“I need you to stay calm,” Alec whispered as his eyes darted between the door and Iris. If the guards heard their voices and came in, he wouldn’t have the time to escape without being noticed, he could only hope that Iris would be silent enough. “For now, don’t make any noise and listen to me.”

Luckily, Iris listened to him like a little girl and anxiously nodded her head in quick succession. The cold gaze in her eyes from the time of their duel had completely disappeared, leaving its place to a pure innocent glint.

‘Is this an act?’ Alec questioned.

Two possibilities occupied his mind.

The first was that, the exact same thing that happened to Alec had happened to Iris. She was knocked out during the duel, and another soul came to occupy her body. Currently, whoever was hiding behind her innocent visage was acting like they had lost their memories. However, what didn’t match up with this train of thought was the fact that she seemed to know the local language. Alec, on the other hand, was thrust into this new world and new body without any knowledge. Wouldn’t another transmigrator be in a similar situation?

The other possibility was that Iris had actually lost her memories, and had no idea what was going on.

‘But I didn’t even hit her on the head! Why would she lose her memories?’ Alec contemplated. ‘Did she have brain damage from lack of oxygen?’ Shaking off these thoughts, he decided to solve his current predicament.

“Soon, I will turn around and leave the room through that window,” Alec whispered. Without letting Iris open her mouth, he continued by saying, “As soon as I leave, call for help from the guards standing outside the room. They will take care of you. Whatever they ask, say that you don’t know. Especially about me. I was never here, okay?”

Alec rained order after order at the confused, and possibly amnesiac, girl. Iris kept nodding along like a little duckling and kept her silence throughout.

‘Does she think that I’m her parent because I’m the first person that she saw after waking up?’ he thought, chuckling at the imagery. Then he scoured the room one last time for any clues that might lead up to him. Deciding that he was in the safe, he walked up to the window and jumped out.

After landing on the wooden crate, he took another step and planted his feet stably on the ground. He then checked his surroundings for any guards before pushing the crate back into the woods.

He could hear Iris calling out to the guards, which made him hasten his actions. Once he was sure he had gone deep enough into the forest, he swirled The Author’s Pen in his hand and started writing on the dirt.

[Dig]

As his mana drained by a surprisingly high amount, the earth split open to reveal a hole just enough for the crate to fit into.

Pushing the crate in, Alec buried the last piece of evidence that would lead to his intrusion.

‘This should be good enough. As long as Iris doesn’t blow my cover, I should be okay...’ Alec thought. It was 9 p.m., and the sun had already set, plunging the academy into darkness. The more he hurried, the easier it would be for him to blend in with the students.

Rotating the pen in his hand and facing it toward his arm, Alec tried something that had been on his mind for a long time.

[Dash magic]

The words took effect instantly. The letters dissipated into thin mana particles before forming a pristine magic circle, which started rotating on its own before being cast on Alec.

‘That’s...’ Alec thought to himself. His heart started beating with vigor as he took off towards his destination in an arc, keeping himself inside the forest and away from eyes. ‘This is so fucking op! It cost barely any mana, took a fifth of its normal cast time, and is much more effective!’

Even if he kept his speed to a minimum to avoid making noise, he was still running at a mind-blowing speed.

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As Alec neared his exit point from the forest, he gradually slowed down. The dash spell ran out, and he quickly recovered his energy as he still had an active stamina regeneration potion.

When he finally exited the forest, he was behind the grand library of the academy. He had entered the building and left through an isolated window to keep an alibi. Jumping up to the window’s sill, Alec first reached his head inside. He then pulled himself in, patted his pants to shake off any dust that might’ve stuck to him, and left the library from the main entrance like nothing had happened.

Theoretically, this was a perfect crime. Although there were a few mishaps, he had pretty much executed his plan to a tee. No witnesses other than Iris, and no evidence left...

After another short walk, Alec reached the dorms and went to his room.

Thomas and Alexei were playing magikards while Evan was seemingly fine-tuning his power-arm motor magic circles.

However, they stopped what they were doing as soon as he entered and looked at him intently.

“What?” Alec asked nonchalantly. His roommates looked at each other before returning the question to him.

