◈ Episode 452. Darkness Falls (1)
The unofficial space-time duel ended.
“Oxidin, is it? I will remember it.”
“We will immediately trace his movements, Cloudy.”
“May you be at peace.”
The scheme the Transcendents had revealed—the Transcendent Alliance.
The heads of the Four Houses moved to track Oxidin, who had supposedly planned the entire board. Since they had cooperated more or less obediently, it was only natural to lift the order expelling guests from the salon.
“Uuuugh, run away.”
Like a child of that age.
Starting with the child of lightning, who flailed about noisily.
All the Transcendents fled from the Salon of Space-Time as if escaping. ‘Still, won’t things be quiet for a while?’ Well, they had no choice.
Everyone saw it, didn’t they?
The rotten shaman, Uraia.
The sight of her being devoured by compatible mana.『High-Rank Black Magic, Endless Nightmare』.
Though it could break the mind, it could not directly harm the target.
But Uraia was a shaman.
Thanks to that, she saw through the nightmare as black magic and attempted to escape it.
In the process. ‘Even if she was unlucky.’ She had come face-to-face with Granfell’s endlessly deep darkness.
I witnessed Uraia vanish, swallowed by compatible mana.
And once again, I realized.
Granfell is merciful, yet not merciful.
Those who cross the standards set by Granfell are dealt with without mercy.
In this case, that standard must have been more sensitive than ever. ‘Compatible mana stems from one’s past and background, after all.’ Uraia.
What she had tried to peer into must have been Granfell’s cruel past and background. Suddenly, I wondered. Was it Granfell’s compatible mana that had swallowed Uraia?
Or was it Granfell himself? ‘At this point, I can’t be certain.’ However, one thing was clear. ‘As expected, is it only me?’ The one who could look into Granfell’s past.
Only I, Lee Hoyeol.
Because Granfell’s cruel history was, at the same time, my own terrible dark history. ‘So I have to take responsibility.’ Isn’t that the pride of an adult who has overcome his stormy adolescence?
The Salon of Space-Time.
Only I and the Witch of the Southern Sea, Mary, remained. ‘She isn’t showing it.’ Mary must be worried inwardly. After all, having stayed at the Magic Tower and acquired knowledge of black magic studies, Mary would know precisely what compatible mana meant.
But there was no need for concern.
I spoke calmly.
“Let us return to the next item on the schedule.”
No matter what storm blows in, I can move faithfully according to my schedule. So Mary, I hope you, too, move as your heart leads you.
“I……”
Of course, I could guess Mary’s destination without hearing it to the end. ‘Ah.’ Then, since she’ll be stopping by, I should ask her to take care of ‘this’ too.
*
“……!”
When she opened her eyes, it was an unfamiliar ceiling.
-Even a cat sleeps less than you, my disciple.
It was familiar nagging.
“Uuugh.”
Jesse clutched her head and sat up.
How long had she been lying there?
It felt as though the muscles had drained from her arms, legs, and entire body.
-What an exaggeration. You never had muscles to begin with, did you?
“Did you really have to say that?”
Jesse pouted and looked around. There was no doubt about it. This was a private room of the Magic Tower’s Healing School. As she tried to revive her last memory, her thoughts reached the space-time duel.
“……
Right. What about the duel?”
The pointed hat twitched.
-To think you remember, after collapsing in such a state.
An inherited class, Archmage.
The vessel of an Archmage contains the knowledge of previous Archmages who had pursued truth across eternal ages. To withstand that vast knowledge, the size of the vessel—her mental strength—had grown to an extreme degree.
Thanks to that, her memories were clear.
“Did it work? The weakness we came up with!”
At Jesse’s words, the pointed hat wriggled.
-If you say “we,” the old fogeys inside the pointed hat will develop bad habits, my disciple. What defeated that bizarre creature was not our knowledge, but purely the knowledge you had acquired, wasn’t it?
That bizarre creature, Urus.
-Even thinking back on it, he was absurd. He took a Meteor Strike and remained fine. Even in Hellfire, he showed no sign of so much as being singed.
The weakness to defeat the Wooden Man, who regenerated infinitely no matter what magic was manifested.
It was not knowledge of the past, but knowledge written in a Magic Tower thesis authored in this era.
Cultivation Methods for Elixir Herbs.
Jesse had not forgotten the characteristics of Maslova.
The elixir specified in the research text.
Beyond simply not forgetting, she had applied it.
“So, what was the result!”
The pointed hat shook as if shaking its head.
