Chapter 382
Chapter 382
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 382
Chapter Title: The Meaning of Survival (4)
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Stage 3: Miasma.
It was a place where swamplands stretched to the horizon.
At first, everyone hovered in the air using Fly magic, but after inhaling the toxic gas rising from the swamp, they began to fall one by one.
The miasma began its work then.
The students who fell into the swamp screamed, their faces twisted beyond recognition.
It was clearly an excruciating pain.
The students still in the sky gritted their teeth and endured.
But they all knew they would have to enter it eventually.
The association was conveying a message through the survival program.
That the power of nature cannot be overcome with magic. That the strength to survive to the end lies not in magic, but in the will of the mage.
The students in the air began to vomit.
The students in the swamp were hit by it, but they were in no state to even register that something was falling on them.
“Haaah.”
Nade’s sigh was heard. As his balance slowly gave way, he looked back at Shirone and spoke.
“See you later, Shirone.”
With Nade’s fall as the starting point, the other students quickly began to follow.
Shirone, too, could no longer hold on. A groggy voice escaped his lips as he tumbled down.
“Yeah... Nade.”
* * *
The students eliminated from the survival test crawled out of the Virtual Zone one by one.
Placing prepared ice towels on their heads, they sat down to rest a short distance from the device.
Colly, checking the Virtual Zone's control panel, said.
“Severe Cold Stage 3, Miasma, has concluded. Current survivors are eight from the Red Team and seven from the Blue Team.”
Olivia said.
“Hmm, surprisingly many have survived. This year’s graduating class is certainly of a high caliber.”
“Class Three has a strong lineup, and Fermi’s group is still in. Of course, there are no slouches in Class Two either.”
Alpheas spoke.
“Stage 4... ‘Severance,’ is it? The scales of the match will tip here.”
Stage 4 was the difficulty level the Magic Association presented as the standard for a certified mage.
This was because here, one experienced not just pain, but actual death.
Dozens of times, at that.
* * *
Whoooooosh!
Hearing the sound of wind spewing from the abyss, Shirone was in a state of endless freefall.
If the previous stages had been experiences of extreme natural environments, Stage 4 was a mechanical space.
It was the inside of a massive chimney whose depth could not be measured.
Hundreds, thousands of blades spun relentlessly, leaving no room to escape, dicing the students to pieces.
Death was something one could not adapt to.
Each time the horrific and tragic sensation struck their minds, their Spirit Zones shattered, and eliminations followed one after another.
Shirone clenched his teeth.
Had he been diced and reconstituted about ten times now? It was as if the system were asking, ‘You’re still going to endure this?’
A giant blade, leaving an afterimage like a tray, awaited him. There was likely no way to pass through it alive.
‘Endure! Endure!’
In an instant, Shirone passed through the blade's afterimage. However, his body had already been separated into three pieces.
What words could possibly describe the feeling of watching one's own two legs fall ahead of one's face?
There are dead people, but no one who has *been* dead, so human language would never find the right words to express it.
The other students were in the same situation.
Impaled by blades jutting from the walls, they would stop falling for a moment, only to pitifully continue toward their next death once the blades retracted.
“Huuuuuuhk!”
His body reconstituted, Shirone gasped for air like a fetus taking its very first breath.
‘Ugh! Just kill me, kill me!’
Anyone would have had that thought upon seeing the dozens of interlocking drills waiting below like a floor.
Thud!
Shirone landed on it.
Whirrrrrrrrrr!
And in an instant, his body was ground up, pouring down below like liquid pulp.
* * *
“Agh! Dammit!”
Nade awoke from the Virtual Zone with a curse.
Iruki, Amy, and even Fermi's group couldn't withstand the Severance stage and were ejected, left rolling on the floor.
Their heads throbbed as if to split, and nausea washed over them. It was common for them to dry heave before spitting out a long string of saliva.
“This is driving me crazy. Why do I always get stuck at Stage 4?”
