expression on her face.

She murmured something, as if talking to herself. But it wasn’t a chant. “…Analysis complete.”

Crackles and soft pops began to ring out. The lightning cage around Ewan extended lengthwise, thinning out and changing shape.

What’s this?

The lightning spell eventually narrowed into ultrafine threads, then spread out in a radial pattern in front of Monica. After that, more threads formed, crisscrossing and connecting the others.

It was a spider’s web, made from lightning magecraft.

All the lightning arrows Heidi fired were caught in the glittering, golden web. Not only that, but they melted away like hot sugar, becoming one with Monica’s spell. It devoured the arrows—all in less than a second.

Ewan and Heidi were both speechless. They’d never seen nor heard of any magecraft that could eat someone else’s spell like that.

The Silent Witch spoke to fill the silence, her voice still flat. “A Cargodian magicule layout favored by the Durandese magecraft school of the Empire. Easy to abbreviate, quick to activate…” Her green-tinged eyes stared at them through the golden spiderweb. “Its flaw, however, is how easy the arrangement is to read. It’s simple to absorb by deploying a spell with the same arrangement.”

Just by hearing the final phrase in Heidi’s chant, the witch had grasped what family the spell belonged to and its magicule arrangement and created a matching web. Theoretically it was all possible, but it could hardly be accomplished in a matter of seconds.

Ewan felt a chill run down his spine.

The golden web strung through the classroom glistened in the dim light. Just beyond it was a true predator whose power they couldn’t hope to match.

Heidi courageously tried to attack her with another spell. But before her chant even finished, the web extended to capture her. Each of its shining strands was an ultrathin lightning spell, and Heidi yelped as she was electrocuted and fell to the floor.

And all the while, the Silent Witch didn’t so much as turn in her direction. Her eyes were still on Ewan; she’d taken Heidi out almost as an afterthought.

Ewan was a mage with the rare power to freely reconstruct his own body with body-manipulation magecraft. People called him a monster for it.

But in Ewan’s opinion, this little girl was far more monstrous.

So this is the power of the Seven Sages of Ridill…!

He quickly changed tack, activating his dragonshifting spell.

…Don’t let her get to you. The web isn’t really that lethal. His slender arms, made to look like Cyril’s, swelled and expanded, and blue scales appeared over his skin. The bone structure in his fingers changed; his nails extended and sharpened, like a dragon’s hooked claws.

Not only did dragonshifting cause a dramatic increase in one’s physical abilities, it gave the user a powerful resistance to magical attacks, like dragons had.

A simple lightning spell won’t be enough to stop me.

Covering his weak point—the spot between his eyes—with his left hand, Ewan advanced. The Silent Witch’s unchanted magecraft was incredibly swift to activate, but he’d determined it didn’t have that much punch behind it. The enclosed space made it especially difficult to wield more powerful spells. If he just guarded his forehead, the witch’s attacks were no threat at all.

“Graaah!”

His claws tore through the golden web. His arms tingled as it shocked him, but it wasn’t enough to stop him from moving. He’d be able to break through.

As he came within striking distance and raised his arm, he felt it suddenly hit against an invisible wall. There were walls all around him, none of which he could see—most likely some type of barrier meant to seal him inside. It was far stronger than the water sphere he’d used last time. Even his strengthened claws would have a hard time piercing it.

Trying to lock me in so you can buy time to call your little friends?

In that case, he just had to destroy the barrier before she had the chance. Even the strongest barriers could be brought down with a series of high-density mana-based attacks to a single point.

But before his claws could shred the barrier, the Silent Witch mumbled, “If I combined this with my ultra-small fixed-coordinate axis flame spell, I could use it to bake cookies, too.”

“…What?” grunted Ewan despite himself.

The witch looked straight at him—there was no warmth in her eyes. “But dragons are weak to the cold, so I’ll do this instead.”

A moment later, the temperature inside the barrier plummeted. Monica was using ice magecraft to chill only its interior.

Save for a select few species, dragons were much weaker to the cold than humans. When a dragon’s body temperature fell, their movements grew extremely sluggish. Since Ewan had dragonshifted, that applied to him, too.

His consciousness wavered; he felt like he was in an icehouse. “Guhhh… Urgh, ah…” He scratched madly at the barrier with his long, sharp claws. Unfortunately, his fingers rapidly weakened, and eventually, he collapsed against the barrier wall.

His vision blurred as he looked up at the Silent Witch.

