Chapter 25
Chapter 25
Academy’s Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Chapter 25
Every corpse had been recovered.
Chunks of flesh and bone fragments that could hardly be called bodies were gathered and placed in coffins.
Those coffins were delivered to the victims' families.
The bereaved expressed their grief in their own ways.
A woman clutching a coffin and weeping all day. A couple screaming their child's name. A child searching for a father they could never see again. And people directing their rage toward Chilseong Academy.
Though the forms varied, not a single person held back their tears.
The air was filled with wails and sobs from all directions.
No one could study in such conditions.
Chilseong Academy granted students a week-long break.
Thanks to that, performance evaluations and midterms for the entire school were postponed.
Not a soul among the 6,000 students objected. They all felt the gravity of the situation deep in their bones.
There were 241 injured in total.
And 36 dead.
Twenty-one guards.
Six teaching assistants.
And nine first-years.
They were little more than kids who had just shed their freshman status.
They were the elite. New sprouts expected to bloom brilliantly, carrying the hopes and trust of their homelands.
One of the professors teaching the first-years muttered.
"We overlooked it too much. Demon blades are everywhere."
He taught martial arts to the students, guiding them in basic self-defense.
He now bore immense guilt and responsibility for the tragedy.
A professor beside him spoke in a voice thick with tears.
"If I'd known this would happen, I should've taught them more magic. Spells to protect at least themselves."
Someone clicked their tongue and grumbled in response.
"Don't talk nonsense. You have to protect yourself. Those kids just didn't know how."
The tone was rough. Not the sort of thing to say before so many coffins.
Yet no one challenged the words.
Because they weren't wrong.
In this world, death was always lurking nearby. You never knew when it might strike.
A dungeon break could erupt suddenly, monsters turning the city to ruins. Or you could get caught in a terrorist attack by wanted villains.
But if they'd had the power, they might have protected themselves.
Thus, in this world, weakness itself was a sin.
Everyone present knew that fact.
They simply averted their eyes from it.
It was too heartbreaking to accept and too logical to deny.
"We all knew players have short life expectancies."
"But I never thought they'd wither before even turning twenty."
"......"
Spring was in full bloom. Flowers of every color announced the arrival of April.
Yet the academy's brightest buds had faded before they could even unfurl.
People moved on, carrying that sorrow in their hearts.
It was time for the funeral to begin.
The vast forest where the bodies were found.
That wide expanse of earth became a graveyard as people lowered the coffins.
Starting with the victims' families, all the professors and TAs attended. Most students who could make it were there too.
No reporters or cameras.
There was no need to record this scene.
This moment was meant to be etched only in the hearts of those present.
Soon after, the chairman's eulogy began.
He explained the circumstances of the incident and recounted the lives of the deceased. There were no grand flourishes.
Their lives had been utterly ordinary.
That made it all the more tragic.
How could they depart so meaninglessly?
Sobs echoed from here and there.
The eerie forest, once fit for ghostly wails, was now filled with human tears. The first-years' cries over lost friends rang out especially loud.
They had learned the pain of loss far too young.
Weeping and tormented, they mourned their friends' deaths.
Seo Ye-rin and No Yu-ra were among them.
Seo Ye-rin, who often seemed so mature, had reddened eyes. No Yu-ra, who had comforted me before, shed thick tears.
A far cry from how she'd consoled me last time.
'......Well, yeah.'
No Yu-ra was still young.
The pain of loss doesn't grow familiar no matter how many times you endure it. How could a young student bear it?
She must have put on a brave front in front of me.
She could read fragments of my senses, after all.
"......"
I stood silently among the TAs, taking in the entire scene.
Even though I wanted to close my eyes or turn away.
I kept them open until they burned, engraving every sight into my heart.
I could have made it all never happen.
Nausea rose. A headache so intense it threw off my balance.
'If I'd just grabbed even one professor.'
The outcome would have been different.
Yuren and his monster horde would have been slain long before.
No protagonist awakening. No innocent students caught in the crossfire. No one gathered here like this.
But I chose the irreversible path.
I kept silent about future events.
I rationalized it by telling myself no one would believe me anyway.
