1
Chapter 1
A sky blanketed by gloomy, dark clouds.
A battlefield littered with the corpses of monsters.
Only two remained alive.
A girl, trembling on her horns, barely clinging to consciousness.
A man in a red robe, watching her with his arms crossed.
The man spoke.
"This Demon God is hardly any different from the monsters. Except for the fact that she can talk."
The Demon God looked up at the arrogant human.
She had planned an invasion of the Human Realm after realizing the Demon Realm could no longer be sustained.
But the Demon Realm had fallen.
None of the scout reports had mentioned a human like this.
"Who on earth are you? If it weren't for you, my plan wouldn't have ended so futilely..."
Her voice cracked, stung by a humiliation she had never known.
"Does someone who calls themselves a god not even know I'm human?"
'How could I not know that!!!' she wanted to scream, but she had to swallow her rage.
This was her chance, while that arrogant bastard was just lounging around.
The Demon God decided to play her final card.
Determination filled her eyes.
"Let's switch positions the next time we meet, human."
"Next time? What next time? Let's just end it here."
The man's mana began to surge.
Countless magic circles instantly adorned the area.
Dozens of circles rotated, interlocking with one another.
The Demon God knew all too well how powerful each of those spells was.
After all, the entire army of the Demon Realm had essentially been defeated by this one man.
"Sky Fall."
At his word, the magic circles flared with a blue light and soared into the sky.
The dark clouds split wherever the light touched.
Gaping holes ripped open, revealing the night sky beyond.
Hundreds of meteors appeared simultaneously and began their slow descent.
"Are you trying to kill us both?!"
"Why would I die from my own magic? Are you an idiot?"
She loathed him for those words, but the magic before her was more pressing.
"The next time we meet, I will surely kill you first, human."
"You keep talking about 'next time.' I told you, there is no next time."
The man shook his head, content to simply watch the falling meteors.
In that moment.
A white light erupted from the Demon God's eyes.
The word 'light' was not enough to describe it.
It was something more primal.
It felt as though it touched her very existence rather than just her sight.
"The condition to become a god is to possess at least one Authority. Be honored, human. You are the only living being to have ever faced my Authority."
The man shielded his eyes with his hand and raised his voice.
"What the hell is this craaa...!"
The man could not finish his sentence.
The light had enveloped both the Demon God and the man before vanishing.
A massive meteor crashed into the spot where they had disappeared.
A vast cloud of dust swallowed the world until nothing was visible.
#
"What the hell is this craaaaaaaap!!"
I screamed with all my might and tried to deploy my Barri...er...
I can't feel any mana.
The mana that once enveloped my entire body!!!!
I opened my palms and tried to concentrate.
The sensation that used to be so natural was gone.
I felt nothing, like an empty water tank.
"I'm an Archmage, someone whose mana used to overflow just by breathing, and I'm in a state of Mana Exhaustion?!!!"
I snapped my eyes open to find that instead of standing atop a pile of monster corpses, I was perched on a wooden desk.
A half-read magic thesis and a cup of lukewarm tea.
Beyond the window, a line of bright yellow mana stone streetlamps stood in a row.
"This is... no matter how I look at it, my laboratory from when I worked at the Academy."
The smell of old books and a creaking chair.
Even the magic circle diagram hanging askew on the left wall.
Everything was exactly as I remembered.
— Knock, knock
Before I could organize my thoughts, the door swung open.
"Teacher Enoch. Excuse me."
A woman with long orange hair entered the room.
She held a stack of documents under her arm, her expression indifferent.
Her name was definitely...
"Ri...anna?"
The moment the name left my lips, goosebumps broke out across my skin.
Back during the Demon Realm's invasion, when monsters swarmed the land.
She had protected people until the very moment her barrier was shattered into pieces.
'And after that, she...'
Rianna looked at Enoch with a gaze that suggested it was absurd for him to call her by her name.
"Rianna? Were we really on such close terms?"
She's alive.
My mind couldn't comprehend it, but she was right there, breathing and alive.
"Ah. Ah. Teacher Rianna, what brings you here?"
My voice came out a beat too late, unintentionally.
Enoch quickly composed his expression.
'What on earth is going on? Why am I in my old laboratory, and how is Rianna, who died, alive?'
"The Vice-Principal wants to see you right now. Teach.er. Enoch."
Rianna frowned, her face twisting with annoyance.
But Enoch was too busy trying to process his current situation.
"I'll... be there shortly."
Once Enoch answered, Rianna left the room without looking back.
She muttered softly in the hallway.
"Why did he suddenly call me by my name? He's usually the type who doesn't even answer me."
As the door closed, Enoch froze in place for a moment.
'What the hell is happening?'
Just when I thought I had the Demon God beaten, I'm suddenly wrapped in light and sent back to the past?
'Going back to the past is a magic that even I, as an Archmage, found impossible.'
Because it's an act of overturning causality.
Could a spell even cause something like this?
'Was that actually the Authority of a god?'
Enoch looked at his hands once more.
He tried to draw upon his mana, but only a hollow void returned.
