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JILL gasped as she looked up. “I thought I just smelled the aroma of a delicious feast for me!”
“Like hell you did in this smoky area,” Roger replied. “Did you find anything?”
He waved his hands in front of him to dispel the smoke as he stepped into the building. This plain structure only had one square window, and the moment Jill and Roger set foot inside, fire arose to greet them—a trap laid out for intruders.
A bit of magical energy was all it took to extinguish the flames, but the powerful fire had burned the entire building to the ground. Almost all the furniture and wooden boxes were broken, and any documents they managed to pull out had been charred to a crisp.
“Nothing useful,” Jill replied. “Didn’t find anyone either. Did they sense our arrival?”
“This is our fourth base, after all,” Roger agreed. “But they still seem far too careless…”
The first base, where Jill and Faris had been trapped, served solely as living quarters for the members of the Arks. Jill couldn’t extract any useful information, and when she arrived at the second base, it was more of the same.
“This place is pretty close to Lehrsatz, isn’t it?” Roger asked. “If they wanted to obstruct the meeting, this was the best location to serve as a base for some planning. What shall we do, Miss Jill? Should we meet up with Hadis first and go from there?”
Jill smiled as she dug through her pocket and took out a list of all the ladies invited to Hadis’s tea party, along with an invitation to it. She’d retrieved these documents at the third base.
“Sounds like a plan,” she said. “I’ve gathered more than enough proof to beat His Majesty into the ground. This is an empress selection meeting disguised as a tea party! I haven’t been informed of such a thing!”
“Uh, we’re not looking for proof to hit Hadis,” Roger replied. “We’re searching for the location of the Sacred Spear and the Arks’ reasoning for stealing it. I didn’t think we’d find any proof so easily, but…”
“Miss Jill! Mr. Brooder!” a student called. They’d been searching inside as well, and they gestured for their two teachers to come. “Over here! I think I found a hidden floor!”
Jill quickly headed over as the student pointed to a burnt rug. When she peeled it away, a spotless floor emerged.
“I thought it was weird since this is the only spot that’s not burnt,” the student explained. “As I thought, there’s some kind of safekeeping spell on it, but it’s complex and I can’t undo it.”
“Let me see… Ah, yeah, this requires a bit of practice to undo,” Roger said. “It’s like a puzzle, and there’s a proper way to unlock it. Why don’t I teach you—”
“No, just do this instead,” Jill said.
She clenched her fist and filled it with magical energy before she slammed the ground. There was a loud shatter, and the floor was destroyed, giving way to a dent about the size of a wooden box. Stacks of paper and the like were haphazardly tossed inside, indicating that this spot served as a storage space of sorts.
After a few beats of silence, Roger smiled. “Personally, I’m not sure if you should leave everything to brute force. It sets a bad example to our students, and isn’t the most logical method.”
“Well, I’m a Dragon Consort accepted by the Dragon God of Logic,” Jill replied. “What is this? A magic circle?” She grabbed a bundle of papers tied together with a string. Each sheet was inscribed with a magic circle, and some mistakenly scribbled circles were strewn around.
“This looks similar to the one I’ve seen engraved in the base of the statue of Dragon God Rave,” Roger muttered. “I’ve seen it at the imperial castle.”
Jill gasped and turned to her glove. “It also resembles this crest! His Majesty embroidered the symbol of the Dragon Emperor for me.”
“But neither is a perfect match to this magic circle… And this one over here’s totally different. It looks like an analysis or reference guide for the circle.”
Roger thumbed through a different stack of papers as Jill peered in and got a better look.
“Hey, I’ve seen this in Kratos’s royal castle,” she remarked. “And I feel like I saw a magic circle similar to this when I was captured by the Arks.”
“Are they trying to replicate the divine crests of the Dragon God and the Goddess?” Roger wondered.
His voice instantly turned stern, and Jill pursed her lips. The student who also observed the papers tilted their head to one side with confusion.
“But what’s the use in replicating them?” the student asked. “Even if we knew the exact shape of the divine crests, I thought only the deities could wield them. It’s something about us lacking magical powers, right?”