'And yet, in the end, I tried to take responsibility for everything.'
The old me had clearly chosen survival over morality.
I'd blinded myself to it all as sacrifices for a happy ending. But my half-baked sense of morality made me reverse course.
And this was the result.
Now, eyes wide open, look straight ahead.
Etch all these deaths and sorrows into your heart.
This world is no longer just some novel.
It's a demon realm where villains roam and innocent civilians die by a scripted fate.
The old me would have chosen to stand by to survive this demon realm.
Nothing guarantees survival like inaction.
Truth be told, I still desperately want to live.
But now I'm thinking differently.
'I don't want to leave them to die.'
Whether it's pity for characters trapped in a predetermined script, guilt and morality toward those doomed to perishI don't know.
If I'm going to live, I wish they all could too.
I've seen enough of people dying.
Dead bodies too.
* * *
As a child, I possessed brilliant talent.
An ability to dominate battlefields and shift the course of wars.
Thanks to it, I became a beacon of hope for terrified citizens and a guiding light for soldiers.
Hope fueled people's will to live, and the lantern pierced the impenetrable darkness.
Everything was fine up to that point.
Perfectly fine.
Until I realized how heavy that hope weighed and how much fuel it took to keep the lantern burning.
At some point, deaths started piling up around me.
Lives in war were worth less than flies, but this was excessive even for that.
I grieved their deaths but fought harder to ensure they weren't in vain. That was all I thought about.
By the end of each battle, mountains of corpses surrounded me.
Monster and human bodies intertwined in heaps like hills, blood flowing from them to block my path like a moat.
Corpse mountains and blood seas.
Each time I saw it, my sensitivity to bodies and death dulled.
I knew it was odd to grow numb to the daily sight, but I didn't dwell on it. My mind and spirit were eroding in inverse proportion to the growing piles.
It was on one such day, pushed to the brink mentally.
At the dark hour when battles with monsters usually lulled, a massive demon force launched a stealth attack.
Countless died in the process, and I swung my sword in resistance.
The situation was dire.
The previous day's massive clash had left the camp with more wounded than able-bodied. At this rate, we'd all perish.
Right then, the camp's soldiers made a decision.
Save Baek Seung-woo.
Not everyone could die.
At least one could escape.
So they forcibly expelled me from the assault.
You're people's hope.
The only lantern that can walk through this hellish darkness.
Even if we all die for you.
You must live.
They drove me out, knocking me unconscious and transporting me.
Through my hazy vision, I saw soldiers dying.
Not just one or two.
Tens of thousands. Maybe hundreds.
Beyond a single unit, entire battalions sacrificed themselves to save me.
Even my transporters changed constantly.
When one tired or got leg wounds, another took over carrying me.
They burned their stamina and lives racing onward.
Only then did I understand.
The corpses around me had been shields to protect me.
Desperately blocking paths to keep hope's spark alive.
That was when I felt the weight on my shoulders.
Too much was piled there.
People's hopes and wishes. Countless lives on my narrow shoulders.
Heavy.
Too heavy.
I'd never known being someone's hope could weigh so much.
By the time my hazy consciousness cleared, I heard the Third Battalion guarding the outskirts had been wiped out.
No, not exactly wiped out.
I survived.
Reluctantly.
No one mourned their sacrifice as tragic.
Instead, they praised it as noble, commemorating it grandly. A mad world.
Saving one with hundreds of thousands of livesnoble sacrifice?
It was utterly insane.
From then on, hallucinations plagued my ears.
You must live.
It was a curse.
One that bound and devoured me.
Even after long years, those scenes and voices sometimes return. Especially at funerals like this.
My stomach churned, so I slipped away from the ceremony for a bit.
No signs of life nearby. Finally, I could breathe.
"......This is why I hate funerals."
"Oh my, you sound like you've attended plenty."
"Is sneaking up behind me that fun?"
I leaned against a nearby tree.
A familiar voice from behind.
Now, even without sensing her presence, I just accepted it.
The woman before me, Nam Hwa-yeon, could effortlessly conceal her aura with magic.
"Yeah. It's fun."
