There was only a day left before the month ended.
Aradia could not wait for the month to end anymore. After the events of the illusion mansion, the red head came to know what was true hell.
Mid terms had been kicking her ass for the last almost two weeks. And to make matters worse, magic was a subject she could not, by any means, fail in, unless she wants to get kicked out of the academy of course.
It all started two days after she started training with Mei. Aradia found out that: Mei had already offered to be Isaac's mentor, even though the official start of the original novel did not happen yet.
Aradia believes the reason behind this sudden change has to do with her actions and existence.
Apparently, on the night that Aradia and Issac decided oh so kindly beat up and take down those shady human trafficking group members, Issac got caught by Mei while sneaking back in.
Long story short, Mei was impressed and did not give him any punishments and instead took him along with Astolfo to the illusion mansion to test his abilities.
And so, Isaac's mentor is Mei, though she also teaches Astolfo and now Aradia as well. Aradia hasn't had the time to talk to Clara this whole time to learn about her situation with Ellen.
After they got back from the mission, Aradia did not see a glimpse of the white haired man. Not that the red head minds of course.
They had back to back exams the whole week and the next, making Aradia wish to burn down the academy just like she did with that damn painting.
The week was a big blur of studying late into the night, barely waking up to walk to class and somehow answering the questions.
Lir, thankfully, helped out during her magic exam. The exam was divided into two sections, the written part and the practical part.
The written part was more or less easy to get done with since Aradia was insanely good at cramming. For the practical, Lir was all but screaming in her head the whole time so she could barely manage to get passing marks.
The other exams, besides history, which felt like a whole new breed of disaster, was very similar to her own world, therefore, easy enough.
Unfortunately though, the hell was not over just yet. On the last day of this month was the official start of "The Survival", the original novel, aka the bomb incident.
Initially, after the exams ended, the academy held its 20th anniversary celebration at the Rain Academy in Morg empire's central capital, Rain kingdom.
Big figures all over the western region were present. Magic is an ability that is hard to master. Despite people having mana, very few were originally actually able to use it to use proper magic. The Rain Academy is the best magic academy in the whole west, and this academy is the sole reason as to why the west is filled with mages in today's day and age.
The King will obviously be present. When the king was going to give his speech is when the bombs went off.
Four, that was the number of bombs that actually went off in the novel. However, despite the awful situation, there weren't too many casualties.
And that was all thanks to the main squad. Astolfo, being good at both magic and sword art, he was able to use the element of surprise and take down the people that had appeared in order for the bombs to go off.
Clara, with her insanely good magic easily put up small shields for the people in most danger and tried to use healing magic to help the people before an actual healer came over.
Isaac, being the future best sword master, easily kept up with Astolfo and took down as many of the threats as possible.
Three bombs went off in three different locations, the last bomb however, was unable to go off since all the mages had been killed by that point.
However, unexpectedly, right when everyone thought that things had settled, the last bomb, placed right under the stage where the king had been on not too long ago, blew to bits.
Ellen used his shield just in time, otherwise the flying pieces of the stage would ultimately cause a lot of damage.
Even though the casualty rate was low, the damage was still bad. The area around the academy as well as the academy itself received quite the damage.
Closely after all rewarding and interrogation procedures ended, the academy gave all the students a whole month of break time.
A month, in Aradia's opinion was a very short time, especially given the amount of damage, but given the magical advancement of this world, it made sense.
Aradia let out a long sign, she was currently sitting on the couch drinking tea and eating cookies that Rae had brought her with Lir.
She looked over at the albino in thought. Their own deal was supposed to last a month. And yet said month would end tomorrow.
A lot of things had already happened, however, the actual thing that their deal revolves around, as in Aradia getting good at magic, was ironically the only thing that did not happen.
Aradia did not want this to end..
Lir looked up at her
"What are you staring at?"
"A rat"
Aradia answered coolly before drinking her tea
"You-?!"
Lir almost choked on his cookie. This is always how they interact, they practically never talk about serious things.
Aradia won't bring up their deal just yet.
'Ignorance is bliss'
Aradia could not help but wonder what Ming Baishi was up to right now.
Astolfo, being the good student with a high chance of ending up as a candidate for the student council, was obviously busy with the celebration event.
It seems no matter the world, free labour for students never ends.
Astolfo had somehow, in the hectic exam week, managed to convince some poor academy administration personnel of having dementia and not giving Ming Baishi a proper dorm.
Aradia still doesn't know how he got away with it or how he managed to produce fake identification for Ming Baishi but it worked out and the white haired guy is actually a student in the academy now.
Mid terms probably made Ming Baishi want to kill Aradia and Lir five times over. The thought made the red head giggle as Lir looked at her like she had officially lost it.
"Do you know why everyone is running around the academy?"
Lir decided to ask once Aradia had calmed down
"Hmm?"
'Oh right, I never really told him about this event'
Lir knew that the person in Aradia's body was someone else, she comes from a different world without magic and a weird language (his words).
Aradia never really mentioned facts about the future for this world or something like that.
Even so, there are plenty of times where she just.. seemed to know stuff anyway. Lir, bless his heart, never mentioned it.
He was probably waiting for the last day to get the red head to answer some of his questions before saying her true name, as per their deal.
"Tomorrow is the academy's 20th anniversary celebration, so a lot of nobles and big figures will appear, thus the preparation."
"Oh."
Aradia's memory of the original novel's events is honestly, mediocre at best and non-existent at worst.
Back at the illusion mansion, for a good chuck of the time they were there, Aradia didn't remember crap.
However, she remembered some details here and there unexpectedly, such as the solution on how to actually get inside the mansion and how stepping on a certain floor board would start the test.