The girl, still not yet fully grown, impassively observed the scales covering his body. Her eyes were those of a researcher. She was trying to read and understand his magecraft.

Those are most definitely not the eyes of someone looking at a fellow human.

Ewan could turn off the part of his mind that recognized people, instead seeing them as mere targets to be killed. The Silent Witch could do the same, registering people only as bunches of numbers.

Was there even a difference?

Ewan moved his numb lips into a sardonic smile. “You mercilessly take human lives like capturing pieces on a chessboard… So this is who you really are, Monica Everett—Silent Witch.”

When the man with Cyril’s face and voice confronted Monica with her own cruelty, it caused her thoughts—occupied with analyzing the dragonshifting spell—to dull ever so slightly.

He’s probably right.

Monica could see people as bunches of numbers, which meant she could hurt them without feeling so much as a pang of guilt…whether she wanted to or not.

No matter how much she tried to be like kindhearted Lana, she’d never really be the same.

Monica Everett saw others as numbers—she was a heartless witch.

And yet…

If that allowed her to protect those she cared about, what need did she have to show mercy in the face of malice?

Monica used an ice spell to bind the arms and legs of the fallen pair to the floor. Now I just have to call Miss Ryn and report to Mr. Louis and—

“Excellent work, my fellow Sage.”

“Oohyah?!” she yelped at the sudden voice from the window.

She whipped around and saw Louis sitting in the frame, tapping his staff against his shoulder and smiling. When had he arrived?

He dropped from the window frame with sprightly movements, brushing his long braid off his shoulder and onto his back. From behind his monocle, his purplish-gray eyes swiveled to look down at the two fallen intruders. “Is the dragonshifter the same one who snuck into the chess competition?”

“Y-yes, sir… Um, it looks like he uses body-manipulation magecraft both for dragonshifting and for disguising himself.”

“Hmm,” mused Louis, his eyes sharpening dangerously. “Then they’re from the Empire after all…”

Thick laughter overlapped his words. The fake Cyril was chuckling from where he lay on the floor, his throat moving in spasms.

“Heh-heh. Ah-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Without batting an eyelash, Louis jammed his foot down on the back of the man’s head. After twisting and pressing the sole of his shoe into the man’s skull, he said in a very polite voice, “You’re quite grating on the ears, so would you mind being silent for a moment? If you wish to talk, you can do so in prison.”

“My, oh, my,” said the man. “Are you sure you have the time to be so…relaxed?”

Sensing a sinister implication in his words, Monica immediately cast an unchanted detection spell. She didn’t pick up any suspicious mana from the two intruders, but as she expanded her spell’s range, she felt something odd coming from near the boys’ dormitory.

Flame mana, steadily swelling, whirling. She’d seen this before.

“Spiralflame?!” she cried out.

Louis’s eyes widened. “Ryn!” he barked.

Ryn’s voice came to them a few seconds later. “I’ve spotted what appears to be a Spiralflame next to the boys’ dormitory.”

Even now, Ryn’s voice was flat and passionless. Louis tsked and glared out the window. “May I leave these two with you, my fellow Sage?”

“Y-yes, sir!”

As Monica nodded, Louis quick-chanted a flight spell and leaped out the window.

The Spiralflame was a magic item meant for assassination, and its greatest asset was its power. It was even strong enough to break through Monica’s barriers.

But Louis was the Barrier Mage—he’d be able to seal it off completely. The man was a talented flier as well, so he was sure to get there in time.

After Louis left and silence returned to the room, the male intruder addressed Monica once again. “Hey, little runt.”

Monica watched him closely, ready to attack if he showed the slightest sign of chanting or any other suspicious activity.

Still face down, he twisted his neck to look up at her. “Could it be you never considered there might be more of us?”

He’s bluffing, Monica decided calmly. He was trying to divert her attention, looking for an opening to escape. The Spiralflame is a threat, but Mr. Louis won’t have a problem dealing with it. Miss Ryn is keeping watch on the prince, so I should stay put.

Even if the man did have friends, and even if they attacked Monica to try to rescue their compatriots, she could use her unchanted magecraft to deal with them.

“Look, little runt, aren’t you curious about how the real Cyril Ashley is doing?”

“…Huh?”

The last place Monica had seen the real Cyril was the grand hall. She hadn’t seen him at all since then.

Ewan saw how her shoulders twitched.

