The Incident Unfolds (5)
The trials were mandatory for all new students, so my turn had taken extra time. While I prepared to withstand dungeon erosion, the odd feeling began to seep in.
"Wait! Whoa! I almost threw a punch instead of scissors!!"
"Wha—?! Free drink! Thanks, Seong-ah, and, um... Hwa-young?"
"Haa~ Just call me casually. We're same-year academy students anyway. What's the big deal. But why the heck are we paired with him~!"
"If you hate it that much, I can take your place?"
Yuna's offer to swap with me for Hwa-young made her sigh and shake her head.
"No. The bet's already set. I can't back out now. And..."
Hwa-young kept glancing between Yuna and me, then sidled up with that mature, big-sister smile and whispered right in Yuna's ear.
"You know, if I leave you two together something's bound to happen."
Aaaah—!
"W-what are you saying!!"
"AHAHAHA! Teasing Yuna is always the best~"
Yuna's face flushed red as she scolded Hwa-young for what she was saying. Hwa-young just laughed and admitted her twisted hobby out loud.
In the end, the bet that had dragged me in meant I was walking out with Hwa-young to grab drinks. We were on our way back when the eerie sensation washed over me.
*Is it dungeon erosion?* I forced my expression calm and hurried toward the source, only to find Cheon Yu-seong standing there instead.
What the—? Maybe I'd misread the aura? I checked again, but the sensation was unmistakably coming from him.
The weird part? Only I had noticed it.
The person whose aura it was—Cheon Yu-seong—simply glared at me with killing intent, not a trace of the feeling. Even Hwa-young, who followed right after, hadn't caught a whiff of it.
If the strange aura itself was so alien and foreign, how could neither of them sense it at all? The fact that they hadn't was deeply unsettling.
*I'm a genius, after all.*
My current strength was nothing more than a survival instinct sharpened by years of war with the Celestials, pushing me to the edge of death. I was not exceptional in any way.
I couldn't even naturally gather or recover mana. My skeleton was a wreck from all the battles. The body I had now was one Beatrice had remodeled specifically for Heavenly Demon Divine Art. It was basically average, or worse—martial talent was garbage.
My talent had capped at Mid-rank, and I had only clawed my way into Upper by forcing my way through with absorbed magic stones. My true potential had been Mid-rank all along.
But unlike me, these two were geniuses.
Cheon Yu-seong wasn't from this world and was a trash human, yet his skill level made me seem like a child. He had reached Highest-rank using some medicine or other, but even so he had climbed the ladder with raw ability.
Hwa-young had killed a Celestial that everyone thought was invincible, and then she had reached the Transcendent tier.
So how could they not feel this green aura that I could sense perfectly well?
The aura itself wasn't harmful— it was simply a tiny bit off from any normal energy—but still, why couldn't they sense it?
And that aura... I knew I had felt it before, yet I couldn't remember when, where, or from whom.
*It's not that I forgot. It's not that the memory faded with time.*
*'Clearly, I know who owns this aura. But I can't remember.'*
My mind was like a door that opened but kept looping on the same endless path.
What the hell was this strange, interlocking feeling?
*'It's like someone tampered with my memories, but how? How did they do it?'*
Memory manipulation magic existed. Even if it was high-level, I could use it.
But how? How had they manipulated it?
I had perfect immunity to mental attacks thanks to Five Colors.
Even Transcendants would be affected by the mental strikes of those monster-like "knights," yet I alone had remained perfectly fine in the moment.
To counter memory manipulation with my Five Colors, I would need something stronger than those knights' mental attacks.
Did such a thing even exist?
It was almost unthinkable that a memory-manipulation spell powerful enough to shake even the Celestials could exist in this world.
If it did, this world would have already fallen to the Celestials long ago, and the inventor of that spell would be ruling as a loyal slave.
*'Should I try it?*'
It was gambling, but a gamble worth taking.
I wasn't sure whether I was actually under the effect or not, but if I was, I could figure it out quickly.
There wasn't much magic I couldn't dispel right now. If it really was memory manipulation, I might be able to unravel it with Five Colors.
*'Huuu... all right. Let's try it.'*
Starting with the alien energy, but for some reason I felt it was necessary to resolve right now.