In the original novel, Astolfo was actually not present during the illusion mansion task, that is why Aradia's memory is so hazy regarding it.
The red head tries to remember anything related to the protagonist more than anything else, since those events are very important for the future progression and character growth.
As it turns out, the illusion mansion was only mentioned briefly, mostly noting stuff regarding the illusions, like a report.
And the person giving said report was none other than Clara. In the original story, Ellen had only sent Clara to take care of the mansion some time after the bomb incident.
But that obviously can't happen anymore because Aradia made the event happen a lot earlier due to her own problems.
One thing that still doesn't make sense though, is Ming Baishi being here.
Aradia's memory might be terrible, but truly, there was no mention of a white haired guy from the east being at the Magic Forest.
But then again, there were also no mentions of Lir or any white haired man besides Ellen.
Thinking of all these things, the red head felt like she would get a headache soon. So she decided to stop wondering about this for now.
"Say, I heard from my student that the violent witch apparently said something weird right before you burned the painting?"
Lir had been meaning to bring this up for a while now. His student, Clara obviously, had mentioned this off-handadly one training session.
Lir knew her intentions. Aradia had probably not bothered to answer the pink haired girl but that does not mean Clara will stop without an answer, especially if it is something possibly dangerous for Aradia.
So she decided to mention this to him to get him to ask Aradia about this and hopefully get some answers, after all, the red head trusts him a lot.
"Did she?"
Aradia thought back to what happened during the final illusion and tried to think of what the witch could have said.
Really, even though the illusion mansion and violet witch were already long gone, every other conversation just had to be about these two topics.
Finally, Aradia remembered her words. Just thinking about it again made Aradia iffy.
Kim Yeon Haa had died a very painful death. Both because of the reason behind her death and also because "falling to your death is the top 10 worst ways to end yourself if you have low pain tolerance" ahm- anyway.
Yeon Haa slowly left the world behind, she was only vaguely aware it was raining by the time she lost her consciousness, not that she could understand that noise anyway.
When Yeon Haa or more precisely, her soul ended up in the dark void for who knows how long, Yeon Haa did not know about anything happening in the real world.
If someone had truly come to her corpse spewing some bullshit then Aradia was glad she died before that could happen.
Actually, now that she thinks about it, did she go into the black void to get sent to this world as Aradia but since the real Aradia still was not dead, she had to wait until then?
The morbidity of that thought made Aradia pause for a second. Even though it was absurd, it did make sense.
Lir watched as Aradia was lost in thought after his question. Whenever Aradia was deep in thought her face would go completely blank, but currently her expression was one of detached coldness and it made Lir frown.
'Just what is she thinking about?'
"Hello? Earth to Aradia?"
"Huh- oh, it was not anything worth mentioning so I completely forgot but, she basically said that after I had died someone may have discovered my corpse, which, of course that would happen sooner or later though..."
"Though how does she know that?"
Lir finished her words. Aradia nodded before eating the cookies, gosh these were good.
"Honestly, I do not care enough about that so I just burned the painting."
"You don't?"
"No, it happened after I already died, besides, it was probably a passerby, just someone random that noticed."
"Hmmm"
They went quiet after that, deciding to end this conversation for now.
________________________
The next day, Aradia was woken up early in the morning, with Rae getting her dressed and ready properly in no time and Benjamin having already set the table with a very delicious looking breakfast.
The event would start soon enough but of course the students had to be all present and sitting in an orderly manner well before the actual event started.
Aradia told Lir to look around and enjoy the event but continue to communicate with her so if something happens, the red head will know.
Lir called her paranoid but Aradia didn't bother to tell him about the bombing, simply because then she would have to explain how the hell she knows about that.
Explaining stuff like how she knows about magic gate-ways and the tests in the illusion mansion are still hard to explain but can still be brushed off by saying she reads a lot or learned about these things one way or another.
But exposing a terrorist attack of all things is not possible without becoming one of the suspects and so, she will continue to pretend everything is fine for the time being.
"Wow"
Aradia said as she looked around. The novel didn't go into great detail about how the academy was decorated for the event but seeing it with her own eyes, Aradia can say it was definitely very pretty.
Aradia looked around before finally spotting a few familiar faces sitting together and she promptly decided to go sit somewhere else.
When the actual attack happens, even though the main trio will help everyone, the attackers will ultimately focus on the main trio as well, meaning being with them is very dangerous.
Besides, she doesn't always have to be around them anyway. She isn't a protagonist to begin with.
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?"
"No, it is not."
Aradia said before she had even seen the person's face.
The person, no, the elf who would become the healer of the hero squad in the future smiled brightly before sitting beside her.
Bonus:
*Loaf of beard:*
Aradia: you'd sell me to satan for a loaf of bread!
Lir: i'd fucking donate you to satan, you're not worth a loaf of bread
To be continued...
Aloha, wassup bitches? It's me Yan
How are you all? Me? I'm ✨ breathing ✨ fr
Anyway, did this chapter come out late? Yes
Will I apologize for the nth time knowing damn well this is going to continue to happen? Nah
I'll keep today's note short cause who wants to hear the same stuff over and over again
We are officially on the third arc aka the one I yapped about at the very beginning of the story, muhahaha
Also, a new character alert!! I felt like it's been way too long since I last gave Aradia a mental crisis by having important characteristics come up to her and we cannot have that in this household
So BAM! New character, who is also an elf and healer?! 👀
I'll give an explanation next chapter and dw, we'll finally get to see more of the actual og protagonist and his group for this arc
Anyway, you know the drill, please forgive this lowly author for any grammatical errors
Have a good day/afternoon/evening or night
I hope you all enjoyed this chapter as much as I liked writing it
And I'll see y'all in the next one
Peace.
Words: 2577