Chương 38: “A Pawtion of Success”

The letter took far longer than it should have. The previous evening, pen in her right hand, Celestia wrote something that would reassure her two parents who had likely spent the past several days assuming their daughter was dead. It was a slow process considering her right hand had not yet fully healed yet, still twinging with pain occasionally. After painstakingly finishing it, she handed it to Martha with instructions to send it by the fastest courier available.

After which, she had a lovely meal and an actual good night's rest. Now, sitting in her office chair in the early hours of the next day's morning, Celestia stared at the ceiling and thought hard about what had happened to her. Her trials had been fundamentally different from anything the academy had described, anything the original novel had depicted, and anything the veteran climbers' accounts had suggested. The Tower had given her a completely different set of trials, and she didn't know why.

She didn't know if that was good or bad yet. Then there was the matter with Synchronization. It had dropped to ten percent again. There was too much to think about and not enough information to think with. She set it aside for now and focused on what she could act on.

"Martha." Martha appeared in the doorway within seconds, as if she'd been standing just outside.

"I need you to get in contact with our information broker. Pay them whatever they ask and have them collect detailed reports on Floors 1 through 5. Specifically, I want anything that deviates from the standard trends, such as unusual trial conditions or anything that other climbers have reported as different from the expected norm." Martha responded, "Understood, my lady." Information was top-priority. Not just for herself, but for the people she intended to send into the Tower eventually.

Celestia had no intention of sending her workforce into those floors blind. If there were patterns to the anomalies, or if certain climbers triggered different trial conditions, she needed to know before anyone under her employ set foot inside. Martha tucked the notebook away.

"Is there anything else?"

"What class do I have this afternoon?"

"Your combat elective, my lady." Celestia sighed. The Tower caused her to miss three weekdays, and with them, most of the week's classes. Thankfully, though, today was one of her classes where she could observe Arthur's progress without getting too unnaturally close. More importantly, she needed to inform the academy that she was alive.

The standard protocol was straightforward: if a student or climber entered the Tower and did not return within their estimated return date, and if the guild's entry records confirmed that they had indeed gone in, they would be marked as deceased.

"I'll go now," Celestia said.

"Have the carriage ready."

"Yes, my lady." Noah's healing session yesterday had fixed the worst of her knee, and this morning she could walk without the limp that had plagued her since Floor 2. The joint was still stiff and it ached when she put her full weight on it, but she could move at a normal pace without drawing attention. Her right hand was another matter. The fingers worked, but it was still a gruesome sight, so Martha had re-wrapped it in clean bandages.

Celestia changed into her academy uniform, which Martha had pressed and laid out for her, and took the carriage to Summit Academy. The administration building was her first stop. She walked in, approached the front desk, and informed the clerk that she had returned from the Tower and was resuming her classes. The clerk this time, a thin woman with spectacles, checked the entry log, confirmed Celestia's name against the guild's Tower records, and updated her status. It was a routine procedure.

Students entered the Tower and came back in various states of injuries on a regular basis. Celestia's bandaged hand earned a brief glance but no comment. From there, she took the carriage again to the dormitory to prepare for the afternoon elective. Students in the dormitory's common area noticed her the moment she walked in. A few conversations went quiet. Others dropped to hushed tones that she could barely hear, to which were mostly people who thought she either died or quit. Celestia ignored them.

She kept her eyes forward and walked toward the stairs. She climbed to the second floor, turned down the corridor toward her room, and was just reaching for the door handle when a voice hit her from behind at full volume.

"CELESTIAAAA!!!" The scent of herbs reached her half a second before the impact did. A blur of purple hair slammed into her from behind, and two arms wrapped around her torso with a strong grip. It was Anna; the girl was shaking, her face was pressed into Celestia's back, and her words came out in a muffled, rapid stream.

"I thought… you didn't come back… I asked the staff and they didn't know… I didn't know how to find you and I thought you were—" Celestia's right hand instinctively pushed Anna's face away, but the motion was weaker than she intended, her hand didn't have the strength for a proper shove.

"Move, it hurts." Celestia said. Anna released her immediately, stepping back with wide eyes that already had red-streaks.

"S-sorry! I'm sorry, I didn't… are you hurt? What happened to your hand?" She was looking at the bandages now, her expression shifting from relief to concern immediately. Celestia flexed her wrapped hand once and turned back to her door.

"I'm fine." However, before she could step inside, a hand seized her sleeve and pulled.

