The moon hung low over Pimcy—a thin sliver of bone against a sky bruised with heavy clouds—offering little light and even less mercy. The Royal Academy, a place of bustling scholarship by day, had transformed into a fortress of shadows and silence by night. Five figures moved through those shadows: a chain of disparate souls bound by a single, dangerous purpose.
Miko led the way, a nervous sparrow guiding lions. She paused at a seemingly solid wall of ivy-covered stone behind the alchemy wing, her small hand trembling violently as she pointed to a faint, faded glyph half-hidden beneath the vines.
"I-IT'S HERE!" she squeaked, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth, her wide eyes darting around in terror. She continued in a frantic, hushed whisper. "The maintenance hatch for the old pneumatic system. The locking rune is supposed to be maintained by the groundskeeper, but he's been ill for a decade." She swallowed, a full-body shudder passing through her. "It just needs a small, sustained mana pulse. ANY fluctuation will collapse the tube entrance and probably seal us in here forever and our skeletons won't be found for centuries and they'll think we were students who got lost and died and—"
"Miko," Sarah said, her voice a calm, low anchor in the girl's spiraling panic. "Breathe. I've got it."
Sarah didn't hesitate. She stepped forward, placing her palm over the rune. To the others, it looked like she was focusing—brow furrowed, breathing steady. In reality, the System was dissecting the glyph's decayed structure in real time, calculating the exact frequency, amplitude, and duration of mana required to unlock without triggering collapse.
[Rune Analysis Complete]
Required Pulse: 0.037 seconds @ 14.2% ambient mana saturation
Risk of Collapse: 0.004%
A soft, steady blue glow emanated from her hand for precisely three seconds. With a quiet click and a puff of ancient dust, a section of the wall recessed and slid sideways, revealing a dark, circular tunnel smelling of old paper, ozone, and time.
"Impressive control," Alice murmured, her amber eyes glinting with genuine interest. "For a first-year."
"I'M GOING TO DIE IN A DUSTY TUBE!" Miko whimpered, staring into the abyssal darkness.
"Move," Mio commanded, voice a low chill in the warm night. She was the operational leader—her gaze constantly scanning the surroundings for any deviation, any sign of guardian constructs or late-night patrols.
One by one, they slipped inside. Miko went last, taking a deep, shuddering breath before plunging in as if jumping off a cliff.
The tunnel was tight and claustrophobic—lined with copper pipes that hummed faintly with residual magic. Miko, with a small light-orb bobbing ahead of her like a terrified firefly, navigated the labyrinthine turns with unerring, if tearful, confidence. Her academic knowledge warred with her abject terror.
"The guardian constructs patrol the main corridors on a 73-second rotating cycle," she whispered back, her voice trembling. "Their sensory range is 15 meters for life signs, but they're calibrated to ignore the residual heat from the pipes. If we stay close to the walls and move during their transit between sectors, we're… probably invisible. UNLESS THEY'VE BEEN RECALIBRATED! WHAT IF THEY WERE RECALIBRATED TODAY?!"
"They were not," Mio stated flatly, her tone brooking no argument.
Kenta brought up the rear, senses stretched to their limit. He heard the distant, rhythmic grinding of stone on stone as the constructs moved. He felt their heavy, magical presence through the soles of his boots. He was a silent sentinel, hand resting on the hilt of Hikari no Ha—a calming presence in the tense darkness.
After what felt like an eternity of crawling, turning, and listening to Miko's barely-suppressed whimpers, she stopped.
"H-here. The wall to our left is the back of the restricted archives. The blood ward is on the main door—which is around the corner. We need to cut through here."
This was Alice's moment.
She stepped forward, running a manicured hand over the cool stone. "A simple matter," she purred. She didn't force it. Instead, she pricked her own fingertip with a sharp nail. A single, perfect drop of dark blood welled up—rich, almost black in the dim light. She pressed it to the stone, and it spread—not like a liquid, but like a growing web of crimson filaments. The stone within the web's boundaries began to dissolve—not into rubble, but into fine, red mist—silently creating a man-sized opening. The air grew thick with the scent of old copper and ozone.
