Spy Classroom - Volume 5 - Chapter 4.2

It was 115 minutes in, and the battle was still raging.

Over in the “Pandemonium” Sybilla and “Meadow” Sara vs “Lander” Vics battle, the handsome Vics had been totally composed the whole way through. After trading a few blows with Sybilla to gauge her strength, he put together a plan, then made full use of the Walled City’s many corridors and repeatedly dashed from hallway to hallway.

The reason for his composure was simple—Avian didn’t actually care that much about Lamplight.

If I’m being honest, the only one we’re actually interested in is Mr. Klaus. ♪

Lamplight’s members harbored deep inferiority complexes about the elites, but the reverse was far from true. Avian held no particular feelings toward their washout counterparts one way or the other.

Vics smiled.

They get props for finishing those Impossible Missions, but at the end of the day, Mr. Klaus did all the work. ♪ Sure, they’re no normal washouts, but they’re not anything special, either. ♪

As a result, all Vics had to do was play it smart. Just as he’d predicted, Sara had been unable to keep up with the battle and got left behind.

After dashing down a few more corridors with Sybilla in hot pursuit, he reached a dead end. There was a small safety railing there and nothing more. Sybilla and Vics cleared the railing in unison and leaped outside of the Longchon Walled City altogether.

Now that we’ve both got room to maneuver, all that’s left is to dive into the world of battle. ♪

Vics’s unique talent was his superhuman strength. His build looked slender, but his latissimus dorsi muscles were gigantic, and their abnormal size allowed him to generate a huge amount of power. When Vics threw punches, he always made sure to put his back into them.

On top of that, his lats were even big enough to conceal his weapons. By making it look like he was unarmed, he was able to catch his foes by surprise.

Superhuman Strength × Concealment = Bottomless Brawn.

That was the liecraft Vics had devised. If his opponents didn’t know his weapons’ reach, he could leverage his immense strength to make each block a knockout!

“______!”

Vics took the whip he’d retrieved from behind his back and gave it a big swing. This time, he’d chosen a medium-range weapon with a completely different reach than his fists or his cudgel.

Sybilla just barely managed to dodge back in time. Those were some serious reflexes she had.

“Where the hell’d you get that whip from?!” she yelped.

“Oh, who knows? Hmm… ♪ Should I go for a spear next?”

“Wait, you’ve got a spear?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? ♪ Ha-ha-ha, make sure you keep your eyes fixed on me!” Vics chirped, poking fun at his bewildered foe.

Naturally, the weapons he hid in his lats had to be small, and he could only hold a maximum of four at a time. At the moment, he was armed with a cudgel, a whip, a pistol, and a pair of brass knuckles. There was no way he could have actually fit an entire spear back there, but by that point, Sybilla would have believed just about anything.

Vics’s score was the second best out of all the academy students, and he had the skills to back that rank up.

Now the two of them had arrived at a completely empty lot. Someone was probably prepping it to build out the Longchon Walled City even farther, as the bare earthen ground was neat and tidy.

Looks like she specializes in theft, but that’s not gonna work on me. ♪ I guess I’d better go ahead and settle this with my next attack. ♪

As long as he had his strength, Vics was confident he could emerge victorious from any close-quarters fight. And as far as deception went, he could tell that he had Sybilla well and truly flummoxed.

“All right, let’s do this. ♪ If I don’t hurry it up, Vindo’s gonna beat me to the punch. ♪”

He stowed his whip back behind his back and replaced it with his brass knuckles. They were the perfect weapon to take advantage of his monstrous strength, so they were his go-to when he wanted to finish a fight.

He lowered his center of gravity and got ready to put Sybilla down with a counter.

“………”

However, she didn’t attack him.

Instead, she sulkily pursed her lips and lowered her raised fists. “…Vindo, huh? So you’re sayin’ I don’t even register to you.”

“Hmm? Yeah, not really. ♪”

“Well, that’s a fine how do you do. I guess that’s just how it is, huh? You guys are elites. No sense payin’ attention to us little people,” she muttered. “You’re pissin’ me off, man.”

Upon seeing her reaction, Vics couldn’t help but let out a laugh. “Ha-ha-ha. ♪ Y’know, there’s something that’s never made sense to me. ♪”

“What’s that?”

“See, it’s funny. ♪ I don’t know why, but losers always get hung up on meaningless evaluations and ratings. ♪ What school you went to, what your grades were like… That kind of stuff bores me to death. You’d think that losers would want to just ignore those rating systems altogether, but instead, they start obsessing over tiny changes and differences. ♪ It’s like, don’t you know there’s a whole world out there? ♪”

It was a mystery Vics had been grappling with for some time.

During his time as an academy student, grades had been the furthest thing from his mind. He knew about spies who were leagues stronger than him—people like Hearth, the Greatest Spy in the World; people like Ouka, the honorable spy whose nationality was a mystery; people like Calico, the strongest counterintelligence agent in all of Lylat; and people like “Flock” Vindo, a rookie from the same generation as Vics who’d immediately distinguished himself. When Vics compared himself to any of them, it filled him with a mortifying sense of inferiority. So what if he was an “elite”? Academy grades weren’t worth the paper they were written on.

