Two shadows cleaved through the night wind, surging along the rugged ridgeline of the northern mountain toward the academy’s main campus.
With a single kick from Silver, the silver wolf in the lead, a massive boulder shattered apart. Chasing after him, Lowell suppressed his heart, which felt ready to burst, and fixed his coldly sunken eyes ahead.
Even as they pierced through the forest at an unreal speed, Lowell’s voice was strangely calm.
“Silver, don’t hide anything. Tell me. What the hell happened to Celestia?”
At Lowell’s question, Silver, running beside him, turned his head.
A human voice, laced with a bizarre, tearing resonance and devoid of his usual arrogance, struck Lowell’s ears.
“It was a surprise attack. My master resisted desperately and faced the evil god Crocell, but in the end, a broken shard of that bastard lodged itself deep within my master’s soul.”
“Crocell?”
Lowell’s brow furrowed deeply.
Crocell.
That name did not belong to a being a mere Act One boss of this game could ever dare approach.
It was an entity that appeared only in the final chapter of the scenario, when every hero on the continent had to join forces just to have a chance at victory.
In the original Act One, the reason Celestia fell was because of Silver, the murderer disguised as a high-ranking spirit at her side.
But now that very murderer was clinging to Lowell, shaving away his own soul in order to save his master, and filling the void was a fragment of the final boss—one whose name was terrifying even to utter.
There were limits to how much a scenario could twist. When the boss of the final chapter was mentioned before Act One had even begun, Lowell felt a terrible confusion wash over him.
It was a game he had played countless times and loved just as much.
But now, everything was moving in a direction completely different from what he knew.
The only things he could trust now were Silver’s scream and the blue system window that had obscured his vision for the first time.
How long had they run?
When they entered the forest on the outskirts of the main campus, traces of destruction that seemed to rip apart the silence blocked Lowell’s path.
“……Stop.”
At Lowell’s command, Silver scraped harshly against the ground and came to a halt.
As if a gigantic meteorite had fallen, the middle of the forest had been hideously caved in.
Ancient trees hundreds of years old had been uprooted and reduced to dust, and in the air vibrated the lingering trace of vile purple mana that stabbed at the nose.
Instinctively, Lowell cast his gaze into the sunken battlefield.
And in the middle of that hellish crater, he found a girl collapsed with her face covered in blood.
“Lumina Felicium…….”
Lowell’s voice sank low.
A main character from the original story, and the heir of a massive continental merchant company who had always flaunted a proud spirit.
Now, she was half-dead in a heap of cold earth.
From Lumina’s crushed shoulder and side, red blood flowed endlessly, soaking the mud, and in her faintly trembling eyes, the flame of life was already guttering out.
Without delay, Lowell threw himself down into the collapsed pit.
Compressed dust and the fishy smell of blood stabbed at his nose.
Seen up close, Lumina’s condition was far more gruesome than expected.
Gone was the almost arrogant confidence she had carried as the heir to a giant merchant company. Now she was merely gasping precariously, like a broken doll.
“Silver, help her. If we leave her like this, she’ll stop breathing.”
At Lowell’s request, Silver growled low.
Finding his master, Celestia, was the most urgent priority, but Silver too read the determination in Lowell’s eyes.
“……Only for a moment, Lowell von Adrian. With my breath, mixed with my master’s mana, I will hold on to the ember of her life.”
Silver approached Lumina’s head and exhaled a silver breath.
As the pure mana of a high-ranking spirit wrapped around Lumina’s crushed shoulder and side, the blood that had been gushing out in surges subsided, and her ragged breathing began to stabilize, if only slightly.
Only then did Lowell withdraw his trembling hands and look down at Lumina’s pale face.
The reason he saved her was complicated.
If she, a main character from the original story, died here, then the future of this world—already twisted beyond recognition—would surely rush toward an irreversible ruin.
But it was not only because of such calculating reasons.
Though he had been possessed into this world and had rolled along the very bottom without even mana, Lowell had not become so coldhearted that he could ignore someone dying before his eyes.
Even if that someone was an exhausting junior who had shown a persistent interest in him.
“She’s past the worst of it for now. The rest is up to you to endure, Lumina.”
Lowell moved Lumina beneath the shade of a tree that was relatively safe.
She probably would not die.
For now, this was all he could do.
He lifted his head again and turned his gaze toward the center of the academy, where purple mana was rippling.
If Lumina, the protagonist, had been reduced to this state, then the current Celestia was no longer a boss on the level Lowell knew.
The pressure of having to stop a friend running rampant with a fragment of the final boss inside her weighed down on Lowell’s shoulders.
“Let’s go, Silver. We really don’t have time anymore.”
“……My master’s presence is growing stronger near the academy’s main building. We must hurry.”
Leaving behind Lumina, who was barely clinging to breath, Lowell began running again.
And before long, Lowell and Silver set foot in the central plaza of Magica Academy’s main campus.
Fortunately, it was late at night, when everyone had returned to the dormitories, so there were no screams from students or people within the school buildings.
But the situation was by no means optimistic.
If mana of this degree was vibrating through the air, the professors on duty or the guard mages should have come running at once, yet not a single presence could be felt.
