Chapter 112
All of Name's attacks took place within the short span of ten seconds.
This time, she stole a greatsword.
The sword swung by the swordsmanship instructor grazed Name's side by a paper-thin margin.
She properly punished the man, whose stance had been half-broken, by thrusting her sword into his waist.
As if refusing to allow even the slightest struggle, she punched him in the chin and lightly kicked the hilt of the falling sword, sending it back into the air.
Shaaak-!
Even after suffering one catastrophe, the shield swordsman continued closing the distance, so she left a deep gash in his neck.
It was an incredibly precise sword path for a technique performed the instant she snatched the sword out of the air.
A shield was a good weapon for breaking out of an isolated predicament.
By imbuing the center of the shield with explosive mana and sending it flying, she created openings even amid the chaotic battlefield.
Of course, she didn't forget to deal with incoming magic and arrows.
Since the aura barrier was not infinite, she dodged anything she could.
Even so, she had to write counter-formulas one by one for the things she absolutely could not avoid.
The information she had found on TreeWiki in preparation for this moment proved useful.
“Crazy...! None of the magic works!”
From the opponents' perspective, it was understandable that it felt as though all magic was being nullified.
Not only did she reverse every spell aimed at her regardless of type, she even interfered with the casters' mana circuits and made them run wild, so the mages fearfully lowered their staffs.
[Level: 9]
[Hp: 1832/4050(2400+1650)]
The health she gradually lost thanks to the Laurel of Life was within a tolerable range.
Consuming mana could restore her health.
Mana, on the other hand, could be replenished by dispelling the spells cast by enemy mages.
The battle between Name, who would not fall thanks to her infinite resources, and the Academy side, which did not know how to give up, continued without pause for no less than an hour.
The land, saturated with blood, glowed red beneath the moonlight.
And the elf's eyes, filled with golden magic, gleamed even more ominously.
“Demon...”
Someone spoke from among the crowd.
Name turned her head toward the source of the sound, but she could not identify its owner.
The reorganized unit raised its weapons again.
‘I guess this method won't cut it.’
Looking down at the now-cold Alpherion, Name let out a deep sigh.
No matter how many routes she verified, she could not find any way to save Adela.
By now, Adela's abilities should have been sufficient, but the problem was that she was psychologically unstable, as the experiences accumulated over many cycles clashed with her psyche on a structural level.
She had thought keeping Alpherion and Sisiella, whom she could trust and rely on, alive and taking them with her would serve as a trigger, but in the end, just as the viewers had said, it had merely been a trap.
“Why on earth... why are you doing this! It never had to go this far!”
A red-haired girl holding a wand much taller than herself shouted.
“Because I came to take back the laurel.”
“You demon!”
“I'm an elf. Can't you tell? I'm pretty.”
“What kind of stupid nonsense is that! Obviously, elves can't exist in this world!”
Giselle's scream made several viewers question things.
-What the hell is she suddenly talking about?
-The person in front of you is an elf.
-Like how there are animals with two-meter-long necks and animals with duck bills on beaver bodies, but no horses with horns?
-This is common sense...?
-Whoa, foreshadowing!
-It's a spoiler if we say it.
-But how did Giselle know?
The chat window was thrown into an uproar when Giselle made the shocking declaration that elves did not exist in the world.
Name narrowed her eyes and demanded an explanation.
“Then who am ‘I’?”
“I’m the one who wants to ask that! What on earth are you?”
A variety of words—identity, existence, an individual—that defined a person.
Name had always fought against them.
Looking at the situation in a complicated way would not solve the problem.
She straightened the laurel crown and declared before the girl who was venting her indignation.
“I’m not sure, but for now, I’m your enemy.”
“...!”
“Hopefully, we can meet as allies next time.”
“I can’t forgive you!”
-There's nothing good that comes from getting on Giselle's bad side.
-We're fucked!
-She's going berserk!
-Look at those rolling eyes.
-And Luna isn't even here;;
-No way, that one thing?
-What thing?
Giselle Phoenix, a first-year at Remnant Academy, born under the Curse of the Phoenix.
If she failed to obtain the Flower of Blazing Heat, she was destined to become one of the phoenix's many spare bodies, and she boasted the greatest mana reserves among the first-years.
If Luna Pavillis was a burst-damage dealer boasting overwhelming firepower, Giselle was an all-rounder who, despite being a mage, could also serve as a tank and healer.
But there was exactly one time when Giselle Phoenix boasted firepower even greater than Luna Pavillis's.
