As we stepped outside the student council building, the blue sky greeted us warmly.
Suddenly, Irene asked me a question.
“What do you think of this school, Violet?”
I didn’t even need to think.
“It’s trash! Garbage! A pile of filth not even deserving to be called a school!”
“Hmm… Yeah, you’re right. It is trash.”
Hearing my response, Irene’s expression grew a little conflicted. Did I go too far?
As we walked past the campus courtyard, she suddenly stopped.
“Could you wait here for a moment?”
It seemed to depict a person, but due to the neglect, it was a mess.
“I didn’t realize the vines had grown this much just because I’ve been busy for a few days.”
Irene began tearing away the vines with her own hands.
Despite her petite stature, she yanked at them vigorously, and the vines clinging to the statue came off easily.
“Let me help!”
I didn’t know exactly why, but I joined her in removing the vines and tossing them aside.
When she pulled, they came off easily, but when I tried, they wouldn’t budge.
What was the difference?
Once the vines were mostly cleared, Irene brushed off the fallen leaves and dust around the statue.
Only then did I realize that the statue depicted a young man and woman.
Their posture was proud and imposing.
Looking closely at their faces, they bore a resemblance to the girl beside me.
And when I examined the plaque at the base of the statue, I understood why.
[In honor of Orion Solstice and Zora Annis, great heroes of Polaris. F.E. 17.]
“Aha! These must be your parents, Irene!”
“Yes, that’s right. They’re my parents.”
The subjects depicted by the statue were Irene’s parents.
In society, they were better known by their epithets: The Spearman of Radiance and The Witch of Dawn.
Heroes who singlehandedly defeated numerous high-ranking magical beasts and took down corrupt Awakened criminals in succession.
They were also the leaders of the Helios Clan.
Of course, in the present timeline, both of them were deceased.
I wasn’t sure about their current status, but that was their fate in the main storyline.
As she gazed at the statue, Irene spoke calmly.
“Since I was a child, I dreamed of entering this school. My parents graduated from here, and I heard it was a prestigious school with an excellent reputation. The rules were strict, but it was said to have an outstanding tradition and history.”
She turned her head towards me, her expression a mix of disappointment, disillusionment, and bitterness.
“But I never imagined it would end up like this. Honestly, even before I enrolled, there were some concerning rumors going around, but I thought they were exaggerated. I never thought they would turn out to be true.”
Irene muttered with a serious expression.
“And, above all, the entrance ceremony…”
“The entrance ceremony?”
“Violet, you know about the incident with the magical beast appearing during the entrance ceremony, right?”
“Of course I do!”
I didn’t just know about it—I died and came back to life because of that beast.
“In a normal school, it’s nearly impossible for a gate to open inside the premises, much less for a magical beast to appear. Academy grounds for Awakened individuals are built in stable locations. And yet, the incident was completely buried. They called it a simple accident. Does that even make sense?”
“Now that you mention it, it does seem strange.”
“But they just swept it under the rug like nothing happened. People died! And the response from the student council and the board of directors? It was suspicious, to say the least. But… there was nothing I could do about it.”
As expected, her thoughts aligned with mine.
That incident had been far too suspicious in my eyes as well.
Watching Irene’s shoulders slump as she passionately explained her thoughts, I felt a pang of sympathy for the adorable girl who seemed so dejected.
I decided to help her out a little, even if there was nothing for me to lose by doing so.
I led her to a nearby bench.
“Irene, do you have any idea why this school has become like this?”
I began by posing a light question to ease into the conversation.
“Not really. I’ve been too busy helping other students to look into the school’s past.”
I explained to her what I’d discovered about how the school had been rapidly absorbing and merging with other schools in recent years.
Perhaps Irene, being familiar with clan dynamics, might have some insight into this.
“That’s surprising. Thanks for letting me know. Now that I think about it, it does seem odd.”
“By the way, do you know anything about the Polaris Academy Board of Directors?”
She replied immediately.
