"Urgh... this is so tiring..."
The class was just over, and Ciel watched as Quia slumped across her table, cheeks lting into a squishy pool.
Ciel’s eyes glimred. She wanted to poke them.
"Miss Quia," she gulped. "Do you already know the lectures by heart?"
"...yeah..." Quia murmured. "I’m never good at long talks. Miss lisra was just revising the basics, so I got off-track..."
If the elf’s reaction was one of boredom, Shire’s was another extre.
Chair screeched, and as Ciel turned, Shire already raised herself from the seat before leaving the duo on their own.
"The class was boring, so I’m going to the dormitory to sleep."
The mad noble just strode away.
Ciel and Quia’s gaze just lingered. Shire, passing by the smiling lisra, slid the door open and stepped out.
This chain of sequence was so smooth that even so classmates stared in awe and jealousy.
"Well then, everyone has a break! Ten minutes later, and it will be Gruella’s lecture, so enjoy suffering a lot!"
lisra’s voice rang and broke the silence. Classes continued, with or without Shire.
As the others began to pack up, lisra called out. "Oh, and Ciel! Follow to the laboratory just right next to this building. See you at the door!"
Quia gave a quiet, weird look to Ciel, who subtly nodded at the request.
"Want to go with you?" The elf suggested, raising herself from the table.
Ciel pressed her down, her smile jagged and a little distant. "Not this ti."
She once asked Sumr and lisra a favour, just between the three of them.
And Ciel would rather keep more secrets to herself, if possible.
—----
Leaving the Black Steel Training Ground, Ciel followed lisra out, as they turned right and strolled along the rooftop walkway.
Their figures passed by the arena, a vast expanse that stretched wherever they went.
lisra’s chuckle ca off as sweet to Ciel. Almost too sweet.
"Little Ciel." She asked. "So were you that cute fishhead I showed earlier?"
The forr shadebeast’s boots clattered. Just for a mont, but Ciel felt as if she was naked.
"Tell your analysis first."
The pink-haired witch, with her back facing the serious Ciel, only caught her chin while humming.
She answered a question with a question. "Do you know how a Queen was born?"
Ciel shook her head. "All I know is that they were typically born under the full moon."
It was more by instinct that Ciel knew this detail, just like when other shadebeasts gathered before a lily.
"Exactly." lisra tilted her head, exposing her catlike smirk. "There was a legend, they say, that the moon was a protector of the Nightfall."
The witch continued. "Shadebeasts and Queens only spawned during the night, so it would make sense they worship the moon that shielded them from the sunlight itself."
Worship? Ciel’s eyelids fell halfway, not enough to squint, but enough to suggest a weary doubt.
"Shadebeasts do not worship," Ciel called out.
"Perhaps so," the pink-haired witch faced ahead again, her expression unreadable. "But this legend reminds that shadebeasts shared a commonality under the night."
She raised a finger. "So it didn’t make sense not to link the existence of Queens to the shadebeasts. If both spawned at night, couldn’t they be of the sa nature? Sa birth, even?"
They soon arrived before a pair of doors, their rimd glass gleaming with a steel-like hardness.
"Naturally," lisra pushed them open, the weight screeching against the floor. "I have suspected your birth to be of shadebeast, given your... experienced outlook in my mimic hunt."
Ciel paused, then her thumbs fidgeted together, as if to clumsily work at the knot in her chest.
"Umm..." Ciel hesitated. "Thanks... for the complint."
Not even Miss Dragon complinted her in the exam. Ciel knew lisra was just stating facts, but she couldn’t help being happy.
lisra just froze halfway on the doorstep. She peeked over her shoulder, glancing at the nervous Ciel.
The pink-haired witch’s eyes curved pleasantly. She pivoted to Ciel, then bent down and squeezed her cheek.
As Ciel let out a stuttering hum, lisra chuckled again. This ti, the sweetness sounded just right. Genuine, even.
"I can see why Sumr likes you," lisra’s tone began to edge dangerously. "Sha...you and I could do so much together..."
The black, lively eyes rely blinked in response. Seconds flew by, but the witches had no ti for bonding alone.
Ciel’s wrist burned again. Breeze quieted, then fluttrered again as if moving just after ti had frozen without her knowing.
Before Ciel realised, her small figure was trapped in a firm embrace, with two laced arms wrapped softly around her neck.
A shadow lood over them. lisra, grunting, squinted behind Ciel.
"Let have my fun with my brethren, Principal."
Miss Dragon? Ciel’s mind caught onto the realisation. Her body could spring up, excited like a child eting her idol.
But the embrace on her was too warm, protective, and possessive.
