Nuriel parted his lips, yet he became momentarily paralyzed upon realizing that Sayla had also begun to open her mouth.
In the awkward silence, he took his chance to observe Sayla, who was now physically healed from the previous injury she sustained to her waist many days prior. In fact, she might've been even prettier than before.
Compared to her brother Edward, who was considered generally attractive, Sayla was a cut above him, given that her hair had the much more metallic texture of platinum blonde, along with her eyes, which were a little lighter than Edward's, and finally, a much more youthful face.
But that might've been due to the difference in workload between a professor in the witchcraft course and a professor at magic engineering.
Regardless, Nuriel momentarily prayed for Edward's health.
During his thoughts, Sayla was the first to break the silence.
"Nuriel... are you lost?"
He blinked. It would damage his image if he were to say he was looking for a bathroom—he had to hold it in.
Nuriel, who was pretending to be clueless, awkwardly chuckled.
"I accidentally pressed a different button in the elevator. Since it was so close to the ground floor, I figured I'd use the stairs, which... I couldn't find."
Sayla sighed. It was clear she was tired, but that didn't stop her from returning to a bright face.
"Well, it seems I have to take care of another person." Her face twitched as she looked at the three students who were just gradually regaining their senses from the shock.
"We'll just take the elevator. I've had it with dealing with students like you," she glared.
One of the students went into another shock, the other too scared to speak, and the one that was still functioning managed to mutter out a few words.
"T-they... the s-seniors t-told us t-to f-find a ghos—
Sayla cut the student off. However, this time, her voice was much more caring.
"Don't let others control you like that... you'll just end up doing stupid things. And besides, there's no such thing as ghosts."
The four made their way back to the elevator. Sayla was the one to press the button destined for the ground floor.
While waiting, Sayla spoke to Nuriel to pass the time.
"Edward keeps talking about you from time to time. It seems like you're already close, right?" she said with a bright smile.
'Close?' Nuriel reminisced about his previous life.
He didn't have close friends. If he had, it might've been a couple of close acquaintances he always talked to, but it was usually confined to the same topic over and over again.
The scepter is too big.
Too energy hungry.
It doesn't meet the required performance.
It's too expensive to build.
It seemed that the price of making a revolutionary device was having a decent social life.
'Have I really changed? I'm sure this body's habits and memories might've affected me...'
His expression grew darker without him noticing.
'...I'm Nuriel Malachi. I've had many friends, including Edward, who's outgoing and rich, Vivienne who is great at cooking, I have Alisa Malachi as my loving sister... who would dare to take that away from me?'
. . .
He covered his mouth. Whether he wanted to or didn't, Nuriel was not in the state of mind to think clearly as he stared blankly into the elevator's door, seemingly detached from reality.
'What the hell...'
Before he could question his own existence, Sayla's voice—which had a clear but distinct tone—seemingly woke him up from the strange trance he was experiencing.
'Did I faint just now? What happened?' Nuriel tried remembering what had just happened, but he couldn't find what was wrong. After a while, he quickly returned to normal.
Nuriel's eyes regained their life, and he stammered some gibberish before attempting to reply.
"Ah... that's true. Edward is quite eccentric and outgoing. I wouldn't have known that you two were siblings if you didn't directly say it."
The two continued their small talk. As for the three students, they stared at Sayla with eyes of envy but also with respect.
'Professor Sayla is so pretty, but who is that nobody?'
'Professor Sayla is so pretty, but who is that nobody?'
'Professor Sayla is so pretty, but who is that nobody?'
The three grimaced. Their combined expression was enough for Nuriel to notice, and so he stopped talking.
The elevator chimed.
As the doors parted ways, Nuriel looked down below as usual. He expected to see the usual message appear underneath him, however—
'It's gone!'
Without pause, he stepped out of the elevator as if nothing crazy had just happened.
The three students said their thanks and blessed Sayla with the standard greeting of the Steel Witch's Church before promptly leaving.
However, Sayla remained at the elevator. She glanced at Nuriel before waving.
"I still have work to do. See you later."
Nuriel watched her press a button. She waved one last time—the last image he saw was her smiling face, which was a bit too radiant, given that it was so late into the night.
