Chapter 55

RATH 55

TL: Eevee

7. Is your backside safe? (7)

#10 Their story: the story of the imprisoned

“What is it this time?”

“Hm… there’s no traces on the surface. Should I try adding magic power?”

“Try it. After that try fire, then water.”

We found blank pages throughout the classrooms.

There were ones that looked like textbooks, ones that were just plank pages, and some that were even some that were in what looked like love letters.

And the majority of them were.

-Too bad! Better luck next time!

-A prizeworthy attempt, but no prize this time!

-Congratulations, you… didn’t win anything!

Duds were the overwhelming majority! And moreover, every time we found an actual hint, there were around 20 failures.

“Found ooooooooonnnnneee!”

“The letters this time are ‘cei,’ ‘cei!’”

“So the hints we have so far are ‘rou,’ ‘is,’ ‘on,’ and now ‘cei?’ That’s four in total, right?”

“Yeah, and the fails are nearing a hundred.”

“Are we just shit out of luck, or are there that many duds?”

“Probably both?”

“That’s true. If we were lucky then we wouldn’t even have enrolled into Yugrasia, right?”

“Yeah, or we’d have graduated before Professor Nicerwin came.”

As everyone heatedly nodded in agreement to that opinion, we checked the papers we had so far.

There were four types discovered so far.

The one I had found first was the type that revealed itself when you rubbed powder or dirt into the gaps.

Another type was one where letters revealed themselves if you poured in magic power.

There was also the type where letters revealed themselves if you soaked the paper in water.

And finally the type where letters revealed themselves if you heated it over fire.

If there are just these four types, we can identify all the clues on the blank pages!

“New type discovered! It’s a paper that doesn’t correspond to any of the methods we’ve found so far!”

Or we could until now!

“Damn it! Is there another method we can use?”

“Dunno, I dunno…”

The vice president Karen murmured while thumping her head against the desk.

The day had already gone by.

There were no windows in this room, but thanks to someone who was wearing a watch, we could tell the current time.

“Current time 7PM…”

“Even if we had night study it’d probably be over by now.”

“Because after we woke up after getting knocked out it’d be dinner time.”

“…Hang on?”

As we were talking the mention of dinner came out, and thanks to that I realised something off.

“Hey, has anyone seen something resembling a cafeteria?”

This was a place that although small, had everything resembling the features of the academy.

It had classrooms, it had teachers’ offices, it even had special classrooms for experiments.

But.

“We haven’t seen anything like that?”

“Neither have we.”

“Our side was all classrooms.”

“Then, how are we going to eat anything here?”

“Tha, that…”

After a short silence, Karen’s startled voice rang out.

“Hang on! Has seen any bathrooms here?”

“There aren’t any?!”

“There was even an infirmary, there has to be bathrooms somewhere.”

“But, we haven’t seen it yet.”

“There has to be. Even if we haven’t seen it yet either.”

“Yeah, even if it’s Professor Nicerwin… even though we haven’t seen them yet either…”

After those words, an even grimmer silence greeted us.

It was said that for humans to live, the essentials are food, clothing and shelter.

But here?

There’s nothing.

There’s no shelter?

No, this is a prison, not a comfortable lodging.

Food? Do you think there’s any food here? There’s no cafeteria here?

And finally, clothing.

We’re all wearing clothes. They might be pajamas, and although everyone was embarrassed at first, now they’re pajamas that everyone’s perfectly okay with!

But why do we wear clothes?

Is it not to hide our bodies?

Then why do we hide our bodies?

Is it not to show others our embarrassing parts!

And there aren’t any bathrooms!

Out of all the shames he could have chosen to inflict on us!

“Pres! We found the bathroom! There are bathrooms!”

“Ah, thank goodness.”

But thankfully, it seemed Professor Nicerwin hadn’t completely veered away from humanity yet.

Although that didn’t change the fact that it was him who’d imprisoned us all to begin with!

“Alright then, getting back on track. What do we do for food?”

“Out of the guys who’d rechecked again, no one’s found anything resembling a cafeteria, right?”

“Yes, there was nothing like that.”

Just what is Professor Nicerwin’s objective? Does he think we can escape before that?

Or he might actually be planning to starve us.

What was certainly true was that Professor Nicerwin most definitely knew how to torment people.

Before the holidays I’d actually thought that Professor Nicerwin might have been a member of the evil organization Howling that was only destroyed just last year.

The timing was roughly similar as well, right? This was simply a logical suspicion.

No, considering the shit he was pulling now that suspicion still hadn’t vanished!

“Search for clues with the knowledge we don’t have any food. Don’t search just the classrooms, but also the bathroom toilet paper.”

“Can we escape by tomorrow?”

“It seems like it’ll be hard, but it’s not like we’ve ever had it easy this entire year, right?”

“True…”

“Hey Pres, but those words’re just cutting at our drive, you know?”

“I know right, we’ve had it hard but we’ve never succeeded.”

“Damn it, the imperial festival. If we win the imperial festival then this hell is over too!”

I had a quaint feeling seeing the third years clench their teeth in rage and vowing victory in the imperial festival, but it can’t be helped.

“Imperial festival or whatever, we need to get out of here first to do it. So let’s all try hard for just a bit longer.”

After that, the number of duds were a lot less than we anticipated.

Who knew? That there would actually be a clue on the bathroom toilet paper?

And so after we found hints on the toilet paper, the classroom motto and timetable, as well as in the documents in the teachers’ office and handkerchiefs, and after we put them all together.

– The escape route is on the ceiling of 1.

Was the sentence we got.

“I think we’re missing some letters?”

“It didn’t say which exact ceiling it was.”