A mature, low voice echoed from behind, growling under each syllable.
"Do not presu my generosity as a license for you to be reckless, lisra."
Sumr hugged Ciel tighter as she held her back. One more step away from lisra was one step closer to safety.
The Principal then scolded, though her tone dimd to be flatter, more dismissive.
"If you do that again, I’ll make sure to cut another paycheck from you."
The pink-haired witch’s eyes shook, as if paycheck was all of her world, and it began collapsing.
"You... fucker..."
"What was that?"
"Nothing!"
lisra huffed and snapped away, striding inside with a groan. "Okay okay, I won’t tease. Blackmailing like this coz I tease your secret lover... fuck, how petty can you be..."
Her mockery trailed off as she entered the lab’s deep end, leaving only Ciel and Sumr before the doorway.
Ciel could only stare. Dazed and a little amused, she glanced up to et Miss Dragon’s glare.
"Hi." She muttered.
"..."
Silence only responded, but Ciel didn’t mind. She always liked silence, and the way Sumr’s eyes softened when it was just them both.
She folded herself into Miss Dragon’s arms, closing her eyes.
And as if naturally, Miss Dragon lifted her by the legs, before walking them into the lab.
A loud grumble of jealousy echoed afterwards, though no one particularly cared.
—-------
The laboratory was a small building with just an open hall, with dusty white ceilings and ssy equipnt piling in the corner, used only by lisra.
Normally, other students and associates would co about, but the Witches’ knowledge was so vast that they would rather isolate themselves in learning not to be disrupted.
And amongst the test containers, each filled with liquids to contain unknown creatures, stood Sumr and lisra, while Ciel rested in the dragon’s arms.
"Here."
lisra threw a cube, and Ciel’s hand barely caught it.
The silver question mark brimd with a glowy eagerness. It was the rare item box, taken from Ciel’s system earlier.
Ciel lent this box to lisra, a trusted confidant of Sumr, to investigate the system through it.
Though Sumr permitted, she warned her never to deluge further, afraid of lisra’s curiosity burning out of control.
"This thing," lisra laid out her findings. "Curiously, carried so of the mana I found in the teorites. The material is pure, untainted, and even hard to penetrate; its properties were like the moon mana if it were a solid."
The pink-haired witch, capable of travelling across space, comnted. For the first ti, her features grew stern with a hint of nervousness, only betrayed by the intrigued arc of her brows.
Ciel’s clasped hands cupped the box, observing it thoroughly, as if her moon magic existed a link with it she never knew.
The System, too, suspiciously suggested moon mastery among the options. Perhaps it wasn’t so coincidental?
lisra sighed as she pulled back. Drawing a chair, she dropped to it with a dismissive wave.
"Unfortunately, this was my only solid conclusion. Others were just hastily strung together thesises with not enough evidence to be backed up."
Sumr asked, as her hands stabilised Ciel into her chest. "Any suggestion that they were linked with the stars?"
Stars again. Ciel frowned, being the only one here left in the unknown.
She could tell the definite proof that the System stated itself, but only when Miss Dragon and she were alone.
"Truth is," lisra shrugged, her glimpse catching Ciel’s frustration, yet mistaking it as just surface-level.
"I, too, was thinking of this possibility. Normally here, I would say there are too many unknowns about them, but-"
lisra’s lips widened into a malicious smirk. "When the Witches failed to find sothing, the Stars were always the only phenonon left to explain them. Well, aside from the Shadebeasts, of course."
Ciel’s brows knitted together, her mind racing.
Earlier, lisra emphasised the associations between two linking factors, a lot.
If going by her logic, the shadebeasts worshipped the moon, and the moon orbited around the stars, so did it an lisra thought the shadebeasts were linked with the Stars too?
Could her System, sohow, be linked to the nature of shadebeasts?
Her head began to hurt as it hung, though a tender stroke befell it, dispelling any of the stress inside.
As Sumr patted the side of her head, this ti, it was Ciel’s lips that began to hurt.
She was trying not to giggle, not in this serious situation.
"Anyways..."
Ciel summoned her system inside again, as a form of distraction.
"Perhaps..." Her black eyes t lisra’s gaze, drawn by the flickering mana in the item box.
"You can observe sothing when I... open the box?"
She decided to demonstrate the System’s ability, partly.
There could be no breakthrough without so risk, and Ciel trusted her perception.
lisra could an no harm, probably.
She didn’t know how much she would regret this sentence in the future.
For now-
[ Rare Item Box: Detected ]
[ Permission to open? ]
Ciel nodded. And a bright light flashed from the box, roaming across the laboratory.
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