"Cough, cough! Kir!! Rookie!!!"

In the middle of the festival, which had instantly transformed into a scene reminiscent of a battlefield, Paula frantically shouted her friends' names as soon as she came to her senses.

"Paula!!!"

Skire, hearing her cry, ran to her.

"Are you okay?"

"I-I'm fine. Are you okay?!"

After looking each other over, they lifted their heads and surveyed their surroundings.

"Where's Rookie? Where is he? Rookie!!! Rookie!!!"

"Be quiet. I'm right here."

Lucas, who quietly dusted himself off and stood up from the ground, looked at Paula.

"Rookie!!! Are you okay?!"

Startled by Paula who ran and hugged him in a single bound, Lucas awkwardly patted her back a few times.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

"What in the world is all this?! Guards! Guards!"

Skire, who quickly called for his escorts, began to reprimand them.

"What were you all doing! What were you doing until this mess happened!"

"Kir! What did they do wrong?! No one knew this would happen!"

"Ahem... alright. Don't be angry."

As the blame was being pointed in the wrong direction, Paula quickly jumped in with a rebuke, and Skire immediately backed down.

Looking around, it seemed no one was seriously injured.

The stray Fire Arrow that had struck the ground had created a deep gouge, but perhaps because it had landed in the middle of the parade route, there didn't seem to be many people nearby.

However, there were quite a few injuries. People with back injuries from flying parasols, people with head injuries from flying brick fragments, and so on.

The horses pulling the carriages, startled by the sudden incident, had all been put to sleep by magic and were lying sprawled on the ground.

Looking up at the carriage pulled by the sleeping horses, he could see the culprit of the incident, this year's top student, sitting collapsed with her head in her hands, completely out of her mind.

"That crazy bitch."

A rough curse escaped Lucas's lips.

As he reached the vicinity of the carriage in a single bound, the event staff quickly blocked his path.

"You can't! You can't enter here!"

"It's dangerous, so please step back quickly!"

The expressions of the staff members blocking his path were quite grim, as if they were worried for the safety of the small child.

"Get lost. I need to rip that crazy girl's head off."

"Lucas! What kind of language is that?!"

Just as Lucas was about to rush in and rip the girl's head off, a familiar voice came from behind him.

"I apologize. I am Professor Aman Tinore of the Magic Academy. I will take this student with me."

Aman gently blocked the path of the staff members who were ready to charge at any moment.

Placing a hand on Lucas's shoulder, Aman pressed down gently.

Lucas roughly slapped his hand away and glared at him, and Aman gave a slight wink.

"Really? Here?"

Hearing Aman's words, Lucas stomped his foot on the ground in a surge of irritation, then followed him away from the scene.

As he said, taking that girl's head off here was not a good move for anyone. In fact, he was even grateful to Aman.

If he had lost his temper and done something bad to that girl, it could have damaged not only himself but his family as well.

'Damn it! Why did I have to choose to be a human of all things!!!'

As always, regret is always too late.

***

"So... the coordinates were set incorrectly. Is that what you're saying?"

"It seems so."

"No matter how nervous she was, is it possible to set the coordinates incorrectly for something that just needs to be shot up into the sky?"

"Well, that's..."

Aman, who had gone to the Dean's office, was dumbfounded by the unbelievable story.

Set the coordinates incorrectly? It was a magic that was sufficient even if you just chanted the spell and shot it up into the sky without any coordinates.

But that magic had become a stray spell and turned the festival site into a chaotic mess.

And yet, from the mouth of this man, the Dean, came the absurd story that 'she set the coordinates incorrectly because she was nervous.'

"I understand. I'm sure you've handled it well, Dean."

"I've ordered a further investigation, so don't worry too much, Professor Aman."

"Understood. Then..."

Aman's expression twisted into a grimace as he left the Dean's office.

'A mere human... dares to ruin my amusement?'

Rage boiled up inside him. He hadn't even figured out Lucas's true identity yet.

The aura he felt from him was that of a perfect human. If he had died in that spot, he would have blown away the empire and everything else right then and there.

If he had to live for hundreds, no, thousands more years without uncovering his identity, every single day would have been a living hell of unanswered curiosity.

"No... absolutely not..."

Muttering to himself as he walked down the hallway, Aman looked around once before entering an empty classroom.

***

"Rookie, we were almost in big trouble, right?"

Paula, who had been watching Lucas's expression, which had been sour the entire way back to the academy, asked affectionately, but Lucas only gave a small nod, not even answering.

"He must have been very surprised."

"You're the one who was surprised. Rookie was really calm, wasn't he?"

"Hmph. I was calm too."

"Pfft! Calm? The carriage was shaking from how much you were trembling."

"No, I wasn't! I wasn't trembling!"

On the way to the dormitory, Lucas's mind was in utter chaos as he listened to their bickering.

'Someone definitely tampered with the magic. For it to be a mistake, the trajectory changed too abnormally.'

That was the conclusion he reached after replaying the scene from the festival several times.

The fired Fire Arrow seemed to be soaring into the sky, then suddenly changed its trajectory and slammed into the ground.

But there was no way the top student had changed its trajectory. No matter how she had taken the top spot, she would be at most a 3-circle or 4-circle mage.

To change the trajectory of a spell that had already left one's hand, one would need to be at least a 5-circle mage. And even then, it would have been very difficult.