Pressing forward, Nuriel's mind was occupied by the strange disappearance of the scepter signal.
He thought about the rumor the custodian told him a while ago. If the college was built on top of a burial zone, then one of the corpses might've had a scepter fragment.
'Is it possible for that to even happen? If someone like Yushin were to somehow die, would the scepter remain with them?'
Nuriel imagined that if he were to open Yushin's corpse like a chest, he'd find the physical form of a scepter fragment.
However, Nuriel doubted such a ridiculous idea. After all, he gave Yevdokiya a scepter fragment, not through real life but in her dream.
It was likely that the concept of someone holding a scepter wasn't in a literal sense, but rather a conceptual or metaphysical one.
He then imagined a walking corpse.
'So freaky...'
Another possibility was that it was simply another artifact he failed to notice, and it was just simply moved to another location.
With the extensive facilities of the College of Magic, it would make sense to have a large space beneath the entire structure, since the spire was too small to store all kinds of artifacts that the school might have.
'That's probably the most boring and likely answer.'
But boring was good. He could wait it out, and eventually, an opportunity might show itself to Nuriel to exploit.
Nuriel walked amongst the sea of chairs and tables of the center ground floor. As usual, he ignored the murmurings and echoes of the entire area. Finishing the delivery was at the top of his list—after that, he could finally sleep!
Quake.
A small earthquake appeared to shake the entire structure, including the occupants. Nuriel staggered toward a chair to balance himself.
The entire hall went utterly silent, leaving only a rumble that lingered in everyone's ears.
Eventually, the minor earthquake ceased, and everyone resumed their own work.
'It's one thing after another...' he gloomed silently.
After stepping out of the main entrance, he saw the truck, which now had half of the books delivered.
Nuriel also quickly noticed Vivienne, who was taking out two stacked books. She had a distant expression, yet her movements didn't seem to be affected at all.
'That means she's done with whatever she did.' Nuriel thought about the throne room again and peering into her dreams—hopefully, he could gain some insight into the fragment that disappeared.
But since it was so late at night, his mind and body screamed at him to take a day off the throne room and just sleep.
Nearly an hour passed, and eventually, they accomplished their task. At that stage, Nuriel was happy enough to jump off the spire and be set free.
After sending their regards to the custodian, they quickly retreated to the truck.
Nuriel wore his seatbelt as he glanced beside Vivienne.
"Drive safely..." he said cautiously—after all, he himself was already at his physical and mental limit and maybe the same for Vivienne.
. . .
Vivienne remained quiet at the steering wheel, seemingly still in a dazed state. She ignored Nuriel's call as if he wasn't even there with her.
"Vivie—
"Oh!.. right, I'm sorry." She flustered.
Nuriel simply blinked at her strange response. 'Oh! ?, now that's something I haven't seen before.'
As the truck drove off, Nuriel leaned back in his chair and faced the window to observe the passing buildings to stay awake. After all, this wasn't their truck, so they still had to return to the main library and walk back to their apartment.
'I wanna sleep already... huh?' Nuriel slowly sat straight up, but he found his upper body to be getting pushed back toward the seat.
In his half-awake, half-asleep state, he noticed something strange once more.
'The truck is... accelerating?'
Nuriel was slightly used to Vivienne's driving style, but this was different, he could slightly tell that she was going much faster than what was necessary.
He turned toward Vivienne, whose expression seemed grim.
Boom!
A shockwave shook the entire truck, followed by a massive boom.
The entire street was momentarily bathed in sunlight before returning to its usual light levels.
Nuriel turned his head toward the rearview mirror. His face immediately turned stern and serious as he saw a horrific sight.
A bead of cold sweat ran down his forehead.
The top part of the College of Magic's spire was currently falling down and collapsing in on itself, along with a raging fire and pitch-black smoke!
Another explosion followed—this time it was even stronger as it blasted the spire into many pieces.
The large pieces of stone and masonry shot up into the sky and landed like meteors.
One of them made it far enough to land just right in front of their truck, its heavy weight crashing against the road and destroying it immediately.
"Shit!" Nuriel screamed.
Vivienne made a hard right turn, but given the speed of the truck, the sudden turn made it drift and flip over multiple times, crashing against the large piece of the spire that was in the middle of the road.