“Her name was Erna, right? That chick who wanted so badly to reach our level that she got in an accident while she was training. ♪ She got fixed on arbitrary metrics, got tunnel vision, and screwed herself over. That’s pretty pathetic, if you ask me. ♪”

While he was at it, he decided to add in a little taunt. Using his flippant attitude to throw his enemies off their game was one of Vics’s signature moves.

“…………………………………”

Sure enough, Sybilla went flush with rage. She was so furious the air around her seemed liable to catch on fire.

Once again, Vics got himself ready to fire off a counter.

“…Maybe you’ve got a point,” Sybilla quietly grumbled. “Fact is, we do get hung up on little things. From your perspective, the stuff we care about probably seems trivial.”

“Oh yeah. ♪ It couldn’t matter less. ♪”

“Can you really blame us, though? All the shit you’re sayin’ might be true, but every time I think back to those cramped academy dorms, I get this ugly pain in my heart. Maybe if I’d been able to become a badass adult, I could laugh that shit off, but guess what? I wasn’t. And my buddies weren’t, either!” Sybilla leaped. “You piss me off, asshole—bad enough to make me pull out a technique I’d just as soon never use.”

“………?”

Vics wasn’t quite sure how to describe what he experienced next.

It felt like a blank spot had just drifted through his mind. All at once, he stopped being able to perceive the girl in front of him. Who was it I was just fighting? All the information about her in his head vanished like a candle being blown out.

Then a moment later—there she was.

“______!!”

Vics immediately leaped away to put some distance between himself and Sybilla. Then he got to work analyzing the strange sensation that had just violated his brain.

…Did I seriously stop being able to perceive her for a second? There’s no way. But at the same time, that’s the only explanation.

He looked over at Sybilla. She was cracking her knuckles and radiating the quiet rage of a person preparing their next move.

That’s probably the secret behind her “theft” skill… She erases herself from her opponent’s perception, then steals their stuff. It’s just about the best ability a pickpocket could ask for. But no matter how you slice it—

Vics gulped.

—this girl’d be even better at killing people!

It was all too easy to picture.

What if she took those fingers so capable of withdrawing a wallet from an interior pocket and dug them ever so slightly into soft flesh? What if she filed her nails down like knives and stabbed them into someone’s heart? Doing so would have been beyond most pickpockets, but not Sybilla. She had the raw strength and combat instincts to pull it off.

Where the hell did she learn a trick like that…?

Vics felt a slight chill in his bones. That was when he noticed that, once more, he couldn’t perceive Sybilla. By the time he could see her again, she was already in melee range.

“Here’s the thing, though. For all our faults, there’s a guy who thinks we’re magnificent.”

With that short declaration, Sybilla swung her knife.

This was going to be a problem. If she was too up in his face for him to trick her, then obviously, he couldn’t use his liecraft.

“Watch close. I’m gonna show you how a lame-ass washout fights.”

Vics only barely managed to block her attack with his cudgel.

Clearly, he was going to have to revise his assessment of her skills. Like it or not, this called for a massive change of plans.

As Vics reevaluated his opinion of Lamplight, Vindo was experiencing some unexpected emotions of his own.

When Erna fled, it had locked in a leader-versus-leader battle between Vindo and Lily, and the battle had ended almost as soon as it began. Vindo had won in overwhelming fashion.

He hadn’t given Lily a single inch. He’d made sure to overpower her before she could so much as arm herself. Using his trademark knife skills, he struck her in the head. Then, after thinking back to how quickly she’d recovered the last time he knocked her out, he hit her head again even harder.

All the strength flooded out of Lily’s body. She’d made a valiant attempt to brace herself, but her legs went limp all the same, and she toppled to the ground face-first.

Vindo glanced at the ground to make sure Lily was actually down for the count.

…After a hit like that, not even she could get up again.

His attack had been so strong that if he’d used it against a civilian, there was a very real chance it could have caused a brain injury. He was a bit worried he’d overdone it, but at the same time, it wasn’t like he could have afforded to pull punches.

His job was to eliminate Lamplight’s members, but they were proving to be far more tenacious than he’d expected. Now that Erna had fled, he was going to have to give chase. He turned toward the hallway.

“…Hold it right there.”

The moment he did, though, he heard an all-too-familiar voice.

“________!”

He looked back, hardly able to believe his ears.

Lily was bracing herself against the wall to drag herself back to her feet.

That was enough to baffle even Vindo.

What’s this girl made of? She shouldn’t be able to move. Any normal person would have passed out ages ago…

As far as he was aware, she didn’t know any techniques for shrugging off attacks. Every blow Vindo had dealt her had struck true. It was the same knife technique he’d used to knock out scores of enemies, soldiers, mafia members, and enemy spies alike. When Vindo attacked someone, he rendered them utterly immobile.

The fact that Lily was still standing could only mean one thing—her mental fortitude was beyond the beyonds. It was a silly explanation, but it was the only one that made sense. The girl was just tough as nails.

“What the hell even are you?” said Vindo.

“I’m Wunderkind Lily,” Lily hoarsely replied. “…And my specialty is buying time.”

“All this, just for the blond… You really care that much about your teammates?”

“Who knows…? Maybe I just love the way protecting them makes me feel…”

“You and I are never going to understand each other, are we?”

“Nope. I hate…your guts, too…”

That there was her limit.

