Class Assignment Exam (Part 7)
Estelle’s frantic shout and the surging black fog were the last things I remembered before losing consciousness—or so I had thought.
Yet, for reasons I couldn't fathom, my mind remained lucid.
Perhaps because the mist had swallowed me whole, the surrounding darkness was absolute. It went far beyond mere dimness; it was a pitch-black void where sight ceased to exist.
What on earth is this...?
Every instinct told me my eyes were wide open. I could feel them staring into the gloom, yet not a solitary flicker of light met my gaze. Just in case, I tried calling out to Estelle and attempted to channel my mana, but nothing answered. Not a voice, not an echo, not even the faintest trickle of power stirred.
Only then did the chilling truth sink in: I was trapped in a realm of absolute nothingness. A cold tendril of dread began coiling upward in my chest.
Still, Estelle had warned me that a Demon of Deception would strike relentlessly at the mind. Clinging to her advice, I drew a slow, deliberate breath, fighting down the surging panic. Even if it was merely the phantom memory of breathing rather than taking in actual air, the familiar rhythm alone helped steady my fraying nerves.
Phew...
Something felt wrong, though. Estelle had insisted an assault on my psyche was coming, and hadn't the demon himself boasted that he would drown me in despair? Yet far from showing me despair, I was enveloped in total sensory deprivation. Bereft of sight, sound, and touch, the only thing tormenting me was the primal existential horror of whether I even existed at all. That was a far cry from the torment I had braced for.
Get a grip...
Losing my composure here was tantamount to suicide. The only priority was preserving my sanity while finding a way out of this trap. The trouble was that not a single idea came to mind. If a tangible beast had lunged at me, I could have swung my sword or fought tooth and nail to break through. But adrift, blind, and numb in an endless abyss, I could only feel myself being slowly erased from reality.
This is bad...
I couldn't remain like this. If I failed to break free, wouldn't I linger here for all eternity? The moment that dark thought took root, the terror I had barely managed to suppress flared anew. Though I knew yielding to panic meant defeat, banishing the raw, instinctual horror of the unknown proved impossible.
...It was then.
[...the... out...]
A voice so faint it might have escaped notice altogether brushed against the edge of my senses. I couldn't make out the words, but there was no mistaking that a sound had reached me. Straining with everything I had, I focused every scrap of my consciousness toward that distant murmur.
And then—
What is this...?
The suffocating darkness shattered, and vision bloomed before my eyes. I found myself looking into the interior of a massive stone hall, reminiscent of an ancient underground ruin. In the center of the chamber—the very place I had stood moments before—a young girl covered in terrible wounds was gasping for breath.
The moment I recognized her face, my breath seized in my throat.
Aria...?
Aria, who had been standing at my side just moments ago, was clutching the stump of her severed arm as blood poured violently from the wound. Standing directly before her was a man of pitch-black skin, demonic horns jutting cruelly from his brow.
When my eyes settled on his features, my blood ran cold.
Albert...?!
The eldest son of the prestigious Lakhart family had been transformed into a demon, toying with Aria like a cat with its prey.
What in the world is happening...?!
My frantic thoughts were brutally cut short. Albert moved again. Having somehow regenerated her severed limb, Aria desperately tried to weave her divine power together, but Albert swept his hand with terrifying speed, preemptively crushing her resistance before it could even begin.
[Brother... Albert...]
Aria's thought resonance echoed across the chamber, drenched in agonized weeping, but Albert had long since lost all reason. Unhearing, he gave a cold, mechanical flick of his fingers. With every careless motion of his hands, foreign magic circles etched themselves into the air, and Aria began to die in every gruesome way imaginable.
Boom!
It began with her limbs. Albert sheared away her arms and legs one by one. When he saw that Aria refused to die—her flesh knitting back together through holy regeneration—he severed her upper torso clean in half from her waist. The horrific sight of her body being bifurcated so effortlessly forced my eyes shut against my will.
Please... I don't want to see this... I can't watch Aria die anymore!
