40. The Seventh Main Tower (4)
Flame had read the original romance fantasy three times over, so she remembered the major incidents that occurred in the Aether World quite clearly.
Naturally, she also knew what happened in the Seventh Main Tower, but it had been impossible for her to prepare the exact method of clearing it in detail.
Perhaps because the genre had been romance fantasy, most battle scenes were either skipped almost entirely or brushed over briefly, and in most cases the scenes were filled out with the characters’ emotional descriptions instead.
If Baek Yuseol had been here, he could have proposed a more effective strategy, but since he was absent at the moment, Flame had prepared as thoroughly as possible with only the memories and knowledge she possessed.
Most of the bizarre monsters that appear in the Seventh Main Tower are dark-element creatures.
Her Radiance-type magic would work very effectively against them, but there was a decisive difference between that and the Divine-type power used by true angels or priests of the Holy Church.
Since her current level of magic was still too low for her to comprehend the Divine, bringing Sacred Symbols and holy water as a substitute had probably been a very good decision.
- Kkikki kkikki!
- Kkekekeke!
Ghosts floating through the air with grotesque noises, and shadows seeping in from all sides.
Forgetting even the fact that Jeremy was following behind them, Flame’s group sprinted through the corridor at full speed to avoid them.
It was a good thing I brought the Symbols after all.
If one were to compare the Sacred Symbol to something in reality, it might be like a cross necklace in a church, or prayer beads in Buddhism.
But unlike in reality, these actually held divine power.
They were items that had not really been mentioned in the original romance fantasy, but just as she had expected, they proved extremely effective at holding back the ghosts of the Seventh Main Tower.
Flash!
Whenever the ring-shaped Symbol flashed with light, the approaching shadows and ghosts faltered and withdrew.
But because it was not an especially expensive Symbol, there was a limit to how many times it could be used.
If I keep firing them off like this, they’ll run out before long…
She had spent her own money to bring as many Symbols and as much holy water as possible, but even that was not enough.
“Ugh!”
When Anella, who had been staggering while casting magic, fell backward, Flame hurriedly threw a Symbol onto her body.
Pajijik!
White sparks burst out, and the ghosts approaching Anella recoiled.
“Get it together! What are you doing?!”
“S-sorry……”
Anella pressed her pale lips together tightly.
Specializing in digging into people’s traumas and bewitching them had been her area of expertise, but she had almost no experience with direct combat like this, so her mind had gone completely blank.
Even so, I’m over forty years old…
No matter how lacking in combat experience she was, it was still pathetic that she could do nothing but hold back children who were only seventeen at most.
A deep sense of self-loathing surged over her like a wave, but she had no time to sink into it.
“There’s a laboratory beside us! Let’s take shelter in there for now!”
“Anella! Hurry!”
“Mm… ah!”
Flame practically lifted Anella up with a rough grip and threw her into the lab.
Then she thrust one Symbol against her chest.
“You. Hold on to this. If you lose it, I’ll kill you.”
“…Thank you.”
Even if her words were rough, the fact that Flame had handed over one of the precious Symbols whole, when only a few remained, made Anella feel both gratitude and guilt at once.
Being dead weight was a truly miserable feeling.
“How’s it looking outside?”
Flame approached Eizel, who was holding them off while sealing the door leading back to the corridor with a magic circle drawn in holy water, and asked.
Eizel answered with a hardened expression.
“It’s completely packed with ghosts. I had no idea there were this many ghosts in Stella.”
“This is bad… Other students have probably been dragged into the Seventh Main Tower by now too.”
Was it really this bad in the original romance fantasy too?
She did not know.
There had been no detailed explanation like that.
The main point had simply been that Eizel was dragged into the Seventh Main Tower and tormented by all sorts of ghosts there, but was rescued by Hae Wonryang.
There had been no way to know exactly what Eizel did inside, or just how many ghosts appeared.
Maybe I should have brought even more Symbols…
No matter how she looked at it, bringing ten had seemed not merely sufficient but excessive, yet already only three remained.
And they still had not properly found the place where Hong Biyeon had been abducted.
Where on earth is she…?
Chewing at her nails, she tried to recall the original romance fantasy.
First of all, where had Professor Meizen Tiren been?
The exact location had not been stated, but she clearly remembered the description that it was an open place, with windows all around, and the sky visible from inside.
But was there such a place in Stella?
…No, there is. The observatory at the very top floor.
All of the Main Towers had a top floor, in other words a rooftop, but it was normally locked, so students could not enter.
That was why she had never been up there herself, but at the very least she had often heard what it looked like.
Then it really is the rooftop…
Boom! Boom!
But before she could even finish the thought, the ghosts began their assault again.
With a strained expression, Eizel poured mana into the barrier at the crack of the door and said,
“Ugh…! The ghosts are consuming the space itself!”
