Part 7
Alexia rushes over to the yard behind the dorms. Honestly, it’s not much of a yard. The area is poorly maintained, and it’s completely overgrown with trees. The night dew soaks her boots.
She looks back over her shoulder as she runs. “Come on, hurry up!”
The guards race after her with looks of terror on their faces. “That magic is dangerous, Princess Alexia! We need to wait for reinforcements!”
“If you keep dawdling, the culprit’s going to get away!”
“Princess Alexia, wait!”
Alexia ignores the guards and pushes her way through the thicket. Soon, she finds the aftermath of a battle.
“No way…”
The ground and vegetation are riddled with lacerations, and the area lingers with traces of powerful magic.
“Who even has magic this strong?”
“Princess Alexia, we— Ah! What is this?” When the guards finally catch up to her, their voices get caught in their throats by the choking quantities of mana still present in the air. “I-it’s dangerous here, ma’am. The culprit might still be in the area.”
“Exactly. And it’s your job to catch them.”
“B-but, ma’am…”
The guards glance at one another, unable to look Alexia in the eye. Alexia sighs, but she makes sure they don’t see her doing it.
“This here—this is blood.” She traces the bloodstains splattered across the grass. “Someone lost a lot of it. They could be badly wounded. They might even be the culprit behind the incidents…”
The Case of the Missing Students is the talk of the campus, but the Knight Order is completely butchering their investigation. They’ve ignored the mountains of evidence and declared that no criminal activity has taken place.
Alexia, on the other hand, suspects there’s more to the case than meets the eye.
“There were some elite dark knights fighting here. But why here?” she says.
The spot they’re in is no battlefield. It’s just the yard behind some student dorms.
“It makes sense to think this could be related to the case. There’s clearly some powerful force at work here…”
One of the guards’ panicked voices interrupts her train of thought. “P-Princess Alexia!”
“What?”
“O-over there!”
The guard is pointing at a silent figure dressed in a jet-black longcoat.
“When did he—?”
Alexia shudders. She didn’t sense his presence at all.
“W-wait, that’s…”
The figure is wearing his hood low, and he wipes his fingers across a bloodstain on the grass. His voice rumbles like it’s echoing up from the depths of the abyss. “This is the toll that a battle demands, is it?”
“Shadow…”
There’s something strikingly melancholic about him, and Alexia finds herself at a loss for words.
“Was the life shed here a necessary sacrifice for the sake of the world?”
“Did you have something to do with this, Shadow?”
Shadow pays no heed to Alexia or the guards. Instead, he sinks deep into thought.
“P-P-P-P-Princess Alexia, get back! You need to retreat and call in the Knight Order—”
The guards tremble as they draw their swords.
“Stand down, all of you,” she replies. “Our swords are no threat to him.”
Despite knowing that, she levels her sword at Shadow all the same.
“Answer me, Shadow. What happened here?”
When she pours magic into her blade, Shadow finally turns to face her. The red eyes beneath his mask home in on her.
“And what would you do, knowing the truth?”
“Catch whoever was behind it. I won’t let them get away with this.”
Behind his mask, Shadow lets out a small laugh. “Your efforts are futile.”
He vanishes.
No, wait—there he is, right in front of her.
“Wha—?”
She failed to sense his magic, his presence, his anything. Before she knows it, he’s standing directly before her with a sword pressed to her throat.
Alexia recognizes that sword.
After all, it belongs to her.
“My…sword…”
She never even noticed him steal it.
“We live in different worlds.”
“What does that even mean?”
Alexia clenches her jaw. She’s put in so much work. She was so sure she’d closed the gap a little.
“Front and back, shadow and light… There exists a world that people from the frontside would be best served avoiding.”
With that, he retracts the sword and turns to leave. His black longcoat flutters behind him, and he strides unhurriedly into the night.
“It’s time,” he says.
“Time? Time for what?”
“They’re making their move…”
A black liquid gushes forth from Shadow’s feet, surging upward and engulfing him. Then the wind blows, and Shadow vanishes in a cloud of black mist.
Alexia’s sword topples to the ground where he was standing.
“He’s gone… Who was it he was talking about?”
Alexia doesn’t understand any of it.
However, learning that Shadow is involved is a step in the right direction. A small step, she admits bitterly, but a step all the same. She turns around.
“Why aren’t those reinforcements here yet? We need to hurry up and preserve the scene of the—”
She freezes in shock.
“What…the…?”
All the guards are unconscious. In the span of that brief moment, Shadow knocked each and every one of them out. And Alexia didn’t notice a thing.
“How is there still such a gap between us? I’m trying so hard… I really am…”
She hangs her head and clenches her fists tight.
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