Miko let out a tiny, strangled gasp. "OH GODS, IT'S DISSOLVING! WHAT IF IT DISSOLVES US NEXT?!"
"It won't," Alice said without looking back, her focus absolute.
They stepped through into the fabled restricted archives.
The room was circular, shelves rising into a domed darkness that swallowed the light. In the center, on a pedestal of polished obsidian, lay a single black crystal—pulsing with a faint, malevolent inner light. Surrounding it was a complex, shimmering dome of energy: the Principal's blood ward. It looked like a cage woven from solidified blood and lightning—beautiful and lethal.
Alice approached it, her usual seductive playfulness gone, replaced by a look of profound focus.
"Oh, this is exquisite work," she breathed, genuine respect in her voice. "It doesn't just test blood; it tests lineage, age, and intent. A brute-force approach would atomize this entire wing."
She closed her eyes and held both hands out toward the ward. Threads of her own blood—glowing with a dark inner light—seeped from her palms and reached for the dome. It was a delicate, terrifying dance. Her blood-threads wove into the ward's pattern—not breaking it, but persuading it. She was introducing herself as a friendly element. A fine sheen of sweat appeared on her brow. For a moment, she looked every one of her 127 years—ancient and strained.
With a final, soft sigh from Alice, the bloody dome flickered and vanished.
Sarah was the first to the pedestal. Her System was already screaming with alerts about the crystal's potent encryption, but one message was clear:
[OBJECTIVE ACQUIRED: DATA CRYSTAL (PRIMORDIAL SEALS)]
She snatched it. The crystal was cold and heavy in her hand—unnaturally so.
The moment it left the pedestal, there was no blaring alarm. Instead, the obsidian pedestal itself turned a deep, angry red, and a psychic pulse of pure violation shot outward—so potent that everyone in the room flinched.
Miko let out a sharp yelp and dropped to her knees, clutching her head. "MY BRAIN IS BEING SCRAPED! I CAN FEEL HIS DISAPPOINTMENT! HE'S GOING TO EXPEL ME AND MY BROTHER WILL DISOWN ME AND I'LL HAVE TO BECOME A HERMIT!"
"The Principal knows," Mio said, voice grim, ignoring Miko's meltdown. "That was a direct tether. He's been alerted."
"Back the way we came! Now!" Kenta ordered, calm voice cutting through Miko's sobs and the rising panic.
They scrambled back into the pneumatic tube. Miko led the retreat, now driven by pure, unadulterated flight instinct. The careful, silent precision of their ingress was gone—replaced by a desperate, noisy scramble through dust and darkness, punctuated by Miko's occasional muffled shrieks whenever she touched a cobweb. They could hear it now: a deep, resonant chime beginning to sound throughout the academy—not a general alarm, but a specific, high-level intrusion warning.
They burst out of the hatch into the cold night air—not as a disciplined unit, but as a group of disheveled, dust-covered fugitives, one of whom was quietly weeping.
"We split up," Mio commanded instantly. "Miko—to your dorm. Act normal."
"NORMAL? I'M COVERED IN LIBRARY DEMON DUST AND I CAN STILL FEEL THE PRINCIPAL'S WRATH IN MY TEETH! I'M NOT NORMAL!"
"Then act terrified for a different reason. You spilled ink again. Alice—you were never here. Sarah, Kenta—with me. We'll take the long way back to the inn."
As Mio gave orders, Sarah's gaze was locked on the black crystal in her hand. The System was already working—a progress bar flickering at the edge of her vision:
[DECRYPTION IN PROGRESS… 1%]
It was their prize. The key to the next step.
But as the ominous chime continued to echo through the sleeping campus, it felt less like a key and more like a ticking bomb.
They had the data.
But they were no longer hunters in the shadows.
They were the hunted. And their most powerful ally was currently having a nervous breakdown over spiderwebs and perceived familial disappointment.
The real game had just begun.