Wiping her lips, Amy's expression was grim.
To maintain one's Spirit Zone even after death is impossible without a powerful obsession that transcends life and death.
A seeker of truth. A religious devotee. A murderer.
Whatever the case, from this point on, it was a world for those whose mental state had surpassed the realm of ordinary people.
As such, it was no surprise that Iruki was eliminated.
“When you die, you die. What’s next?”
One shouldn't create a situation where death is a possibility in the first place. For his mind, which detested uncertainty, this stage was incomprehensible.
Severance fully met the association's expectations.
Quite a few eliminations occurred at Stage 4, and most of them crawled out of the Virtual Zone looking like death warmed over.
“Ugh, I feel like I'm dying. Hey, you okay?”
Nade approached Iruki, rubbing the back of his neck. Iruki looked back at him, his eyes filled with surprise.
“No way, you got eliminated too?”
“Yeah. My head is killing me.”
After a moment of thought, Iruki asked again.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Iruki had thought Nade would pass Severance without any trouble. But as a thought occurred to him, he soon understood.
‘Perhaps it’s an obvious outcome?’
Nade doesn't think about what comes after death. It was likely a deliberate suppression.
If his mind were to transcend death, it would be impossible for him to remain a normal human being as he was now.
“It's nothing. Anyway, let’s get out of here. I’ve died so much, I feel like I'm dying.”
Colly turned to Alpheas and said.
“Entering Stage 5, Insect King, in 30 seconds. Shall I open the vision?”
“Hmm, the Insect King...”
They had passed the ‘near-death’ standard for a professional mage, so from now on, it was a world that could not be defined by theory.
As a misstep could lead to fatal mental damage, it was necessary to open the vision and check the students' condition.
“Open the vision.”
“Yes. Activating the master device.”
As Colly operated the device, a large, concave hologram appeared in the air of the Virtual Zone.
In the graduation exam, a giant hologram appeared on the ceiling from the start, but even with the current vision, the situation inside the program could be clearly seen.
-Virtual Severe Cold Program Stage 5, commencing Insect King.
“Ugh! What is that?!”
When the scene of the Insect King appeared on the vision, the eliminated students gathered in front of the Virtual Zone recoiled and grimaced.
All sorts of disgusting insects were swarming endlessly. The sight of hundreds of millions of insects undulating was like watching the very earth move.
The survivors were likely buried somewhere in there by the insects, suffering.
Stage 5: Insect King.
It was a place where the fear, disgust, and pain were so intense that one would think it better to simply die.
* * *
The sight of the tangled mass of insects stirred a primal human fear, but this time, it wasn't just about watching.
They were penetrating skin, nerves, and internal organs, delivering a tangible sensation.
The pain of them burrowing into every orifice of the body and eating away at the flesh did not simply end with death.
As those who could not endure began to emerge, the places where insects were piled up like graves began to stir.
Someone, covered in insects as if smeared with ink, shot to their feet and began to scream and thrash.
“Aaaaargh!”
The scream that erupted in the virtual space was echoed by Eider, who was lying in the Virtual Zone.
“...Aaaaaaaaaah!”
Shaking his whole body and rolling on the floor, he flailed his limbs, trying to crawl away somewhere.
“Aaargh! Aaargh! Aaargh!”
No one helped him. Approaching someone in a severe state of shock could cause them even greater trauma.
Still, perhaps because he had the talent to pass Severance, Eider quickly regained his composure.
“Gasp! Gasp!”
On the borderline between virtual and reality, he looked around with a terrified face, his eyes welling up with tears.
“Ugh, this is... really scary.”
“...”
How could it not be scary?
Those who were eliminated before the near-death stage looked at Eider and thought themselves lucky to have finished at Stage 4.
Screamer, on the other hand, did not look pleased.
He had recruited Eider to the Blue Team because, while his other skills were uncertain, he had been scoring well on the survival evaluation since last year.
