WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 16: Someone’s Trace
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Alice.
A girl frail by nature, with an air that made her seem ready to break at any moment.
The reason she came to glimpse a secret was a simple coincidence.
‘He helped me...’
Social anxiety.
Alice feared contact with people, even the outside air itself.
The headmaster had admitted her to the academy out of consideration, but a place packed with children her own age was no different from poison to her.
She had refused to attend classes even after the semester began.
The reason she had dared to go outside was a momentary whim.
Not wanting to worry the headmaster, she had steeled herself and left the dormitory.
‘M-my necklace... Yeriel gave it to me, but w-where did it go?’
Her clumsy outing had only led to the worst possible result.
She had lost something more precious than her life.
It was a treasure she would never trade for anything in the world.
She had been on the verge of tears as she searched through the bushes.
“Hello?”
A boy held out his hand to Alice.
The top student of Class E, the class she belonged to.
His name was Viktor, if she remembered correctly.
He was known for the grotesque mask he wore.
‘S-scary...!’
After the entrance ceremony, Alice hadn't attended classes for several days.
Even so, she had occasionally used her ability to observe the academy, so she had a grasp of the atmosphere in her class.
As far as she was concerned, Viktor was a scary person.
She knew he bullied his classmates.
So she had rashly let fear get the better of her.
She had been wary of the boy before her and let her fear show.
“Let's calm down first, shall we? I understand you were startled.”
“Ta-da. Use this to wipe your tears.”
“The flower is a gift.”
Yet, unlike what she had expected, the boy had been neither forceful nor frightening toward Alice.
His gentle tone, the handkerchief he kindly offered, even the balloon flower...
He treated her as if she were a fragile glass ornament.
“Please don't be so wary of me.”
“I'm very favorably inclined toward you, Miss Alice.”
Gently.
The thorns she had raised in her heart folded away, and her wariness gradually faded.
Alice barely managed to calm down.
The boy didn't stop there.
“May I ask what you lost?”
“Don't worry, Miss Alice.”
“Viktor and his friends will help you.”
This time, he gathered people and helped her find her necklace.
“It's all right. I only helped because I wanted to.”
“You said we're in the same class. Now that we've crossed paths, how could I not help you?”
Even when she tried to express her gratitude somehow, he only waved it away and said it was fine.
When Alice fidgeted anxiously, he casually added something, as if trying to ease her burden.
“Then how about this? Let's be friends from now on.”
Let's be friends.
It had been a very long time since she had heard those words, perhaps the first time in her life.
“The semester only just began. I don't really have any classmates I get along with either, so I was looking for someone to spend the semester with.”
“Yes. Or do you dislike me, Miss Alice?”
Her difficult life had never allowed her to form relationships with others.
Alice herself had never felt dissatisfied with that.
‘A loner.’
The girl considered it natural.
She thought it was a fate that would always stay with her, like her nightmares.
Other people's kindness was unfamiliar to her, and sometimes it even frightened her.
But...
“See you tomorrow, Miss Alice.”
The boy had easily crossed that boundary.
It had surely been a casual kindness, offered without much thought.
But that casual gesture left a profound impression on Alice.
Kindness directed at her.
That was why, even after returning to the dormitory, the girl remained lost in its lingering warmth.
“...”
Alice lay quietly on her bed.
Her eyes were on the ceiling, but her mind was elsewhere.
“That person's name was Viktor...”
It was nothing in particular.
For some reason, he was on her mind.
Despite it being their first meeting, he had readily shown her kindness.
A scary person, but someone she was grateful to.
That was how Alice remembered him.
“Hmm...”
It was getting late.
She had not meant to activate her ability.
Her ability activated on its own as her consciousness drifted toward sleep.
One Dream, Another Form.
The ability to see another person's world through dreams.
‘Even if it activates, it shouldn't be able to succeed with him...’
The conditions shouldn't have been met.
Just because she felt favorably toward him didn't mean he felt the same way about her.
She hadn't done anything to earn his favor, nor had there been time to.
Normally, she shouldn't have been able to see anything.
Yet...
‘Huh?’
She could see.
Her ability activated, and when she closed her eyes, an unfamiliar view appeared.
The backs of a black-haired boy and a silver-haired girl walking down a dark corridor.
The scene was somewhat blurry, but one of them was definitely Viktor.
His unusual mask made him easy to recognize.
