The Overpowered Cult Leader at the Academy Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Lightning Nightmare (2)

—Granvi.

“Huff!”

Granvi sprang up from his seat. His body was drenched in cold sweat. Still unable to gather his senses, a single thought soon surfaced in his mind.

Was this a nightmare? If one were an ordinary person, they would not have been able to escape a sickbed. It was a terror of that magnitude.

“Phew. My training is lacking.”

After saying that, he rose to his feet. Then Granvi realized that he had not yet escaped the dream.

Otherwise, he would not have been seeing a vast adow instead of the Academy.

“This… is.”

The scenery was so familiar that it had been engraved into his mind. It was the place where he had spent his childhood in the past. His cognition could not keep up with the situation.

He could not grasp at all why he was here.

—Granvi.

“……”

He turned at the sound of soone calling his na. That beautiful voice carried many things within it.

No, rather, the countless emotions that rose up when he heard that voice made it feel that way. It was love, longing, and at the sa ti, anger.

“rhen.”

—My Granvi. It’s been a long ti.

The girl he had been forced to let go because of his own ugliness stood there.

The girl greeted Granvi with a smile like sunlight. Her low-saturation green hair swayed in the wind.

The worn skirt she wore fluttered precariously like a lamp before the wind. Granvi stared at her with a hardened expression.

The only person in his life who had ever made him feel true anger was this girl, and at the sa ti, she was the one who had brought him his greatest regret.

—It seems that place is enjoyable.

“……”

—If I had been there, you wouldn’t have been in that position.

She was from the sa hotown as him, a friend with whom he had grown up sharing dreams. He, the son of a carpenter, and rhen, the daughter of a hunter.

Their relationship had been very close, but the difference between them had not been one of intimacy—it had been one of skill. From a young age, rhen had run across the hills and hunted wild animals.

Her skill with the bow had been nothing short of exquisite. Even in the use of a sword, she had been a step above Granvi.

In the daily sparring matches, Granvi had never once defeated her. Each ti, she had comforted him, but the Granvi of those childhood days had not felt it that way.

He had been jealous. He was a boy and possessed a stronger body. Yet in the end, he could not surpass her.

With an ugly heart, he had grown to resent rhen. His resolve to graduate from Museion Academy and proudly beco a knight had, before he knew it, beco filled with anger.

Why could he not beco like her? Why could he not move like her? Why could he not be faster than her? Why could he not beco stronger than her?

That anger had rcilessly devoured the young Granvi.

—Do you truly like the Academy you went to in my place?

A question spoken with innocent brightness, without even a handful of malice. Yet what lay within it was powerful malice. rhen’s malice? No—ugly malice that Granvi himself had created.

One needed exceptional skill, and the tuition was by no ans cheap. Even so, the villagers had sincerely supported the dreams of these two children.

“I… I didn’t an for that to happen.”

—Yes, I know. But it turned out this way.

“I… I never. Ne… never imagined it would turn out like this! Not even in my dreams!”

—Yes, I know. But Granvi. It turned out this way. Just like how you’re standing in that place instead of .

“A… Aaaah! Uaaaaaaah!”

A mistake he had made because he could not overco his jealousy and envy. If they had passed together, it was obvious they would be compared, so he had devised the worst possible move.

Saying he would submit it on the way, Granvi had taken rhen’s application form and crumpled it before throwing it into the river.

But unlike rhen, Granvi had lacked the skill. And so they had both failed the Academy’s first round together.

However, Granvi had known that there was a relief system for provincial students like them, and he had applied for it. Proudly enough, he had been selected.

Even in that situation, rhen had smiled and congratulated him. She had remained in the village, carrying on her father’s will.

—I truly did congratulate you, you know?

“Stooooop!”

Guilt. Unable to endure the pain of that heavy word pressing down on him, Granvi threw his head back and scread toward the sky.

Was this the nightmare! Was this my anger! Were these the sins of my past!

Granvi ended up recalling the version of himself who had once been unbearably ugly, the self who had harbored the greatest anger of his entire life.

“Uaaaaaah!”

“Waaah! What! What is it!”

Because of Granvi, who sprang up screaming, confusion blood inside the once-quiet hospital room.

The healer, who had been busy dealing with matters related to nightmares lately and had taken a brief mont to rest, was startled out of her wits.

She hurried toward the bed surrounded by curtains. A student was shedding tears, his entire body soaked in sweat.

It was the reaction shown by students afflicted by nightmares. And what needed to be done afterward was almost predetermined.

“Kgh! Ugh! Nightmare! Nightmare!”

“C… calm down!”

The student shot up like an arrow. The healer hurriedly clung to him, but she had no idea where such strength was coming from.

Granvi shook off the healer and ran sowhere. The healer’s desperate calls quickly faded behind him.

“Huff! Huff!”

“What is it.”

The place Granvi arrived at, running like a madman, was a space set aside for the Imperial Knight Order in one corner of the academic affairs office.

One mber of the Imperial Knight Order, who had been taking a short rest there, frowned and called out to Granvi.

“I… I did it.”

“What?”

“No… No, no, no. It’s all because of .”

“What? What are you talking about? Student! Student! Take a deep breath!”

Granvi, who could barely breathe properly, tearfully poured everything out.

The trigger of the incident. In other words, the reason. The story of the Anaye Order. The person who had instructed the tampering at the chapel. That he himself stood at the center of all of it.

Having confessed like this, he even went so far as to beg them to get rid of this nightmare.

“And that’s the ru~mor so far!”

“Well done. You’ve done sothing big.”

