Leaving the alchemy club, I walked while thinking, my mind gradually shifting to another issue that had been simmering inside me for a long time, only lacking a suitable opportunity to resolve.
I recalled the sensation when summoning a monster, the few seconds needed to complete the ritual, chant the spell, and channel mana into the card before the monster actually appeared on the field.
It was long. Horribly long.
What? Five seconds is already fast? Sorry, but spending that much just to summon a level 3 or 4 monster while the enemy is about to fire a beam at me makes those seconds feel like an eternity.
In a normal card battle those few seconds might mean nothing. But in a real life-or-death fight where the opponent doesn't need to follow any rules or turns, those brief seconds are no different from suicide.
'No good. There has to be a way to shorten this time, or better yet eliminate it completely.'
And right then I suddenly remembered a familiar image that flashed into my mind so clearly I couldn't help laughing to myself in the middle of the corridor.
'Duel Disk.'
Exactly. The legendary wrist-mounted device from the anime I had been obsessed with throughout my teenage years, where you only needed to place a card into the slot and the monster would appear instantly, no lengthy chanting, no waiting through complicated rituals.
And yeah, I had thought about it before, and now was the time to make it happen.
The problem was, I only knew its external appearance and basic functions from the anime episodes and manga pages I had read. As for its internal structure and actual operating mechanism, I was completely clueless.
This was clearly not something I could craft with my own limited knowledge.
'In that case, I'll have to ask someone with expertise.'
And at that moment I suddenly recalled a place I had just visited not long ago.
The mechanic club, the one that produced that earth-shaking explosion this morning, forcing Alvin, Alice and me to hurriedly stay away.
'Well, might as well try once. Who knows, it might work.'
Instead of going back to find my friends scattered around Area B, I decided to change direction and head straight for the mechanic club, the site of that memorable explosion only a few hours earlier.
The moment I stepped across the threshold I was immediately enveloped by a thick mixture of machine oil, gasoline, and the lingering scorched smoke that still hung in the air like the remnants of the morning blast.
The hum of running machinery, the clanging of hammers, the grinding of gears echoed from every direction, forming a chaotic industrial symphony that somehow had its own rhythm.
I froze right at the door, eyes wide as I looked around, unable to hide my amazement.
Because the scene before me, to be honest, was steeped in steampunk to an astonishing degree. Gleaming brass machines with countless intertwined steam pipes, giant spinning fans, various pressure gauges with constantly trembling needles, and somewhere amid that chaos were machines of strange shapes whose purpose I couldn't even begin to guess.
'This world is truly bizarre,' I thought, shifting my gaze from one old-fashioned steam engine to another device right beside it that looked far more advanced. 'Sometimes the magical technology surpasses even the modern era I used to live in, other times you see these industrial-revolution relics. A true hotpot of everything.'
Just like Yukiko's deck. The world is a magic world, yet her cards are rockets, motorcycles, and so on.
While I was still absorbed in observing the surroundings, my eyes accidentally landed on a familiar figure, the ponytail girl who had been blown out of the club during the explosion this morning.
Now she was squatting in front of some device, wrench in hand turning continuously, safety goggles still on her face, concentrating so hard she paid no attention to anything around her.
I approached and greeted her.
"Hello, senpai."
No reaction. She kept tightening the bolt in her hand, completely ignoring my existence.
I frowned and tried again, a little louder this time.
"Hello, senpai!"
Still nothing changed. She continued her work as if I were nothing more than a passing breeze.
'…Oh? So you want to play it this way?' I thought.
I took a breath, leaned down close to her ear, and gently blew a stream of cold air straight into it.
"HUH—!!"
She jumped violently, her whole body shuddering as if electrocuted, the wrench flying from her hand and clattering onto the floor. She spun around, eyes full of extreme panic as she stared straight at me.
I was about to open my mouth to greet her properly, but before I could say a single word she suddenly dropped to her knees, both hands clasped in front of her chest as if begging for mercy.
"I-I'm sorry! I still haven't earned enough credits to pay the debt! I swear I'm trying my hardest!" she rattled off in a trembling, terrified voice. "I only have this body and this tiny precious club of mine, please don't touch my club!!"
"…?"
I stood frozen in place, needing several seconds to process the flood of information I had just received.
'…A debtor?'
Clearly this was some disastrous misunderstanding. She was probably mistaking me for someone coming to collect a debt. I stayed silent for a moment, trying to organize my thoughts before explaining.
"Uh, no, I have nothing to do with your debts. I only came here to talk about a few things."
Hearing that, she raised her head and looked at me with eyes still not free of suspicion, but upon realizing I was still young and that she had never met anyone like me, she let out a long sigh of relief as if a thousand-pound weight had been lifted.
"Phew, thank goodness… I thought the credit payment deadline had already arrived and I still didn't know what to use to pay, so I was planning to offer my body to—"
She hadn't finished the sentence when she met my gaze, a mix of contempt and deep skepticism about human character. She immediately fell silent, her face flushing red with embarrassment.
"…No, that's not what I meant! I meant I was planning to work overtime, repairing things for other people to earn credits!" she hurriedly corrected herself, waving her hands frantically.
