Lisan Al-Gaia: Tales of the First SSS Human

"He was looking for these materials?"

"What for?"

The team had gathered early that morning, as they had grown accustomed to doing. To make sure Silas would not surprise them again during training, they had decided to skip classes for the remaining days before the mission and focus entirely on preparing themselves.

They had also kept that decision a secret from him.

As usual, they gathered and boarded the shuttle heading toward the floating platform. Yet the team that was normally loud, active, and full of energy seemed strangely subdued today.

Cher wore a cold mask, staring into the distance as if she expected to find something on the horizon. Darius, meanwhile, remained unusually quiet, neither speaking nor interacting with anyone, which was almost unnatural for someone like him.

Lara had not even sat with them, instead retreating to the rear of the shuttle where her babies were. The three squirrels had grown accustomed to flying by now, and were happily jumping and humping around as though they were still running across solid ground.

That left only Alfred, who had never been particularly talkative, and Terio, who seemed lost whenever Lara was not around. The two were the only ones acting relatively normal.

Yet both of them could tell that something was wrong.

They remembered how Silas had contacted the two of them the previous night, asking them for a list of materials without inviting Cher, Lara, or Darius. They had already discussed it afterward, concluding that Silas had seemed unusually anxious and excited.

Alfred also recognized the old piece of paper as one of the many documents Cher had given him to carry to his dorm.

Putting the pieces together, they realized that Silas had probably discovered the paper only a few hours before contacting them. Since it had already been late at night, they assumed he had simply not bothered contacting Cher or Lara.

Darius was a different matter.

They both knew how exhausting his work as their coach had become. He spent his days tracking everyone’s progress, taking notes, studying them late into the night, and then presenting his findings the following morning.

He was either dead tired and asleep when Silas contacted him, or buried so deeply in his work that he had simply overlooked the message.

Still, when they met the others that morning, neither Alfred nor Terio could shake the feeling that something was off.

As they made their way toward the floating platform, they exchanged a few silent glances before Alfred finally decided to test the waters.

"Silas asked Terio and me for a list of materials."

"He showed us an old piece of paper," Terio added. "It had a lot of instructions on it and mentioned some kind of ancient rune structure that was discovered decades ago."

As everyone’s attention turned toward him, Terio suddenly felt nervous, especially when Lara stared directly at him amidst her babies.

"I don’t know the specifics, but the materials were things used to activate grand rune structures and forge..."

"He wants to repeat an old experiment."

Alfred interrupted him, though he wasn’t sure why the red-haired youngster had suddenly stopped speaking.

"Repeat an old experiment?"

Cher’s voice remained cold, but her eyes carried a different weight.

"I could tell from the paper."

Alfred shrugged.

"We tried to dissuade him, but he was..."

"Desperate."

Taking advantage of the distraction, Terio quietly moved a few steps until he was standing beside Lara. He then spoke as though the two of them had been having a private conversation all along.

Lara gave him a strange look before casually placing one of her babies between them.

Terio inwardly sighed.

’Rejected again.’

"By desperate, you mean..." Darius finally spoke, his expression unusually serious. "Desperate desperate, or..."

"What does that even mean?"

Cher rolled her eyes and cut him off before his question could become any more ridiculous.

She turned toward Alfred.

"I want to see that list."

Then she glanced at Terio, who was standing suspiciously close to Lara. For a moment, she looked ready to tell him to move away, but then she noticed the faint smile hidden beneath Lara’s hair as she watched her friend.

’Fine.’

Cher sighed inwardly before deciding to ask Terio something else instead.

"What else do you remember about that paper? Anything specific?"

She wasn’t sure what else to say, but she didn’t want to reprimand him when Lara clearly wasn’t bothered by his presence.

"Well... about that..."

Cher expected Terio to understand the hint and remain quiet beside Lara.

Instead, he suddenly spoke with an expression that suggested he had remembered something important.

"That paper had a diagram on it, right, Alfred?"

Terio had never been particularly interested in drawings, so he couldn’t remember exactly what the diagram looked like. Still, he had always been strangely attentive whenever drawings were involved, and he hadn’t forgotten that one.