“The Polaris Academy Board is one of the many corporations and foundations operated by the Magna Nabis Clan. Do you know what kind of clan Magna Nabis is?”
Of course, I knew.
It’s one of the four massive clans that manage Rustlum, and they control the western region.
“The student council president is already suspicious, but the board of directors is even worse! How could they suppress every report about incidents like this?”
“You’re right. We should look into this. I’ll also ask the clan’s contacts to check, within reasonable limits. But…”
As we continued our conversation, Irene suddenly stopped talking and gave me an odd look.
“By the way, how much of our earlier conversation did you hear?”
Ah, I had given myself away.
“To be honest, I heard it all from the beginning.”
Startled, she hurriedly scanned her surroundings.
“Absolutely, under no circumstances, tell anyone else about this. As far as you’re concerned, you didn’t hear anything. Got it?”
Under her serious warning, I quickly nodded. I decided to steer the conversation to a different topic.
“By the way, the dueling ground—is it common for disputes to be settled through duels, even among outsiders?”
“It’s not uncommon. Actually, it happens quite often. But this is a school. We’re still students. For the administration to resolve systemic problems through personal fights—it’s absurd!”
Her voice rose slightly in frustration but quickly calmed down as she continued.
“Still, for now, I need to focus on what I can do.”
“What you can do…”
“For starters, I plan to steady my mind and train. First, the Freshmen Management Committee, then the Student Council, and finally…”
I had a pretty good idea of the last word she left unspoken: the Student Council President.
It seemed like her own method of addressing the school’s corruption and the calamity of the entrance ceremony.
But wasn’t it too much for her right now?
That guy—just by looking at him, you could tell he was ridiculously strong.
Irene, without the experience, power, or even her signature weapon from the main storyline, didn’t stand a chance against him.
“Anyway, thanks for offering to help. I’ll look into this on my end, but let me know if you find anything new. Just don’t push yourself too hard!”
“Got it.”
I immediately returned to start digging up information.
That evening, the third Violet Emergency Meeting was convened.
-Central team, Southwestern team, have you found anything?-
-Well, not much is coming up.-
There are various ways to gather information, but in the age of digitization, the number one method is the internet.
The Central Violet Squad, equipped with battered laptops and smartphones they’d scavenged, got to work.
The dungeon team in the southwest, now staying in a small rented room after hopping between motels, powered up a secondhand tablet PC.
-If only we could clone electronics, that’d be great.-
-Complex devices are a gamble when it comes to cloning. Let’s just buy what we need.-
The school team rummaged through the library, mostly looking for anything related to the school’s history.
Still, it was strange.
Why was the library so empty?
-Any luck finding an official school brochure?-
-It’s hard to find anything under all this dust. Loads of books don’t even have their classification numbers anymore.-
No. 8 from Central, fiddling with a smartphone, started explaining.
“Let me begin by explaining the state of the school website. You know how there’s usually an introduction or history section, right? Something that shows how the school started and evolved over time. But guess what?”
No. 8 paused dramatically before continuing.
“There isn’t one!”
“What do you mean?”
“None at all! These people don’t seem to maintain the website. There hasn’t been any update since F.E. 20. Even information about students and staff is barely outlined.”
No. 8 adjusted the data.
“Want to hear something creepier? Check this out. I searched for news articles using the keyword ‘Polaris Academy.’”
No. 8 shared their screen.
The laptop display appeared.
Setting the search period to the current year and hitting the keyboard brought up fewer than a hundred results.
Most were basic admission advertisements, promotional pieces, or articles with vaguely related terms.
It was the same for other search results.
There was nothing detailed about the school itself—just trivial content.
“But you know what happens if you turn back the clock by a few years?”
Adjusting the search period to several years earlier, they pressed enter.
Suddenly, a mountain of information flooded the screen.
Articles, reviews, opinions, and critiques about the school were everywhere.
“I checked. Starting around 6 to 7 years ago, mentions of Polaris Academy on the internet began to drop drastically. Media articles? Don’t even get me started.”
“Wait, so the volume of content about the school from the past compared to now is this different?”
