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After unlocking Claris’s handcuffs with the lockpicking tool, I cast healing magic on her.
Her injuries were terrible, but after treating so many of the people of Lineage, I had more experience with this kind of magic than anyone else.
For the moment, I treated her until the pain was gone, then used the lockpicking tool to remove the prince’s handcuffs.
“How is this even working?”
Felix stared at me in surprise.
“Trade secret.”
I did not know either, but I gave some cool-sounding answer off the cuff.
“More importantly, why do you even have a tool like that?”
“Adult women have their secrets.”
When I answered with a composed look, Felix looked at me with exasperation and said, “You are absolutely not an adult woman.”
That annoyed me, so I smacked his shoulder.
“This little…”
Felix started to hit me back, but stopped his clenched fist before it touched me.
“What? Is something wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
He said it while turning away, his face red.
Looking closely, even though I had hit him, he somehow looked a little pleased.
(After the frightening experience of being imprisoned, he is awakening to some weird tastes…!?)
I shuddered.
I felt sorry for him, so I decided to be just a little kinder.
After handcuffing the two soldiers who had been beating Claris, I searched inside their clothes.
(This is a different code from before…)
When I told Vincent over the communicator, he said, “It may be a passkey for disabling the magic barrier.”
“I will try to decipher it. Until then, Lady Mythia, please wait—”
After cutting off the communication, I carried a desk and chair beneath the ventilation duct and prepared our escape.
“All right, we are escaping.”
It was right when I said that.
“Hey, it is time to switch shi—”
The room door opened, and one soldier was looking at us.
“…………”
“…………”
Silence hung in the air.
“Hey, they are getti—”
I blasted him away with the magic that makes ice for drinks, but the impact revealed to the other soldiers that something had happened.
Soldiers gathered.
Bullets from magic rifles came flying through the doorway.
“Felix, put up an ice wall!”
At my command, Felix created a wall of ice.
While taking cover, Roy-kun and I fired magic at the enemies on the other side of the door.
“Claris, use light magic to blind them!”
“Understood!”
A counterattack with all our strength combined.
But the difference in numbers was far too hopeless.
No matter how many we took down, more enemies kept coming one after another.
Our magic power and stamina were gradually being worn down as well.
“This is bad, they are pushing us back…!”
At Felix’s words,
“I’m using the trump card!”
I pulled out the spy gadgets Vincent had given me.
A smoke grenade, a tear-gas grenade, and a grenade that discharged electricity.
“Grenades!”
“These grenades are not normal.”
“Why do they have something like that…?”
The enemy soldiers were bewildered.
“Why do you have something like that…?”
“Haven’t I told you? Adult women have their secrets.”
I answered offhandedly while searching for a chance to escape, but the bullets coming out of the smoke precisely sealed off our route of retreat.
(Can’t escape…?)
Even after using the trump card, we could not get away.
When the white smoke cleared and the enemy realized we had not escaped, they were visibly relieved.
Their assessment was correct.
The outcome had already been decided.
Roy-kun was the first to run out of magic power.
It was probably because he had been using attack magic, which consumed a great deal of magic power, over and over even before coming here.
Next, Felix’s magic power drew close to its limit.
The ice wall was being chipped away and steadily growing smaller.
(My and Claris’s magic cannot block the enemy’s attacks.)
In other words, the moment Felix’s magic power ran dry, we would immediately be riddled with bullets and lose our lives.
(Is this as far as we go…?)
While firing the magic that makes ice for food, I bit my lip.
Claris Maitland clenched her fist tightly.
She felt that she was the most useless one there.
A special magic that no one else could use.
The faces of the adults who had expected things from her always changed into slight disappointment.
“So it can only emit light…?”
It was the same with her classmates.
“For all that talk about how amazing it was, it can only glow?”
They gave her nicknames like “Firefly” and “Flashlight.”
The apothecary older brother and her teachers would tell her, “Even that alone is amazing,” but she could still sense a trace of disappointment behind it after all.
Even if they did not really think that, she felt as though they saw her that way.
Because she was always betraying expectations.
Because she had never once been able to live up to them.
Mythia had been the same.
When she first used her magic, Mythia had looked just a little troubled after all.
She thought Mythia might dislike her.
That Mythia might distance herself because she had turned out to be a disappointment.
But Mythia’s attitude did not change in the slightest.
More than that, she even thought up a strategy that let someone like her be useful.
“Claris’s light magic is the most important part of this plan.”
She had even said words that made her so happy.
A cool classmate.
Her first friend.
A precious friend.
She wanted to help.
She wanted to live up to expectations.
If she did not do it now, she would regret it for the rest of her life.
But she could not find even the slightest clue for a new way to use light magic.
Because it was magic no one else could use, there were no precedents and no one who could teach her.
Once again, she stood frozen in the same dead end as always.
Tears of frustration ran down her cheeks.
(How am I supposed to create a new light magic…?)
That was when the ice wall shattered.
A rain of bullets poured down on me and Mythia.
Before she knew it, she had been shoved aside.
Mythia was stretching both arms out, pushing her toward the side where safe wall still remained.
She was being saved again.
A rain of bullets poured down on Mythia.
She did not want to lose her.
No.
