"You're saying... those three are still alive?"
After her afternoon classes ended, Catherine had only just returned to her dorm room, so tidy it was almost bare, when her personal maid, who had been waiting there, delivered some rather unexpected news.
The three upperclassmen she had secretly hired to test the Screech Magic Device prototype deep in the Dungeon had been out of contact for days. She had long since written them off as casualties of a failed experiment, yet not only were they alive, they had... successfully returned to the surface.
That genuinely surprised Catherine a little.
"Yes, my lady. They are indeed alive, and witnesses saw them coming out of the Dungeon entrance together this morning."
The maid lowered her head and calmly confirmed the news.
"This morning..."
Catherine repeated softly, a flicker of understanding crossing her blue eyes.
No wonder she had noticed people whispering in so many corners of the Academy today. The atmosphere had seemed unusually charged.
At the time, she had dismissed it as idle campus gossip and paid it no mind.
Now it seemed this incident was probably at the heart of it.
Once her surprise passed, reason swiftly took over.
Catherine frowned slightly, beginning to consider what was strange about the situation.
How had those three escaped after becoming trapped in the deeper areas?
On their own?
Absolutely impossible.
If they had possessed that kind of strength and adaptability, the monsters in the depths would never have driven them into a desperate situation and left them missing for days.
Then there was only one answer: someone else had intervened and rescued them.
That deduction put Catherine on alert.
Although the contract prevented those three from voluntarily revealing the specific details of the Screech Test commission, there was another concern.
If that third