The change, naturally, did not go unnoticed by anyone at the academy.
First, when the entire academy grew dim, everyone turned their eyes outside and confirmed that it was enveloped by a pitch-black wall.
Before panic could even arise from that, a deep rumbling shook the entire academy.
"..."
Whose vacant voice was that?
But it was hardly surprising. That sight was something he—no, most of the people present—had surely never witnessed before.
—A horde of black monsters dense enough to fill the horizon to the brim.
It was not unprecedented for monsters to gather in groups. There were species with such tendencies, and the phenomenon of monsters spilling out from dungeons—commonly known as the Great Flood—
could sometimes involve diverse species banding together, as was happening now.
However, there was a major difference from those.
The most obvious, the most despairing distinction among them.
There were simply
,
too many.
Even a Great Flood could never produce something like this. A horde vast enough to swallow the entire academy whole—and then some—was seeping through from the other side of that black wall, with no sign of running out.
An uncanny spectacle. Sudden savagery. And above all... why was this happening at the academy, out of nowhere?
Overwhelmed by questions, terror, and confusion, the academy was plunged into panic in the blink of an eye.
"Uwaaaaaaaa!!"
"Wh-what the hell are these things!? Where on earth did they come from—what's going on—!?"
"Wh-what do you think this place is—gyahh!"
Since it was still relatively early in the afternoon despite being after school, many students and faculty members still remained at the academy.
Without exception, every last one of them was hurled to the depths of confusion, and most began fleeing into the school buildings driven purely by terror.
However, even among those, a small number took different actions. For instance,
"—Hmph, every last one of you is pathetic!"
Count Geist, the B-Class instructor, confidently shoved aside fleeing students to step forward to the front lines.
Several other instructors and students with some skill in combat were also glaring head-on at the horde of monsters.
—Or so they were.
What truly filled their hearts was not some grand aspiration of protecting the academy.
"No matter how large the numbers, they're just monsters, aren't they? To be cowed by something like this—clearly, you're still children after all."
"Indeed! We must use this opportunity to teach them once more—that we are the only ones who can protect this academy and guide its students!"
Just as Count Geist declared and the other instructors echoed.
What lay in their hearts was contempt—'merely monsters'—and the self-assurance that they could handle the problem with their own magic without difficulty. Confidence born from having defeated monsters hitherto with their Bloodline Magic without breaking a sweat.
And... a desire for overwhelming battle results that would silence the criticism currently being leveled at Yurugen—such as a glorious repulsion of a monster horde that had attacked the school.
And so, Count Geist and the others who charged forward never once questioned their own victory and glory. They charged straight into the horde of monsters.
Appearing directly before Count Geist was a swarm of large, bee-type monsters.
"You think I'd flinch at a measly swarm like this!? I've faced the Great Flood more times than I can count!"
He raised his magic power, chanted his incantation, and launched it at the swarm.
The magic that represented his absolute confidence—the very reason he had been able to inherit the earldom—unleashed a tremendous band of lightning across the entire area.
"—Bloodline Magic: 'Thunderclap Reversal'!"
It crashed into the swarm all at once, engulfing the bee monsters in flames more than sufficient to burn them to ash—
—That was where their complacency, their belief that these were 'merely monsters,' came to an end.
What Count Geist saw through the smell of scorched air and the clearing dust was—
"Wha..."
A black sphere.
A massive sphere roughly the size of a human being.
It didn't take long to realize that the bee monsters had all converged simultaneously and formed it.
A dense formation, in other words.
A defensive formation where units clumped together in one spot to minimize the surface area exposed to attacks, thereby reducing damage. This time, the bee monsters had assembled in an even more perfect version of this formation—a sphere—to block Count Geist's lightning.
It worked perfectly. Despite being hit head-on by the lightning, only the individuals on the outer surface of the sphere were struck. Their bodies served as shields, and not a trace of lightning reached the monsters inside.
As a result, the count's full-power magic accounted for less than a tenth of the casualties it should have.
The sphere dispersed, and the unharmed monsters within simultaneously thrust their stingers forward.
"Wh—why are monsters doing something like—this!?"
The count, who had unleashed his magic with the certainty that it would settle things and without a shred of doubt, was thrown into a terrible panic. His next attack required a charge-up, and there was no way the enemy would let that opening slip.
"Ku—!"
With nothing else he could do, the count retreated.
The bee monsters gave chase without mercy. Running for his life while counterattacking with his lightning Bloodline Magic, he gradually whittled down their numbers.
And after several minutes of this desperate chase, he barely managed to drive off the swarm.
"Hah... hah... for monsters to give me this much trouble—!?"
But immediately after, he realized. Where his frantic flight had actually brought him.
—he was surrounded by a horde of monsters that looked like a fusion of a giant bear and a tiger.
"...No way."
He hadn't been fleeing—he had been *driven* here.
The moment he realized that, there was nowhere left to run. With no option but to somehow break through, a fresh wave of despair crashed down upon him.