“What? But I drew the holy water on the doo—”
Cutting herself off, Flame looked up with a startled expression.
Dark mist was creeping into the lab.
Only then did she realize it.
The Seventh Main Tower itself was a single ghost story.
In other words, no matter where they hid, unless they sealed off every bit of space with holy water, they were still within the ghosts’ reach.
“Damn it! Run outside for now! If we stay here, we’re going to get swallowed whole!”
“Yes!”
Eizel hurriedly erased the holy-water barrier circle and tried to open the door, but it would not budge.
“Ugh, the ghosts are jamming the door shut from the other side!”
“You rotten bastards!”
She swore harshly and kicked the door with all her strength, but naturally, that was never going to open it.
Rattle. Clunk.
While Eizel and Flame struggled with the shut door, Anella, who had been crouching silently, turned her head at a sound coming from behind.
“..Huh?”
And then she saw something strange.
The skeleton model used for biology experiments and the model used for anatomy practice had started moving.
Rrrk.
The eyeballs of the anatomy model rolled around, then met Anella’s eyes.
“Ah.”
For three seconds, thunderstruck.
It was not because she was afraid.
It was because those rotten dead-fish eyes, staring at her as though she were something pathetic, were so absurd that she could hardly believe it.
Now even a model is looking down on me…
I may be like this, but I’m still forty…
She felt wronged and mortified.
Her life had already been shabby and miserable enough, but that did not mean she wanted to be looked down on by brats still wet behind the ears.
Crack.
Veins stood out on her fist.
When a dark mage entered complete dark transformation, they lost their magic entirely, while their innate traits and physical abilities rose dramatically.
But Anella had already lost all of her innate traits, and she could not use magic either… so if she wanted to fight, boosting her physical abilities through dark transformation was essential.
There’s no one here to see me anyway, right?
Flame had already grasped a fair bit of her true identity, and Eizel worried her a little, but… she thought it was far better to reveal her strength here than die a dog’s death while hiding it.
Remember this. If you release more than fifty percent of your dark mana, you won’t be able to hide it again.
That was the warning her superior had given her just before she was dispatched, after she received the cult leader’s seal.
Then doesn’t that just mean I have to make sure it doesn’t go over fifty percent?
Anella lightly clenched her fist and threw a jab.
She had never learned how, nor had she ever trained her body professionally, so this was the first time in her life she had ever attempted hand-to-hand combat.
Boom!!
The air burst apart, and every ghost in front of her scattered in an instant.
“W-what?!”
Flame and Eizel, who had been preparing magic to break the door and escape, spun around in shock.
Anella stood there frozen with her fist extended, and behind her, the wall of the laboratory had been completely blown apart.
“What in the world……”
“What kind of magic was that just now……?”
The girls were stunned, but Anella could not answer.
More precisely, Anella herself was included among the stunned girls.
W-what kind of power is this?
Because she had always been such a coward, even as a dark mage she had never properly tried throwing a punch, so she had never known this power herself.
With an awkward expression, Anella said to them,
“Um, well… the wall… has a hole in it……”
“…Yeah. Let’s go that way.”
The door would not open because ghosts were blocking it from outside, but thanks to Anella opening up a much easier path, the girls escaped the lab at once.
“The rooftop! That brat should be trapped there!”
“Yes!”
Flame’s group burst back into the corridor and ran toward the stairs with all their might.
Using an elevator in a place packed with ghosts like this would be suicide.
They had to break through dozens of floors of stairs, but thanks to Anella becoming a huge part of their fighting strength, their speed of advance was much faster than before.
“Uaaaah!”
That was a battle cry.
“Graaagh!”
Not a scream. A battle cry.
Anella, clumsy though she was, drove back the ghosts from the front with astonishing punches and kicks, which let the others behind her cast their magic more freely and focus more effectively on defense, so their pace increased considerably.
Since they still had dozens of flights of stairs to break through, the fact that Anella had become such a major help to their combat strength was unquestionably good news.
At this rate, we can make it!
However.
“Huh…?”
Why had no one thought of that?
The Seventh Main Tower was a ghost story in and of itself.
If it could manipulate every space in the building freely, then why would the stairs be exempt?
“What is this……”
Anella stared ahead with a blank expression.
The Main Towers of Stella were structured so that a spiral staircase stood at the point where the corridors from all four directions met.
Small warp halls would sometimes be installed there, or the stairs themselves would move, letting students travel conveniently between upper and lower floors…
But there was nothing there.
The ceiling and floor had only a huge hole punched through them. The stairs were gone without even a trace remaining.
As if stairs had never existed there in the first place.
“This is……”
She had not expected this at all.
To think even the structure of the building itself would be twisted into something grotesque.
What do we do…?
Flame desperately worked her thoughts.
There had to be a way.
Some method she was overlooking.
