The instant her palm made contact with the golden gate, Lea felt a sharp, piercing pain on the spiritual level.

Complex, chaotic, disorderly, colossal information, laced with traps and dangers whose full shape she could not see, surged into her mind all at once.

That made Lea's heart grew heavier once more.

The one who built this gate seemed not to have applied any hidden structures to it at all; it was like an impregnable gate that nonetheless boldly exposed the entire mechanism of the lock before everyone.

Confidence—or rather, conceit.

Anyone could examine it, anyone could try to crack it, but the gate's maker seemed to have cast a mocking gaze over them all.

You lot, you can't.

That kind of calm candor only made it feel all the more troublesome.

  As her perception gradually spread, with nothing blocking it, the entire structure of the gate grew clearer in her sight, as if it could be directly unraveled; yet those intricate formations and structures were like a ball of yarn after a cat has played with it—completely tangled.

She didn't even know where to start; how could she proceed?

At this moment, she finally understood where that gate-maker's confidence came from.

This gate was huge.

Yes, enormous.

Stretching across this wide expanse, it made any lone person before the golden gate seem as tiny as a bug.

Precisely because of that, within the gate one could packed at will and without scruple, all manner of useful or useless formations and frameworks.

These formations and frameworks interwove and constrained one another, building the extreme complexity of the composite structure before her eyes.

You had no way of knowing which piece of structure was superfluous and meaningless, and which formation, if shifted even slightly, would cause irreparable consequences.

"Then, faced with this, what should one do?"

Lea changed her posture, gently rubbed her hands to dispel the chill in her palms.

She quickly glanced back, precisely picked out that figure in the crowd, and couldn't help but feel at ease; all her panic scattered like little frightened rabbits running away.

Then she went on.

This time, with deliberate control, the picture forming in her eyes was quite different.

An incomparably vast, incomparably intricate pattern slowly spread out before Lea's eyes.

Countless lines along which magic coursed, the underlying frameworks, and precise, complex alchemical machinery arranged themselves in orderly rows beneath her gaze.

Though still chaotic, mixed with true and false, and hard to grasp, at least now these things looked... like an open book.

And as long as it was a book, she could read it, understand it, and digest it.

Just as the girl had done for more than a decade before.

...

...

"I didn't expect you wouldn't go help with the cracking."

Moen, who kept most of his attention on Lea while strolling around, drifted to the edge without realizing it, looking like an old hand adept at slacking off on the job.

Not far from him, another sly old fox was even worse: he had actually fallen fast asleep, slumbering so soundly that drool dripped from the corner of his mouth.

"Hm? Huh?"

The intelligent beauty named Faye blankly wiped the drool from her lips; it took her a long moment to pull herself out of the beautiful dream that had been disturbed, and her bright eyes focused on Moen before her.

"Why would I go?"

Faye yawned and stretched, and the stunning figure only slightly inferior to Lea's was outlined beneath her robe:

"I'm good at magic, but I'm not good at dismantling that sort of thing. Not everyone has a way with it; otherwise, with so many people here, we wouldn't have only such a pitiful few crackers."

"Makes sense."

"But I'm a bit surprised that you, Mr. Moen, didn't go."

"Eh? Me?" Moen froze.

"Yeah. You're that one's disciple—this kind of thing surely won't stump you!"

Faye looked at Moen, the same strange gleam as when they first met sparkling in her bright eyes.

He couldn't shake the feeling... he'd really been misunderstood somehow.

The corner of Moen's mouth twitched, and he silently turned his gaze away.

"That said, Miss Margarita is one thing, but I didn't expect that hothead Anne to take the initiative to do something like this," Moen said, changing the subject.

At the moment, five people were involved in the cracking: Lea, Nalishiji, Margarita, Freya's knight Bryan, and Anne.

In fact, what surprised people most was Freya's divine attendant knight, Bryan. Many had not expected that he was also a mage of very high attainment. When that man in black stepped out of Freya's shadow for the first time, he truly made quite a few jaws drop.

But Moen didn't feel much about that; to him, the fact that a bratty little loli Anne would proactively take on such a thankless task was even harder to believe.

"Don't underestimate Miss Anne. As the best alchemist here, if she doesn't act, the cracking work will likely run straight into enormous difficulty."

Faye smiled. "After all, what's complex about that gate isn't only magic."

"Oh, oh."

Moen, wearing the steady look of someone who'd known all along, rubbed his chin and said:

"So that means... the cracking is going smoothly, right."

Hm?

Faye's willowy brows knit slightly, and her doubtful gaze swept over Moen's taut, unreadable profile...

He clearly understands this stuff, yet he's deliberately asking me?

What is that supposed to mean?

Though puzzled, Faye still answered instinctively:

"For the moment, I suppose so."

"For the moment?"

"After all, it's the kind of thing crafted with great care. Until the very last moment... hm?"

In an instant, the laziness and leisure vanished from Faye's face; a grave expression, like a dark cloud, swept over her features.

"What is it?"

"There's a problem."