A red glow erupted from his front right.
Looking, there—on top of a tree—was a rat-sized monster. It opened its mouth and spat out a fist-sized ball of flame.
That in itself was no big deal. Some monsters could wield magic, and this one was on the weaker end among them. That single fireball was no great threat.
The problem was—
That particular monster,
along with roughly
a hundred others
clustered together on the trees,
every last one of them spewing fire magic—the accumulated result was a massive fireball that could engulf Geist and then some.
He couldn't block it. Right now, he had no means of stopping that spell.
But he couldn't flee either. Giant and powerful monsters had him completely surrounded.
In other words—he was checkmated.
"Ahhh—h—"
Having intuited that, Count Geist's face finally twisted with terror.
He was a veteran of the battlefield. True to his word, he had faced the Great Flood numerous times.
But all of those had been easy victories. He had never once been cornered like this.
Therefore, he could not come up with any strategy to break through.
Wearing an expression of terror and self-abandonment, unable to do a thing, the monsters on the trees launched their fireball with evident satisfaction.
It swept toward Count Geist, who had no recourse—
"—'Netherworld of Salvation'!"
A violet light stopped it.
Simultaneously, translucent purple soldiers surged toward the surrounding monsters. They cut down the tree-bound monsters with ease and latched onto the larger ones, locking them in place.
The situation had changed so abruptly that Count Geist stood rooted to the spot, face blank with shock. From behind him came a voice—beautiful yet sharp with rebuke.
"—Pull back! You saw what just happened, didn't you? Those aren't... the monsters we know!"
The count looked toward the voice's owner—Katia.
But that was all. Dominated by fear, he could not muster a rebuttal even to her imperious tone, and he had even forgotten that she was a student he had once tormented when she was in B-Class.
He fled the scene at her command, crawling away on all fours.
◆
"So that's how it is..."
Katia, who had joined the fight a beat late, gritted her teeth.
What appeared on her face was not doubt, but understanding.
Because she had heard from Ermes in advance about the true nature of Clyde's magic—along with, to the extent of his knowledge, the characteristics of magic of that type.
In other words—she was already convinced that the one behind this phenomenon was Clyde.
She would set aside his motives for now; they couldn't be anything good. As for the black wall covering the school, she couldn't let her guard down, but since there was no direct harm at present, she would shelve it for the time being.
What she needed to prioritize right now was the horde of monsters.
...Because it was clearly abnormal. That much had been especially evident in the way the horde had cornered Count Geist moments ago.
Sophisticated formation changes to minimize damage.
Clever herding that lured fleeing prey to specific locations.
Coordination among monsters of the same species, pooling their power to produce devastating results.
And so on—the horde was employing high-level tactics as though they were being directed by a human.
And she had roughly figured out the mechanism.
Ermes had told her the other day about the characteristics of Clyde's magic—the 'monster-manipulation' type.
"'This type of magic has two main features. The first is that certain conditions must be met before the user can control monsters. The second is the ability to apply a specific enhancement to the controlled targets. The content varies depending on the spell, but—a straightforward example would be an increase in basic physical abilities like magic power or raw strength.'"
She would set the first aside. The problem was the second.
A specific enhancement applied to controlled monsters. Combined with what she knew of Clyde's prior crimes and the current phenomenon, the nature of that enhancement became fairly clear.
Those incidents had been caused by Clyde's unconscious magic activation. Yet the monsters had managed to commit crimes so—admittedly there had been the preconception that 'a human did it,' but still—so perfectly that no other human could detect them.
And now, the monsters were employing sophisticated tactics. This went beyond what a single commander's orders could achieve. She couldn't imagine Clyde was capable of issuing such precise commands.
If that was the case, there was only one answer.
"The additional effect is—the enhancement of monsters'
'Intelligence.'
Of all things—!"
The implications of that were enormous.
Previous monster hordes—those from Great Floods and the like—were nothing like this. Each monster rampaged about on its own. The only exception was when they were led by a powerful Boss, but even then, meaningful coordination was rare.
But this was different. Every single monster possessed high intelligence, shared it among themselves, coordinated their movements, and even employed tactics to corner their prey.
This was no longer a horde. It was an army.
In other words, they were about to face an enemy that commanded not only these overwhelming numbers but also efficient coordination and tactics, deploying the lives of monsters with devastating effectiveness. In other words—
—a Great Army of monsters.
That was the true power of Clyde's Bloodline Magic: "Ten Thousand Miles of Absolute Darkness."
Its threat level soared far beyond any previous estimate.
Moreover, the sheer volume blanketing the entire academy was incomprehensibly vast.
It was unnatural. Perhaps Clyde had received some form of support from the collaborator lurking in his shadow—but regardless, the threat before them remained unchanged.
"...This is bad."
Having analyzed the situation, Katia gritted her teeth.
Behind the lines, Sara was already protecting the entire school building with her Spirit Veil, preventing monsters from infiltrating.
