Edward and Professor Emma took Alec and Evan through countless corridors under the alchemy shop. Whatever the fuck they had tried to build underground, they had managed to make it look like the inside of an ant nest. Every time Alec waited for it to end, they turned another corner and found another corridor. The corridors seemed completely arbitrary and quite honestly, were pretty dizzying.

They finally stopped and entered a door. Inside, there was a purple crystal sitting on top of a pedestal with an angular design. While the rectangle reaching up from the ground, about waist-high, was a dark gray; the pedestal plate itself was pristine, marbly white. The crystal was a crude pyramid with jagged corners, looking like the tip of a primitive spear. It was about the size of a shoebox. The width of the pedestal had been obviously tailored to the crystal. Just wide enough.

Other than that, the room was completely empty. The walls, the floor, and the ceiling were of the same stone blocks in a monotone arrangement. What was such a non-descript room made for?

Nevertheless, they stood around the crystal in a circle. Professor Emma and Edward reached out their hands, touching them. Alec felt the mana in the room boil and start siphoning toward them. It passed through their magical circulation and was injected into the crystal. As more mana piled up inside it, the purple crystal started shining. Its previously dead surface now glistened from the inside.

Then, a shift. The shackles around Alec's mind immediately relaxed, and he felt it. It wasn't by much. Someone unaware wouldn't notice it, even if they were proficient in anti-memetics or mind magic. Still, the change was there. Alongside it, Alec felt a restriction on his body. Although he could still move freely, he felt that moving in one direction was harder than the other.

"Will any of you two explain what is going on?" Alec asked with his arms crossed. Generally, he was the one to lead people around without explaining things. Being on the receiving end of that wasn't pleasant. Professor Emma and Edward turned around simultaneously, eerie.

"This was a measure left by the headmaster before he disappeared," Professor Emma explained. Her elderly nature seemed to have vanished, being replaced by that of a veteran. Her brows creased, either in worry or in anger, dropping shadows on her eyes. "He had foreseen that something like this might happen. In fact, he had foreseen it so precisely. He guessed that a demonic incursion might start trickling into the academy grounds. He said that it had to be stopped no matter what."

"What does it do, exactly?" Alec asked. His eyes shifted from Professor Emma to Edward. Although he was just as tense, he didn't seem to know much. He was listening to the woman with raised brows and curious eyes just like Alec and Evan.

"It has a few uses. The main one is that it completely shuts down the academy by erecting a barrier around it. Once it is activated, no one can enter, and no one can leave. In fact, the barrier encasing the academy is so strong that even the headmaster himself would not be able to breach it," she said in one breath. Alec noticed a small smile tug on her lips and her face relaxed whenever she talked about the headmaster. "Well. That was told to me by the headmaster himself, so I don't know if it is an exaggeration."

"Interesting. What is the nature of this barrier?" Alec asked. He had heard of barriers before and had searched into them a little bit. However, these types of ultimate barriers tended to be specialized designs rather than generalized ones. A simple example of this was a barrier called Protective Ward Barrier. It would simply form an egg-shaped barrier that absorbed classical spells until a certain damage threshold. On the other hand were the temperature arrays covering the academy buildings. These were technically barriers. But didn't have specific names. A normal temperature barrier would be much smaller than that. Thinking about it, Alec couldn't fathom the amount of mana they were expending on the maintenance of the academy.

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"I'm not sure. However, the headmaster did tell me the barrier was unbreakable by conventional means," she said. She then held her saggy chin to think for a moment. "Though, his 'conventional means' might be different from today's. Especially yours, Mr. Alec. With the recent developments, stacked along your discoveries, magic is much better than how it was back then. Still, it is an indubitably strong barrier."

"I see," Alec said, averting his eyes. No matter how strong the barrier was, it probably wouldn't hold against a nuclear bomb. Fortunately, the odds of Professor Howard becoming demonized were very low. And if he did, the barrier would be their last problem. Alec shuddered at the thought.

"The other effect of the crystal is unleashing a mind-affecting miasma. It will make anyone who wants to get near the outer walls not do that," she said. This caused Alec to nod in realization. 'That must have been the reason I felt a restriction moving in a certain direction.'

"Why would it do that? Isn't there a barrier already?" Evan chimed in with a question of his own. Professor Emma turned toward him and smiled.

"Indeed, young man. It's just to make everyone gather in the middle of the academy grounds," she said. That made sense. If even Alec himself felt the restriction, many students would feel much worse. Moving toward the middle would be the only reasonable choice. "Those are the main uses of the crystal. He called it 'The Witch Hunt', so we call it that too. It also makes an announcement for everyone to gather. This place is too isolated to hear it, so we probably missed it. But the rest of the academy should be heading there by now."

With Professor Emma's explanation over, she gestured for them to leave the room, then followed them outside. While traversing the corridors, Alec contemplated the crystal.

'Alongside those uses she mentioned, the crystal seemed to weaken the anti-meme. This makes it certain that the headmaster knew about it. He just didn't tell anyone, at least not Professor Emma. As for why she was chosen to tend to the crystal... I don't know,' he thought while eyeing the elderly woman.

She was weak. At least when compared to the other professors. If Alec were to face her in a one-on-one using The Author’s Pen, he would probably be able to take her out. Possibly unwounded. Still, he could somewhat understand the headmaster's decision. 'She seemed incredibly fond of the man whenever she talked about him. Maybe he wanted to use that loyalty of hers? Still, none of this makes sense. What happened to the headmaster? It was as if he knew he would disappear—but he didn't try to prevent that. Instead, he went ahead and prepared the academy for his absence.'

While Alec was deep-diving into his thought process, they walked. Twists and turns, they left the alchemy shop underground. The somewhat scared Alyssa was worriedly looking around, like an alert little rabbit. Once she saw them, she visibly relaxed and skipped to their side, following along. Alec was readying himself for the gathering in the middle of the academy grounds.

However, once they opened the door and stepped out, they found the academy to be very different from how it normally was.

'Orange.'

All of them thought. All of their brows rose as they angled their heads to look up. The sky was orange. How weird. It was supposed to be slightly past 1 p.m. And not to mention, Alec didn't remember seeing this, sun-rise, sunset orange painting the sky. Ever. His thoughts wandered toward the journal. But he still couldn't make sense of it. The un-anti-memed sky was told to be red. Not orange. He wouldn't make such a blatant mistake, especially when the stakes were this high. Not to mention, the anti-meme hadn't weakened this much. Leaving himself aside, Alyssa would never be able to perceive it. Even with a shit ton of help.

"Umm... Why the fu-" Alyssa was about to say with a frown before she stopped. Her gaze briefly wandered toward her grandmother –who looked back at her with a terrifying expression– as she coughed and corrected herself. "Why is the sky orange?"

"Oh. Sweetheart. The headmaster had told of this. The inert barrier surrounding the academy is orange. When it activates, it looks like a beautiful sunset," she explained with the tone of a sweet grandparent telling their grandchildren a story. Her sudden shift in demeanor caused Alec to shiver.

"Thanks, granny," Alyssa said. Right beside her, Alec considered the woman's words. How true were they? Did the headmaster deceive her? Was the orange sky really related to the barrier, or was it something related to that dead sky the past him had written about?

There was no way to figure that out for the moment. So Alec chose to follow along...