"Wha—"

Moen tensed a little, but then coughed dryly and forced himself to sound calm:

"It can't be Lea who's in trouble, can it?"

"Of course it's not Lea."

Faye gave Moen a strange look, then glanced toward the field and said meaningfully:

"The one with the problem is someone else—the one who looks the least likely."

...

...

"What's going on?"

Before the gate, Anne, who had been focused on reverse-analyzing the operating rules of the alchemical mechanisms, suddenly opened her eyes. Her gaze locked onto a tall, thin figure not far to her side, and a ferocious killing intent flashed across her baby-fat little face:

"Nalishiji, what the hell are you doing?"

Though the five were parsing at the same time and in different directions, their goal was the same, so they were bound to affect one another to some extent.

Anne was now affected—by Nalishiji, and not in a good way.

"I... n-no, it's just a small mishap, a small mishap! I'll get it under control soon, very soon!"

Nalishiji was drenched in sweat, the arrogance from moments ago gone from his brow and eyes. He stared fixedly at the gate before him, and the hands with which he was channeling magic to perform the crack were already trembling slightly.

No.

This was not right.

It shouldn't be like this.

He was the leader of the Revelation School, a genius in this field; everyone here was inferior to him in this respect, and so it was only natural that he had taken on the most vital core cracking.

By rights, everyone here should have been his background, the green leaves that set off the flowers. He would open the gate and win everyone's praise and admiration, and anyone who wished to go further would have to be indebted to him for this favor.

He would also win Miss Freya—win the favor of Her Highness the future Saintess. Just like before, he would get, get her...

But...

Why?

Why was it like this?

It was just a tiny oversight... no, not even an oversight; as the Revelation School, meticulousness and prudence were etched into their bones.

But then, faced with that insignificant small magical framework, he had reflexively used the substitution method—temporarily swapping in another spell with the same effect, without understanding the essence of the framework, to keep it running.

Yet that small substitution turned that seemingly trivial little framework into the first domino to fall. The chain reaction spread rapidly, and more magical frameworks began to collapse.

If it continued like this, it would soon reach the core and then cause irreparable consequences.

Not just him—everyone here would be dragged down by him!

Then never mind anyone being indebted to him; even after they left here, those enraged people would tear him to pieces!

"It's not over yet... not yet!"

Veins crawled across Nalishiji's forehead, and bloodshot lines webbed his eyes, but he kept trying to plug the ever-widening breach. No matter what, that hole must not blow up on his watch, on his watch...

"Nalishiji!"

Anne's roar snapped him awake, and in a daze he realized everyone was looking at him.

There were no blind men here; basically everyone had noticed something was wrong.

"Hey... don't tell me... we're going to fail."

Before this high-stakes gamble began, everyone had been told the consequences of failure.

So some people were already turning pale and bolting.

More people watched Nalishiji with even more fervent eyes, hoping this genius in the spotlight would step up and turn the tide.

But soon, that fervent gaze turned to despair.

Because... even Nalishiji himself... gave up.

"S-sorry... I can't do it."

He let go, dejected, letting the collapse spread swiftly. A low hum came from the gate, and some terrible killing intent was brewing.

It's over. It's already over.

No one could save him; no one could save the people here.

The collapse could no longer be contained. Soon, all the magic arrays in the entire gate would detonate at once; under that tremendous force, none would be spared.

This game had already ended—

"It's not over yet!"

Nalishiji jerked his head up in astonishment, and saw that the girl he had just 'reminded' suddenly left her place and stood before him.

Without hesitation, she set both hands on the gate, which had grown scalding as the magic began to collapse.

She was going to...

"Ha."

Nalishiji started, then let out a self-mocking laugh. "It's already over."

Even something he himself couldn’t do—how could she possibly manage it?

Even if she was a saintess candidate, in his mind this saintess candidate, apart from her looks and figure, had nothing particularly outstanding, which was why he said such things at the time.

Looks and figure were of no use at this moment; unless someone could, in a mere minute, construct hundreds of magic arrays to fill the gaps, then even ten more saintess candidates couldn’t stop the tragedy from happening.

"My lady, please go. If we seize the moment now, maybe we can still, before the explosion arrives..."

"I said, it’s not over yet!"

The girl’s suddenly raised voice cut off Nalishiji’s admonition.

It also brought all the clamor in the venue, the restless crowd, and Anne—who had been about to shout something—into silence at the same time.

Everyone stared in astonishment at the girl who, from the back, looked so delicate and slender.

"Before this, I learned an important lesson from someone important."

The girl turned back and glanced at Nalishiji.

Then, specks of starlight around her brightened one after another.

"That lesson is..."

The dazzling starlight linked into arcane threads and, at a jaw-dropping speed, began constructing magic arrays.

"When no one believes in you..."

The girl slammed both hands once more against the searing-hot gate, and at that moment an even greater roar resounded.

"At the very least, you must believe in yourself!"

The bright radiance flared with a hum, casting the image of the girl with her long hair flying.

Sacred and proud.

As if she were a true saintess.