40. The Seventh Main Tower (7)
…The darkness extending out from the full-length mirror swallowed Flame and dragged her inside.
It happened so suddenly, so instantaneously, that no one present managed to react properly.
“Uh, uh……?”
Eizel stared blankly at the full-length mirror.
Professor Chekiren too seemed so flustered that he could not even think of using magic, and Anella simply collapsed to the floor.
“What… is this……?”
She could not understand it.
That was Flame.
The Flame who was always proud and self-assured, and who had perfectly overcome every accident, crisis, and hardship that had ever come her way.
This time too…
She had thought Flame would pull it off.
Just like before, no matter how powerful or dangerous a dark mage appeared, she had thought Flame would refuse to back down, fight bravely, and win.
But to have her go like this so meaninglessly.
“Ah……”
Thud.
Eizel sank to the floor and let her staff slip from her hand.
She was far too young to process the experience of losing someone she had been fighting beside with their lives on the line, and so Eizel could not properly grasp the situation at all.
What… went wrong?
Only belatedly did she retrace their mistakes and try to think what the problem had been, but she could not understand anything.
And sadly enough—
The girls had done nothing wrong.
If they had simply continued fighting according to the plan, they surely would have won.
If there had been a problem at all, it was only one thing.
…That Flame had been the Child of the Stars.
“H-hahaha!”
Only then did Chekiren erupt into mad laughter.
He had thought it was a desperate crisis when the full-length mirror came under attack, but to think that person would directly step in and devour the enemy!
“You really did give me a fright.”
Was that what it meant to bear the name of Stella?
To think that a mere first-year had managed, if only for a moment, to make even him—a dark mage and a magic professor—feel alarmed.
She deserved praise for that much.
“But in the end, this is how it turned out. Isn’t it?”
Whoosh!!
A deep crimson blaze surged upward.
Like a red tide flowing on the heels of Chekiren’s fury, the flames rolled menacingly and began to cover the entire area.
“Now that the most troublesome bitch is gone, I suppose it’s time to bring this to an end.”
The more fiercely the enemy resisted, the harder it was to subdue them intact without killing them.
But now, with the major force that was Flame gone, this would be easy.
Professor Chekiren spread both hands, preparing to bloom the most brilliant and beautiful flames he could.
The magic he had prepared to decorate the final finale was none other than the scarlet flame of the Adolevit royal family.
“…Hm?”
But something felt strange.
Unlike ordinary fire, the flames of Adolevit were not passionate and violent.
Their defining trait was a serene beauty.
And yet the flame Chekiren drew out now was nothing more than an ordinary red blaze, entirely plain and without distinction.
Wait, this isn’t—!
The moment that thought crossed his mind—
Puuuk—!!
“Kh…?!”
A scarlet blade flew in from behind and pierced straight through his heart.
“Kuhuk…!”
Black blood sprayed from his mouth as he tried to grab the blade that had skewered his chest, but it possessed no physical form.
A blade without substance.
That was…
A true flame.
Redder than anything else, and therefore all the more passionate and beautiful.
The true flame of Adolevit.
Chekiren slowly turned his head.
There, barely keeping herself upright with one hand braced against the wall and cold sweat pouring off her, stood Princess Hong Biyeon.
How…?
He had definitely consumed Hong Biyeon’s sense of self with his own hands.
Had he not then perfectly stolen her magic as well?
Her soul should have been doomed to remain trapped inside the full-length mirror forever, wandering until it was extinguished.
He had believed the body left standing now to be nothing but an empty shell.
But thinking about it again—
He had not “personally” collected her soul.
To be more precise… the one inside the full-length mirror had absorbed it directly.
No way…
Thuk!
Forcibly pulling the scarlet blade out, Chekiren turned toward the full-length mirror.
“So that… was what it meant to be the Child of the Stars?”
At present, the strength of that being sleeping within the full-length mirror was still pitifully weak.
It had struggled just to properly absorb a single flame of the Adolevit family.
And yet, on top of that, it had also absorbed Flame, the Child of the Stars.
Maintaining its power properly after that was impossible.
“…I don’t know exactly what happened, but you’d better brace yourself from here on.”
Hong Biyeon forced strength into herself and spoke each word carefully.
There was no energy left in her body at all—she felt as if she might collapse and lose consciousness on the spot—but if she fainted here, everything really would be over.
That was what she thought.
Yet—
“Hah, haha… hahaha.”
As if he had lost all will to fight, Chekiren slowly staggered backward, clutching his face with both hands and shaking his head.
“Damn it… You can’t even endure something as trivial as this? And after that, you fed me lies…? You deceived me? Damn it, damn it!”
“Wh-what?”
Chekiren’s muttering and cursing into empty air was so incoherent that even Hong Biyeon, who had just been flaring her flames to the fullest, was taken aback instead.
That rage could go nowhere, and simply dissolved into the air.
But one thing was clear.
Chekiren was… completely resigned.
It was strange.
A high-ranking dark mage did not die merely because their heart had been pierced.
Hong Biyeon had struck a vital point just moments ago, but even so, killing the students here should still have been easy for him.
And yet, without doing anything, he sank down where he stood.
“…Everything has become meaningless.”
The higher a person’s aspirations and ambitions, the less able they were to endure the moment all those dreams burst like bubbles.
Chekiren gripped his face hard with both hands, made a sound like he was sobbing, then slowly lifted his head and looked over the girls.
Hong Biyeon and Eizel, whose powers he had absorbed first of all.
And finally Anella.
“You really have ended up pitiful too.”
“W-what, what do you mean pitiful?!”