"N-No!" Celestia turned, and Anna's fingers were gripping the fabric of Celestia's uniform at the wrist. The girl looked like she was about to be sick from nerves, but her grip didn't loosen. Celestia raised an eyebrow. Anna had become comfortable around her last week, that was for sure, but being this assertive? That was new. The girl's hand slid down from the sleeve and, with visible hesitation, took hold of Celestia's left hand.

Her fingers were trembling, but they closed around Celestia's palm with surprising firmness.

"C-come with me…!" Before Celestia could respond, Anna had already turned and started pulling her down the corridor. The girl moved with the frantic energy of someone who was terrified that if she stopped moving, she'd lose her confidence entirely. Celestia allowed herself to be led. Anna had no reason to hurt her, and the way the girl was acting, there was urgency but no malice in it. Whatever this was, Anna seemed to think it was important.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. They passed the main staircase and continued deeper into the dormitory, past the residential wings and into a section Celestia hadn't visited nor did Anna show her during the tour before. These were the dormitory's auxiliary rooms, spaces allocated for student projects and independent study. Anna stopped in front of one of the doors, fumbled a key from her satchel with her free hand, and unlocked it.

It was a laboratory. Small, roughly the size of a bedroom, but every surface had been converted into workspace. A long table ran along the far wall, crowded with beakers, vials, glass droppers, and a set of scales. Ceramic pots lined the windowsill, each containing a plant in various stages of growth. Bundles of dried herbs hung from hooks. A mortar and pestle sat on a side table next to a stack of handwritten notes, and a small burner with a stand and flask occupied the corner.

"S-sit here!" Anna pulled a wooden stool from under the table and positioned. Celestia sat while Anna moved to the far side of the table and began rummaging through vials, Celestia looked around. She recognized some of the plants from the common garden. Others looked like wild flora, but there was a significant number she couldn't identify at all. Anna's workspace, or what Celestia assumed to be the case, was meticulous despite the clutter. Every vial was labeled in small, neat handwriting.

The notes on the side table were organized by date. Whatever Anna was doing in here, she was very passionate about. This must have been her herbology research. The thing she'd mentioned during their earlier conversations, though Celestia had never asked for specifics. Anna returned carrying a small tray. On it sat a beaker no larger than a teacup, filled with a deep green liquid that had an almost syrupy thickness. Beside it, a glass dropper.

Anna set the tray on the table next to Celestia and clasped her hands together, pressing them against her chest as if trying to physically hold her own courage in place.

"I-I already tested this," she said.

"The effects still need more intensity, b-but it should..." Celestia looked at Anna and asked her, "Pray tell, Anna, what exactly are you trying to do?" Anna swallowed. She reached for Celestia's right hand, and carefully started unwinding the bandages. Layer by layer, the wrapping came away, and the state of the hand beneath was gradually revealed. Anna winced. The healing from Noah's session had closed the worst of the open wounds, but the hand was still a mess.

The skin in several places looked like it had been peeled back and regrown unevenly, layered over itself in patches that were pink and raw in some spots, still bleeding a bit in others. Anna stared at it for a long moment, then she picked up the dropper and dipped it into the red liquid. Her hand was shaking.

"I-I've been trying to develop something…" She drew the liquid up into the dropper and held it over Celestia's hand.

"D-don't panic, please…" She squeezed the entire thing on Celestia's hand. The pain was immediate and it was blinding. It wasn't heat, though her mind registered it as burning. It was something else entirely, a searing, consuming pain radiated outward from the point of contact and drove itself into the muscle and bone beneath. Celestia's jaw locked. Her left hand shot out and gripped the edge of the stool.

Thankfully, Pain Resistance played a part that made her hiss through clenched teeth rather than an outright scream. Her mind, which had been calm and curious seconds ago, detonated.

'What is this, Anna?!' Her thoughts spiraled. Why did she do this? Why did she agree to sit here and let a girl she barely knew apply an unknown substance to an open wound? She'd been careless and stupid. She'd let her guard down because Anna looked harmless, because the girl stuttered and trembled and, and now—'The Imperial Prince's faction? Did they get to her?' Anna had proximity. She was Celestia's dormitory neighbor.

If someone wanted to plant an agent close to Celestia, a shy, unassuming commoner girl would be the perfect cover.

'Or the underground market?' Maybe someone from the auction house wanted what she bought, especially the one designated as Eclipse… If they wanted retaliation, poison would be ideal in covering up their tracks.

