Inter-Class Battle (8)
The Celestial Realm was no different from any other day. Everyone bustled about, peering into the finely partitioned worlds and tallying gains against losses — the same old routine.
"Nngh..."
Operator 14.
Angel stretched, craning their neck out long and slow. Was there even any point to this? They stared blankly at the Celestial Realm where they worked. Black flames clung to the buildings as they burned, condensed against the stone. Holes gnawed through floor and ceiling by those same dark fires — a Celestial Realm that had frozen in place from some moment onward.
"Haa..."
Ever since that day, they had been stuck. Every operator here was smiling brightly, diligently extracting Causality — but the ones doing this work knew better than anyone. It might take hundreds of thousands of years. Hundreds of billions, even, before it was possible. Whether they had forgotten that fact or were simply ignoring it, they kept diligently working all the same.
Angel gazed gloomily down at the Celestial Realm — then a man appeared on the screen, and their face lit up as they rummaged for the placard resting on their knees.
Jeong Jojun.
A player who had been nothing more than a participant in one tiny little world. A man who, instead of the guns and abilities conveniently supplied to clear that world, had slain the Demon King with nothing but a sword — no skills at all. He had been so exceptional it brought back memories of the old days, when they used to snatch warriors from behind. Watching him was a pleasure.
"Player! You got this!"
GO! JEONG JOJUN, STRONGEST SWORDSMAN!
Angel waved the placard and shouted. The surrounding operators frowned at the noise and glanced over, but when Angel caught their eyes and glared right back, they quietly looked down and returned to their work.
"Aaaah! That's our Player! The best!"
On the screen, Jojun climbed into the air on Spirit Step and, with impossible mana control, seized a current of electricity and slammed it down into the back line. Angel watched in awe. The higher-ups hadn't brought him here for nothing. That Player had talent enough to save even the world Mubaek had ruined.
What the hell did that crazy bastard even do?
Mubaek surfaced naturally in Angel's mind, and their face crumpled. Back when Angel had scattered the prototype Levatein and gotten thoroughly chewed out by the higher-ups, Mubaek had called the Player aside separately and told him a fragment of the truth — and his own purpose. And during that conversation, something Mubaek had said to the Player still snagged.
"Fuck."
No matter how they thought about it, no answer came. Reading the schemes of that deranged bastard was beyond even a veteran like Angel.
"Ah, whatever. How bad could it be."
If things really went south, Angel could just intervene like before and dump a mountain of support on him. Operator 1101 from Management would shriek about Causality, but so what? On the scale of hundreds of billions of years, that Causality was a speck of dust.
"Huum..."
Angel wiped the thought away, grinning, and looked back at Jeong Jojun. Watching him flee from the old man, return to campus, and fire off a text, Angel started preparing to descend to World 9999. There was still a decent stretch of time until the next Inter-Class Battle, so they figured they'd ask Jojun to grab a few things from the food stalls in the shopping district, and smiled.
But then.
SKREEEEEEEE—
A bone-chilling sound of glass being scraped filled the screen.
Zzzt—
Every landscape visible on the display tore and warped. And that warping didn't stop at the screen. It bled faintly through into the Celestial Realm itself. The scenery stitched itself back together. The sound faded. And as if it had been waiting, black fire erupted — those flames, bursting from midair, tearing the campus apart.
"Fuuu...ck."
Angel muttered a curse, stunned. They wanted to deny the impossible sight before them. They couldn't. How could they fail to recognize it, when the same pitch-black flames were writhing across the ceiling right above their head?
"Wh... what?!"
A scream erupted from Management next door. They'd seen it too. It was unbelievable, but Angel made the call fast. There was no time. Angel sprinted like a mad thing toward the stairs that led to the higher-ups. They wanted nothing more than to descend to the world where the Player was — but going down now wouldn't help. They would die too.
Crunch.
Angel bit their lip, filling their mouth with the iron taste of blood, and understood. This was the price that insane bastard Mubaek had talked about.
"Crazy son of a bitch... crazy son of a bitch...!"
Spitting curses, Angel climbed the stairs even faster. Now that it had come to this, the salvation of that world had already left the Player's hands. The only option was for the higher-ups to fix it somehow.
"...my lord!"
Angel shouted, kneeling before someone.
"Mm...."
A palace of half-collapsed pillars and withered plants tangled together. In a palace veiled in pitch-black darkness, a massive man sat upon a glittering throne that did not belong there at all. He idly moved the fingers draped over the armrest.
Tock. Tock.
Slowly tapping the throne with his fingers, he rested his other arm against his chin, as if lost in thought. Grotesquely, the flesh of those fingers had sloughed away, discolored a deep purple.
"Is this the right one?"
A deep, low voice resonated, and something answered from the pond beside him.
Two fates.
Either the star finds its place as it goes further, or the tree grows.
"Mm.... I see."
Tock. Tock.
The man flicked his purple fingers against the throne once more.