'…Fine, let's pretend I didn't hear that,' I sighed inwardly and decided not to dig further into this girl's strange professional ethics.
Once the atmosphere had become a little less weird, I began explaining the real purpose of my visit.
"Actually I came because I have a request I'd like the club to help with. I don't know… can you do it?"
I knew that besides being gathering places for people with shared interests, the academy's clubs also functioned as a kind of internal service, ready to fulfill requests from other students as long as those requests fell within their specialty.
As for compensation, it depended on the agreement between both parties. It could be paid in credits or something else, as long as the receiving side was satisfied.
"What kind of request?" she asked, her voice back to normal, looking at me curiously.
"I want a wrist-mounted device that allows me to use cards instantly just by placing them on it. It should be able to hold five or six cards, foldable or extendable very easily. You know what I mean?"
Hearing that, she paused slightly and raised an eyebrow.
"Oh… actually I've received a few similar requests before," she scratched her head, a bit awkward.
"But those people only said one vague idea like 'make something that summons faster,' so we had no idea where to even begin."
Oh really? So there are other people who also realize how slow manual summoning is?
"Then let me explain more clearly," I said, and began describing it in as much detail as possible.
I talked about its shape, a device worn on the arm with slots to insert cards, a mechanism that expands and retracts flexibly. I explained how it worked: when a card is placed in the correct position, the device automatically reads the information on the card and activates the summoning effect immediately, reducing the entire traditional ritual process down to a single action.
Even though I myself only knew these things from anime episodes and manga pages in my previous life, describing it so clearly, specifically, and systematically seemed to make the idea far clearer than the vague requests she had received before.
She stood silently listening to everything, her eyes gradually shifting from surprise to a different kind of light—the same light I had grown all too familiar with after witnessing it in both Ellie and Madden only minutes earlier.
"Wait a moment," she said, then turned and ran off toward a few other club members who were gathered repairing something in the opposite corner of the room.
I stood waiting, watching from a distance as she whispered with her teammates, occasionally pointing toward me, then the whole group nodding and discussing animatedly.
After a while of discussion she returned, a surprisingly bright smile on her lips, completely different from her earlier panic.
"Alright! We'll do it!" she cheered with full enthusiasm.
"So how much is the fee?" I asked, ready to pull out credits to pay.
"Fee? Sorry, but we only do this out of passion. We don't care about that stuff," she waved her hand as if money wasn't worth worrying about in the slightest. "As long as we get to create something new that has never existed before and that also helps other people, we have nothing to complain about."
'…Why is every club I visit today full of pure research enthusiasts?' I thought, feeling both grateful and a little amused.
No wonder she in debt
Then she suddenly remembered something and clapped her hands.
"Ah, I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Pai, class Qin Shi Huang, year 11, and also the president of this mechanic club."
A year 11 student? Older than I thought.
"Igor, year 6," I replied, a bit surprised that she was also a club president, just like Ellie from the alchemy club earlier.
Pai then rummaged in her pocket, took out a blank card, and handed it to me.
"Take this. Consider it a method of contact. Whenever you need anything extra, want to ask something, or we have updates on the progress, use this to get in touch."
I accepted the card and nodded in thanks.
"Thank you very much, senpai."
"No problem at all. Wait for our news!" Pai waved goodbye, then returned to her unfinished work, seeming to have completely forgotten the fear of debt repayment from a few minutes earlier.
I left the mechanic club in a much more upbeat mood. Actually, keeping this device just for myself wasn't what I wanted either.
With what I already knew about the events that would come later, this academy would need to strengthen its overall power even faster, otherwise it would be hard to withstand the upheavals that were about to hit.
A device like this, if widely popularized, might help a great many people, not just me.
Leaving Area B with a light heart, I headed toward Area C, my stomach already starting to growl after a long morning of wandering around. The cafeteria was waiting for me ahead.
"Not inviting everyone… is that okay? Eh, whatever, they'll come later anyway."
But just as I was passing a row of large windows looking out onto the back of Area C, a strange scene caught my eye and forced me to stop.
Aelith, the true protagonist of the game, the one I had always been quietly watching with special curiosity, was standing alone in a deserted courtyard, striking some kind of pose with an extremely serious expression.
She stood at an angle, one hand raised to cover half her face, one foot forward and one back as if preparing to step into a life-or-death battle.
Then she shook her head, muttering something I couldn't hear clearly through the glass, apparently criticizing the pose she had just made.
"This pose isn't cool enough yet."
She switched to another pose, this time with both arms crossed over her chest, chin tilted high, eyes gazing into the distant horizon like a hero from a painting.
I stood looking through the window, my whole body frozen stiff.
But it was already too late. Aelith, while absorbed in her private practice of "cool" poses, suddenly looked up, and her eyes accidentally met mine as I stood frozen behind the glass.
"Ah."
She let out a short sound, without the slightest embarrassment or panic I had expected, just a calm "ah," as if being caught striking poses alone in an empty courtyard was the most natural thing in the world.
The two of us stood there, looking at each other through the window in silence, neither saying a word.
*****
I will change "grade" to "year"