“Come on, Erylin, just tell me~”
“Mmph! I can't tell you!”
“Not talking? Then don't blame me for continuing my attack~”
“No, stop! Not there!”
A girl dressed in casual clothes had a mischievous grin on her face, her hands relentlessly tickling Erylin's waist.
“No, stop tickling me! Vanessa, I was wrong! Don't tickle me anymore... haha...”
Vanessa let go of Erylin and spoke with some dissatisfaction.
“Then at least tell me how you ended up with a score of zero, and what that explosion in the center of the forest was all about.”
“Mmph! I—I can't say!”
Erylin covered her mouth, looking as though she wouldn't speak even if it killed her.
She felt that since Ain had hidden his strength for so long, he must have his own reasons.
Even if Ain didn't want to talk about it, she would keep his secret safe.
“Oh, come on, what's the harm in telling me~”
Vanessa shook Erylin frantically.
Seeing that she was still covering her mouth, Vanessa had no choice but to give up.
“Hmph! Fine, don't tell me then!”
“I treat you like a best friend, and this is how you treat me?”
Erylin let out a sigh of relief. Just as she was about to reply, her stomach betrayed her with a loud growl.
“Gurgle~”
Hearing Erylin's stomach growl, Vanessa suddenly realized that Lillian, who had left in the morning, hadn't returned yet.
“Why isn't Lillian back yet? It's almost two in the afternoon.”
“Maybe she got held up by something.”
Just as she spoke, the dormitory door slammed open with a bang, and a girl stood at the threshold, panting heavily.
“Lillian? What took you so—”
Vanessa was about to say something, but Lillian cut her off.
“E-Erylin! Ain... Ain!”
As if drained of all strength, Lillian stumbled forward and collapsed into Erylin's arms. She tightly clutched the hem of Erylin's clothes, her cheeks stained with fresh tear tracks.
“Ain? What happened to him? Slow down.”
Seeing Lillian in such a disheveled state, Vanessa's expression instantly turned fierce the moment she heard Ain's name.
“That guy who offended Erylin before? Did he bully you too? What an absolute bastard!”
“N-No, it's Belinda!”
Vanessa looked taken aback and asked in shock, “And Belinda, the one who's been making trouble for you every day?”
“Did she and Ain bully you together?”
Lillian wanted to explain everything, but when her eyes fell on Vanessa, she swallowed back the words that were on the tip of her tongue.
“I can't tell Vanessa about my witchification!”
“I... I can't tell you...”
“I can only tell Erylin.”
“Huh?”
Vanessa frowned. She really couldn't understand why even Lillian was keeping secrets from her now.
When they moved into the dorm, hadn't they promised to be best friends for life?
Why did she suddenly feel like she was the one being left out?
Seemingly guessing what Lillian wanted to say, Erylin could only offer an apology to Vanessa before leading Lillian out to the balcony.
“You're saying Ain was taken away by the Prosecution Office?”
“And he was accused of using forbidden magic?”
Lillian nodded.
“How are you feeling? Do you feel unwell anywhere?”
“The symptoms of witchification have subsided, but I'm not entirely sure how I am. My head just feels a bit dizzy.”
Erylin got the general idea of what happened.
“What was the name of the student who arrested Ain?”
Lillian clutched her head. Having been half-asleep and half-awake at the time, she didn't have a very clear memory.
After thinking for a long time, Lillian slowly managed to utter a few words.
“I think... Sevis?”
“Sevis?!”
Seeing Erylin's shocked expression, Lillian asked in confusion, “You know him?”
“He's a fourth-year student. Actually, he should be a fifth-year, but he was sent to another academy for advanced studies last year and only just returned.”
“I heard he won the approval of the high-ranking officials of the Titan Prosecution Office and is currently serving as an Arbiter.”
“An Arbiter?! Isn't that a position only academy instructors can hold?!”
Lillian gasped. In her mind, an Arbiter had the authority to directly pass judgment on offenders.
Erylin shook her head and said, “I don't know the exact details either.”
Erylin picked up a tissue and gently wiped away the tears from the corners of Lillian's eyes.
“Anyway, let's go find Professor August first!”
...
Inside Hermetica's potion-making classroom.
