As I’d checked beforehand, the infirmary was in a small building some distance from the one where the entrance ceremony was being held. It was more than two hundred paces away—about a hundred meters by the standards of my previous life. The infirmary looked like a smaller version of the temple I’d seen on the ducal estate. That was only natural, since it was both an infirmary and a temple.

The academy had been founded to strengthen the royal family’s power. Naturally, it had tried to keep the temples, which stood in opposition to the royal family, out as much as possible. The temples, for their part, had done everything they could to gain a foothold here. The result was a temple operating under the name of an infirmary.

The two of them helped me into the little building tucked among the others. The sudden arrival of a patient sent the small temple called the infirmary into a flurry. I was taken straight to a private room with a bed, and a distinguished-looking middle-aged priest came in soon afterward.

A sidelong glance told me he was no ordinary priest. At any other time, we might have introduced ourselves and sized each other up, but right now he was simply a priest attending to a patient. He came over, placed a hand on my stomach, and began to pray.

From the perspective of someone who remembered a previous life, there were plenty of funny things about this fantasy world. One was how indiscriminately priests used their healing abilities. In my previous life, someone would have asked questions or run tests to find the cause of an illness—not that the diagnosis would necessarily have been right. Here, unless it was a serious or hard-to-treat disease, they used their abilities first and worried about the rest later. That was also why my fake illness had worked.

HUMMM.

The priest’s hand on my stomach began to glow. Warmth flowed through my abdomen. He tilted his head slightly. Hm. Maybe he wasn’t just blindly using his healing ability after all. If so, I had to move before he noticed anything amiss. Besides, the ceremony would be ending soon.

“W-wait! I need the bathroom!”

Leaving everyone staring in bewilderment, I bolted from the room. I ran to the bathroom I’d spotted on the way in and locked the door. Then I raised my mana and checked my surroundings. No one had followed me into the corridor, and fortunately, no one was outside the bathroom either.

The bathroom’s layout was no different from those in other temples. Its clean interior was oddly reminiscent of bathrooms from my previous life. But this was no time to inspect the facilities. I opened the window and squeezed through it. It wasn’t very large, but fortunately I was still small enough to get out.

Now, what should I do? Go back to the ceremony hall? The ceremony was nearly over. Which meant Piar, inside this building, was nearly due to explode.

I’d succeeded in getting him out of the hall as planned. I hadn’t had time to confirm it, but his self-destruction seemed to be his inherited ability. From watching him closely, though, it didn’t look as if he’d chosen to blow himself up on purpose. I still couldn’t be sure. Either way, I’d removed him from the hall, so even if he did explode, the people there would be safe.

“So this infirmary’s the problem now?”

If he blew up again and I escaped, everyone in the infirmary would surely die.

“Well, it’s not as if I’ve managed the best possible outcome every time I’ve died. There’s no point agonizing over it.”

When I was a baby, maids had vanished under the label of “missing,” and there had been plenty of people I’d killed or who had died. Most of them had been enemies, of course, but things had rarely ended happily for everyone.

“My survival came first.”

Besides, I’d grown fairly cold over time.

Still.

“If I just get caught up in a terrorist attack in the capital, it’ll be hard to prepare for what comes next.”

And the thought that my choice might get people with nothing to do with this killed bothered me a little.

“Ugh. I really don’t want to die...”

I sighed and leaned against the building, looking toward the ceremony hall. It would be best if nothing happened at all, but if I did die, I hoped I could at least find another clue.

“Maybe I should just kidnap him next time.”

I was watching the building where the ceremony was being held, entertaining that absurd thought, when I heard a commotion.

A murmur rose from the ceremony hall, and I saw people coming outside.

“Don’t tell me it’s going to end without anything happening?”

I was sure the bomb had gone off just as the ceremony ended. It was an uncertain outcome, but if things ended like this, I could only be grateful.

I let out a breath of relief and was about to head toward the hall when a flash lit up the doorway people were coming through. Brilliant light poured out from within.

And then—

BOOOOM!

The ceremony hall exploded with a deafening roar. The ceiling shattered and shot skyward, while the walls blasted outward.

RUMBLE!

“Aaaah!”

“Aaagh!”

Flames surged into the sky, and people’s screams battered my ears alongside the roar.

“Damn it.”

Debris flew in every direction. I drew up all the mana I could and swung my fists.

BAM! BAM!

The fragments hurtling toward me shattered against my fists. Smashing through the debris, I ran for the ruined building.

‘Was I wrong? No. It was definitely Piar who exploded last time!’

The unexpected turn of events threw my thoughts into chaos, but I didn’t stop running.

There were still people alive. I spread my mana as far as I could and sensed them. Pushing through the smoke toward the building, I saw people lying on the ground and groaning.

