Magic Tower Undergraduate. (3)
……In the vanished time, a faint space.
A metallic gleam flickers in the dim distance.
“Professor!”
Julie rushes toward him. Her own body is covered in wounds, but she doesn’t hesitate.
He leans against a wall. True to form, he neither lies down nor collapses—he stands firm.
“Your wounds are deep!”
Blood surges from his entire body.
As a knight, Julie’s body and mind move on instinct. She assesses the injuries first, then controls the bleeding and administers emergency treatment. It’s a habit drilled into her over twenty years of training.
“You remain composed, Julie.”
“Don’t speak.”
Her heart pounds, but there’s no time to indulge in sentiment.
She pinpoints the wounds and is about to begin mana-based healing when—
Snap—!
Deculein grabs her hand. Julie looks up at him in confusion.
He’s smiling.
“……It’s fine.”
“Absolutely not! It’s not fine!”
“If it’s not fine……”
He places a hand on her cheek. She flinches.
“……then I must be dying.”
“……”
Julie meticulously examines his wounds. His abdomen, iliac bone, spleen—all the most vital spots have been pierced.
She grits her teeth.
“……You are dying.”
That trembling voice stirs a memory in Deculein, one from his time as Kim Woojin long ago.
Quite some time back. Her on the monitor, severing Deculein’s lifeline, and his dying words as Deculein.
‘Damn bitch—’
“Even the Iron Man must die someday…… Julie. I’ve seen myself die before.”
“Stop, stop talking!”
Julie wants to cover his mouth. The more he speaks, the more blood bubbles up, but Deculein stubbornly continues.
“It’s strange. That future would probably be the most beneficial for you.”
“Professor, please……”
“I know too, Julie. This can’t be the end.”
If he dies like this, Julie can never reclaim her true self.
Deculein’s death must come by Julie’s hand, without fail.
“For your sake, and for mine.”
He places a hand on her shoulder. Then, in a perfectly clear voice, he says,
“Kill the being you fear most, and we shall meet again.”
“……Professor.”
“Remember it. Kill the being you fear most, and we shall meet again.”
“What does that……”
“……”
Deculein’s words trail off. He simply closes his eyes in silence.
“Professor! Professor—!”
He never bent, not even for a moment…… until he broke in an instant.
……Back in the present, Julie glances back and forth between Sophien and Deculein.
“Julie. Unless you suddenly lost your mind.”
Sophien speaks. She taps her upper arm with the fingers of her crossed arms.
“Are you saying you regressed?”
“Yes. Exactly one week from today.”
Julie nods steadily.
Her grasp of the situation, summary, and understanding are remarkably swift. Perhaps because the memory is too vivid to dismiss as a mere dream.
“Fascinating. What were the circumstances of Deculein’s death?”
“There was a report of a demon appearing in the palace underground.”
Julie turns her head briefly and coughs. Cough—! Cough—!
“So we went to the palace together……”
Blood trickles from her mouth. Julie wipes it away as if it’s nothing and continues.
“The professor entrusted me with the underground entrance. He went down alone—”
“And I died there?”
“……Yes.”
Each word seems an effort. Cold sweat beads on her forehead.
“Also…… huff.”
Her head spins; she shakes it once.
Clutching the desk desperately, she says,
“At that time, Your Majesty was asleep. Your retainers tried, but you wouldn’t rise from your pillow.”
“……Is that so?”
Sophien furrows her brow. I think as I listen to her.
“Yes. Cough—!”
Julie coughs. A clot of blood sprays from her mouth. In an instant, the blood spatters the snowy ground red, and thud!—her entire body collapses atop it.
She’s lost consciousness.
I kneel on one knee and lift Julie into my arms.
“What is it?”
Sophien asks. I feel the raging fever throughout Julie’s body. Closing my eyes, I Understand her injuries.
“……Her wounds are severe. A side effect of the regression. Julie is dying.”
Regression is the process of returning from future to past. Thus, the body’s mana surges dramatically at least once.
Of course, a sturdy body and circuits would adapt quickly, but Julie’s aren’t. It’s because of the curse clinging to her heart.
With such a body, she regressed not a day or two, but a full week.
The price of reviving my future self.
“Deculein. Your face right now is divine.”
Ho ho~ Sophien chuckles softly.
“A face I’ve never seen before. Does it mean you love her that much?”
I silently check Julie’s consciousness and pulse. She’s faintly awake.
“……No.”
Thus, my words will linger hazily in her memory.
“I’ve never once loved her that much. I merely want to possess her. Lately, though, her constant illnesses have become quite bothersome.”