-Regrettably, I do not know the ending either. However, at the very least, you did not lose, my disciple. It seems the rematch that had originally been scheduled was canceled.
“The rematch was canceled?”
-Yes, something must have happened to that bizarre creature.
“……
Hmm.”
Maybe so.
But since she did not know the result, something felt unresolved.
Right, let’s check.
The moment Jesse reached for the smartphone in her subspace.
Suddenly, a voice came from beyond the private room door.
“Cle, could you look after the patient for a moment?”……
Cle?
Wait, if it’s Cle?
Could it be Cle Odia, the author of Cultivation Methods for Elixir Herbs?
“Sure.”
Cle approached with a gentle voice. The one surprised by the unexpected meeting was not Jesse, but Cle. Seeing Jesse sitting up, Cle jumped in place.
“Wh-when did you wake up? More importantly, you still need to rest……!”
The Magic Tower did not neglect the pursuit of truth, nor the pursuit of the strange.
Since it faithfully followed the flow of the new era.
News of the space-time duel had also reached the Magic Tower.
Cle laid Jesse back down and continued speaking.
“You’re Jesse Heinness, aren’t you? I watched you participate in the duel. You were truly amazing! It feels like only yesterday you were an apprentice mage, and now you’ve reached a level that even senior mages admire.”
Cle answered hurriedly.
“No! I still have a long way to go!”
“How humble.”
“Really! More importantly, it was a huge help!”
“……
Pardon? I was?”
Could she be mistaken, thinking I had tended to her injuries? If so, the fellow Healing School mage who had been looking after Jesse until just now was in a rather pitiful position.
But it was not a misunderstanding.
“No! Not that. The book you wrote, Skilled Mage Cle Odia—Cultivation Methods for Elixir Herbs—was a huge help in the duel! Truly!”
“Y-yes, yes, yes?!”
Cle was genuinely surprised.
Cultivation Methods for Elixir Herbs.
A book so dry from the title alone.
That she had wondered whether anyone would even open it.
Even Lady Jibril had said as much, hadn’t she?
-“There are times when Chief Lee’s name has no power, Miss Cle. Look at this. It’s practically brand-new, isn’t it? Of course, all recently published magic texts have gone through Chief Lee’s review, but this is too much. Let’s put it somewhere more visible……”
The value of research is not judged by how much attention it receives.
Because Senior Bellier had told her that.
Cle had not been hurt.
Rather, Jibril had been the one to fume, as though Cle’s own research had been buried.
And yet, someone had read that Cultivation Methods for Elixir Herbs.
“You really, really read my book?”
Cle asked with sparkling eyes.
“Yes! To be exact, page 1,324……”
“That would definitely be the section on Maslova, right?”
“That’s right! The information about Maslova’s aphids!”
The pointed hat looked cynically at the two mages making a fuss.
Mages.
A race whose innate nature made it impossible for them to get along closely with one another.
-Yes. Try to get along while you can.
Surely, it would not be long before their relationship soured.
-I am not saying this because I have no friends.
Nor was it because he was jealous.
The moment the pointed hat added this to his disciple, lest she misunderstand.
Cle hurried off somewhere and brought back a sealed letter.
“Ah, right. I was asked to deliver this once Miss Jesse woke up.”
“To me? By whom?”
Could it be the Twilight Magic Clan member and Witch of the Southern Sea.
Lady Mary?
That was what Jesse thought as she received the letter.
“Lady Mary delivered it……”
As expected, it was Lady Mary.
“She said it was definitely a message from Chief Lee.”……
Riiip.
At the same time Cle’s words fell.
Jesse tore off the wax seal of the letter.
And began to read Hoyeol’s handwriting within.
Slowly, exclamation marks appeared in Jesse’s pupils.──────Congratulations on entering the Salon of Space-Time.──────The lines began with a congratulation that carried no emotion whatsoever.──────However, Jesse Heinness, if asked whether you truly possess the complete rank of a Transcendent, I would answer no. Had I been able to, I would have cast a vote against your entry into the Salon of Space-Time.──────When Jesse read the above paragraph, the pointed hat got angry on her behalf.
Even if he was Chief Lee.
He had gone too far in crushing someone else’s beloved disciple’s spirit.
“…….”
However, just as she had never skimmed even a single page of a book.
Jesse did not skim Hoyeol’s letter either.──────However, having observed the course of the space-time duel between you and Urus, your manifestation power can already be considered to have reached the ranks of the Transcendents. Therefore, I, too, cast my vote in favor of your entry into the Salon of Space-Time.──────Of course, as exacting as his standards were.──────P.S. Even so, it would be best not to go near high society.──────Chief Lee’s added words were also far from ordinary.
