After defeating the Shadow Demons and encountering a few acquaintances, I decided to climb the stairs and head for the last floor—where everyone else took refuge.

Upon getting to the large hallway, I was met with the gazes of several students. They were well over a hundred, and murmurs flowed among them. Of course, the volume of their disgruntled tone drastically reduced the moment they saw me.

‘Sigh, let’s get this over with…’

Now practically surrounded by curious, frightful students, I calmed their nerves and decided to explain a few things to them.

“WHAAAAAATTTT?!”

To put things into summary, the students instantly flipped once I told them the identity of our assaulters.

They simply couldn’t believe that Demons—the stuff of fairy tales and legends—were actually real… and that they were attacking. Many students gave me suspicious glares, most likely conceiving whatever notion suited their heads best.

I was less concerned, though.

More important things occupied my brain.

‘Why are the Demons here? How large is the scale of their attack?’

As though answering my voiceless query, the automaton I sent returned. Since I had already programmed it to search for my Mana signature within the building, it easily found me on the last floor, flapping its invisible wings.

The crowd of Lower-Class students surrounding me didn’t even notice when the Automaton arrived. Since my concealment Spell was still active on the bat-like construct, that made sense.

“Undo.”

Instantly, the invisibility wore off, and the little flying thing appeared in front of everyone.

“ARHHHHHH!!!” Shrieks of fear rang throughout the room.

I glared at the crowd, causing them to instantly zip up their lips.

‘One of the perks of being feared, I guess…’

It would have been a pain to try convincing them, but after seeing my performance in the Exchange, it was pretty evident that I was the strongest guy around. They must have also noticed how merciless I could be.

Fear proved to be a good incentive to make them behave.

“This is my Automaton. I had it scour the area to better understand the situation.” I explained, hoping they would at least calm some of their nerves.

‘This is why I don’t like relating with these guys… I’m like a babysitter now…’

“In any case, it has no attack or defensive function, but it is capable of far-ranged image and sound detection. There’s a storage compartment within as well, so it stores all it perceives inside—like a brain or a memory cube.”

I was painstakingly explaining these things to them so they wouldn’t question the validity of whatever they were about to see. I certainly hoped it wouldn’t be much.

I sincerely prayed I was overreacting.

“No, then, all I have to do is use Magic to extract the image and audio, use Sound and Light Magic to display whatever the Automaton saw.”

I reached out to the flapping thing and poured my Magic into it. It was a complicated thing, using specialized Magic like Light and Sound, and normally it would be impossible to use two at the same time.

My multiple cores solved that, so as soon as my Magic infusion was complete, the eyes of the bat shone brightly, becoming a projector that displayed some sort of window panel in front of everyone—myself included.

“This is it, uh? Let’s see what you found out.”

And so, the sound and image played right before our eyes.

**********

“N-no way…”

“T-that’s i-impossible, right?”

“Demons… there are actually demons!?!”

“What do we do? Argh! Shit!”

“This is bad! Are we going to die?!”

Reactions sparked as the projected sight was displayed for all to see.

I was silent throughout, but my inner self was in a panic. I didn’t want to believe it, but things were very bad!

Shadow Demons had swarmed the entire Academy!

They not only took over all the public infrastructures like the library, classrooms, and other important spots, but they also went after the Dorms.

Other than this one, there were five others. Two belonged to the Middle class and Upper-class boys, and the remaining three were for the girls. The Demons that converged on their location were incredibly more than those that showed up here. Perhaps they judged the level of importance based on how glamorous or shabby each structure was.

It could be Mana concentration as well.

“Shit, damn it…” I whispered under my breath.

This was the worst-case scenario!

“W-where are the teachers?!”

“Shouldn’t the guards be patrolling as well?”

“D-don’t tell me… all of them were killed?!”

“Where the hell are they? We can’t fight those things!”

Clamors continued, and I furrowed my brow.

‘Good question… where are the teachers?’

Of course, I had some idea what the answer to their queries was. If my suspect was truly the one behind this assault, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to keep the teachers occupied—or at least distracted—while this tragedy occurred.

‘It looks like this is an alliance between the Demons and that guy. Maybe the Shadow Demons want something else… which explains their uncoordinated behavior. But this chaos is very dangerous and widespread. There’s no way I can ignore it.’

I was caught between a rock and a hard place—save my life and abandon others, or try to quell this whole mess even if it meant playing into the enemy’s hands.

‘He’s going to use this chance to kill me…’

It was dangerous, risky, and terribly inefficient. However…

‘I’m not abandoning you guys!’ My eyes were focused on Edward and Jerry.

There were very few people I cared about in Ainzlark, and it would be terrible if they lost their lives this early. In the face of calamity—especially one as intense as this—there were bound to be casualties.

I had to ensure it was kept to a minimum.

‘These guys are the future of the Kingdom. If the Demon Race is truly behind this, we can’t afford to lose the lives of promising youths.

I didn’t want to be burdened by anyone, but this was probably the best route to take.

“We’re evacuating!” I said to everyone present.