“Let’s dig into the old material first.”
Scrolling through the monitor revealed a variety of content.
<The Growth and Challenges of Polaris Academy: Tasks for the Future>
<How Orion the Spearman Became the Best—Polaris’s Educational Philosophy>
···
As I scrolled further, an interesting title caught my eye.
It was a post on a small community forum that dealt with issues related to hunters and Awakened individuals.
<Oh! Warm and Bittersweet Memories of Polaris’s 13th Class! F.E. 18.05.29>
“Let’s check that out.”
The post belonged to an older individual reminiscing about their past, accompanied by a photo of their graduation certificate.
<…During the freshman orientation at the entrance ceremony, a mid-tier magical beast suddenly appeared in the middle of the auditorium. I was shocked, and everyone panicked, but it turned out to be a hologram.
Senior students comforted the crying and trembling freshmen with laughter.
Apparently, it was an old tradition of our school’s initiation ceremony.
After that, I too welcomed younger students as they cried and laughed. …We all got along happily, like a family!
…Oh, youth, oh memories! Although I retired due to injury, I still miss my school days…>
The post ended with a nostalgic sigh.
“Even in the past, it was practically an annual tradition for the entrance ceremony to be interrupted by monsters. Though back then, it was fake.”
“Is that person really the real deal?”
“Judging by the certified diploma, it seems so. But the last post they made was seven years ago. It says the writer has left the group.”
We continued to search for school-related materials.
“Is there something like an alumni association?”
“There is, but it shows up as an unregistered number.”
“These people aren’t reachable either.”
It was strange.
The more we searched, the more we felt an invisible wall.
It felt like someone had been intentionally controlling school-related information on the internet for the past five years.
The closer the timeline got to the year 20, the fewer writings or posts specifically describing the school or addressing issues about it appeared.
But even amidst all that, we were able to find one clue.
The same name kept popping up—like when we previously looked into the school consolidation issue.
<“Sudden Department Expansion: Is It Appropriate? Vice Chair Valefor. ‘Specialization in Awakened Education’”>
<“Prestigious Polaris Expands Admissions—Valefor Chair’s Plan”>
“Valefor Chair?”
“Try looking them up.”
Surprisingly, as soon as we typed in the name of the chairperson, we immediately found out who they were.
That’s because they were incredibly famous!
The screen displayed the photo of a man with a youthful appearance, long ash-gray hair tied back, and a strikingly young-looking face.
“Notis Valefor. Former head of the Magnaavis Clan. Current chair of the Polaris Board of Directors. S-Class Hunter. A high-ranking mage with combat power equivalent to Level 5… Why does this guy have so many titles attached to his name?”
“Though his appearance is young, he’s older than you’d think! Seems like he even experienced the First Dimensional Invasion that occurred before the Federation Era.”
It was beyond impressive.
With power at this level, he was practically the equivalent of a small army.
One of my other No.s muttered as they read through the chairperson’s profile.
“Here, found it. I’ll read his biography. Served as the leader of the clan until 15. Stepped down from the position that year. Started serving as the vice chair of the Polaris Board of Directors from 16. And from 20 onward, he’s been the chair until now!”
The timeline was striking.
The school consolidation and department expansions began around the time this person moved to the board.
While listening to the explanation, the first No., who had been combing through books in the library, suddenly gasped.
“Ack! Look at this!”
“What is it?”
No. 1 pulled out old school brochures, lining them up by year on the empty library desk.
“Our department is called the Dungeon Strategy and Management Department, right?”
“Yeah. That’s what it’s called.”
“But look here. In the Academy game, this kind of department didn’t exist!”
“And in this brochure, it didn’t exist until a few years ago either.”
We opened an outdated school brochure from 17 that had been buried in the library.
<Departments: Combat/Tactics, Field Support, Exploration and Reconnaissance, Strategy and Management>
“Back then, they only operated a few integrated departments that covered multiple fields. Now, let’s look at the current year’s brochure.”
In the opened brochure, the number of departments, which had previously been only four, had nearly doubled year by year.
