Night of the Full Moon (6)
Night of the Full Moon (6)
"How about we put that down for a moment and talk?"
Rina looked at Ian.
A faint smile lingered on her lips. From that expression, Ian confirmed several things.
First, the spore infection had progressed considerably.
Most of Rina Rosewell's hair had already turned blue. Only the deep crimson moonlight made it appear violet.
Second was the smile at the corner of her mouth.
'That isn't natural.'
It was a mask.
And not just the smile. Everything about this woman was an act.
The worst possible kind of heroine.
If someone had asked Ian in his previous life what he thought of a hypocritical heroine, that's exactly how he would have answered.
A heroine should be free of pretense.
Especially when that pretense was playing nice.
A game wasn't reality. Players wanted to be healed through the game. Worn down by social life, or desperately lonely. The role of a game's heroines was to embrace that pain. Even through a screen, if she smiled at you with pure, unclouded warmth, you felt healed.
But if it was all an act?
That was no different from destroying the unspoken contract between player and character.
The worst of the worst.
If he'd been playing this as a game, he'd have thrown his phone across the room.
'... If this were still a game, I would have.'
If every smile was nothing but a mask, the player had no choice but to feel betrayed. His suspicions about Rina Rosewell had been rooted in exactly that.
But his thinking was different now.
Ian shook his head.
Once he'd been isekai'd into this world, it became reality. And reality was harsh. Whether a heroine was a virgin or not, sincere or not — that mattered far less than keeping himself alive and growing stronger.
Even if the Rina Rosewell he knew turned out to be someone else, he was fully prepared to accept it. Whether she wore a mask or was a hypocrite, Ian was too busy taking care of his own survival to care.
... Which was why he could say this with certainty.
"You came to save me. Thank you."
The girl flaunting her overwhelming beauty alongside that artificial smile was not Rina Rosewell.
Then what was she?
'A walking blue mushroom wearing Rina Rosewell's skin.'
The blue mushroom's spores.
What stood before him was essentially a hollow shell, fully infected.
When someone was infected by the spores, the first symptom was a slight increase in aggression.
And once you started listening to those provocative inner whispers, sooner or later, control of your body and brain was completely usurped. At a glance, it resembled the Blood Rock Sect's brainwashing. But that similarity existed only because the sect happened to make heavy use of such psychoactive substances.
Ian spoke.
"I think it's about time you dropped the act."
He had no intention of having an actual conversation with the infected Rina.
A human poisoned by mushroom spores was indistinguishable from something else wearing a human shell.
He was simply assessing the infected Rina's current state.
"What do you mean?"
"There's nobody around. Isn't this the perfect situation to kill me?"
The infected Rina had displayed vicious aggression, and its target was Ian himself. He still found himself recalling that single devastating blow she'd landed during combat training.
"True. There's no one here. But I wasn't trying to kill you, Ian."
Rina smiled brightly.
A smile that curved her eyes with a seductiveness that wasn't quite Rina Rosewell.
Then she brought her hand to the center of her shirt and began unbuttoning it.
"Want to do it once?"
A cloyingly sweet voice.
A proposition with no plausible context whatsoever.
But her beauty framed it as if it were the most natural act in the world.
Ian's gaze didn't waver.
Right now, Rina Rosewell's brain was under the spore's complete control.
This sudden seduction was likely an attempt to absorb bodily fluids for recovery — and to spread the spores as widely as possible at the same time.
"You. You're not Rina Rosewell."
"I-I-I-I don't know what you mean."
Unfortunately for the creature, Ian had no hobby of making love to mushrooms.
"Stop stuttering. It's disgusting how obviously inhuman you sound."
"......."
The infected Rina froze in confusion.
The reason was obvious.
The host could only pull responses stored inside Rina's brain. It had no way to properly handle a question like 'You don't seem human, do you?'
"Come to think of it, aren't mushrooms basically just fungus?"
"......."
Her eyes whirred and clicked as if rifling through her brain.
It was a little creepy.
He wanted to deal with this right now.
Along with that thought came a question.
If this were the uninfected Rina, would she have attacked him?
'No.'
Ian shook his head.
Without question, Rina Rosewell instinctively and unconsciously disliked Ian.
The magic she'd fired into the back of his head — even if it had been the infected Rina, that act had only been possible because she'd harbored those feelings at some point.