Midway through her mumbled stream of verbal abuse, she keeled over forward and passed out atop the cold concrete floor.

Seriously, what is that girl made of…?

In terms of spy skills, she couldn’t hold a candle to Vindo. If their positions had been reversed, though, Vindo knew that there was no way he could have gotten up that many times in a row to buy time for his allies.

What are they all made of…?

Despite being comprised of nothing but washouts, Lamplight had successfully completed multiple Impossible Missions. And sure, their recent missions had been marred by successive failures, but they’d put up a surprisingly robust resistance in their battle against Avian.

Vindo couldn’t make heads or tails of how intensely they were struggling.

He sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, and let it out to center himself.

“It doesn’t matter. Either way, I’ll do what needs to be done,” he muttered to himself. He started thinking about how he was going to chase down Erna.

Then, as he turned his back on Lily, he spotted someone unexpected walking down the corridor. It was Klaus. He gave Vindo a steely look.

“………”

It felt like a chill had just run through the air itself.

Apparently, Klaus was going around and getting the knocked-out combatants to safety. Despite his professed neutrality, everything about his demeanor was practically bubbling with resentment. Fair fight or not, he couldn’t stand seeing his teammates get hurt.

“There’s no point holding this against me, Bonfire,” Vindo said before Klaus had a chance to say anything. “This is what the Republic needs. It’s important we find out who’s better so the stronger team can work under your command. It’s for the good of the motherland.”

“I understand that. I don’t need you to spell it out for me.”

Klaus strode past Vindo and gently felt Lily’s bleeding forehead. Then he wordlessly wrapped a bandage around his subordinate’s scalp. His expression was hard, but his fingers moved with a decided softness.

As he continued applying first aid, he spoke. “It does beg the question, though—why do you want to work with me so badly?”

“………”

“You were the one who gave that bold order to send three people after Monika, weren’t you? Your judgment is sound, and I watched you fight just now. You aren’t the kind of man who needs to work under someone else’s command.”

“…That’s my call to make.”

Klaus pressed the issue. “Why do you want me so badly? The way I see it, Avian is a perfectly fine team already.”

However, Vindo didn’t understand what he was getting at. He had no idea what kind of future Klaus had in mind.

“…I’m just paying off a stupid debt,” Vindo briefly replied before striding on past Klaus.

There was no need to tell him, he’d decided.

Klaus didn’t need to know that the reason Vindo had set his sights on him to fulfill “Firewalker” Gerde’s final wish.

Vindo met the spy known as Firewalker on two separate occasions.

The first was a chance encounter—and an indirect one—during the Great War. There, a younger Vindo bore witness to a miracle.

Vindo was a tender ten years of age at the time, and his hometown was under Galgad occupation. Their rule was horrific, and his town descended into a state of exploitation and murder. The Galgad soldiers confiscated what little rations there were, and they mercilessly killed any who tried to stand up to them. Both of Vindo’s parents had been shot dead when they begged the soldiers for food.

Vindo stared through the window as they buried his parents in a hole far too ignoble to be properly called a grave.

I’ll kill them!

Tears welled up in his young eyes as he chanted the words inside his head like a curse.

I’ll kill them all, every last one of them…!

He wouldn’t find out until later, but a full 20 percent of his town’s population ended up dying at the Imperial army’s hands. It was there that a lust for vengeance took root within his heart, accompanied by a tormented realization of his own powerlessness.

In the end, it was someone else’s hands that carried out his revenge.

A strange rumor began circulating through the Galgad-occupied town.

I hear the army had some classified information leaked. Apparently, there’s a spy hiding in the town.

There were other rumors, too.

Whenever the Imperial army takes territory, there are these five monsters that show up there.

There’s a man with a katana and unmatched combat skills; there’s an old woman sniper who charges full speed through battlefields like nobody’s business; there’s a pair of twin brothers—a games master who’s won a thousand battles in a row and a fortune teller who can see the future; and there’s a mysterious woman with hair like a raging inferno.

Those five can make the impossible possible.

A week later, the Allies launched a surprise attack on the Imperial forces there. For a town drowning in despair, their arrival was like a beam of light shining through the darkness. Before long, the Imperials’ position started falling apart, and the soldiers starting scrambling to be the first to get the hell out of there.

It was like magic, and it moved young Vindo’s heart.

Later on, he would discover that it was a spy who made that magic possible.

The second time he met her was during his time in the navy.

After witnessing the miracle of espionage work driving back despair, Vindo set his sights on joining the Naval Intelligence Department. And graduating from the naval academy with outstanding grades was exactly what he did. Having a job where he got to travel the globe doing intelligence work was also exactly what he wanted.

During his travels, he ran into a striking-looking old woman on a street corner in the Fend Commonwealth. The woman was pretty darn conspicuous. Her tank top and jeans left her brawny muscles bare, her grizzled hair was tied back behind her, and she had a pair of sunglasses resting on her forehead. It was almost inspiring, the way she smoked three cigarettes at once and pounded down beer out of a large mug in broad daylight.

As Vindo was giving her a long, hard look, she suddenly turned and glared at him.

“You there, sonny. You’re a spy, right?”

She’d found him out in a heartbeat.