Three rows of lab benches converged toward the podium in a fan shape, each tabletop embedded with a bronze formation plate.
The air was thick with the scent of wormwood, Moonlight Moss, and Holy Dew Grass extract.
For the students of Hermetica, this smell was comforting, but for the two students currently standing before Professor Grimm, it only felt oppressive.
“The ratio of auxiliary materials is three percent higher than last week, but the purification rate only increased by zero point five percent?”
“Marco, is your brain filled with magical beast dung?!”
“Did you even look at the textbook for this data? Take it back and redo it!”
The student named Marco lowered his head, took the sample, and slowly stepped aside with tears welling in his eyes.
The other students in the room merely glanced up before lowering their heads to continue their experiments.
“Sigh, another one broken by the professor's scolding.”
“Colette.”
The girl called upon subconsciously clenched her hands, her legs trembling uncontrollably.
Her grades in Hermetica had always been in the top five. She had thought this final project would be as simple as usual, but to her surprise, all five of the samples she submitted had been rejected.
“You changed the pretreatment of the Thunder-pattern Grass to low-temperature grinding. Your train of thought is correct.”
Colette breathed a sigh of relief.
“But!”
Colette's heart, which had just settled, instantly leaped back into her throat.
“The grinding temperature was too low, and the Thunder-pattern Grass entered a dormant state. Take it back, let it sit at room temperature for thirty minutes, and measure it again.”
“Yes, Professor.”
Colette picked up the sample and solvent from the podium and returned to her seat. The students below cast surprised looks at her.
She actually wasn't criticized by Professor Grimm?
Could her approach be the answer the professor was looking for?
With that thought, some students even began rummaging through their potion boxes for Thunder-pattern Grass.
“I don't expect you to come up with a perfect answer, but as long as there is a complete train of th—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the classroom door was pushed open by a pink-haired girl holding several documents and a bottle of solvent.
The newcomer was none other than Violet.
“Professor, I would like to submit my final project.”
“You're finished? Are you sure?”
Grimm's tone carried a hint of skepticism.
He had just kicked her out this morning, and yet, in less than half a day, she had already completed the project?
“Of course. This is my lab journal, please take a look.”
Grimm took the notebook the girl handed him. After a period of silence, his expression grew increasingly dark.
“Violet, although none of your previous forty-one experiments were successful, at least there was logic to be found in each of those formulas.”
“But this time, you didn't even add a neutral buffer, and you didn't even change the flowchart!”
“And yet, you actually wrote down a one hundred percent purification rate in your experimental results?!”
The professor flung the lab journal aside and roared angrily, “Violet, are you trying to use this method to express your dissatisfaction with me?!”
The sample bottle in Colette's hand almost slipped, and Marco completely forgot that he was blocking the middle of the aisle.
The students below didn't even dare to breathe too loudly after that roar, and their movements slowed down even further.
“It's over, the professor is going to fly into a rage again.”
“Senior Violet is definitely going to get torn to pieces this time!”
Yet, Violet's expression remained relaxed. Carrying the solvent in her hand, she walked step by step toward an empty lab bench.
“Professor, don't be so quick to anger. You haven't even looked at my sample yet.”
“Do I even need to look?! I don't need to look to know that your sample is—”
As Violet uncorked the bottle and dripped the solvent onto the bronze formation plate, Grimm's voice grew softer and softer.
“What happened? Why did the professor stop talking?”
The students below curiously raised their heads and looked in Violet's direction.
On the formation plate, two lines of faint golden text materialized:
Potion Purification Rate: 100%
Lightning Attribute Toxin Residual: 0%
All the students stared in astonishment at those two lines of numbers.
They could never have imagined that while they had racked their brains just to raise the purification rate to forty percent, the girl before them had already raised it to one hundred percent!
Professor Grimm adjusted his glasses in shock. After confirming that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him, he picked up the lab journal he had thrown aside earlier and studied it carefully.
After a moment, Grimm said in a low voice, “Were these processes and techniques all invented by you?”
Violet cleared her throat, unable to hold back the smile on her face any longer.
“I am merely a discoverer of knowledge, not its creator.”
Bathed in the admiring gazes of the surrounding students, Violet's face was the very picture of smugness.
“This feels amazing.”
Rate on N.U.
