However, he didn’t know where to find the teachers at this time of day. They were easily accessible in the morning, but many began working on experiments and research in the afternoon. The Saint would be a lot easier to track down, and he could ask her to pass his questions on to the teachers.
“…I guess I’ll just go alone.” After some thought, Lulomet decided he didn’t need Kunon to accompany him.
“Oh, you’re going? Can I come with you?”
“What?” This caught Lulomet off guard. Hadn’t Kunon just said he was going straight home?
“Whatever you want to talk to her about is clearly important if you’re willing to visit her on your own. I’m certain it will be interesting.”
That’s Kunon for you, Lulomet thought.
He knew the teachers were unlikely to divulge any classified information. If anyone was going to let something slip, it would be the Saint. That was another reason he’d decided to talk to her instead of the teachers.
“Well then, let’s go,” he said.
Lulomet had no reason to refuse Kunon, so they headed out together.
“Hello, Kunon. Hello, Lulomet.”
Saint Reyes was in her classroom.
A few days had passed since her disappearance, and she’d returned to her daily life as if nothing had happened.
The news of the unfortunate setback regarding her plans for an underground city of plants had indeed reached her, but luckily, she had accepted the extermination as inevitable. The plants’ roots could break even stone. She knew it would be a tragedy if the underground facility collapsed, so she was glad the plants had been removed.
She was still a little disappointed, however. And so, she resolved to create her ideal environment herself one day in the future. Perhaps a whole city would be difficult, but she might be able to manage a small village of plants. She wasn’t yet aware this was what people called “ambition.” Lacking in emotion as she was, she still didn’t realize what she was feeling.
“So this is your classroom,” said Lulomet, looking around the room with curiosity. “I’d heard rumors, but it really is quite unique.”
The Saint had many potted plants protected by Sanctum, a spell unique to saints. Some of them were clearly not in season, but they grew rapidly within Sanctum’s barrier. The sight was very interesting.
“Is this your first time here?” Kunon asked.
Lulomet nodded. “I’ve met Reyes before, but I’ve never been to her classroom.”
The Saint had assisted Lulomet with multiple Rationality experiments during the previous year.
He’d tried to recruit her, but she’d ended up deciding not to join any of the factions. It was rare for an Advanced class student to remain unaffiliated, which made her a valuable presence.
“My apologies, but I am about to leave,” she said. “If you have business with me, please make it quick.”
The Saint had been scolded by her guards for her multiday disappearance.
She often stayed at school overnight, but she had never done so without giving prior notice. Not even explaining the reason and providing written testimony from her teachers had been enough to save her from her guards’ wrath. For the time being, she was saddled with a much stricter curfew.
The Saint always kept her promises. In fact, the thought of breaking a promise had never even occurred to her. There was no chance she would miss her curfew.
“I see. Then I’ll keep this short.” Lulomet sat across from her as she organized some papers and launched straight into the matter at hand. “Do you know anything about a ‘shining plant’? I saw something that might fit that description while underground.”
A shining plant. Kunon had lowered himself halfway into the chair next to Lulomet’s when he froze. He couldn’t believe his ears. That sounded like what the Saint had been searching for in the forest—the divine flower. Kunon was sure of it—that must have been what she was trying to find.
“Maybe. I’m not sure,” the Saint responded nonchalantly.
Her lack of emotions prevented her from lying. She’d just admitted she might well know what Lulomet was talking about. Or rather, she knew, but only vaguely.
“Please tell me more,” she said.
“I would like to, but it’s possible my eyes were playing tricks on me. I’m the only one on the team who saw it. And I only glimpsed it once from a distance. Besides, whatever it was, it was fast. I’ve never heard of a plant moving on its own two feet. I’m not even sure it was a plant. It looked like a plant, but I have no idea what it actually was.”
Plants certainly didn’t walk around on feet. Roots, perhaps, but that still seemed wrong, somehow. Either way, Lulomet was right—most plants were not capable of self-propulsion.
“Furthermore, more plants seemed to sprout along the path the shining plant traveled on. It was as though it was turning the ground green beneath it. We followed its path, and it took us deeper into the dungeon.”
Lulomet had told Kunon earlier that it took multiple days to clean up the dungeon. Perhaps that wasn’t because the vegetation from the forest had spread farther than expected, but rather because the vegetation kept expanding as Lulomet and his team chased it.
“It’s all a little hard to believe,” the faction leader continued. “If I wasn’t a sorcerer, I probably would have immediately denied what I saw.”
Sorcerers frequently came into contact with mysterious and inexplicable things. Used to this, Lulomet was able to believe what he saw.
“But if such a shining plant exists, it would explain everything,” he concluded.
They still didn’t know who or what had bored the hole in the forest leading into the dungeon. It would be one thing if tree roots had simply pierced through the dungeon’s ceiling. But a hole had been created that was large enough for a person to fall through. What could have caused it?
Lulomet was talking about a plant that could walk around by itself and leave a trail of new growth in its wake. Maybe this shining plant had made the hole.
It sounded quite unnatural, but so did everything about the situation. In fact, in context, it seemed like the most logical explanation.
“So what happened with the shining plant?” asked the Saint when Lulomet was finished.
The faction representative had chased the shining plant deep into the dungeon. But now he was here, claiming the issue had been resolved.
That meant the plants in the underground facility had been exterminated, and they’d handled the root problem.
Had he caught up to the mysterious plant? Had he captured it? Had he killed it by burning, cutting, or uprooting it? Perhaps he was about to give it to the Saint as a present.
No, that doesn’t seem likely, thought Kunon.
Lulomet was a thoughtful and skilled sorcerer. He wouldn’t simply brush aside such a mystery. He also wasn’t frivolous like Kunon and didn’t go about hitting on girls and giving them presents.
No, he would strive to solve the mystery, no matter what it cost him. Kunon doubted he’d done anything rash with the plant.
“We lost sight of it,” said Lulomet. “The trail of plants stopped, so we turned back. That’s part of the reason I’m here talking to you.”
The Saint and Kunon—who had been quietly listening—both saw where he was going with this.
“This is totally our chance!” Kunon said excitedly. “If all the entrances have been closed off, doesn’t that guarantee the shining plant is still underground?!”
Lulomet and his team had sealed off all paths of escape. That included the hole leading back to the forest, so the plant should still be in the dungeon somewhere.
“Well, I guess it could have bored another hole and gone somewhere else,” said Lulomet. “But…I think that is highly unlikely.”
The underground facility that served as the Rationality Faction’s base was an artificial dungeon, and it was quite old. It was so ancient, deep, and expansive that no one had seen the entire thing. The structure was strengthened magically, but there was still a chance it could collapse. There was even an alarm that would ring if any part of it changed shape—which could signal a partial collapse. That was why Cassis and the others had been in such a panic.
However, this was a magic school. Incidents were an everyday occurrence. They’d never expected a hole to suddenly appear, leading into the dungeon, and yet they’d still managed to handle it. The members of Rationality were taking every precaution they could think of.