“No… Professor Pearlman… Why?” When he saw the face behind the hood, Albert’s voice shook with shock. At this, Pearlman smiled, half in satisfaction, half in cruelty.
To be honest, I was just as shocked as Albert. Not at Pearlman’s true identity, but at the fact that Gods of the Moon had sent one of their members to infiltrate a prestigious boarding school. That’s what threw me for a loop.
It was a school that the global aristocracy sent their sons and daughters to. As the academy already had its hands full keeping the students out of trouble, it had taken special care to beef up security.
Which brought us to Pearlman. An educator in a position to teach the students directly. And while the students didn’t know his backstory, the academy surely would have vetted him thoroughly before hiring him. And yet, one of the followers of Gods of the Moon had managed to worm his way in there. I couldn’t have imagined something crazier than that.
The crucial question was this: Had he already been a member of Gods of the Moon before he was hired, or did he join the cult afterward? Or the third option—had an impostor taken the real Pearlman’s place after he was hired? But if we went down that road, the possibilities would be endless, so let’s just stop there.
Regardless, the cult I’d encountered in the future that I thought was new actually had a long history, and it was much bigger than I’d imagined. I couldn’t ignore the reality of the situation.
I cursed and glared at Pearlman. Meanwhile, he thoughtfully rubbed his chin, then put on his gentle teacher’s smile.
“Bah! You’re pretty slick. When did ya find the time to get involved with all this shit?”
“I don’t exactly have much free time. But I’ve been doing this for quite a while.”
I was trying to casually get some answers out of him. And whether he noticed this or not, he was polite and cheerful in his reply.
“Though it vexes me to say so, your existence is incredibly important to us. The reason I was placed on this assignment was because I was in the most convenient position for it. As your teacher, I was able to keep close watch over you. Though in practice, the plan was full of unexpected twists. That was quite irritating.”
Keeping his tone even, Pearlman kept telling me things he didn’t need to… Or rather, he was talking to me as though I was a small child.
“Ohh? So you’re saying because of me, you got your turn holding the reins?”
“Exactly. As someone with the Hair of Sulberia—the chosen one, loved by the Lord Eltania Himself—you are a terribly important person to us.”
A hint of anger colored his cheerful tone when the topic of the Lord Eltania came up. I already knew the Gods of the Moon hated Eltania, but they seemed to hate Him even more than I’d thought.
“Is that why you distributed the drugs? To get to me?”
“No, that’s one of our primary activities. Our aim is to create a better world where people live in their natural state.”
We still hadn’t touched upon the core of the matter, but the drugs weren’t connected to me… Or were they? The cult’s activities seemed to have a wide scope. At the end of the day, I supposed that the version of the future I’d seen was their endgame. Through the proliferation of drugs, more and more of Eltania’s people turn violently insane and unanimously curse the Hair of Sulberia—that future.
I wasn’t so tenderhearted that I cared what other people had to say about me, but it would definitely be hard to walk down the street in broad daylight with these locks in a future like that.
Pearlman gave a disgusted snort before resuming in a composed tone. “We at Gods of the Moon carry out activities such as this to make the world a better place. And so I have a proposal for you, Miss Mylene: Would you like to join us?” He extended a hand as if he were asking me for a dance.
It was Albert who responded. “How dare you! Lady Mylene would never work with scum like you!” He was shouting, his face red with anger.
I didn’t like that he was speaking for me—but then again, he wasn’t wrong. And of course, I highly doubted the sort of “help” I would give these guys would be legitimate.
“You are a hopeless soul who has been chosen by Eltania. But the huge supply of magic energy residing within your body, the body Eltania so painstakingly created, is extremely valuable to us as a vessel for our god. So…what do you say? Would you like to host our deity in your body and use those powers to shape the world as you desire?”
Pearlman’s voice was colored with feverish passion as it once again grew peppered with the maniacal tone I’d heard from him before. It gave me the familiar feeling I got from all brainwashed cultists: Aha. There’s just no reasoning with this nut.
I shrugged. “Not interested. Nothin’ good will come from that thing you bastards call God.”
“Blasphemy… And here I was going to purify that filthy body and soul of yours.”
In all likelihood, the man I knew as Professor Pearlman had never existed from the very beginning. He was just your garden variety crazy cultist.
“I shall save your soul at once. This will divert our plan quite a bit, but as long as we have your corpse, that will more than suffice as an offering to our god. When we rip off your head and offer it unto our deity, it shall serve as a catalyst to bring about the new world order of chaos.”
To say this guy had a short fuse would be the understatement of the year.
Pearlman, now in full-on battle mode, discharged his magic energy. The air in the room immediately plunged in temperature.
What tremendous magic… This guy’s no ordinary teacher. Not your average drug dealer, either.
His tranquil expression vanished, replaced by a blank, emotionless mask. He was just God’s Bitch now, completely devoid of his sense of self.
“Mylene…!” Despite being overwhelmed by the magic, Colette still managed to croak out my name.
She must have wanted me to run for it. And I didn’t blame her—this guy’s magic was something else. It was a magic energy more inhuman and diabolical than anything I’d ever encountered, even during my days as Envil the mercenary, when I’d needed to fight to live.
But I’d had my own fair share of enriching experiences.
“Fine, take my head. I’d love to see ya try. It ain’t much, but it’d be a shame to give it up to some god I’ve never even heard of, so I ain’t partin’ with it for cheap.”
The prized commodity, Mylene’s head, was already sold. I’d gotten it basically for free, but it was a gift from an empress. I couldn’t just hand it over to somebody else willy-nilly.
And besides, if a god ate my noggin, he’d probably wreck his guts.
I gave my sword a gentle swing to check in with the sensations in my body before I discharged my magic energy. A powerful light flowed forth, embracing my entire body.
“Mylene, no…! That’s too much power…!”
“Yes, she has always told me that she gets by on technique alone,” Albert said. “But I doubt anybody has ever seen the extent of her true powers when she channels them.”
The sight of his proud smile mellowed me out a little. Any more mellow than that, and we would’ve had a problem, but a calm mind for a task like this wasn’t a bad thing at all.
“It’s go time,” I announced casually. Then I shifted my balance and stepped forward.
As I glided smoothly along the ground, Pearlman’s eyes widened in shock. It was my beast stance. But I waited on standby.
With a surge of magic energy, Pearlman swung his arm high. Then the next thing I knew, a wall of magical power shot up right before my eyes. Barely a second later, icicles exploded from it.
But I was prepared for that. I immediately kicked off the ground, sharply changing my angle.
“Shit!” I cursed softly. Another wall of ice, the exact same kind as Pearlman had erected earlier, shot from the ground to shield him from my magic. Evidently, he had no qualms about relying on that kind of magic. If he kept using ice attacks that sprang out from the ground, my normal beast stance techniques would have little effect against him.
Between the way he’d subtly sneaked in the first attack and the speed with which he released his spells, he really was first-rate, just as I’d pegged him for.
“I’m not finished yet!” Pearlman cried, swinging his arm high again the same way he had last time. Three ice arrows shot out horizontally from his hand. It was spell after spell with no break in between. The sheer momentum of his attacks made it impossible for me to get any closer to him. And then he was on to Phase Three. As he lowered his raised arm, a lump of ice formed over my head and smashed down on me. I jumped sideways to dodge it.
The lump of ice that fell where I used to be was the size of a stocky adult. And judging by the way it had shattered on contact, it could have easily smashed someone open like a pomegranate.
He was definitely a pain in the rear. That last attack was not the sort of thing you could just whip out after firing off two other spells without recharging. He had an unnaturally large store of magic energy, and he was gifted in the art of one-on-one combat on top of that.