“My friends are watching us as we speak,” he continued. “If you attack me further or if I give the signal…they’ll take the true owner of this face and kill him.”

“…And that is how the intruder is threatening the Silent Witch,” said Ryn’s voice in Louis’s ear as he used flight magecraft to head to the boys’ dorm.

“He’s bluffing,” Louis replied. “Leave it be.”

His colleague may lack some key human qualities, but she was intelligent. At least, she wasn’t stupid enough to fall for such an obvious lie. Louis continued on his route to the dorm, taking the least visible path he could manage and leaving the intruders to Monica.

The sun had almost completely set, and indigo was beginning to seep into the sky above. It was only a matter of time before the colors of night subsumed the orange still visible on the horizon.

Louis felt the cold of the coming winter in the wind against his cheeks, but he opted not to deflect it with a barrier. Instead, he used a detection spell.

This is…

Louis’s considerable combat experience with the Magic Corps made him better at detection spells than Monica, and he immediately noticed something off about the results. The mana response he’d picked up certainly seemed like a Spiralflame, but upon closer observation, the mana’s expansion was unnatural.

It’s a decoy!

Magic items were on the whole terribly expensive. Those as strong as a Spiralflame were especially difficult to obtain.

The magic item near the boys’ dorm was probably something cheaper made to look like one. The mana would swell, whirling and churning, but never explode.

Still, any magic item that produced so much as a modest flame had the potential to cause a fire. With Ryn unable to divert her attention from the second prince, it fell to Louis to retrieve it.

He scowled. He didn’t like this situation at all. It’s as if the enemy has me dancing in the palm of their hand.

It was obvious that if they suggested the existence of a Spiralflame in that situation, Louis—who excelled in barrier techniques—would go to retrieve it. Was the decoy meant to distract me—to get me away from there? If so, then their motive is…

A thought occurred to Louis, but at that very moment, Ryn’s voice reached his ears. And she sounded uncharacteristically desperate.

“Lord Louis! The Silent Witch, she’s…!”

“Don’t you care what happens to Cyril Ashley?”

The man’s words disrupted Monica’s thoughts.

She had an excellent mind for calculation, and those calculations were telling her this was a bluff.

But her heart argued back:

What if he’s telling the truth?

Then Lord Cyril, he’d…he’d die…?

She knew she had to remain calm and carefully scrutinize the man’s claims, but her mind wasn’t working properly. She felt a cold sweat on her back. Her heartbeat was pounding in her head.

Cyril was always helping her. Even if it wasn’t much, she wanted to show her thanks by doing her best at the school festival.

“Let’s do everything we can to, um, make the school festival a success. Okay?”

That’s what she’d told him. But she still hadn’t done anything.

“No… No, that’s…”

“This is no empty threat, dear,” said the man. “You know what happened to Eugene Pitman, don’t you? The one I became last time?”

The teacher from Minerva’s whose form this man had taken at the chess competition had been found brutally killed. Her opponent was more than capable of murder, without a shred of mercy or pity.

No, no, no…!

As Monica stood there at a loss, the man with Cyril’s face laughed in a way totally unlike Cyril. It was a derisive laugh, one meant to bully. “If you value Cyril Ashley’s life at all,” he said, “then disable your spell.”

I have to buy time until Mr. Louis gets back, she thought. But how…?

Shaken by the man’s rambling, Monica failed to notice the other intruder—the woman with the dignified eyebrows—chanting ever so softly.

Her spell produced a small flame, which was slowly melting the ice binding her right arm. Eventually, once the ice was thin enough, she freed her hand, opened a vial hidden in her sleeve, and rolled it over to Monica’s feet.

Inside it was the same highly volatile poison the man had thrown at her a few minutes ago. And by the time Monica noticed the awful stench, it was too late.

“…Ah, argh…ugh, ah…?”

The back of her head tingled, and her vision began to distort. Knowing she was under attack, she immediately tried to deploy a magical formula.

Unfortunately, with how hazy her mind was, she couldn’t manage the necessary calculations. All those beautiful equations and formulae twisted, broke apart, and collapsed.

“Ah…agh…ahhh…”

She crumpled to the floor, her limbs twitching, as the pair of intruders destroyed the remaining ice and stood up.

“We have two objectives,” said the man. “The first is the second prince. And the second…”

He knelt down beside Monica, snatched her up by her hair, and brought his face close. He wore a cruel smile.

“…is to secure the Silent Witch, Monica Everett.”