The Demon Prince goes to the Academy - Chapter 260

I don’t know if Elise believes that I know the future.

But Eleris has the most important job to do, so she has no choice but to share her most important secret.

Time will tell if what I say is true.

It seemed to convince him that I was trying to make contact with a magical coven, and that I was weird.

This made me feel more comfortable discussing the details with Elise.

It prevents a really big crisis in the future.

With that premise in place, there’s nothing to say.

But problem.

“……Don’t know?”

“It is.”

“Didn’t you say you know the future?”

“I don’t know everything, there’s more I don’t know.”

“No, but you’re right, I’m not going to lie to the Black Order!”

Elise exclaimed in disbelief.

Uh, how come…….

I feel like I’m getting yelled at by my mom for having an accident…….

“All I know is that Aaron Mede is a member of the Black Order, not that I know where to find them, and I’m just throwing it out there because I don’t think I’ll ever get involved with them if I miss it.”

“Hah……. Maybe……. Then of course you don’t know much about cantus magna, do you?”

“It is.”

“Hah…….”

As I was writing, I realized that this is a very long post.

When you start a long-running series, there are certain things that you can’t control because human memory is limited and your abilities are limited.

You forget the rice cakes you sowed.

It becomes untouchable and you can’t collect rice cakes at all.

The Magic Coven are those ‘unclaimed’ rice cakes for me. It’s not that I’ve forgotten, but I’m afraid it’s gotten too big for me, so I’ve forgotten ah……. that I don’t know what to do with.

A product of my own irresponsibility.

The Black Order makes one appearance in Aaron Mede’s Gun, and there’s a mention of the Sobriety Hunters, but that’s about it.

I wrote about them in a way that made me feel like they were great, and I had the setup in my head, but it never came out. When the whole Gate thing blew up, all the little things got sucked up or forgotten.

They never talked about what they did during the Gate debacle.

The only thing that sticks in my mind is what I had in mind when I set up the magic circle.

The Magical Order acts and operates by its own standards, independent of the morals of the world. This is as true of the Black Order as it is of the Sobriety Hunters, the Cantus Magna.

The Black Order has only made one appearance.

Cantus Magna is mentioned, but not shown.

At the end of the day, this is my cheap shit, so I have to jump in and figure it out somehow.

If the gate debacle was caused by the Covenant, you should definitely know about them.

The problem now is that I’ve pretended to have information that would appeal to the Black Order, but I don’t have any.

So she’s looking at me pathetically once she’s done it.

“Um, ……. I don’t know much about Cantus Magna, but I know how to get to them.”

“Is there a way to do that?”

a.

But if I say this again.

I’m going to get in trouble for this…….

No, but it’s not complicated, it’s super easy.

It’s hard to beat that.

“They’re bounty hunters, those guys.”

“Yes.”

“Then, of course, you’re going to use the forbidden word, right?”

“…….”

Eleris’s expression turned sour. It feels similar to the way Ellen sometimes glares at me with a cheap look.

It’s kind of cool, though, because Ellen’s the one with the expressionless face, and that’s what Elise, who’s always smiling, looks like.

Real.

I feel a sense of crisis.

To call in a sobriety hunter, you can use forbidden magic.

I mean, it makes sense!

“Do I really want this burn!”

Elise eventually screeched and grabbed my head.

-Bam!

“Eek!”

“What did I do……!”

He was surprised at himself for what he had done, so he patted me on the head and apologized.

My suggestion to use sobriety to invoke the cantus magna was rightly dismissed.

“Elise, calm down and think about it. After all, if the Black Order finds out I lied to you, you’ll end up fighting them anyway, right?”

“It’s loud!”

Eleris sighed in frustration.

“The council might know something. We’ll look there for clues for now, there are some families with deep ties to Inse.”

“Really?”

“A vampire who lives long enough inevitably becomes a wizard. For there is nothing like hard study to appease the freeing of time.”

Let’s set aside the very risky method and take a cue from the Vampire Council.

For now, my next move would be determined there. It would be crucial to determine whether or not I could bring them under my control.

* * *

Aside from life in the Temple, I’ve given Elise instructions on what to do outside.

We don’t have a lead on the Black Order yet, but it’s highly unlikely we’ll be fighting them. If they do, I might use alcohol to call them out. If the Black Order doesn’t use that method, well, they’ll have their own reasons.

