"Hello. I’m Ria di Ribanche."
"I am Arald di Ribanche. A pleasure to meet you."
I watched the two of them from the faculty office.
Mm. They act pretty well. As expected of demons—they didn’t get that much older than they look for nothing.
Right now I’m sitting in the office like someone with absolutely no connection to any of this.
The House of Achaia betrayed Ria Liss’s earnest wish and came all the way to Atlas.
Thanks to that, the faculty office is fairly noisy. A woman who looks like Ias’s mother is going on and on, and Ria Liss is working hard to soothe her anger with an extremely kind and extremely businesslike smile.
Pielot, for his part, has nothing to say about the performances of his fake mother and fake father, so he just stays still, whereas on the other side, Ias—
'......He looks mortified.'
Every time his mother says something, Ias’s head sinks lower. Judging by that, it doesn’t seem like this grand visit from the House of Achaia was something Ias wanted.
Well, it’s hard to imagine that prideful Ias went whining to his parents. In other words, this is his parents’ unilateral decision.
"Ever since that day he can’t even hold a spoon properly! Just how on earth are °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° you raising—"
"Mother, when did I ever—"
"You keep quiet!"
I admired the rather familiar scene.
Oh ho, so nobles like that exist too. Her clothes and jewelry are luxurious and her features are elegant, but from her words and attitude she’s just an ordinary auntie blinded by love for her child.
'I feel a little bad. For Lirih and Arald.'
Honestly, I didn’t expect an auntie that intense to show up. I’ve never seen that character type, at least not on the Falind continent. So stereotypical it’s actually refreshing.
Ias must be suffering too. The one most mortified here is Ias.
'......Hm?'
Just then, something odd brushed my senses.
My Sixth Sense had activated.
'Ias’s mother is doing something.'
She’s still shouting as if furious, but mana is slowly seeping out from her body.
It’s so faint it’s almost impossible to notice. In fact, even though Ririh and Arald and Pielot are right in front of her, none of them noticed.
There was no killing intent in that mana. It wasn’t a spell formed by an array either. It simply extended, slowly and diligently, reaching toward the unmoving Pielot.
'......What is she doing?'
I felt a foreboding. At the very least, it’s clear that all that overbearing talk and posture is an act.
Whatever she intends to do, if I only move after it happens, it’s already too late.
'No helping it.'
I hadn’t planned to step in, but if this isn’t going to end as a simple kids’ scuffle, that’s different.
Pop!
I flicked out the demon’s power, ever so lightly. It wasn’t enough to make someone faint—just enough to cow them. Exactly that much.
"......!"
The woman’s mana stopped. Instinctively, she turned her head and looked straight at me.
'Ho. To figure out in that instant that I was the one who sent it.'
For a very brief moment, her eyes and mine crossed.
So she noticed me. No matter. It’s a small price to pay compared to Pielot getting hit by something.
And as far as this place is concerned, I have no relation to Pielot at all. I merely sensed her mana and, thinking she was about to do something to a student, issued a "warning."
"Wh-what is it, Lady Achaia?"
asked the teacher who had been working hard to mediate between the two houses.
Ias, too, looked puzzled at his mother’s sudden change.
"......Let’s go, Ias."
"Huh?"
With that, the woman took Ias by the hand and retraced her steps out the way she’d come. Her husband followed a little belatedly.
Her eyes were completely different from the figure who’d just been raging for her son—as if the one making a scene a moment ago had never been her at all.
'Interesting.'
A woman who, for a noble, looked like a textbook auntie.
But that loud voice and glib tongue were bluffing; her real intent lay elsewhere.
She was about to do something to Pielot.
Finding out what that was—that’s my job.
If I get the time, I’ll ask that guy, straight away—
"......Ah."
There I realized my mistake and gave a wry smile.
Ask? Ask who?
'Gregory isn’t here.'
I don’t have Gregory anymore. No crows, no rats on my side now.
When I left the Falind continent, my contact with Gregory was cut. No matter what, Gregory’s reach doesn’t extend across continents.
If his range were that broad, Gregory would have known about this continent from the start. But from Falind, Agoris was an unknown land—no one even knew it existed.
'Careless. I just believed he’d always be there.'
But thinking it through, of course he wouldn’t be.
So I never even said a proper goodbye to Gregory. I couldn’t meet him in person, and I couldn’t even relay a message through a crow.
"No helping it."
Even without Gregory, there are ways.
I’d already been paying attention to Ias’s side.
What Lady Achaia meant to do to Pielot still sits in the realm of curiosity.
I sincerely hope this ends as mere curiosity.
***
Investigating the House of Achaia begins with investigating Ias.
Of course I won’t overstep; I’ll just go back over what’s already on file. Strictly in my capacity as a teacher.
But before that, there’s something I have to confirm.
'Giotto’s wiretap—I only had my doubts, but Arald was nearly certain.'
