In a dark room...
Princess Ferith suddenly opened her eyes.
“...”
Unlike her dark hair—dyed black to conceal its natural color—her deliberately revealed red eyes glowed fiercely, resembling the reflective eyes of a beast.
Though her eyes had been closed, she hadn’t been sleeping.
It had been a long time since she had last slept, and yet her mind remained ever in peak condition.
Even now.
“...Never thought Kajita would lose.”
Her voice carried a hint of amusement, faint but tinged with an almost childlike naivety.
The princess gently stroked the head of the doll in her arms.“As we suspected, Deathberry. I told you the transfer students would bring a wind of change. Things are certainly about to get a lot more interesting.”
Smiling, the princess rose from her seat, made her way to the window, and flung it wide open.
The light from the blood moon illuminated the room, revealing the dolls that filled the room.
Dolls of various types and appearances filled the large space.
Whoosh.
A warm breeze blew in.
As the translucent curtains fluttered softly, the princess stepped backward, bathing herself in the glow of the blood-lit moon.
Her steps were graceful, as if performing a dance.
At her designated spot, the princess gently leaned backward.
With a soft thud, the dolls that filled the room served as cushions. Buried among them, Ferith held up Deathberry.
And she smiled, making eye contact with the ominous heterochromatic eyes.
“Luan Bednicker, what an interesting guy... Hmm? You’ve taken a liking to him? Ahaha, so have I.” Hugging Deathberry tightly, the princess whispered, “...The atmosphere is ripe. It’s time to move on to the next stage.”
* * *
Shortly after leaving the research building...
Evan Helvin sprinted through the academy’s grounds without so much as looking back.
The blazing sunlight, faint chilling breeze, chirping birds, and the students just waking up...
The sun had just risen and bathed the academy with its radiant sunlight. It was a peaceful scene.
Evan's face, however, was horribly twisted into a grim expression.
...I am in debt.
What if it had been him and not Luan who was left behind?
The princess had had an unmistakable demonic energy around her, a clear indication that she was the mastermind behind all this chaos.
Hadenaihar's followers were generally unhinged. No words would get through them. They were beyond reasoning.
His awakened memories of evil spoke.
Lunatics.
Hadenaihar, the Demon of the Blood-Lit Moon, was also a god of madness.
There were those who called the Blood-Lit Moon's faction the “Church of Assassins,” treating them as an offshoot religion.
While the Blood-Lit Moon’s high priest obediently followed the commands of the cult leader... conflicts with other factions were frequent, just as they had been throughout history.
In other words, his identity as a vice-cult leader would not protect him. They’d probably just say, “Ah, is that so?” with little surprise before either killing him or taking him captive.
And that would only make his situation even worse.
After all, a vice-cult leader had many uses.
They could make an excellent sacrifice to a god of disaster, or the demonic energy inside them could be extracted, leaving them for dead.
In short, making Evan flee had been a wise decision.
Not that Luan Bednicker had considered such things.
I have a bad feeling about this.
Of course, it was bad enough that the demon lord had been summoned...
But somehow, that felt like a precursor to some greater catastrophe.
“Ha.”
Evan laughed dryly at the sudden thought.
If the summoning of the demon lord was just a precursor...
Then what kind of nightmare could possibly follow?
And more than that...
What is it that I want to do?
Evan abruptly stopped running.
He stood in front of the academy’s main building.
The cadets glanced at him curiously as he stood there motionless, but he didn't care.
The demon lord had already been summoned, and he instinctively knew that something worse was yet to come.
If he stayed like this, he’d either get caught up in it and die, or he’d face a fate worse than death.
Should I just run away?
Evan seriously considered the possibility.
Of course, as long as the headmaster’s doll was present, escaping through normal means would be impossible. There was no way he'd be able to escape the headmaster’s watchful eye.
But wasn’t trying to escape better than just sitting here and waiting for death?
That's right, let's just run.
The moment he had that thought...
Shut up, Evan Helvin snapped back at it.
He'd known this shit from the start. From the moment he'd awakened as a vice-cult leader, before he’d been discovered by Luan Bednicker.
But Evan hadn't done it.
He hadn’t run away.
If he left, what of the cadets here?
Was he supposed to just abandon them, leave them to die knowing that disaster would strike?
So what? Whether a few hundred or a couple thousand infidels die, it won't stop the spread of our doctrine in the slightest, came the mocking voice.
He ignored the whispers of the memories of evil, which seemed to have a sinister will of their own.
Though he would never admit it to anyone, Evan’s mind was in a state of deep turmoil.
Thanks to his absurdly meaningless death, the memories of evil had failed to properly seep into his personality.
While he acknowledged the doctrines of the Church of Darkness, he still retained the pride of a young hero who had once admired and wished to become one.
As a result, two identities coexisted within him: Evan the Vice-Cult Leader and Evan the Young Hero.
A split personality? Perhaps that would have been better. At least then he would be more emotionally stable.
But this was different.
Even the inner voice within Evan was a reflection of his true feelings.
Stop.
He shook his head.
Continuing to dwell on a question he could not answer right now was dangerous. If he wasn’t careful, the madness could resurface and he could completely lose his mind.
Evan forced himself to redirect his train of thought.
Luan would not be able to return easily.
Given the way things were looking, it was likely he had already been dragged to the Veiled Side.
So what would happen next?
Would the princess deploy a stand-in puppet for Luan?
That’s impossible.
Creating a stand-in puppet was not easy.
House Bednicker’s young master had only been at the academy for a few weeks, far too short a time to make a puppet.