[Finisher: Avatar Descension]
It was when she used the finisher that burned away everything, leaving neither the demon's body nor soul behind.
The reason choosing to save Alpherion was a trap.
Even if she repeated hit-and-run attacks at the lowest difficulty and annihilated hundreds of knights, waiting for her at the end was Giselle Phoenix, who would pass judgment with the ultimate fire magic.
Name stifled a hollow laugh when she saw the magic circle extending from Giselle's wand.
It was as complex as a seventh-circle spell, but it was nothing more than a scribble of circuits, with not a single part that actually made sense, let alone needed deciphering.
It was like a scientist in a movie who studied complex celestial motion and relativity theory being stumped by multiplication tables, the quadratic formula, and the Pythagorean theorem.
In other words, it was pure nonsense. It even broke immersion.
Artificial magic that neither existed nor could exist in the real world—a forced reset trigger possible only because this was a game world.
Before she even had time to register the flash that burst forth, the entire world became a sea of fire swirling around Name.
Looking at an absolute, irresistible force and an equation that could not be dispelled because it did not exist, Name offered a brief review.
“What a fucking garbage game.”
* * *
[An unrecoverable resource error has been detected.]
[Synchronizing with backup server... 1%]
Tap-tap-
Rat-a-tat-
“Please...!”
Adela bit her lip tightly and sprinted toward the clock tower at full speed.
Boom-!
The intense light roused the people of the quiet city, where morning had yet to arrive.
Despite the considerable distance, the shockwave that shook the earth made Adela's heart pound violently in turn.
“No...! Haa...”
She clenched her fists so tightly that her sharp nails dug into her flesh.
Without even realizing that blood was trickling out, Adela's gaze remained fixed straight on the center of the holy city.
“Again... again! Again because of me... Aaaaaaagh!”
Adela let out a scream bordering on a shriek, vaulted over the wall dividing the Academy grounds in a single bound, and arrived at the scene of chaos.
The flames showed no sign of dying down, rising higher than the buildings.
Under normal circumstances, finding NoName in there would have been nearly impossible.
However,
[YOU DIED]
“Ah... Aah... No... It can't be...”
Only after channeling mana into the laurel could she properly see the meaningless strings floating in midair.
If she went down there, she would be able to meet the person she was desperately searching for.
[Synchronizing with backup server... 13%]
Her silver tail stung where it had been scorched by the flames, but she had no time to worry about it.
It no longer mattered that the battle suit she treasured most had been torn.
“Ah...”
When Adela discovered the charred-black corpse of a forest guardian, the strength suddenly left her legs, and she lost her balance.
“I was wrong...”
Adela's voice trembled faintly.
“I-I was weak. I... It was because of me...”
From the stone wall covered in countless names, a memory that should not have existed suddenly surfaced.
[How can you compare me to those illiterate bums? Heeheehee! Look how well I can write!]
[The name here is wrong.]
[It was a mistake, a mistake!]
[It’s ‘your,’ not ‘my.’]
[I said it was a mistake!]
The memory of chatting with NoName while taking shelter from the rain in the immediately preceding cycle,
[You were more amazing than anyone I’ve ever met.]
A compliment NoName had given her at some moment in a cycle she did not even know the number of,
[Next time, let’s survive together.]
The fourth cycle's
[Trust your instincts.]
The sixth cycle's
[Thanks.]
The tenth cycle's
[I guess we can meet again here.]
The sixteenth cycle's
[I’m sorry I left you alone every time.]
And now, through the seventeenth cycle, the words NoName had spoken at the end of her life each time flashed through Adela's mind like a panorama, one after another.
“Why... why on earth can’t I remember? Why!”
As if a god were playing a trick, the world was rewound again and again.
Yet Adela always recovered her memories only after NoName had died.
“Remember! Recall it! Don’t forget! Adela, you can’t even do this—you’re such a... sob... stupid idiot...”
There had definitely been times when she felt déjà vu.
Before meeting Valum Venaons, her abdomen had always ached after he punched her in the stomach, and her heart had pounded whenever NoName told her to hit her.
Even though it was her first time tasting Churu, its salty flavor had felt overwhelmingly familiar.
Adela should clearly have died in the first cycle.
Behind Gene Chronicle were demon worshippers, and he had planted a foundation for a demon to resurrect in the Laurel of Life, causing it to possess him.
It was an unwanted death, but one she had no regrets about.
That was why, even in the second cycle, she had clearly made the same choice.