As Vindo stared dumbfounded, the woman went on. “You’ve still got the stink of soldier on you, greenhorn, and I can feel your thirst for revenge from over here. What’re you, Naval Intelligence? You punks haven’t learned a thing. Well, someone had better teach you something. All right, sonny, c’mere.”

Without even giving him her name, she simply laid on the criticism and dragged Vindo off to her basement apartment. Whenever he argued back, she would throw him against the ground and stick a gun to his head.

Then, after all but kidnapping him, she subjected him to three days and three nights of hellish training down in that same basement.

Every time he tried to flee, she would grab him by the throat and haul him right back. Vindo was so out of it by the end of the training that he couldn’t actually remember any of the specifics. All he knew was that he emerged with several broken ribs.

On the third night, after Vindo threw up for the fifth time, the old woman finally released him. “That’s pathetic is what it is, kiddo. Little Klaus only threw up three times getting through that regimen. Well, it is what it is. You’re better now than you were before. You’ve still only just started learning to control those emotions of yours, mind you.”

The woman had been merciless from start to finish. She still hadn’t introduced herself, but over the past three days, Vindo had deduced that she was nobody to be trifled with. The list of people with skills like hers had to be a short one.

“…During the war, you ever go to a town called Melatock?” he asked.

“Hmm?”

“I was there, and I watched with my own two eyes as spies screwed with the Imperials’ intel and left their bastard soldiers without a leg to stand on. I’m wondering if you were there, too.”

The older woman scratched her head in disinterest. “I couldn’t say, really. It’s hard to remember that far back. But sure, I might’ve worked there.”

Vindo gasped, and his heart stirred. Sure enough, the woman across from him was one of the legendary spies who freed him from that hell.

“Well, I was one of the civilians you saved.” He gave her a deep bow. “Thank you, really. You’re exactly the kind of spy I want to be like.”

“……………” After thinking for a long time, the older woman licked her dry lips. “I see, I see. So you owe me one. In that case, I’m going to go ahead and be a bit selfish.”

“Hmm?” Vindo looked up. He had an ominous feeling about this.

“Drop that naval nonsense and come join the Foreign Intelligence Office. Its existence isn’t public, but your bosses will know the name. Just tell them that ‘Firewalker’ Gerde sent you, and they’ll square you away right quick. That’s where the real spies work. With your skills, you’ll be through and done with the academy inside a year.”

“If that’s where the skilled spies are, then I’d be happy to join, but I’m not sure I follow…”

“Then I’m gonna need you to lend Little Klaus a hand.”

“Who?”

“He’s a young’un, like you… Hell, you might even be the same age. He’s called Bonfire. You remember that, now. You stay in this world, and you’re bound to find him someday.”

Vindo didn’t recognize the code name, but he made sure to commit it to memory. Whoever this Bonfire was, he was clearly important to her.

She narrowed her eyes, like she was gazing far off into the distance. “…Little Klaus is awful at relying on people, you see.” There was a certain sadness to her words. “I’ve got to foster more talent before these old bones run out of life in ’em. At this rate, he’s gonna end up alone. Sigh… The work never ends when your subordinates are as much of a handful as mine.”

With an exasperated “That boy, I swear,” she shook her head and left.

Harsh as her words were, though, her voice had the warmth of a grandmother fretting over her grandson.

Vindo’s expression softened as he reminisced on his run-ins with the older woman.

Two years had passed since he’d followed her instructions and transferred over to the Foreign Intelligence Office. Since then, he’d blitzed his way through his academy and joined the front lines of espionage work. It was there that Avian’s old boss Sky Monk had told him the rumors about Bonfire.

The story was, Gerde was part of a team called Inferno, and everyone on the team except Bonfire had been wiped out. Vindo never got to have his reunion with Gerde, but he’d long since mastered her technique. He’d taken his burning lust for revenge and locked it deep away, only sublimating it into a liecraft that let him launch immediate, explosive counterattacks.

“Don’t you worry, Firewalker,” Vindo said. “I’ll drive off the flies buzzing around your grandson and crush Lamplight until there’s nothing left.”

That was the secret to his fixation on Klaus—a desire to do right by the woman who’d given him hope all those years ago.

Two hours had passed since the teams infiltrated the Longchon Walled City.

The city had initially seemed like a labyrinth, but as it turned out, it was pretty manageable if you took it one section at a time. After fleeing from the room Lily had gotten injured in, Erna took a long detour, then made her way back to the same room. She glanced inside, and sure enough, Lily was gone. Klaus must have come and picked her up or something. Erna quickly closed the door.

From there, she left the room, headed down the hallway, and sank to the floor. She couldn’t walk another step. Her lungs hurt so bad it felt like they were going to burst.

In all likelihood, Vindo was still close by. He’d been working to eliminate Lamplight’s members, and now that he’d taken out Grete and Lily, Erna was the only one left. Right now he was probably on the hunt for his final prey.

As Erna tried to catch her breath, something fell off her head and onto the floor.

It was a black puppy, Johnny.

“…Oh, that’s right. You’re still here, too.”

She scritched the puppy’s chin, and he licked her fingers, almost like he was trying to console her.

“Big Sis Sara…” As the puppy helped Erna calm her nerves, she thought about the Lamplight member she so dearly adored. “…I’m not scared. I’m not scared anymore…,” she whispered.

