Chapter 42

It suddenly reminded me of a novel I read a long time ago.

In that story, there was a criminal guilty of unspeakable atrocities.

One day, due to a curse, that criminal lost all memory and any continuity of self.

He became a completely different person, utterly unlike the one who had committed those crimes.

Can someone be held accountable for sins they no longer remember, committed by a self they no longer are?

That was the theme of the novel.

And now…here I am.

Another Winter Winslet exists, one without Winter Winslet’s memories or identity.

Did that Winter Winslet deserve to inherit the sins of the one he no longer was?

I couldn’t easily answer that question.

The only difference between me and that fictional criminal was this. My story hadn’t ended yet.

Even if I couldn’t undo the wrongs of the past, the mistakes of the future could still be foreseen and stopped.

I had failed to save Glenn from death.

But the chance to prevent an even greater tragedy still remained.

Ultra-high-concentration caraphine, with a purity over 60 percent.

A magic bomb made by Winter Winslet, meant to fall into the hands of Sakis Lubas—

A bomb destined to be used in the Royal Mile bombing incident.

But that bomb was still in my hands.

This was the only way I could bring any comfort to Glenn’s death.

So I resolved not to sit back and let the terrorists carry out their plan.

I picked up one of the caraphine rods and carefully began drawing out its mana.

Hissss…

Strange smoke rose from my fingertips gripping the rod.

This was the process of creating a small flaw in the caraphine meant for Sakis Lubas.

An imperceptible flaw that couldn’t be detected by anyone but a mage on Winter Winslet’s level or higher—

A Trojan horse.

It would lie in wait, hidden until the moment they tried to use the caraphine as a bomb.

The detonation would fail.

And even with ultra-high-concentration caraphine, they’d get no more than a flashy fireworks display.

If I made the slightest mistake, the caraphine could explode and blow my entire hand off—

A post-processing procedure fraught with danger.

But Winter Winslet’s possession of both “A-Rank” Dexterity and “A-Rank” Magic made it possible.

With full concentration, it took me twenty minutes to finish processing all three caraphine rods.

Just as I exhaled to catch my breath—

Tap, tap, tap.

Footsteps echoed from the hallway outside.

They stopped right in front of Glenn’s room.

Knock, knock.

A restrained, deliberate knock.

Thinking it was Professor Haynes returning, I called out,

“Come in.”

But the door didn’t open.

I only sensed someone lingering just outside.

…Was it not Professor Haynes?

I started toward the entrance to check who had come to Glenn’s room, then abruptly stopped in my tracks.

A possibility suddenly came to mind.

Back at the Heptangam Society meeting, Sakis Lubas had said:

– The royal family’s agent is roaming the academy.

And Glenn’s note had said this:

Someone from the royal court came to see me, asking for proof of the academy’s illegal caraphine manufacturing.

Glenn had been missing for two weeks.

Everyone close to him would know that by now.

So who would knock on the door of a missing person’s room?

And even more suspicious….someone who didn’t come in even after being told to.

They were clearly testing the situation from the other side of the door.

If I allow myself a small leap in logic, my instincts were saying this:

There’s only one person who would appear in Glenn’s room now, at this exact moment.

“Have you come for what Glenn left behind?”

I cast the bait.

[Warning]

[A death flag has been raised.]

“…Who are you?”

He took the bait.

***

Silence followed.

It was a silent standoff—

A moment where both of us calculated, separated by just a single door.

Then, still standing outside, the man asked again,

“I’ll ask once more. Who are you?”

“I’m the one who got here before you.”

Naturally, if I arrived first, I’d be inside.

But this wasn’t just some cryptic riddle.

The royal intelligence agent quickly caught the other meaning behind my words and followed up,

“Are you saying you’ve uncovered the truth? About what’s happening at this academy… and what happened to Mr. Glenn?”

He was being cautious with his words, trying not to give anything away.

But it was pointless.

I already knew everything.

Thanks to Glenn’s handwritten testimony, where he had detailed every last piece of the puzzle in his attempt to expose Winter Winslet.

“You mean that Glenn Sherwood, assistant to Professor Colton Haynes, tried to report the caraphine manufacturing taking place inside the academy to the royal court?”

“You know everything… And the fact that you’re telling me this—”

He was a royal intelligence agent. I trusted in his professionalism.

From his position, he was just about to reel in a major case from the academy,

only for his inside informant to go missing.

Now, a mysterious figure had shown up here in the whistleblower’s room—

And that figure claimed to know the whole truth.

There was no way he’d walk away empty-handed.

“Are you here to talk?”

“Enter the room slowly with your hands raised.”

Right after I said that, I pulled the old coat draped over the nearby chair that was once Glenn’s and threw it over my shoulders.

Then, with my right hand, I conjured chilling mana.

Crack.

The sound of freezing air accompanied the formation of a mask in my palm.

The mask was crafted from ice with a fine inner air layer and was white and opaque.

