These past few nights, Hoshino Gen had been making excuses to leave the house, sneaking out to investigate leads related to that scent.
First, the source of the scent was indeed the cherry blossom trees near the school, but the exact reason why they were blooming for a second time remained unknown.
Hoshino Gen hadn’t thrown away the petal he’d taken from Ziteng Sayaka’s hair.
Instead, he’d secretly kept it and later sent it to Kunimitian for slice analysis.
The results came back quickly.
The petal did show signs of being tainted by dark energy.
As for what effects the scent it emitted could cause, with such a small sample size, it couldn’t be studied yet.
These kinds of details simply didn’t exist in the game’s plot.
All he knew was that the next King-level Beast to appear was a gimmick boss.
A few Magical Girls had almost been killed by it back then, and it had also left them with severe psychological trauma.
A person’s mental breakdown often happens in an instant, yet the pressure that causes that breakdown accumulates slowly over years.
Hoshino Gen had done so much preparation in advance.
Of course, he didn’t want any unexpected events to occur.
He had to investigate every possible variable beforehand.
He used his memory to draw a map of the area around the school, and also obtained a map of Tamayura Town’s underground water pipeline system from other sources.
For such a large batch of cherry trees to be infected simultaneously, the most likely cause was a problem with the groundwater source.
The water, polluted by dark energy, was then absorbed by the roots of nearby plants, leading to this result.
However, this was all just his speculation.
The truth depended on the results of his field investigation.
These past few nights, Hoshino Gen wore a dark outfit for moving around at night, transformed into a manhole cover thief, and pried open every sewer grate he could find.
After collecting enough data samples and comparing them on the map, a fairly obvious pattern emerged.
This was exactly what Hoshino Gen wanted.
The principle was easy to understand.
The closer to the pollution source, the higher the concentration of dark energy in the water sample.
By ranking the water sample data and following the map, he could locate the source of the pollution.
Through his investigations over these past few days, combined with map analysis, the pollution source turned out to be somewhere he never expected.
The pollution source was inside Chiyu Academy.
This was definitely bad news.
He’d just been doing a casual investigation, but suddenly discovered something major.
With so many students in the school, if something went wrong, it would be catastrophic.
He had to find the pollution source as quickly as possible and deal with it.
However, being new to the school, Hoshino Gen naturally wasn’t very familiar with it yet.
He spent some time walking around the campus to get acquainted with the environment, and also asked his younger sister some questions.
That gave him a rough understanding.
Hoshino Gen only knew that Chiyu Academy’s groundwater had problems.
Trying to steal manhole covers—er, no—secretly investigate the groundwater on school grounds was a completely different level of difficulty compared to doing it on the street.
He had to be extremely careful.
After all, it was a school built by a financial conglomerate, known for being lavishly funded.
Chiyu Academy had an enormous footprint, with all kinds of landscaping and facilities a school should have.
But there weren’t many places that could affect the groundwater.
Only the teaching building, the office building, and the dormitory buildings.
It was another dark and windy night.
The moon and stars were all hiding.
Wearing his dark outfit, Hoshino Gen walked and stopped around the school, holding a dark energy detector recently developed by Dark Erosion.
Because his home was close to the school, he and his sister could commute as day students.
But many of his classmates lived outside Tamayura Town and had no choice but to board at the school.
If a classmate caught him sneaking around campus at night and he couldn’t explain it clearly, he’d easily fall under suspicion.
Fortunately, Hoshino Gen had completed many Souls-like 3A masterpieces and had skillfully mastered various stealth techniques, like rolling, jumping, crawling, wall-hooking, backstabbing, and elemental reactions, etc.
Under the disguise of his dark outfit, Hoshino Gen blended perfectly into the night, and hadn’t been spotted by anyone yet.
In this world, Magic Beasts existed.
Ordinary citizens generally didn’t dare to go out at night.
But it was different inside the school.
The later it got, the more young couples would come out, walking in pairs on campus.
A prompt came through Hoshino Gen’s earpiece, meaning the detector in his hand had sensed the location with the highest concentration of dark energy nearby.
Following the direction indicated by the detector, Hoshino Gen traced a path along a small road until he was blocked by a tall wall.
The scenery inside the walled compound was deep and secluded.
Looking at the gate, the architectural style was somewhat Western European.
The top of the gate was covered in spikes and barbs, and from a distance, it looked like a fence made of weapons.
There was actually a place like this in the school?
Just as Hoshino Gen was wondering if anyone could live in a place like this, the sound of piano music came from deep within the courtyard.
The piece was too famous.
Within a few seconds, Hoshino Gen recognized the name of the piano piece.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.
This was a truly miraculous piece.
When you closed your eyes and listened intently, a magical scene would emerge in your mind: a tranquil sea with shimmering reflections, the tide slowly rolling in, gently lapping against the shore.
As time passed, the music’s tempo gradually quickened, ripples appeared on the sea’s surface, the tide grew more turbulent, and a full moon slowly rose above the horizon, its light scattering across the entire ocean.
This was an exceptionally high-level piece in terms of both technical difficulty and artistic merit, using notes to paint a vivid picture.
It was on an entirely different plane.
Although Hoshino Gen wasn’t particularly artistic, beautiful things had a captivating magic.
Even before the prelude had finished, his entire mind was sinking into it.
Even if this wasn’t the time to be stealing a moment of leisure, his brain didn’t care about that.
It issued a single command: “Attention everyone, enjoy the music!”
Hoshino Gen closed his eyes and listened intently.
The same piece, played by different people in different moods, could express completely different emotions.
The version of the Moonlight Sonata he was hearing now was vastly different from the original.
The original was all about the glorious full moon shining over the entire sea, majestic and grand.
But this version featured a waning moon hanging low, the sea dark and gloomy, bleak and sorrowful.
The person playing the piano was in a very low state of mind, and the piece they played involuntarily evoked a sense of sadness in the listener.
The tone was sorrowful, but undeniably, the playing was incredibly good.
Could a new music teacher have come to the school?
The piece ended, and the courtyard returned to silence, with no more sounds coming from within.
Hoshino Gen snapped out of his dazed melancholy and realized that, without noticing, he was standing right at the iron gate, one step away from touching it.
The earpiece suddenly emitted a buzzing static from interference, and the detector in his hand started pointing wildly in all directions.
Hoshino Gen’s pupils instantly constricted as he sensed danger.
In a single large leap, he bounded several meters back from the gate.
Whoa, that gate was electrified!