“Yarf,” the puppy barked sadly.

Erna stroked his fur and turned her thoughts back to the past.

When was it I first became a slave to misfortune?

After her family passed away in a fire, she became fixated on a peculiar notion—the notion that it wasn’t fair that only she got to live. At her family’s funeral, seeing the attendees mourning their deaths made her want to run away and hide, and when the attendees gently told her to be strong on her family’s behalf, the words rang like a curse in her ears. All she was in their eyes was a pitiable little orphan.

At the same time, though, she realized something. The more misfortunate she was, the more sympathy people would show her, even though she was a wretched child who’d survived all on her own.

She hated herself for even letting the thought cross her mind.

How did I feel when I joined my spy academy?

She recognized what a horrible person she was, and being drawn to misfortune was her way of punishing herself. However, she still wanted people to console her. That made her that much more drawn to misfortune, and she threw herself into situations where it was liable to occur.

Eventually, word of the ex-aristocrat girl who showed up at the scene of accidents with nigh miraculous frequency made its way to the spy academy scouts, and when they offered her a spot, she had no reason to turn them down.

She wanted to become a spy and save loads of people to do her late family proud—or at least, that was what she told them. However, not even she herself was sure if that was really true. Perhaps she only said that because she wanted someone to compliment her, she mused.

………The question was, who?

Why was I so alone at the academy?

She was inarticulate, gloomy, secretly a teensy bit prideful, and overly prone to accidents. However, that was all just details. The actual reason was it was because of how twisted her personality was.

Why did I keep getting drawn to misfortune?

Because she knew. She knew that every time she got unlucky it gave her an excuse she could give both to herself and to others.

After all, it would mean it wasn’t her fault.

If she was unlucky, it wasn’t her fault she got bad grades. If she was unlucky, it wasn’t her fault she had no friends. If she was unlucky, it wasn’t her fault that everyone hated her. If she was unlucky, it wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t be a good girl and make her dead parents proud. So what if she was cowardly and dishonest to her core? Her misfortune was delivering a commensurate punishment, so it was fine. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t her fault.

She might have been a pathetic washout, but that was all just bad luck, so it wasn’t her fault.

She loathed the way she chose to live her life.

But at the same time, she had a young man who’d saved her and a group of teammates who’d accepted her with open arms.

Johnny the puppy twitched his nose to let Erna know that someone was coming. She looked up with a start.

Vindo strode out of the long hallway’s shadows.

He twirled his knives in his hands as though getting a feel for their weight. As a sort of tic, he juggled three of them into the air at once like an acrobat.

Finally, he clutched them between his fingers and looked up as well. “Found you, Blondie.”

“……!”

Erna brimmed with resolve as she rose to her feet. Retreat wasn’t an option. This time around, she was going to have to face him.

The two of them squared off in the silent, abandoned corridor with about fifteen feet between them. The light bulb dangling from the ceiling let off a feeble glow.

Erna could hear gunshots coming from off in the distance. Some of Lamplight’s and Avian’s members were probably duking it out, but the shots were coming from far enough away that there was no way anyone was going to come save her.

She focused every nerve in her body and glared at Vindo.

“Here’s some friendly advice,” Vindo said detachedly. “Surrender now. I get no joy out of bullying weaklings.”

“……….No way.”

“I swear, you people just don’t know when to quit.” Vindo combed back his hair with his hand, visibly annoyed. “In that case, I guess I’d better take it easy on you. I’ll bring you down with my bare hands.”

“Take it easy”?

By the time Erna reacted to the phrase, Vindo was already closing the gap. He dodged the bottle Erna hastily threw at him, and a moment later, he was right in front of her.

Erna pulled out the lead pipe she’d been hiding behind her back and swung it down with all her might.

Vindo tilted his body backward to evade the blow. He dipped so low he nearly hit the floor. It almost looked as though he’d fainted. Then, in an instant, he sprang back up from his defeated-looking position.

“I’m code name Flock—and it’s time to gouge clean through.”

His knife-hand attack struck Erna square in the gut. Spittle flew from her mouth, and she couldn’t breathe as her body jerked into the air, then tumbled across the ground. Her mind went fuzzy for a second, but she snapped out of it upon vomiting and ending up on her hands and knees in a puddle of her own gastric juices.

Vindo had completely overpowered her without even using his knives. She hadn’t been able to so much as put up a fight. For him, beating her had been like taking candy from a baby.

“That should about do it.” Satisfied with his work, Vindo brushed off his hands. “Now just go to sleep so Bonfire can come pick you up. Enjoy that kindness of his. This’ll be your last chance to do so.”

“………”

“Don’t worry. It’s not like you’re saying good-bye to him forever. Just accept your powerlessness, go back to your academy, and pour yourself into your training. Right now that’s your place.” His tone left no room for rebuttal. “And while you do, Avian will protect you. I’ll protect you, and I’ll protect our nation.”

Vindo’s voice rang loud with pride. His dignity and patriotism came through, clear as day.

A sharp pain ran through Erna’s heart. She’d seen it time and time again at her academy. Deep down, that was who the elites really were. Sure, some of them were greedy and arrogant, but the vast majority of the top students were like Vindo and had a strong moral compass to go along with their talents. Erna couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen their faces brim with confidence.

“You’re so cool…!”