It was like a Fibonacci sequence, multiplying like rabbits.
“Just look at this ridiculousness. It’s like splitting an art department into Primal Art, Renaissance Art, Impressionist Art, and Romanticist Art. This is absurd! It’s like they’re carving it up into pieces for no reason.”
“It looks like a desperate trick to inflate student numbers. Couldn’t they just increase the size of existing departments?”
“Maybe there were other constraints, like a cap on the number of students allowed per department.”
No. 1, still examining the books, pointed at another section with their finger.
“Look at this. The admission procedures have also been increasing. Back in the day, there was only a regular entrance exam, but now, there are all kinds of quirky processes like special admissions or donation-based entries.”
We all sighed in unison. The more we looked, the more absurd it seemed.
After the new chair took over, the school had suddenly started expanding its size, accepting students by any means necessary. We were dying to know the reason behind it.
No. 6 offered a hypothesis.
“Could it be for money? Maybe they’re trying to profit by selling degrees and pocketing the tuition fees.”
No. 2 argued.
“Valefor was the head of one of the Four Great Clans. Based on his background, he’s basically a walking war machine. Would someone like that come here out of desperation for money?”
“Maybe he’s gone senile…”
“Stop with the nonsense!”
After a brief silence, an idea sparked in No. 7’s mind. Like lightning, the realization spread through the entire Violet Network.
“What did the student council president say earlier? Something about ‘five years of enrollment,’ wasn’t it?”
“Right. Let’s see if it’s in the brochures we brought.”
Soon, a mix of exclamations and cheers came from the library section.
“Found it! It’s right here. Wait, what?”
“What’s wrong? A student council president starting from their first year?”
In the <20 Academic Year Student Council List> section, the top entry featured the name and photo of one “Crosell Torrence.” It was him.
All of the Violets’ minds began whirring.
We quickly pieced together a logical conclusion based on the information we had gathered.
“The chairperson consolidated nearby schools into Polaris and split the departments.”
“And the year this Valefor or whoever became chair, a guy named Crosell started serving as the student council president from his first year.”
“The student council president has direct communication with the board of directors.”
“And now, the school is a mess. Just five years after the new chair took over.”
We posed the question.
“Can all of this really be a coincidence?”
We felt like we’d stumbled upon a clue.
But we still couldn’t resolve the fundamental mystery. A single question lingered in all our minds: Why?
“Why did they go out of their way to expand the school? We’ve only discovered connections, not explanations.”
“Why do the seniors act like bullies, and why are the professors so incompetent?”
“Why did monsters invade the entrance ceremony?”
We tried to come up with plausible reasons.
“Maybe the student council neglected the sudden school expansion, creating an environment where bullying could thrive. Maybe the student council president even encouraged it.”
“The poor quality of professors or instructors could be explained by the rushed expansion of the school, leading to a decline in education standards.”
“As for why monsters showed up… I have no idea!”
Still, we didn’t have a fundamental answer.
“So, why are they doing all this?”
“Who knows? Maybe they’re secretly running an underground pedophile ring in the school basement or something?”
We still couldn’t figure it out.
“For now, let’s tell Irene. She might be able to find something we missed.”
“Good idea.”
With more questions than answers, we ended the meeting.
“Should we explore the school a bit? There are plenty of unused, empty buildings around here. We might even find some items while searching.”
“Sounds good. Let’s investigate at night. And… should we ask the professors about what the school was like in the past?”
“I don’t know. All the professors here are weird. I doubt anyone will give us a straight answer.”
We tilted our heads in doubt. Could anyone really explain how the school had changed in detail since the new chairperson took over?
But as the saying goes, “The darkest place is under the candlestick.”
Because the very next day, I found someone who could answer my questions right under my nose.
“Hey, brat! Are you even practicing your swordsmanship properly these days?”
“Yes! I am practicing!”
“Practicing, my ass! Just look at the way you’re swinging your sword. Tch… Get down! Fifty push-ups!”
“Eek!”