The Extra’s Academy Survival Guide - Chapter 86

The first day of the snowstorm.

The vacation, over which there was no school, was finally coming to an end.

That meant the days of being able to spend an entire day dedicated to my own growth and training were also coming to an end.

The current week was now the last spurt.

Once the semester started, there would be a limit to how intense my training could be. At most, I would probably only be able to make some time to meet with Yennekar to work on a contract with a mid-rank spirit. The rest of my time after class would be used for studying.

Actually, there was nearly no meaning to doing any physical training. All I had to do was maintain where I was.

When my vitality was really low, I spent a few days training, which managed to just barely raise related stats. Perhaps it was because my body had already reached its limit, but there wouldn’t be much of a change.

Being in the body of Ed Rothstaylor, who was born with no physical talent whatsoever, it felt like I had trained as much as my body would allow.

It was still at a level that was on the higher end of the average male’s physique. Being able to do that much was still a great feat.

If I want to raise my specs any higher, I needed to spend my time focusing on a specialized field rather than just mindless repetitive training.

Magic Engineering and Elementalism. It definitely felt like I was lacking in those two areas.

Among all the skill combinations in , those two were the best combination, which complemented each other’s weaknesses. However, just as there was nothing perfect in this world, it still felt like I needed to do something else if I wanted to live a good life after graduating.

[ Life Skills Details

Grade: Intermediate Craftsmen

Specialized Fields: Woodworking

Handicraft Lvl 15

Design Lvl 11

Collecting Skills Lvl 13

Woodworking Lvl 15

Stonemason Lvl 8

Hunting Lvl 14

Fishing Lvl 12

Cooking Lvl 7

Repairing Lvl 5

Technical Proficiency: 23

Power Amplification: 4

Infusion Success Rate: 92

Fire-related Spiritual Proficiency: 6Wind-related Spiritual Proficiency: 3

Contracted Spirit: Low-Ranking Fire Spirit Mugg

Spiritual Resonance Level: 12

Spiritual Understanding Level: 12

Innate Skills: Blessing of Fire Fortune, Explosion

Contracted Spirit: High-Ranking Wind Spirit Merilda

Spiritual Resonance Level: 4

Spiritual Understanding Level: 3

Technical Proficiency: 4

Magic Engineering Understanding: 5

Fast Production: 3

Collected Production Formulas:

Climbing down the rope, I jumped off down to the floor once I was close enough.

After wiping away the snow on my body, I looked up at the fallen ceiling. A few snowflakes were falling in, but since the hole was still quite far away it wasn’t building up as much as I thought it would.

The first thing that caught my eye was the pile of all sorts of magic engineering materials. Those were all things that I managed to move after going back and forth. I really thought I was going to run out of energy.

Other than that, I was impressed upon seeing how neatly the library was organized. While moving the materials, I had checked on it a few times. However, there weren’t any mistakes.

I gave Ziggs a few coins, asking him to help clean up the rubble with magic, but I had no idea that he would even organize all the books that were lying around.

Just seeing all of the books neatly grouped up into their meaningful categories… No matter how many times I saw it, you could tell it came from the touch of someone with experience.

It probably came from the help of Ziggs’ lover, Elka. Even though I told him to keep the existence of this library a secret as much as possible, he must have not been able to keep the secret from her…

He probably tried to keep it a secret from her, as he was not one to go around speaking of others so freely, but… Elka was the one and only person he didn’t keep a secret from. He told her everything.

It seemed that no matter how much he wanted to keep a secret, he couldn’t hide it from her.

Elka must have also become interested, seeing as she came down into that dark and dusty library just to organize the books. I started to think that maybe the price to pay for keeping it all a secret was too much.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine Elka systematically sorting out the books as Ziggs ran around cleaning things up. Considering his personality, he probably thought of it all as training.

In any case… They put a lot of time and thought into it. Seeing the amount of work those two did, it was worth way more than the amount I paid them.

Once schools started up again, I’d have to find a way to pay them back.

“Hmm… Should I get started?”

I had piled up a lot of food, along with gathering all the materials. Even the library was neatly organized.

For the next week, the environment would be perfectly prepared for me to focus solely on researching magic engineering.

