Exit
Exit
While the tower entry is underway, the professors responsible for each year gather in one place.
They are there partly to discuss the tower entry's progress, but mainly to respond immediately to any emergencies.
The theme for this second semester's tower entry was Contemplation.
The concept is simple.
A battle against a copy of oneself.
After defeating the replica, a cadet can request to summon other entities, but the default is a deathmatch against their own copy.
As a result, the evaluation criteria are simpler and less strict than last semester's tower entry.
In the first place...
"If it's going to be like this, couldn't they just let us go? They're not even giving us a live feed..."
A mutter came from Lee Su-yeon, the professor in charge of Usu Class.
With her chin resting on her hand, she sounded bored. Several professors inwardly agreed.
Unlike during the first semester's tower entry, the holograms projected over the table were extremely sparse.
Even those weren't real-time footage—just simple tables of formulas and charts.
For whatever reason, no live video feed was being shared for this tower entry.
Because of this, the first-year professors gathered here were each handling their own work.
A teaching assistant near Lee Su-yeon replied with a strained smile.
"Because an emergency could occur."
"An emergency that's never once happened before. Maybe it's a lack of safety awareness, but honestly, what kind of accident could possibly happen here? A fistfight between cadets, at worst?"
"Ahaha..."
Siyoram's defenses are notoriously formidable.
Countless schemes have been attempted, and it has never once permitted even the slightest intrusion. The word impregnable fits perfectly.
The idea that a problem could occur in such a Siyoram... was difficult for Lee Su-yeon to imagine.
Still, policy was policy, so she remained at her post.
Either way, since the first-year professors were all gathered anyway, multiple meetings had taken place.
"Will the Birth Festival schedule this time proceed similarly to last year?"
"According to the Vice Headmaster, it's going to be held even more grandly this year."
"Is that so? Last year was so grand it was a lot of fun. Especially touring the rows of stalls the cadets set up... Ah, but now I'm a year supervisor..."
The main topic of discussion was the Birth Festival (誕生祭).
The Birth Festival is a year-end festival hosted by Siyoram. It is a tradition that has continued since the academy's early days, carrying the meaning of celebrating the futures of the children setting out from the cradle into the world.
Many parts of the process and schedule have changed since then, but fundamentally, it has remained a festival for eating, enjoying, and playing.
Ultimately, it's a schedule designed for the participants to enjoy.
They hold variety contests, competitions, and even exhibit novel magic tools.
And, as with any festival, stalls are set up to sell delicious food, drinks, and alcohol.
While independent business owners from the commercial district sometimes come to set up stalls, the cadets also run their own.
Recalling the memory of having fun playing and drinking last year, Lee Su-yeon's expression brightened.
But soon, remembering that she was now a first-year professor and included in the festival preparations, her brightened face instantly sank.
It's not as if being a professor means she can't enjoy the festival, but she wouldn't be able to enjoy it as lightheartedly as last year...
"......"
"......"
While the meeting continued like that, there were two who couldn't quite join in the Birth Festival discussion.
Liana and Atra.
Liana blinked, listening carefully to the surrounding conversation, and Atra sat with her eyes neatly closed.
In other words, they weren't speaking. More precisely, they couldn't interject.
"...Professor Atra, do you have no opinion on this?"
Liana, who had been looking around, whispered to Atra seated beside her. Atra opened her closed eyes and gave Liana a sidelong glance.
Atra was not a Siyoram graduate to begin with.
She was from a British academy. It wasn't that there were no festivals there, but at the time, Atra was a mad training fanatic who was always burning with zeal and holed up in the training room.
"None. I'd have to know something to add a comment. And isn't it you who should be giving an opinion? You've experienced it yourself."
"...Me? I also don't particularly... have an opinion."
Liana averted her gaze as she trailed off, dodging the question.
She is a Siyoram graduate. She experienced four Birth Festivals, from first year to fourth year.
But Liana didn't enjoy the festivals.
While others were opening stalls, entering competitions, and enjoying themselves, Liana was holed up in the library indulging in books or playing with spirits in the deserted empty zones.
At the time, there were many who wanted to enjoy the festival with Liana, who consecutively held the top seat, but she had never actively responded to them.
Liana back then, before she had tasted the bitterness of the demon realm, possessed a... peculiar personality that was hard to describe.
Either way, both of them were distant from the word 'festival'.
Furthermore, since Lee Ha-yul's tower entry video wasn't being shared in real-time, the time felt utterly empty in many ways.
At least Liana had work as the supervisor of Ipchun Class, but Atra truly had absolutely nothing to do.
So Liana steadily handled work, while Atra spent the time pondering Lee Ha-yul's training schedule.
- Bzzt...
"...Huh?"
A hologram rose up over the table.
On the holographic screen, the entrance of the tower could be seen rippling and slowly opening.
