High School of Demon Hunting

Chapter 1143: Chapter 205: Day Off in Lieu

The divination on Monday afternoon still had a significant impact on Zheng Qing.

Although he pretended to be open-minded in front of Elena, and lied to her that he had changed his question, that wasn’t the case. What he had indeed asked was whether he would be expelled from school, and the Tarot cards held a pessimistic view on the matter.

This made the young cost student increasingly timid at school.

So much so that regarding Nicholas’s current predicament, he only quietly remained an observer, daring not to intervene on Nicholas’s behalf for fear of losing his limited ’prestige’ among the students of Jiuyou Academy.

Accordingly, the atmosphere in dormroom 403 had also become somewhat tense.

For several days in a row, Xin Fat Man had been muttering to himself, claiming that he had been ”infected” by Zheng Qing, with a nightmare tormenting him at night, preventing him from sleeping well.

Zheng Qing had thought he was just describing insomnia and nightmares until he saw Fat man get up early on Wednesday morning for the first time in a while, holding a small glass bottle in one hand and a dropper in the other, diligently dripping some unknown liquid into the bottle against the dawn light.

”What are you doing?” the cost student asked groggily, rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.

Two sprites, one holding a toothbrush and the other holding toothpaste, handed them to Zheng Qing, urging him to brush his teeth. As they had also just woken up, the sprites were flying somewhat erratically.

”Caught a little nightmare, and I’m concocting it now,” whispered Fat Man, his tone somewhat proud. ”To catch it, I even stuffed a few ant eggs into my ears before going to sleep last night...”

Zheng Qing covered his mouth, which was about to yawn, and widened his eyes in curiosity as he leaned in closer. He even forgot to take the toiletries that the sprites had handed to him.

”A nightmare?” he asked in surprise. ”Are you serious? I thought that was just another term for bad dreams.”

”How fresh!” Fat Man gave his roommate a sidelong glance and snorted loudly through his nose. ”Are you telling me sleep paralysis is just your own limbs being temporarily paralysed?”

”From a scientific perspective, it is indeed temporary paralysis,” Zheng Qing said, peering closely at the little glass bottle, his tone thick with interest. ”But from a magical perspective... Is this really a nightmare? What are you planning to do with it? Hmm, are you sure it’s not just a spider in the bottle?”

His voice was laden with skepticism by the end.

He hadn’t seen any nightmare in the glass bottle that Fat Man was holding, just a fingernail-sized, colorful little spider scurrying around the bottom of the bottle.

”Scorpions, spiders, toads; these are the favorite incarnations of nightmares,” Xiao Xiao, who was on the other side of the desk, also got up and casually explained upon hearing Zheng Qing’s question:

”Of course, some nightmares also like to turn into stinkbugs or mosquitoes. It’s only when they come into contact with dreams that they transform into nothingness. On ordinary days, they always crawl around the house in the form of various ugly little bugs... to those wizards who are not adept at killing bugs, they truly deserve the name nightmare.”

”If it can transform into nothingness, how did you manage to catch it?”

”I told you, I used ant eggs. You even need bait to fish, don’t you?” Fat Man, becoming slightly impatient, spread his arms, pushed Zheng Qing away, and said dismissively, ”Aren’t you guys supposed to go to morning class? Go on, go on, don’t bother me... wait until I’ve concocted it, then I’ll give you a proper show.”

Zheng Qing looked at the little spider in the bottle, shrugged his shoulders, no longer interested in the commotion, took the toiletries from the sprites, and went into the washroom.

If it were really a formidably transformed, horrific-looking nightmare, perhaps he would have been somewhat interested to see something rare. But a colorful little spider just wasn’t that interesting. He had already had his fill of such small bugs this spring.

Compared to that, Zheng Qing had even more important things to do.

Because he had arranged a time to explore the Secret Realm with Korma for Saturday morning.

But on Saturday afternoon, he needed to work part-time in Professor Montreya’s office; on Saturday night, he also had the task of night patrol at Lin Zhong Lake—although he had an accident during patrol last week, the School Works Committee had not canceled his duty because of it.

Given the many uncertainties during the exploration and the potential lack of time, this presented a not-so-small problem. In case he couldn’t return to the school on time by noon or even by the evening due to time deviations in the Secret Realm, he would need to take leave in advance to prevent Professor Montreya or the School Works Committee from assuming he was deliberately missing work.

It was easy to speak with Professor Montreya.

After all, it was a proper laboratory with plenty of staff. As an extracurricular laboratory assistant temporarily added to the roster, Zheng Qing only needed a sufficient reason to get a leave slip from the professor.

However, taking leave with the School Works Committee was a bit more troublesome.

He needed to first submit a formal leave application to the School Works Committee and, after receiving permission, he had to find the old school worker Hemingway, who was in charge of his night patrol tasks, to adjust his patrol schedule.

Because the School Works Committee’s patrol duty was originally a punitive task, there was no concept of ’taking leave,’ only the options of ’days off in exchange’ (time off) or ’job transfer.’

Zheng Qing didn’t want to completely change his duties, he just intended to temporarily adjust one evening, so he chose time off in exchange.

This meant that he had to shift his Saturday night patrol duty to another time slot and use other tasks to fill the gap. The entire application process went on sporadically for several days, and it wasn’t until Tuesday night, before he went to bed, that he received a paper crane from the old worker Hemingway.

The note requested that Zheng Qing come to find him in the lawns on the east side of the lake after his Wednesday noon class, where the old man would assign him a temporary task.

Wednesday morning was a Magic History class.

Mister Sima talked about the Magical World after the first Wizard-Demon War, including the establishment of the ’Wizard-Demon Coexistence System,’ the main magic organizations of the 1920s, and the ’Pureblood Contamination Event’ of 1929-1933 that affected the entire Magical World.

The large-scale pureblood contamination led many wizards to fall and become Witch Demons, a key factor that triggered the second great war between wizards and demons. Therefore, this class’s content was repeatedly emphasized by Mister Sima as a focus of the semester.

In this history class, there still seemed to be some tension between Xiao Xiao and Mister Sima, with both wearing stern faces and ignoring each other.

”As a boy, you should be more magnanimous,” Zheng Qing advised the doctor after class.

Of course, he did not intend to meddle in their affairs too much, as he had plenty of troubles of his own.

After class, Zheng Qing parted ways with his companions, donned a hood, hugged the shadows of the academy walls, and hurried to the location appointed by the old school worker.

When he arrived, he saw the old school worker Hemingway tidying up the lawn, rhythmically swinging his hoe and striking at the mounds left by the ants. Grey-white columns of earth crumbled under the whoosh of the hoe, leaving behind pits in the ground.

From a distance, the green lawn looked as if it was speckled with leprosy, mottled and rather unsightly.