“Oh, Kunon!”
When Kunon and Elva reached the magic school, it was still morning, despite all they’d done.
They arrived to find a number of students running back and forth across the school grounds. There had obviously been some kind of incident.
That was nothing special; there were incidents every day at magic school. It wasn’t even rare to see people racing around campus. But that didn’t mean Kunon was any less curious to know what happened. Perhaps another school building had been destroyed. A major incident like that had happened quite recently. At the very least, he wanted to know if what was going on was related to it.
He was just about to stop someone when a student ran up to him.
“Did something happen, Riyah?” he asked.
The student who’d approached him was Riyah Houghs, Kunon’s classmate.
“I just learned about it myself, but you’d be better off asking what didn’t happen!”
It sounded like a major incident after all.
“Well, that’s exciting. You sure have a way with words. If only you were a girl.”
“Don’t flirt with me, Kunon. I don’t even know everything.”
To be honest, if Riyah had taken him seriously, Kunon wouldn’t have known what to do. He’d simply said the words on impulse.
“What happened? Does it have something to do with me?” Elva asked.
“I don’t know,” Riyah said. “It all started when Saint Reyes went missing a few days ago.”
““What?””
That was a shocking way for the story to begin.
It seemed the Saint had gone missing, too. Was this a new trend? After all, Serraphila had been missing, too, from Rudin’s perspective. People were disappearing left and right.
“What happened to her?!” Kunon asked.
Unlike Serraphila, Kunon had known the Saint for a year already, and he hadn’t heard anything about her going on a trip. News of her disappearance scared him so much he started to sweat. His heart ached with worry.
“Oh yeah. She’s fine. She’s not even hurt. It was only when she showed up again that anyone realized she was missing.”
She’d disappeared, and no one had even realized it? Of course, Kunon hadn’t noticed she was gone, either, so he was in no position to say anything.
“Where is she now?” Elva asked.
“I assume she’s back in her classroom,” replied Riyah. “She mentioned not being able to tend to her plants for a few days.”
Kunon felt relief wash over him; that sounded just like the Saint. It seemed like there really was nothing to worry about. She was safe and acting like her normal self.
“That’s where it gets interesting—”
“Riyah!” A pretty girl ran up, interrupting him. “Have you found the representative?!”
It was Cassis from the Rationality Faction. She was wearing her usual miniskirt, which exposed a distracting amount of thigh.
“Hello, Miss Cassis. It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, it has! Let’s save the greetings for later, though! There’s no time!”
Kunon hadn’t properly spoken with Cassis since before summer break. She didn’t ignore his greeting, but she was clearly in too much of a hurry to catch up. She looked just as busy as the other students running around the school.
“What happened?” Elva asked.
Cassis just stared at her. The two had never interacted before. Cassis was shy, and because they didn’t share a faction or attribute, they had nothing to bring them together.
Until this, that is.
“You’re an earth user,” said Cassis.
“Huh?”
“You’re an earth user! Help us! This could be a disaster!”
“A disaster, huh…? Well, I’m willing to help, but I have no idea what’s going on.”
Incidents were commonplace at the magic school, and it wasn’t unusual for students to ask others for help when they occurred. That said, you couldn’t lend a hand if you were totally ignorant of the situation.
Plus, Cassis was in Rationality, while Elva was in Harmony. If the situation was serious enough to merit crossing faction lines to ask for help, they needed to be cautious.
If the Rationality Faction couldn’t solve this issue on its own, there was a high chance the incident was truly dangerous. Careless action might only worsen the situation.
Riyah left again to find his faction’s representative, while Cassis explained the situation in his place.
“I’ll keep this short. I don’t know the details of the incident, either, and a proper investigation has yet to be performed. Some of this will just be my own conjecture, so take it with a grain of salt. But you’ll at least get the gist,” she said, putting their expectations in check. “Saint Reyes was missing for about two or three days.”
Kunon and Elva nodded to show they had heard that already.
“It’s not uncommon for Advanced class students to go missing,” Cassis continued. “She ended up being totally fine, too. That isn’t the issue.”
Students often left for fieldwork without warning, only to return days later. That alone would not have caused such a panic.
“The issue is where the Saint turned up.”
Where she turned up?
“She emerged from underneath the Rationality Faction.”
“Underneath… Do you mean she came up from the artificial dungeon you use as your base?”
“Yes. She suddenly emerged from the dungeon’s depths.”
That could only mean one thing. The quick-witted Kunon and Elva both saw where this was going.
“I had been under the impression Miss Reyes was investigating the newly sprouted forest,” Kunon said.
Just two weeks before, the Saint had told Kunon she was heading into the forest. It had stuck in his mind because he’d wanted to go, too, but had been rejected.
He hadn’t seen her since. In fact, he hadn’t even heard mention of her. He had assumed that meant she was still investigating and had been planning to visit her within the next few days.
The forest in question had appeared without warning. It was caused by the blooming of the Sacred Tree, Kira Vera, and there were still many unanswered questions about it. Fascinated by it as he was, Kunon was looking forward to hearing about the results of the Saint’s investigation.
But if she hadn’t yet finished, she must have disappeared while exploring the forest. And then, a few days later, she’d emerged from below the Rationality Faction’s base. That could only mean one thing.
“Then are the forest and the artificial dungeon connected underground?” Elva asked.
She had reached the same conclusion Kunon had.
“If only that were all,” Cassis said, her expression grim. “You know how all vegetation in that forest grows at an unusually fast rate? If that caused the plants to penetrate the dungeon, and they continue to spread, what do you think will happen?”