A week might have seemed long, but it also felt short once you started focusing on training.

If all of that could be mastered in a week, then what would be the point of magic engineering being so subdivided?

However, when it came to efficient growth, I already knew how to maximize it.

The most important thing was training one’s mastery through repetition. No matter how simple and easy to understand a device might seem, by repeatedly making it you would start to see a new mechanical principle or flow of magic power that you didn’t see at first.

Reading through hundreds of Production Formulas was inefficient. What was truly important was picking a good one and focusing on it.

The key was to gain a very thorough and deep understanding of a field of magic engineering that I could create.

Only after raising my magic engineering skill level and becoming more comfortable, by repetitively making things like the Weak Wind Generator, Loud Noise Generator, Greenhouse Crystal Ball, Blue Magic Orb, Craigle Magic Ink, Permeating Photosphere, and the like… could I make rare-grade items like Onia’s Hellfire.

Only after training like that, over and over again, to the point that my eyes were bloodshot and I was so exhausted that I could barely stay awake… Would I take on the final goal I had for that vacation?

[ Glockt’s Eyes (Legendary)

Temporarily increases the skill level of all resonance-related skills. The effectiveness of curse-type magic is halved. You cannot use defensive magic. Immune to elemental magic. ]

[ Dell Heim’s Hourglass (Legendary)

Restores the state of your body to a few seconds prior, removing all damage and wounds. One time use. ]

Glockt’s Eyes, which allowed a person to gain an extremely high level of resonance at the expense of practicality and defense.

Dell Heim’s Hourglass, which negated all life-threatening damage a single time.

During Act 3, neither of those legendary-grade magically engineered items existed due to balance.

And I have to complete at least one of the two. If I didn’t, it would be basically the same as accepting my death. Thinking back to when I was a senior in high school and all I did was sleep for three hours and study the rest, that much was nothing.

Sitting on the workbench set up in the center of the library, I took a deep breath.

“Whooo… Shall I get started…?”

After saying that, I had a realization.

Not yet… I didn’t bring the tools from the cabin…

I had even put them in a pretty toolbox to bring with me to the library…!

I was too busy preparing for the storm that I had forgotten.

It was a bitter mistake.

It was time for my body to suffer. I took in another deep breath.

***

The sharp wind was starting to grow fiercer as it ran through the needleleaf trees of the North Forest.

Clarice’s fluttering hair seemed like it could blow away at any moment.

Since she could still push through the winds, Clarice continued to make her way towards the river that ran through the North Forest.

‘Sacred Magic’ and ‘Holy Magic’.

Sacred Magic was a magic that came from having been born with the blessing of God.

Holy Magic on the other hand is one that is manifested through faith.

Therefore, most of the Knight Templars and the magicians that were a part of the religion were more proficient in Holy Magic than Sacred Magic. One had to be born with the blessings of God to have an effectiveness with Sacred Magic.

That was why Clarice, who had received all of Telos’ love, had so much power with Sacred Magic.

The Holy Blessing Clarice wore across her body returned double the damage dealt by the target if attacked with ‘hostility’. And to an outsider, it was impossible to comprehend it even happening… It was a defensive magic with an illogical structure.

Unless one was capable of a variety of special destructive magics, it was something that could not be dealt with.

So, no matter what type of wild animal she might come across, even if it were a monster Clarice would never get hurt.

It was safe to say that even if she did feel fear, there was a nearly zero percent chance she would get hurt from an attack.

Despite that, she still had a deep fear of Ed. But that was because of its own reasons.

And that was… there was a high chance that Ed was baptized by Telos Religious Group.

After the head of house Krepin Rothstaylor had been baptized by the Telos Religious Group, it became tradition for the successors to do the same. A tradition that had been passed down for only two or three generations.

Given that Arwen Rothstaylor had passed away and Ed Rothstaylor rose to the position as heir… he had to have been baptized by the archbishop.

Tanya hadn’t been baptized yet, since it had only been a few months since she was raised to the position of heir. However, in the case of Ed Rothstaylor, the chances of him having been baptized by the Telos Religious Group was nearly 100%.

The Holy Blessing… It was also within its nature to not exert its power against believers that were baptized by the same religious group.

