A Sword with Remarkable Effect

"Snap—"

"Argh—?!"

The man woke in agony. When he opened his eyes, he felt as though his vision had been affected.

Why was the world he saw reduced to a single slit?

And… his eyes hurt so badly…

"You’re awake?"

The man looked over with some difficulty. Before him sat a kindly-looking old man, his Pure White Angel robes reflected by the surrounding crystals… Crystals?

Crystals!!!

That was right! They were supposed to be in the underground ruins, captured by those bizarre crystal bugs, and then… then…

"Ahhh! You! What are you?!"

The man looked horrified, assuming the other person was a native of this place.

Dressed entirely in white, he somehow suited the dazzling crystals around them. Even his skin was pale, making him look like someone who had lived in a place devoid of sunlight.

"Calm down, child. I am a scholar. You may call me Gandalf…"

"…A scholar?"

"Yes. I found this place and discovered that you were trapped inside the crystals… Can you tell me what happened to you?"

"We…"

As if recalling something terrifying, the man shuddered, then began recounting their experiences in fits and starts.

From being forcibly conscripted by the Ministry of Magic, to being attacked by the Kraken upon entering the ruins and scattered from their group, to wandering into the underground space and being ambushed because their vision had been impaired… His final memory before losing consciousness was of crystal-like bugs crawling toward him…

"Mm…"

Adam nodded and smiled at the man.

"Do you feel uncomfortable anywhere now?"

"Uh… Other than having no strength, I don’t think there’s anything wrong."

"Alright."

Adam nodded, rising from the crystal.

"Basically the same as what you said last time. I’ll ask the other one."

Man: "???"

After putting the man into a baby-like sleep, Adam turned around and brought down his sword, shattering the crystal sealing the young woman inside.

"Snap—"

"Mm…?"

The woman opened her eyes through a wave of pain, puzzled to find her cheeks throbbing with swelling.

"You’re awake?"

After questioning them, Adam found that their accounts largely matched, with only one difference—the middle-aged man claimed that the Ministry of Magic’s assigned watcher was the young woman, while the young woman claimed it was the middle-aged man.

Oh-ho. A Rashomon situation.

Fortunately, Adam did not care who worked for the Ministry of Magic. His testing had only been meant to confirm whether extracting people from the crystals would harm their physical or mental health.

Seeing that the two still had the energy to scheme against each other, they were probably fine.

Adam swung his sword and rescued Eugene’s parents, setting them aside to wait for them to wake up. Then he began studying the nearby crystals and glowing spheres.

The middle-aged man with swollen eyes & the young woman with bruised cheeks: #%&#￥…

"What exactly is this?"

Adam cut off the top of a crystal pillar and gave it a gentle shake. The liquid inside rippled in response. Relying on the Shield Card’s protection, Adam even dipped a finger into it. The liquid was colorless and transparent, slightly thicker than water to the touch, somewhat like… milk tea?

It seemed that every crystal in this space was the same. They had only a hard outer shell, while the insides were filled with that strange liquid. Even the bugs were the same—their insides were not organs, but this liquid.

The crystals and bugs had the same internal structure. Did that mean the bugs and crystals were fundamentally the same? Were the crystals alive too?

"Mm…"

Adam turned his head. Eugene’s father had awakened.

"Hello, are you Mr. Jackson Crowell?"

"Huh?"

When Jackson saw Adam, he was still dazed. Instead of answering Adam’s question, he instinctively looked around and found his still-unconscious wife, Melinda.

His unconscious wife, the surrounding crystals… Only then did Jackson remember what had happened before. He looked at Adam.

"You are…?"

The wariness in Jackson’s words and gaze gradually turned into hesitation and blankness after he realized Adam was a child. He even began to doubt—

His life, his understanding, his memories… and his eyesight.

"My name is Adam. I’m Eugene’s classmate."

"Eugene’s… classmate?"

"Eugene wrote to ask his grandmother after you wrote that you would visit him at Christmas, but his grandmother said you were already dead… A lot happened in between. Anyway, I found this place, and I’m here to rescue you."

At this point, Adam could not help frowning. Whether Eugene’s parents had met with trouble or not, no news could have reached the outside world. So who were the people who had gone to Eugene’s grandmother with the bodies, and who had written to Eugene?

"Here… to rescue us?"

Jackson repeated the words blankly, and Adam was even a little worried about his mental state.

But Jackson could hardly be blamed. What Adam had said was simply too absurd… Running into dangerous ruins to rescue his classmate’s parents because they were in danger—never mind how Adam had managed it, wasn’t that friendship a little too unbreakable?

Even Hufflepuffs were not this ridiculous, were they? After all, he and Melinda had both been Hufflepuffs once… Oh, right, their son should be a Hufflepuff too, shouldn’t he?

Jackson felt a tiny pang of guilt.

For a moment, Jackson could not even consider that Adam might be a liar. A liar trying to gain someone’s trust would not make up such an absurd reason. Still, he needed one final confirmation.

"Um… Do you have any way to prove your identity?"

After saying that, Jackson saw Adam looking at him with a somewhat complicated expression, one that seemed to contain a trace of reproach.

"Good question. When I asked Eugene that before, he was silent for a long time. Then he told me he had no keepsake that could prove his identity. He had never even met you… at least, not in his memories."

Jackson had intended to say that he and Melinda had gone home once when Eugene was two years old, but after hearing Adam’s addition, he swallowed the words.

Melinda, who had just awakened beside him, could not help feeling guilty as well.

"This photograph should barely be enough to prove who I am, right? Fortunately, you two haven’t changed too much from the people in the picture."

Adam took out the photograph, then thought for a moment.

"Oh, right. There are also the birthday gifts Eugene has given me over the years, along with the first Christmas gift. He said they were things you brought back, so you should recognize them, right?"

Carrying feelings too complicated to describe, Eugene had given away gifts with all the carefree abandon of a spendthrift son selling off his grandfather’s land. All four brothers in the dormitory had gotten a share.

Whatever Eugene had felt when giving away those gifts, Jackson’s heart twitched when he saw them, especially when he spotted that bottle of Felix Felicis.

Even Melinda could not help sitting up.

—That was most likely genuine Felix Felicis!

"I think this thing is probably fake."

Then Adam’s words stabbed straight into both their hearts, with remarkable effect, silencing them completely.

"After all, if it were real, you should have bathed in Felix Felicis. You wouldn’t have been forcibly conscripted by the Ministry of Magic only to end up trapped here… Even an ordinary person’s luck shouldn’t be this terrible."

After saying that, Adam put the bottle of "Felix Felicis" away again. After all, in Adam’s eyes, no matter what kind of spring water it was, the friendship attached to it was the bottle’s most precious value.