OHNIR – Chapter 6
Chapter 6: Lying in Wait
At three o’clock that afternoon, Kelusta appeared at the library entrance on time.
The stern potions teacher wasn’t too pleased with her panting appearance, but at least he didn’t say anything. He just gave her a stiff nod and said, “Go on in.”
He didn’t make things too difficult for Kelusta, just assigning her two areas near the book storeroom to organize the shelves and clean up before leaving with a stern expression.
Kelusta sighed.
“I never knew my water magic could be used like this,” she said to the System in high spirits. She sat in a chair, legs propped up ungracefully, and held out a hand, guiding a stream of water from the washroom onto the rag she held. “Maybe I’ll write a book someday, On the Various Applications of Water Magic. Who knows, it might even make it into the Royal Library.”
The System said coldly, “Give it up. No one would publish something so strange.”
Kelusta didn’t seem discouraged at all. She rolled up her sleeves with a grin and deftly got to work.
Because this area was remote, she didn’t disturb the other students in the library.
—Of course, given that this was a sea of history, not many students came to the library anyway.
Water magic is so useful!
Without having to run back and forth to the washroom, Kelusta finished all her chores in just over two hours. She dusted off her hands, returned the cleaning supplies, and was about to leave when the System suddenly spoke up and stopped her.
“Temporary Host, to prevent you from facing the penalty of ‘failure to graduate due to loss of all academic credits,’ I’ve decided to offer a friendly reminder,” the System said. “The storeroom hasn’t been organized yet.”
“…The storeroom needs cleaning too?” Kelusta turned to look at the inconspicuous room, hesitating. “I thought that would be an off-limits area?”
“Your teacher specifically emphasized: this area,” the System said cautiously. “Based on my professional analysis of human colloquialisms, that should include the inside of the storeroom.”
Kelusta thought hard for a moment and decided the System had a point.
“Alright, just to be safe, I’ll tidy up the storeroom too.” Kelusta turned back and walked toward the storeroom.
The light in the storeroom was much dimmer than in the library. Kelusta stood at the entrance, squinting for a moment to let her eyes adjust. Only then could she make out the huge pile of toppled books in front of her, and she couldn’t help but gasp.
“Gods!” She casually picked up a book, and seeing it was, as expected, about the two goddesses of light and dark, she lamented with sincere feeling, “Before I left Seaside Town, I never knew Nobili had so many idle people!”
“…”
Sarcasm aside, she couldn’t be careless with her work if she wanted to graduate. Kelusta began arranging the pile of books from smallest to largest, as if she were laying bricks. If a book fit, she stuffed it onto the shelves along the wall; if not, she tossed it aside, planning to stack them on the floor later.
As she worked, Kelusta stood on a heavy, thick tome, stretching on her tiptoes to place a book on the highest shelf, when her elbow suddenly seemed to hit something.
With a soft click, just as she turned her head, the central bookshelf suddenly split apart, silently revealing a pitch-black secret room.
The book in Kelusta’s hand fell to the floor.
Her mouth agape, she pointed at the secret room in shock and said to the System, “This is incredible, Old Sy. You casually tell me to do some cleaning, and I discover the library’s secret—you must be the real game heroine!”
System: “…”
They, the Systems, had undergone rigorous training. No matter how much they wanted to strike their hosts, they wouldn’t. Unless they couldn’t help it.
For now… for the sake of its performance metrics, it could endure a little longer.
Marveling, Kelusta walked toward the secret room but stopped at the entrance, peering inside uneasily.
As expected, she saw nothing.
“Don’t you guys have some kind of detection system?” Kelusta demanded of the System. “Check for me. Is it dangerous in there?”
Although the System was sometimes rendered speechless by Kelusta’s antics, when it came to matters of professional competence, it was quite reliable.
“…Scan complete. There are no living creatures inside,” the System said icily. “However, I cannot rule out the possibility of a mechanism killing you with a single arrow.”
Kelusta burst out laughing. She found the grudge-holding System unexpectedly cute.