By bringing it to my face, I was ready to meet the royal agent.

It was a makeshift disguise. Improvised but effective.

As soon as I put the mask on, the door to Glenn’s room opened without a sound.

And just as instructed, a man entered slowly with his hands raised.

He had a gaunt look and deep-set dimples.

When he saw me, he muttered with a smirk,

“Huh… a mask, is it?”

The courage it took to enter the room and try to confirm my face despite the unknown danger was admirable, but there was no way I could let him know my identity.

The man was an intelligence agent sent to investigate acts of treason and I was a prime suspect.

Given the location, running into me in the room of a missing whistleblower would make it look like I’d killed Glenn to silence him and was now here to destroy the evidence.

And to be fair, the circumstances weren’t all that different from that assumption.

“I’ve entered just like you asked. If we assume we’re making a deal, may I ask what I want to know now?”

“Go ahead.”

He was a man with an unexpectedly ordinary appearance, but that somehow suited the role of an intelligence agent even more.

He wore casual clothes, and there was no visible weapon, but for someone risking his life on field missions, it wouldn’t be surprising if he had at least a hidden dagger.

Of course, even if he came at me with a blade or something, he wouldn’t stand a chance, but regardless.

The important thing was that I had no intention of fighting him.

The agent asked,

“Is Mr. Glenn dead?”

“Yes.”

“Did you do it?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll ask just one more thing. Are you… the enemy?”

“You didn’t come all the way here to play twenty questions, did you?”

“……”

“Catch.”

Whoosh.

I used telekinesis to send something flying toward the agent.

It wasn’t moving all that fast, and though he flinched, he managed to catch the small object arcing through the air with little difficulty.

Then he asked,

“What is this?”

“The item you came here to find. Caraphine.”

“…Ugh!”

The agent screamed a beat too late and leapt back and I got to witness a man daring to juggle a rod of caraphine with over 60% purity.

After bouncing it a few times in the air, the man managed to catch the caraphine rod and exclaimed like a scream,

“Throwing something this dangerous around like that!”

“Don’t be so dramatic. It won’t explode unless magic is involved.”

As the agent had said, high-concentration caraphine was extremely dangerous, which was why, during the final stage of its manufacturing process, it was always coated with a wax containing desensitizing substances.

When the agent checked the surface of the caraphine rod at my words, he finally let out a sigh of relief and straightened his posture.

Then, looking a little sheepish, he asked,

“But why give this to me?”

“How long are you planning to just ask questions? Use that clever brain of yours and think it through.”

“……”

Conversations that are one-sided explanations tend to invite suspicion.

Considering what I was about to do next, this was the moment for a bit of careful back-and-forth.

The royal agent turned his attention first to the object he now held in his hands.

“This sparkling sheen… this really is caraphine. And of incredible purity, no less… I can’t believe illegal caraphine production was actually happening at the academy.”

He seemed satisfied to have secured proof of wrongdoing at the academy, which had been his original goal.

But that satisfaction didn’t last long.

He was soon confronted with a grave truth.

“Then it’s true… that man Winter Winslet betrayed the kingdom?”

At that, I responded as calmly as possible, feigning composure, and asked back,

“What do you mean by that?”

“Are you pretending not to know?”

Just as I had hoped, the agent assumed I was testing him.

Since I had already shown that I knew quite a bit, he no longer felt the need to conceal anything from me.

To him, what mattered more now was what he could gain from continuing this exchange.

“Glenn, who agreed to cooperate with me, testified that all of this was part of a systematic crime orchestrated by Winter Winslet. Is that true? Did Winter Winslet betray the kingdom?”

“Hard to say.”

Winter Winslet was a valuable human asset to the kingdom.

Because of that, the royal family had turned a blind eye to his abuse of authority and various injustices within the academy, sometimes even cleaning up after him, to keep him within the borders of the Kingdom of Laurencia.

But would they still try to protect him after learning he had committed acts equivalent to treason?

No chance.

From the moment he got involved in caraphine manufacturing, Winter Winslet became an enemy of the crown.

That’s why the truth about the caraphine manufacturing at the academy couldn’t be revealed here.

It must not be exposed.

If so, the only option left would be to eliminate the intelligence agent who came to find evidence and cut off the royal family’s pursuit… but things never go that smoothly.

Even in the original story, Winter Winslet had thoroughly erased all traces of Glenn and hunted down and killed the agent who had tried to contact him.

Yet despite handling the aftermath so perfectly, in the third-year episode, he was still struck down by the wrath of the Candela Knights.

Which means killing the royal agent here would only be a temporary fix. It was a short-term solution to an urgent problem.

But if I let the agent live and send him back, that would only hasten our downfall.

So then, what to do?

They say crisis is an opportunity in disguise.

I decided to craft one huge lie to turn the entire game on its head.

“Winter Winslet…. he’s an ally of our Empire. He infiltrated the academy as a spy to uncover internal intelligence about the Heptagram Society.”