It could never raise a sword at a brother- or sister-in-arms that came from the same teachings.

In the first place, if you were to go as far as getting baptized, you would never harbor hostility towards the saint.

However, there was a bit of a loophole there… She was attending school not as Saint Clarice, but instead as Kylie Eckner.

Even if he were a devout believer of Telos, without knowing her true identity he could still raise his sword against her. That was why it was dangerous to reveal her identity.

No, in the first place she couldn’t even be sure if that fallen noble with blonde hair even knew her true identity. She was full of unanswered questions.

“Aghhhh…!”

With layers of clothes tightly wrapped around her, Clarice continued toward the North Forest through the snowstorm. She learned the location of the river by familiarizing herself with a map beforehand. As she walked through the forest, it was impossible to miss anyway.

Once you found the river, all you had to do was continue upstream.

The cold was tolerable.

Right after one of the maids had checked on Clarice, she had run out. At the very least, she had a few hours before she would be found out.

Right now… She had to take advantage of the opportunity before the school semester started to get rid of all her worries and questions about Ed Rothstaylor.

“This… Is just like an adventure…!”

All of a sudden, the fear and nervousness she was feeling lessened as a new, warm sense of accomplishment swept over her.

Even just taking steps to find Ed’s cabin… It gave her hope that everything would be okay.

Clarice looked timid, but in reality, she was far from weak. The Sacred Magic she was born with and the Holy Magic she gained from her faith—both of which were at a level that a magician could never look down upon.

And as she kept crossing through the snowstorm, once she saw Ed’s cabin off in the distance it felt as if she was an explorer that had just discovered their goal… Clarice took in a deep breath.

It was the first time that she had gone outside alone and also the first time in the middle of a snowstorm.

Was it the colorful life of an adventurer that Adele had spoken of…? Clarice walked to the front of Ed’s cabin, which was already half-buried in snow… She took a deep breath.

Her self-confidence rose.

The feeling of being able to accomplish anything…!

Clarice decided to not worry any longer as she steeled herself, opening the front door of his cabin.

“Uhm…”

The sound of the sharp wind blowing right by her ear was replaced with the sounds of the walls being pounded.

The sound of the wind was more eerie than you would think when indoors. As there was no light in the cabin, it was completely dark. Because of that, she had to wait for a bit to adjust to the darkness.

And the first thing that she saw in the darkness was… the corpse of a wild boar, the hook still attached to it.

It was bigger than Clarice.

“Aaaaghkak!”

Clarice tripped on her foot, taking a step backwards and falling onto her butt… With both hands, she covered her mouth and averted her eyes from the dangling corpse.

Then, she slowly started to get a view of the entire cabin. Most of the supplies scattered around the cabin were in preparation for the snowstorm.

The sawtooths that were laying around… if you were to look closely, they were all hunting traps that had been piled up.

Though to Clarice, who had no knowledge whatsoever on hunting… it only looked like a sharp weapon.

And… most of them were still covered and stained with red blood. Blood here. Blood there. Blood! Blood! Blood!

There were bloodstains that came from when he had moved the carcass of the boar, and in another corner, there was a massive pile of snake and marten skins.

Looking even further around the cabin… there was a knife used for trimming, still covered in blood… Giant saws and tools that were bigger than Clarice’s pale forearms. And the guts from a variety of wild animals were scattered around, drying.

Right on top of the table was the head of the boar. How in the world was he going to use something like that?

At that point, Clarice was already in tears. To a girl that had lived her entire life in the enclosed and nurturing environment of the Holy Father Building, it was overly stimulating. It was no different than hell.

Stomp. Stomp

The sound of footsteps in the snow.

Beyond the raging snowstorm, someone was walking towards the cabin.

She didn’t need to see anything to know. At a time like that, there was only one person that would be walking there… the owner of the cabin.

Clarice tried to find a place to hide, but losing strength in her legs, she fell back onto the floor. She managed to use her arms to drag her body all the way over to the right corner of the hut, but it was a terrible effort at hiding.

Crawling under the workbench, hiding in the faint darkness, she prayed to Telos.

Boom!

Whoooooosh!

