The group of four were sitting at the café outside the main gates sipping some hot coffee in their free time. This was the time for the second period but Darrick didn't have any class so he joined the other three who were heading somewhere. Turns out it was to the café.

"Do you guys seriously not have any other class or are you just wandering out here to pass some time?"

"I swear I don't have any other classes for now. This period is free so I had to do something in the meantime while waiting for the sigil studies to start." Leon said as he put his coffee cup down.

"You seriously missed the first sigil studies class man! I'm like hundred percent sure you weren't there or any of you, to be honest." Darrick accused others of their lack of attendance.

"Of course, I told you we are here for fun so it doesn't matter even if we don't attend the classes at all but we do attend most of the classes and that day we had a so you can't blame alone for that." Leon shrugged as he pointed towards Jasmine.

"Well, shit. I should have known better, I know for a fact that you are gonna use that same sentence a hundred more times whenever I ask something like that." Darrick pointed his cup at Leon while saying that like it was a threatening weapon.

"Are you jealous that you couldn't do that like us?" Leon asked with a mocking grin on his face. He was teasing Darrick and it looked like it was working Darrick got angry as he blurted out,

"Fuck you!"

"Kekeke" Leon laughed in an entirely new tone just to make it look mocking uniquely.

"If you guys are done I want to talk about what I planned for the 'thing' you speculated about yesterday," Jasmine said as her voice turned to whisper as she was finishing the sentence. The mood shifted on the table as everyone became more attentive.

"I've said it before but if it's dangerous then I won't be participating in it and also not letting any one of you do whatever you want either. If it's reasonable I will do my best otherwise you know it."

Leon's voice was deadly serious when he said that, the playfulness of before was turned the complete opposite and he was very serious about it.

"I agree too. I also want to save people and all but not at the cost of my life. I prefer to hear people cheering for me when I'm alive." Darrick also agreed with Leon's sentiments. It was one thing to fight for your life and totally another to fight for a complete stranger.

I already have a feeling that I'm under-levelled for this but this is literally the chance to see if I'm the protagonist. If I'm a hero then it would go my way and I can be a hero. Very simple. If this is not my stage then why was I even transmigrated here?

"I understand what you are saying so I made a plan that's not too dangerous. It's a very simple plan, considering every factor we found till now this is the only viable one I could think of. It's a bit rough but we can smoothen it out together so what do you say?" Jasmine asked as she leaned back on her chair.

As the one who was most affected by the speculation of genocide in Astoria, although she had some kind of compulsion for that, it was Jasmine who was the one to lay out a plan to prevent all this from happening.

"I'm in."

"Me too."

"Hmm." Jasper also made a sound of agreement alongside a nod.

"As I said it's a simple plan. The most crucial part of the plan is Darrick who can identify the criminals." She said as she pointed at Darrick and she was about to continue when Leon interrupted with,

"Are you trying to bait the big fish with small fries?"

"Okay, you need to keep quiet until I explain what my plan is. Can you do it?" Jasmine reprimanded Leon as she was a bit annoyed at the interruption and Leon also placed a finger on his mouth to indicate he wasn't going to talk.

"Let's continue then. As I was saying Darrick is the crucial part of the plan as he is the only one who can sniff out the terrorists who want to place the bombs and maybe also plan to create an artificial dungeon flooding."

"The first step is the most tedious one. Darrick has to roam around at places like government buildings in the royal district, the staff building of our academy or any other place where we could find the spies."

"Then comes the dangerous part. We have to leak the information about some people who want to foil the plans unsuspectingly so they come out to eliminate the variables."

"Am I the bait?" Darrick asked.

"I never mentioned any of us getting very involved in this so much that we became baits. We can hire someone for money."

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"That won't be as efficient as Darrick baiting himself." Leon butted in.

"Why? I can agree that in us four Darrick would have been the better bait but we don't need to choose between us." Jasmine was a bit confused while wondering why Leon pushed Darrick for bait.

"My lie. I said it hoping to attract less attention but it probably did the opposite of what I hoped for. I know we sounded very suspicious when they saw the tunnel to the second room and also I did a bit of research about traps. It turns out traps are very specialized mastery and only at the later levels of mastery can we mask the traces of traps." Darrick answered shaking his head.

"That leaves us four in the suspicious light and the only one they would spare some manpower to eliminate is me simply because of you guy's background. Nobody would want to bring more variables to their plan than what they already have because they touched the wrong people."

"I didn't take that into account, I thought that lie worked or something. Well... Okay, if Darrick doesn't mind being a bait then we can go with this plan." Jasmine said as she was rearranging the plan with the information.

"Should we try finding those two mages to spread some information?" Darrick asked, "They will be easiest to find if we go for the goblin dungeon but..."