The words spilled from her mouth, and tears spilled from her eyes. Her opponent’s words had gouged at her heart, and his blows had stung her body, but her true feelings tumbled out all the same.

“I want to be like that, too… I want to live my life like you do!”

She was so jealous. Vindo was everything she admired. Everything she yearned for. She wanted to become a valiant, courageous spy like him.

How many times had that wish crossed her mind back at the academy, she wondered? How many times had she resented its refusal to come true?

She wanted to be a strong, talented spy. She wanted to live a life trusted and relied on by everyone she met. She wanted for people to have great expectations for her—and to meet those expectations by saving her nation from peril. She wanted to be someone who could deftly deceive her foes and confidently tell those weaker than her that she would protect them.

She wanted to be one of the elite.

“I just wanted…to become a spy…who Mom and Dad…and Big Bro…and Big Sis would be proud of from up in heaven…”

Ah, she thought as realization dawned on her. That was who she wanted to have compliment her—the family she would never see again.

In the end, though, I couldn’t do it.

I was never able to become the ideal spy I wanted to be.

Her weakness left her drawn to misfortune, and bit by bit she strayed from the path of righteousness. She grew to love disasters for the excuses they gave her for her ever-falling grades, and before she knew it, the people at the academy started seeing her as a washout and handling her with kid gloves.

“They wouldn’t care,” Vindo said curtly. “Not everyone has it in them to be strong. That’s why it’s up to us strong people to protect weaklings like you. Now, yield.”

“I can’t do that!”

Erna fought through the pain racking her body and stood up. She panted as her lungs frantically tried to take in as much oxygen as they could, but she stood on her own two feet all the same.

“I couldn’t become a cool spy… And the only way I know how to live is one that I hate… But even so, despite all that, I’ve had good things happen to me, too… Lamplight is the one thing I can’t give up on,” she declared. “And so I decided to accept myself for the shameful, horrid, uncool person that I am.”

Confusion flitted across Vindo’s face, and Erna quietly smiled.

She was about to show him something.

She was going to show him the twisted way a washout who was unable to become an ideal spy fought!

She was going to show him a way of life so uncool that an elite could never even conceive of it!

“I’m code name Fool—and it’s time to kill with everything.”

She opened up the door beside her and immediately leaped out of the way.

The door led to the empty room she and Lily had just fought Vindo in. Under normal circumstances, opening it up wouldn’t have done anything. But this time, flames blasted out of it.

Vindo was standing right in front of the door, and flames billowed directly toward him. He tried to leap to the side as quickly as he could, but there was no way for him to make it in time.

The raging flames assailed him.

“______?!”

Vindo screamed when the fire hit him, then rolled across the floor to put out his burning clothes. The Longchon Walled City was made of concrete, so there was little danger of the fire spreading and creating a huge conflagration. After it finished scorching the area around the room, it was going to die out in no time.

Vindo managed to put out the fires on his body, but not before suffering some serious damage. He groaned in pain as he clutched at his burned right leg. He wasn’t going to be pulling off any more of his fancy footwork any time soon.

“Why…was there a fire there…?” Vindo’s eyes went wide, and he glared at Erna. “When did you set it up? Back when we fought, you didn’t have any sort of bombs on you!”

He must have checked her for weapons when he attacked her with his knives earlier. It was the work of a consummate professional.

He clicked his tongue. “How could you have set that fire while you were fleeing?”

“With a burning lens. I used that stainless steel bowl I threw to focus the light from the flashlight Big Sis Lily dropped and set the rug on fire. Then, when I opened the door just now, it triggered the backdraft effect.”

The Longchon Walled City’s expansions had been uncoordinatedly slapped together out of concrete. Plenty of its concrete rooms had terrible ventilation, and a locked room with poor airflow was precisely the right kind of environment for the backdraft effect to take place.

“You told me all that yourself,” Erna matter-of-factly declared.

“No,” Vindo snapped back in irritation. “The time line doesn’t add up!”

“But…”

“I didn’t tell you about burning lenses until after you two lost control of that flashlight. Up to that point, you couldn’t have known they existed. If you did, what was up with those accidents you caused?”

He had a point. Before their current showdown, Erna had gone through a pair of accidents. There was the backdraft effect from the burning lens fishbowl at the cotton mill, and there was her fall caused by the aluminum fence warping under the converged light from her crystal ball.

Vindo had determined that both events were caused by Erna’s negligence. In his view, they’d only happened because of her ignorance regarding scientific concepts like burning lenses. The thing was, though, he’d stopped one step short of the truth. If not for the one fatal misconception he was operating under, he would have gotten there.

“They weren’t mistakes; they were on purpose,” Erna replied.

“Both of the accidents happened just the way I engineered them to.”

“…The hell?”

“It was all intentional. I felt that I had to, so I caused the fire and let myself get hit. It was the same thing with my fall. I intentionally put my weight on the part of the aluminum fence I’d weakened and made myself fall off the cliff.”

That was the truth behind the two accidents: Erna had actively caused them both. Everyday danger or not, there was no way that so many focused-light-related accidents could happen one after another—not unless someone was consciously making them occur.

However, Vindo hadn’t been able to reach that truth. No reasonable person could possibly understand the mindset of someone who willingly threw themselves into disaster—and that was precisely why Erna had known it would work. Intentionally creating misfortune and using it to fool everyone was a combat style that was hers and hers alone.

