After the battle against the mysterious statue, the Seven Mysteries have been reduced to five now that two of them are fully eliminated, the Photobomber and the School Statue.
"So what is the next plan? Do we eliminate the other confirmed mysteries?" Kazuma asked Raigaki and Rena.
"Not yet and although we do plan to eventually fight them and eliminate them, we first needed valuable information regarding them instead of attacking them head-on. We allowed you to fight against the photobomber as that one was weak and easily eliminated. And it has a glaring weakness that happens to you so it was dealt with before it got worse. As for the School Statue, it was an impromptu attack we did after we realized that it can be beaten without any sort of special conditions that it requires to be successfully eliminated, and since it is an evolving motherf*cker, we just proceeded to do it without any problem," Raigaki casually answered.
"Language, Raigaki~ If you don't want a big smack in the head, you better fix that habit of yours, speaking with slurs," Rena smiled at him though Kazuma could see a little vein of anger on Rena's forehead.
"Sorry, sorry. I won't do it again." Raigaki started begging.
"That's good. Anyways, Kazuma-kun, it is one of our priorities to find the data of all the mysteries first before engaging them. Why we are doing this? To ensure that the mysteries themselves are indeed from a Qlipoth's little work. If they are not even in the slightest even part of the Qlipoth's abnormalities then we wouldn't need to deal with it. It's kind of like a grace period we have before we go full rampage against the confirmed Qlipoths to sweep them down in one go, making it easier to be done~" Rena happily explained.
"But we have destroyed two Qlipoths already, will this be a problem later on?"
"Oh no, no. Don't worry too much~ There is no restriction in dealing with the mysteries since they can still be dealt with if the magician is confident to deal with them immediately. We also do this whenever the Qlipoth is more deadly than we expect and if left long enough, it might become a real danger. So eliminating them early does not mean it will affect the process."
Kazuma sighed in relief knowing that there is no such thing as order and process of Qlipoth Annihilation to the Seven Mysteries. Otherwise, he already failed on another joint operation once again.
"Anyways, Kazuma. We still have three unidentified mysteries that we have no idea just yet. As for the other two, they are not yet good for concerns right now so we can leave them there and we can just go there and eliminate them when the time comes so our focus is to continue finding clues about the other three as we can't afford it to become a very troublesome mystery in the process," Raigaki explained once more.
"No clues or any info regarding the rest of the three?" Rena asked.
"Nope. All of the information I got is either too vague or just not part of one."
"Really? Did you try to confirm them?" Kazuma asked.
"Of course and none actually clicked or just fake news with some minor explanations. I have checked them out and some are just straight out not worth the time or are just made-up rumors to talk to me a little bit longer. You know that I am popular with the ladies," Raigaki winked and clicked his tongue before pointing at Kazuma with both hands.
SMACK!
A light smack in the head is what Raigaki received from Rena. "Stop bragging you are a ladies' man even though you are clearly not one. We came here to investigate any signs of those things happening here and since Raigaki here doesn't have any solid clues, then I will be the one who will provide one clue instead. I got a piece of information about the drifting classroom. I haven't checked it entirely but based on the rumors, a whole class has disappeared after the class drifted and has never been heard ever since."
Kazuma frowned when he heard this. "A drifting classroom? Do you mean a classroom that suddenly disappeared out of nowhere? Shouldn't that make a big headline or something like that?"
"That is the thing when the drifting classroom incident happened and the entire class disappeared, only those who were directly involved from that class was the one who remembered it. And what I mean as "directly involved" are those people who are either part of those classes, or are directly related or have seen the classroom disappear right before their eyes."
"Hey, that is not a good sign already. That is considered a space-manipulating incident already and I do not like that is present in a Lilith-Gomaliel tier mission! That is a Gharab or even worse, a Tagimron!" Raigaki got serious after hearing the clues that Rena provided.
"I think so as well but because it was a recent incident, we can still solve it but if push comes to shove, we will have to call a higher tier magician that can handle a minimum of Tagimron threat level."
Kazuma had heard of these threat levels before but hearing these new levels was kinda weird being spoken out loud, nevertheless, he continued to listen instead of interrupting. He doesn't want to be the deadweight of the group.
"Kazuma, I know that you seem to be confused about what is happening right now but all I can tell you is that we will have to be on total guard on this one. This danger level is beyond what you can handle right now but we will ensure you will be safe while you are with us so stick around and don't wander too far. We will need your help as well since we will be investigating things first and foremost before concluding it."
Despite his lack of understanding, Kazuma nodded. He knows that things are not that easy right now but since he still doesn't have much of a good idea of what is happening, he decided to just nod.
The three continued to walk to the corridors. Although the place looks grim compared to when it was daylight, thanks to both Rena and Raigaki, exploring the area is less scary than Kazuma thought. They continued to move until they arrived on the second floor. There, they continued to move until they reached the place where the classrooms were located.
"Look at the numbering order of the nameplates above each classroom. It should be the year level and their current section which is categorized in the English alphabetical order which would be A, B, C, D, and E. They cannot be skipped by any means and they must follow one. However, take a look at the order of these classrooms."
Rena pointed to the nameplates and Kazuma and Raigaki started to check out on them.
"Class A, Class C, Class D, and Class E... I don't see the problem?" Raigaki frowned and scratched his head.
Kazuma also thought the same thing at first but then he remembered what Rena had just said. He knows the correct alphabetical order but why does he feel like agreeing that there is nothing wrong with what he just saw? Something was forcing him to say that nothing was wrong but in his mind, he was quite sure that something was wrong and he needed to say it. Resisting it for a bit, he managed to say what he wanted to tell the two.
"The Classroom B is missing."
As soon as Kazuma said those words, Raigaki also realized and facepalmed himself after realizing it.
"Sh*t...memory manipulation...this is not good already. And one classroom full of students is gone already? This needs to be solved immediately."
Rena turned to look at Kazuma with a surprise on her face. "I didn't think Kazuma would be capable of immediately breaking the effect of the memory manipulation. I was waiting for you guys to say that you two already have no idea what has gotten wrong..."
"Huh? Really? I mean it was literally missing one letter as it jumped from A to C immediately."
"That is the thing. Someone has to show and convince you to be able to break apart on that effect, but seeing you break out without me doing it is already something else, Kazuma."
Kazuma shrugged it off and decided to look at the missing nameplate. "But seriously, does that mean one single classroom has disappeared here? Maybe there shouldn't even be a classroom here at all and the nameplates are just there to joke around?"
Rena shook her head and led the two near the classroom of Class E."Hah...not this time. Look at the far end, next to Class E. There is a huge empty space there that is the size of the classroom without anything in there. Now explain to me why an empty space exists here where there should be at least anything that can signify that this place was used for something else. Seeing a spot-clean area while a classroom is missing is enough proof that something was amiss here. That classroom existed but because of the effect of whatever caused it to disappear, it was soon erased to everyone's mind and we are in this situation now."