Aaron Mede’s job has been put on hold, and he’s sharing his only secret with Elise.

Issue.

“…….”

“You know, you guys are kind of obvious, right?”

“What.”

We’re quietly eating breakfast and Riana is chewing the tines of her fork through her teeth, alternately looking at me and Ellen.

“Did you fight or not?”

“No? And or what?”

“I didn’t fight.”

But the look on everyone’s face says, “We fought.

“They don’t talk much anyway, but I can see if they’ve been fighting or not.”

Adelia giggled at Riana’s comment and scratched her head. It’s probably because she thinks I’m going to lose my shit if she says anything.

After the last incident, Ellen and I became strangely silent, as if we hadn’t had a subtle fight.

Ellen was mad at me, and I was mad at her.

They do it because they care about each other, but the end result is that they only make each other worse.

What to say.

Temples externally and internally.

My head was spinning.

It’s not just Ellen. Riana asked, this time looking to the side.

“And what’s up with you lately?”

“……No, it’s okay.”

Herriot shook his head in dismay as he woke up.

Herriot was suffering from something akin to PTSD due to the traumatic sights he saw at Aaron Mede’s mansion.

Herriot didn’t do the fighting himself. Ellen took care of the anti-magic field.

However, I’ve seen humans being controlled by homunculi who have fallen victim to my anti-magic spells.

It wasn’t murder, but Herriot seemed to think it was.

And the horrible chimeras I saw in the underground workshop.

That would be a direct source of trauma. I didn’t see it because I didn’t go in, but it seemed like something Ellen didn’t want to think about ever again.

It’s inevitable.

I had nightmares for a while after seeing a zombie horde, too.

In a way, it’s a good thing Harriet grew up with nightmares and trauma from what she saw. No, I’m glad she’s able to live a normal life.

What happened there was a secret, and very few people knew about it.

So, except for Bertus, no one knew why we looked the way we did.

“Do you want to cheer yourself up?”

I can’t stand to see this happen again,” Riana said, her voice rising in tension.

“I hear there are lots of fall flowers along the Irene River. Let’s go see them after class.”

If we didn’t go, they would give us an electric massage with a big smile on their face, so we nodded, even though they didn’t seem to like it.

* * *

After class, myself, Ellen, Harriet, Liana, and Adelia left the Temple.

Ellen walked some distance away from me, and Herriot stayed with Adelia.

Naturally, Riana and I were leading the way.

“Hey, how’d that work out for you?”

“……Roughly.”

Riana is a weird one, because she seems to have it all figured out, and then she doesn’t.

“I think that’s why it looks like this again…….”

He’s also assuming that it happened somewhere he doesn’t know about, but he doesn’t ask.

And then, out of nowhere, flowers.

I don’t have a hobby for that. Come to think of it, I don’t think Ellen or Adelia would have anything to do with flowers, except maybe dabbling in magic, though I’m sure Harriet lived in a palace with a garden.

I don’t think Ellen will be much different.

“Do you like flowers?”

Riana shook her head at my question.

“Not really, unless it’s clothes.”

After all, he’s trying to cheer himself up, and he’s clearly not interested in the flowers themselves.

I wonder who this is for.

* * *

Come here, Daeha.

Namely, along the Han River in Seoul, Korea, called the Zodiac Gradient.

The Rotary Club used to stop by when they were here, but not much has happened since the headquarters moved.

Autumn flowers bloomed everywhere, and many people took a walk. The world after the Demon King’s death. A peaceful world.

I see people there enjoying the flowers without a care in the world.

We were one of them.

Everyone had come to see the flowers without much thought, and Riana was no different.

But we were there, so we walked the trails and watched the flowers bloom.

Riana grabbed my arm and pointed to a type of flower that was everywhere.

The most blooming flower.

“What kind of flower is that?”

“It’s Cosmos.”

“……what. Why do you know?”

“No……. It’s common sense.”

Cosmos doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and you want to go flower watching?

But Riana wasn’t the only one who noticed. The way they looked at me seemed to have changed.

All of a sudden, this is where the otherworldly stuff happens.

“You guys didn’t know either?”

Adelia scratched her cheek at my question.

“It’s not that I don’t know it’s Cosmos…….”

“……Is the very fact that I know flowers a mystery?”

