Somewhere within the grounds of the Olsyvia Academy’s western branch, the Euphemia Academy, Bella and the others purposefully sped up their pace. As there was quite the number of spirits wandering the academy for some reason, Angel was able to use her specialty magic to communicate with them and help Bella’s group by obtaining the locations of the three students that were following them.
As the branch full of students of royal birth, the security of the Euphemia Academy was quite strong. To ensure the safety of all the royalty, students from the other branches, apart from high ranking members of the various student councils and the disciplinary committee, would have to book an appointment several days in advance before their entry onto the Euphemia Academy’s grounds.
Later, due to the improvement in relationships between nobility and royalty, some higher ranking nobles were granted the right to enter the Euphemia branch without having to wait a week after booking an appointment. This right was currently only limited to nobles with the peerage of Duke and higher and when they entered the Euphemia branch, they were allowed to bring up to three companions or servants along with them inside.
Based on the information that Angel received from the nearby spirits, Scout was currently wearing a string ring that seemed to be possessed by the spirit of a powerful old man. It was that old man’s spirit who had cast some stealth magic on Scout, allowing noble with low peerage like him to enter the Euphemia Academy.
Adelaide was royalty himself, meaning that he didn’t have to take as many precautions as Scout did while following Bella. As for what his ‘cheat’ was, Angel’s spirit friends were unable to detect it for now. Based on the information that she had received from Ariel, Bella strongly suspected that this Adelaide was a Saviour smuggled into this world by one of the male Creators. It was just too hard to pass off Adelaide’s growth as anything less than being a transmigrator, the MC cliche was simply too strong with this one.
As for Scout, Bella was already 80+% sure that he was one of those Saviours as well. The ring containing the spirit of an old man was a cliche cheat that had been quite widely used back in Earth’s novels.
Seeing Bella’s group suddenly increasing their pace, all three of their stalkers thought that Bella had discovered something and that they had been exposed, but chose to continue their pursuit, speeding up to match Bella’s pace. After walking for several circles, Bella and the girls entered an elegantly designed and decored buildings.
Of the three people following them, two of them froze on the spot. Only the student council president of the commoners’ Francis branch, Britney, decided to leave her cover and continue her pursuit of Bella, after a short moment of hesitation.
Scout and Adelaide looked a little helplessly at the building in front of them, this was a building similar to the female washrooms back on Earth and there were quite a few female students coming and going from the building, the two Saviours could only try to remain hidden outside the buildings as they waited for Bella and the others to leave.
When Bella and the others sped up their pace earlier, these two had thought that the girls had discovered that they were being tailed. Seeing now that they had simply been in a rush to use the washroom, the secretly let out a breath that they had been holding for a while now, it seemed that they had not yet been discovered and all that worry was for nought.
As soon as president Britney closed the door behind her, she was grapped by someone from behind, a hand swiftly coming to block her mouth before Britney could yell for help. Quickly, two black-haired beauties appeared beside her, most likely her assailant’s accomplices, came and subdued her and then pulled Britney into a small room before locking the room’s door.
The assailant who had grabbed her from behind was also female, president Britney had identified her attacker’s gender the moment that she had fallen into the girl’s arms, due to this, Britney didn’t escalate her resistance.
“President Britney, you can speak now, why were you following us?”
“Er, this is all just a misunderstanding, Duchess Bellina… I just needed to come in here as well.”
“You’ve followed us even after we’ve walked in several circles, you call that a misunderstanding? Then let me word my question differently, why is the student council president of the Francis branch wandering around the Euphemia branch?”
“I’m here to find… find president Ese because I have something that I need to discuss with her. For real, I wasn’t trying to follow you girls.”
“That’s strange, after dismissal today I heard from Natasha that you had something you needed to talk with president Lucia about, so why are you over here looking for president Ese?”
“Uhm… Natasha probably remembered it wrong…”
“President Britney, I don’t think a dishonest girl is suitable to be a student council president~! How about this, I’ll come to find president Ese with you, didn’t you say that you were looking for her!?”
“This… I wouldn’t want to bother you, so myself is enough…:
“President Britney, just come clean. Natasha had already told me of the contents of your talk with Lucia, you’re following me because of that reason, am I right?”
“What? Didn’t Natasha and Lucia already promise to keep my secret, so why…”
Looking at the panicked Britney, a smile of victory appeared on Bella’s face. When they had first met, Bella had already guessed that Britney was a rather innocent and naive beauty. Now after just a few sentences, Britney spilled the beans as to the reason why she was following Bella.
Quite evidently, innocent girls weren’t very well suited for this line of work. Britney’s face exposed all of her thoughts and someone who was unable to hide their expressions was naturally unable to hide any secrets. Apparently, even though the student council presidents were generally all pretty well off financially, president Britney was the exception.