That alone absolutely could not happen—
She reached out desperately.
In that instant, strength flooded her body as if guided there.
Light enveloped the world.
An unknown magic was activating.
The next instant, a torrent of light blasted away everything before her.
That magic took my breath away.
An abnormal sign of magic power.
A magic formula I had never seen before.
An attack spell of light that dyed everything white.
I understood instinctively.
Felix and Roy-kun had probably felt the same thing too.
This magic possessed a tremendous power that surpassed everyone at the academy.
At the same time, somewhere in my mind, I had expected it.
Because this girl was the heroine.
Because she was the strongest enemy who would stand before me, the villainess.
At times like this, I knew she would absolutely save me—
(If there is any chance to win, it is now!)
I regained my balance and kicked off the ground.
I came out from behind the ice wall and moved forward.
Because of the aftershock of Claris’s magic, I could not hear with my right eardrum.
But the same was true for the enemy.
If anything, the enemy, who had never imagined this, had to be even more shaken.
Their profile stared blankly at the huge hole opened in the abandoned school building.
I closed the distance and fired the magic that makes ice for drinks from point-blank range, reaping the consciousness of the nearest one.
It seemed they had only just noticed that I had moved forward, but it was already too late.
I shot ice into the backs of two necks to make them pass out, then pushed farther ahead.
As I passed one, I pressed the pen case Vincent had given me, the one that electrocuted the target, against him and knocked him out.
At the same time, I activated a magic formula and knocked out another one, and that was when three gun barrels were aimed at me.
(This is bad—)
I caught my breath.
Everything looked like slow motion.
“Mythia!”
A torrent of light swallowed two of the enemies and blasted them away.
However, the one at the far end was not struck by the attack and had already pulled the trigger at me.
The bullet was fired.
The lead round, traveling faster than sound, flew straight toward me and was swallowed by an ice wall just before it could tear through my throat.
After firing magic at the enemy, whose eyes widened, and knocking him unconscious, I looked at the small wall of ice deployed before me and said,
“I will not thank you.”
“I was not expecting you to.”
Felix said that and let out a relieved breath.
(That exchange just now made me feel like I had an evil, charming, stylish aura, did it not?)
Keeping the smile from loosening my cheeks inwardly, I checked the situation around us.
We had managed to neutralize the nearby enemies.
However, Claris’s magic had been so abnormal that it could probably be seen even from outside the academy grounds, so if we stayed still, there was a high chance reinforcements would come soon.
“We are getting out immediately.”
Making sure not to be found by the enemy, we used the ventilation duct to return to the former headmaster’s office, where Kate had made the hidden passage.
With my hands on the edge of the vent, I jumped down onto the desk.
Because of my thick-soled shoes, I lost my balance a little, and Kate looked at me with an awkward expression.
(Hm? What is with that look?)
Tilting my head at the unexpected reaction, I noticed a soldier hiding behind the sofa and caught my breath.
“Do not come down—”
A gunshot rang out.
It had probably been a warning shot. However, that sharp sound once again stole the hearing that had been returning to my right ear.
(There are two more behind him, huh…)
In the corner of the room, Camila was lying there in handcuffs.
There were three enemies, and Kate had been taken hostage.
On top of that, four soldiers climbed up into the room from the hole Kate had dug.
“The students have already been restrained.”
Apparently, they had found the entrance first, defeated my classmates, and then neutralized Kate and the others who were inside the abandoned school building.
(We are already exhausted, and with this many…)
Gun barrels were aimed at me.
“As long as the prince and the child with light magic stay alive, that is enough. Kill them.”
An utterly hopeless situation.
Gunshots rang out mercilessly.
They shook my skin as vibrations in the air.
The smell of scorched powder and white smoke drifted through the room.
There was no pain.
No impact either.
—It was as though nothing had hit me at all.
I opened my eyes.
Three soldiers had fallen.
From my left ear, the one that could still hear, I heard a familiar voice.
“They are wearing bulletproof gear, so they are not dead. The pain should be considerable, however.”
After kicking away the soldier’s gun, he ripped off the mask covering his face.
Vincent took out his glasses from his chest pocket, quietly put them on, and said,
“You are pushing yourself far too much. It is good that I somehow made it in time.”
“Lady Mythia—!”
One of the soldiers threw herself at me and said that.
As a burly-looking soldier clung to me, my mind went completely blank.
(What is this situation…!?)
This was completely sexual harassment.
“Hey, what are you doi—”
Felix came hurrying down from the ventilation duct, his voice flustered.
I did not know why he was so angry, but in a situation where I was being sexually harassed, he felt extremely dependable.
And this soldier had a terrifying face, but an unbelievably cute voice… wait, that voice—
“Ciel, take off the mask. It is scary being hugged by that face.”
“Ah, sorry, Lady Mythia.”
Ciel took off the disguise mask.
Judging from the feel of being hugged, I guessed she was disguising her body shape with thick clothing.
“What are these people…?”
Felix said in a daze.
(Oh my, that is quite a satisfying reaction.)
My cheeks almost loosened into a smile, but I held it back.
Cool and stylish to the very end.
I narrowed my eyes and said,
“Haven’t I told you? Adult women have their secrets.”
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