37. Soul Orb (1)
By the time the match reached its latter half, each and every battle taking place had become quite interesting.
Quite a few of the major championship candidates had already been eliminated, but that was only because boys and girls rising as new stars were putting on uniquely outstanding performances.
—Ah~ player Edelia has been eliminated. Charging in after abandoning cover at the end was a bold decision, but luck wasn’t on her side. To think there was a venom trap right there of all places!
One, then two.
Each time a player was eliminated, regretful sighs burst out from all around, while somewhere else cheers erupted.
The announcer’s eyes darted rapidly as he checked each and every battle taking place on the stage, skillfully commentating on multiple scenes at the same time.
He would explain this location, then that location, then switch and relay events from somewhere else.
But very occasionally, even the announcer focused on just one single battle.
That happened when it involved especially noteworthy players in whom the overwhelming majority of the audience had taken interest.
—A powerful championship candidate, player Zeliel! She has encountered player Berunkal and has begun fighting!
To be honest, not many people knew the name Berunkal.
But Zeliel’s reputation was famous on a global level, and plenty of people would naturally be interested, so the announcer hurriedly focused his attention there.
It was unfortunate that other players’ battles would be neglected, but as an announcer, wasn’t it inevitable to commentate in the direction the audience wanted?
—The battle has begun immediately! Opponent player Berunkal—though his name may not be widely known, the overwhelming pressure he gives off makes it seem player Zeliel cannot afford to take him lightly!
The announcer deliberately hyped up the opposing player as well, trying to create the feeling of an evenly matched battle, but most people expected Zeliel to win.
Even so, the psychology of the audience was simple.
Knowing the likely outcome didn’t change the fact that they wanted to see the skill of Zeliel, who had become a high elf at such a young age.
What brilliant magic would she display as she crushed this unknown opponent player?
With those expectations,
the battle began.
But—
—Ah…… one moment, it seems a slight issue has arisen during the match…….
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Isn’t that really burning?”
“Something’s weird here……”
“Did the Stella Dome glitch or something?”
As the terrain itself began to burn away under Berunkal’s dark crimson flames, the audience started to murmur.
And once it became clear that Zeliel’s skin was actually being charred black by the magic that struck her, the unease only intensified.
The stage of Magic Survival was a virtually created space.
It should have been a place where one could never truly take damage from magic, so why was such an incomprehensible phenomenon happening?
“What? What’s wrong?”
“I’m not really sure……”
Of course, there were also ordinary civilians who didn’t know much about magic and couldn’t tell what exactly was wrong.
“There are objects in the stage that the players’ magic isn’t supposed to be able to destroy. Things like the falling shower, or fixed piles of building debris.”
“Yeah. So what?”
“That player called Berunkal is burning all of those things away while attacking player Zeliel. He’s not making it obvious…… but judging by how she looks, it seems she’s actually getting injured.”
“Right. And…… those black flames look like they’re carrying dark power.”
“What……? Seriously?”
But among the audience were also many professional mages with specialized knowledge.
They noticed that the match was unfolding abnormally, and as they spread that fact to the people around them, talk began to spread like wildfire that perhaps a dark mage had intruded into the survival match.
—Ah, dear audience, please remain calm. It seems there has been a minor accident, but Stella will resolve everything……
At one point, the announcer even received a signal telling him to turn the monitor away, but he rejected it flatly.
He had been an announcer for decades, and he knew this well.
When controversy erupted like this, turning the screen away only made things worse.
—For now, let us continue to observe the situation gradually….
And just as the announcer was fumbling to calm the atmosphere,
at last, Zeliel’s entire body was engulfed in flames from Berunkal’s magic, and she collapsed.
—Ah……
The situation was spiraling out of control.
Around that time, in Flame’s hospital room.
Watching the same scene, Hong Biyeon suddenly said:
“The Root of Iskaram.”
“Eh……?”
It was such a random remark that Anella made a blank expression, and Flame added an explanation from the side.
“That’s the source of that magic. It’s like a dark mage bloodline. It lets them handle special magic.”
“Ah, right…….”
Since Anella was a dark mage too, there was no way she wouldn’t know.
‘Iskaram’ was one of the worst dark mages, possessing some of the greatest power.
‘That’s incredible…….’
Even though that dark mage looked to be much younger than herself, he could wield such overwhelmingly tyrannical power.
Since Anella could never do something like that, she almost felt a flicker of envy—
but quickly steadied herself.
‘I’m not envious of dark mage power anymore.’
While Anella was shaking her head back and forth, Flame stared at the monitor with a grim expression.
Berunkal, who was using Iskaram’s magic, would surely be aware that he was exposing himself to tens of thousands of spectators.
But…… he would probably enjoy that all the more.
In a situation where all eyes were focused on him, by tormenting and killing a being who was as good as an idol to mages, he would feel pleasure.
