"O-ho-ho? This was definitely done by a restoration spell, that's for sure!

"Hm. Yes. Clearly an internal injury inflicted by a specialized Magi technique."

Two hours after the events unfolding behind the scenes of the school's sports festival, I was sitting in the closest thing the base had to an infirmary in the form of the Abnormal Biology Laboratories. It was a fairly spacious and well-organized workshop with dark green tiled floor and racks full of jars holding 'research materials' lining the walls. It would've still looked almost normal compared to the other Research Division facilities if not for the many Pudding-kuns running around as if they owned the place.

Jaakobah and Peabody were in the process of examining me with their usual enchanted monocles, and while I would've loved to be anywhere else at the moment, what had to be done had to be done. I patiently waited for them to complete their diagnosis, and it concluded with the portly nurse, now a professional homunculus researcher, letting out another one of his usual chuckles.

"O-ho-ho. I don't think there's anything to worry about. Leonard is quite sturdy, so he should shrug off the after-effects in a day or two."

"I concur," the dour agent voiced his unenthusiastic agreement, followed by some stern instructions. "If I may, Lord Polemos. While I might not be your official physician, I nevertheless heavily recommend that you rest, drink plenty of fluids, and try to avoid any strenuous activities. And stairs."

"Yeah, I've already heard that one today," I grumbled aloud without meaning to, so I inhaled sharply and tried again. "I'll follow your advice. Thank you."

Jaakobah gave me a Celestial salute, which probably meant he considered it just doing his duty. Since we were done here, I vaguely gestured in the direction of the other 'patient' in the room, though the word could hardly describe him at the moment.

"We have to act, now!" Lord Ambrose, lying on his back on a discount hospital bed next to my chair, one which I borrowed from a different department, was rather vigorous despite the fact that he couldn't even get up. "We need to start crafting a replacement Grimoire Key! No, wait! We need to prepare for that shrew coming to the island! No, wait again! We have to inform the Assembly and show them the evidence of her illegal experiments on the Key first! That will light a fire under her ass for sure, and then we can—!"

"Take it easy, big guy."

"Don't you patronize me, you lout!" the man on the bed snapped at the lanky arch-mage sitting by his bed, but Lord Gulliver laughed it off.

"Shouting like that isn't good for your blood pressure."

Before their back-and-forth routine could even get started, we were all startled by someone exclaiming, "What is this commotion all about?" the moment they entered the workshop. "I could hear you all the way from the opposite end of the corridor."

Unexpectedly enough, those words came from Lord Grandpa of all people. It wasn't his first visit to the base, but unless I was mistaken, he hadn't seen the 'back-rooms' of the facility yet. Despite that, he walked in without the slightest hint of reservation, and not even the group of little eldritch abominations scurrying around the place gave him a pause. Some might've said he had nerves of steel, but it was much more likely that those same nerves were just so frayed at this moment that he didn't have the time to care about any of this.

He wasn't alone either. His group was led by Sir Roland, which made sense. He was my unofficial representative at the base in my absence, something I was planning to make ratify one of these days. Some might've said that Sir Arnwald or Brang would've been a better fit, but the former was already fulfilling a similar role in the Draconic Council, while the latter…

Now hear me out. The old Faun was competent, a hard worker, and commanded respect among the personnel of the base. He also spent way more time here than Roland, so he would've made a perfect candidate… if there wasn't a language barrier. In any case, I was planning to sort this whole thing out and… wait… Dammit, I was trailing off again.

I shook my head and focused my full attention on the group again. No distractions.

So, there were Roland and Endymonion. They were closely followed by the remaining two arch-mages. Three, if we counted Sahi, who was still in her school uniform. The same went for Armband Guy, and surprisingly enough, they were accompanied by the class rep, who was already glaring at me. Maybe she was still being annoyed by her floaty orb thingies, I wondered. Or she was mad at me for that stunt I pulled with the glasses. One or the other.

In other words, with maybe the exception of Gowan, literally every even remotely important Assembly magi currently on the island was gathered in this here workshop, and none of them looked too happy to be here. Except for Sahi, who had the kind of look in her eyes that said she couldn't wait to see the drama unfold. But then again, that was Sahi, so that much was to be expected. How that girl-slash-old-woman managed to rise to her former position without being kicked out of the Assembly along the way was a mystery for the ages.

"Oh, don't you get started with me too!" Lord Ambrose yelled back at the local arch-mage from his bed, but it didn't lead to any further arguments, nor did it stop the whole group from congregating around us. It also jolted me out of my latest side-track, but that was neither here or there.