“……”
Sophien’s lips twist in a cynical sneer as she looks at me.
Soon, the palace physicians arrive. They load Julie onto a stretcher, and I watch her being carried away.
Sophien speaks.
“Deculein.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I master all things—truly all things—with ease. When we first met, grasping your emotions was difficult. But now, even that is simple.”
“Is that so.”
“Deculein, you lied to me.”
Sophien says sternly. I don’t deny it.
“I am deeply disappointed. Enough to want to sever your head this instant.”
“……I apologize. However, I probably don’t love Julie as much as ‘Your Majesty imagines.’”
Just as Julie is completed through Deculein, so too is Deculein completed through Julie.
I cannot defy that fated story.
“It’s probably far more than that.”
Not that I can’t do it, but that I don’t want to.
Deculein’s unique ego. His most unyielding personality and stubbornness demand Julie.
“……Hmph. Enough.”
Understanding my meaning, Sophien scoffs. Then, suddenly, she slumps onto the wooden desk.
“Truly…… suddenly so tiresome…… and sleepy. After rebuking you for lying to me…… I meant to learn some Rune Language…… but……”
Sophien’s sluggish words trail off. I look to Kairon.
Kairon nods.
Once more, the door to the underground opens.
I enter the underground past. The moment I open the door, the palace garden comes into view.
Spring’s lake. Its surface reflects Sophien.
She sits in a wheelchair. I try to approach, but it’s already too late.
She’s blind and deaf. And this is her final moment.
I can’t let her know I’ve come. I can’t tell her I failed to keep my promise.
Your Majesty—!
The retainers gathered around her call out, weeping.
I approach her. Crunch— Grass crunches underfoot, dirt scatters. Dying Sophien asks in a frail voice,
—Who…… is by my side.
A question she can’t hear the answer to, her ears already deaf.
“Yes. I am by your side.”
The moment I answer Sophien—
—I wish you were.
And the moment she murmurs that—
The world changes.
Rumble—!
A vibration shakes heaven and earth.
Soon, the entire space collapses, then flips anew.
A rapid regression unfolds.
The palace rebuilds once more.
Sophien of Round 13.
Before her illness worsened, she hanged herself.
And the world shifts again.
Sophien of Round 16.
She dies receiving a folk remedy from a cult from the southern seas.
Sophien of Round 21.
Worn from regressions, she sobs until she smashes her forehead against a rock and dies.
Sophien of Round 29 starves to death, refusing food.
Thus, Rounds 33, 37, 40, 43, 48, 53……
I watch every moment of her deaths from beyond the mirror. The Devil’s Mirror deliberately shows me Sophien’s ends.
Nesius rampages in the gaps, but I can do nothing.
“……”
Observing and accepting her myriad deaths.
I gain an insight.
“……Mirror. Now I think I understand. What you desire.”
Why this Devil’s Mirror preserves discarded worlds.
Why it obsesses over Sophien’s deaths.
Why it exists as a mere ‘mirror’ intermediary.
“‘World.’”
I say, looking up at the sky.
“Yes, a world. That’s what you wish to become.”
Then, a door appears in the void.
A plain wooden door, signaling my answer is correct. It settles quietly to the floor like falling snow.
I open it.
“What did you see inside?”
Back in the palace, I walk the first-floor corridor with Kairon. Flanked by rows of plate-armored knight statues—known as the ‘Forest of Knights’.
“I realized.”
These statues hold a specific mana resonance, blocking eavesdropping or surveillance.
“What?”
Kairon asks.
“First, ‘regression’ revolves solely around Your Majesty. I’m nearly certain of it.”
In truth, it’s more than that.
This entire world likely orbits Sophien.
“And the Devil’s Mirror desires a ‘world.’”
“……A world?”
“Yes. This underground demon far transcends mortal common sense.”
It has intent. Intellect. Desire.
The countless worlds Sophien discarded through regressions. Growing alongside them, it developed a dream over time.
‘I want to become a world like them.’
‘I want people to live in my world, days connecting endlessly.’
‘I want to be reality, not a mirror……’
Thus, the Devil’s Mirror now craves.
The being that makes this world a world. Sophien, the ‘proof of the world.’
“It seeks godhood?”
“More than that.”
“A way to resolve it?”
“……”
I look at Kairon. His face remains steadfast.
“Kairon. Any progress tailing Nesius?”
“We’re still on it, but no specific location. It’s circling like it’s mocking us.”
“Yes. It’s likely a decoy.”
The Devil’s Mirror wants to become a world itself. Not as a mirror, but a true one, existing in this realm.