But since it had said that, it probably meant there was no real danger inside. Kelusta cautiously stepped in. The moment the tip of her foot touched the floor, eerie blue-green flames suddenly flared to life on both sides of the passage, illuminating the entire room.
Startled, Kelusta looked closely and saw that the secret room wasn’t very spacious—it was more like a corridor than a room. At the far end was a raised platform with something placed on top of it.
“…A bit creepy,” Kelusta said. “Old Sy, what do you think?”
The System didn’t want to look. It just wanted to give her a big slap across the face.
Whatever. Who hasn’t encountered a few brats on the job?
The System sighed, performed another deep scan, and after a moment of silence, said, “No danger… I advise you to approach the platform. The distance is too great to detect what that is.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Kelusta steeled herself and stepped fully into the secret room.
Although she was terrified, the room didn’t seem to be equipped with any traps. Kelusta reached the platform unimpeded, walked up the steps, and finally got a clear look at what was on it.
It was a mirror, its black frame carved with intricate patterns. The lines seemed chaotic, yet held a faint, underlying order.
Kelusta found it somewhat familiar.
She frowned, searching her memory carefully for where she might have seen similar patterns before.
After a long moment.
“Ah.”
The brown-haired girl lightly tapped her palm with her fist, her eyes widening as she stared at the mirror’s black frame. “I remember!” she exclaimed in sudden realization.
“Isn’t this the language of the demons?—”
The System remained silent. While Kelusta was trying to remember, it had been performing a deep scan of the mirror.
“…Scan complete. Confirmed. Identification result: Tenebris Magic Mirror, one of the artifacts of divine power given to the demons by the dark gods. There are two in total, capable of long-distance communication and transmission.”
“In Oceanum, it first appears in the demon route and is a crucial tool for helping Musen return to the Demon Realm.”
Kelusta thoughtfully ran a hand through her long hair. “Hmm… so this must be what Gloria was looking for in the library.”
This magic mirror wasn’t used by Musen alone.
The other person who used it was the final boss, Gloria.
In the demon route, the reason the Demon King gave up on the royal capital to attack Seaside Town instead must have been because he accepted some condition proposed by Starangui, who was acting on Gloria’s will.
It was most likely related to the Holy Force Source.
“System, let me ask you something.”
Amidst the blue-green flames, Kelusta’s honey-gold eyes looked exceptionally deep. She placed her fingers on the mirror’s frame, slowly and gently tracing the demonic script.
“In the ‘Secret of the Gods’ route, the second stage mission is to raise Gloria’s affection level. Does that mean that as long as I play my cards right and get her affection high enough, in the perfect ending, she’ll definitely give up the idea of destroying Seaside Town and seizing the Holy Force Source?”
“…”
The System didn’t answer, and Kelusta didn’t press it. Only after the flames had danced for a long while did the stiff, electronic voice slowly sound, seemingly tinged with a hint of weariness.
“Replying to the esteemed Temporary Host: Yes.”
Having received an affirmative answer, Kelusta closed her eyes, a relieved smile gracing her lips.
“Thanks for your hard work, Old Sy.” The solemnity of the previous moment seemed like an illusion as the brown-haired, golden-eyed girl suddenly reverted to her usual carefree self. She glanced back at the Tenebris Magic Mirror one last time but did nothing, then walked toward the exit without looking back.
The System found that it couldn’t quite grasp her intentions.
“Temporary Host, are you planning to…?”
“Shh, don’t ask anything.”
Back in the storeroom, Kelusta once again stepped on the large tome, reached out, and touched the mechanism that had opened the secret room. After the bookshelf slid shut, she casually jumped down. Looking at the neatly stacked books before her, she broke into a mischievous smile.
She stuck out a finger and gave a gentle push—
The books came crashing to the floor with a clatter. Fortunately, the storeroom was remote and separated by the library’s thick walls, so almost no sound could be heard outside.
Kelusta had returned the small mountain of history books to its original messy state, haphazardly blocking the bookshelf with the secret entrance. She coughed twice in the rising dust, gave the restored scene a satisfied look, and turned to leave the storeroom.
“Since I need to grind affection points, I should give the final boss a big gift,” she said to the System with a giggle. “This mirror is just perfect, don’t you think?”