She’ll make a move by the end of today.
After all, Evan had been able to slip right underneath the princess’s nose.
In that case, sharing the situation was a priority.
Looking back, Luan’s decision to share information with the other young heroes had been a good one.
By now, even the slower ones among them should have come to terms with the situation.
First, to the Amber Hall.
Just as Evan decided on his next course of action...
Thud.
His body suddenly collapsed to the ground without any warning.
He had lost consciousness.
Normally, someone collapsing in the middle of the main building would surely attract attention... but not a single cadet spared him a glance.
That was because he wasn't the only one with these symptoms.
Thud, thud...
Cadets and staff walking near Evan collapsed one after another like narcoleptics.
And this wasn't just happening here.
Professors inside the main building, a group of cadets chattering away on the train, a student just waking up from a late nap, a merchant who had just opened their shop, and even their children...
Every human living in the academy fell unconscious.
“...”
“...”
“...”
A cloudless, clear sky, and the sun shining brightly overhead.
At what would normally be the busiest and noisiest time of day, the academy was plunged into unprecedented silence.
* * * * *
* * * * *
“Dad! Save me!” I shouted as I shot up.
I quickly swerved my head around to look.
“...The fuck?! What kind of batshit dream was that?” I muttered.
I scratched my head furiously.
For some reason, I couldn't clearly recall the moments right before I’d passed out.
I closed my eyes and tried to think.
I must have heard something horribly shocking... and then just blacked out.
“...”
I looked at the Dark Star Blade in my hand, and it all came rushing back to me.
“I... I’m a priest. Seriously?”
The absurd turn of events made my head spin all over again. Thinking I must have made a mistake, I looked around to confirm, but...
Leone was nowhere to be seen, there was only Headmaster Alderson lying stiffly on his back.
“Leone?” I called out in a low voice, but there was no response.
I wondered if she'd stepped away for a moment, but I immediately realized that wasn't likely.
Leone had appeared so suddenly, so there wasn’t anything strange about her disappearing just as abruptly.
Of course, that left me in quite the predicament.
Leone must have had something to do with the Dark Star Blade’s sudden appearance.
Even if I was acquainted with the Demon Lord of Black And White, my eldest senior brother, it was still strange that this blade had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the middle of my fight.
Did Leone make me a high priest?
Or was this some kind of arrangement made by Eldest Senior Brother when I’d met him last time?
No, maybe it was neither of them.
Maybe Leone was just pulling my leg.
I carefully closed my eyes to examine the inside of my body, but I soon let out an annoyed groan.
...There it is.
It was faint compared to my internal energy, but there it was... There was definitely a small amount of demonic energy gathered in my inner core.
Ahh, shit. Fuck me.
I wasn’t the type to get easily agitated, but in this case, I couldn’t help it.
It was at this point that I finally remembered the dream I’d had while passed out.
I had met the Lord of Blood and Iron.
In the dream, he pointed his sword at me and spoke.
—A high priest of the Church of Darkness, from my bloodline? Unbelievable. You are truly a disappointment.
—No, Father, it's all a misunderstanding.
—Hold your tongue, Luan... No, even uttering your name disgusts me. Be silent and just prepare to die, you disgrace of the Bednicker bloodline.
—Gack!
“...”
The thing was, if my true identity were exposed, the chances of that exact scene occurring were ridiculously, terrifyingly high.
Honestly, I would even thank him for giving me such a quick, easy death.
I still remembered vividly what had happened to Professor Einsburn.
The Lord of Blood and Iron didn’t offer cultists—let alone the traitorous rats—painless deaths. Instead, he took his time inflicting the most excruciating pain imaginable.
But if that person finds out that I, a Bednicker, am not just a rat but a high priest...?
I couldn’t fathom the horrors that would unfold.
Anyway, I needed to meet Leone again and demand answers about how in the world all this had occurred.
“...Huh?”
At this moment, I realized there was something clutched tightly in my right hand.
I opened it and found a note.
[See you in Seititus.]
[P.S. I'm bored playing puppet.]
Seititus?
I'd heard that name before...
“Ah.”
—The nation that the Demon Lord of Black and White destroyed was called Seititus.
—Little is known of it today, but some documents refer to it as the Empire of Evil.
Headmaster Alderson.
Well, strictly speaking, it was Headmaster Alderson’s puppet whom I’d heard that from.
The country my Eldest Senior Brother destroyed.
So if I went there, would I find the cause of this cursed mess?
“...”
No. This wasn’t good.
I had too much useless information swimming in my head.
First, let’s deal with the Blood-Lit Demon Lord.
I crumpled the note into my pocket and stood up.
Headmaster Alderson was lying beside me.
He wasn’t dead, and he didn’t look to be in too bad of shape.
The places where the chains had been were a little red and swollen, but nothing life-threatening.
The strangest part was the spot where the dagger had been lodged in his chest; the dagger was gone, and there was no sign of any deep puncture wound.
Could it have been a magical item?
I'd heard of tools that could interfere with mana circulation.
As I took a moment to observe Headmaster Alderson carefully...
Ruuumble...!
“...”
The entire building shook violently, as if an earthquake had struck.
I have a bad feeling about this.
Not knowing exactly what was happening just made the situation all the more ominous.
I quickly pulled Headmaster Alderson over my back and started climbing up the underground stairs. I reached the first floor...
And there, through the window, I witnessed an unbelievable sight.
“...The fuck? What in hell is going on now?”
The adult dolls that had been roaming outside the building...
The group of dolls, as Arin had called them, were shrieking as they charged toward the building I was in.