‘H-how is this possible? How can I be sharing his vision...?’
Though confused, Alice soon peered at the scene before her.
Since it had activated anyway, she decided to watch for just a moment.
The boy strode through the dark corridor.
‘Where is this...? Wait, warning signs?’
They passed warning signs again and again.
Only then did Alice realize the place was Purgatory, the underground dungeon.
‘P-Purgatory? And the 70th floor? I heard entry was prohibited. How did he get in? No, more importantly, I have to stop him...’
There were no staff members accompanying him.
Only a silver-haired girl who looked roughly their age stood at his side.
While Alice panicked, the boy flung open the grand gate to the 70th floor.
He walked in without hesitation.
“Ah...! No...!”
He would die.
Someone was going to die.
Alice sprang out of bed.
Without even time to think, she was already running out of the dormitory.
‘This can't be... The master of the 70th floor, th-that thing... No one could survive it...!’
The master of that room was a dragon.
Even in its undead state, it radiated overwhelming force.
The contents of the warning signs flashed through her mind.
Official attempts to clear it had failed several times, and countless raid party members had died.
It didn't matter whether they were students or not. Even professor-level powerhouses had been swept away.
‘I have to tell someone! B-but who? The headmaster? Sister Javert? Or anyone else...!’
She had to alert them and get help.
As she frantically tried to leave the dormitory with that thought in mind, Alice felt the vision flowing into her flash brightly.
“Ugh...!”
Her brow furrowed.
Had it been about two minutes since the boy entered the room?
After seeing what followed, Alice had no choice but to stop in her tracks.
“...Huh?”
It was gone.
Half of the dragon was gone.
“Huh, huhhh?!”
It happened in an instant.
The boy snapped his fingers, and the creature was cut in half.
Its massive body shrank as rust-colored liquid spread in every direction.
The dragon was dealt with without even a single scream.
“Uh, uh...?”
What had she just seen?
It was dead.
He had killed it.
With a single gesture, he had killed the master of the 70th floor, a dragon.
He had split it precisely in half as if he were playing with it.
“...”
Alice felt something bizarre, as though everything she had known as common sense had been overturned.
Regardless, the boy simply cleaned up afterward without a care.
As if a sight like this meant nothing to him.
Just as everything seemed to be settling down...
“...?”
Their eyes met.
“...What?”
It wasn't her imagination.
Beyond the blurry vision, the eyes behind the mask.
They were staring straight at her.
“Hehe.”
He was smiling.
The mask was grinning grotesquely as always.
Alice couldn't breathe beneath the overwhelming sensation.
It felt as though that smile would tear open at any moment and hundreds of tentacles would crawl out.
As though teeming death would close around her throat.
“Haah, haah...”
He had noticed her.
And he was smiling as if to mock her.
As if he had known from the beginning that she was watching.
The mask.
He grinned.
“Gasp...!”
Then the vision finally cut off.
Alice could only gasp for breath.
It felt as if that killing intent still lingered along her spine.
Panic overtook her.
“Our, our eyes met...? H-how? This has never happened before...”
Her blue eyes shook wildly.
He was someone who could tear apart even a dragon with a single gesture, a single look.
There was no way such a monster couldn't see through her.
‘I've been marked.’
The boy had been hiding his strength.
But why? Why would he?
Was he trying to infiltrate the academy?
Why had he deliberately become the top student of Class E?
Why had he cleared Purgatory?
What was his purpose in hiding his strength?
Countless questions crossed her mind, but none of them mattered to Alice right now.
“He, he noticed me...!”
A suspicious person hiding his strength.
She had learned the truth about someone like that.
And he had realized she knew the truth.
She remembered the smile the mask had given her before the vision cut off.
“Ah, ahh...”
Only one kind of development came to mind in a situation like this.
She knew too many secrets, so Alice had been marked by him.
“I-I'm going to die... He'll kill me. He'll, he'll silence me...”
Tears ran down her cheeks.
The girl's face had gone pale.
“Sniff... W-what do I do...?”
The girl's trembling didn't stop for a long time.
* * *
The next day.
The staff had also noticed the anomaly on the 70th floor.
An emergency had been declared among the professors from early morning.
“What? Purgatory's 70th floor was cleared overnight? What kind of bullshit is that?”
An emergency meeting was immediately convened.
Every professor sat there with a pale face.
