The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide - Chapter 235

Keeeeeeek!

The problem wouldn’t stop unless it was cut off at its source.

In the first place, the summoning of Velbrok’s monsters wasn’t something I could stop directly. When Taylee McLaure tried to climb up its scales and drive his sword through its heart… that had been a defensive attack pattern meant to stop him from doing so.

There was only one way to stop the monsters from being summoned.

Rather than killing them all off, we had to defeat Velbrok itself. Only then would it fall and bring all of the monsters down with it.

In other words, killing the monsters was an endless task that would not stop the calamity.

The calamity would only end once Velbrok—flying through the sky and straining against its chains—was defeated.

Whoosh!

Wind Blade cut through the monsters on our way to Trix Hall.

I was worried, since I was using more magic power than I had anticipated, but the most important thing was to clear the path.

The hill leading to Trix Hall. As we proceeded up the road, cutting down all of the gremlins that stood in our way, my school uniform became completely stained with the monsters’ dark red blood.

However, there weren’t any injuries on my body. Since my combat abilities weren’t impaired, it was manageable.

After climbing the small hill, I got off Merilda’s back and ran up the wooden stairs. It didn’t take long to reach Trix Hall.

[…It seems there was a major battle here as well.]

Merilda returned to human form as she landed on the ground, frowning as she looked at Trix Hall.

Trix Hall had always stood tall, looking prestigious and imposing. Now, however, the right side of the building and the roof were destroyed.

The road leading to the lobby was completely covered in monster blood and corpses.

No matter how many monsters there were, it should have been impossible for them to make their way into Trix Hall and past all of the core faculty members of Silvenia Academy.

I sprinted past the corpses and entered through the large glass doors.

I’d been to the massive lobby on the first floor of Trix Hall several times. However, it was completely different from the usual scene of faculty members and visitors busily walking around.

Broken glass was scattered everywhere. Shattered chairs and other pieces of furniture lay across the floor, making the place look like a ruin.

By the counter, several faculty members lay unconscious. Some appeared to have lost their lives due to severe bleeding.

They must have been unable to escape when the monsters swarmed in. Even if the place was guarded by Silvenia’s core faculty, that didn’t mean they were immune to casualties. The monster attack had been too sudden.

[…It’s quiet.]

“Ayla and Taylee went to look for the Sage’s Seal, so they’re probably on a higher floor.”

I continued moving quickly while examining the traces of battle.

Along the wall were marks left by a massive sword attack. It was clearly a swordmaster’s technique. That meant Taylee had been there, fighting the monsters.

However, something felt off.

Where did all of the faculty members go?

Trix Hall was the main faculty building, yet I hadn’t seen a single active faculty member. At most, there were a few corpses bearing signs of monster attacks.

I quickly climbed the stairs, ran through the second-floor hallway, then searched the third floor. Still, there wasn’t a single person in sight.

It was unnatural for there to be no one left in Silvenia Academy’s main faculty building.

However, when I reached the fourth floor—

Boom!

I finally found someone.

The fourth floor of Trix Hall housed the offices and conference rooms. Near the main conference room, someone had stumbled out into the hallway.

They were staggering while clutching their side, clearly gravely injured. Blood seeped through their fingers.

Was it Velbrok’s magic? Or a monster attack?

I ran down the hallway to help. Either way, I had many questions about what had happened.

“K-Keuk… A student? What are you doing here… in this situation…?”

When I got closer, I immediately recognized her.

Her white hair was neatly tied, wrinkles lined her forehead, and her sharp eyes reflected both age and authority.

It was Deputy Headmistress Rachel Thyslin.

“Deputy Headmistress. How did you get hurt this badly?”

“You’re… the third-year top student, Ed Rothstaylor… Keuk…”

She recognized me immediately, then glanced behind me as if something were chasing her.

“The situation outside… can you report it to me?”

“There’s not much to say. It’s exactly as you think. Right now, they’re forming several safe areas centered around influential students.”

“I see… The supply room… We need to go there now… immediately…!”

Deputy Headmistress Rachel quickened her pace. There was no way she would recklessly push herself, so I supported her as we hurried toward the supply room at the corner of the fourth floor.

It wasn’t far.

“What happened in Trix Hall? Without orders from the heads of the school, the students and faculty outside don’t know what to do.”

“We were in a meeting in the conference room, trying to establish a course of action. But… in the middle of it… they broke in…”

“They? Who are you talking about?”

“I… I could hardly believe it myself…”

Was it a monster?

No matter how powerful a monster was, it should have been killed immediately if it broke into a conference room filled with Silvenia Academy’s top executives and faculty.

After all, the senior faculty were among the strongest individuals in the academy.