Of the five branch student councils within the Olsyvia Academy, the poorest would have to be that of the commoners’ Francis branch. Britney’s family was actually that of an impoverished noble’s, her father had once been the lord of a small fiefdom who had lost his land to other nobles during a territorial dispute.
After that event, Britney’s family situation had been in a steady decline. In recent years, Britney’s younger sister was diagnosed with a strange sickness and after expending all of her savings, Britney was unable to find a cure for her young sister’s ailment. There wasn’t much time left for her younger sister and Britney was able to see a glimmer of hope after hearing that Bella had auctioned off a bottle of ‘Elixir of Life’ at the Filomina branch’s auction for the seat of honour.
Britney’s sister had contracted a peculiar sickness and ‘Elixir of Life’ just might be able to save her life. So, Britney had tried asking the Filomina branch’s student council president, Lucia, for help, hoping to be able to obtain a drop of the valuable elixir. However, due to the fact that the bottle had already been placed into the treasury by the higher echelons of the Olsyvia Academy, not even Lucia could easily get her hands on it and she could only give her apologies to Britney.
The reason as to why Britney was following Bella and the others was because she wanted to find some time alone with Bella to ask if she had any more ‘Elixir of Life’ on her. If Bella had any left, Britney wouldn’t let this chance slip away from her hands once more. After their conversation, Bella learned that the president of the Golden Legend, Carlos, had been constantly been offering the Francis branch’s student council financial aid in secret. However, he had always been turned down by Britney, who opposed the idea of letting Carlos back them.
Carlos’ Golden Legend had always used this method to infiltrate the ranks of other student associations and turn them into his puppets. With this method, Carlos had annexed many small and medium-sized student associations and incorporated them into the Golden Legend. Now that he was no longer satisfied with only controlling student associations, Carlos turned his eyes toward the student councils of the five branch academies. The easiest target was Britney’s commoner council due to their financial problems, they were the easiest for Carlos to seep into.
After learning this, Bella naturally wasn’t going to let Carlos have his way. Her association, the Rose Society, had already openly declared opposition to the Golden Legend. After dealing with the bunch of Golden Legend members who were making trouble for the Rose Society last time, the Golden Legend’s members had tried several more times to surround the Rose Society’s main office and capture the association’s last bastion.
Only after Lisha and Kriss joined the Rose Society did the Golden Legend cease their antics, at least temporarily. The abilities of these two princesses were quite widely known and their title of ‘Hero’ wasn’t just for show, of the support that Carlos could obtain from outside, there weren’t any that were able to defeat Lisha or Kriss. Carlos was too smart to send his lackeys into a fight that was impossible to win.
The Golden Legend was currently recruiting around the Olsyvia Academy in hopes of finding someone capable of bringing him victory, meaning that he hadn’t given up on depriving the Rose Society of their last piece of territory, just that it would happen a little later than previously planned. So, Bella decided to help president Britney so that Carlos wouldn’t be able to further expand his power.
“President Britney, I’ll help you cure your little sister. However, this isn’t the place to have a proper talk. This transportation stone will take you straight to my dormitory if you have it out while using one of the academy’s teleportation formations. Come to find me sometime tomorrow night! We can discuss details then.”
“Thank you, Duchess Bellina, do you have anything that requires help? Even though I don’t have much money, but I still want to repay you for your help, I can’t just receive free help from someone.”
“Hmm, I haven’t decided on what I want yet. We can discuss a reward when you come to find me tomorrow night, quite a detailed discussion at that!”
___
Outside of the female washrooms, Scout and Adelaide had already been waiting for over an hour, there was still no sign of Bella and the others. Even if Bella and the others were having some stomach problems, there was no need for them to stay in the washroom for so long!?
Realizing that something had most likely gone wrong, with the help of the mysterious old man in his ring, Scout shamelessly entered the female washrooms still with the stealth magic on him. He had chosen a time with the least amount of girls in the building and none of the girls inside noticed a thing. After entering the washroom, Scout immediately saw an open window on the top of the building’s opposing wall.
Bella and the others had escaped through the high window without a ladder with the help of Angel’s little ‘friends’. Angel had gathered the nearby spirits and used a spell so that they would temporarily become ‘real’ and formed an invisible stairway for Bella and the others. Bella knew that even though they had entered the female washroom, there was still a chance that Scout might be shameless enough to sneak his way in with the help of the old man in his ring.
“I’m surprised that you didn’t request anything weird of president Britney, this isn’t like you at all?”
“What are you talking about, Ivy, I’m a good person. Just ask Kriss, do I seem like someone who would take advantage of others?’