"......Then do as you please."
"Kidding, kidding. Don't take it so seriously."
She patted my shoulder as she spoke.
I lacked the energy to reply or resist, so I just took it.
Nam Hwa-yeon looked at my dazed expression and handed me a cube.
What is this?
I accepted it anyway. It looked like a Rubik's Cube.
But unlike a normal one, it had no colors.
"What's this?"
"Want to try solving it first?"
"......It has no colors."
"Does it really look colorless?"
When I asked how to solve it, she countered with a question.
I tilted my head at the baffling response.
Suddenly, my red eyes were overtaken by purple.
Through amethyst-like irises, mana visualized before me.
Now, the cube appeared in vivid colors to the naked eye.
But something still felt off.
It bound each cube segment tightly.
Like a lock.
Without deciphering it, the cube couldn't be solved.
And 'that' was a form I knew well.
"Helix......?"
No, not a simple helix.
Not the double helix I'd internalized becoming an Ilmiho either.
Atop it, another thread intertwined.
"Triple...... helix?"
"Oh, you recognized it right away."
"You want me to solve this?"
"With your knowledge and experience, it should be possible."
A triple helix.
I had no idea why Nam Hwa-yeon gave me this cube.
But a triple helix was beyond my current level.
I hadn't even fully mastered the double helix yet.
Stepping into a higher realm wasn't easy.
"At least, not something I can solve right now."
"Think you could if I just told you the theory?"
"......Probably? Experience and trial-and-error come after the knowledge."
"Then how about being my disciple?"
"......!"
My pupils dilated at her words.
Nam Hwa-yeon's disciple.
For me, it was all gain, no loss.
Like a poisoned chalice, in a manner of speaking.
Disciple of the Demon King...... I hadn't set that up, but prestige matters. Even if I framed the Demon King not as lord of demons but 'king of mages,' making her a non-villain, she needed someone fitting that title's dignity.
What about the protagonist?
No way, obviously. A blockhead becoming the Demon King's disciple would be unseemly. Same for the leads.
So it's basically nonexistent?
Sure, it could be fun to include, but suddenly inserting someone worthy of the Demon King's eye into the scenario would shatter plausibility.
Nam Hwa-yeon was a genius etched into magic history.
She advanced modern magic history by centuries, earning the system's recognition and the title of Demon King.
So her standards for disciples must be exacting.
At minimum, talent just below hers or equal to it.
No one dared surpass her. That's what Nam Hwa-yeon meant in the magic world.
Right then.
One of my traits came to mind.
'Magic Saint......'
Magic Saint, absolute talent in magic.
A trait granting the potential to become a magic saint.
I'd never understood why I had it at first.
I just accepted it as a good thing.
Figured pondering wouldn't solve it.
But right now.
I think I know why it's mine.
'......Eve.'
My old friend's arrangement.
Nothing else made sense.
Then why this arrangement? Why send me into the novel?
My questions deepened, but no clear answers emerged.
All I could do now was move forward.
That alone.
"Um, Professor......"
"Ah, we'll get your answer later. You're heading to the dungeon, right? You took personal leave."
Nam Hwa-yeon left the cube in my hand and departed.
The funeral still had time left.
As a professor, she couldn't be absent long.
As I watched her go, my pocket buzzed.
Vrrr, my phone's vibration.
Not a callonce wasn't enough. A text.
"......Who'd text me?"
I had fewer than ten contacts, and this was my first in a month of living here.
Maybe a disaster alert.
I pulled out my phone. An unfamiliar number.
The stiff tone rang a bell from days ago.
"Baek Seol-hee?"
My biological little sister in the novel.
Her text said she'd confirmed my leave and would send a car that day.
Suspicious.
She'd sent an archaic letter last time, now suddenly a message?
Whatever it was, she had ulterior motives.
'......Showing my face at the clan once in a while wouldn't hurt.'
Deciding to play along with Baek Seol-hee's scheme, I sent a positive reply. A few days later.
My leave day arrived, and she confirmed a car would wait at the appointed time.
Not wanting to be late, I left thirty minutes early.
But the car was late.
What the hell is this?