Anella’s defensive instincts kicked in before anything else, and she shouted angrily.
But at that single line, Eizel came to accept an even harder reality, and slowly spoke each word.
“…What will happen to Flame?”
“Answer me!”
“If you already know, why ask?”
Chekiren jerked his chin toward the full-length mirror.
“That place is a fragment of a shattered world, completely cut off from reality. If an ordinary human soul enters it, it can never come back out. That’s why I absorbed your souls into myself.”
That was precisely why the one within the full-length mirror could not act alone and needed Chekiren as a medium.
But to think it had only been this much.
If he had known in advance that it was so weak it could not even endure Flame alone and would end up vomiting back out every soul it had taken, he never would have started something this dangerous in the first place.
Chekiren closed his eyes.
The moment Flame and that being intertwined and were extinguished inside the full-length mirror, he too—his own soul bound there—would disappear as well.
“W-wait…! We can’t just leave it like that!”
Tak!
By then Hong Biyeon had already approached Chekiren.
Biting down hard on her pale lips, she leveled her staff at his throat.
“Tell me.”
“Tell me how to bring her back out.”
“Hah, impossible. That world is like a mirror shattered by a hammer. Look right and you’ll see left, look left and you’ll see behind you—a world all mixed together. What exactly do you think you’re going to do if you go in there? If you’re that determined, go ahead and jump in. If the two of you die side by side, that’ll at least be worth watching on my way out.”
Grinding her teeth, Hong Biyeon slowly looked from Eizel to Anella.
And then, the most horrible question—the one she had desperately not wanted to ask—
Left her lips.
“You really came all the way here… to save me?”
At the voice that sounded as though she herself had not wanted to ask, Anella could not answer.
Eizel hesitated for a moment, then nodded.
“…Yes. Flame put this team together in order to save you.”
“I see…”
As though there was nothing more to hesitate over, Hong Biyeon turned on her heel.
The place she headed toward was not the exit.
It was the full-length mirror.
“W-wait! Stop!”
Realizing at once what Hong Biyeon intended to do, Eizel rushed forward and grabbed her by the arm.
At once, Hong Biyeon violently shook her arm free, whipped her head around, and glared at her fiercely.
“Don’t interfere!”
For even Eizel to shrink back for an instant, Hong Biyeon’s eyes burned like living fire.
What had enraged her so deeply?
What had stirred her emotions this violently?
Eizel could not understand even a speck of it.
“I… have to go. I have to save… her…”
Her eyes had already gone unfocused, as though she were possessed by something, and as she made for the mirror she clearly looked dangerous.
Even in perfect condition, going in there would obviously mean death.
Much less now, when she was not in her right mind and most of her mana was already spent.
“We can’t let you do that.”
From behind, Eizel gripped Hong Biyeon’s hand tightly.
“She risked herself to save you. And you’re saying that sacrifice should just be thrown away? I won’t allow that.”
“…Let go.”
“Hah, if you really insist on going, then go ahead and burn me first. Aren’t you always saying that?”
And yet Hong Biyeon did not make the slightest attempt to threaten Eizel with magic.
Just as expected.
Hong Biyeon never forgot a kindness done to her.
…No, she went beyond even that.
Princess Hong Biyeon had a strong tendency to become endlessly soft toward people who had done something for her without asking anything in return.
In her head.
In her heart.
In her chest.
As if some enormous stake had been driven through all of them.
So how could Hong Biyeon possibly stand by and watch the death of Flame—
Who had tried to save her at the cost of her own life, without asking for anything in return?
“I have to go……”
Eizel’s blue eyes widened in shock.
It was the first time she had ever seen it.
Princess Hong Biyeon of Adolevit looking so weak.
Her lips trembled as though she might cry, yet she forced them shut and lowered her head.
Even from here Eizel could feel it—the disappointment and fury Hong Biyeon felt at her own helplessness.
Now…
She simply hated all of it.
At last, Hong Biyeon lost all strength and sank down weakly before the full-length mirror, and Eizel supported her.
It was over now.
Perhaps they would have to be satisfied with having saved Hong Biyeon.
…It was at that exact moment.
“Ah, damn it. Am I already too late?”
A voice rang out.
The eyes of all three girls turned there at once.
There stood Baek Yuseol, hastily smoothing back hair blown wild by his sprint and wiping the sweat from his cheek.
“Ah……”
And in that instant, she thought:
The situation they were in now was hopeless enough, impossible enough, a wall so huge and suffocating that there seemed to be no way past it.
And yet, the arrival of just one boy made the entire absurd situation suddenly seem full of hope.
Why?
With an expression full of dissatisfaction, he swept a glance across the scene, then fixed his eyes on the full-length mirror as though boring through it.
“Ugh. My life really is blessed, huh.”
Baek Yuseol walked over and lightly patted Eizel and Hong Biyeon on the shoulders.
As though telling them they had done well, that they had struggled long enough.
Just that one small gesture alone…
Was enough to wash away every worry and anxiety as thoroughly as if they had been rinsed away with water, leaving behind only relief.
“I’ll be right back.”
His gait was easy and relaxed, as though he were merely stepping out for a casual walk with a dog up a little mountain behind the neighborhood.
But more than anything, the sight of his back was steady and reassuring.
Shuk! Crash—!
Just like that, he stepped into the full-length mirror and vanished completely.
Yet none of them felt worried at all.
If anything, they felt reassured.
“Ah……”
“Uh? Princess Hong Biyeon? Stay with me!”
At last, she let go of every worry and concern and fell into a deep sleep.
Because when she woke again…
Everything would be resolved.
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