“I will keep your advice to stay away from high society in mind!”
Jesse folded the letter and carefully stored it in her subspace. Then she took out her smartphone. From Hoyeol’s letter, she had gained at least a rough idea of how the duel with Urus had turned out. ‘Still, I want to see it with my own eyes.’ How much I’ve grown.
However, Jesse could not check her own battle.
Because from the very first screen, an unbelievable article had appeared.[Shining Guild Executive, ‘Dmitri Malcolm,’ Dead]
The vitality vanished from Jesse’s eyes.
“……
Dmitri?”
*
After the emergency update.
The evil eyes that surged into the sky from collapse rifts. The greatest change was the status abnormality those evil eyes caused, [Corruption].
A thick middle finger rose toward the evil eye in the night sky.
“Eat this.”
This is just fucking disgusting.
“You sons of bitches.”
Corruption.
Unlike fear, there was no information whatsoever revealed about corruption. A new status abnormality that even the AAU did not know about. Even while hunting monsters unleashed into reality, players could not shake off their unease.
“Senior Dmitri, you really don’t know anything?”
Shining.
Executive Dmitri had returned from the Arcana Continent to reality. It was because he could not ignore his homeland, which had been reduced to a mess. And yet, his own guild members were scraping at his nerves first.
Bang.
Dmitri kicked aside debris and answered.
“I said I don’t know, didn’t I? In the first place, where would there even be a player close to Lee Hoyeol? I’m not the weird one. To be blunt, the Holy War Alliance probably isn’t that different from me.”
The lofty Lord Lee Hoyeol.
Not only among the giant alliances.
Even among the great and mighty Arcanans, there likely wasn’t anyone who could boast of a friendship with Lee Hoyeol. To put it bluntly, no one even knew where he was or what he was doing right now, did they?
“Really?”
Their persistent response made his anger boil. ‘At this rate, I’ll even fall behind Camilla.’ Leaving Rox aside.
The reason he had returned to reality instead of Camilla?
It was simple.
Because Camilla was burning with a motivation she rarely showed.
-“I’m going to chase after her. After Jesse.”
There must have been a change of heart while she supported Jesse, who had fainted after the space-time duel. While Dmitri had readily yielded the opportunity to Camilla, he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable inside.
“……
Shit.”
He had barely managed not to show it.
“And now even you guys are doing this to me?”
Now, his far-younger juniors were scraping at his temper.
Why were they asking about Lee Hoyeol?
Wasn’t it strange to think they were close in the first place?
It was already a matter of the fairly distant past. ‘When I think of that article even now……!’ The article about Lee Hoyeol flatly rejecting the courtship of Baek Iseol, the master of the Myth Guild. Right beside it, the broadcasting station bastards had run an article about his own failed proposal, and their atrocity was still vivid in his mind. ‘I really thought I’d die of embarrassment.’ Dmitri forced himself to calm down.
“Phew, fine. What would you know?”
Let’s just clean this up quickly and return.
Dmitri brushed off the guild members’ complaints.
And hunted the monsters released from the collapse rift.
It was then.
His vision flickered.[A demon appears.]
“!”……
A demon?
More important than that was the appearance message.
The fact that an appearance message had been displayed meant it was undoubtedly a powerful foe.
“Everyone, be on guard!”
Dmitri immediately took a combat stance.
But something was strange.
No matter how sharply he heightened his senses, there was not even a glimpse of the demon.
A voice came from behind him.
“Then Senior Dmitri, there wasn’t anything strange?”
“Strange? What kind of bullshit is that all of a sudden……”
“No, I mean Lee Hoyeol.”……
Still that?
A demon had appeared, yet they still couldn’t move on from talk about Lee Hoyeol.
Which bastard still hadn’t come to his senses?
As an executive of Shining, he needed to scold them harshly.
The moment Dmitri turned around.
“……!”
Only then did Dmitri realize it.
The status abnormality, [Corruption].
The effect of the new status abnormality.
It was not possession.
It was, quite literally, perfect “corruption.”
“Y-you!!”
Dmitri stammered.
The guild member he faced no longer had a human form.
To the point that he could never return to being human again.
He had changed into an hideous form.
He was unmistakably a demon.
“I’ve been asking you since earlier if you know anything about Lee Hoyeol, because they want to know.”
Swaaaak.
An attack came flying.
Drops of blood scattered before Dmitri’s eyes.
A new message flickered.[The half-blood demon, ‘Demon of Curiosity,’ craves the correct answer.]
“……!”