As if someone had deliberately diverted everyone’s attention, the vast campus was submerged in an unpleasant silence.
“Are we really the only ones in this entire place?”
“……It seems so. Celestia’s presence is headed beyond there, toward the Hall of Glory. It is the place that honors the great knights of the past produced by the academy.”
At the end of Silver’s low, growling gaze stood a sacred hall in the academy’s northeast, where the remains and relics of past knights and heroes were enshrined.
Before Lowell could even wonder why Celestia had headed there of all places, the heavy scrape of armor tore through the silence from the entrance of the White Corridor, the only path leading to the hall.
A massive knight’s silhouette stood with the moonlight at his back.
He stood motionless, like a gatekeeper guarding that place.
The moment Lowell confirmed the glow of eyes shining through the helmet, he felt a cold chill run down his spine.
“……Execution Knight Cassian?”
He was a figure who appeared as the final boss in Chapter Three of the Magica Academy Legacy scenario, the Collapsed Sanctuary arc.
An iron executor and wraith resurrected by Chloe, who had occupied the hall while rebelling against the mage-centered academy system in order to restore the honor of knights.
According to the original story, there should still have been several months before his appearance, yet now he was thoroughly blocking the entrance to the hall Celestia had headed toward.
Act One’s Celestia was holding a fragment of the final boss, and Chapter Three’s final boss was guarding the path before her.
This was no longer merely the order of the game being jumbled. It was clear proof that the stage called the academy itself was collapsing.
Cassian’s enormous shadow stretched long across the cold marble of the White Corridor.
He stood like a stone statue, without the slightest movement, until Lowell and Silver stepped within a certain distance. Then, with the creak of armor, he opened his mouth.
“Halt.”
The red glow leaking through the narrow slit of his helmet swept over Lowell’s entire body.
It was less the gaze of a living human than a weighing of a sinner’s soul in judgment.
Cassian adjusted his grip on his massive greatsword and asked,
“Speak thy name.”
Lowell tightened his grip on the crowbar and met that gaze head-on.
“I am Lowell von Adrian.”
But Cassian’s reaction was different from what Lowell had expected.
The red glow flashed for an instant, and an oppressive aura powerful enough to shake the entire hall bore down on Lowell.
“A lie. That is merely the name held by thy flesh, not the name of thy soul.”
Lowell’s heart dropped.
It was a statement that seemed to pierce straight through his identity as one who had possessed another body.
“Thou who art false. Thy soul, whose very origin is unclear, is not even worthy of facing my blade.”
“……Why is someone who died long ago here?”
When Lowell shouted while suppressing his confusion, Cassian lifted his head and looked into the hall instead of answering.
There, the purple demonic energy emitted by Celestia was swirling like a storm.
“A powerful will summoned me here from my slumber. That noble yet terrible will, which even defies death, bestowed upon us a new mission.”
Cassian raised his greatsword and aimed it at Lowell’s chest.
In his voice was the emptiness unique to a wraith, along with the sense of duty of one who had accepted an inescapable fate.
“Our mission is but one. The complete destruction of the Solarion Empire.”
Lowell’s brow furrowed deeply.
The destruction of the Solarion Empire.
That was a world-ending scenario mentioned only in the final chapter of the original story.
The fragment of the evil god Crocell within Celestia was using Cassian, the boss of Chapter Three, as a medium to hasten this world’s destruction.
Lowell glared at Cassian with eyes gone cold.
He had no intention whatsoever of backing down just because he lacked a true name.
Lowell felt the palm gripping his crowbar grow damp.
He prided himself on having lived with brutal diligence, but the wall before him now was not the kind of thing that could be overcome with diligence.
Objectively speaking, victory was close to impossible.
In his duel against Chloe Jellin, he had been able to shake the board with technique and psychological warfare, but beings like Cassian or Celestia were different.
The vessel that contained their technique—in other words, the bare minimum value of their overwhelming martial force—already surpassed the bounds of humanity by a vast margin.
The only consolation was that Silver, a high-ranking spirit, was at his side, but Silver too was not in a complete state, having been rejected by his master and manifested by shaving away his soul.
Lowell’s reason warned him that this was where he would die.
Just then, as the pressure crushed his lungs until it was hard even to breathe, a rhythmic metallic sound came from behind him.
The sound of cold, solid plate armor fitting together.
Before Lowell could even turn his head, a familiar voice—yet one bearing a weight completely different from usual—cut through the silence and lodged itself in his ear.
“My lord. Must you enter that place?”
There stood Chloe Jellin, armed head to toe in silver-white plate armor.
Between the pieces of armor that gleamed icily in the moonlight, her cool aura rose like mist.
Not long ago, she had declared to Lowell that she would no longer continue their playful game of lord and vassal.
But the words my lord that came from her lips now contained not the slightest hint of the amusement or mockery from before.
It was the truest oath of loyalty offered by a knight who would stake her life to open a path.
Lowell stared into her eyes for a moment, then fixed his gaze on the purple mana storming within the hall.
“……Yes. I think I have to go in.”
At Lowell’s answer, devoid of hesitation, Chloe slowly drew the sword at her waist.
When the blade was fully revealed, the entire White Corridor was swept in a frigid chill from her aura.
“So it shall be.”