Summary So Far:
After the sudden assault by the Theater Troupe Actor, Itsuki and Nina were able to repel the attack within the school. Yet, strangely, there was no trace of students or teachers in sight, and the only clue they had was a message instructing them to head to the rooftop.
"… ''Come to the rooftop,''" Nina tranted the English phrase written on the ckboard.
Her trantion was incredibly helpful, especially since I was clueless about thenguage. Someday, I should learn some trantion magic myself, I thought absentmindedly as I processed the meaning.
It was obvious that this message was meant for us. There was no one else around to read it, after all.
But just because the message told us to go to the rooftop didn''t mean we''d willingly walk into whatever trap might be waiting for us up there. Monsters could be lying in wait; it was practically guaranteed.
"Itsuki, what should we do?" Nina asked.
"The rooftop? We''re not going up there just yet."
Without knowing what awaited us, the smartest move was to approach cautiously.
But that didn''t mean we had to go directly ourselves. So I pped my hands, a sharp sound echoing through the empty ssroom as two small fairies about five centimeters tall appeared before me.
Each of them wore arge hat and little ck boots—the
Leprechauns
would be our eyes.
"Check the rooftop for us," I requested.
"Aye," replied one of the Leprechauns as it eagerly leaped out the ssroom window, scaling the building''s wall toward the rooftop.
One of the great features of the Leprechauns is their shared vision, so what one sees, all others connected to them can see. They''re like magical surveince cameras, able to ry back exactly what''s up there.
I watched the candles on the cakes in the ssroom burn lower and lower as I waited, until the Leprechauns returned with a surprising report.
"Nothing there, nothing at all," one of them ryed.
"Hmm? Nothing?"
"Yes, yes! There''s nothing on the rooftop."
My head tilted in confusion, and next to me, Nina leaned in, her curiosity piqued.
"Are you sure there''s no one up there?"
"Yes, yes, empty as can be! Don''t believe me? Go see for yourself."
The Leprechaun snapped back and promptly disappeared.
Wow… talk about attitude.
I sighed and shifted my attention back to the message on the ckboard.
"If there''s no one on the rooftop, maybe this message is just a trick," Nina suggested.
"You might be right. But if it''s a trick, it''s strange that they left the rooftoppletely empty."
"It could be a trap," she proposed.
"If it were, the Leprechaun would''ve noticed," I reasoned.
Nina pondered this, frowning slightly as she considered the situation.
"So… does that mean the rooftop really is empty?" she finally asked.
"It''s possible."
Or maybe there was something there that couldn''t be seen from the outside. Either way, we wouldn''t know for sure until we saw it ourselves.
"Let''s go, Nina-chan," I said decisively.
"Yeah, let''s."
Since monsters were already lurking in the school, I couldn''t risk leaving Nina alone. I led the way, Nina following close behind, as we climbed the stairs.
With each step, the echo of our footsteps filled the silence, adding a strange eeriness to the daytime school. The halls were empty, and theck of other sounds made the experience all the more surreal.
Just as we reached the third floor and were about to ascend to the fourth, we heard heavy footsteps thundering up the stairs below us. Nina grabbed my sleeve, tense.
"F-first… floor!"
A booming voice from below, apanied by the sight of a massive face emerging at the bottom of the staircase—a giant head, probably three meters tall. Its chin nearly scraped the floor while its hair brushed the ceiling.
Behind this enormous face trailed a centipede-like body with dozens of human legs. A grotesque, insect-like monster.
"What''s something you can keep eating without it ever going away?" it asked in a low, rumbling voice.
I thought about it for a moment before replying, "Curry bread."
"…Curry bread?"
The monster''s enormous face contorted in confusion. It must be fairly intelligent, maybe around third-tier in rank.
Not letting my guard down, I extended my right hand and conjured a Silveit Thread.
"
Homura Bachi!
"
With the incantation, the fiery spear I summoned struck the monster square in the forehead, piercing and exploding, scattering its insides.
As the massive form disintegrated into ck mist, I turned to Nina, taking her hand to lead her onward.
"Let''s go."
"Y-yeah, but…," Nina hesitated, her grip on my sleeve tightening.
"Why did you answer ''curry bread'' to that riddle?"
"Because I like it?"
The answer slipped out more as a question than a statement. Honestly, I hadn''t put much thought into it; it''s not like there''s any need to seriously answer a monster''s riddles.
But Nina seemed oddly fixated on this, musing aloud, "I think the answer was supposed to be weight…"
"Oh? Yeah… probably?"
Eating without losing weight—yeah, that makes sense. But really, now wasn''t the time to get sidetracked with riddles.
Continuing up the stairs to the fourth floor, we surprisingly encountered no more monsters. Perhaps we were just lucky, or maybe we had already dealt with all of them on this floor.
Either way, it was a chance not to be wasted. We crossed the hall to the stairway leading to the rooftop.
Our school had a set of stairs leading directly to the roof. At the top was a weathered aluminum door with frosted ss, much like any other school''s rooftop ess. Scrawled across the silver metal in red paint were the words "Wee!" in messy, childlike letters.
Even without understanding English, I could guess what it meant.
"We''re being invited in," I said.
"Yes."
I reached out with
Silveit
, gripping the handle from a distance. There was always the risk of spells that required physical contact to activate.
Twisting the knob, I carefully pulled the door open.
"…Huh?"
Instead of the expected rooftop, we found ourselves staring at an amusement park.