Divine Luck: SSS-Rank Battle Maid Harem

Monolith was gone. It was not as much of a relief as they would have thought. For one, they still wanted to beat the crap out of him. But secondly, that meant he had completed his objective. There was no longer any reason for him to prevent them from entering the sewers and the Underworld.

However, Monolith wasn't the only thing missing from the ruins of Basilia. All the underworld energy that had been forced to the surface was also gone. That was more concerning than anything.

Hadn't the Underworld pumped up the underworld energy to secure an outpost on the surface to make their advance easier? Had they given up on that or was there another reason for the underworld energy to have been on the surface other than to make it more difficult to stay in the city?

Other than that, there didn't seem to be anything else amiss. The city was just a pile of ruins with a crater in the center. But an investigation wouldn't be an investigation if they left it at that.

Zach threw up barriers around his friends and split them into groups of two. He was alone with his familiars.

They walked around the city for an hour before regrouping at the center where Monolith had been.

"Anyone find anything?" Zach asked.

The others exchanged glances to see if anyone had found anything. Their silence was their answer.

"Did we cover the entire city?" Nessa asked after a while.

"If you all went to the districts I asked, it should have been most of it."

Nessa frowned and looked at the others.

"Who went to my and Dukiel's districts?" She asked accusatorily.

Nessa's tone came seemingly out of nowhere, so Dukiel, Anerias, and Violina frowned and looked at her with question marks in their eyes.

"No one?" Violina said, shooting Zach a quick glance. He had a tendency to lose his way, after all. But he shouldn't have moved from the city center. If he had, he wouldn't have been there waiting for them.

"Oh, then I think I found something," Nessa said, her tone much lighter than before.

A minute later, they were all standing on the corner of one of the more intact streets closer to the outskirts of the city, comparing their shoe sizes to the bootprint on the ground. It didn't match anyone of them. It was bigger than Zach's, Nessa's, and Violina's shoes, but it was smaller than Dukiel's and Anerias' footprints.

"So, someone's been here. It's odd but nothing alarming, right?" Anerias said after they finished comparing sizes. He looked at the others, wondering why their expressions were so grim.

Violina helped him.

"Did you see any footprints or signs of someone walking to the city? Or anywhere else within the city for that matter?"

"No…?"

"Then why are there footprints here?" Violina glanced around.

"And over there." She pointed at another footprint in the dust on the ground.

Something suspicious was going on.

At her words, the others also started looking for more footprints, expanding their search with the one Nessa first found as the center. They found a few more. Strangely enough, it seemed like they led to and from the city center, where Monolith's entrance to the Underworld was.
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What was even more strange was that there didn't seem to be any footprints along the outer edge of the city.

"So, are we dealing with ghosts now?" Dukiel jokingly asked. Anerias' face paled.

"Maybe an Underworld Exterminator who came to take a look?" Nessa more helpfully suggested.

"Could be. But why cover up their tracks into and out of the city but not inside?"

They came up with a few theories but nothing that stuck since they only had the footprints to go on. They looked for more traces of someone being there or anything else happening, but in the end, they didn't find anything. So, they decided to return and attend class. It wasn't a good look if the top students were absent on the first day of lessons, even if the class was just Jarron talking about his vacation.

They were at a slight loss.

It wasn't a disappointing return to the Academy. But it was underwhelming.

Zach and the others hadn't expected anything specific. But they had thought that the Underworld would have done something while they were away. Instead, they had done the opposite. They had undone what they had done before the break.

There weren't any underworlders, named or unnamed to fight. There wasn't any underworld energy to drive away. If there were any spies, they didn't know about them.

But that didn't mean there was nothing for them to do. With Monolith no longer blocking their way, they could try and enter the Underworld to investigate. Monolith wasn't in their way anymore since the Underworld wasn't worried about the students entering the Underworld right now.

That could be because they had sealed the entrance or because no matter what the students did, it was already too late. But they had to find out which of the two it was. So, what they had to do was obvious. They had to enter the Underworld.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that easy.

It was the start of the school year, and it was the fourth year at the Academy, which was known to be the academically heaviest one, regardless of what special things the principal had prepared for each year.

It wouldn't be that easy for them to get permission to take a few days off the normal classes. Zach might be able to talk to the principal, but that old bully had a stubborn and obstinate streak when it came to things like this. Still, it was worth a try.

And it was better than just staying cooped up in the library trying to understand what the quadratic formula had to do with summoning familiars and fighting monsters. There was also another matter that Zach wanted to talk to the principal about, but that was a personal favor.