A few days later, the academy finally reopened, and the campus gradually returned to its usual bustle.
Students once again filled the corridors and lecture halls, yet the atmosphere was noticeably different from before.
It did not take long for whispers to emerge, and before the morning had even passed, they had already grown into rumors.
"That Distortion that appeared... haven’t you heard? They say it was the daughter of Baron Beckjord."
"No way... House Beckjord? They’re an old baronial house, right?"
"The professors managed to subdue her, didn’t they?"
The academy had done everything it could to keep the incident under wraps in order to protect the student’s identity.
Even so, that had proven nearly impossible once it became known that the student belonged to the aristocracy, where rumors traveled far more quickly than official announcements ever could.
More importantly, there had been countless eyewitnesses long before the incident was brought under control, making it inevitable that parts of the truth would eventually spread beyond the academy.
By then, the details barely mattered anymore. Each person who retold the story embellished it a little further until fact and fiction had become impossible to distinguish from one another.
Before long, the rumors had taken on lives of their own.
It was said that the professors had fought the Distortion on Mount Serebryany for nearly an entire day before finally bringing it down, claiming that the mountain itself had been split during the battle.
So on and so forth.
Whether those stories were true or not no longer mattered, because the only thing people remembered was that a Distortion had appeared, and the one at its center had been the daughter of Baron Beckjord.
Yet even that truth was gradually overshadowed by another, far more disturbing fact than the incident itself.
"...I wonder why she distorted."
"Wasn’t House Beckjord having financial troubles recently?"
"Do you think... that had something to do with it?"
No one could answer with certainty.
But perhaps, if bottled emotions were allowed to fester for long enough that they consumed a person from within, the monster did not need to be born separately at all.
Perhaps... a person could distort themselves.
For Ilya, however, that revelation was far less shocking than it was for everyone else. The notion that a human could become a Distortion was nothing new to him because it had already occurred in the original novel.
The only problem was that the person who had distorted this early in the story had never been the daughter of House Beckjord, but someone else.
As Ilya made his way toward the familiar staircase where they usually gathered between classes, he immediately noticed that something was different.
The moment he approached, several pairs of eyes turned toward him.
"Oh, Ilya’s here."
"Yeah."
The greeting lacked its usual energy.
After exchanging brief greetings with everyone, Ilya glanced around the group. It did not take him long to realize that two familiar faces were nowhere to be seen.
"Where’s Adrian? And Helene?"
His friends exchanged uneasy glances before finally speaking.
"I... asked one of the instructors about them... It seems... the two of them have already withdrawn from the academy..."
Ilya frowned. "...Withdrawn?"
"They dropped out."
"...What?"
Although Adrian’s withdrawal came as no surprise to Ilya, having already confided his decision to him beforehand, and judging from the others’ reactions, it seemed Adrian had been honest with them as well.
As unfortunate as it was, his absence had already been accepted.
Meanwhile, Helene’s departure was an entirely different matter.
The last time Ilya had seen her had been during the practical examination, and despite everything that had happened, not once had he imagined she would choose to leave the academy of her own accord.
If anything, she had always struck him as someone who would grit her teeth and endure until the very end, regardless of how difficult things became. Unlike Adrian, there had been no hint that she had ever intended to leave.
But in the first place, Helene had always been a rather secretive woman.
"...Could it have been her grades?"
Several students looked at one another before someone shook their head.
"But Helene consistently ranked well in class, didn’t she?"
"She did," another replied. "Although... now that I think about it, her practical performance wasn’t exactly outstanding..."
"You guys don’t think..."
The words trailed off before anyone dared to finish the thought.
No one seemed willing to be the first to say what everyone else was already thinking. Whatever conclusion had crossed their minds, it was apparently disturbing enough that merely voicing it felt wrong.
"...What?" Ilya finally asked.
They looked toward him with surprise.