Having lived with mana his entire life, Enoch felt as though he had gone blind.
'For now, I have to accept this surreal situation. If I solve the problems in front of me one by one, I'll eventually find a way out.'
Enoch headed straight for the Vice-Principal's office.
#
— Knock, knock
"Come in."
The Vice-Principal's office was filled with a distinct scent of cedar.
The Vice-Principal, sitting behind a wide desk, spotted Enoch and spoke.
"So, have you given any more thought to my proposal?"
"Excuse me? A proposal? What proposal?"
Thinking that Enoch was playing dumb, the Vice-Principal raised his voice.
"Are you ignoring me right now? I'm talking about the F Class person in charge position I mentioned last time!"
'F Class? Ah. Right. I remember now.'
Now that he thought about it, the Vice-Principal had once tried to force him into the exclusive position for F Class.
F Class.
The lowest grade in the Academy.
A place where students who had awakened but were branded as failures simply for having low mana gathered.
At the time, he had stubbornly refused and was eventually kicked out of the Academy.
'After that, confident in my skills, I went to the Magic State...'
The Vice-Principal was not pleased with Enoch, who seemed lost in thought right in front of him.
He slammed the table violently, breaking the silence.
"So, are you going to do it or not!!!!"
"I'll do it. I'll take it."
The Vice-Principal's eyes widened.
He had expected another refusal.
'The old me would have been stubborn, but things are different now. I can't feel a single grain of mana in my body.'
Going to the Magic State without mana? That was a guaranteed path to unemployment.
The only silver lining was that he could still see other people's mana, like the Vice-Principal's.
It was proof that his senses weren't completely dead.
'But how did this man become Vice-Principal with such a pathetic amount of mana? Does he have some kind of backer?'
"Again!! You're spacing out again!! That's always your problem, Teacher Enoch!!"
The Vice-Principal's nagging, which had finally boiled over, seemed endless.
Enoch just nodded along, letting the words drift past him.
After the exhausting expedition to the Demon Realm, the Vice-Principal's nagging sounded like a herald of peace.
'It's better than listening to the screams of monsters.'
#
After being thoroughly chewed out by the Vice-Principal, Enoch was on his way back to his laboratory.
Of course, he had just lightly brushed off the Vice-Principal's lecture.
There was something far more important.
'Even for a god, that kind of Authority can't be used frequently. Otherwise, they would have used it infinitely to destroy the continent by now. There must be a penalty.'
Reversing time is an act that completely overturns causality.
Even a god would surely have to pay a price.
'If I only knew what that price was, I'd be a bit less worried.'
Lost in thought, Enoch continued to walk unconsciously.
Even as he turned the corner, his gaze remained fixed on the floor.
— Thump.
"Eek!"
A momentary collision.
The person he hit lost her balance and tilted backward.
Enoch's hands moved before his mind could.
He reflexively caught her by the waist, pulling her back up.
It was a manifestation of the instincts forged on the battlefield.
"Ah... ah..."
The one frozen in his grasp was a girl with platinum blonde hair.
Her cheeks, pale as snow, flushed a deep red in an instant.
Her lips parted and closed repeatedly, but Enoch didn't notice.
He was preoccupied with other thoughts.
'What kind of penalty could it be? Loss of mana? Memories? Or maybe—'
"Th... thank you!"
It was a voice strained with effort.
She shouted with her eyes tightly shut and her head bowed, but there was no response.
Five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Even as she held her breath and waited, there was only silence.
When she finally peered open her eyes, she saw only his receding back.
Enoch set her on her feet and continued down the hallway as if nothing had happened.
The girl's name was Vivianne de Mabil.
She was the precious jewel of the Mabil Kingdom and a treasure coveted by the entire continent.
Her purple eyes were the hallmark of the Mabil royal line.
Her porcelain skin and the platinum blonde hair flowing down her back were breathtakingly beautiful.
Even the silk attire she wore for mobility was not enough to contain her elegance.
A subtle lavender scent always lingered in her wake.
It was likely that scent that made people unconsciously stop and look back.
Nobles offered rare treasures to win her favor, while commoners bowed their heads, not daring to meet her eyes.
Her fame reached even the lands of the demi-humans, drawing them to the kingdom just to catch a glimpse of her.
But where the light is brightest, the shadow is darkest.
Not a single person had ever approached her without an ulterior motive.
She had grown weary of constantly testing the sincerity of others.
That was why she had prepared for the Academy as if escaping.
She wondered if she could live not as a princess, but as a simple student.
To her, today's encounter was a complete shock.
A man who left without a single word, let alone any interest in her.
Enoch had no grand intentions.
He hadn't acted because she was a princess, but simply because his instinct was to right a falling object.
She had never experienced such indifference.
The fact that she was treated as a mere object rather than a princess left her in a state of fresh shock.
"I wonder who that was."
She didn't even realize she had spoken aloud.
'My face is so hot it won't stop burning... I should return to my quarters quickly. My guards will be worried.'
Despite her words, she showed no sign of moving.
Her gaze remained fixed on the end of the hallway where he had vanished.
The scent of lavender slowly drifted through the air.