“The people who were coming outside?”

They were covered in burns and black ash, but their arms and legs were intact, and they were screaming.

I passed them and headed into the destroyed building, where flames still burned and wreckage was still falling. I bit my lip at what I saw. It was a miracle the people outside had survived. I could sense almost no one alive in here. The place was filled with burned, mangled bodies.

I could sense a few people groaning with burns all over their bodies, but I didn’t know any of them. I couldn’t see the princess, and there was no trace of Manuel. The gravely injured survivors were all at the edges of the building. The others might have been blown away, but the lingering heat and the marks left by the explosion were concentrated at its center. The princess and Manuel had been sitting there, along with the other teachers. Now they were nothing but charred bodies.

Smoke and corpses. And death. Death. Death...

I stared blankly around me. Meanwhile, others entered the still-hot ruins.

“Oh my God. Is—is anyone alive?”

The female teacher who had spoken to me on the way to the infirmary staggered through the smoke, covered in ash. Fortunately, it seemed she too had come outside as the ceremony ended. Other school staff who had survived entered the ruins as well, bloodied and searching for survivors.

“Oh my God, hurry! There’s someone alive over here!”

The priest who had been treating me ran in with several priestesses. The middle-aged priest rushed from person to person, trying to save them, and the others did the same.

“What are you doing? Snap out of it and help over here!”

The middle-aged priest shouted at me while using his healing ability on someone covered in burns. But I didn’t do as he said. I just stood there, staring at the horrific disaster. The priest clicked his tongue and devoted himself to saving people, while the others worked tirelessly to help him.

Then Piar and the butler appeared at the scene. With the priests here, there was no reason for the two of them to stay behind at the infirmary. The butler looked around, as stunned as I appeared to be. Piar, his face deathly pale, approached the priests.

“Please, help over here!”

A priestess called to them, and unlike me, they moved to help her.

Just as the two of them reached the priests and priestesses tending to the wounded—

“Huh?”

Piar stopped, startled. Then he turned his head in a particular direction.

At that moment, a light flashed.

Light surged up once more, spreading outward from Piar’s body.

BOOOOM!

With an enormous blast, mana and heat struck everything around him—no, struck me. The heat was tremendous. It was exactly like the explosion that had gone off moments before. I neither blocked it nor dodged. I closed my eyes and felt the blast wash over me. In that final moment, I wasn’t looking at Piar. I was looking in the direction he had turned.

I hadn’t merely stood in a daze at the scene of the attack. I’d been cursed out for it, but instead of helping people, I’d been gathering as much information as I could. Piar wasn’t the culprit. He really was just another victim of the bomb. And he wasn’t the only bomb. Someone else had the switch that set them off. I hadn’t figured everything out yet, but I’d learned more than I’d expected.

Good. Next time would be the last. This loop ended here.

Darkness enveloped the world. Then a small light drew steadily closer.

[You have died. Restarting from the autosave point.]

* * *

When I opened my eyes, I once again saw the little princess’s back. I was just entering the ceremony hall. Pain struck my entire body. A curse burst out of me, and the world spun. In the end, I had no choice but to lean against the wall.

I’d thought I was used to dying, but repeated deaths in such a short span of time were still hard to bear mentally. This time, I had to finish it according to plan.

Once I’d collected myself, I headed straight for Piar. The princess and Manuel looked puzzled to see me going somewhere else, but I ignored them. I had to hurry. I needed to confirm something before the ceremony began. I approached Piar from behind and greeted him.

“You’re Piar, aren’t you? I’m Alex de Gresia.”

Piar turned around, looking bewildered. Then he gave a start and greeted me.

“Alex Gresia? I-it’s a pleasure to meet you. But how do you know who I am...?”

The name Gresia startled Piar again, while the noble boy seated beside him—another freshman oath-taker—tilted his head when he heard my name. Damn it. I had to finish this before that guy spoiled things again.

“I heard your name from a friend who’s enrolling with us... No, a relative of yours.”

“Oh, you mean Mirisa? How do you know my older cousin?”

I followed Piar’s gaze and saw a freckled girl staring over at us in surprise. Did they look a little alike? Either way, I’d taken a shot in the dark and gotten lucky.

There were two bombs, not one. If the bomb was an inherited ability, it was reasonable to suspect another family member or relative was the second. Of course, it might not be an ability unique to their family, and there were plenty of other holes in my reasoning. But now that my guess had proved right, even that shaky theory seemed more likely.

The trouble was, it raised new questions. Could two commoner cousins, neither of them nobles, both develop inherited abilities? And could those abilities be used for a terrorist attack? I could work through those questions later. Right now, it was time to catch the culprit—the one behind it all.