Meanwhile, back at base camp…
Two figures sat facing each other across a small, round table.
Aron and Kate.
Their faces, usually so full of life, were now pale with worry as they stared at the clock ticking ominously on the table.
-Tick tock… tick tock…
The relentless ticking of the second hand seemed to amplify the silence that had settled over the camp.
It was already two in the afternoon, long past lunchtime.
“Lucas still isn’t back…” Kate said, her voice heavy with apprehension.
Aron tapped his fingers nervously on the table.
“Lunch was supposed to be at noon… It’s been two hours…”
“Has he ever been late before?”
“Not that I can recall… Not once in the past five years.”
Kate bit her lip, her anxiety growing with each passing moment.
“He did say he had a bad feeling about this… right before he left for his patrol…”
“Yeah…” Aron muttered, his gut twisting uncomfortably.
He couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was terribly wrong.
They had been colleagues for years, and Lucas was never late.
He was an assassin, and precision was in his blood. He lived by the creed of punctuality.
And yet… here they were.
“Something’s wrong…” Kate whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
“Don’t say that…” Aron said, trying to sound reassuring, but he couldn’t quite manage it.
He was starting to fear the worst.
Suddenly, Sharon burst out of the staff tent, her face flushed and her eyes wide with alarm.
“Aron! Kate!”
“What is it, Sharon?” Kate asked, her brow furrowing in concern.
“One of the emergency communication devices… it just went offline!”
“What?!”
“We have a situation!”
Sharon dumped a pile of small, box-like devices onto the table. They were blinking erratically, emitting a faint, red glow.
She picked up a few of them, her voice trembling slightly as she explained.
“These are the communication devices for all thirty teams… see anything strange?”
“Why is the light off on… Team Four’s device?”
“The connection’s been cut. Someone’s disrupted the mana lines…”
“Disrupted? Are you sure? Maybe it’s just a malfunction…”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Aron!”
Sharon pounded her chest, exasperated by Aron's indifferent response.
“I made these devices! They don’t just malfunction! Don’t you understand how serious this is? Someone has tampered with the mana lines!”
“Tampered? You mean… it’s not just a simple mana shortage?”
“Yes! Are you finally getting it?!”
Sharon’s outburst brought Aron to his senses.
A disruption in the mana lines…
It sounded like a simple mana shortage, but it was anything but.
Normally, magical devices malfunction due to a lack of external mana.
But a disruption in the mana lines… that was something else entirely. It was akin to a barrier, a veil that prevented the magical signals from reaching their intended destination.
To put it simply, it was a barrier that didn’t block the flow of mana itself, but rather, the communication signals that flowed through it.
It was a difficult and highly advanced form of magic, one that went against the very laws of the world.
“And you know what’s worse? None of us… felt a thing.”
“...”
“...”
Aron and Kate exchanged a horrified look.
She was right.
They hadn’t felt a thing.
Not a single ripple of magical energy, not even a faint tremor.
And these were some of the most powerful mages on the continent.
“You’re saying…”
“We’re dealing with someone… or something… powerful enough to mask their magical signature from us,”
“Tinamithius… help us…”
“This isn’t about Lucas anymore!”
“If my theory is correct… then all the students on this island… they’re all in danger! We have to do something!”
“Damn it!”
Aron shot to his feet, his chair clattering to the ground. He shrugged on his coat, his hand instinctively reaching for the pair of knuckles he always carried with him.
With Lucas gone, he was the senior-most professor present. The responsibility for the safety of the students now fell upon his shoulders.
“Sharon, pinpoint the location of Team Four’s last known signal,”
“And send out an emergency message to all teams. Tell them to return to base camp immediately!”
“R-Right!”
“Kate, you go and alert the other professors,”
“We need to get everyone back to safety as quickly as possible!”
“What in the world is going on?!” Kate exclaimed, her voice laced with panic.
Sharon immediately began fiddling with the communication devices, while Kate, her entire body enveloped in a faint, blue glow, shot off towards the other base camps.
Aron, not wasting another second, sprinted towards the stables, where the horses were kept.
“I’ll leave things here to you, Sharon,”
“Aron, where are you going?” Sharon called after him.
“To the location of Team Four’s last signal,”
“Team Four… you mean…”
“Yes, the team with Raiden and Margaret,” Aron said grimly.
“They’re both from Duke’s families! This is a disaster waiting to happen!”
Just then, a new voice, calm yet laced with regal authority, spoke from behind them.
“You say the communication device for Young Master Lishite’s team has gone offline…?”
Sharon and Aron spun around, their eyes widening in surprise as they recognized the speaker.
“Y-Your Highness?!”
Their eyes fell on the Empire's First Princess, Lucy von Lietrio.
Her blue eyes, trembling slightly, were fixed on the two professors.
“Tell me,”
“What has happened to Young Master Lishite?”
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How does the academy work when there is only one competent teacher, and now he's dead?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't work, but the plot sure does
DeleteYou're looking at it backwards. It's not the teachers are not competent, it's the enemies that are competent this time. Lucas is an outlier teacher and out of the norm to notice at all.
DeleteWhy are people expecting some academy instructors to match up to one of the four generals of the enemy army?
DeleteThanks for the chapter
ReplyDeleteWasn't he minseo in his past life? why did his father call him Raiden
ReplyDelete