His words made Alfred’s expression change as the memory returned to him.

"Draw it as well."

Before Alfred could say anything, Cher immediately added another order, and he simply complied.

"Speaking of him, I received quite a few messages asking where I was and what I was doing."

Darius touched his wristwatch and opened the messages he had received from Silas. There were quite a few of them, yet not a single one contained even the slightest hint that Silas needed their help.

"I got some too," Lara called from behind, though she made no effort to leave her usual spot. "They were all just asking if I was awake or free, or simply saying hi."

"He sent me the same messages." Cher opened her wristwatch and scrolled through the ones she had received. "He even sent me a couple early this morning."

She glanced between Darius and Lara, and both nodded. It seemed Silas had sent the same messages to all three of them that morning.

"Why didn’t he ask for our help as he did with those two?"

Darius sounded annoyed, but as he looked through the messages again, he realized something was wrong. They looked like ordinary friendly messages, yet Silas had never been the type to send messages without a reason.

He never contacted them unless some disaster was already hanging over their heads.

The three of them realized the same thing almost simultaneously. Lara merely shrugged, but Cher felt a pang of guilt for overlooking such a subtle detail about Silas.

"Ah, so that must have been him asking for help."

Terio spoke casually, drawing everyone’s attention.

"Didn’t you say you promised to handle the material problem for him?"

Cher looked puzzled, while Darius was even more confused, so he asked the question first. Cher remained silent, waiting for Alfred’s answer.

"That’s true." Alfred was still in the middle of recreating the diagram from memory. "But there was another problem he had to solve himself, the Rune Rock problem."

The others stared at him strangely, forcing Alfred to explain.

"The diagram isn’t just a simple rune formation. The paper contains numerous rune symbols that have to be engraved onto the rocks to produce the proper Rune Rocks, and that was the part Silas had to figure out himself."

"Are you saying he’s looking for a Rune Master?"

Even saying it aloud made the situation sound ridiculous. Cher knew how difficult and expensive it was to hire a Rune Master, not to mention how rare it was to find someone capable of doing the work in the first place.

"He’ll find one easily enough." Terio failed to understand why she was making such a big deal out of it. "We’re in the academy, and there’s an entire Rune Class here, remember?"

He spoke as if the solution were obvious, completely oblivious to the strange looks everyone was giving him.

"He said he would go to the higher years and look for a master there, so he must have contacted you about it."

Only then did Terio notice that something was wrong.

Everyone was staring at him, even Alfred, who had been with him when Silas mentioned it.

Terio grew nervous under their gazes and instinctively glanced over his shoulder, half expecting some disaster to be creeping up behind him without his knowledge.

There was nothing.

He let out a relieved sigh before finally realizing how strange the entire situation was.

"What? Why are you all looking at me like that?"

Darius was the first to answer.

"You genius..."

"Did you forget how expensive it is to hire a Rune Master?"

"Of course I know." Terio still failed to see the problem. "Alfred and I warned him that finding one would be difficult, but he came up with the brilliant idea of looking for a Rune Master among the academy’s students and teachers..."

"Finding one isn’t the problem," Lara interrupted, finally taking pity on him.

"It’s just that..."

"Silas is an orphan."

"He didn’t come from a prestigious clan or even a wealthy family, so..."

Lara did not need to finish.

Terio’s eyes widened as the realization finally struck him.

"We need to go find him..."

Cher wanted to reprimand the two slow-witted idiots, but there was no time for that. Knowing Silas, he had probably already found the teacher and spoken to him.

She knew Silas would never be able to afford the price of hiring a Rune Master, but that was not what worried her.

There was only one Rune Master in the entire academy, and his reputation was rather famous, or, more accurately, infamous.

’The Fat Wealth Cat... You went to that greedy bastard empty-handed and completely unprepared.’

Cher inwardly gritted her teeth, realizing that this was not entirely Silas’ fault. He had tried to contact her, tried to reach everyone else, and yet none of them had responded.

’I got distracted by my father’s message...’

Her thoughts shifted as another realization surfaced.

’That reminds me...’

She silently looked at the other two, Darius and Lara.

’What exactly were these two doing that they couldn’t even respond to his messages?’