“1? Do should we look through classrooms 1 and 10?”

“Might it be the first floor?”

“That’s not it. When Risen was falling earlier, his screams were from a long way down. It’s definitely not the first floor.”

“Then half of us look for ceilings in places with 1 in them, while the rest of us look for other clues.”

While the sentence was nearly complete, we didn’t really expect for it to tell us where the escape route was so easily.

No, on the contrary, considering how easily it was telling us where to escape, the method to escape was undoubtedly even harder!

And after we scoured through all the classrooms with 1 in them, and every other room in this building.

“There’s nowhere to escape in the ceilings.”

We still couldn’t find the way to escape.

#11 Their story: Risen de Roa’s story.

-Is he still not awake?

-Isn’t he actually dead?

-Leave the corpse! Find clues first!

-Damn it, another dud!

I could hear voices within my faint consciousness.

These were familiar voices.

As if… yes. The voices of the shocked student council after we woke up after betting beaten by the silver devil during night study…

‘Eh? Why am I hearing this?’

I was definitely on holiday.

Then wouldn’t it be normal to not hear these?

So why can I hear these sounds?

-Oi, contractor? Enough avoiding reality now, and wake up?

Loki’s voice started to echo through my head.

Avoiding reality? What on earth was that supposed to mean?

-The fact that you fainted when you tried to escape and got beaten up by the silver devil for it.

Ugghhh… I felt memories that shouldn’t be revived coming back up.

Yes. That was it. When I woke up the vice-pres’s face was suddenly in front of me, and the other student council members around me.

A magic video of Professor Nicerwin wearing a weird mask came on and said let’s play a game.

-Is what he says, and when we open the door, the hallway will be full of teachers, won’t it?

Yes, so I said and as I broke down the wall and jumped out…

-This, this is!

-Bad childwen! When ya play a game ya need ta stick to th’ rules!

-N, no!

Yes, when I saw where we were as I fell to the ground and was surprised as a result, the devil came.

-For the bad boy who doesn’t stick to the rules, the trial of justice! Justice tushitushi!

-What kinda bullshit is thaaat!

And like that, I was beaten up by the silver devil… and I fainted?

-If you know then stop grumbling, and get up.

“Kuughhh…”

By entire body’s sore but I still get up while clutching my head.

If the people I see in front of me are students, then what I am also seeing is the classroom I see every day.

But the difference was that the students inside said classroom were not wearing uniforms, but pajamas instead, and were frantically running around with their faces sheet white instead.

The fact that they were running around so frantically, probably meant that whatever game Professor Nicerwin mentioned wasn’t going very well.

And the fact that their faces were so pale meant that there was something pretty desperate coming soon…. Was the devil coming?

“Vice-pres, you awake?”

“Risen’s up!”

“Someone get Pres!”

When they saw me wake up, some of the stuco members hurriedly ran off somewhere, and shortly afterwards the pres and vice-pres came for me.

“Risen, you good?”

“Uh, yeah, a bit. But Pres, the game Professor Nicerwin was talking about, have you made any progress?”

“We’ve found nearly all the clues, but we can’t find the escape route.”

It was weird that Pres was shaking his head with a scowl.

“What’s the rush? Does the silver devil come after us if we’re late for this too?”

“No, not that but…”

“We have no food.”

The vice-pres answers instead of the hesitating president.

“Food?”

“Mm. We’ve searched everywhere but there’s nothing to eat.”

“No food…”

The fact that there’s no food means that it will be very difficult to hold out for a long time.

Does Professor Nicerwin simply want to punish us for not coming to school over a short period of time?

I’d say no.

If he was just going to punish us, there is no reason for him to kidnap the entire student council to a classroom without anyone the wiser for no apparent reason.

It is weird that he’d do something this bothersome where he has so many alternative ways of going about things.

Then that must mean he has some other purpose in mind…

-Loki, why would he deliberately deny us food when he says he wants to play a game?

-Wiing? Well… he’s probably using food as a tool for the game.

-Tool?

-Yeah, a tool. He’s using food in order to progress the game. For example, being able to purchase it, or giving us food when we do something.

Tha, that kind of method! But since we can’t buy anything here we can imply that the most likely thing was that he would give us food in response to specific actions.

“Pres, I think he’s going to use food to make us do something.”

“That’s possible.”

Pres too, nodded in agreement.

Then there’s only one thing we have to do.

Escape from here, before Professor Nicerwin gives us something ridiculous to do as a mission!

“What have we found so far?”

“The escape route is on the ceiling of 1. It feels like there’s something else at the end, but this is all we have so far.”

“We’ve searched every ceiling we could call a ceiling but we’ve found nothing.”

Their expressions are serious.

But unlike the other two, I understood something.

There’s an escape route in the ceiling?

So they searched the ceiling but they found nothing?

That’s a matter of course.

Because in this ceiling, there’s nothing.

“Pres, you know where this is?”

“No, I know this is a classroom similar to Yugrasia’s, but this isn’t Yugrasia.”

“No, you’re wrong.”

For once in a very long time, I deny the president’s words with a serious face.

This is definitely Yugrasia.

And the fact that we don’t know where this is despite that, is because this is a place that even the student council have been banned from since Professor Nicerwin arrived.

“Pres, this is Yugrasia. The rooftop.”

The sights that I saw as I jumped down.

The familiar sights of the school named Yugrasia!

Indeed! This place was made in none other than the Yugrasia’s rooftop!

“Probably, what we’d get if we got all the clues is ‘the escape route is on the ceiling of the 10th floor.’ Meaning, there’s an escape route in the floor somewhere.”

And thirty minutes later.

In the floor of a certain classroom, we discovered a hidden staircase leading to the lower floor.