A quarter of an hour later, 3.5 meters beneath St. Lian Girls’ Academy.
“Hey, Ji Bingyao, could you please hurry up? We’re going to be late if you keep this up!”
“I can’t help it! It’s so narrow down here!”
“Narrow? I distinctly recall you didn’t say that a year ago when we snuck in here to explore! Have you gotten fat?!”
“Fat? You can’t just randomly slander someone’s good name, Miss Chuunibyou! I’ve merely built up muscle! This is muscle, understand?!”
“Muscle? Ha, no wonder I felt so many hard lumps on you when we went to the hot springs last time. I actually thought you were wearing a bulletproof vest under your swimsuit.”
“Who are you calling—”
“Enough, both of you!” After Ji Bingyao and Shijō Yurizumi erupted into another pointless argument, Shirley, her patience finally exhausted, snapped, silencing the bickering pair instantly. “Stay quiet! If we’re discovered, everything will be over.”
“Ugh, r-right!” The two nodded repeatedly.
“Now then… if my memory serves me correctly, we should turn left up ahead,” Shirley announced, carefully removing an aluminum alloy filter screen that obstructed their path with a screwdriver. “Then, at the next fork, we turn right, and continue straight…”
“P-pardon my intrusion, Shirley,” Xia Hua gasped, already struggling to keep pace. Unlike the others, whose bodies had undergone special reinforcement and felt almost no fatigue, she remained utterly exhausted and drenched in sweat, despite having handed off all her equipment for others to carry. After all, the concrete pipe was just wide enough for them to crouch and shuffle forward, and its extremely confined, stifling heat made it incredibly inhospitable for anyone moving within it for an extended period. “We’ve been crawling through this sewage pipe for hours! When will we finally reach our destination?!”
“First, we haven’t been crawling for ‘hours’; it’s been less than ten minutes since we descended. Second, this isn’t strictly a sewage pipe, but rather the school’s rainwater collection conduit,” Shirley clarified. “As for our objective, it’s the main security room near the school gate.”
“To there? Why?”
“Based on my assessment, there’s a high probability that Miss Salome is there.” With too much sweat beading on her face, Shirley carefully tugged at the eye patch—which a certain great sorceress claimed was used to seal a god of destruction—making sure to prevent the artificial eye hidden beneath from seeing anything. “Since she consistently refers to herself as my ‘daughter,’ it’s only proper for her to offer her mother a little something.”
“But I still don’t quite understand how you determined her location. That person never revealed their whereabouts! She even opens a spatial rift every time she gives us something! Did she use some mysterious power I’m unaware of to pinpoint her?”
“Of course not; I relied on logical deduction,” Shirley stated. “You must have noticed that Miss Salome can pinpoint our location within the campus and, for the most part, observe our activities.”
“That’s right.”
“And we already know that while the ‘wand’ likely possesses real-time monitoring capabilities, it cannot continuously acquire optical images of its surroundings. Furthermore, it’s usually tucked into my pocket, so it wouldn’t be able to see outside,” Shirley explained. “If we were outdoors, I would consider the possibility of reconnaissance drones, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, or even high-resolution optical reconnaissance satellites. However, the fact remains that she is aware of what happens to us indoors, especially in public indoor spaces like the gymnasium, far more quickly and promptly than she is of our outdoor movements.”
“Uh… that does seem to be the case…”
“Therefore, this can only mean one thing: her knowledge of our movements within the school most likely relies on the campus’s surveillance camera system. After all, reconnaissance planes and satellites cannot see what transpires indoors, but the surveillance cameras already installed there certainly can.”
“And the place that can view all surveillance footage is the security room… No wonder!”
“Furthermore, if Miss Salome is indeed in the security room, then her ‘stock’—that is, the firearms, ammunition, potions, chainsaws, and other items she demands we exchange our lives or flesh for—is highly likely stored there as well,” Shirley continued to elaborate. “One of the maintenance exits for this rainwater collection pipe is located near the security room’s back door. And there are no surveillance cameras installed inside the pipe… Of course, making too much noise here could potentially be overheard from above ground. In short, a surprise attack on the security room via this route is feasible.”
“But Shirley, how are you so familiar with the rainwater collection pipes?” Xia Hua inquired, a hint of confusion in her voice. “Could it be that, like the legendary Ma*io and Lu*gi, you enjoy exploring sewers in your spare time?”
“Actually, that… that was because of us,” Ji Bingyao admitted, awkwardly twiddling her fingers beside them. “Two months ago, to secure the right to use the band practice room, I made a bet with the classical orchestra club. Because I was a little… impulsive back then, I set the wager: ‘the loser has to go into the school sewers, take a photo, and check in.’”
