The Genius of Cloning in the Academy City-Chapter 101: Violet Discovered a Suspicious Place.

I realized that the gate had disappeared right after I woke up.

“Ugh! The gate!”

“What’s going on?”

The group of students, including myself, had set up tents in the open space near the entrance and spent the night there.

In the morning, the screams from outside the tent acted as an alarm, waking me up.

I slowly stepped outside the tent.

I saw a few students, who had also woken up, rubbing their eyes and peeking their heads out.

“What’s happening?”

When I asked, I saw the student who had been on night watch trembling and pointing towards the entrance.

“Over there! Look at that!”

I was taken aback. What on earth was going on?

The gate that had been in front of us slowly disappeared, as if the water was being sucked into a drain.

The gate, now contracted into one small point, fizzled out, scattering small sparks.

All that was left in the spot where the gate had been were a few blades of grass.

The students, who had been watching the scene blankly, eventually understood what was happening and screamed.

“Ah… ah! The gate is gone! What the hell? Where did it go?”

“Kyaaaah!”

“Hey! Wake up! We’re screwed!”

Everyone was in shock from the unexpected situation.

From beyond the fog outside the open area, strange howls echoed.

“It’s monsters!”

“Wake up! Get your weapons!”

Before we could fully process what was happening, we had to fight right from the early morning.

**

After the battle ended, the fog gradually started to clear.

“I can’t believe the gate disappeared. It’s just so unbelievable.”

Irene said this while opening a package of instant food.

She was keeping a calm demeanor on the outside, but she kept glancing at the spot where the gate had disappeared, even while eating.

Usually, Irene was always composed, but this unexpected situation seemed to be shaking her up inside.

I opened my own package. It was surprising, but first, I needed to eat and regain my strength.

Today’s breakfast was instant risotto. Chicken flavor.

As we ate breakfast, we gradually began to talk.

“Is it even possible for the gate to completely disappear like this?”

“I’ve heard that it’s rare for something like this to happen, but I didn’t expect it to happen to us.”

“So, are we supposed to be stuck here? That’s terrifying.”

“Exactly, it would be all of us except Violet. What’s the situation outside?”

Irene asked, and I gathered the information from my earlier conversation with Instructor Frederick in my mind.

“The external gates haven’t disappeared. They’re still working on stabilizing them.”

“Is that so? If the external gate hasn’t disappeared, then the connection must not have been severed. That means a new gate must have appeared somewhere in this dungeon.” ℞𝘈ΝỖᛒĘș

“…That’s just common sense. Once a dimensional connection to the outside world is made, it’s not so easily severed.”

“Huh?”

A familiar voice interrupted our conversation.

I turned my head, and there was Lucian, holding an unopened packet of instant risotto.

“Why are you here?”

“Oh, Violet. I came to exchange for the chicken flavor. I don’t like the mushroom flavor.”

“Chicken? That’s all gone.”

“Tch…”

Lucian muttered quietly after hearing my words.

Currently, I was supplying food for all the students.

I provided easy-to-cook and various canned and retort foods because they were convenient to prepare.

It was all stored in the kitchen to feed the dozens of Violet clones. I told the other students that I had “accidentally discovered” the emergency rations left behind by the instructors.

“It’s just instant food anyway!”

“It’s convenient to eat.”

“But didn’t you just talk about the connection between spaces earlier?”

I asked Lucian, who was heading back to his seat. He replied,

“Are you asking because you don’t know? You, who got a perfect score on the exam.”

“You mentioned that another gate might have appeared! Explain it to me.”

“This easy stuff?”

Now that I looked at him, his attitude clearly said, “Why are you asking about this?” While the other students weren’t paying attention, I slipped a chocolate bar from my pocket and handed it to Lucian. He quietly accepted it.

“Well, it’s simple. A dungeon is a space that’s been isolated after a part of the real world fell into a dimensional rift. A gate is a passage created between the real world and this dimensional space. Think of it like an unhealed, continuously bleeding wound.”

“Keep explaining.”

“Once a gate is opened, it can never completely close. The dimensional pressure between the two worlds keeps the rift open. However, the size of a dungeon isn’t fixed. The boundaries of a dungeon can expand or contract. When that happens, the positions of the gates often change. For example, the gates that appear in the city, spit out monsters, and then disappear—that’s an example. This is when the entrance position in the real world changes.”

Ah, I get it now. I remembered the conversation I had with Daphne the other day, explaining the fog and the dungeon’s boundaries.

“And the position of the entrances inside the dungeon can change as well.”

“Correct. But to explain something so obvious like this, are you sure you’re first place? How did you even do well on the exam?”

Because I used collective intelligence.

As Lucian carried his mushroom-flavored risotto back to his seat, I looked out at the jungle beyond the open area.

The thick fog from yesterday was gradually clearing and disappearing.

After finishing breakfast, Irene gathered the students together. She summarized and explained what Lucian had said earlier.

“The gate didn’t disappear. Its location just changed. From now on, let’s search the dungeon to find the new gate.”

A male student raised a question.

“Can’t we just stay here? It’s dangerous outside with all the monsters.”

“You need to be near the gate to have a higher chance of being rescued quickly. I won’t force anyone. If you think it’s too dangerous, stay here. I’ll take volunteers. Understood?”

Another female student asked suspiciously.

“How can we trust that? Do you have any proof?”

“There’s no direct proof, but according to academic statistics, magic knowledge, and physics theory, the likelihood is very high.”

“That’s not 100%! What if there isn’t? And what do you know about magic?”

The female student, holding a staff, spoke to Irene in a challenging tone. Seeing this, I started to feel irritated. Just as I was about to get angry, Lucian suddenly spoke up.

“Hey, shut up.”