Suddenly, the door swung open as the sound of the sharp wind once again reached her ears.

Ed walked through the snow as he took what he was carrying on his shoulder, dropping it onto the floor.

A sack of something that was oddly shaped and rather clunky… looking closer, it was an elk that had frozen to death.

From Ed’s point of view, it was lucky. He had no idea he was going to find such a windfall on his way back.

However, for Clarice, who ended up making eye contact with the dead elk rolling on the floor… she couldn’t even let out a faint scream.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t let out a sound, afraid of being caught, but rather she didn’t even have the time to let out a scream. All she could do was let out her breath as she swallowed her fear.

“Phew…”

Cold weather.

Ed’s breath was visible despite the layers of thick clothing he wore. In Clarice’s eyes, it looked no different than that of a beast. Looking into Ed’s eyes, it was as if she had mistaken him for a monster in truth for a brief moment.

With the last bit of rationality left inside of her, she covered her mouth with two hands to keep from letting out the smallest of sounds.

Ed had fully entered into the darkness. Unlike Clarice, he wasn’t yet fully accustomed to it yet.

But with Ed already being fully familiar with the layout, he was able to make his way around the cabin.

Dodging things laying around here and there, Ed reached his hand out towards a wooden box… He then took everything out, checking the items one by one.

Tweezers, needles, awls… As his eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, he started taking out bigger objects… even hammers and knives were taken out.

And finally, when the moonlight shone down softly, Clarice saw Ed taking out a handsaw with her own two eyes.

“Ahhhh!”

In the end, she made a sound. Clarice covered her mouth with both hands… She had almost completely lost her mind.

“……”

Ed, who had briefly been taken aback, whipped his head around. He made eye contact with Clarice, who was hiding in the dark.

Her heart stopped before racing again.

As if her heart was making up for the moment it stopped, the sound of her heartbeat pounded in her ears.

“K-Kylie Eckner?”

Her whole body was trembling like crazy. Her mind stopped thinking, her mouth started watering, and her heart was beating like crazy.

“Wh-What? Why are you here? Why are you shaking so-…”

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Sacred Magic, Emission of Divine Power.

A skill that was advantageous against nearly all other forms of magic, to the extent it even ignored Ed’s Storm’s Blessing… Ed was hit straight into his solar plexus.

SLAAAAAM!

Boom! Thud! Crash!

Taken by completely unexpected surprise, Ed got knocked back all the way against the wall. The cabinet fell down as all the other things hanging on the wall fell onto him.

Dust rose in the air.

And then complete silence.

The sight that was left after the dust had settled was… Ed passed out, lying on his back with a streak of blood dripping from his head.

It was a perfect surprise attack. Even for Ed, who was quick witted and agile… that was too much to avoid.

“Uhmm… I… I don’t know…! A-All of a sudden…! I was just trying to…”

A moment of silence.

Clarice stood up with a trembling body as she looked down at Ed, passed out with a stream of blood from his head.

It looked as if Ed had lost consciousness after having taken a big hit.

No, it wasn’t just having lost consciousness…

Whoooooooosh.

The winter wind continued to blow.

The cool air slowly cooled her head as she finally started to remember why she had come.

“I…”

Clarice then faced reality.

“I… Killed a person…!”

Ed’s cold body didn’t move at all. Clarice then started to feel a different type of goosebump come across her body.

“L-Lord Telos… I-I…. I have committed a great sin…”

With trembling hands, Clarice grasped them together as she knelt down. With an expression that suggested that she had no idea what to do, her body continued to tremble.

“H-How can I… After such a sin… How… How can I live a pure life…. I-I have committed…. Such a great sin… I… I am stained… I-I…. I deserve to burn in hell… I need to pay for my sin…”

During her confession… Clarice trembled as she shed a tear. A moment where she had fallen into a panicked state.

“Hey.”

Thud.

A hand was on her shoulder.

To her surprise, after turning around looking at Ed’s face covered in blood… It felt as if a ghost was in front of her.

“Right now… Are you kidding me?”

“Heeeeghk.”

…Clarice couldn’t even let out a scream.

She couldn’t even let it out… And holding the expression of screaming, she passed out.

***

A snowstorm that had the strength to cover the entire world.