It was even more impossible to stop chanting while changing the trajectory.

But she had finished her spell as soon as she cast the Fire Arrow.

'Who was it? Who tampered with her magic?'

As he thought about who could do such a thing, one person came to his mind.

A person who could easily change the trajectory of a spell cast by another without chanting.

A person who was located not far away and had watched all of her magic...

'Aman...'

***

The day he returned from the festival, Lucas had intended to go find Aman immediately and raise hell.

But as he was walking down the hallway, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

The Aman he knew was a dragon.

A cheerful, and again, cheerful dragon who was sincere about his amusement.

For such an Aman to have almost killed him, a human he was curious about? It didn't make sense.

Lucas also knew well, having lived for half a millennium in a dragon's body.

A dragon's curiosity knew no bounds. They started wars out of curiosity, and they ended wars out of that same curiosity.

For him to try to harm him when his curiosity about him hadn't been satisfied at all was an absurd story.

As his thoughts spiraled, a headache set in, and Lucas gave up on finding Aman and headed for the dormitory.

'Then who? Why?'

If there was someone trying to harm him, they could have just dealt with him quietly.

To deliberately ruin the festival, and the parade that was its grand finale, while drawing everyone's attention, meant there was a high possibility of something more.

'Could it be... to harm Skire?'

That thought suddenly occurred to him, but Lucas soon shook his head.

Even with a moment's thought, there was no need for that. As Skire said, he was the second son of a prominent ducal family.

There was no need to harm the second son, who wasn't even the heir.

'Whoever it is, just let me catch you. I won't let you die a peaceful death.'

***

Aman's steps, which were headed towards the imperial palace, came to a halt.

"Please find our child!!!"

"He hasn't come home for two days!!"

The people gathered at the guard post in front of the imperial palace were each pleading their own cases.

"Look, I'm telling you, the kids might have just gone out to play together, so you should wait until tomorrow."

"My child is not one to go out without a word and not come back!"

"Ha, this is why parents are a problem. They don't know their own kids."

The guard listening to the stories waved his hand dismissively, as if he was tired.

From the sound of it, it seemed several days had already passed.

"Please... please just look for him! Please find our... our Simon..."

As a woman collapsed to the ground and began to sob, the people around her also began to cry one by one.

"Please find our Alonda... Alonda... Alonda!!!"

"Oh my... my baby... where are you..."

Aman, who was watching the scene, stopped a passerby.

"What's going on over there?"

Aman's expression gradually hardened as he listened to the words coming from the passerby's mouth.

"Missing?"

"Yes. The number of young children who disappeared during the festival is considerable."

"How many?"

"A total of sixteen."

"Six... sixteen?"

"Yes. But those guards just say the kids probably went out to play and not to worry, and they won't even look for them, can you believe it!!"

"Is that so..."

Sixteen children had disappeared overnight, but the guards, far from looking for them, were treating the parents as if they were being difficult.

"Phew... what is this country coming to... it's been like that for two days already."

"Two days... you mean they disappeared on the last day of the festival?"

"Yes. The parents all say their children who went out to see the festival haven't come back. You know, right? The accident on the last day."

"Yes."

"The parents were worried their children might have been hurt in the accident, so they all went out and even cleaned up the entire site."

"Ah..."

Aman also knew that the accident site had been quickly cleaned up with the help of nearby residents. He had thought it was just a gesture of goodwill from the empire's citizens.

But that wasn't it.

"They say they're still searching the nearby forests and the area around the imperial palace, but not a single hair can be found. Tsk tsk..."

"I see. I understand. Thank you for letting me know."

"You too, sir, if you see a lost child while passing by, please take a good look."

"I will do that."

After the passerby left, Aman looked at the front of the guard post once more.

A considerable number of people were still unable to leave, sitting collapsed in front of it and sobbing.

'There's something going on. They didn't just disappear.'

He had a bad feeling. Aman, who was about to go to the imperial palace and request sole investigative authority for this incident, soon gave up on that idea and changed his course.

'It's better to move quietly.'

***

After the basic theory class ended, Paula and Skire, as usual, dragged Lucas towards the dining hall.

By this point, rather than being dragged, he was even secretly hoping they would lead him to the dining hall.

"Is that really true?"

"Yeah! They say it's almost twenty."

"They probably just went out to play and haven't come back. I've heard it often. Commoners sometimes cause that kind of trouble."

"Hey! Don't talk nonsense. Who says that? That commoners do that? I heard it's the nobles who do that?!"

"Hmph! Are you saying this after listening to those half-wits with no education? We..."

"Be quiet!"

"...Alright."

Lucas's expression began to twist into a grimace as he listened to Paula.

"What's wrong, Rookie? Does your stomach hurt?"

Paula, who saw Lucas's expression, came over and asked affectionately, but Lucas only shook his head briefly.

"When was that?"

"Huh? What?"

Paula tilted her head at Lucas's sudden question.

"When did the children disappear?"

"Ah, that day we went to see the festival. They said they disappeared then."

"Damn it."

The suspicion he had, just in case, turned into certainty.

Lucas, who let out a small curse, turned his steps and began to run.

"Rookie!!! Where are you going!!!"

'It's them. I should have ripped all their heads off back then!'

(End of Chapter)