Reincarnated as the Weakest Shadow Queen in the Academy-Chapter 47: The System and the Mysterious Box (Featuring: A Jealous Dragon)

Chapter 47: The System and the Mysterious Box (Featuring: A Jealous Dragon)

"Urgh... this is so tiring..."

The class was just over, and Ciel watched as Quia slumped across her table, cheeks melting into a squishy pool.

Ciel’s eyes glimmered. She wanted to poke them.

"Miss Quia," she gulped. "Do you already know the lectures by heart?"

"...yeah..." Quia murmured. "I’m never good at long talks. Miss Melisra was just revising the basics, so I got off-track..."

If the elf’s reaction was one of boredom, Shire’s was another extreme.

Chair screeched, and as Ciel turned, Shire already raised herself from the seat before leaving the duo on their own.

"The class was boring, so I’m going to the dormitory to sleep."

The mad noble just strode away.

Ciel and Quia’s gaze just lingered. Shire, passing by the smiling Melisra, slid the door open and stepped out.

This chain of sequence was so smooth that even some classmates stared in awe and jealousy.

"Well then, everyone has a break! Ten minutes later, and it will be Gruella’s lecture, so enjoy suffering a lot!"

Melisra’s voice rang and broke the silence. Classes continued, with or without Shire.

As the others began to pack up, Melisra called out. "Oh, and Ciel! Follow me to the laboratory just right next to this building. See you at the door!"

Quia gave a quiet, weird look to Ciel, who subtly nodded at the request.

"Want me to go with you?" The elf suggested, raising herself from the table.

Ciel pressed her down, her smile jagged and a little distant. "Not this time."

She once asked Summer and Melisra a favour, just between the three of them.

And Ciel would rather keep more secrets to herself, if possible.

—----

Leaving the Black Steel Training Ground, Ciel followed Melisra out, as they turned right and strolled along the rooftop walkway.

Their figures passed by the arena, a vast expanse that stretched wherever they went.

Melisra’s chuckle came off as sweet to Ciel. Almost too sweet.

"Little Ciel." She asked. "So were you that cute fishhead I showed earlier?"

The former shadebeast’s boots clattered. Just for a moment, but Ciel felt as if she was naked.

"Tell me your analysis first."

The pink-haired witch, with her back facing the serious Ciel, only caught her chin while humming.

She answered a question with a question. "Do you know how a Queen was born?"

Ciel shook her head. "All I know is that they were typically born under the full moon."

It was more by instinct that Ciel knew this detail, just like when other shadebeasts gathered before a lily.

"Exactly." Melisra tilted her head, exposing her catlike smirk. "There was a legend, they say, that the moon was a protector of the Nightfall."

The witch continued. "Shadebeasts and Queens only spawned during the night, so it would make sense they worship the moon that shielded them from the sunlight itself."

Worship? Ciel’s eyelids fell halfway, not enough to squint, but enough to suggest a weary doubt.

"Shadebeasts do not worship," Ciel called out.

"Perhaps so," the pink-haired witch faced ahead again, her expression unreadable. "But this legend reminds me that shadebeasts shared a commonality under the night."

She raised a finger. "So it didn’t make sense not to link the existence of Queens to the shadebeasts. If both spawned at night, couldn’t they be of the same nature? Same birth, even?"

They soon arrived before a pair of doors, their rimmed glass gleaming with a steel-like hardness.

"Naturally," Melisra pushed them open, the weight screeching against the floor. "I have suspected your birth to be of shadebeast, given your... experienced outlook in my mimic hunt."

Ciel paused, then her thumbs fidgeted together, as if to clumsily work at the knot in her chest.

"Umm..." Ciel hesitated. "Thanks... for the compliment."

Not even Miss Dragon complimented her in the exam. Ciel knew Melisra was just stating facts, but she couldn’t help being happy.

Melisra just froze halfway on the doorstep. She peeked over her shoulder, glancing at the nervous Ciel.

The pink-haired witch’s eyes curved pleasantly. She pivoted to Ciel, then bent down and squeezed her cheek.

As Ciel let out a stuttering hum, Melisra chuckled again. This time, the sweetness sounded just right. Genuine, even.

"I can see why Summer likes you," Melisra’s tone began to edge dangerously. "Shame...you and I could do so much together..."

The black, lively eyes merely blinked in response. Seconds flew by, but the witches had no time for bonding alone.

Ciel’s wrist burned again. Breeze quieted, then fluttrered again as if moving just after time had frozen without her knowing.

Before Ciel realised, her small figure was trapped in a firm embrace, with two laced arms wrapped softly around her neck.

A shadow loomed over them. Melisra, grunting, squinted behind Ciel.

"Let me have my fun with my brethren, Principal."