"How are they?" Lord Taika spoke up first, her question clearly addressed to the two 'nurses', but I decided to respond first.

"I'm fine, thanks for asking."

"Indeed," came the second response from Jaakobah and he gestured at the arch-mage in the bed. "As for the other patient, I'm afraid full recovery will take at least a month. With the use of a specialized catalyst, the recuperation time can be drastically reduced, but…"

"Approved," I interjected before he could finish. "Go get one on my orders. If anyone gives you a hard time, tell them that I'm not in a great mood after what happened today and that they definitely don't want me to visit them in person."

"As the Lord Archon commands."

Jaakobah gave me a quick salute, then politely inclined his head towards the Assembly group before turning on his heel and leaving the room with heavy steps accompanied by Peabody's chuckles.

"O-ho-ho. And I was hoping I could have lots of time and opportunity to experiment with unconventional treatment methods. Such a pity, such a pity."

…

Yeeeah, right. It was in moments like this that Peabody really showed his Research Society roots. More importantly, the arch-mages around me looked quite impatient. Or maybe it was just the class rep, but she certainly raised the overall impatience levels in the room. Either way, I turned to Lord Grandpa and asked, "How's the situation at the school?"

"Entirely under control. The attendees of the event had not noticed a single thing." His brows, already furrowed, now descended into a full-blown glare. "If Bel of the Abyss did not choose to engage only a select few within our Restricted Space, the situation could have easily spiralled out of control. It could have been a disaster, on the grounds of my School. Again."

"I'm afraid we'll have to get used to his unpredictability," I commented on the side. "This was just the prelude of what's to come."

"How would you know that?" Lord Barnabas inquired with a brow raised high, and after a moment of consideration, I shrugged.

"You can call it a hunch."

"We'll do that then, but can we discuss the elephant in the room first?" Ammy finally ran out of the little patience she had and stepped forth into the center of attention. "Can you please explain to me… I mean us, about what happened in Ottawa?"

I could understand her reaction, especially seeing that her magic marbles were circling her head so fast I was surprised they weren't making whooshing noises. The rest of the group was also visibly intrigued, so I glanced at Lord Ambrose. His eyes told me to do whatever I wanted, therefore I sharply cleared my throat and gave a concise description of the event, only omitting about ninety percent of the details.

It wasn't because of my bad habit. The one that Judy termed 'compulsive secret hoarding'. Nope. This time, it had more to do with the meta-elements that reared their ugly heads, such as the floompy nature of the Simulacrum there, and The Girl, and the way I tried to use my Narrative-ness to my advantage. All of those had to be omitted, or at the very least re-contextualized in a way that made Watsonian sense, and so I finished my super-concise explanation of the events in the blink of an eye. Or half an hour. Felt the same, anyway.

"… and then I grabbed the Grimoire Key and we both returned to Critias using one of my preset long-distance teleportation markers. The end."

The room remained deadly silent… was what I would've said if not for the numerous curious Pudding-kuns running circles around the Assembly group like overly-excited puppies, making purring and 'Nyu!' noises all the time. Besides that, everything was completely silent.

"This is a problem…" Lord Barnabas spoke up first, holding his forehead in the more polite imago state of a facepalm. "While I certainly understand that you were relying on your best judgement under the weight of the unfolding situation, and the initiation of the incident squarely falls on the shoulders of Lord Ambrose…"

"Hey! What would you've done in my place, huh?!" the man on the bed complained, but he was summarily ignored as the dark-skinned arch-mage continued without batting an eye.

"However, forcefully misappropriating a Grimoire Key, regardless of the circumstances, is considered one of the most severe transgressions under the Assembly's rules, and the fact that it was accomplished with the assistance of a Celestial…" Lord Barnabas gave up the pretence and fully buried his face in his palm. "Right now, Lord Marzanna has all the required justification to demand our heads on a platter." He paused to glance at me and added, "Metaphorically speaking, of course."

"I figured."

"We can deal with that later," the class rep insisted, in clear contrast to her usually meek demeanour while in front of a group. "Where's the third Key? You said you took it, so you should still have it, right?"

"Well, the thing is…" I reached into my breast pocket and showed the two halves of the magical orb to everyone present. I had a feeling I would need them, so I asked Brang to hand them back to me before we came to this workshop, and they've been sitting in my pocket since then. Anyhow, I made sure that everyone could take a good look. "As you can see, it's a bit… broken."

"Oh. Oh no…"

The class rep looked at the shattered Key like her whole world was coming down around her, and the rest of the arch-mages didn't look too good either.