But everything went wrong starting with the third cycle.
In the repeating cycle of reincarnation, it was not Adela but NoName who died.
“She must have known... She knew everything...! Why would she... someone like me... Sob...!”
She became certain that, unlike her, NoName remembered every cycle.
Only then did all the bizarre things NoName had done begin to make sense, like fitting together a puzzle scattered across the floor.
NoName had been fighting alone in a hell she could never escape.
Until she became strong enough to fight and defeat Gene Chronicle.
“Please... don’t... don’t die anymore. Just leave me to die there... I’m... I’m not someone you need...”
Adela collapsed face-first onto the muddy ground and dry-heaved. If she did not do at least this much, she could not control the feelings surging up inside her.
[Synchronizing with backup server... 36%]
Had she ever grieved this deeply over one person's death?
At least, there was no such memory in Adela's mind.
This was a world where human lives were treated as worth less than earthworms in the street.
Since countless people ended their lives because they had no strength, no money, or even clothes to wear in winter, offering condolences would only make them objects of ridicule.
Adela and NoName had only met for the first time today.
They were not lovers, family, or friends; she could not understand what meaning she had been seeking in a relationship that was nothing, connected only by a tenuous thread as comrades in a hopeless organization.
[Synchronizing with backup server... 39%]
What frightened Adela more than anything was the fact that she would lose all her memories again next time.
NoName would willingly sacrifice herself for her all over again, and Adela would have to spend a moment that felt like eternity.
Everything was proceeding exactly as ordained.
She bit down on her lip again. Her fangs suddenly protruded, and her mouth was now a mangled mess.
She retraced the path she had taken with NoName.
Before long, her consciousness would gradually fade without her even realizing it, and the world would regress to the beginning once more.
Just as it was impossible to draw a clear line marking when she had fallen asleep, it was impossible to perceive the point at which the world vanished.
‘This is where I first threw a tantrum at NoName...’
Even when she had denigrated herself countless times as useless, NoName alone had acknowledged Adela regardless of her abilities.
The places she had gradually fled to differed slightly in each cycle.
In front of the aristocratic residential district, at the entrance to the slums, Trepis Square, and so on.
Her consciousness grew increasingly hazy.
Surrendering her body to her aimless footsteps, the last place she arrived was a stone wall beside a road.
The kind of graffiti naming that slum children often made.
[Nonaehit] [Adela]
[Nonaem] [Adela]
[NoName] [Adela]
[NoName] [Adela]
[NoName] [Adela]
Only after getting it wrong twice was she finally able to write the correct name on the third attempt.
Out of pointless defiance, she wrote it two more times afterward, leaving the stone wall covered entirely with their names.
‘Wait... why is the stone wall still here?’
She repeatedly exhaled ragged breaths.
If the world had turned back, it should not have remained intact.
It felt as though she might have grasped a clue.
In a world that had returned to the past, the only thing that remained unchanged was the stone wall Adela had carved with a sword.
The traces from the previous cycle were unmistakably still there.
If this worked, she could surely send a message to the next ‘me.’
“So the stray cat was hiding here all along.”
“...!”
Bzzzt-
A red beam pierced through Adela's torso.
Adela coughed up a gush of blood, and her body collapsed limply onto the cold stone floor.
“Cough...!”
“You happened to have two laurels. I don’t like it, but I suppose I should praise you at least once before you die.”
Gene Chronicle deactivated the concealment on the laurel crown she had hidden so carefully with a spell and sneered.
“It’s the least I can do as a father.”
Her entire body was burning hot.
She felt a sharp pain in her abdomen.
She put her hand there to stop it somehow, but drops of blood fell between her fingers.
“Aah... sob... Aaaah...”
“You saved me the trouble of finding you.”
Gene Chronicle left without even looking at the groaning girl.
Adela pulled a single precious dagger from her clothes.
Using the proper grip NoName had taught her countless times, she drove the dagger into the stone wall with a crunch.
Squeak- Scritch-
Her expression twisted every time she moved her arm. Looking at the pool of blood collected on the ground, she could hardly believe it had all come from her own body.
But Adela could not stop.
At the very bottom of the stone wall filled with precious memories, she carved her final words with all her strength.
[Go back]
“Haa... haa... hehe. Heh...”
Hoping that her self in the next cycle would find this phrase.
[Synchronizing with backup server... 99%]
[A fatal error has occurred due to !$%!@!.]
[NoName(NoName)]
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