Everyone who saw that screen opened their eyes wide. It was currently the afternoon of the fourth day of the tower entry. There was still roughly a day left until the tower entry was scheduled to end.
"Someone's coming out? Hold on, let me pull up the records..."
A few professors busily flipped through holograms.
"...Cadet Lee Ha-yul?"
Someone let out a voice full of puzzlement.
Before those words could fully land, Atra and Liana shot up from their seats.
On the screen, Lee Ha-yul, spat out from the tower entrance, swayed precariously. The two felt their hearts plummet.
Just what, what in the world had that golden child experienced to be ejected from the tower early? Why was he staggering again?
Suppressing the anxious thoughts that rose instinctively, they dashed out like arrows toward the tower entrance.
"...!?"
Horrified, Atra, who had burst out, halted her steps.
She instinctively stopped her body from kicking off the ground powerfully and launching forward.
Her heart wanted to rush to Lee Ha-yul immediately and ask if he was okay.
"...What..."
The fine hairs on her body stood on end.
Her instincts warned her not to approach. The experience she'd built up until now blocked her actions, screaming 'danger'.
Lee Ha-yul's aura had changed.
The aura, which was fundamentally very faint and inconsistent in intensity, had undergone an upheaval.
It felt as if his aura had materialized into blades that would literally grind down the surroundings.
A sensation like the chill of a lethal weapon against the nape of her neck washed over her as a hallucination.
It was an ominous aura vicious enough to make even Atra's body stiffen.
A bead of cold sweat trickled down her cheek.
"Good heavens."
"...Just what happened in the tower?"
Liana and the other professors who chased out belatedly also hardened at the utterly sinister aura.
A strange standoff continued.
Around the time someone swallowed dryly.
[Master?]
[Professor Lia?na]
The necklace hanging on Lee Ha-yul's neck clicked. A voice, stuttering as if filled with noise, sounded out.
Simultaneously, the ominous aura subsided.
Lee Ha-yul's mysteriously chilled complexion gradually loosened as well, recovering his previous rounded, gentle impression.
Regardless of whether others were flustered by the sudden change, Lee Ha-yul trudged forward.
A few people stiffened from tension. They were the ones who couldn't relax at all after that bloodcurdling aura from before.
Lee Ha-yul paid them not the slightest mind.
He approached his target in a straight line.
And buried his face into the chest of Atra, who was closest.
"...?"
Atra, who had been frozen still like the others, blinked.
Lee Ha-yul was nestled in her arms.
Her body reacted reflexively.
She opened her arms and without hesitation embraced him.
Naturally, she wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him close, resting her other hand on his head, carefully stroking and pressing.
Following her touch, Lee Ha-yul burrowed firmly into her embrace.
Holding Lee Ha-yul in her arms was no big deal.
With that thought, she comforted Lee Ha-yul, who clung to her, acting spoiled.
"What in the world happened this time..."
Liana, who had approached their side, was the same.
Not knowing the reason, she rushed over to soothe the child who had suddenly become strange, focusing entirely on consoling him by stroking Lee Ha-yul's head and back.
.
.
.
"...While it is heartwarming that the bond between master and disciple is strong, could you perhaps summarize the situation first?"
"Hm?"
"Ah?"
"And while it's not good to meddle in personal affairs... I believe this might be a bit too much contact in such an open space..."
It had grown quite prolonged.
Only when the intervention of Professor Alberot, who could wait no longer, came did the two professors' senses snap back to attention.
When they abruptly raised their heads and scanned the surroundings, gazes observing them with extremely peculiar looks pierced into them.
"Oh my..."
Among them, many gazes were full of interest. Lee Su-yeon in particular had opened her eyes wide, covering her mouth with one hand and letting out an exclamation of admiration.
* * *
Silence had already settled upon the world that had been filled with ominous roars.
The wasteland, originally so barren it was hard to find even a single blade of grass, had long since become a useless scrap of land.
Traces of deep gouges, explosions, and fissures...
It was the aftermath carved out by weapons clashing thousands upon thousands of times and countless collisions of expansion abilities.
The 2nd Iteration, who had been perched on a mound of protruding dirt from the shock's aftermath and blankly surveying the surroundings, suddenly stroked the area near his shoulder.
A sensation of pain was conveyed.
A wound that stretched from his right shoulder to his left hip.
For the 2nd Iteration, this was nothing new.
He had sustained far too many injuries during his lifetime. Some left lasting aftereffects, and though some functions returned, many outwardly hideous scars remained.
Even a healthy adult might faint if they faced the visage of the 2nd Iteration right this moment, so hideous was his appearance.
"Haah..."
But right now, the 2nd Iteration felt complex emotions about this wound.
Even though the 2nd Iteration was equalizing the physical level to be comparable...
