Chapter 6: How Could an Extra Not Be the First One to Step Up?

Chapter 6: How Could an Extra Not Be the First One to Step Up?

[A fantasy originating from Ocris, gradually becoming reality…]

‘???’

Just as Louis was feeling confused, Helen suddenly leaned her upper body over and began flipping through the Magic Notes in Louis’s hand.

Her hair accidentally fell onto Louis’s face, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. She brushed her hair aside and kept flipping through the notes as if interacting with Louis like this was perfectly normal.

Seeing Helen’s actions, Louis fell into thought.

‘Could the ‘Fantasy Travel Story’ be the ‘Book of Fate’ described in the story? Ocris summoned me here… So, deep down, Helen thinks she’s my sister-in-law?’

‘And when Lufield and the others look at me, it’s like they’re looking at an extra, a toad dreaming of eating swan meat?’

Remembering the cheesy fantasies Ocris usually had, as recorded in the book, Louis felt a chill run down his spine.

He had no interest in these tacky stories or in any so-called princess. Right now, he just wanted to get past this second test.

“Looking at this stuff isn’t helpful, Louis,” Helen said as she flipped to a certain page in the Magic Notes he was holding. She gave him a somewhat reproachful look. “Don’t look at those extra things. Hurry up and copy this over. I need to look at it too soon—impromptu speech, right?”

After saying that, Helen also took a quill and a small notebook and shoved them into Louis’s hand. Then she gave Louis a helpless look, as if to say, “How come you didn’t bring anything?” After that, she sat back down.

Louis sighed quietly to himself, picked up the pen, and lowered his head to look at the Magic Notes.

The page Helen had flipped to contained many illustrations of terrifying monsters like evil spirits and Soul Harvesters—he was very familiar with them. The knowledge of the Faeries had comprehensive information about various spirits. So now, he could even tell at a glance which parts of these illustrations were wrong.

However, he could be sure that although the illustrations and descriptions of the monsters had many mistakes, the two magic spells written in Helen’s notes could deal with them.

One of these spells was called ‘Demon-Banishing Charm’ and the other was called ‘Evil Spirit Banishing Charm’.

From the notes and research comments Helen had written, these two spells were very difficult—because Helen thought they were incomplete. And every wizard, when using these two spells, had to add something based on their own understanding.

While studying these two spells, Louis thought it was just a simple elementary school algebra word problem. The missing parts could be solved by putting an ‘x’ in algebra.

[You have comprehended ‘Demon-Banishing Charm Lv1 (0/7)’ and ‘Evil Spirit Banishing Charm Lv1 (0/6)’.]

‘Hmm, these elementary algebra word problems still need to be done a few times.’

Louis continued reading and found a strange little piece of paper. The writing on it was very fresh, and if you rubbed it hard, ink would smudge. It looked like it was written just this morning.

It seemed this was a cheat sheet Ocris had prepared for Helen! It contained her understanding of this spell.

But this teacher’s skill level was clearly not great. A simple thing was written by her full of holes and extremely complicated.

There was also a note from Ocris on it: ‘This spell is obscure and hard to understand, but it’s very likely the trump card they’ve set up for this assessment. Memorize it secretly. I haven’t used these spells in front of others, so you can say they are your new research.’

Looking at the messy stuff Ocris had written, Louis shook his head.

No need to think about it. Helen was definitely going to fail. If he used this incantation to cast the spell, he might be able to do it 100% of the time. But for Helen, given her understanding of magic, the success rate probably wouldn’t exceed 20%.

He thought that Ocris’s original intention might not have been for Helen to defeat the Mirror Demon, but to use this ‘amazing’ spell so that even if Helen failed, she could still show some flair and get some points.

But there were two types of ‘Mirror Men’ in front of whom you could not show any flair—the Nameless One and the Calamity Evil Spirit.

To deal with these two things, you either completely won, or you got played to death by the evil spirit. If you lost, you definitely wouldn’t get a good score—you might even end up dancing upside down on the spot.

“Why are you just looking and not copying? Can you remember it all?” Helen looked over again, a tone of complaint in her voice.

Louis sighed quietly to himself, took out his own completely blank spell notes from his bag, and began copying.

A moment later, he calmly returned the notes to Helen.

“Did you copy everything?” Helen flipped through the book and said, “Memorize it well. Make sure the examiner doesn’t see you reading from a cheat sheet! Even if you might not be able to cast it, as long as you can make the examiner feel the mana in it, you can still get points—but let’s agree first, you use the Evil Spirit Banishing Charm, and I’ll use the Demon-Banishing Charm. Each of us takes one.”

“Oh?” Louis was a bit curious. “Don’t you need the Evil Spirit Banishing Charm from here to get points?”

Helen smiled confidently. “The Evil Spirit Banishing Charm is specifically for dealing with Soul Harvesters. If one of those shows up, I can handle it right away.”

The meaning between the lines was that if a Soul Harvester appeared, then it wouldn’t be Louis’s business at all.

‘I hope so,’ Louis thought to himself.

Not long after, many officials from the Ministry of Magic, Court Wizards, more professors, and apprentices also entered the hall one after another.

It seemed there were quite a few observers today. Lufield and Tyrus also felt something was off about the atmosphere—there were too many people. They couldn’t help but straighten their chests and speak in a gentle and refined manner, showing the demeanor of a great noble family.

Louis noticed that aside from some wizards from the academic faction, almost no one greeted Ocris. Instead, everyone instinctively glanced at Lufield and Tyrus. Those looks held some expectation, or interest, but more were meaningful and warning.

It seemed Ocris’s current situation was not very good. Not exactly surrounded by enemies, but she could be described as down on her luck. Among her supporters, the old professors from the academic faction had no interest in politics. The others all had very deep ulterior motives.

Clearly, in this Tylon Kingdom, the Witch Queen was in charge now. Anyone who acted as Ocris’s scapegoat today would not have a good outcome.

Louis had no power or influence. He didn’t plan to be the scapegoat, nor did he plan to steal the male lead’s spotlight. No matter who it was, as long as one person passed today, he would try his best to stay silent and keep a low profile.

But unexpectedly, when everyone gathered in front of that mirror, Ocris actually had him go first.

How could an extra qualify to go last?

Extras had to go first to act as cannon fodder, scouting the way for the main characters!