Unlike everyone else, Ilya had spent the past week away from the academy. Between recovering from the expedition to Mount Serebryany, training with Vera, and dealing with matters involving his family, he had not been around to hear what had happened after the incident.
"...Do you remember Sir Fritz?" one of them asked.
Ilya slowly frowned. "...What about him?"
"You haven’t heard?"
Ilya shook his head.
On the surface, he had every reason to appear confused. In truth, however, he already knew Sir Fritz’s fate. The man had died on Mount Serebryany at Vera’s hands, a fact witnessed only by the two of them and no one else.
"He’s officially been declared missing ever since the incident on Mount Serebryany. Most of the instructors were either rescued, hospitalized, or... confirmed dead. Sir Fritz was the only one whose body was never recovered."
Because he and Vera had made certain that no body would ever be found.
"That alone would’ve made him a person of interest. Investigators started looking into his background, hoping to find anything that might explain what happened."
"And... they did."
"Get on with it."
"Well... it turns out Sir Fritz had been accepting... personal favors from female students in exchange for grades... Once the investigation started, several former students apparently came forward with the same story..."
"...."
The image of that dependable instructor who had lectured them only weeks ago remained difficult to reconcile with the rumors now surrounding his name. Whether every accusation was true or not hardly mattered anymore, because with Sir Fritz missing and presumed dead, there was no one left to answer them.
"That’s ridiculous, isn’t it?" Ilya said at last. "Even if every word of that were true, what does that have to do with Helene? She consistently ranked well in class. Why would she ever need to exchange favors for grades she was already capable of earning herself?"
"I mean... What if those grades were manipulated from the very beginning?"
The focus shifted to Ilya.
"You were in Sir Fritz’s class too, weren’t you, Ilya? You spent more time with Helene than the rest of us. What was her performance actually like?"
"That’s..."
He searched through his memories of the practical lessons, the mock duels, and the countless evaluations Sir Fritz had presided over. Helene had never struck him as an exceptional student.
She was competent enough to avoid falling behind, but in practical combat, she had always been weaker than he was, while her written examinations had been little more than average.
Yet somehow, whenever the evaluation sheets were returned, Helene’s overall assessment was almost always higher than his.
Back then, he had accepted the explanation without giving it much thought.
Sir Fritz had simply been the instructor, and an instructor’s judgment was rarely questioned by students. Differences in attitude, participation, and other subjective criteria were common enough that a slight discrepancy in scores never seemed worth dwelling on.
Now, however... the evaluations he had dismissed so casually no longer felt quite as convincing.
"...."
Now, he found himself wondering whether those grades had truly reflected Helene’s abilities, or whether they had reflected something else.
At that moment, a memory resurfaced.
’Hey. Did you get a boyfriend?’
——H-Huh?
’Your neck—’
Slap——!
——N-No! I didn’t! It’s just... an insect bite!
’....’
——Y-Yeah! An insect bite! That’s all it is, okay?
’Uh, yeah. Sure?’
At the time, he had accepted the explanation without giving it much thought.
Although the mark had looked suspiciously like a hickey and Helene’s panicked reaction had been unusually defensive, he had dismissed the entire exchange.
Helene had always been an eccentric woman, and compared to the countless strange things she said and did on a daily basis, that incident had hardly seemed worth remembering.
For someone as blunt, loud, and utterly unconcerned with romance as Helene, the thought of her secretly being intimate with a man felt strangely out of place.
Could it really have just been a boyfriend?
"Hey, classes are about to start."
"Let’s talk about this later."
"...Yeah."
The group gradually dispersed as each of them made their way toward their respective lecture halls, yet the unease refused to leave Ilya.
With every step he took, a cold sensation slowly crept down the back of his neck.
"It must be..."
There was a reason Ilya had stubbornly remained close to this particular group of friends despite everything.
After all, from the very beginning, every one of them had occupied an important place in the original novel, and Helene was no exception.
Because in the original story...
"Haa..."
The very first person to distort was Helene herself.