I shook my head violently in the dark, screaming inward pleas for the slaughter to end. But this gruesome theater was forced directly into my consciousness by the demon's magic; squeezing my eyes shut did nothing to shield me. Even while feeling my eyelids clamped tight, before my gaze, across my vision... inside the very depths of my mind, Aria was butchered over and over again.
Her chest was blasted apart in a shower of gore. Her head vanished into red mist beneath crushing kinetic blasts. Yet like time itself rewinding, Aria's body knit itself whole each time—only to be slaughtered anew by Albert the instant she drew breath.
Ah... aah...
It was a nightmare. A sickening nightmare. Only now did I truly comprehend the nature of the Demon of Deception, and why he had forced me to bear witness to this atrocity.
No...
I refused to believe it. How could this be real? How could a human being fall to demonization so easily? Above all else, Aria had held her own against a Superior Devil—even if pushed to the brink, how could she be so utterly helpless here? It had to be a cruel illusion. Nothing more than a fabrication designed to break my spirit.
I clung desperately to that denial to preserve my fraying sanity, but repeating it changed nothing of the horror before me.
[Ugh... a-aagh...]
In the nightmare, Aria was being relentlessly violated and torn to pieces by Albert. No matter how grievous the injury, her immortal flesh knit itself back together. Her blessing felt like an unspeakable curse, subjecting her to such endless agony that true death would have been a mercy.
I knew it was an illusion. I knew I couldn't verify what was real and what was false. I knew that letting it torment me was falling into the demon's trap. Yet shaking off the horror proved impossible. It was too vivid, too visceral. The sight of Aria dying, the sound of her agony, the wet splatter of her blood... every detail screamed that it was reality, that this tragedy was unfolding at this very second.
Please... stop...
Thud!
Stop killing her.
Crash!
I said stop killing her!
Stab!
Stop.
Squish!
Just stop...
...Stop...
...Please stop...
I yield...
I couldn't win. No one could endure this without losing their mind. Watching a friend—no, even if she were a total stranger, watching a young girl be violently mutilated and murdered countless times before your eyes... who could possibly witness that and remain sane? Anyone who could must have been a monster from the start.
Terror consumed me. The terror of having to watch any more. The suffocating dread of wondering how Aria would be torn apart next crushed my chest. My sanity was splintering into dust.
Yes. That's enough.
Yielding my shattered, exhausted soul to that soothing whisper, unable to stand any longer, I allowed myself to sink gently into the embrace of death.
...It was then.
—KWA-AAAAH!
A sound like a shattering cataclysm roared through the depths of my consciousness. In that blinding instant, the pitch-black void ignited with an incandescence so fierce it burned my eyes.
What...?
What had just happened? Even as the question flared in my thoughts, the blinding radiance slowly receded, and the world regained its contours. And there—
[Wh-what...?]
Albert's arm was gone. Where his limb had been, nothing remained but a cauterized stump glowing cherry-red, radiating blistering waves of heat. Aria was drenched from head to foot in blood, swaying as though she might collapse at any moment—yet the sacred light pouring from her necklace was nothing short of miraculous. Even after enduring such unspeakable torture, her will to fight on had never broken.
And the instant I saw her noble eyes shining through the gore, a gentle smile gracing her lips, I understood instinctively.
Aria was trying to save Albert. She was trying to restore him to his true self. That was why she had endured it all—biding her time through every death, waiting for that single fleeting chance to strike.
And... the truth struck me like a physical blow.
Everything happening before my eyes wasn't a nightmare conjured by the demon to break me. It was reality. It was actually happening.
Ah...
In a situation where anyone else would have surrendered in despair, facing pain that defied human endurance, Aria had refused to give up. She had endured the unendurable solely out of a steadfast devotion to rescue Albert from the demon's grasp.
The moment that realization pierced my heart, I reached out and seized my falling soul just as it teetered over the edge of the abyss.
I can't die like this.
I couldn't allow myself to perish here. If only to look Aria in the eye without drowning in shame, I had to survive.
I had to.