Second Life, Not a Replay
A sticky, sticky sound.
Something black burst out from the tiny gaps between the shattered stones.
It looked like darkness itself, yet it was slightly different.
It had more form, like something that could be grasped in the hand.
“What is this?!”
I threw the medal straight into the surging black stream, but the medal floated in the air without falling and continued spewing out black mist.
But the foreign feeling didn’t end there.
Like a sponge absorbing water, it began to devour everything around it, wrapping all the surroundings in pitch-black.
Whoosh… whoosh… whoosh…
Thick darkness spread out, covering the entire area so that even an inch ahead was impossible to see. The dense black mist, so thick that it faintly outlined my own hand, seemed to embrace everything around the spot where the medal had been.
I didn’t know much about magic. But the sensation and the complex smell told me this wasn’t something that could be described as mere Magi.
Something had gone terribly wrong. No matter how much I condensed Magi, I had never seen anything like this.
“Ugh… ugh…!!”
The source of the disaster, Rigel, who was near the medal, was about to be sucked in instantly and clung desperately to a tree root embedded in the ground.
All the leaves and stones on the ground except mine disappeared toward a single point.
“What in the world is happening…?! ”
No. No way.
There wasn’t time to analyze this phenomenon now. I wasn’t even a mage, so I couldn’t understand it properly anyway.
‘Should I run?’
But the force pulling me toward the center was already too strong. I could only barely hold on.
That force was growing stronger, and soon the roots would snap or my hands would slip.
‘Besides.’
I had no idea how far the black mist’s reach would extend or how much stronger it would become.
There were villages nearby. It might swallow the entire village and cause countless casualties.
I could see a shimmering light inside. That had to be the medal.
‘No choice.’
It might be a rash judgment. Maybe I was making the worst possible decision right now. But at least I had no other way.
If I didn’t do something now, I might not even be able to get near that medal in the future.
I grabbed a fist-sized stone that brushed past me and slowly calmed my breathing.
The force dragging me forward grew stronger, and the visibility inside the mist shrank until I couldn’t even tell what had just passed right beside me.
The only thing visible was that light over there, the gleaming medal.
Huff… huff.
I breathed slowly. I couldn’t panic.
I somehow dragged my lower body toward my upper body and planted my feet on the ground. Now all I could do was wait.
Instinctively, I felt terrified and shaking. It was definitely Magi, but not Magi. It was colder, more sinister, and completely unfamiliar.
Of course I couldn’t run. And I had no choice but to dive straight into it.
I had to do it. And I had to do it right now.
If not me, then who?
Duduk… dududuk.
The tree root I could no longer hold finally snapped.
Now.
‘Mana.’
I pulled every last drop of mana from within me. Even the knight’s meager mana was all poured into a single instant.
And at the exact moment the root snapped, I stepped forward.
I threw myself toward the black mist that poured out bright light at a speed too fast to see or feel.
And then, soon.
I poured every last bit of strength into my body and swung my arm toward the light ahead.
***
It felt like my throat was burning.
My arms and legs screamed as if every muscle in my body had torn apart.
My skin felt scorched, and my skin was unbearably hot, numbing my mind.
But the thing that ate away at my mind most of all was the something digging into my body from inside.
It was like a needle drilling straight through my veins. I couldn’t even think clearly.
It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurts.
If only I could scream, but not a single finger of my body moved.
While my mind filled with nothing but the thought of pain, a clear sensation of something flowing through my veins woke me up.
‘No…! If I keep going like this…’
I couldn’t let my body be eaten away. I had to expel whatever it was similar to Magi outside my body.
I struggled with all my might. With nothing but the desperate feeling that even pain had forgotten, I reversed the tiny bit of Mana inside me and circulated it back.
It was pain that I perceived. But with the sheer will to survive, I faced that pain head-on and began to push out the foreign thing invading my body with my own.
Slowly. No matter how painful, because pain wasn’t as bad as death.
Enduring the pain that left even my mind hazy until the very last one, I expelled the unknown outside my body.
Maybe it was because all my strength was gone, or maybe it was just that I was extremely exhausted.
With my eyes half-open, I saw moonlight above and lost consciousness again.
***
It was quiet.
No sound of wind, no rustle of bushes. Of course, no animal sounds from the forest either.
When I opened my eyes, moonlight still shone on me, illuminating the brilliant light in the sky that I had seen before losing consciousness. I pushed myself up with my hands, scraping the blackened soil.
“…That can’t be.”
The broken trees, even those that hadn’t broken, were all tilted as if pulled toward one center.
Even the trees couldn’t hold on, so the underbrush on the ground couldn’t be intact. Like fire had swept through, the weeds were gone, leaving only parched black soil.
Luckily, it was still the familiar forest scenery before I lost consciousness.
‘Good thing I survived.’
The moment I took a deep breath, a burning pain surged deep in my chest. Luckily, it seemed like a dream or the afterlife.
Every time I moved, my body ached, so I twitched and looked around. Nothing else was there.
No carriage uncle, no carriage, no horse. Not even the mage who had been caught up with me.
No one. The only person left in this forest was me.
‘Did I die…?’
If I thought rationally, everyone must have died. The area within ten meters of me was completely devastated.
It was obvious the mage who tried to stab me had died, and the carriage uncle escaping through the chaos was the most optimistic hope.
I couldn’t know for sure, but I hoped I had survived.
If there was any luck at all, it was probably that this place wasn’t that far from Sohlehren. We were supposed to camp here and take half a day more to reach the village.
I’d have to walk the whole day.
While I looked around again, I spotted my sword stuck in a tilted tree trunk over there.
It was a cherished sword of mine, so I was relieved it hadn’t been lost.
‘Yeah, it’s good that you’re still here.’
No matter what, I had to get back to the village quickly. With my body aching and screaming every time I moved, any attack from wild beasts in the forest would be dangerous.
“Hmph.”
I frowned, gathered strength, and stood up. But something felt off.
My vision was strange, and my senses felt completely different from before.
My body was clearly not normal. First, I hurried toward the knife embedded in the tree trunk to get away, grabbed the handle, and pushed with all my strength.
But the knife wouldn’t come out. Normally, it would have been pulled out easily with one hand. It seemed my body was in far worse condition than I thought.
In the end, I pulled it out with both hands, grunting. But the unease I felt wasn’t just because my body was abnormal.
“…What?”
Had this sword always been this big?
It used to be small. Now, compared to my hand, it felt like a huge sword.
And there was more. White hair dripping down the sides of my vision mixed with a faint blue light. Normally, side hair wouldn’t be visible, yet here it was.
And in the hand gripping the sword’s handle, the clear calluses had vanished, leaving only soft, slender hands.
“Wait… wait.”
I jerked.
Why was my voice like this? Why had my voice become thin?
Clang.
I stared at my hands many times, but they didn’t change.
And beneath them, a swollen chest rose and fell.
My hair had turned completely white. This time it wasn’t pain, but bewilderment.
No matter how hard I thought, I couldn’t understand what was happening now.
Pinching my cheek, biting inside my mouth, slamming my head into the tree with all my strength—only clear pain registered.
My slender hands, my weak voice, my swollen chest—none of them returned to normal.
“…No. That’s impossible.”
I picked up the sword with trembling hands. And I held it up to the sword blade shining in the bright moonlight and looked at my face.
But my face wasn’t reflected there.
Greenish eyes, still slightly bluish-white hair, and a face with delicate features watched me.
If I tried not to understand at this point, my body understood on its own.
“…No.”
Even if I couldn’t accept it.
[Greenish eyes, slightly bluish-white hair, delicate features… a face that wasn’t mine.]