But that spell consumed enormous amounts of magic power. Covering the entire building—even Sara could not maintain it for long. And given the intensity of the current assault, it was questionable whether she could hold out at all.
In other words, they needed to reorganize the battle line before that happened. Katia had already dispatched her phantom soldiers to their limits, but against this enemy, they would eventually adapt and break through somewhere. She had no room to come up with a new strategy either, and if that happened...
If they could hold a bit longer, the situation might change, but right now things were far too—
"I don't have enough... hands!"
Reluctantly, she would have to borrow some help. Thinking so, Katia turned to Count Geist, whom she had rescued earlier and who was still behind her.
"...Sir, I need your help. You don't have to push to the front like before. Just steadily reduce the enemy from where my magical support is thickest, and—"
But.
Count Geist's response was the last thing she expected.
"I-I can't do it...!"
"...Excuse me?"
"Th-that thing—I've never seen monsters like that! I don't know anything about monsters that can corner *me*! I can't fight them—I'll be killed for sure this time!"
On his face was terror, despair, and—the look of a man who had been utterly broken.
...The same as what had happened with Aster.
A person who had won nothing but through their natural-born gifts since the day they were born was terribly fragile in the face of hardship and defeat.
(But even so, for an instructor to be—!)
Ignoring whether Katia heard her own grinding teeth, Geist delivered the next—still unbelievable—words:
"W-what are you all doing!? This is no time to be standing around talking—look, the monsters are coming!"
"What?"
"You—you're the Duke's daughter! In times like these, your duty to protect the country is stronger than ours! That's why you were granted such extraordinary magic! Now hurry—"
"Protect us!"
"—"
...Of all things.
The one person whose duty it was to protect others—the one who, on the basis of something as trivial as a difference in rank, would normally lord it over people, now turned that around to shirk responsibility onto her.
Truly, there was no end to it.
Something dark and murky welled up from within Katia. On pure impulse, she was about to hurl it at the rotten man before her—
"Bloodline Magic—'Four Winds of the Heavenly Demon'!"
A gale so powerful it blew away even her frustration surged past.
It swept onward as a mighty tornado, crashing into the army of monsters and blowing the entire area clean.
The number of monsters she defeated was small, but more importantly, the distance it created bought precious time.
And from behind her, a male student emerged.
"Lady Katia. I saw you were in trouble and took the liberty of stepping in—I hope you don't mind."
"...Albert."
She called the name of her former classmate—the student who had changed the most since she transferred to A-Class. Albert nodded and glanced behind him.
"I'm not the only one. ...I brought a few more, at Lady Sara's request."
True to his word, several B-Class students emerged from behind him as well.
What they all shared was the resolve burning in their eyes. Even understanding that the situation was desperate and the enemy terrifying, they refused to submit.
"Honestly, I have no idea what's going on... but there's no doubt the academy is in crisis. Thanks to Lady Sara's efforts, they have a bit of breathing room on that end. ...We may be inferior to A-Class students when it comes to magic, but make good use of us."
"That's... really reassuring. Just having you fight is—no, that's a rude way to put it."
For a moment she had been about to ask why he hadn't broken down like the others, but she swallowed the question, realizing it would be insulting.
And of course. They were different from those others. They knew defeat. They knew how to climb back up.
And above all—they had been trained by *him.* The idea that they would fall apart or self-destruct in the face of something like this was simply impossible.
So she rephrased:
"You're really dependable. More than anyone in A-Class."
Her former classmates beamed with delight at her heartfelt praise. Putting that aside, she moved on to specific instructions.
"First, I need you to reduce the monsters' numbers. Focus on the ones attacking Sara's barrier, but don't overextend. Don't get surrounded like those instructors did earlier. Prioritize holding the line and buying time."
"Understood. But... what are we buying time for?"
"What do you think? —We're waiting for El."
For B-Class students unfamiliar with Ermes's abilities, this strategy might seem puzzling, but she couldn't afford the time to explain. So she addressed only Albert, the one person she knew had some knowledge of him.
"...This is undoubtedly an emergency. Even he should realize he can't afford to hold back. And if Ermes gets serious—something like that would be handled by him alone."
Her unwavering trust momentarily threw Albert off balance, but he recovered and nodded with understanding.
"Now that you mention it—if anything, the fact that he still hasn't shown up here means—"
"He's fighting somewhere else. So let's wait for him to finish there first. Trust in that and hold out—no, rather than relying on El, push forward with enough force to secure this area yourselves. You can do it."
"Yeah. I'll talk to the other B-Class students."
Exchanging mutual understanding, they dispatched Albert's B-Class squad.
...She really thought they had grown dependable.
The dark emotions that had gripped her earlier had been washed away entirely.
With that momentum—she declared:
"—Well now. It seems that wasn't enough to teach you a lesson, Clyde. ...I'll make sure you pay the full price for your stupidity."
Cool in her anger, yet never misreading the battle.
Together with classmates she could rely on, she began her fight.