Chapter 66

Chapter 66. Terror Attack (3)

As I had checked beforehand, the infirmary was in a small building a short distance away from the building where the entrance ceremony was being held.

It was more than two hundred steps on foot. By the standards of my previous life, it was around one hundred meters.

The infirmary looked like a smaller version of the temple I had seen in the ducal house’s territory.

In truth, it was both an infirmary and a temple, so that was only natural.

This academy had been established to strengthen the power of the royal family.

Naturally, the royal family had tried to exclude the temple, which stood opposed to them, from the academy as much as possible, while the temple side had tried by any means necessary to set foot inside the academy.

As a result, a temple had been built under the name of an infirmary.

It was a small building standing between the other buildings. The two of them supported me and brought me there.

The small temple called the infirmary grew noisy at the sudden appearance of a patient.

I was immediately moved to a private room with a bed, and soon after, a rather handsome middle-aged priest entered the room.

When I glanced at him from the corner of my eye, he did not seem like an ordinary priest.

At any other time, we might have exchanged names and felt each other out, but right now, he was only a priest treating a patient.

The priest approached and placed his hand on my stomach.

He began to offer a prayer.

From the perspective of someone who remembered his previous life, there were several amusing things about this fantasy world.

One of them was the priests’ indiscriminate use of healing abilities.

In my previous life, they would have looked for the cause of an illness through questioning or diagnosis—though, of course, it was hard to say whether that diagnosis would have been accurate—but in this place, unless it was a serious illness or a disease difficult to cure, they used their abilities first and thought later.

Thanks to that, my feigned illness had worked.

WOOONG.

The priest’s hand on my stomach began to shine.

A warm energy began to flow through my stomach.

The priest’s head tilted slightly. Mm, was he not simply using his healing ability ignorantly after all?

If so, I had to move before he sensed something strange. Moreover, it was about time for the entrance ceremony to end.

“W-Wait, the bathroom!”

I left the bewildered people in the room and hurriedly ran out.

I ran to the bathroom I had noted when I came in and locked the door.

Then I raised my mana and examined the surroundings.

No one had followed me into the hallway, and fortunately, there was no one outside the bathroom either.

The structure of the bathroom was no different from that of other temples. It was a strangely clean interior that resembled the bathrooms of my previous life.

However, now was not the time to be touring a bathroom.

I opened the window and slipped my body outside. The window was not very large, but fortunately, since my body was still small, I was able to get out.

All right, what should I do now?

Should I go to the entrance ceremony hall?

The entrance ceremony would end soon.

It was also the time when Piar, who was inside this building, would explode.

As planned, I had succeeded in taking him out of the entrance ceremony hall.

I had not had time to confirm it, but Piar’s self-destruction seemed most likely to be his inherited ability.

From what I had observed beside him, however, it did not seem as though he had chosen to self-destruct on purpose.

It was not certain yet.

Either way, since I had removed him from the entrance ceremony hall, even if he self-destructed, the entrance ceremony hall would be safe.

“Then is this infirmary the problem this time?”

If he self-destructed again and I escaped from here alive, the conclusion would clearly be that everyone in this infirmary would die.

“Well, it is not as though I have always produced the best result every time I died, so I do not particularly feel guilty about it.”

When I was a baby, maids had disappeared under the name of going missing, and there were several people I had killed or who had died. Of course, most of them had been enemies, but there were almost no results where everyone ended happily.

“My own survival came first.”

Besides, I had become rather coldhearted over time.

However.

“If I simply get caught up in a terror attack like this in the capital, it will be difficult to prepare for the future.”

Well, there was also a little unpleasantness at the thought that my choice might cause people unrelated to the incident to die.

“Haah, I really do not want to die…….”

I let out a sigh and leaned against the building as I looked toward the building where the entrance ceremony was being held.

It would be best if nothing happened and this simply passed by, but even if I died, I wanted to discover some further clue.

“Should I just kidnap him next time?”

As I had such absurd thoughts, I continued looking at the building where the entrance ceremony was being held.

Murmur, murmur.

A commotion rose from the entrance ceremony hall, and I saw people coming outside.

“Do not tell me it is simply passing by?”

The explosion had definitely occurred at the moment the entrance ceremony ended, had it not?

It was an ambiguous result, but if things ended like this, I could only be grateful.

I let out a breath of relief.

Then, just as I was about to walk toward the entrance ceremony hall—

FLASH.

A brilliant light burst out from inside the door through which people were coming out.

And then—

BOOOOOOM!

With an explosive roar, the entrance ceremony hall burst apart.

The ceiling shattered and shot into the sky, while the walls were blasted outward.

RUMBLE.

“Kyaaaaaak!”

“Aaaaaah!”

Flames surged into the sky, and the thunderous roar, along with people’s screams, struck my ears.

“Damn it.”

Fragments flew in every direction.

I drew up mana fully and swung my fists.

BANG. BANG.

The fragments flying toward me were struck by my fists and shattered.

I broke through the fragments and ran toward the ruined building.

‘Was I wrong? No. What exploded last time was definitely Piar!’

My mind was in chaos because of the unexpected situation, but I did not stop moving.