“We were all defeated. Head Dean McDowell, Combat Department Dean Stan, Alchemy Department Dean Edelweiss, Senior Professor of Monster Ecology Flubin, Senior Swordsman Instructor Floun, Senior Spiritual Studies Professor Melina… none of them can move. And Headmaster Obel… he was probably the first…”

“Even Headmaster Obel… was defeated?”

At that moment, an enormous surge of magic power erupted from the conference room she had fled from.

The magic behind us was not only overwhelming in quantity but also unique in nature.

Dark red magic power flooded the area.

It wasn’t the kind used for ordinary magic. It was a special type—known as Celestial Magic Power.

And the amount was abnormal.

Even Professor Glast, who was said to have reached the furthest depths of Celestial Magic, had never exerted such a vast, concentrated quantity. It exceeded what was needed even for advanced spells and spread across the entirety of Trix Hall’s fourth floor.

Before I could react, Deputy Headmistress Rachel grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.

She flung open the door to the storage room and shoved me inside.

Caught off guard, I turned to ask what she was doing, but she slammed the door shut and engraved a magic circle onto the handle, locking it in place.

She then layered camouflage magic over the door, making it blend seamlessly with the surrounding wall.

Inside the storage room was a small glass window that allowed a view of the hallway. Deputy Headmistress Rachel concentrated as she gathered her magic power. From the outside, the door became completely invisible.

At first, I wondered why she had locked me inside. If I wanted to, I could easily break through a door like that.

But as I watched her cast camouflage magic, I realized that doing so would be a mistake.

She hadn’t locked me in.

She was hiding me.

But hiding me from what?

“What the hell is—”

“Shh…!”

There were other people inside the storage room.

As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I took in the scene and swallowed hard.

Between the dusty shelves filled with school supplies were multiple students in uniform, hiding.

They must have been student assistants assigned to Trix Hall. It seemed the faculty had hidden them here first.

About a dozen students were trembling or crying quietly. One of them raised her index finger to her lips, signaling me to stay silent.

I knew her.

“Ayla…!”

“You have to hide, Ed.”

She pulled me into a corner of the room.

Ayla was clutching the Sage’s Seal she had been desperate to read. I didn’t know how she managed it, but she had taken advantage of the chaos to steal it from within Trix Hall.

And at the very back of the storage room—

Taylee, whom I had been searching for, was leaning against the wall.

He had been here the whole time.

The key to ending this calmly—Swordmaster Taylee McLaure.

“Taylee McLaure.”

“Ed Rothstaylor… what… are you doing here…?”

He was breathing heavily, his back pressed against the wall. He looked seriously injured.

Had he been wounded while fighting the monsters?

Ayla was tending to him, frowning as she covered his wounds.

“You’re injured…”

That was bad.

Taylee should have been cutting out Velbrok’s heart at that moment. Seeing him in this condition was a serious problem.

“A wound like this… is nothing… but…”

Boom!

Another explosion echoed through the building.

Explosions had been constant across Acken Island due to Velbrok’s rampage, but this one was dangerously close—definitely from the same building, on the same floor.

“Right now, in Trix Hall… there’s a monster. It’s different from normal ones… something… impossible to deal with…”

“A monster?”

“Ed.”

Before Taylee could continue, Ayla raised her head and called my name.

She lifted the Sage’s Seal and said, “There’s something I need to ask you.”

***

In front of the storage room, Deputy Headmistress Rachel finished casting her camouflage magic and took a deep breath.

After carefully confirming that it was functioning properly, she slowly closed her eyes.

A monster was emerging from the conference room.

Although it looked human, it was a beast devoid of intellect—incapable of communication and devoid of reason.

And worst of all, it was incredibly strong.

Rachel prayed to God.

She prayed that, at the very least, the monster wouldn’t notice the camouflage magic on the storage room door.

Everything had happened too quickly.

From Velbrok’s sudden resurgence to the collapse of Mexes Bridge, an unprecedented calamity had struck Silvenia. The senior faculty had rushed to the conference room to determine a response.

Then, a blinding light filled the room.

When their vision returned, a human stood in the center of the conference room.

They had landed elegantly, like a fairy descending from the sky.

Their face was hidden beneath a robe and hood engraved with magnificent patterns. The robe, however, was frayed in several places, as if it had been worn for a long time.

They were smaller than expected, holding a massive wooden wand nearly as tall as their body.

From the pale skin visible beneath the hood and the slender hand gripping the wand, it was clear—

It was a young girl.

The staff froze, unable to react to her sudden appearance.

Then she spoke, her voice elegant and graceful.

“Oh my goodness.”

Her tone was as casual as if she had discovered pests that needed extermination.

“There are quite a few ‘variables’ here.”

An indescribable fear spread through the room.