*Huuu... inhale deeply, hold.*
At the same time, mana flowed toward the "brain" where memory-manipulation magic was embedded.
I scoured the memory library where mana stored and altered recollections, searching every corner of the magic's location.
Dispel. The method most people called Dispel sounded deceptively simple—canceling a spell in an instant.
But Dispel was classified as the highest-tier mana-piercing technique.
Dispel itself was broken down into three steps.
First, understanding the magic.
Second, penetrating the mana.
Third, reverse calculation of the spell.
On the surface it looked easy, but to perform Dispel you had to understand exactly what spell your opponent was using, then pour your mana into it and dismantle the resulting magic faster than it could reform.
So without understanding the spell, you couldn't use it. Even if you did understand, your tiny drop of mana had to stay separate from the ocean of raging mana, or it would lose control and the third step would fail.
Even if you somehow cleared the first two steps, if you were slower than the opponent finishing their spell in the reverse-calculation phase, Dispel would inevitably fail.
It was a highest-tier technique that looked simple but required extremely precise, difficult steps one by one. Yet my situation was different.
I didn't need to dispel anything being formed; I only had to check for any hidden anomalies in my own memories.
I would slowly, very slowly sweep the memory library with my mana.
Past to present, through warm seasons into cold winter.
The day I first met Beatrice.
Tales of adventures with companions while the world burned in war with the Celestials.
New faces appearing one by one beside me.
The frustration of not being able to enter the academy.
Memories of high school, middle school, elementary school, the bookshelves grouped under the category of "school."
Then, even though there were fewer books, the thick ones that stood out... passing the bookshelf named "Grandma."
*...There it is.*
A single wooden door at the very end of the memory library.
Before the door bound with black chains and green vines, I reached out my hand.
*【It's still not the time.】*
KRRRRAAAAAAGHHHHH!!!
I was blasted backward by an unknown force.
*THUD.*
"Haa... haa... haack! Hic! Hic! Hic!!"
"Eh? Wha?! Why did you just collapse?! Hey!!"
Hwa-young jumped at the sudden fall of Cheon Seong. She checked his condition, coughing and struggling, then helped him up.
"Haa... haa... W-what happened?"
"Wh-what do you mean? I asked you why you fell. You were fine until a second ago."
Hwa-young's question pulled a short breath from Seong.
"Thanks for the help. But I don't know either. Why I suddenly collapsed."
"What?! That's impossible! You're not the type to collapse easily, and there's no reason at all!"
Accusing him of hiding something, Hwa-young demanded an answer. Seong's voice was steady.
"Even a moment ago I was doing something... I just can't remember what it was."
"But one thing is clear. Whatever it was, it was something I absolutely shouldn't have been doing right now."
"Are you hurt anywhere? Go get healed by Yuna already!"
Hwa-young asked with genuine worry.
After a moment of thought, Seong shook his head and reached out to her.
*Tap... tap...*
"I'm grateful for the worry, but it's fine. There's no problem with my body, so I don't want to worry Yuna. Let's go."
Gently stroking Hwa-young's fiery red hair, Seong took the drink from her hand and started walking forward.
Watching the back of Seong walking slowly ahead, Hwa-young quietly placed her own hand on the spot he had touched.
Feeling as though she was somehow reaching across and touching his hand too.
"Hey, why are you so slow?"
Since he hadn't come and had been standing still, she turned to see him calling from a distance. Hwa-young lowered the hand she had raised and muttered.
"...Idiot. Why the sudden change of heart."
Her footsteps left the ground and she started toward him. Seong stood waiting quietly.
The closer Hwa-young got, the more she thought.
*Thank goodness the corridor is dim. Thank goodness we're far apart. If we were closer, I might have seen his face. If we were closer, I could have cooled my burning cheeks.*
"Why are you so late? You were ahead of me a second ago. Don't you usually exercise?"
"T-that's because I was tired from carrying you! And I do exercise too!"
Hwa-young reacted exaggeratedly to Seong's words to hide her embarrassment, then combed her hair to make sure he couldn't see her face.
Her swaying red hair was the same vivid red as her heated cheeks, covering her embarrassment. She wanted to believe that.
Her friend, Cheon Seong, had looked different today.