'Or someone with a grudge against the original Celestia?' There was no doubt that the old Celestia had made enemies, there could be dozens of people at this academy alone who had reason to want her hurt, and any one of them could have approached Anna with an offer or a threat. The scenarios multiplied in her head, each one more elaborate than the last, branching and splitting into conspiracy trees that grew faster than she could prune them. Her pulse was hammering. Celestia's body jerked involuntarily.

She was breathing hard now, short and shallow, and the edges of her vision were starting to darken. Then, just as fast as it came, the pain vanished. It was simply gone, as if someone had flipped a switch and disconnected every nerve in her hand. Celestia's body immediately moved. She was on her feet, her hand had already snatched a heavy glass flask from the table beside her, and her arm was cocked back, ready to hurl it directly at Anna's head.

"It worked!" Anna was beaming. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks were flushed, and she had both hands clasped together in front of her chest. She looked like a student who had just passed an exam she'd been dreading for months. Celestia's arm stayed raised. Anna, apparently too elated to register the immediate threat to her skull, had already pulled a notebook from her satchel and was scribbling furiously. She was muttering to herself between strokes of the pen, "Onset was immediate…

duration of acute phase approximately… eight seconds? Maybe nine?" Celestia stood there, flask in hand, and tried to understand what was happening. Then she noticed which hand was holding the flask; her right hand. The flask was gripped firmly in fingers that, just moments ago, could barely close to hold a pen. She slowly set the flask down on the table. She raised her right hand in front of her face and looked at it properly.

The skin was still reddish in patches, and the areas around her knuckles carried a raw, freshly-healed appearance. But the layered, peeling mess that had been there minutes ago was gone. The tissue had smoothed over. The places where the skin had regrown unevenly from Noah's healing were now flush with the surrounding flesh. She flexed her fingers, and there was still pain, but it was now a dull ache that was manageable. She rotated her wrist and had full range of motion.

Even Noah's healing, which drew on both their life-forces, had only managed to restore basic function after a full session. And this girl's liquid had done more in ten seconds than what the priest managed to do in a single session.

"Hmm…" Celestia squinted her eyes, she couldn't help but be astonished. The sound made Anna raise her head from the notebook. She saw Celestia's expression and the color drained from her face.

"I-I'm sorry!" She clutched the notebook against her chest.

"I knew there was going to be pain, b-but I didn't know that it was relative to the severity of the wound…" She looked down at her own hands.

"M-maybe that's why the mice died of shock…" Celestia stared at her. The mice…? Noticing Celestia's incredulous expression this time, Anna's eyes went wide and she quickly added, "Ah! I-I also tried it on myself first! On scratches! It only stung a little, so I thought the mice were just… incompatible…" The guts on this girl… Celestia sat back down on the stool. She needed to think about this for a moment. Her mind, no longer in crisis mode, began to sort through what she knew.

This was an actual healing potion in the original novel, however, potions like this weren't introduced until the latter half of the second arc. And they came with a specific limitation: the pain made them unusable during combat or any high-stress situation. The existing alternatives in this world were nothing like this. The so-called elixirs at the Reingarde estate were steeped herbal baths that required hours of soaking to relieve muscle aches.

And even healing magic required someone talented in that element and drew on life-force. And there was a bigger catch… Celestia looked at Anna, who was back at the table, carefully measuring out portions of the green liquid into smaller vials and making notes after each pour. A professor had invented this potion. That was what the novel said.

But looking at Anna right now, with her dated research notes and her labeled vials and her meticulous workspace, it seemed very unlikely that this girl had stolen anything from anyone. Which most likely meant it was the other way around. Since Anna was a commoner, someone with no family name, no political connections, no patron, and no leverage. If a professor at Summit Academy decided to claim her research as their own, who would she appeal to?

The academy administration, who would take the word of their tenured faculty over a scholarship student? The guild, who had no jurisdiction over academic disputes? She had no one to rely on. Perhaps that was why Anna didn't exist in the original novel. She had disappeared from the story entirely after being betrayed. This hypothetical scenario made sense. Celestia looked at her right hand again as she opened and closed the fingers, feeling the tendons pull smoothly beneath the skin. Then she looked at Anna.

Celestia smelled money.

"Anna." The girl looked up from her vials, a dropper still in one hand.

"Y-yes?"

"Would you like a sponsor?"