“Did you make the potions?” Evan asked. Alec thought about the question. He had succeeded in creating the potions, however, had already used them. He needed to make up an excuse.

“I did, but they turned out to be... of abysmal quality, so I just dumped them,” Alec answered as he walked up to his bed. He picked some pajamas from his closet and left the room for a shower.

As the door closed behind him, silence encompassed the room. All his roommates were deep in thought.

The one to break the silence was Evan.

“He is lying,” he said as he got back to tuning the magic circles on his shoulders. Throwing out another spell card, Alexei nodded.

“I felt so too. Alec doesn’t waste anything. Even if it were low quality, he wouldn’t have dumped the potion. Especially after spending so much on it,” he said. The spell card he threw out was promptly blocked by a mana wall Thomas had set up.

“So? What do we do?” Thomas asked while thinking about his moves. His teleportation blocker card was running out of mana. He had to do something quickly if he didn’t want to spend mana on reactivating it.

“We don’t do anything. If Alec doesn’t want to tell us, there is no need to force him to,” Alexei answered while inspecting Thomas’ facial expressions.

“No,” Evan opposed. Alexei and Thomas stopped what they were doing and looked at him. He pushed the magic circle motor away to float over the table before turning toward them. “Did you guys notice the ingredients he had bought?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Fluxrose?”

“Fluxrose doesn’t mean anything. There are hundreds of recipes done with that,” Evan sighed and said. He pushed out mana from his index finger and drew a vertical line on air.

“We don’t know, Evan. Neither of us took Alchemy classes,” Alexei said with a frown on his face.

“Yeah. I know,” Evan answered. He then started writing a few ingredients on the left side of the vertical line. “Red crystal chrysanthemums and bugflowers. Do any of you know what these are used for?”

Alexei and Evan shook their heads in unison, which prompted Evan to continue his explanation.

“There are about ten recipes that use these three herbs together,” Evan said. “Seven of which are too high-level for me to know. Alec should be in the same situation as he has lost his memories. Which leaves us with three possible potions.”

“Stop cliffhanging us, man. Tell us what’s going on,” Alexei urged him to continue.

“I’m getting there,” Evan said before writing the possible potion on the right side of the vertical line.

“Health potion, health regeneration potion, or the pain-numbing potion,” he read them out loud. “Guesses, everyone?”

“Maybe he got injured during training or something? Or there might be lingering wounds from his fight with Iris?” Thomas theorized.

“It’s not likely. One of us would’ve noticed it if he was in pain. He wouldn’t have been let out of the infirmary if he was still injured,” Alexei refuted.

“Health regeneration potion is not one of the options,” Evan said as he crossed it out. “The wounds would have taken some time to heal, and we would notice it.”

“That leaves us with two,” Alexei mumbled thoughtfully.

“Which leaves us with not very pleasant scenarios,” Evan continued. “One is that, Alec is doing something dangerous and getting injured. Which necessitates the usage of health potions.”

“No blood on his clothes.”

“Maybe he took off his clothes beforehand,” Alexei said.

“That is possible. Could also be something internal. What about the other potion?” Evan asked while pacing throughout the room. Which caused his other two friends to sigh deeply.

“Lingering pain, maybe?” Alexei tried to make sense. Evan rolled his eyes and grunted.

“We had eliminated that possibility earlier. I think both of you know what I’m thinking.”

“Yeah...” Thomas muttered as the room was plunged into an uncomfortable silence once again.

“He is... He is doing drugs? Like... Like an addiction?” Alexei muttered.

“All of us have seen how he sometimes comes back with bloodshot eyes. He even zones out for no apparent reason.” Evan said. Which made everyone sigh deeply.

“Yeah...” All of them said in unison. Right as they were thinking about what to do, the door of the room opened.

Alec had come back.

“Hey...— What’s going on?” Alec asked after seeing the somber atmosphere. His eyes were slowly becoming bloodshot because of the focus potions he had drunk throughout the day. It was a simple side-effect as far as he knew.

All his roommates looked at each other knowingly.

“Just... Go to sleep,” Evan answered. Before sitting back down to deal with his magic circles.

“O- Okay..?”

And just like that, Alec laid down in his bed and drifted off into deep sleep.