The Awakening of Cineurius
The day’s routine for class president Han Seohee had been simple enough: accompany Rose to the military base visit event, catch a glimpse of that idiot’s face, and head back home. But somehow things had spiraled until she found herself standing at the edge of a contaminated zone.
‘How did it come to this? What the hell am I even doing here?’
She stared into the thick fog rolling across the ruined landscape. It looked so dense that a monster could burst out at any second and no one would see it coming. Surely nothing would actually jump out… right?
‘Ughhh, I’m scared.’
That division commander talked way too much. She just wanted the tour to end so she could leave. She didn’t want to be in a place like this at all!
That was what she was thinking when she spotted a lone figure standing on the rooftop of an abandoned building no one ever used. At first the person was too small to make out clearly, but the moment she noticed the clothes, she knew.
“Haru?”
Why had that crazy bastard crawled all the way into a danger zone? Did he seriously think he was the main character of some story? The sight of him still stuck in his middle-school delusions genuinely disgusted her. No wonder the girls called him “ultimate cringe” and avoided him.
She used to think the rumors about Haru’s chuunibyou were a little exaggerated. Seeing him pull stunts like this, it turned out the rumors had actually been watered down.
Even the teacher telling her to be nice to someone like that felt physiologically impossible. Just looking at him made her want to throw up from sheer secondhand embarrassment.
Then, suddenly, she heard something moving in the fog right in front of them.
‘No way… right? Yeah, it’s probably nothing. There’s no way the exact monster I’m worrying about is going to charge out screaming like some kind of idiot.’
It was happening!
‘Aaaaaah it really appeared! It actually appeared! Aaaaaah damn it all!’
She was about to turn and run when she saw the soldiers calmly raising their weapons. Was everything… going to be okay? She told herself it would. This level of threat was something they could handle without issue. There was no problem. None at all.
“I’ll do anything, just please let there be no problems.”
The moment those words left her mouth, she saw Haru looking straight at her and saying something. For a second the urgent situation slipped from her mind. What is he doing?
“…Huh?”
Maybe she had seen wrong? But then black haze began rising around Haru like heat shimmer. It spread, growing larger and larger.
‘Hey! Look over there! Hey! Something’s happening over—’
She tried to shout, but everyone was too focused on the monster to notice. A moment later, the haze transformed into a mythical divine beast with four wings, something straight out of legend. Her mouth fell open.
Then it vanished, only to reappear in mid-air and land. What happened next left her frozen.
‘No way…’
It couldn’t be. There was no chance what she had just seen was Haru.
That was what she kept telling herself until—
“Primrose.”
“Cineurius.”
The two spoke as if they knew each other well.
“Ah…”
Only then did she understand. Why the princess and young ladies of the Serena Union had come here. Why Haru looked down on humans like they were nothing.
As that realization hit her, Haru’s eyes met hers. He stared as if he could see every single secret she had ever hidden. Then, just like when he had appeared, he vanished.
Watching him disappear, she could only think one thing.
‘Ah… I’m screwed.’
The moment I stepped properly into the contaminated land using the flight and shadow magic I learned from Sorcia, an unnatural hunger surged through me. Before I knew it, I had transformed into something strange.
I unconsciously used my abilities to clean up the surroundings, and only then did my mind return to normal.
‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! I’ve lost it! I’ve completely lost it! What the hell did I just do?!’
Only after the fact did the regret hit me. And what even was this form?!
But more pressing than that was the enormous number of gazes pouring toward me. If I didn’t want to be hunted down, I needed to clean this mess up immediately. The thought flashed through my head like lightning.
In the setting of the novel I wrote, Cineurius was the being that followed Primrose. At first I had planned for it to be a divine beast, but that felt too plain for a character full of secrets, so I tried making it a fierce beast, a monster, even a specter. The moment the half-baked character Cineurius came to mind, Primrose naturally looked at me and spoke.
“Cineurius.”
To which I, as Haru, replied.
“Primrose.”
Yeah, this should work! Thinking that, I tried to disappear, but then I noticed the strange energy flowing from my body and the crystals created when the monster contamination was purified. They were filled with magical power.
The energy inside them felt far stronger at suppressing monsters than the item I had given the chairman’s son to slow his transformation. If I used this… it would be incredible!
Still in my monstrous male—no, monster—form, I moved quickly, left the contaminated zone, and the moment I wondered how to return to my original appearance, I changed back. Meanwhile, Primrose was happily picking up the contamination crystals.