"Pull yourself together," Pascal spoke as he stepped up to Ammy, ready to catch her in case she fell. It was unnecessary, since Sahi was already propping her up with a magical hand construct, but it was the thought that counted, I suppose.

"But… But the third Key…"

"Oh, bummer. This is a problem, isn't it?" Lord Gulliver quipped on the side.

"Of course it is, you bumbling clod!" Ambrose yelled at him and clumsily hit (more like tapped) his chest with the back of his hand. It only made the lanky arch-mage smile.

"Look at you! You can move your arm already!"

The rest of the people present didn't appreciate their jostling, but had bigger things to worry about.

"This is… more than just a 'problem'," Lord Barnabas spoke through gritted teeth, and Lord Grandpa looked at me as gravely as I'd ever seen him.

"Was it already broken when you retrieved it?"

"It was cracked, but it only split after we came back," I told him, but Lord Taika interjected with a downcast expression.

"It matters not. No matter what we say, Lord Marzanna can now claim that we destroyed a Grimoire Key."

"Like, if that's a thing," Sahi spoke up for the first time since she came in, but waited for everyone to pay attention to her before she continued. "Shouldn't we start preparing a new Key, like, right now?"

"It's not that simple." The dark-skinned arch-mage let the hand covering his face down, sounding unusually dejected. "The materials required to make a replacement Key are limited in availability. We would need to propose a resource-sharing agreement in front of the Assembly in Glasgow, and there's no way we'll get the opportunity like this."

"Can't we cut some corners?" Lord Taika asked, sounding a bit more hopeful than her colleague. "With Leonard's help, we could…"

"Even with the support of Leonard," Lord Grandpa interjected, cutting her short. "There are certain corners that could not be cut, no matter what."

"Wait, wait! I've got an—!" Ambrose exclaimed, only to grunt and turn to Lord Gulliver. "I can't snap my finger!" To his credit, the red-headed arch-mage immediately understood him and snapped his fingers, allowing the bedridden man to continue. "I've got an idea! Leonard! Do that thing!"

"What thing?"

"You know! That thing you did back in Ottawa, with the door!" I admit, I was a bit slow on the uptake. "Don't look at me like a slack-jawed yokel! You know what I'm talking about! You said it was an illusion to fool the world itself, so couldn't you use it to fool the Grimoire into thinking that all three Keys are gathered here, along with the Conduit?"

"That's imp—" Lord Taika spoke up reflexively, but then she bit back her words and reconsidered. "No. If it's Leonard's magic, it might just work."

I wanted to raise an objection, but everyone in the room was looking at me with renewed hope in their eyes (especially the class rep), and so I was quickly browbeaten by them.

"I'm not making any promises, but… I'll give it a try."

To be honest, I would've been lying if I said I wasn't curious if this could work. Maybe if I wasn't sleepwalking, or whatever my current condition was called, I might've given it some more consideration, but I figured that if it was something dangerous, future-me would've warned me about it ahead of time. Not that he was especially forthcoming, even now, the prick, but I trusted myself to have at least this much decency in the future.

As such, I held my palm out along with the broken Grimoire Key on top of it and gingerly pinched the two halves between my fingers. It took some finagling, but once I got them to match, I inhaled sharply and inserted a single phantom limp into the Key.

Before long, I was staring down the familiar fractal space, and it didn't take much time or effort to pick the right replacement. I overlaid the intact variant upon the one between my fingers, and then I was immediately back in the real world and… wow. Was it just me, or was this unusually easy?

Such concerns didn't hold their spot in my mind for long, as they were soon displaced by alarm bells as the temporally retconned magic marble struggled against my grasp. It broke free before I could utter a word and it headed right towards the startled class rep's forehead.

What followed was (at the risk of sounding trite) quite magical. The three Grimoire Keys shone in unison as they began to orbit around Ammy's head. Raised by an invisible force, she was gradually lifted into the air, knocking both armband guy and Sahi's magic hand back in the process. She looked rather startled by the events but didn't panic (too much) even as the orbs kept speeding up, eventually moving so fast it looked like she had a ring of light around her head.

"L-Leo? What's going on?"

"I haven't the foggiest," I admitted freely, though again, if my brain wasn't asleep, I might've considered reassuring her instead. Hindsight, as always, was a female dog.

Without warning, the three spinning spheres came to a complete and abrupt halt and then began to disintegrate into fine sand.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Lord Grandpa asked, though I sincerely doubted anyone here would (or could) know the answer.

More importantly, while the marbles themselves were rapidly disappearing, their radiant glow remained in place. We watched with bated breath as the process continued, and the moment their physical form was gone, the three wisps of white light beelined towards the confused class rep's forehead.