Even if he were to die immediately after that, as long as he could leave a huge scar in the world of magic, nothing else would matter to him.
The announcer had gone completely silent by then.
On the screen, Zeliel had painfully crawled out from the body of her summon Elpion, but her body was covered in severe burns and she looked utterly incapable of fighting, while Berunkal, in contrast, looked perfectly fine.
It made Flame’s head spin.
In the original romance fantasy, Zeliel was undeniably a villainess.
Hong Biyeon and Zeliel, who stood in positions completely opposite from Eizel, had each tormented the protagonist in various ways, but Zeliel’s methods in particular had been so vicious that she was impossible to forget.
And so Flame hesitated.
‘Is it really okay if Zeliel dies?’
Zeliel was a figure who exerted immense influence on this world.
Villain or not, she was influential enough to turn an entire city upside down with a single word.
If someone like that suddenly vanished from the world because of an unforeseen variable?
Wouldn’t that…… instead mean taking one more step more quickly toward the ‘end of the world’ that was coming in the future?
While all sorts of confusion tangled together—
Krrroooom……!!
A great bolt of lightning fell inside the screen, and at the same time, Baek Yuseol appeared.
He had chosen to save Zeliel.
—Ah, um…… player Zeliel has been eliminated…….
Baek Yuseol safely eliminated her, and when the battle began immediately afterward, Flame held her breath and watched.
In the end, the only way to prevent further damage to the other players was to deal with the dark mage directly on the spot.
……And yet, separate from how serious the situation was—
“Yeah! Baek Yuseol! Kill him!”
“Nice! Show him what’s what!”
Cheers erupted from the spectator stands.
After all, Baek Yuseol had not only rescued Zeliel in a dramatic moment, he was also the very same boy who had gone around single-handedly eliminating countless players with overwhelming combat power, so perhaps it was only natural.
‘What is this going to turn into……’
Even in the original romance fantasy, there had once been a huge uproar at Stella because of the incident where a dark mage infiltrated it.
That had happened in the story after the interschool competition, when Professor Meizen Tiren underwent dark magic corruption.
But Meizen Tiren had already been taken care of by Baek Yuseol a long time ago, and Flame had thought maybe things would pass quietly after that, only for—
“Huh?”
Then, in the middle of that—
a strange aura began to radiate from Baek Yuseol.
It was familiar, yet an aura that absolutely should not come from a human.
‘This is…… divine beast mana?’
“What? Is something wrong?”
Apparently Hong Biyeon could not sense it at all, because unless one’s senses were especially sharp like Flame’s, it probably wasn’t noticeable.
“…No. It’s nothing.”
Flame shook her head.
She was only a little surprised because she had never imagined Baek Yuseol could even handle the power of a divine beast.
But since he was a regressor, she figured nothing he did would be all that strange.
‘……Then why do I feel so uneasy?’
In Stella Dome Stage, VIP Room A.
Kkotseorin, who had been watching the tournament in a space completely cut off from the outside, frowned when she saw the dark mage reveal himself.
Was it because she was displeased that a dark mage had suddenly intruded into Magic Survival?
Of course, that was part of it.
She especially hated dark mages as a species.
But apart from that, she was also disappointed that the dark mage’s identity was not the one she had wanted.
“……Ah?”
Then—
when she saw the face of the boy fighting Berunkal, Kkotseorin’s expression went blank for a moment.
It was a familiar face.
How could she not know him?
That student was none other than the mysterious boy who had saved the life of the spirit Iphanel.
“Is something the matter?”
Oranha asked, but Kkotseorin did not answer.
Instead, she stared at Baek Yuseol’s face as though she meant to tear it apart with her eyes.
There was no mistake.
He really was the boy she had met in Iphanel’s garden that day.
‘To think he was a student of Stella……’
Even though he had been so close, she had not been able to meet him.
It left her feeling strangely empty, but at the same time relieved.
Once the tournament ended, she would be able to meet him.
Perhaps……
she might even ask him how Iphanel was doing now, after having fallen asleep to recover her energy.
But apart from that, because there was still no sign at all of the Spirit Killer, Kkotseorin began to feel an odd unease.
‘She’s growing anxious.’
Oranha smiled faintly to himself.
With the Spirit Killer still not revealing himself, Kkotseorin touched near her lips.
Even though the mask prevented her from touching them properly, the fact that she was doing it without noticing her own habit meant she was very anxious.
Judging by the way she kept glancing at Oranha, she looked as though she wanted to ask him something, but perhaps she had decided to wait a little longer, because she turned her eyes back to the screen.
Kkotseorin trusted Oranha quite deeply.
If she didn’t, there was no way she could have entrusted him with most of the king’s duties.