"...my lord! A decision!"
Angel shouted again.
"Mm...."
The man lifted his head slightly and looked into the air. A cosmos packed with pitch-black darkness. Gazing at the tangled stars.
"Kh...! Khkh!"
He let out a burst of mad laughter, and then—
"Yes. We cannot withdraw."
He spoke savagely, and lifted a hand. At that signal, a figure sprang out from behind the throne as if it had been waiting.
"Am I really going?"
The voice was light and bouncy, nothing like the man's deep rumble. Angel lifted their bowed head.
"Ah... huh?"
"Yes. Go."
"Okaaay. Got it~"
Shrouded in shadow, the figure's features were unclear — but the silhouette alone was enough for Angel to know who it was. A slender build. A sword at the hip. The one who had been the model for the Swift Swordsman class the Player had originally intended to change into after this scenario ended.
"Been a while since I went down."
The way he grabbed the sword at his hip, voice bright with pleasure, was uncannily similar to the habit Jeong Jojun always had.
Ah.
BOOM—!
One side of the campus erupted, vomiting black flame. The writhing black fire gnawed bizarrely at the air itself, spreading its territory.
"What the hell is that..."
My Gigan-enhanced senses screamed at me to run, now — but I could only stare blankly at those flames. Because there, in the center of the bursting black fire, floating serenely wreathed in pitch-black flame, was a Cheonghwa I had never seen before.
Her eyes were filled with nothing but solid black, no whites at all, and her face was stripped of emotion to a degree that made my skin crawl.
Ah...
And above Cheonghwa's head, as she kept murmuring a single word over and over, seven pitch-black horns had sprouted.
"What's going on...?!"
I wasn't the only one who'd noticed the anomaly. Everyone around me murmured and looked in the same direction.
"What is that?!"
"Ability overload?"
The voices around me grew louder. And with them, my Gigan screamed even harder. Run. Run right now.
"Urgh?!"
Then, suddenly, one of the people looking at Cheonghwa retched something up. They clapped a hand over their mouth, but the liquid that hit the ground a moment later was vivid red blood.
"Blegh!"
Starting with that person, everyone who had looked at Cheonghwa — everyone except me — hung their heads, vomited blood, and collapsed to the floor.
"Hah... hah...!"
My brain spun at this sudden insanity, and the anxiety stabbing through my whole body stacked on top of it until I was panting without meaning to. Calm down, Jeong Jojun. Calm down. My legs were shaking on their own, but I looked at Cheonghwa and shouted.
"Cheonghwa!"
At my voice, she tilted her head slightly and looked at me. The moment those pitch-black eyes turned my way, the instinct driving into my skin grew even more certain — but I shouted even harder, desperate.
"Cheonghwa!"
"Ah."
A sound from those small pursed lips, aimed at me. Cheonghwa's voice this time wasn't the limp, broken thing from before. It was a voice that clearly recognized me.
"Yes! Cheonghwa! It's me, Jeong Jojun!"
With trembling hands I slapped my own chest, showing her who I was. That's right. She's not the kind of kid who'd end up like this. She looked fierce on the outside, but inside she was endlessly warm and kind. Cheonghwa was—
"Jo... jun..."
Zzzt.
#$!@#
Her words split apart, and an incomprehensible eldritch tongue bored into my ears.
"Nngh!"
I clapped my hands over my ears, but even that brief exposure was enough — blood streamed from them, soaking my palms.
Eeeeeee—!
Tinnitus screamed in my ears, ringing a final alarm. Run. Shut up. I clenched the hilt of my sword and ignored my senses. Even if I ran and saved myself, everyone around me — no, everyone on this campus — would have no way of stopping that.
I drew Levatein from my inventory. I was going to bring Cheonghwa back to her senses, one way or another. If words wouldn't do it, I'd beat her back to sanity.
The moment I drew Levatein, Cheonghwa's gaze drifted toward my sword. And then.
#!#$#
That grotesque language bored into my ears once more, and — whoosh. Every last scrap of black flame in the area was sucked into Cheonghwa.
Ah.
In less than a second. Watching what unfolded in that sliver of time, a flood of thoughts rose strangely in my mind, and I understood what was coming. That attack would kill me. Not just me — everyone at this academy would die.
No. Fuck no. Not happening.
I gripped Levatein and invoked the power of Regeneration.
A pulse.
The black flame Cheonghwa had swallowed was about to be expelled from her body and unleashed — and in that instant, my vision was overlaid with crimson fire.
Choose the protagonist of the Regeneration that shall follow the Great Destruction.
Letters writhed into being from the distorting flames, and I shouted.
Regeneration could summon anything. That much was certain. So if I called forth the previous Otherworld, the one that had been sealed away... everyone on this campus would get hurt, no question — but the people in Buildings B and C would be safe.
A whisper of motion. The crimson flames vanished, and a rose-red world draped itself over my vision — the Otherworld settling in. And right behind it, the black fire wrapped around my body.