Winter wore a blank expression. Davide, who was receiving the report from Canis, looked thoroughly satisfied.

So satisfied, in fact, that he personally poured tea into Canis’s teacup and even fed her dessert with his own hands.

It was not the sort of kindness soone like Davide would normally show. The current situation at the Academy was extrely chaotic.

So said it was the work of an evil spirit, others claid it was the remnant of the attack incident, and still others insisted it was the doing of grand-scale illusion magic.

This phenonon called [Lightning Nightmare], which was generating endless gossip, had been created by these two.

In other words, it was a scam orchestrated by the damned duo of Planner Davide and Director Canis.

And by chance, they had just heard the desperate experience of one student. Of course, if it was considered punishnt for the petty stunt pulled at the chapel, it felt sowhat refreshing—but still, perhaps it had gone a bit too far.

“I… Isn’t this going to beco a problem later?”

“It will beco a problem.”

“……Haaah! Huaaah!”

He answered calmly. He knew very well what kind of thing he was doing. And yet, he went through with it anyway.

“If we get caught, that is.”

“This will absolutely not be discovered~ Our Winter is such a scaredy-cat~”

“There are incredible people at the Academy! We’ll get caught!”

Davide shook his head. It carried the certainty that no matter who ca, they would never find out. Seeing that, I could not help but feel reassured.

Up until now, he had kept his word. If he said he would return, he returned. If he said here, then it was here. Everything happened exactly as he said.

Such precedents created an absurd level of trust. No matter how I thought about it, it felt like we would definitely get caught—but because it was Davide saying otherwise, it sohow felt like that wouldn’t happen.

“How did you even do it…….”

“It’s simple. You just spread rumors. That so idiot got struck by lightning while eating and collapsed.”

“……You didn’t actually drop real lightning, right?”

“Of course not. I can’t do sothing like that in the first place. I’m not a magician. Anyway. You just spread the rumor. If you get a few people in on it and casually let it slip, they’ll take care of the rest themselves.”

“…….”

“After that, it’s simple. You just barge into their dreams. Then you get a situation like this.”

“Barge into… their dreams? That’s possible? When you’re not a magician?”

“Tada~ If you have this, everything goes smoothly~”

—Displeasure.

Canis cut in. She took sothing out from her bosom and proudly showed it.

A being created through Ancient Magic that she could not help but take pride in. It was Anger. Having run tirelessly over the past few nights, Anger reacted sensitively.

“This is… that monster, isn’t it?”

“It’s a creation made by that guy.”

Davide brushed it off vaguely. Though it looked foolish, that thing had been made with Ancient Magic. It was sothing extrely rare, said to have been lost.

A kind of thought-form created through Canis restraining her anger. An irregular that parasitized her mind and even exerted physical force.

This creature stimulated the anger of whatever it ca into contact with. It touched the primal rage knotted deep within the heart.

When the victims fell asleep, they simply had to secretly send Anger. When Anger laid a hand on their bodies, the primal anger that had taken root in their chests burst forth.

However, because emotional agitation occurred while they were asleep—more precisely, while they were dreaming—that agitation was reflected directly into the dream.

“That’s possible? It’s a dream.”

“I don’t know the principle. But they said it was possible, so we tested it, and now we’ve applied it.”

Davide dismissed it just like that. Winter gave up trying to think about it. She just… just hoped everyone would be safe.

She felt guilty for having done sothing terrible to the victims, but she did not show it outwardly. To hesitate and be stained by such emotions, when the path the man before her walked was so overwhelmingly tyrannical, was not an option.

Davide faintly noticed Winter’s expression. He had thought she might feel that way, and indeed, she seed to.

“Don’t worry about the victims. They deserve it.”

“Pardon?”

“They’re the ones who pulled that crap at our chapel recently. They did it at that bastard’s instigation. I barely managed to stop Anaye from dropping real lightning.”

“Ah, I see—Wait, dropping what!?”

Recently, the Holy Scripture of the Anaye Faith had begun trembling at all hours. It trembled so much that even while falling onto Davide’s head, it continued to shake.

The reason for its ceaseless vibration mode was easy to guess. A chapel was a place that served a god.

From Anaye’s perspective, it was as if soone had scribbled that kind of graffiti across her face. There was no reason for her not to be furious.

Moreover, knowing that Anaye’s temperant was not exactly gentle, Davide had sowhat foreseen this situation.

Saying she would drop lightning was sothing he said casually, but if she truly could have, she probably would have. Of this, he was certain.

Thus, in order to soothe the enraged Anaye, Davide put effort into offerings. He presented an ornant taken from Astral’s laboratory—sothing that looked expensive but seed impossible to sell.

“Phew. Just what in the world is going on…….”

Winter sighed as though nursing a headache. This was not sothing on the scale a re student should be capable of. She had absolutely no confidence in handling this situation.

“After going this far, they’ll take the bait, right?”

“Of course~ Their napes must be tingling already.”

“The deal cos after that.”

“Of course! I’m waiting for that mont~”

Just what kind of deal had they made now? Winter looked at Canis. Honestly, she felt burdened. From their first eting to her current conduct.

Davide did not particularly like her either. He found her troubleso enough to rank her fourth on the Death Note.

Canis was not much different. The malice that the Ulbushis Family harbored toward the Duhein Family. Canis, who would have inherited that sentint 그대로, would not have lent her hand so easily.

“Anaye…… is frightening.”

Now she was no longer afraid of other things. She had to worry about sothing else. What had Davide offered to Canis?

What kind of item was it? Or money? If not that, then what? What could possibly move Canis?

The pale white girl was afraid of that.