How had Eizel and Hae Wonryang overcome this obstacle in the original romance fantasy?
There had been no exact description.
Only the fact that Eizel had received Hae Wonryang’s help.
Wait. If it was Hae Wonryang’s help…?
Then one thought flashed through her mind.
In the future, Hae Wonryang would rise to greatness as an Elemental Master, someone who could handle all elements perfectly.
At present, he could only use wind, ice, and fire, but he already wielded those three nearly at the highest level, which was why his fame was what it was.
That meant Hae Wonryang might already have been capable, even then, of using Windborne Levitation, one of the higher-level wind spells.
Because it consumed an absurd amount of mana, the original romance fantasy had never actually shown him using Windborne Levitation, but… in a crisis like this, would he not be perfectly capable of lifting his body and going up?
But there was no user of wind-type magic here.
Which meant they had no means whatsoever of replacing the stairs.
She thought of using Eizel’s ice and her own plant magic as a way to climb, but it was impossible.
Basically, the durability of ice- and plant-type magic was too low. They would not withstand the assault of the ghost story and would be destroyed almost at once.
She could summon a gigantic tree trunk and then use Matter Manipulation on it to increase the sturdiness to some extent, but… would she really be able to reach that height while simultaneously using two types of elemental magic?
“Ugh, the shadows have consumed the whole space!”
“I-it’s too hard!”
Her train of thought could not continue to the end.
Eizel and Anella were being eaten away by the shadows and were slowly beginning to sink to their knees.
There was only one Symbol left now.
If you get devoured by the shadows, you lose your sense of self.
Flame looked with lingering regret toward where the staircase used to be.
If she poured out all of her mana here, she might just be able to go up.
But if she did that, she might lose Eizel and Anella.
…This is my fault.
It had been a rash judgment.
She should have thought more carefully, judged more carefully.
Had she taken too lightly the Black Magic Erosion of the Seventh Main Tower… the one even Baek Yuseol had said was dangerous and needed preparation?
I’m an idiot. A complete moron.
Because she bit down too hard on her lip, blood ran down it in a thin stream.
But without even feeling the pain, Flame ran toward Eizel and Anella with all her strength.
There was no other way.
Even if it consumed every last bit of her mana here, she had to endure it.
I can do this.
Eizel is the protagonist.
The one and only protagonist of this world.
Even if I go down here, I have to protect her, at the very least.
She squeezed her eyes shut and began reciting an incantation.
Unlike other magic, the incantation for Radiance-type magic carried a certain melody to it, so it sounded almost like a song.
…Saaaaa!
A cluster of golden light spread outward from Flame.
Darkness was eaten away by light, and ghosts melted.
Startled by that intense, sacred radiance, Anella and Eizel both staggered back and collapsed to the floor.
“What is this……”
“It’s a type of magic I’ve never seen before……”
It was the first time they had ever seen such magic.
It was not destructive, nor dazzling to the eyes… and yet it purified every darkness existing in that space cleanly.
In an instant, the blackness receded, and light painted over the world.
Without meaning to, Anella thought,
Beautiful…
As a dark mage, that was disqualifying.
To look upon magic that stood opposed to herself and think it beautiful. But any other dark mage who saw it would think exactly the same.
Even if one were struck by it and died, perhaps in the very final moment one would still end up thinking, Beautiful.
The golden magic circle blooming beneath Flame’s feet spun and spun, then made starlight blossom toward the sky.
That was right.
The girl’s magic resembled starlight.
It was neither the Radiance-type power black-mana beings hated most, nor Divine-type power.
It was the magic of starlight.
Listening to the hymn of stars, like a fragment of the Milky Way had been torn from the heavens and dropped into the world, Flame slowly closed her eyes.
…Even so, I did what I could.
All I can do is endure this, but after this Eizel will think of a way, just as a protagonist should, and overcome the obstacle.
That would be enough.
Even if something happened to me right now, as long as Hong Biyeon and Eizel could be saved…
The moment she thought that, a wave of gold suddenly swept over the golden light cluster.
It was another golden spell.
“Huh…?”
Anella gasped in shock and squeezed her eyes shut at the sight of that magical tide, but then noticed something strange and looked toward where the stairs should have been.
There were stairs there.
Extravagantly decorated in a completely unnecessary way for the situation, as though they had been built for an emperor, a golden staircase… stretched all the way to the very top.
“Th-this is……”
“Hurry!”
Anella looked stunned and was about to say something, but Eizel moved first, as if there were no time for that.
She hurriedly supported Flame, who was collapsing from exhaustion, and started climbing the stairs.
Anella hurried after them.
Then she glanced behind her.
…Far in the distance.
It seemed as though a golden-haired boy could still be seen within the darkness Flame had failed to erase entirely, but he vanished into the shadows at once.
As though it had all been nothing but a trick of the eye.
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