“What? What did you just say to me?”

“Yeah! Why are you talking to my friend like that?”

As the female student chatted with her friends, Lucian raised his gloved hand and snapped his fingers.

Multiple magical circles appeared behind him.

“And what about magic? Don’t you think those who can’t do magic should keep their mouths shut?”

“Eek!”

As the female student recoiled, Lucian puffed up with pride and gestured towards Irene.

“Hey, first-year representative. Get on with it.”

Irene nodded slightly as a gesture of thanks, and then lightly nodded again.

“So, as I said earlier, we’re going to look for the location of the newly formed gate. It’s not mandatory. I’ll only take volunteers. If anyone wants to join the search for the gate, raise your hand.”

When she asked, the students hesitated and looked around nervously. I whispered in Irene’s ear.

“Irene, just leave them be. It’ll be faster if I go alone.”

“Should I…? Alright, if no one else volunteers, I’ll ask you to help.”

Just as our plan to search alone with a Violet scout team was about to be finalized, a male student, seemingly having made up his mind, raised his hand and loudly shouted.

“We’ll go!”

It was the team I had called the “Hero Party.” After talking to his team members, five of them confidently looked toward us.

Lucian, who had been quietly standing with his arms crossed, also raised his hand.

“Then I’ll go too.”

“Uh… then I’ll go too!”

“If the leader is going, how can I not follow?”

After that, several students, either individually or with their teams, volunteered to join the search. About 12 students in total decided to join the search.

The rest decided to stay in the open area for now. It couldn’t be helped.

After finishing preparations, we scattered to begin the search.

“Violet, I’m counting on you!”

“Yeah, I’ll find it!”

“Alright, the search operation starts now. Everyone, move!”

“Everyone, hurry up!”

I headed toward a location far from the open area. Just for a moment…

“Ugh…”

“Don’t push yourself too hard, Violet. No one’s going to complain if you take it slow.”

“Ugh… Thanks.”

As Daphne patted me, the shock eased slightly. Being chewed alive wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience.

While I was recovering thanks to Daphne’s healing, Irene approached us cautiously.

“There’s something you two need to see.”

Daphne and I followed Irene. Various corpses of beast hordes were scattered around.

“These are the ones we killed earlier, right?”

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

“Yeah, but look at this. Doesn’t it seem strange?”

I examined the beasts one by one. I could spot something odd.

“What the… aren’t these a crab and a polar bear?”

“Technically, they’re beasts derived from those creatures. Normally, they don’t inhabit Cloris’ Great Forest.”

“Could they have come from an external dungeon?”

“That’s impossible. Unless someone deliberately brought them here…”

I tilted my head in confusion. The more we dug, the more questions we uncovered.

“We’ll need to continue searching tomorrow.”

“Yeah, let’s sleep on it for now and think about it tomorrow.”

Thus, we greeted the third morning in the dungeon.

In the meantime, I witnessed something strange.

Violet No. 406 was one of the members of the Violet Search Squad. The squad, following orders from the temporary command center, tirelessly rotated shifts or generated new clones to locate the position of a new gate that had appeared in Cloris’ Great Forest.

Despite the humid weather, No. 406 muttered complaints under her breath as she hacked away at the bushes blocking her path.

Then, something strange caught No. 406’s eye.

“What’s that?”

“A gate? But it seems smaller than usual.”

It was indeed a gate. However, its size was smaller than the previous ones, and its color was peculiar.

The surroundings were a mess, as if a storm had swept through.

Trees were snapped in half.

As Violet surveyed the area, something caught her eye—a shape partially buried in the dirt.

When she picked it up and brushed it off, she found a warning sign.

Curious, No. 406 transmitted the discovery to the Violet command center.

“Can you see this?”

“This area is a managed and controlled zone. Unauthorized entry is prohibited.”

Seeing that written on the sign only made one want to enter even more. I gave an order to No. 406.

“Go in for now. You’re wearing your mask, right?”

“Yeah, confirmed!”

Violet No. 406 leapt through the small gate. Her surroundings changed in an instant, and her eyes widened.

“This place…”

Looking around, she saw an area composed of various large and small structures.

“Who built a place like this?”

She cautiously walked further inside.

There were temporary structures divided into several levels, illuminated by artificial lights.

Suddenly, the sound of multiple footsteps reached her ears.

“No. 406, hide!”

Violet No. 406 immediately concealed herself in a corner.

She saw several people engaged in conversation.

Among them, a young man with gray hair caught her attention, and the entire Violet command center reacted in shock.

“It’s the student council president! And the one next to him, is that the treasurer?”

“What are they doing here?”

A mysterious gate located within an expanded dungeon, and a suspicious facility beyond it. On top of that, the student council president was walking with one of his subordinates.

Who built this place, and why was the student council president here?

The Violet command center immediately ordered further reconnaissance.

No. 406 began exploring the unknown facility, evading detection in the shadows.

“Be careful not to get caught!”

While Violet was inspecting the suspicious facility, a group of students arrived at the location she had just passed through.

“Nathan, was it really necessary to come this far?”

“You saw it too. The beasts are getting stronger. We need to find an exit quickly.”

A party of students, whom Violet had labeled the ‘hero party,’ and another group of students discovered the small gate.

“Could this be the exit?”

“It seems operational. Let’s just step inside and come right back out. Then we can inform the others in the clearing!”

The students cautiously entered through the gate.

Shortly after, a second group arrived.

“Hey, Lucian, look over there. Is that the exit?”

“Well, it does look odd, doesn’t it?”

“Whatever it is, we need to check it out. If it’s dangerous, we’ll leave immediately.”

Lucian’s party also stepped through the gate, completely unaware of what lay on the other side.