The contamination crystal was an unstable substance born when corrupted magical power that turned living beings into monsters underwent further mutation. Even the slightest touch could cause it to explode. But when I altered it slightly with my Conversion ability, it became magical power capable of “controlling” monsters.
Feeling a spark of hope that I might be able to cure Yu Daye, I asked Daisy, Sorcia, and the genius among geniuses Hunya for help. Together we created a pendant, which I placed around Daye’s neck.
It didn’t kill the monster inside her, but it stabilized it and went even further—sealing it so completely that she became like a living corpse, unable to do anything.
‘Half-success, I guess…’
Once the monster inside Yu Daye was sealed, her body slowly began to recover.
“A brocon big brother using the power of younger-sister LOVE to create a monster-sealing pendant?! At this rate, the day I get my name permanently engraved in Oppa’s family register and start my lifelong career as his exclusive woman with no retirement age is right around the corner!”
It would be nice if it were permanent, but ever since I converted it, the magical power inside the contamination crystal began depleting far faster than its original rate. Depending on the crystal’s power, it would last anywhere from a few months at the shortest to about a year at the longest. The moment the power ran out, the pendant would turn into a useless ornament.
As a bonus, these contamination crystals were, as the name suggested… extremely “dangerous” because the contaminated energy had crystallized through Cineurius’s power. Only someone as peculiar as me could properly handle them. Anyone else who tried to mess with them would end up like that rat that had turned into a monster.
While I practiced making more Sealing Pendants with leftover materials, Primrose handed them over to the government, telling them they were items that could seal the monsters inside infected people and that they should be used to help the sick.
At first they looked at her with faces that said, “You expect us to believe a single girl from the Serena Union solved a problem humanity and the Union have failed to crack for decades?” But because I had already purified a contaminated zone, they reluctantly accepted them with a “Thank you.”
A few days later they formed a special task force to urgently collect the crystals before their power ran out on its own. They offered Primrose money to mass-produce the pendants, but since the method wasn’t that difficult, she told them she would make them for free.
Then government officials came again, asking how to erase contamination and create more crystals so they could meet Cineurius. Since my transformation wasn’t fully confirmed yet, and I was terrified of what would happen if Haru’s identity got exposed—I’d probably be dragged into all sorts of dangerous experiments—I deliberately gave them extremely difficult conditions.
“Cineurius exists in the void beyond this world. To summon him, you need an untainted pure sacrifice, an object that can pique his curiosity, and finally a place steeped in the thick scent of death.”
After saying it, I realized it sounded a bit weird, but the stranger it sounded, the less likely they were to succeed in summoning him, so it was probably fine.
I wanted to call it a peaceful return to daily life, but the news was filled with headlines like these:
[Hope Found for the Infected]
[Successful Creation of Device to Seal Monsters Inside Infected]
[Humanity Finally Freed from the Threat of Infected]
[Government Decides to Distribute Sealing Pendants at Low Cost]
Every single one of them mentioned that a member of the Serena Union had provided assistance. Even though no one had said my name, everyone knew it was me.
That was why the internet had started calling me things like:
Thanks to all that, the stares directed at me had increased dramatically!
‘It’s already burdensome enough right now! What am I supposed to do if it gets even worse?!’
On top of that, maybe it was because long-lived races like elves lived for hundreds of years, but I couldn’t adapt to changing situations as easily as humans could. I rolled around my room screaming, but the water had already been spilled. In the end, I became a slave doing unpaid labor.
“Woo-kyak!”
Today, after finishing work and coming home, Hunya came running out. The moment her eyes sparkled at the “gifts” of food I had brought, I nodded. She quickly snatched them and ran off to her gaming room to eat while playing.
‘Primrose hasn’t been going to school lately… but I guess it doesn’t matter.’
After all, attending right now was just for adaptation purposes. They said I could properly attend starting from first year later. And just like Daisy, Sorcia, and Nagase Yohiko, I was allowed to skip classes whenever I wanted.
While I was thinking that, the class president—who used to be the only one in class who would talk to me—had become strangely silent ever since we went to the military base event together. If she had something to say, she would only speak to Sorcia or Daisy. And if our eyes happened to meet, she would quickly look away.
She must have been really upset that I went to the army with her last time.
While all sorts of changes were happening around me, I ended up committing a catastrophic mistake that I absolutely should never have made.
“Uwaaaaaang!”
I had made the demon princess Daisy cry.
The reason was that the white knee-high socks that had been wrapped around her slender legs just seconds ago were now clutched tightly in my hand.