The night was still quiet...
Outside the Sanze Academy cram school building, beside a river where traffic and pedestrians were scarce at night, making it a suitable place for a school, the chirping of insects and birds still rang out through the night... The entire building was immersed in the scattered glow of lights beneath the night sky. Everything was peaceful.
It was a charming, tranquil night in Academy City. Nothing was happening.
At least, to the residents nearby and the few pedestrians passing through, everything seemed perfectly normal. They hadn't noticed anything amiss, nor had they heard the terrible roars and horrifying explosions coming from the Sanze Academy building.
To outsiders, under the influence of the magical barrier known as "Mirror Reflection" or "Presence Concealment," the Sanze Academy building was just as it always was. There were no explosions, no lightning strikes, no near-collapse, no miraculous instant restoration as if time had been rewound, and certainly no terrifying noises coming from inside!
Before the wondrous spells of the magic side, Academy City—renowned for possessing the world's most advanced technology, being at least twenty or thirty years ahead of the outside world, leading the scientific world, and pioneering the development of psychic powers—hadn't noticed a thing. Not even the security robots scattered all over the city. Even those robots that looked like giant metal barrels, despite passing the road outside Sanze Academy several times, simply turned a blind eye and hurried on. They paid no heed to the students, men and women alike, lying all over the lobby behind the shattered glass doors; the seven remaining knights of the Order tied to pillars; or the bodies lying in pools of blood.
At that moment, the only ones in the city who were probably still keeping an eye on what was