“Does this even make sense? Purgatory's 70th floor was clearly a sealed floor!”
“And it was successfully cleared... Just what is going on here?”
“How did anyone even enter Purgatory? Were the guards asleep on the job?”
The meeting room was in an uproar.
The professors each raised their voices to express their concerns.
“This is difficult to accept. Even official raid parties failed several times. Throughout the academy's history, far too many members died in the line of duty.”
“That's why we decided twenty years ago to seal Purgatory's 70th floor.”
“And yet... that 70th floor was suddenly cleared in a single night?”
“Fuck, what the hell is going on...?”
The 70th floor had remained unconquered throughout the academy's history.
The longer a staff member had worked there, the harder it was to accept what had happened.
They had heard enough about that floor's infamy to be sick of it.
“Purgatory is the most heavily guarded place in the academy. It is difficult to believe someone forced their way in through the front. In particular, the captain of the guard reported that there were neither visitors nor intruders last night. They say not even an ant crawled past Purgatory's entrance.”
“Then what is it? Are you saying there's some hidden path leading into Purgatory?”
“That's ridiculous! We conduct regular inspections because we worry about exactly that. Throughout the academy's history, there has never been any hidden path to Purgatory.”
“We can't make heads or tails of this...”
It was utterly baffling.
The 70th floor had been cleared, yet nobody had entered Purgatory.
Neither the staff nor anyone else had approached it overnight.
“You have all reviewed the materials, correct?”
That wasn't all.
A screen had been provided to each staff member.
“...”
The screen showed the wrecked landscape of the 70th floor.
At its center lay a huge lump of flesh.
The professors couldn't hide their dismay.
“My God, the dragon was cut in half...”
“Professor Rekan. Can you do something like this?”
“Do you think I can? Even if you brought the commander of the Imperial Knights, they couldn't do it.”
“Are we sure it was a dragon?”
“Yes, the autopsy is complete. Though it had become undead, a dragon is still a dragon. The cause of death is exactly as you see on the screen. It appears to have been split in half by a single strike. The other half that was cut away has vanished without a trace.”
“Gods above...”
The staff members' gazes turned cold.
Someone swallowed dryly as a chill ran down their spine.
“Then that means...”
“They're in this academy, aren't they? Someone who can break through tight security, infiltrate Purgatory, and split an undead dragon in half with a single strike? You're saying some bastard like that could be hiding in the academy right now?”
“...”
Once it was plainly put into words, the matter felt even more serious.
As the staff struggled to find their bearings, the white-haired old man finally spoke.
It was the headmaster, who had silently watched the situation unfold.
“For now... we will not inform the outside world of this incident. Until we understand the situation, control all information regarding Purgatory.”
“Yes!”
“And... I ask every member of the staff to investigate. We must identify the person responsible and determine whether they pose a danger to the academy. Do not overlook a single suspicious detail.”
“Understood!”
The staff responded crisply, like a military unit.
Among them, only one person had their attention elsewhere.
It was Chief Investigator Javert.
“...”
Javert's green eyes blinked calmly behind locks of red hair falling across her face.
She stared silently at the screen provided as evidence.
She held someone's profile in her hand, her eyes moving between it and the screen as though comparing them again and again.
Her gaze seemed devoid of emotion.
Scratch, scratch.
Additional notes were written across the profile.
The subject's name was written on the hard-backed folder.
[Viktor]
The boy with the mask.
Until the staff meeting ended, Javert silently stared at it.
* * *
A refreshing morning had arrived.
After last night's hard work, it was a day without a single thing to worry about.
The sunny weather had me feeling oddly excited.
‘I've got the dragon's scale, and the refinement materials too...’
Everything was going smoothly.
Now all I had to wait for was the Freshman Welcome Test tomorrow.
There were no classes today, so I could lie around and rest.
I planned to spend the day relaxing while I waited for tomorrow’s event.
“...”
Right.
I thought that would be enough.
“Student Viktor.”
“Yes, Professor Javert.”
That was before this happened.
The red-haired woman suddenly came to see me around lunchtime.
She sat in the chair across from me, looking my way with lifeless eyes.
Her green eyes held no trace of vitality.
“I will ask directly.”
“Please do.”
“Was it you? The one who cleared Purgatory's 70th floor.”
“...Pardon?”
I asked, dumbfounded.
Footnotes:
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