Granting that wish outright is a poor option.
“It’s scattered lesser Nesius demons across the continent as distractions. But I suspect I know where the Altar has gathered Your Majesty’s regressions.”
“Where?”
Kairon’s gaze fixes on my mouth. His eyes burn like flames. It’s a bit intimidating.
I say,
“Julie gave the hint.”
“A hint……”
“A demon appeared in the palace underground, didn’t it?”
“……What?”
Kairon furrows his brow and asks again.
I remind him of a fact he already knows.
“There’s another door to the underground.”
The underground doors aren’t singular. The passage linked to the Devil’s Mirror is the back door; the front one is separate.
“The darkest place is under the lamp, Kairon.”
The front door Jolang once tried to guide me through but failed. It’s never opened even once.
An incredulous smile tugs at Kairon’s lips.
“Hah, really.”
“We don’t know if the Altar’s gathered regressions span centuries or millennia. But we must use it first.”
“……I get the idea. But what if Julie wasn’t the only one who regressed that day? The enemy could have—”
I shake my head. Reasonable doubt, but impossible given Nesius’s nature.
“Unlikely. Nesius is a simple demon—only good for harvesting and transport. To use harvested essence artificially, you’d have to kill it, which would breach the contract.”
“Breach the contract?”
“Yes. Lesser demons like Nesius are products of contracts. They have intellect and emotions; disobey the terms, and they sulk. Under a group that kills their kin, they won’t perform any tasks.”
“Sulking…… Hah.”
Kairon chuckles in disbelief.
“Kairon, we move in five days. Act normal until then.”
“Understood.”
I turn to leave after that. I’ve barely taken a few steps when Kairon grabs me.
“Leaving already? That knight Julie will wake soon. Won’t you stay?”
“……”
My legs root in place. I picture Julie lying in the sickbed.
“……No need.”
The regression’s turmoil must have wrecked Julie terribly.
The life force she burned to meet me again is incalculable.
Which is precisely why I mustn’t be by her side. I can’t be her affirmation—only a worsening factor.
“Julie’s protection is no longer needed. I’ll inform Your Majesty. An unwell knight is naught but a burden, not a guard.”
With those words, I sense our impending parting sadly.
Our relationship, withering like falling petals, trampled and vanishing.
“……Hmm.”
Meanwhile, Premien sets down the letter with a sigh.
Her mana affinity aids in inferring events from intelligence, allowing her to outline a vague picture in just 28 hours.
Scraaape—!
She ‘pulls out’ the timeline she constructed mentally and places it into a ‘mana vessel.’
A mana vessel is literally a rectangular frame made of mana. Put memories inside, and it logically infers on its own.
Dubbed ‘materialization of thought and memory.’
The reason Premien became the youngest vice security chief.
Vrrr— Vrrr—
Memories and thoughts flash like a scan. Once the process advances, Premien returns them to her mind.
Accepting the unbiased logical inference, she turns.
“Eli.”
“Yees?”
Eli, rummaging through Purple Room drawers, replies. Premien rubs her nape and asks,
“Deculein Professor said he keeps the anniversary, right?”
“Anniversary?”
“His fiancée’s death anniversary.”
“Oh, yees! Not a single year missed.”
One corner of Premien’s mouth twitches up.
“Then I get it now. Why that professor requested the Cielia investigation.”
“Really?!”
“Yes. Still suspicion level, but nearly certain.”
“Ah, yees! Then write a report and send it to Professor!”
Premien freezes at Eli’s words. She glares with narrowed eyes.
“……A report?”
“Yees. Professor loves reports. Even minor things go through reports. He says meetings involve too much talk, spittle, and time.”
“Ugh. Such a finicky bird.”
She presses her temple. Compiling this massive info into a report…… who does he think she is, a mere grunt?
What the actual fuck, Premien mutters curses under her breath.
“Fine. But I’ll spit in the report, so you know.”
“Nooo~ Don’t do that!”
“My heart wants it.”
Premien lays paper on the desk and picks up a pen. Simultaneously, she reviews her memory.
Deculein’s requested Cielia investigation.
The result: Deculein himself killed Cielia.
Dryly put, ‘Deculein murdered Cielia.’ Motive likely revenge, instigated.
But another detail, known only to Intelligence perhaps…… still unknown.
“Eli. Ask the Intelligence guy for this document.”
“Yees~ I’ll ask.”
A Level 1-2 classified file, unopenable even in Purple Room.
Just this one could reveal the full truth.
“A report. That professor is such a hassle……”
Thereafter, Premien begins drafting the report with her understood timeline first.