The girl waved her hand lightly, as if brushing away a mosquito.

In an instant, half the people in the room began to bleed.

There had been no warning. The speed of her attack was beyond what anyone could respond to.

By the time they realized she had used curse magic, half of their manpower was already incapacitated.

The girl stood calmly in the center of the conference room. Her eyes, hidden beneath the hood’s shadow, were empty.

Rachel, who met her gaze, understood instinctively.

Those were the eyes of a madwoman.

The eyes of someone who had been trapped for an unbearably long time—and had finally lost her mind.

Rachel stood up at once, demanding to know who she was.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Velbrok’s scream tore through the skies above Acken Island once more, like metal scraping against metal.

The girl turned her head toward the window, gazing upon the unfolding disaster.

The Holy Blue Dragon roared through the sky. Monsters swarmed the ground. People were being massacred. Forests burned, and school buildings collapsed.

At the sight—

The girl raised her voice.

“Kaha.”

“Kahaha! Kahahaha! Kahahahaha!”

She burst into grotesque, unsettling laughter.

Her body twisted unnaturally as she bent over laughing, the sight alone enough to paralyze anyone with fear.

Rachel gathered her magic power, frowning.

Then, as the remaining uninjured professors stood to subdue the girl—

…in the blink of an eye, the conference room was drenched in blood.

The girl took less than ten seconds to annihilate every veteran professor in the empire.

***

Ayla turned to the final page of the Sage’s Seal.

She lifted the book and showed it to Ed.

Unlike the other neatly written passages, a hastily added message was written there.

It had been scribbled with a quill, but the handwriting was unmistakably Silvenia’s.

If it were simply related to her research, she could have added it later.

But this message felt different.

As if she had suddenly thought of the distant future, Silvenia had hurriedly written one final note—one not related to the book’s contents, but seemingly addressed to someone in particular.

No one knew why she wrote it, or to whom it was addressed.

Ayla had no way of knowing why Silvenia felt compelled to leave such a message.

After all, Ayla couldn’t decipher the book itself.

Still, for Silvenia—who worked with careful logic and efficiency—it was strange to leave such an emotional message at the end.

It might have been connected to the Holy Blue Dragon now throwing Acken Island into chaos.

That was why, despite the urgency of the situation, Ayla asked Ed—since he could use Celestial Magic, perhaps he knew something.

“Can you read this?” Ayla asked.

Ed was left speechless.

“This…”

Silvenia Robester had begun her life as a linguist, born into a family of translators.

Ancient runes, non-human languages, the Empire’s official tongues, northern and eastern continental languages, even minor tribal dialects—to her, learning a language was no different from redefining a set of rules.

No matter how unfamiliar it was at first, her exceptional mind allowed her to master it quickly.

So for someone who had reached the pinnacle of Celestial Magic—magic that twisted the world’s providence—

Just how much had she seen?

By increasing the amount of magic she wielded, what kinds of worlds had she observed?

The answer lay in the language she had chosen for the final message in the Sage’s Seal.

“This… is Korean…”

“What?”

The Sage’s Seal was a legendary magic book that had yet to be fully deciphered.

So the obscure message on its final page hadn’t drawn much attention—it seemed no different from the many passages that remained untranslated.

Ed took the book from Ayla and began to read Silvenia’s message.

***

[To you who survived.Your life of solitude and death—I know it better than anyone.I know your dark past, where you turned away from reality, lived under the starlight, drank alone, and remembered comrades who have already left.I know that my arbitrary actions will cause you great pain and hardship.And yet, I have no choice but to bow my head and ask this of you.The deeper I reach into Celestial Magic Power, which erodes my mind, the more clearly I see the truth.There are many days when I feel madness gnawing at my heart, whispering darkness into my ears.Still, I cannot abandon Celestial Magic… because I cannot accept a future of endless darkness.I believe there is a future beyond the cliff.I believe that as long as we continue to survive, we can overcome it.However, if I cannot endure until that end…If I am consumed by madness and become someone who can no longer see the future…]

Boom!

Through the storage room’s window, Deputy Headmistress Rachel was sent flying by Celestial Magic. She bled profusely before collapsing.

Then, a girl in a robe appeared in the hallway.

White hair spilled over her shoulders, her hood lowered.

In portraits, her hair was always neatly tied. Now, it was completely disheveled.

She laughed strangely, the corners of her lips stretching up her bloodstained cheeks. Her empty gaze made one’s skin crawl.

[If that happens, please kill me. For the sake of your survival.]

After reading the final line, I slowly turned my head toward the storage room window.

The girl standing there…

Looked exactly like Merilda.

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The Holy Blue Dragon roared once more over Acken Island.

The disaster was still ongoing, but—

It was very different from anything I had experienced before.