Therefore.
'I have no intention of going easy on her.'
The infection may have explosively boosted her combat power, but she'd already fought Sharon. On top of that, the deliberate explosion had inflicted considerable internal injuries.
Besides, mages were traditionally weak in close quarters.
Even more so for a spirit mage who had to summon spirits in combat.
'I've identified her weakness too.'
If you threw an unexpected statement at her, she'd glitch out trying to find a response.
He would exploit that opening.
Ian discreetly tightened his grip on the Lunar Staff.
Then he launched his bluff.
"Rina."
"Yeah? What is it, Ian?"
"I think mold's been growing in your brain. You've gone rotten."
"......?"
Her eyes clicked and whirred again.
'... Now.'
Ian immediately closed the distance.
He'd strengthened only the parts of his body needed to maximize destructive power.
The movement was somewhat slow, but Rina's reaction was slower still.
Her brow furrowed belatedly.
"Too late."
— Crack!
The Lunar Staff slammed directly into Rina's pale forehead.
A long red line carved itself vertically across her skin.
As she toppled, Ian mounted her collapsing body.
"Kasa!"
She desperately shouted a lesser spirit's name.
— Whoosh!
But Ian had already wrapped Lunar around his arm in preparation.
That attack wasn't strong enough to break through a fully charged Lunar.
"Sela..."
Two syllables and up — well.
Once you'd closed the distance, dealing with a spirit mage was simple.
You just had to stop them from opening their mouth.
"Omnipotent Aim..."
Wow. This mushroom's lost its mind.
Ian hurriedly seized her throat.
"...descend upon us, O Lord... guhk!"
What kind of demon was she trying to summon?
Her neck was slender and pale enough to fit in a single hand.
Ian exhaled and steadily applied pressure.
"Guh-guh-guhk—"
A bizarre noise leaked from the infected Rina.
Her complexion grew paler by the second.
But he knew.
Lichten Academy students didn't die that easily.
"Krrrk—"
He wasn't sure if making a heroine produce such sounds was allowed.
"Bear with it."
Ian was someone who'd nearly been killed by a heroine's suicide attempt.
There was no room left in his eyes for distinctions like 'heroine.'
Thrash. Thrash.
The infected Rina's host struggled desperately to survive.
Her arms and legs struck at him, but the blows weren't significant.
— Krrk.
With a death rattle, he felt the strength drain from Rina's body.
She wasn't dead, of course.
"... The primary purification is complete."
Ian observed Rina's now-docile form.
As he studied her slowly, something caught his eye.
"Found it."
The crown of Rina Rosewell's head.
There, a tiny blue mushroom had sprouted.
— Snap.
Ian plucked it off without hesitation.
Then he activated his Dishwashing Authority on Rina once more.
To answer his questions,
he needed Rina to return to her right mind.
◆
Rina Rosewell was wandering inside her own consciousness.
An abyss. Endlessly deep and dark.
She was lost.
One day, a voice had begun speaking in her heart.
At first, it had been sweet.
— You don't always have to be nice.
— Acting kind just makes people treat you like a pushover, you know?
Words that made her think: Is that so? She'd felt strangely comforted, so she'd dismissed them without much thought.
But the harder her life became, the stronger that voice grew.
— See, Rina Rosewell? You always looked after everyone else, but now there's no one looking after you — you can't even bring a packed lunch anymore.
— Wow. Did you see that Ian guy? His grades are exactly one rank above yours. At this point, it feels like he's deliberately screwing with you.
... It had been unconscious. The act of listening to that insidious voice.
Partly because she was so exhausted.
— I could lend you a little power.
The voice had made the offer. Rina had accepted.
Because she needed grades and a scholarship right now.
Sometimes she lost herself.
But she'd thought it was still manageable.
Because the power that thing had given her was so overwhelming.
— See? You listened to me, and now everything's going smoothly.
She'd sunk deeper and deeper.
And before she knew it, she'd found herself here, sunk deep within the abyss of her own mind.
In this place, countless memories of past and present tangled together like knotted thread.
Now, everything her body — stripped of its agency — saw and heard was replayed. Even when she closed her eyes, certain scenes streamed without end.
"... Ian."
His name slipped from her lips unbidden.
Only now, in this place, did Rina Rosewell realize.
The sin she had committed against Ian had never been trivial.