“That’s the story, but all magic circles and spells are derived from divine crests,” Roger replied. “Even if the Arks created their own kind of magic theory, they still originate from the divine crests. Research on divine crests isn’t unusual in and of itself, and all researchers dream of one day replicating the crest, but…”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“Haven’t you heard that these crests serve as a base for a special kind of sealing magic? Dragon God Rave’s divine crest can seal dragons, and Goddess Kratos’s crest can seal magic. And the Arks are trying to replicate that. It’s a bit concerning, isn’t it?”
“Do you think the Sacred Spear’s currently trapped because of that divine crest?” Jill asked.
Roger neither agreed with nor denied that query, and Jill felt like mentioning any further concerns wouldn’t help. She grabbed the only thick envelope remaining in the box. “Destroy” was written across it in red letters. This space under the floor seemed to be a temporary storage spot for documents that were meant to be destroyed. These past actions connected to the present, and Jill opened the envelope to pull out some dirty pieces of paper. She couldn’t hide her astonishment at the first words she read.
“‘Plan to attack Kratos using the Draco Flute?!’” she read.
“Sounds like they wanted to frame the attack on Rave and start a war,” Roger observed.
The plan detailed using the Draco Flute to mobilize the dragons as far as they would go. The beasts would go past the defensive line of House Cervel, and it meticulously noted their point of attack. There were even plans to infiltrate the Lehrsatz and Neutrahl Dragon Knights to steal away as many dragons as they could.
“Without the Draco Flute, this whole plan falls apart,” Roger noted. “I can see why they wanted to destroy these papers.”
Jill pointed to the large letters noted at the top of the page. “Look. It doesn’t say that this plan will be ‘canceled,’ but ‘revised.’”
There was a good chance that another plan was concocted to take its place. Roger violently ran his hand through his hair.
“I’d rather have them change the motive of their attack, but if they have some sort of replacement for the Draco Flute, that’ll be the worst scenario,” he said.
“Even worse would be if the Sacred Spear was involved somehow,” Jill added. “We’re practically in Lehrsatz territory, aren’t we? I’ll go report back to His Majesty.”
“Report? You’re not gonna attack him?”
“Miss Jill!” a student cried.
The students were supposed to have been searching the premises, but a group of them jumped into the building. Jill was surprised to see more students than she thought, and quickly realized that the team delivering Faris to Lehrsatz had also returned.
“What’s going on?” Jill asked. “Wasn’t the plan for you guys to stay in Lehrsatz after sending the queen over?”
“Now’s not the time!” a student cried. “The city of Lehrsatz has been taken over by the Arks!”
“There’re even rumors that the empress candidate will storm into Kratos,” another added. “What will we do?”
Jill jumped up and Roger scowled.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What about the meeting?! We returned the queen!”
“I-I don’t know,” a student replied. “The rail station suddenly exploded, and the entire city was blockaded, calling the explosion an act of terrorism.”
“And all the while, a magic circle’s glowing atop Duke Lehrsatz’s manor,” another added. “A black spear made a barrier. I think it’s the Sacred Spear!”
“Damn it!” Jill growled. “This base was deserted because the Arks left to enact their plan!”
“We managed to flee because we were outside the city, but the Gold Dragons are still trapped inside!” a student of the Azure Dragons said.
The class vice president stepped forward. “I tried to stop them, but they said they were worried about Mr. Hadis and decided to stay. So we split into two teams.”
The student struggled to get their words out, regretting that they left their friends behind, but they never vocalized their thoughts. They knew they’d ultimately made the right decision, so Jill’s question was straight to the point.
“Is His Majesty in the duke’s manor, within that barrier?” she inquired.
“Probably,” the student replied.
“I see. I leave him to his own devices for just a moment, and he takes the entire city hostage. What a troublesome husband he is,” she growled.
As the student gazed at the ground, she patted their shoulder and glanced around the room at the others.
“All right, little birds!” she shouted. “This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for—when a murderer transforms into a hero! Are you mentally prepared to save the trapped princess?”
“Yes, ma’am!” the students replied as they energetically saluted.
She couldn’t stop a smile from tugging the corners of her mouth upward.