Scenario:Lonesome Dragoness - Chapter 5: To Turn the Tables - Episode 3

Lonesome Dragoness - Chapter 5: To Turn the Tables - Episode 3

Once the party is back in the classroom, the students who were responsible for summoning the aberrations explain that they used forbidden shadow magic to learn more about the Crimson Horizon and the Otherworld. The group decides to decode the spellbook that the students used, hoping that it might help resolve this situation.

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When (Captain) and the crew return to the classroom building, they report the situation to Hanna and the others.

Hanna: I see. Thank you for gathering that information.

Hanna: So about these circles in the clock tower that connect with another world.

Hanna: We'll have to destroy them, or the monsters will keep passing through into our world.

Hanna: But our enemies have covered the entrance of the clock tower with a barrier, and we can't get inside at present.

Hanna: And then there are all of the students that you rescued.

Hanna: They used some sort of spell to connect this world and another one.

Hanna: That much we know.

Grea: I'm so sorry. This is all because I broke the monolith.

Hanna: You haven't done anything at all, Grea.

Hanna: If anything, I'm the one responsible.

Hanna: It was none other than I who asked you to destroy the core monolith.

Grea: No! No, I'm the one who said it, so—

Anne: All right now. That's enough, Hanna and Grea.

Anne: Enough about what's been done. Let's start talking about where we're going from here on.

Hanna: That's right. What Anne said.

Hanna: Ahem. Setting aside the students who were behind this for the moment...

Hanna: We have to figure out how to enter the clock tower.

Grea: I should be able to do something about the barrier. The problem is the circles that are acting as gates.

Grea: They could be like the monoliths, where they activate once they're broken.

Io: Those enemies are smart, so that could be right.

Anne: Hey, Hanna. Where are the people who opened the gate to the other world?

Anne: They said that they'd explain everything to us later.

Hanna: They should be in the infirmary now.

Girl 1: Um, excuse me...

Several students enter the room with trepidation.

Hanna: Are you all feeling okay now?

Girl 1: Yeah. Ms. Miranda patched us up.

Girl 1: Yeah, and... and... I'm sorry!

Boy 2: We really messed up!

The students all bow their heads to Hanna, (Captain), and the others.

Hanna: Well, it looks like you have a good idea of the state of the academy.

Girl 2: Yeah. We heard everything from Ms. Miranda.

Girl 1: We didn't just put the school in danger. We put the whole world in danger.

Girl 1: What can we do now? I'm so sorry.

Hanna: This isn't the sort of problem that can be apologized away.

The faces of the students responsible become dim and pale.

Boy 1: I mean, we didn't think that anything this bad would happen.

Boy 1: We just wanted to find out more about the bottom of the sky.

Hanna: The bottom of the sky?

Boy 2: Yeah. At the bottom of the sky, there's a world different from the legendary Astral Realm.

Boy 2: A world called the Crimson Horizon or the Otherworld.

Boy 2: It said so in this book.

Anne: The Crimson Horizon. That's supposed to be a place at the bottom of the sky.

The boy hands the book to Anne.

Boy 2: We wanted to find out more about it, so we used one of the forbidden shadow magic spells written in this book.

Hanna: Forbidden shadow magic?

Hanna: You students!

Anne: Come on now. Calm down, Hanna.

Hanna: Hm? Well, okay.

Anne: What sort of spell was that forbidden shadow magic?

Boy 2: It was supposed to be a spell that would make a gate to connect worlds.

Boy 2: We tried using that spell to make gates to the Crimson Horizon, to the Otherworld.

Boy 2: We were trying to check them out in person.

Hanna: What made you decide to do that sort of thing?

Boy 1: We wanted to prove it with our own hands—the existence of that Otherworld.

Boy 1: The Sky Realm and the bottom of the sky are just physically on top of each other. They're connected.

Boy 1: So then why is the Crimson Horizon, which is supposed to be the bottom, considered the Otherworld?

Boy 1: Can it really be treated as another world?

Boy 1: We wanted to reveal that world's hidden secrets.

Boy 1: We thought if we did that, everyone would look up to us as master mages.

Hanna: ...

Boy 2: But to even make a tiny hole, the spell requires a ton of magic and an intermediary.

Boy 1: So we used the core monolith of amplification when we cast the spell.

Girl 1: Nothing happened at first, so we thought we messed up.

Girl 1: But before we knew it, there was a gate there.

Anne: I see.

Anne: There are spells in that book for opening the door, right?

Anne: Then magic that closes the door should also be—

Boy 2: Uh, about that. I'm sorry, but we didn't read all the way to the end.

Hanna: Unbelievable. How can you open a door without even knowing how to close it? That's so thoughtless of you!

Boy 1: We figured that if we stopped supplying magic to it, then the gate would shut.

Hanna: That's an all-too-convenient way of thinking born of your impulsiveness. The door didn't close, now did it?

Boy 2: No.

Anne: Then all that we can do is decipher the rest by ourselves.

Hanna: That's right. We should have the teachers help us out as well.

Hanna: There are sure to be some things that we can't figure out alone.

Anne: You're right.

Anne looks carefully through the spellbook that the students gave her, a book that provides the only clue to how to resolve this situation.

In her eyes there burns the steady fire of determination to protect the academy—the place that she cares for.