Fifteen Minutes Before Rescue
Kanteil slid down against a tree, his back scraping the rough bark.
"Damn it. This is taking too much out of me."
The continuous physical reinforcement had drained not only his mental focus but also pushed his stamina to its absolute limit.
If he recklessly went all out, he could easily hold on for another three hours. But doing so would mean he couldn't guarantee the girl's survival. Since he had gone through the trouble of saving her, he had to see it through to the end. He knew better than anyone how agonizing false hope could be.
"Are you okay? If... if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be in this mess..." The girl's eyes welled with tears.
Watching someone else suffer was always hard to stomach—especially when it was an innocent civilian.
"I'm fine. I just need a little rest, and I'll be back on my feet in no time."
"..."
The girl's gaze grew infinitely heavy. It was a look he knew all too well—the same look he had seen on the faces of survivors who had lost their families to zombies. Self-loathing. It was the expression of someone trapped in an endless cycle of despair and regret, constantly thinking that if only they hadn't existed, their parents, siblings, lovers, or friends wouldn't have perished.
Looking into those eyes, I could dismiss her thoughts with a single sentence.
"Stop thinking about useless things."
Seriously, stop. In my experience, those who indulged in such weak-minded thoughts rarely survived long. Most of them ended up throwing their lives away under the pretext of sacrificing themselves for others. They failed to realize that the person who had saved them in the first place wanted nothing more than for them to survive until the very end.
Deciding to break the heavy atmosphere, I shifted my posture.
"By the way, why can't you use magic? You look like a mage."
"I... I don't really know either... When I was little, everyone called me a magic prodigy. But one day, my spells just started canceling themselves."
Spells canceling themselves? How could someone hailed as a magic prodigy—and admitted into the academy, no less—suffer from spell cancellation?
"Did this spell cancellation start after you entered the academy?"
"No... it's been happening since I was ten. My circles keep advancing, but I can't cast any spells. Especially offensive magic."
Even Magic Missile, the most basic of all spells, was being canceled mid-cast. That pointed to a severe underlying issue. And yet, the academy had still granted her admission despite such a critical condition? Just how absurdly talented had she been when she was fine for them to accept her anyway?
Is she like Idrian before he was possessed?
In his youth, Idrian Goldenroad had been hailed as the greatest prodigy in the Empire. However, he lost his beloved mother at the age of ten. Before he could even process his grief, his father was summoned by the Imperial Court to the Imperial Capital. Seizing that vulnerability, a neighboring count's family sent a corrupt tutor to brainwash the heir of the marquisate and ruin the Empire's greatest genius. With Idrian's heart already fractured, the brainwashing took hold all too easily, degrading him into a pathetic, bloated scoundrel. Yet, the academy's headmaster, unable to forget Idrian's past genius, had admitted him anyway. It was right around then that the soul of the First Hero possessed him, giving birth to the current Idrian.
But her personality doesn't seem bad at all, aside from her low self-esteem.
Looking at the girl staring back at him with the gentle, innocent eyes of a puppy, he couldn't detect even a shred of villainous energy.
"Come to think of it, I haven't introduced myself. I'm Kanteil. Second-year, Swordplay Department."
"Ah, I'm Seril Lever, a second-year in the Enchantment Department... People call me the 'Minus Hand' because whenever I try to enchant something, it just breaks. Hehe."
Enchantment. A technique that imbued objects with magic to produce magical tools. But she broke everything she touched?
"Doesn't that make it impossible for you to craft magical tools?"
"You're poking right where it hurts... That's exactly why they call me the Minus Hand. Everything breaks the moment I touch it."
"Ah, I didn't mean to pry."
"It's fine. I can tell you didn't mean any harm."
Seril forced a bright smile. Was it just his imagination, or did that forced smile look even heavier than her previous gloomy expression?
His stamina was slowly returning. Once his depleted mental focus was fully restored, he reached out toward his sword.
BOOM!
Everything went black. For a brief, fleeting moment, the entire world was dyed in blinding white. Along with the sensation of being hurled through the air, an agonizing, bone-snapping pain flared in his lower back.
What... just happened?
He couldn't comprehend it. Where was this sudden, excruciating pain coming from? He could barely twitch his arms; his legs wouldn't budge at all. Dazedly, he stared ahead. There, standing before him, was the Irregular Slime.
In that instant, reality set in. He was utterly screwed. Of all times, he had been ambushed while letting go of his sword to recover his mental strength. Fortunately, he hadn't been killed instantly, but his near-dead body refused to move. Then, his eyes caught the sword lying slightly out of reach.
If only I can grab that...!