Accidents × Starring in Her Own Productions = Catastrophe Creation.

That was the liecraft Erna had devised.

“Are you…,” Vindo said, dumbfounded. “Are you insane?”

It was unclear if the look in his eyes was one of fear or disdain.

There was no way he could comprehend why Erna had willingly caused those accidents. Nobody who lived their life untwisted could possibly understand her.

And so she replied. “I’ve known there was something broken about me for a long time,” she said with a casual coldness. She gave Vindo a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Good-bye.”

The trap she set off for good measure was a simple one. The fire had spread to the lumber piled carelessly in the hallway, and with how badly the planks at its base were smoldering, the pile was starting to lose its balance. All Erna had done was cut the wire holding the wood up.

A pile of burning planks came toppling down toward Erna and Vindo. Erna yanked her body to the side, just barely managing to avoid the misfortune she’d called forth, but with Vindo’s injured leg, there was no way for him to do the same.

“………”

The planks landed and crushed him under their bulk.

A wave of black soot struck Erna head-on. As she wiped her face clean, she started making her way down the hallway. Her joints were killing her. She needed to find somewhere safe to rest up.

“Let’s go,” she said to Johnny the puppy, then scooped him up in her arms from his spot by her feet. He obediently leaned against Erna’s chest. Feeling his warmth helped settle her nerves a bit.

Once Erna had covered a little bit of ground, she turned and looked back. Vindo hadn’t gotten up yet. She’d really taken him down.

“………”

She stopped for a moment and thought.

If Vindo had passed out, his life might be in actual danger. It was Vindo she was talking about, so she was sure he’d avoided any fatal injuries, but she was still a bit concerned about his safety. That said, she also didn’t want to carelessly approach him and end up eating one of his counterattacks. Plus, she was worried that some of the locals might get caught up in the fire…

D-did I take things too far?

Erna started fretting. Regrettably, holding back hadn’t really been an option.

“…I get it now.”

Then Vindo’s voice smashed right through her train of thought.

“______!”

Vindo shoved the piled-up planks aside as he rose to his feet. There was something slower and more relaxed about his movement now. Like he was flaunting how confident he was.

He gave his knives a flick, and the gale force from that alone cleaved a path through the smoke hanging in the air. His wind also blew away the last smoldering bits of fire.

“Good, I can still move,” Erna heard him mutter to himself in satisfaction. He looked at her, blood streaming from his forehead. “I underestimated you,” he said. “No, that’s not it. My read on you was completely off.”

His right leg was burned, his body was covered from head to toe in cuts, and there were bluish patches of internal bleeding visible through the hole in his shredded jacket. Yet still he was standing.

Erna ground her teeth.

All that…? All that, and it wasn’t enough to beat him?!

Her self-inflicted injuries had ostensibly made him complacent, Grete and Lily had fought tooth and nail to let her escape, and she’d lured him in and caught him right in the middle of one of her trademark accidents. Erna had put everything she had on the line. And yet even so, she’d failed to bring Vindo down.

“Now I get you,” he said proudly as he wiped the soot off his clothes. “I’ve heard of a mental disorder like that, where someone who’s otherwise healthy injures themselves to garner sympathy from others. Munchausen’s syndrome, it’s called. You’ve got something like that; you just fake accidents instead of illnesses.”

“………”

“I bet it started with that fire that killed your family. Did you set that, too? No, I guess not even you would go and burn your whole family to death. That fire probably was an accident, but you went and passed it off as arson by taking an empty bottle and throwing it into the burning building yourself. Then you told the police you’d seen someone sketchy. Go on, tell me I’m wrong.”

Erna bit down on her lip. “I thought not,” Vindo said, nodding to himself. “Your motive was simple—you wanted to elicit as much sympathy as you could. Your family was a bunch of former aristocrats, and everyone else was jealous of them, right? You knew the world would grieve more for an act of arson by a cowardly villain than a simple hearth fire that happened to get out of control. You lied for the sake of your dead family.”

It was like his words could see right through her.

“But that just made you hungry for more. All you had to do was make yourself unfortunate, and people would shower you with pity. You couldn’t stop. You sought out misfortune, and you were drawn to accidents. In the end, you even started causing them yourself.”

“……….”

“Deep down, that’s who you are—a brat who loves the pathetic misfortune of her own situation.”

After saying his piece, Vindo let out a long exhale.

Then, after a pregnant pause, he went on.

“It’s sickening.”

He looked at Erna like one would a pile of filthy garbage. It was a look she’d received countless times at her academy.

“You think…,” she said. “You think I don’t know that?!”

“But you haven’t told your teammates, have you?”

“I…”

“You can’t. Not if you want them to keep spoiling you with their kindness and affection when you run into misfortune.” Vindo’s voice echoed within her skull. “If they knew who you really were, they would find you repulsive, too.”

Erna couldn’t help but picture it. What would happen if they found out that some of her misfortune was of her own creation? Sara consoled her whenever Erna got into accidents, Sybilla and Lily doted on her, and Thea looked after her. How would they treat her once they knew?

Her body went limp, and the puppy she was holding fell to the floor.

“Guess I hit the nail on the head.”