In the middle of it, Ed stood alone at the cabin looking down at the unconscious Clarice.

His expression… Wasn’t all that happy.

***

“Head Maid.”

“I heard the report. Keep calm and create a plan of response.”

Clarice was wrong.

Since Clarice had left right after the maids had checked on her, she thought that they wouldn’t have noticed for at least a few hours… However, the maids in Ophelis Hall weren’t that lax.

It only took them fifteen minutes to notice Clarice’s absence.

On the top floor of Ophelis Hall, the maids on duty that were watching over every direction then started to look for any clues of a student disappearing through a snowstorm.

It then took only ten minutes to quickly recount every person in the building and only five to confirm that Kylie had gone missing.

“I don’t know why she would just run off, but… First, I’ll make a report to the academy. Then we’ll start a search.”

“Shall we send out the maids on duty first, Head Maid?”

“Sending out the maids is something we have to think carefully about, as that would also lower the amount of people we have helping out inside the dormitory. Instead, right now we need to think about how we can use the number of people we have most efficiently. Especially… Make sure that you never forget to always have at least one person watch over Lady Lucy. If we run after her prematurely, that might even cause greater damage.”

“A-Alright… Then, what do we do about Lady Kylie…?”

Although it was an unexpected situation, Bell wasn’t flustered. Rather, she calmly considered her options for a countermeasure.

The head maid of Ophelis Hall.

She was one of the only people inside the school that knew of Kylie’s true identity. In other words, Bell had already been told that Kylei’s true identity was that of Saint Clarice. That was a fact that, at the very least, the head maid deserved to know.

She didn’t know why she would run off in the middle of a snowstorm or where she was headed. If only they knew of her objective, they could infer where her destination was.

As a rule of thumb, Kylie shouldn’t be the reason for the building’s protection and safety to be harmed in any way. There was also the fact that there was no guarantee that they could even find her by sending out the maids immediately. On the contrary, it was more likely that they wouldn’t be able to find her, given the weather.

That was something that needed to be carefully considered, with close cooperation from the academy.

But… The fact that hadn’t been revealed… About Kyle’s true identity… If they knew about it, it would actually be a situation where the entire staff and student body combined needed to be mobilized.

If a saint went missing, that is something that could flip the entire nation upside down.

But if you thought about it the other way… The saint was someone that wore the Holy Blessing. In fact, it was a sigh of relief knowing that, compared to other students, she was much safer.

At the very least, it was safe to say that there was no chance of her getting harmed by a wild animal or something like that. That meant that, at the moment, it wasn’t a life-threatening situation.

After much deliberation… Bell decided to go out and find her herself. Leaving her duties to a Senior Maid for a little while, it would give her time to deal with urgent matters right away.

Seeing that she didn’t lose her composure in the slightest despite the situation… Even the maids that were watching her also became calm.

“The reports of the maids on duty have been updated, Head Maid! But… As for Lady Kylie, it seems… That she disappeared towards the direction of the North Woods…!”

And the news that followed…

In that weather, no one could go outside.

However… There was only one man that was currently out fighting against the brutal snowstorm. And the North Forest was his territory.

“…Don’t tell me… It’s not…”

Bell started to sweat.

The man that lived out in the North Forest.

The brutal snowstorm. Distress. Just a man and a woman. Asking for help while waiting to get rescued, the two would just have to lean on each other during that extreme situation.

And weirdly enough, a man that had a strange amount of luck with having women around him.

Thoughts of the very complicated relationship diagram centered around the man that lived out in the North Forest flooded her head in an instant.

It was too difficult to keep an eye on the arrows that moved back and forth between all the people involved, as it was ever-so-complicated.

Thinking of adding another face to that, and the identity of that person as well, a cold sweat started to run down her body.

Bell suddenly started to raise her voice.

“We must find her…! As soon as possible…! Before it’s too late…! We have to…!”

For Bell, who was always so calm and serious, that was a really urgent and surprising tone of voice. Bell at least knew that Kylie wasn’t someone that could be killed, yet the urgency of the situation didn’t fade.

Because of that, all the maids that were around her also started to clearly recognize the seriousness of the situation.

Probably…