“So what are you going to do about your hair?”

Karen continued drinking her tea despite the fact that she didn’t particularly like the taste, “Frankly I don’t really know. It’ll probably change back over time I think. It changed due to Pandora’s power after all.”

“Hmmm,” Quinn glanced at Karen’s purple hair, “We should deal with your hair though, it’s too conspicuous”

Quinn walked over to Karen, and Karen looked up at him and asked, “What are you-”

Quinn’s eyes suddenly flashed with a red light, and a black light spun around his pointer finger. He quickly tapped Karen’s forehead and suddenly Karen’s hair shifted from a dark purple to a pitch black.

Karen shook her head, and asked, “What did you just…”

Quinn pointed towards the mirror, and Karen turned her head. As she looked at her hair she grew wide-eyed, “Wait how!? This is…magic? But what sort of magic could have done this? Did you use illusion magic or some transformative magic? But I thought it’s almost impossible to cast transformation magic on someone else especially if they aren’t willing.”

Quinn sat back down, “It’s nothing as fancy as transformation magic, I just used another little trick.”

Karen turned to Quinn and stared at him. She wanted to say something but paused for a moment seemingly losing herself in thought. Quinn took a sip of his tea and glanced at her before suddenly turning his head to the wall behind him.

“You’re like us aren’t you?”, Karen asked, “Are you from the same world as Hiro?”

“...”

“Tell me do you know the countries America, China, or any country from Europe?”

Quinn raised his finger motioning Karen to be quiet. He hurriedly got up and moved towards his bed. He raised his arm and a flash of black like struck the broken cocoon and suddenly it vanished.

Karen’s mouth gaped at the sight of this. Even if Quinn didn’t know or even Pandora herself despite being the one who made said cocoon Karen was more than well aware of how powerful that cocoon was.

That black cocoon was an emergency spell that deployed whenever Pandora would ever be knocked unconscious as a sort of last resort. It was not only formed from an immense amount of mana but from Pandora’s unique special abilities. This made it incredibly difficult to even damage the cocoon.

And while Karen was easily able to punch a hole through the cocoon to exit it, that was because she made the cocoon and even after drying and being left there without its owner that cocoon was still as hard as steel. Yet in an instance, Quinn had silently destroyed the cocoon without leaving a single trace.

Quinn turned to Karen and grabbed her arm. She protested, “Hey there’s no need to be so rough.”

He pulled Karen over to his closet and whispered, “Don’t make a sound.”

He jammed Karen into the closet when suddenly his door opened, “Quinn are you alright!”

Quinn quickly shut the closet and turned to Noel who had just burst into his room in a set of armor and a sword hanging from her waist, unlike her usual attire. Following beside her were several instructors Quinn was familiar with and several he had never seen, and even Maria and the Third Prince Baldar had tagged along.

Quinn was relatively familiar with the princess, while she couldn’t be considered his best friend they were at the very least more than acquaintances. Over the past year in the academy, Maria would accompany him in a leisurely stroll along with some of her own friends or come to chat with him on the balconies.

As for Baldar, while he was familiar with his sister the two of them rarely interacted. It was only in the days following Hiro’s death that Baldar began speaking with Quinn.

In the beginning, when Baldar found out about the incident he immediately grew enraged to the point of destroying part of the dormitory. However, as time passed he grew incredibly pensive and spoke seriously with Quinn reassuring him that he would find and kill whoever did this to his brother.

However other than a few other cursory words they’ve exchanged over the past couple of days they still didn’t particularly talk that much. So when he suddenly saw Maria and Baldar pop into his room along with Noel and the instructors he was rather surprised.

Quinn walked up to Noel and asked, “What’s going on?”

Noel stared at Quinn and breathed a sigh of relief before hugging Quinn, “Thank the gods you’re still safe.”

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“Noel?”

Noel rubbed Quinn’s head and said hesitantly, “Quinn I need you to stay in your room, put up a barrier, I have some scrolls in my bag, make sure you don’t open the door for strangers and when you go out to eat-”

Quinn pushed Noel away, “Wait what’s going on? Is this about my brother?”

Noel shook her head, “Partially, your sisters been kidnapped…”

~

Noel quickly got Quinn up to speed with the situation in the capital city.

Over the past month or so the capital city has been in a bit of an uproar. At first dozens of people have gone missing with seemingly no motive or anything to link the victims. There would always be no sign of forced entry and it happened almost everywhere in the capital city.

Then slowly without anyone noticing people started dying. At first, it wasn’t noticeable, the poor and the homeless would simply just drop dead in the streets or in some corner. Then it would be a few drunken men in the pubs, most of them just laborers drinking away.

However soon enough more high profile individuals would be found dead, and this time with wounds signs of a struggle. These would be adventurers, guards, knights, some mages. The problem was while it didn’t seem to be an instantaneous death like those before them there was also no sign of any actual fighting.

Nothing was reported to the guards, there was no damage to the surroundings, yet these victims would be found dead with their weapons drawn. This led the magic knight corps of the royal family to begin intervening.

This led to several noble families to begin participating in the investigation, but as things seemed to be calming down we received word from someone in the academy that someone had perished.

The victim was a noble child enrolled as a Magic Knight who died in his own room having lost an arm and an eye. Then following this event several nobles families were abruptly assaulted leading to the death of several knights and mages, and even a few magic knights.

Originally the target of their assault was relatively unclear, but later today it was found that dozens of noble children had been kidnapped and among those children was on by the name of Eris Whitmore, the Whitmore Families only daughter.

This caused the Baron to grow enraged and he deployed all of the Whitmore families resources. Noel was also sent to check up on the Baron’s other son in full magic armor and to borrow some of the school’s instructors to solve the case.

After stopping by to see how Quinn was doing Noel promptly left with the instructors and two siblings who were being escorted back to their father for protection.

Quinn looked at the table that was now filled with several scrolls, stones, and weapons that Noel had left him for self-defense and shook his head.

“This is too early…”, Karen walked out of the closet, “We need to find Hiro...”

Quinn turned to Karen, “Too early?”

Karen nodded her head, “This was supposed to happen two more years from now.”

Quinn paused and his eyes flashed red, “Time magic? Your other self is capable of that, but that’s not it. It’s not Divining magic either, otherwise, you should have seen this coming. Just what are you.”

Karen paused before hesitantly saying, “I...I’ve seen a certain timeline of events, and in that timeline, your sister was kidnapped and you saved her. However in that timeline, your brother didn’t exist, and you went on to become a mage that saved this country. I know this is hard to believe but…”

Quinn turned his head, “I believe you.”

“Eh?”

“I believe you, at the very least it doesn’t feel like you’re lying. Plus I told you, I know more than my brother.”

Karen’s eyes lit up, “Really!?”

Quinn nodded his head, “Though I don’t think we’ll be finding my brother any time soon.“

“Huh? Why not?”

“Because you’re simply too dangerous. He’s aware that at his current level you possess an immense and imminent threat to his life and as a Hero he feels that until he completes his mission he must survive no matter the costs. After all in his eyes, if he dies, the world might as well be destroyed the very next day.”

“Then what are we gonna do…”

Quinn walked over to the scrolls on the table and picked a few of them up, “Well first, let’s go find my sister.”