Chapter 280: Recalling What's to come?
After finally getting her room to herself, Lillian sat at her desk with an intense focus look on her face.
Looking down at a particular notebook with a pen in hand, she began jotting down the events that would happen.
First, she had to remember about a certain bin she had been pouring water inside the entire time.
Once every month leading up to this point, on a random day, a mysterious individual would drop in a cardboard box. Lillian knew that the individual was a student here at the academy.
Well...
She says student, but she wasn't sure about that. In the game, the student was a living puppet that was being mind-controlled.
The person who mind-controlled them was none other than the leading attacker in the invasion to come.
One of the 5 Priests of the Cult of Jesters. He was the weakest but the most impulsive and willing to not follow the orders of his superiors, which were other priests who were much stronger than him.
If Lillian recalled correctly, the Cult of Jesters were still in its infancy. Well, in terms of members. They were still heavily armed, though.
They appeared several years ago. At first, they were subtle in their movements, but slowly, their actions became more extreme as they raided countless military bases for their equipment.
They had also invaded countless small villagers on the outskirts of every kingdom, leaving ruined buildings without a single corpse left behind.
As she thought about this, she remembered that this was Millis's backstory.
A small country girl in the outskirts taught by a travelling instructor from a prestigious academy. After going on an errand, she found that her entire village had been destroyed.
She was then later found alone in the centre of her village by the people of Louis Mana Academy, who had discovered one of their members—through unknown means—had perished.
Later on, they brought her to the south region's kingdom, Restara. This was where they discovered her talents for the art of magic and later retrieved letters of recommendation from her instructor.
Lillian scratched the side of her head, sighing.
"A traumatic backstory for a girl that doesn't even look like she's scarred one bit."
Turning her head back down to her notebook, she continued to scribble more.
The leading attacker was the Puppeteer due to his ability to use strings to control both living people and corpses. In this case, it would be living people.
Lillian returned her mind back to the bin and the object inside the cardboard box.
At this point, the academy should know about her actions and have even discovered the black cubes.
These cubes were secretly explosives that would undoubtedly create a large explosion of damage if gone off. At least packing in the force of several dozens of dynamites in one.
And with how many there were... It really would cause a catastrophe, considering that the garbage dump was secured and circulated under the entire realm.
Fortunately, she had managed to get rid of them.
With...
Water that she had imbued with the element of being Parasitic.
Just normal water wouldn't be able to serve as a good defuser, especially with its design. That's why, by partially imbuing her water with Parasitism, she had managed to make it leech off of the power supply inside.
Luckily, this didn't cause any trouble outside of what she wanted, for she had discovered that over time, her Parasitic element would lose effectiveness if not constantly fed mana.
Which... Was common sense in this world.
'Although it served as good practice and endurance...' Lillian leaned back in her seat and stared up at the ceiling. 'It does use up a lot of her mana...'
As she continued to think more on this, she couldn't help but wonder when the academy—more specifically, the Acting Headmaster—was going to confront her about this.
'On the topic of Headmaster... I believe Luton's Academy Headmaster is—'
"What are you so deep in thought about?"
Lillian flinched, shooting herself up into a straightened posture as she twisted her chair around, finding Marionette behind her.
The Assassin was casually lying on her stomach on top of the Rabbit's bed, staring at her with a curious but stoic look on her face.
The corner of Lillian's lips twitched as she quietly asked:
"H-... How have have you been there for?"
"... Does that matter? Are you finished with your work?"
"W-well, not really and uh..."
Lillian turned her chair around, flipping the notebook shut before placing it back in one of the desk's drawers along with its pen.
Twisting herself back, she flinched again as the Assassin's face was right against hers.
Leaning back in her seat, she watched as the woman slowly climbed onto her lap before wrapping her arms around her neck and cuddling up to her.
She felt the woman's face move into the crevice of her neck, tickling the side of it with the tip of her nose before breathing her in.
Lillian shivered a bit, unprepared for the sudden intimacy.
"S-so... Good morning to you too, honey..."
Marionette, having closed her eyes and begun enjoying Lillian's presence, gave a low hum of acknowledgement.
"Good morning to you too, Lillian."
Lillian shuffled a bit, feeling the woman's arms move down from her neck to around her chest and under her armpits.
She gulped and asked:
"Have you... Been awake long?"
Before she had entered her room, she had left Marionette alone on the couch to sleep a little bit more.
Albeit... Was slightly difficult to remove herself from the woman's tight embrace.
"..."
Lillian felt a bit awkward as the Assassin was silent to her question. However, that awkwardness soon disappeared, followed by a subtle sense of panic as she felt the woman tighten her hold around her chest.
"A-ah uhm... M-mari... It's a bit tight now."
"... Too bad. Don't leave my embrace without asking, next time." Marionette muttered almost warningly.
"I-I..." Lillian stuttered, trying to come up with a retort before sighing.
She then muttered in a defeated tone:
"S-sorry, ma'am..."
"Good girl."