He could kill that thing. But his hand wouldn't reach. With his body paralyzed, no matter how hard he strained his arm, the blade remained agonizingly out of grasp.
But where was the girl, Seril? Straining to turn his head, he scanned the surroundings. His gaze locked onto a figure pinned to a massive tree.
Seril, the girl with the striking pink hair, was dying. A thick branch had impaled her straight through the abdomen.
"...It hurts... This time... I have to protect..."
Pinioned to the tree, Seril muttered incoherently. Watching her stare blankly into the void and whisper, Kanteil felt curiosity override his own pain. What kind of past did she have that made her obsess over protecting someone even as she lay dying?
Her blue eyes suddenly swirled with iridescent, rainbow-colored light. In that exact moment, the world began to tremble.
RUMBLE!
Around Seril, who hadn't even been able to cast a simple Magic Missile, four massive magic circles manifested simultaneously. Fire, water, gravity, and light. Four elemental attributes—any single one of which would brand someone a genius—were being unleashed all at once.
Flames erupted in all directions. Water was drawn out from the surrounding trees, enveloping both her and Kanteil to heal their wounds. Sensing the imminent danger, the slimes lunged toward Seril.
CRASH!
But they were instantly crushed into paste, flattened by an invisible, overwhelming force.
Gravity.
A rare attribute that even the genius mage of the Ice Magic Tower had failed to obtain. In the entire original novel, no one possessed it except for a gloomy bastard who hid his identity behind a white mask. The moment that bastard revealed his full power, he had utterly overwhelmed the entire protagonist's party, who had already reached the Expert rank as mid-tier mages. Gravity—the power of the stars, an attribute so peerless that almost nothing in the entire world's lore could compare to it. And she possessed it?
But his bewilderment quickly turned to sheer shock at what happened next. Her magic was growing stronger. The output of the spells she had already cast was surging, multiplying in power until it was three times more potent than when they were first unleashed.
To put into perspective how absurd this was: it was like sharpening a sword, only for the blade to spontaneously evolve and become three times sharper on its own over time. Or perhaps like firing a pistol, only for the bullet to transform mid-air into an anti-materiel sniper round capable of piercing tank armor.
Once a spell was cast, its output could not be altered. Just as a pistol fires a pistol round, the physical laws of magic were absolute. Yet, that fundamental law was being shattered right before his eyes.
Seril pointed her index finger at the Irregular Slime. A beam of pure light pierced through the core of the monster, vaporizing it instantly. It vanished before its core could even attempt to divide.
"Haha... I guess she didn't get into the academy for nothing."
What on earth had happened during the gap in the original timeline that prevented a talent of this caliber from ever appearing?
Pushing his fully healed body up, Kanteil gripped his sword. Even the injuries that Seril's healing magic hadn't quite reached regenerated in an instant.
I didn't realize physical reinforcement came with a regeneration factor too.
Well, a welcome surprise was a welcome surprise. Having single-handedly annihilated the Irregular Slime mid-air, Seril lost consciousness and began to fall. The magic that had fiercely protected her vanished into thin air. Kanteil stepped forward and caught her limp body in his arms.
Her face was pale, and her eyes were tightly shut. She had passed out.
"I thought she was just a weak survivor. I didn't expect her to save my life."
He had no idea what had kept this girl from appearing in the original story. But unfortunately for her, now that she had caught his attention, a quiet, ordinary life was out of the question. She would make an invaluable asset in steering this chaotic, variable-ridden world toward a happy ending.
"Well, since she took care of the boss, I suppose it's my turn to clean up the trash."
Although many slimes had burned to death in the surrounding blaze, plenty of survivors remained. Knocking down charred trees, black slimes surged forward from all directions like a tidal wave.
A thin thread of Sword Force spun out from the tip of his blade. A single flash of light erupted along Kanteil's sword path. The world split in two, and the Forest of Ash was utterly stripped of its original form. By the time the blinding flash faded, every single trace of life in the forest had been extinguished.
A boy sitting in a wheelchair suddenly scanned his surroundings. Watching him with confusion, a red-haired girl asked in a worried tone,
"Is something wrong? Why the sudden look?"
"Ah, it seems an urgent matter has come up. I need to stop by the infirmary. Please wait here for a moment."
The boy pushed the rims of his wheelchair, rolling himself forward. The girl stared blankly at his retreating back, bewildered by his abrupt departure.
"What on earth could have happened to make him look like that? I've never seen him make that face before..."
Ever since his admission, the boy had never worn anything but a gentle smile. Seeing his features contorted into a terrifying, demonic scowl made a cold shiver run down her spine.
The boy speeding away in the wheelchair with that twisted expression had pink hair.