"W-What's happening now!?"

This question was the same as the rest. As in, nobody had a bloody idea.

That said, the lights soon disappeared, leaving a large, brightly smouldering mark on Ammy's forehead in the shape of a stylized eye. It was the kind of thing a spiky-haired card-game-playing pharaoh would've had, but it looked surprisingly natural on her as well.

Then, silence. This time for real, as all the Pudding-kuns were now hiding under shelves and only watching the events unfold from afar.

"Like, was that it?" Sahi was the first to speak, and I would've added that to the list of meaningless questions if Lord Grandpa didn't beat me to the punch.

"It is difficult to say. The records about the operation of the Grimoire of the Last Truth are ancient and fragmentary. It would not surprise me if we would have to take my granddaughter to the physical location of the Grimoire in Glasgow and have her—"

"Operation Report: Language system initialized."

This time you could taste the silence in the room as everyone was glancing left and right with expressions that screamed 'Who said that?'. It was only the beginning of the confusion.

"Operation Report: Connection with SOPHIA is established. Initializing interface."

"Leo? What is this?" the class rep muttered as soon as she realized that the sonorous female voice was coming from the mark on her forehead, but it was too early to be surprised, as a moment later it flared up and let out a wide golden beam.

It wasn't an attack but a projection, and soon the semi-transparent form of a tall, slender woman wearing a fancy toga materialized in front of us. When I squinted a little, she kind of looked like an older Ammy, but maybe I was just imagining things.

"Error: User not found. Scanning." She remained motionless, right until her head abruptly snapped to face me. "Result: Ophanim, male. Readings are inconclusive. Please provide relevant identifications."

"I'm… Polemos, the Second True Archon?" I tried, and the projection's emotionless eyes remained on me for a few seconds before turning away.

"Error: No match found. Resuming scan."

"What in the world is this?" Lord Grandpa burst out, and that was the… sixth meaningless question? Fifth? Either way, we had a bad track record here.

However, there was something else there. A vague realization that was trying to elbow its way into the forefront of my cognition, but it took several seconds to succeed. Yet, when it did, my eyes opened wide and I automatically rose from my seat.

That speech pattern… I was familiar with that one, wasn't I?

Activating my storage enchantment, I retrieved Teeny in its spear form, much to everyone's apparent apprehension. Not the holographic woman though, as she faced me again with the same inscrutable expression.

"Observation: Spear of Destiny detected. Requesting authentication. … Authentication received. New user registered. SOPHIA system, operational. Welcome, Administrator Polemos."

"Wait… Why is this… whatever this is reacting to your spear?" Lord Taika muttered in a daze, and her question was enough to make the other arch-mages stare at me with undisguised suspicion.

"Leonard?" Lord Gulliver broke the ice to ask the question on their collective minds. "What did you do to the Grimoire Key?"

"Nothing. I just returned it to the way it was supposed to… be…"

My words trailed off at the end as a sudden realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and I felt very much awake all of a sudden.

For the longest time, there had been this small niggle about the original scenario I could never quite figure out. In the Simulacrum's initial designs, I was supposed to be a major antagonist in every potential 'route' Josh could've started. Depending on his choice of 'heroine', my role would've shifted to match the route's theme. With Angie, I was supposed to become Polemos and create a love triangle over Deus. With Elly, I was supposed to be the Knight hiding in plain sight and aiming for the lives of her and her family. With Penny, as hard as it was to accept that she was meant to be a 'secret heroine', I would've been standing in Josh's path to become the King of Knights.

Fairly straightforward stuff so far, but then there was Ammy's potential route, and I could never quite figure out how I was supposed to factor into that one. At most, I imagined I would've played into the Magi vs. Celestial conflict, but there just wasn't a hook for me like in the other potential routes. Instead, Ammy's story was focused on the Grimoire and its Keys, and that was about it.

Now, let's look at the current situation: The Keys were gathered, and they activated some kind of ancient magitech AI. She was wearing a stereotypical Celestial outfit, she immediately honed in on me instead of all the certified arch-mages in the room, and she not only communicated like Teeny, but she also recognized it and granted me admin rights over whatever this 'SOPHIA' system was right off the bat.

Conclusion: The Grimoire Key, and maybe the Grimoire of the Last Truth itself, were Celestial magitech. And they were the oldest and most highly regarded artefacts of the Magi who, without my intervention, would've been at a cold war with Elysium even at this moment. In other words, there was a potentially ancient conspiracy afoot, which in turn meant…

"Goddamit," I whispered, quietly preparing myself for the inevitable. "Things are going to get even more complicated, aren't they?"