However, in the days that followed, Kelusta’s calculations proved wrong.
Even after waiting in the library from dawn till dusk, she was unable to find Gloria again.
“I’m starting to wonder if our meeting that night was just a dream,” Kelusta said dejectedly, tapping her fingers on the table out of boredom. “It’s strange—why hasn’t she come back? From the way she looked last time, it was obvious she hadn’t found it yet!”
System: “What if she did find it that time?”
Kelusta said warily, “Don’t jinx me. Judging by the amount of dust in that storeroom, I’d conservatively estimate that no one’s been in there for at least three to five years!”
She said that, but deep down, Kelusta wasn’t very confident.
Surely not? Could I really be that unlucky?
On the third day, after Kelusta had once again waited from afternoon until the moon was high in the sky, she finally saw the duke’s daughter step into the library again.
The silver-haired woman wore a different long dress this time, a subtle, pale gold that made her eyes look exceptionally deep.
When she walked into the library, Kelusta was busy building a castle out of a pile of history books.
Gloria clearly hadn’t expected to run into a student at this hour. She froze for a moment and frowned imperceptibly, but the instant Kelusta looked over, her gentle smile returned.
“We meet again.”
She still gave Kelusta a very aristocratic curtsy.
Having recovered from being stunned by her beauty last time, Kelusta was much more composed. Her most intense reaction was merely her eyes lighting up as she stood, pushed back her chair, and walked out from behind the table. “Ah, it’s you again, Senior!” she said, full of pleasant surprise.
It was genuine surprise.
It had been three days. This was the very definition of lying in wait.
Seeing her so enthusiastic, Gloria was momentarily, and rarely, taken aback. But true to her sophisticated nature, the duke’s daughter recovered instantly. “Are you studying again?” she asked, her voice as warm as a spring breeze.
As she spoke, she glanced at the pile of books Kelusta had stacked up and gave a kind smile.
Kelusta was thick-skinned enough not to be fazed by the teasing. Her eyes crinkled into a smile, and she shook her head without the slightest embarrassment. “Nope.”
She paused, then added meaningfully, “I’m waiting for someone.”
As soon as the words were out, the interest in Gloria’s eyes diminished. Her blue eyes, which had been politely fixed on Kelusta, shifted away by a fraction of an inch.
The movement was very subtle; if the System hadn’t prompted her with “Gloria’s affection -1,” Kelusta wouldn’t have noticed it at all.
The System said mercilessly, “If you had said ‘waiting for you,’ the affection level might have immediately dropped into the negatives.”
“A pick-up line from centuries ago? You think I’d use that?” Kelusta scoffed. “Who do you take me for?”
After retorting to the System, the brown-haired girl in front of Gloria raised an eyebrow slightly. She put on a troubled expression and ran her slender fingers through her smooth hair, messing it up a little. The slightly tousled strands successfully drew Gloria’s gaze back to her.
“Sigh, Senior, you have no idea how pitiful I am,” Kelusta sighed, speaking with great sincerity. “I was punished by the potions teacher to clean the library, but I’ve waited three days for him to come and inspect it, and he still hasn’t shown up… so I’ve had to clean it for three days straight. If he doesn’t come soon, the librarian is going to have to apply for wages for me.”
Clearly not expecting the girl before her to say something so silly yet cute, Gloria found that what should have been a foolish statement, paired with her messy hair, was surprisingly convincing.
Slightly taken aback, Gloria lightly covered her lips with her porcelain-like fingertips. As if finding it all very amusing, she actually let out a soft laugh.
“Ding, Gloria’s affection +2.”
Unexpected answers often lead to unexpected results. The sages of old were right.
Kelusta maintained her honest, dazed expression. She already had a petite and cute appearance, so ever since she was little, even when she intentionally or unintentionally said something rather childish or clumsy, her looks would cause listeners to misinterpret it as “pure innocence.”
System: “…Taking an unconventional approach, I see.”
Kelusta: “You flatter me. Just another day in the life of the Seaside Flower.”
Comments
Post a Comment