“And then this idiot chose to play chess against someone from the classical orchestra club… Well, the club president on the other side was a three-time national youth chess medalist; I have no idea where she got the nerve to challenge them to that,” Shijō Yurizumi muttered. “The result?… We ended up down here.”
“And then we got lost,” Ji Bingyao shrugged.
“You two really are audacious… Wait, after something like that happened, the school didn’t even issue a reprimand?”
“Because after Shirley found out, she managed to obtain a complete map of the rainwater collection pipes from the school archives before the school was even aware, and then she located us, trapped as we were… Otherwise, we definitely wouldn’t have escaped disciplinary action,” Ji Bingyao explained. “It’s precisely because of that incident that Shirley knows this place so intimately.”
“It seems this is fate,” Xia Hua exhaled a long breath, donning her ‘occult researcher’ persona once more. “The mysterious power of destiny manipulates our every move… Uh, but where is that ‘wand’ then? If it truly can monitor and pinpoint our location…”
“Shirley left it in the dorm,” Eileen stated. “However, considering that remaining completely silent might arouse Salome’s suspicion, I placed Ji Bingyao’s tablet next to it… I imagine the ‘little movies’ she usually hides on it should prove quite useful at a time like this…”
“W-what is all this?”
****
Meanwhile, in the security room of St. Lian Girls’ Academy, Salome found herself in the most awkward predicament she had faced in years. According to her original plan, during the final period before the parasitic swarm launched its large-scale attack, she would remain stationed here, utilizing the school’s surveillance network—a significant portion of which remained intact—along with the ‘wand’ she had left for her mother, to observe her mother and her companions.
Though, up to this point, her mother’s acting, disguising herself as an innocent maiden, had been astonishingly convincing, enough to deceive soft-hearted individuals like Cassandra. Especially when she chose to sever her own hand and blind her left eye to procure the insecticide needed to save her classmates, Cassandra had instantly burst into inconsolable sobs, weeping uncontrollably.
However, Salome was not her weak and gentle sister! She was acutely aware that this might… no, it was highly probable that it was merely her mother’s theatrics.
As the sister who had worked with her mother the longest and had been most deeply involved in all of her mother’s various experimental projects and schemes, Salome believed she could see through all of her mother’s contemptible tricks. It was clear that, with her mother’s intelligence, she couldn’t possibly have failed to guess that Salome wished for her to live as long as possible. Therefore, she had every reason to take a gamble: that after choosing to acquire the insecticide through a ‘flesh payment,’ Salome would provide her, already physically enhanced, with prosthetics to ensure she wouldn’t perish from incapacitation.
And indeed, she had gambled correctly.
“Yes, Mother, before outsiders, you are forever the pure, selfless, righteous white lotus… the ‘Saintess of Science,’ Dr. Irmindada!” After much deliberation, Salome finally couldn’t resist throwing the prepared, highest-grade artificial prosthetic through the spatial rift, murmuring to herself, “Very well, then I shall see how long your facade can endure in the face of inevitable failure and death!”
According to Salome’s estimation, her mother’s pretense would ultimately shatter due to the desperate circumstances; after all, that woman was, at her core, the most ruthless egoist. Subsequently, Salome would cease all forms of aid, and as the final moments drew near, her mother would surely be unable to maintain her previous performance, instead resorting to pleading for her own salvation…
However, she had never anticipated that, after being informed of the approaching danger, her mother would actually lead her companions into her own dorm room! And after that, the only sounds transmitted through the comms were the rustling of blankets and sheets, continuous heavy breathing, and gasps and moans… Although there were no surveillance devices in the private dorm rooms due to student privacy regulations, preventing Salome from seeing what was happening inside, she nonetheless possessed sufficient knowledge in this area. Thus, she could perfectly deduce the situation within…
Consequently, the heat in her cheeks rapidly rose to a degree capable of frying an egg.
But… what in the world was happening? With a formidable enemy at hand and the situation as precarious as a stack of eggs, why did Mother still have the leisure to engage in such activities? Could this be the legendary suspension bridge effect? B-but, to involve so many people at once was simply too…
“Sister Salome.”
Just as Salome’s heart pounded like a startled deer and her cheeks flushed crimson, Cassandra suddenly scurried into the surveillance room. “Sister Salome! I… I saw a premonition!”
“What premonition?!”
“An explosion! Right at the back door of the security room!” Cassandra cried. “The timing seems to be—”
A tremendous roar and tremor drowned out the latter half of her sentence. Before Cassandra could even finish speaking, the explosion had already occurred.