Miss Dragon? Ciel’s mind caught onto the realisation. Her body could spring up, excited like a child meeting her idol.

But the embrace on her was too warm, protective, and possessive.

A mature, low voice echoed from behind, growling under each syllable.

"Do not presume my generosity as a license for you to be reckless, Melisra."

Summer hugged Ciel tighter as she held her back. One more step away from Melisra was one step closer to safety.

The Principal then scolded, though her tone dimmed to be flatter, more dismissive.

"If you do that again, I’ll make sure to cut another paycheck from you."

The pink-haired witch’s eyes shook, as if paycheck was all of her world, and it began collapsing.

"You... fucker..."

"What was that?"

"Nothing!"

Melisra huffed and snapped away, striding inside with a groan. "Okay okay, I won’t tease. Blackmailing like this coz I tease your secret lover... fuck, how petty can you be..."

Her mockery trailed off as she entered the lab’s deep end, leaving only Ciel and Summer before the doorway.

Ciel could only stare. Dazed and a little amused, she glanced up to meet Miss Dragon’s glare.

"Hi." She muttered.

"..."

Silence only responded, but Ciel didn’t mind. She always liked silence, and the way Summer’s eyes softened when it was just them both.

She folded herself into Miss Dragon’s arms, closing her eyes.

And as if naturally, Miss Dragon lifted her by the legs, before walking them into the lab.

A loud grumble of jealousy echoed afterwards, though no one particularly cared.

—-------

The laboratory was a small building with just an open hall, with dusty white ceilings and messy equipment piling in the corner, used only by Melisra.

Normally, other students and associates would come about, but the Witches’ knowledge was so vast that they would rather isolate themselves in learning not to be disrupted.

And amongst the test containers, each filled with liquids to contain unknown creatures, stood Summer and Melisra, while Ciel rested in the dragon’s arms.

"Here."

Melisra threw a cube, and Ciel’s hand barely caught it.

The silver question mark brimmed with a glowy eagerness. It was the rare item box, taken from Ciel’s system earlier.

Ciel lent this box to Melisra, a trusted confidant of Summer, to investigate the system through it.

Though Summer permitted, she warned her never to deluge further, afraid of Melisra’s curiosity burning out of control.

"This thing," Melisra laid out her findings. "Curiously, carried some of the mana I found in the meteorites. The material is pure, untainted, and even hard to penetrate; its properties were like the moon mana if it were a solid."

The pink-haired witch, capable of travelling across space, commented. For the first time, her features grew stern with a hint of nervousness, only betrayed by the intrigued arc of her brows.

Ciel’s clasped hands cupped the box, observing it thoroughly, as if her moon magic existed a link with it she never knew. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The System, too, suspiciously suggested moon mastery among the options. Perhaps it wasn’t so coincidental?

Melisra sighed as she pulled back. Drawing a chair, she dropped to it with a dismissive wave.

"Unfortunately, this was my only solid conclusion. Others were just hastily strung together thesises with not enough evidence to be backed up."

Summer asked, as her hands stabilised Ciel into her chest. "Any suggestion that they were linked with the stars?"

Stars again. Ciel frowned, being the only one here left in the unknown.

She could tell the definite proof that the System stated itself, but only when Miss Dragon and she were alone.

"Truth is," Melisra shrugged, her glimpse catching Ciel’s frustration, yet mistaking it as just surface-level.

"I, too, was thinking of this possibility. Normally here, I would say there are too many unknowns about them, but-"

Melisra’s lips widened into a malicious smirk. "When the Witches failed to find something, the Stars were always the only phenomenon left to explain them. Well, aside from the Shadebeasts, of course."

Ciel’s brows knitted together, her mind racing.

Earlier, Melisra emphasised the associations between two linking factors, a lot.

If going by her logic, the shadebeasts worshipped the moon, and the moon orbited around the stars, so did it mean Melisra thought the shadebeasts were linked with the Stars too?

Could her System, somehow, be linked to the nature of shadebeasts?

Her head began to hurt as it hung, though a tender stroke befell it, dispelling any of the stress inside.

As Summer patted the side of her head, this time, it was Ciel’s lips that began to hurt.

She was trying not to giggle, not in this serious situation.

"Anyways..."

Ciel summoned her system inside again, as a form of distraction.

"Perhaps..." Her black eyes met Melisra’s gaze, drawn by the flickering mana in the item box.

"You can observe something when I... open the box?"

She decided to demonstrate the System’s ability, partly.

There could be no breakthrough without some risk, and Ciel trusted her perception.

Melisra could mean no harm, probably.

She didn’t know how much she would regret this sentence in the future.

For now-

[ Rare Item Box: Detected ]

[ Permission to open? ]

Ciel nodded. And a bright light flashed from the box, roaming across the laboratory.