Vindo clutched his knives and approached Erna.

He’s bluffing, the logical part of her brain told her. He’s too injured to move properly, and that’s why he’s trying to rattle me. Deducing people’s mental states and using that to wage psychological warfare is just another weapon in his arsenal.

Don’t let him get to you, she encouraged herself. Vindo wasn’t beaten yet. She needed to devise a new disaster. None of that stuff he’s saying matters right now!

However, visions of her teammates’ eyes full of revulsion flitted through her mind.

“I’m not scared…,” she said. Down by her feet, the puppy barked.

Step by step, Vindo closed in on her.

“I’m not scared of the others finding me repulsive…”

“Woof!” the puppy barked loudly.

Vindo lowered his center of gravity a little.

“I’m not scared of that future you talked about, not one bit.”

“Yarf!” the puppy howled.

Vindo took a running start and charged at her.

Erna squeezed her hands together as though in prayer.

“I don’t care if the others hate me if it means I can take you down…!”

She had to will it into being.

She needed to put everything she had on the line and call forth a disaster so bad it would obliterate her enemy where he stood!

Erna leaped to the side and readied a bomb in her hand. As she did, Vindo swung his knives.

The puppy jumped up.

“YARF, YARF, WOOF, YARF, WOOF, YAAAAAAAAAAARF!”

“Yeep…?” “What?”

Erna and Vindo both froze.

The puppy was barking like there was no tomorrow. Something was getting him all riled up, and his cries were getting shriller and shriller. Erna was right next to him, and it got so bad her ears started hurting.

Neither combatant could do anything but stare at the puppy in bewilderment. The wind had been taken right out of their sails.

“So…” Vindo furrowed his brow. “What’s the deal with the dog?”

“I—I don’t know…”

Erna had no answer to give him.

She’d heard the dog bark a couple times since she borrowed him from Sara, but this was the first time she’d seen him so agitated.

Then a reply came from an unexpected direction.

“Oh gosh, I’m so sorry! I haven’t finished training him yet!”

It was Sara.

She popped up from around the corner and gave them an apologetic bow. “I’m teaching him a trick like Miss Monika told me to.”

She gave her cheek an embarrassed scratch as she came over, then scooped Johnny up and gave him a stern look. “She said it would be handy, so I should hurry up and make him learn it. The thing is: It’s trickier than I expected, so I’m starting off by doing a test run on my teammates, but…he still gets worked up sometimes…”

“I…see?” Vindo replied, still perplexed.

Sara went on, excited to get a chance to talk about her pets. “According to Miss Monika, not all perspiration is made of the same components, and people have researched how to figure out people’s emotion from their sweat. So I did a little experiment on Miss Erna. I’ve always been a bit worried about her, so I taught Mr. Johnny to react whenever she sweated in a very particular way.”

She happily made her reveal.

“Specifically, the way she sweats when she lies.”

Erna was shocked.

She racked her brain to think of all the times he’d barked. Sure enough, they all matched up with times she’d been lying.

In other words, Sara had known for ages. She knew that some of Erna’s accidents were of her own creation. She knew that Erna had caused the screwup in the cotton mill on purpose, too. And even so, Sara had stuck by her side.

Erna felt the corners of her eyes growing hot.

As she stood there motionless, Vindo boredly flipped his knives into his hands beside her. “So?” He gave Sara a domineering glare. “You want a piece of me next?”

“Huh?” Sara’s expression sank. “No, no, no, no, no! I couldn’t; I could never! I’m not here to fight you! Miss Monika just finished lecturing me about how that wasn’t my job!”

She rapidly waved her hands in front of her and scurried backward. Then, once she was all the way out of sight, she went on in a much more composed tone.

“That’s why I brought some people way stronger than me when I followed Mr. Johnny’s barking.”

The assistants in question were standing on the other side of the hallway Sara had just disappeared down.

“You’ve got a lotta nerve, makin’ our Erna cry like that!”

“Yeah, I hope you’re ready. It takes a lot to tick me off, and you managed to do just that.”

It was Sybilla and Monika—Lamplight’s two heaviest hitters.

Vindo gritted his teeth in unconcealed frustration. “…Those idiots let you give them the slip?”

Sybilla was the first one into the fray. She closed the distance in a flash and hurled a punch at Vindo’s face with a fierce “Eat this!”

The attack was straightforward to a fault, but Vindo no longer had the strength to properly react to it. He was able to block the punch itself, but the force from the blow still sent him toppling to the floor. After landing from the spill, he managed to get back on his feet, but then—

“A burning lens, huh? That’s a clever idea.” Monika looked at the scorch marks, then nodded as if something had just clicked. “But just so you know, bending light is my specialty.”

A flash went off.

The camera Monika had produced gave off a blinding light, and after reflecting off the mirrors Monika had simultaneously strewn, it struck Vindo square in the eyes.

Her attack couldn’t be dodged. It was quite literally as fast as light.

As the camera robbed Vindo of his vision, Erna started running.

“YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!”

Her body ached, but she fought through it and let out a howling shout to encourage herself as she charged. She poured everything she had into jumping at Vindo, then head-butted him with all her might.

Her head slammed right into his face.

At long last, Vindo’s body finally went limp, and the man who’d stood above all the other academy students sank to his knees.