Since Oranha himself had mentioned the Spirit Killer, Kkotseorin chose to believe him and wait, and simply watched the match in silence.
“Your Majesty. Stella’s mages are moving about in great haste. It seems this is a real situation, after all.”
“That dark power is not fake.”
It was said that some ordinary spectators, even after seeing the dark mage who had intruded into Magic Survival, still thought perhaps it might be some kind of Event.
How blessed they were, not to be able to feel that vile, disgusting dark power.
Kkotseorin, for her part, felt so miserable that she could have torn off her own nose that very instant.
“But since they still can’t simply barge into the arena right away, I suppose the rumors are true—that Stella’s principal cannot properly control his own magic.”
Kkotseorin did not answer those words, but she found herself thinking that it could not be helped.
The essence of Eltman Eltwin’s spatial magic had been derived from someone else’s.
And now that he had completely severed ties with the master who had taught him that magic, even if he discovered flaws in his own spellwork, he had no way of fixing them.
Spatial equations were impossible for a human brain to comprehend, and Eltman Eltwin’s magic had spent his entire life standing still in place, unable to move forward.
Kkotseorin silently took in every screen of the stage at once.
Now that they knew Berunkal was a dark mage, who was to say there weren’t others?
Unless they revealed dark power immediately, no matter how keen Kkotseorin was, she had no way of sensing them while they used special dark-sealing arts—but the moment even the slightest bit of dark power leaked out, she would notice at once.
Even so, the place her gaze kept returning to most of all was naturally the battle between Berunkal and Baek Yuseol.
Berunkal’s unusual dark mage magic was not all that remarkable to her, because she had already seen the original version long ago.
Baek Yuseol, on the other hand, was extremely unusual.
“Isn’t he interesting? That student called Baek Yuseol.”
“…Yes. He is truly unusual and special.”
She knew his name very well, having heard it countless times.
At the young age of just seventeen, he had already created two magics great enough to carve a mark into history.
And on top of that, he could control Blink, was it?
To Kkotseorin, who accepted it as common sense that controlling Blink was impossible by ordinary magic, it was simply astonishing.
“……However, Your Majesty. Have you never considered this?”
“Yes……?”
“If Baek Yuseol were not an ordinary teenage student…… wouldn’t all of those achievements feel rather plausible?”
“What…… exactly are you talking about?”
“At least, that is what I believe. There have been many mages in history who created great spells like those.”
Firendart had created pure-blood magic at the age of thirty-nine.
Arazest had developed reverse casting playback at fifty-four, establishing magical stability at one hundred percent.
Quintum, at forty, had perfectly condensed a crystallized form of mana elements.
Baek Yuseol’s achievements were similar to theirs.
It was just that his age made them stand out all the more.
“It is his age that is the problem. Baek Yuseol…… is disguising his age.”
“……What are you suddenly talking about?”
To Kkotseorin, the remark was absurdly abrupt.
And yet Oranha went on, looking at her with eyes full of certainty.
“Your Majesty also knows very well why I would say such a thing, do you not?”
“That……”
What in the world is that supposed to mean?
She had been about to ask that.
But at that moment—
suddenly, from somewhere,
she felt an extremely powerful…… divine beast aura.
Kkotseorin shot to her feet before she realized it.
That familiar aura, more familiar even than memory, unbearably dear to her……
was none other than that of her longtime friend, the spirit Iphanel.
And that divine beast mana was coming from not anyone else, but the student named Baek Yuseol.
‘How……?’
She knew he had saved Iphanel.
But…… even so, for him to carry Iphanel’s aura could not be explained by common sense.
For an ordinary human to carry that much of such power, it would be absolutely impossible ‘unless he had killed a spirit and consumed its heart.’
But hadn’t Iphanel herself said it?
That this boy had definitely saved her.
‘Ah……’
Watching Kkotseorin’s thoughts become more and more tangled, Oranha rose from his seat and gently placed his hands on both her shoulders.
“Your Majesty. I am not bringing this up lightly. I…… have definitive evidence.”
“……Evidence?”
“Yes. I must apologize for keeping it from you, but…… I had Baek Yuseol carry the ‘Soul Orb.’ And today makes exactly one month.”
“Ah……”
In that case, through the Soul Orb, they could determine whether Baek Yuseol’s soul had been corrupted.
If he had truly killed a spirit, then a pitch-black pearl would reveal itself before the world.
Kkotseorin did not want to believe it, but at this point she had no choice but to listen to Oranha.
She shut her eyes tightly and nodded.
“……Very well. Please call Student Baek Yuseol aside quietly.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Indeed, what a merciful queen.
Even now, she was still thinking of calling him aside in private to confirm the truth.
Thinking that, Oranha had no intention whatsoever of obeying her wish.
He truly was sorry to her for that—
but Oranha intended to expose Baek Yuseol’s identity to the whole world.
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