"Yeah, that won't be natural anymore. We can't go back there when we were told not to come, we have to find someone else altogether. I'm hoping that we won't find more than needed. If there are too many of them, which I don't think they are, we may have to change this plan a lot." Leon finished what Darrick was saying with some insight of his own.

"Step 1 plan looks fine but we have to think a lot more on step 2. I mean, what is this misinformation we are going to spread? How should we proceed to the next step while keeping track of their movement regarding step 2? And lastly, how are we going to deal with them when the plan actually comes to fruition?" Darrick put forth the topic for their discussion to continue as they had a lot more time left for the next class.

"Yeah, we need to revise the plan until we can do it with the minimum risk so what I think is..."

***

"That's a lot of planning for just a little over two hours," Darrick said as he placed his head on the desk in front of him in the classroom.

They were now back in the classroom. There were only a few minutes before the class started so waiting was given. When Darrick arrived he looked around but didn't spot Aulia but he already had his group to pass the time.

"Mission starts from this weekend. If you find someone while roaming around the campus just note them down, don't act upon them this early. We don't don't want them cautious." Jasmine instructed.

Just then Professor Lana also entered the class. Looking at her she wore a different style of clothes than last time. Last time clothes were mysterious and mage-like but this fit seemed like a magical girl outfit. Something that looked so out of place for a classroom. It was that extravagant.

The centrepiece was a fitted bodice made of shimmering pink fabric that glittered with every movement. The bodice featured intricate embroidery in gold and silver threads, depicting stars and floral patterns. It had puffy, short sleeves.

The skirt was voluminous and layered, made of soft satin that flared out whenever she moved. Each layer was a different shade of pink, creating a more magical girl feel. At the waist, a wide satin ribbon was tied in a large bow at the back which gave a much more playful look.

However many playful vibes it gave, that was not enough to distract Darrick from the fact that Professor Lana had worn that outfit here to the classroom for teaching. There was no ill feeling about the dress but it did feel a bit weird to see it here of all places.

To each their own. I can't judge what other wears, if she is comfortable enough to wear it here then it wouldn't matter if I criticize it or something. And I don't remember this place having any kind of dress code so whatever.

"That's an awesome fit, Professor!" Jasmine cheered from her seat. She caught the attention of the whole class and of course, the professor's too.

Professor who heard her looked towards her and made a heart gesture with her hand, then showed it to Jasmine. She cheered once again and the professor walked up to the stage to start the class. The class was silent for a few seconds before bursting into a lot of talking.

"You didn't tell me the professor was so awesome here. I would have missed that if I didn't take this class or just decided not to come." Jasmine nodded herself and suddenly turned towards Darrick and asked, "What did I miss in the first class?"

"Nothing really. She wore a robe that was reaching to the floor with a lot of accessories but then she taught like a normal teacher and left the classroom." Darrick said as he tried to remember anything unique like this from that day but nothing came to mind.

"Were there white embroideries at the sides of her black robe? What about accessories? Where were they? Were they at neck, waist and on top of her head?" Jasmine asked with a quick succession of questions.

"Um...Yes. Wait! Was that also a deliberate dressing with the reference to someplace?" Darrick questioned in disbelief as he realized why she looked like a mage to him so much more than other teachers in the previous class.

Yeah, cosplay but it doesn't look like Natil has a word for it.

"Mhm. That should be the normal mage wear a few hundred years ago. At that time mages were so proud that they always wore those whenever they left their houses. Even when they had public teachings." Leon interjected in the conversation as he was one between those two and didn't have any choice but to listen.

"Does she have multiple personality disorder or something?" Darrick asked still in disbelief that he was so impressed by her cosplay on the first day.

"Could be but we can't just rule out the possibility that she is just that fun of a person. We always can't judge a book by its cover but most of the time you just do that because that's what their purpose is."

A quote dropped from Jasper with the wisdom of heaven and earth at the most unexpected time possible but the timing didn't matter for the wisdom so Darrick acknowledged what was said as it definitely contained the truth.

On the stage, Professor had started teaching and she was fully immersed in her cosplay as it was evident by the cheerful tone of her voice.

"Hey class, now that I'm here we can start learning about today's topic. Can you guess what it is?"

"It's okay if you don't. Let me tell you myself, it is sigil evolution!" She answered her own question without letting anyone else to even guess it.

"Hooray to everyone who guessed it right and those who guessed it wrong don't worry at all. You need to guess a lot more here in today's class so much so that you won't mind missing this one."

"We'll start with our second guess. What is this sigil evolution? If you know the answer to it then which of the sigils you lot see in common have a potential to evolve?"

"Just a guess please, I have a lot of time for guesses so let us start."