Giotto somehow knew what classes I taught and what I said faster than rumor.
I suspected he was wiretapping, and Arald agreed.
Truth be told, even if Giotto was wiretapping me, I didn’t particularly care. The more tasks he assigns me, the greater the influence I wield here at Atlas.
Now that I’m handling homeroom, magical theory, and combat theory without strain, Giotto seems to have sensed it; he seldom touches me these days.
Or maybe he feels too watched to try anything more.
In any case, I’m not looking to do anything about Giotto’s petty stunt—I’m just interested in the bug itself.
I’d had this conversation with Arald:
"A magitech device completely undetectable by mana-sense. Is that even possible?"
I’d told Elodie about the wiretap and had her drop by my classroom to run a mana-sense sweep, but she found nothing at the time.
Arald answered my question.
"Impossible."
"Then there’s no bug."
"No. It just isn’t made with magitech."
A bug not made with magitech.
Obvious in the previous world, but not here.
In this world, magic does most of what electricity would do. From my standpoint, a bug not made with magitech sounds like a bug that doesn’t use electricity either.
"I don’t know the exact principles of such devices," Arald said, "but products that don’t use mana have always been researched at Hitchcock."
"Why? Planning to do things you don’t want caught by mana-sense?"
"Yes."
A brisk, demonlike affirmation.
"It isn’t about breaking law or ethics. A company has all sorts of things it doesn’t want exposed. Moving such things around is a real hassle."
"Really? Not about indulging demonic desires in something cruel?"
"If that were the purpose, we wouldn’t have built Hitchcock in the first place."
Fair enough.
Anyway, even Arald didn’t know the specifics, which piqued my interest.
So even while teaching, I looked for where the bug might be—but it was hard to search while conducting class.
I can’t start emptying lockers in the middle of a lecture.
And if Giotto notices I’ve found the bug, the leverage I went to the trouble of obtaining might just fizzle out. When I said as much, Arald’s "As expected of Lord Frondier" managed to rub me the wrong way.
So what I chose was to put on a little after-school act.
"So what is it this time, Mr. Frondier?"
"A student from magic practicum came to me and—"
As always, one of those Frondier–Elodie spats that happen at Atlas.
This time we set the stage in my homeroom.
Exchanging curt, chilly remarks and not looking at each other at all, we ransacked the classroom from top to bottom.
We’ve done this act long enough that Elodie and I have gotten pretty good at quarreling.
Not that it’s something to be proud of.
'But even searching this seriously, I still don’t see it.'
A classroom looks complicated, but it isn’t well-suited to hiding something for long.
Desks and lockers the students can check are out of the question, and so is the lectern.
That leaves the walls. So Elodie and I checked for hidden doors or secret spaces—but came up empty.
'If such a space existed, Weaving or the workshop would’ve outed it.'
My Weaving copies an object’s structure as is; if there were any anomaly, I’d spot it immediately.
At least in this classroom, there isn’t such a space.
'So there really wasn’t any wiretapping? Were Arald and I just wrong?'
"Answer me. How long do you expect me to keep cleaning up after your students?"
"I’m the one cleaning up. I have to redo everything because you’re not doing your job properly."
We were running out of topics to argue about.
Give up and come back another day, or try a different method.
Just as I was thinking that—
[Attention from the broadcast room. Students remaining on campus, please go home immediately. Repeating the announcement......]
A voice came from the ceiling speakers. Just the standard dismissal broadcast.
"......"
"......"
And we both fell silent for a moment and listened. It was natural—we’d been talking when the announcement came on.
Natural—but then:
[......Frondier.]
Elodie’s telepathy came through.
[Just going to check.]
Thinking no way, seriously?, I pulled the ceiling-mounted broadcast speaker into my workshop.
I don’t know the schematics of a speaker. Still less if it’s magitech. So even if I look, I can’t tell what part’s wrong.
That’s not what I’m looking for.
The moment I took the speaker into the workshop, the cable connected to it came in with it.
What I want to see is how far this speaker’s cable runs.
[Frondier, you said Mr. Giotto is wiretapping you, right? But there’s no way he could hide a bug inside the speaker without people noticing.]
[......I’m thinking the opposite.]
[Opposite—as in, it is possible to install?]
[Not that kind of opposite.]
My eyes followed the speaker cable endlessly.
......And finally—
I confirmed that the line ran to the broadcast room—and that there was another branch line running off elsewhere.
[......What if it’s the reverse, Elodie.]
[Reverse of what?]
[What if Giotto never meant to wiretap me in the first place?]
[What?]
[What if he had no interest in me at all at the start, and I just happened to walk into his preexisting wiretap field?]
Elodie’s face chilled at my words.
In other words, the order is reversed.
Giotto didn’t install bugs because I showed up.
Long before I came—right from the start—for a very long time now, across every speaker in all of Atlas—
[......He’s a complete lunatic.]