This was a wound inflicted by none other than the real one—a wound he should never have been able to inflict in the first place.
That wound became the trial's success condition, and the real one had just been ejected.
Moreover, his mental strength was bottoming out anyway, so the 2nd Iteration had also been thinking of pausing.
'...Haha...'
Brushing over the wound, the 2nd Iteration could only feel the difference between the fake and the real one.
The real one had picked up in a few short days, however clumsily, what he had learned and established over years of rolling through pools of blood.
What a staggeringly overwhelming gap.
The more he recognized that, the more an empty laugh leaked out.
Besides, was 'during his lifetime' even the right expression? The fake had never been the real one.
"...Seems he's rather quick to bolt."
Blankly stroking the wound, the 2nd Iteration muttered. No sound was heard. There was no vibration, nor flow of mana.
But the senses of the 2nd Iteration, the Myriad Combat Arts, detected the change. Besides, the other party hadn't intentionally hidden its presence to begin with.
At the presence felt right behind him, the 2nd Iteration continued without bothering to turn around.
"It's ridiculous. When I was searching like a mad dog until my legs practically fell off, you didn't show a single hair, and now that I'm a dead wraith, you show your face?"
No answer came back. The other party only remained silent.
"Why do you show yourself and then shut your trap? If you were going to do that, why not crawl back inside? Or did you come to sneer at this fucked-up mess of a sight?"
『Mmph...!? Mmph...!』
An odd sound rang out at the 2nd Iteration's dry question.
How should one describe it? Is it similar to listening to outside sounds with ears muffled as if submerged underwater?
Of course, the sound quality was obstructed to a degree incomparable to that. It couldn't be interpreted at all.
"It's all a goddamn mess... I'll just lament by myself."
The 2nd Iteration shook his head, scratching his ear.
"The current method... I understand it. It's better to hurt now and be happy later than to lose everything miserably and die later."
The 2nd Iteration had personally put the real one through that ordeal. He had realized long ago that Lee Ha-yul's pain was being reproduced, but he had not stopped.
This opportunity was far too precious to stop for just that reason. The one bowing their head behind him likely held the same thought.
In reality, Lee Ha-yul had returned with results sufficient enough—no, enough to laugh at the anticipated results.
He is still inexperienced, but with this level, he'll make use of it on his own.
He was a preposterous existence.
Besides that, he could understand the choice of the Tower Masters... underst... under...
Abruptly, the 2nd Iteration stopped speaking.
Instead, his own memories flickered past.
A life that was long if called long, short if called short.
A life that seemed thick in some ways and thin in others.
A life that was merely a shell, a fake.
"...I do, understand. I, of all people, considering your position, this was the best choice, the most efficient, the surest choice."
As expected, the presence behind him didn't answer.
"No matter how much I understand, I utterly despise you."
Crrk... Strength went into the hand. Thick veins protruded over the back of a hand covered in scars.
"I understand that the intention was good, that you didn't intend for me to suffer this agony, that it was the best possible solution. But... I cannot bring myself to like you."
Birth, growth, a cradle, bitterness, yearning, a sense of loss, powerlessness, desperation, impatience, death...
The 2nd Iteration, Lee Ha-yul, reflected on his life. It was indeed full of twists and utterly wretched.
He had achieved nothing. His talent was woefully insufficient compared to his aspirations.
Even though he tried his very best, rolled around desperately and clung on shamefully like a tick, he was insufficient and ultimately died an ugly death.
Even that wretched life did not belong to the real one.
It was merely a possible branch, a single path that happened to be observed.
That fact made him feel unbearably filthy. It felt as if the life he had clawed and scrambled through was being denied.
No, it had been denied. My life was not real.
『......』
There was no reply.
Whether they could not answer, or could but were simply too ashamed to, the presence only bowed its head and accepted the condemnation.
Having sensed that air, the 2nd Iteration let out a deep sigh and spoke.
"...Still, I don't wish for you to be punished to death."
He truly hates them, but their actions weren't wrong.
If this plan succeeded, the world would not perish, and the real Lee Ha-yul would finally live the happy life he had wanted so desperately.
The presence behind him trembled greatly. Had it not expected to hear such words?
"So help properly. You guys have no fallback anyway."
The 2nd Iteration... Lee Ha-yul is not a person who, just because he suffered, wishes for others to suffer the same agony.
"At least the real one deserves to be happy."
The long, drawn-out conversation halted. Having said all he wished, Lee Ha-yul's body began to disintegrate into a cluster of light.
* * *
Meanwhile, at that moment, inside the public training hall within the Tower of Growth.
"Yeon-hwa, could we talk a bit regarding Ha-yul?"
"...About Ha-yul?"
At Ellia's words, clasping her hands together, Hong Yeon-hwa's complexion grew sullen.