Britney had already parted ways with Bella and the others. Even though Britney wasn’t originally planned to be one of Bella’s targets, but Bella wasn’t going to let Britney go now that she had presented herself to Bella.
Bella also realized that if she didn’t make Britney her’s, Carlos would definitely use his wealth to exploit Britney and that was something that Bella definitely didn’t want to see.
Even though they had thrown off the pursuit of Adelaide and Scout, Bella didn’t let down her guard as she didn’t know what kind of cheats they had and there was always the possibility that they wouldn’t give up and continue trying to tail her.
In order to spend some quiet time with Kriss, Bella chose the location for today’s lunch at the Bruce Street which was located at the centre of the Euphemia Academy, a shopping district owned by the Brotherhood. In the Olsyvia Academy, any places that weren’t faculty related or off limits were allowed to be claimed by student associations as long as they proved that they were capable of managing it.
Along the Bruce street, there we numerous pairs of handsome male students holding each other’s hand, living up to the Bruce street’s reputation of being a sacred place for philosophers. There was a sign at the entrance to the street explicitly stating that heterosexual couples weren’t allowed and even though the gatekeeping Brotherhood members were a little confused when they saw Bella’s group of girls, they still let the girls in. They had seen female and female couples before but this was the first time that they had seen an entire group of girls entering the Bruce street together. While the Bruce street was a sacred place for practitioners of philosophy, female students were still allowed in.
Bella’s earlier worries were correct, not long after she and the others entered one of the Bruce street’s restaurants, Scout and Adelaide had somehow managed to arrive at the Bruce street’s entrance as well. However, they froze in front of the gates as they looked at the sign that said ‘Single males not allowed, male students must bring an intimate male friend along for entry’.
Scout’s stealth magic was unable to be maintained here, the old man in the ring told Scout that it was because he had run out of magic. The actual reason that he didn’t tell Scout was that as soon as they had entered this area, he was able to feel a strange gaze wandering the Bruce street as well as a mysterious power that stopped all stealth abilities from being used.
“Bella, that store seems a little different, should we go and check it out?”
“Alright, let’s all go together. That store is a bit special, it’ll be more interesting if all of us go.”
After lunch, Bella and the others who were about to leave, spotted a mysterious store in the Bruce street. The exteriors of this store’s wall were painted in dark colours and there were countless different types of various strange items on display outside of the store. For example, those strange time-stopping rings that Charlotte had gifted Bella earlier, this store had an entire pile of them on the display stand.
Compared to the luxury and extravagance of the rest of Bruce Street, this store’s dark design and airs seemed outlandish when compared to its surroundings, however, none of the other students wandering by seemed like they could see the store and there didn’t seem to be anyone entering or exiting through the front.
The name of the store on the sign was a chain of strange characters that only Angel was barely able to make out ‘Thirteenth Exchange Entrance’. Right as Bella and the others were about to enter the store, a pair of handsome male students who had just happened by stopped them by getting in their way.
“Did you girls just see a shop with a black storefront? You can’t go in there!”
“Er, why is that senpai?”
“You girls are new students right, so it’s understandable that you haven’t heard of it yet, but this store is forbidden grounds.”
The two then told Bella and the others about the rumours circulating the Olsyvia Academy about a mysterious black store that appeared on the Bruce street at random times. No one knew who much about the store except that it would appear at random times and at random locations, seldom appearing in the same place twice in a row, only appearing to a few people at a time.
As for what was inside this store, no one knew, the students who entered either mysteriously disappeared, never to be found, or returned in a severe state of distress, many of those who entered were clerics and exorcists from the Church of Light. There was no effect when one used magic to attack the store either as if all the attacks had hit nothing.
Due to the fact that nothing happened if one didn’t enter the store, the Brotherhood and the higher-ups at the Euphemia branch locked down all information about the Bruce street’s mysterious store. One of the main reasons that the street was able to become holy grounds for practitioners of philosophy was the existence of this store.
After parting ways with the two senpais who were apparently a ‘couple’, Bella and girls turned to look at each other. They didn’t know whether this ‘forbidden’ shop was recorded on the ‘Strange Happenings of the Olsyvia Academy After Midnight’, but the chance was definitely likely. Ivy and Marlie were the tensest of the group, they were still normal humans, after all, it was natural for them to be fearful of the supernatural.
Bella, Angel, and Kriss were just a little curious, the three of them technically weren’t fully human and they didn’t know if they would be attacked by whatever it was in there. There was nothing forbidden for a group that contained demon kings and gods.
—TL NOTES—
IOU:20 + 5patreon
Interview went surprisingly well, I’ll start paying off Pateron chapters soon
—END—