There were still people alive.

Through the mana I had spread as far as I could, I could sense living people.

As I broke through the smoke and approached the building, I saw people collapsed and groaning.

“People who had been leaving the building?”

Though they were covered in burns and black ash, people whose arms and legs were intact were screaming.

I passed them and headed into the destroyed building, where flames and rubble were still falling.

Then I bit my lip at the sight inside.

It was truly a miracle that the people I had just seen had survived.

Inside this building, I could barely sense any living people.

It was filled only with burned, mangled corpses.

I could sense a few people groaning with burns all over their bodies, but none of them were people I knew.

There was no sign of the princess, and no trace of Manuel remained.

All of the critically injured people groaning were left in the corners of the building.

They might have been blown there by the explosion, but the remaining heat and the traces of the blast were centered in the middle of the building.

The princess who had been seated at the center, Manuel, and the other teachers.

They had all become burned corpses.

Smoke and corpses. And death. Death. Death……

I blankly looked around.

Meanwhile, other people also entered the still-hot ruins.

“My goodness. Is there no one alive?”

The female teacher who had spoken to me when I was going to the infirmary staggered into the smoke, covered in ash.

Fortunately, it seemed she had also gone outside when the ceremony ended.

Aside from her, surviving academy staff members entered the ruins covered in blood and began searching for survivors.

“My God, hurry! Move! There is someone alive here!”

After that, the priest who had been treating me and the priestesses rushed inside.

The middle-aged priest ran around trying to save people, and the others did the same.

“What are you doing? Come to your senses and help here!”

The middle-aged priest, who was using his healing ability on a person covered in burns, shouted at me as I stood there blankly.

However, I did not follow his words.

I simply stood there and watched the horrific disaster.

The priest clicked his tongue and focused all his attention on saving people, while the others were also busy helping him.

Then Piar and the butler appeared at the scene as well.

Well, of course, if the priests had come here, there was no way the two of them would remain behind.

The butler looked around with a stunned expression like mine, and Piar also approached the priests with a pale face.

“Please help here!”

A priestess shouted toward them, and unlike me, they moved to help her.

The moment the two of them reached the priests and priestesses who were saving people—

“Huh?”

Piar stopped walking with a startled expression.

Then he turned his head toward a certain direction.

At that moment—

FLASH!

Light surged once again.

Light spread outward with his body at its center.

BOOOOOOM!

Then, with a massive explosive roar, mana and heat struck the surroundings—no, struck me.

An overwhelming heat. It was the exact same explosion as the one that had just erupted.

I did not block the explosion, nor did I avoid it. I closed my eyes as I felt the explosion as it was.

At the final moment, I did not look at Piar. Instead, I looked in the direction Piar had been looking.

At the site of the terror attack, I had not simply been standing there blankly.

I had been thoroughly cursed at, but instead of helping people, I had been gathering as much information from the surroundings as possible.

Piar was not the culprit. He was truly only a victim of the bomb.

And he was not the only bomb.

Someone else had the switch that detonated the bombs.

I had not found everything out yet, but I had learned an unexpected amount.

Good. The next one would be the end. This loop ends here.

Darkness covered the world.

Then a small light gradually drew closer.

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

---

When I opened my eyes, I saw the back of the little princess once again.

It was the moment I was entering the entrance ceremony hall.

Pain struck my entire body.

A curse burst out of me on its own. The world spun.

In the end, I had no choice but to lean against the wall.

I had thought I was accustomed to death, but repeated deaths over such a short span were still mentally difficult to withstand.

As planned, I had to end it this time.

After regaining my senses, I immediately headed toward where Piar was.

The princess and Manuel looked puzzled when they saw me heading somewhere else, but I ignored their gazes.

I had to hurry. I had to finish confirming things before the entrance ceremony began.

I approached Piar from behind and greeted him.

“You are Lord Piar, correct? I am Alex de Gresia.”

Piar turned around with a bewildered expression.

Then he started in surprise and greeted me.

“You are Lord Alex Gresia? It is a p-pleasure to meet you. But how do you know me……?”

This time as well, Piar was surprised by the name Gresia, and the noble boy who was seated beside him as one of the new-student pledge representatives tilted his head when he heard my name.

Damn it. I had to finish this before that fellow ruined things again.

“I heard your name from a friend…… no, a relative who is enrolling with you.”

“Ah, do you mean Sister Mirisa? How do you know my cousin?”

When I looked in the direction Piar was looking, I saw a freckled girl staring this way with a surprised expression.

Did they resemble each other a little?

In any case, I had taken a guess, and fortunately, I had been right.

There was not one bomb, but two. If their inherited ability was a bomb, it was possible to infer that a relative or family member was another bomb.

Of course, that bomb might not have been a unique inherited ability, and there were many other holes in my reasoning.

However, since my guess had turned out to be correct, the likelihood that my reasoning, though riddled with holes, was right had increased even more.

The problem was that another question had arisen.

They were not nobles but commoner cousins. Could both of them have inherited abilities? And could those inherited abilities be used in a terror attack?

However, those questions could be answered slowly.

Right now, it was time to catch the culprit, the source of the disaster.