But once again, he failed to pass Stage 5, and the one they needed to be most wary of, Shirone, was still inside the Insect King.
‘Shirone is enduring something Eider couldn't?’
Nade was thinking something similar. As he watched the Virtual Zone while applying an ice pack to his neck, he spoke to Iruki.
“That Eider kid, he made it to Stage 5, right? Pretty impressive for his age.”
“No matter what, he’s the youngest in the current graduating class. His skill might be debatable, but his talent is undeniable.”
The difficulty of the Insect King was incomparable to Severance. Starting with Eider, students began to be eliminated one after another.
Canis sat up with a grimace, and a moment later, Arin slowly opened her eyes.
Unlike Eider, they calmly collected themselves.
“Canis, are you okay?”
“More or less. It’s much harder than I expected. After Stage 4, the Spirit Zone becomes too sensitive.”
“There are too many insects that secrete toxins. They get inside your organs and sting, making it hard to maintain an imperturbable mind.”
‘Imperturbable mind, my ass. Bunch of crazies.’
It was a fitting assessment from Arin, an expert in the mental arts, but to the students eliminated before the near-death stage, it was just absurd.
It was only natural that they seemed crazy, talking about toxins and imperturbable minds while insects were burrowing through their intestines.
But that was why it was called a state of mastery.
A realm of depth that couldn't be measured numerically was a sensation that could never be understood without reaching it.
‘Everyone’s amazing.’
While the eliminated students gathered around the Virtual Zone, Maya remained in the rest area.
She was the first to be eliminated but the slowest to recover, and no one paid her any mind.
She could understand the coldness of competition. But the fact that they didn't even consider her a competitor saddened her.
She approached Shirone’s friends. They were the only ones in the graduating class who showed her any kindness.
“Amy, are you okay? How are you feeling?”
Hearing Maya's voice, Amy turned her head.
“Yeah. I think we're fine. What about you?”
“I’m feeling a bit better now, too. I’m sorry. I was eliminated in Stage 2.”
Maya lowered her head, looking ashamed. She felt terrible for not living up to the expectations of Shirone, who had accepted her onto his team.
“It's okay. To be honest, I was completely overwhelmed too. Don't worry about it.”
Amy instead comforted Maya. Knowing what the pain of Stage 2 was like, she could never blame her.
“But... do you think Shirone is okay? He hasn't come out yet.”
Amy looked over at the Virtual Zone. Everyone else had been eliminated in Stage 5, and only the last two people were lying side by side.
Shirone of the Red Team and Fermi of the Blue Team.
“In any case, the balance has been maintained until the very end. Whoever wins there takes the victory.”
Maya looked up at the vision floating in the air.
It had been disgusting even from a distance, but seeing the screen unfold before her eyes, she felt another wave of nausea.
‘How can they endure a place like that?’
She had been terrified by just Stage 2, the Ice Prison. Yet someone was fighting on in such a horrific place.
‘If it were me, I would have just given up and died.’
Maya couldn't bear to watch the vision. But because Shirone, who had believed in her, was fighting, she didn't look away.
“Th-there...!”
Boyle pointed at the vision, his eyes wide with shock.
The swarm of insects stirred, and then Shirone slowly pushed himself up.
“G-good heavens...”
Maya’s face turned pale.
The other students, also shocked, could only stare at the vision with their mouths agape, unable to look away.
Shirone’s appearance was too gruesome to behold. In some places, the flesh was completely stripped away, revealing bone, while in others, the skin was swollen and rotting.
Maya couldn't believe that the human mind could endure such a thing.
Having completely relaxed his body, Shirone stood with his arms hanging limp, his head bowed.
At the sight of him not even flinching as insects tore through his skin, the corners of Alpheas’s mouth turned up.
“Impressive. A perfectly imperturbable mind.”
It wasn't that he couldn't feel pain or disgust. It was a transcendent state of maintaining focus under any circumstance.