Ellen, Harriet, Adelia, and Riana all nodded.

Then yes.

It’s amazing that a gachaban like me knows the name of a flower, no matter how common it is.

Sickness.

I don’t really care, but I do know enough to get by.

Of course, I’ve also done the foolish thing of memorizing flowers and flower words in an attempt to expand my vocabulary. It didn’t help my writing at all.

However, I did manage to memorize the common flowers and the flower names of some of them.

For those flowers that everyone else knows about.

“Hey, what’s that?”

“Chrysanthemum.”

“That one?”

“……that’s a chrysanthemum.”

“They’re different colors, that one is white and that one is yellow.”

“Oh bitter, don’t you know that red roses and white roses are both roses, are you really this ignorant?”

“Oh, right. They do look the same.”

It’s not a big deal, but people look at me like I’m crazy.

What the hell is I in your heads?

I don’t think I need to ask, but for some reason Riana asked me if that sounded funny when the unnamed flower was in bloom.

Even as I picked up the names of these flowers, there were still many I didn’t recognize.

There were many flowers that I wasn’t sure if they were unique to this world, or if they were in the original world but I just didn’t know the name.

In the end, I didn’t know everything. Of course, there was always more we didn’t know.

But as the sun was setting. The looks on everyone’s faces got a little weird.

The looks on their faces were like they had never seen a different side of me before.

“Oh, really, what’s the big deal, is it so amazing that I know so much about flowers?”

“Of course.”

Riana speaks for herself.

“You know, the more I look at you, the more I don’t get it.”

In the end, the different version of me didn’t seem to be a bad thing.

Harriet was blushing, though she didn’t know why.

You guys, I think this misunderstanding has gotten out of hand.

Let’s set the tone.

“But I’m a flower girl, which is kind of weird.”

“Why?”

Everyone was curious to see what it would sound like this time.

“Aren’t flowers technically the genitals of plants?”

Technically, it’s pistils and surgery.

“Don’t you think it’s kind of funny that we gather like this to look at genitalia?”

“ah…….”

“…….”

“…….”

“You’re a nutcase after all.”

You’ve successfully set the tone.

* * *

I don’t know if I really felt better after that one flower viewing. We all turned to leave, but Ellen grabbed me.

“A little.”

“……?”

Ellen winks at me.

“Let’s stay a little longer.”

She wanted to be alone. Everyone was like, “If you want to do it, do it.

As if they thought we should be left alone to talk, even if it was because of a misunderstanding, not because we were fighting. Everyone left us alone without another word.

It was a fall evening, just after sunset.

We sat at the foot of the stairs, close to the Irine River.

“…….”

“…….”

We were angry at each other.

I will dabble in more dangerous things, most of which I can’t even tell Ellen about. I don’t even want to ask for help.

It’s too risky.

I don’t want Ellen to know anything about what I’m going to do, and if she does, it won’t be that I’m doing something dangerous, but that she’ll know my secret.

If that happens, I don’t know what happens after that.

I didn’t want to imagine it.

“I think it’s weird.”

Ellen said as she finished.

“What.”

“If someone is important to you, you should say nice things, do nice things, and be nice to them.”

“…….”

“I think it’s more like if you care about someone too much, you’re going to say things you don’t like about them, and you’re going to hurt them.”

Ellen stays still, watching the calm surface of the river with its red ripples.

“It’s stupid.”

“……Yes.”

Foolishly, I tossed a rock into the river. I watched it sink below the surface in small ripples.

Under a searing fall sunset.

“I’m sorry.”

“Me too. I’m sorry.”

We apologized to each other.

Ellen leaned her head toward me.

It’s been a while since I’ve done that.

“Reinhardt.”

“Uh.”

“Aaron Mede, you didn’t kill him.”

“…….”

Ellen already knew.

I can’t help but notice.

It’s a lie, but Aaron Mede’s head exploded and he died. There is no way I could have left such a scar.

You may have hidden the body, but Ellen could have seen it.

“Uh.”

Ellen didn’t ask any questions.

“When you become Swordmaster, will you tell me your secret?”

“…….”

I couldn’t tell you if I was more than a Swordmaster.

I had no answer.

There comes a moment when Ellen learns my secret.

It felt like an inevitability now.

It seemed like we could avoid the gate, but not by much.