Chapter 116
I dreamed a long dream.
I had lost my way and was wandering through the mountains.
All the stars that had embroidered the sky had vanished without a trace.
The sky, the earth, and the trees were all achromatic, adding to the unreality of the landscape.
And squeezing through the gaps, a red full moon ominously illuminated the world. No, the light only reached the area around me. I was bathed in the full force of a red spotlight.
I ran blindly down the mountain.
Strangely, I never felt the slightest bit of danger.
I tripped over rocks and even fell from cliffs, but each time, I found myself back at the mountain's summit.
When I finally gave up on everything and was about to sink to the ground, a door suddenly appeared at the mountain's summit.
Unable to restrain my curiosity, my hand reached for the doorknob as if drawn by a magnet.
Despite my pounding heart, the door opened easily with a click.
A familiar scene lay beyond the door.
My room, the place I had wanted to return to so badly.
My own room, where no one else could ever find me.
The dark room had no walls or windows, not letting in even a sliver of light, and was connected to where I stood by a door.
I briefly wondered how I could see inside the room in a place where neither electricity nor mana flowed.
But that thought soon passed when I noticed a child curled up in one corner of the room.
I could neither see nor hear anything, but my intuition clearly told me that there was a child over there.
The moment I recognized the child, the room lit up brightly.
But the me inside the dream callously left the crying child alone and calmly looked around the room.
Vivid photographs that seemed alive and moving had replaced the wallpaper.
I plucked one of the messily tangled photographs from the wall and stared at it.
A red-haired girl in a conical hat was smiling brightly, while the innocent-looking brown-haired boy beside her wore an unmistakably troubled expression.
This time, another photo album flew into my hands. It seemed to be demanding that I look at it too.
I called it a photo album because it contained not one photograph, but many.
I opened the middle of the rather thick album at random.
The man had a jawline that looked as if a master craftsman had carved it painstakingly with a sharp knife, and deep shadows fell beneath his long eyelashes. He was truly breathtaking.
When I flipped the pages with my left thumb, the boy gradually grew younger, while flipping them with my right thumb made him age, bringing greater depth to his eyes.
The photographs of him as a child were what caught my attention.
A curly-haired girl who resembled him played at his side all the time. Like a scene from a painting, it was obvious that each of them was incomplete without the other.
Clack-
The child in the corner suddenly grabbed my hand and closed the photo album, preventing me from looking any further.
Shake-shake-
Then she vigorously shook her head, and each time she did, her swaying golden hair slapped against my arm, stinging me.
I smiled at her innocent appearance and called the child's name.
“Long time no see, my Jealousy.”
Nod-
She replaced a greeting with a single dip of her head.
How cold.
[Cast: Cerebral Cortex Reconstruction]
[Advanced Cast: Lateral Septum Activation]
[Decode: Neurotensin Receptor 1]
[Unique Magic – Estasha Style, Second Form - Schadenfreude]
* * *
“So the identity of these filthy tentacles was a lump of tar after all?”
I couldn't understand all of the monster's emotions, but I could at least clearly read the emotion of confusion in his eyes.
“Why? Are you upset because I took away what you were using? Are you angry? I hope you are.”
[Replication: ■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle]
Black tentacles identical to the monster's burst from my back.
I erased the octopus's flailing legs one by one with my tentacles.
Boom!
Boom!
Each time one of his weapons slammed into the ground, he let out a shriek like a fingernail scraping across a blackboard.
“How about this, then?”
[Replication: ■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle]
The sound of a second hand came to me like an auditory hallucination.
Ticktock.
By the time the mana current weighing down my body had violently condensed into a single point,
Tick-
Tick-tock-
Ticktockticktockticktock-
Whirr-
The magic he had cast while alive returned to him in exactly the same manner.
A beam of blue light instantly formed a massive pillar and pierced the monster through the abdomen.
I slowly walked toward the monster, which had been sent flying into the distance by the shockwave.
Seeing the enormous hole in the middle of his stomach filled me with ecstasy. I couldn't control my trembling shoulders.
“%$@%^$^%$^”
“Haaah—yes, more! I believe you can despair even more. Show me a fragment of your emotions right now. Show me the helpless expression on your face as you look at me, the one who took everything from you!”
Not enough.
The bottom of my emotional reservoir was completely shattered, so I needed despair like a waterfall.
[Replication: Remilia Asaphite]
[Cast: Hellfire]
[system: This magic cannot be cast with the current Laurel. It will be replaced with the lower-level magic Heat Transfer.]
A red flower bloomed in the dark sky.
The fully opened petals poured down like rain, scattering embers, and those embers became catalysts that dyed the earth red.
Only when the flames spread to the black liquid did it finally produce a sound worth listening to.
“Wait...! Mortal...! We can talk!”
“Yes! That's more like it!”
Just look at him crawling upward after pretending all this time that he couldn't speak, only to do so when he was cornered.
With its viscosity reduced, the monster spread black sludge across the ground with tremendous force.
Perhaps even its main body was trying to merge with the ground. It began to soften from the feet up, gradually losing its shape like a swamp swallowing it.
[Replication: Klaus Nestro Banafort]
[Body Enhancement Art: Gaia's Embrace]
[system: This aura art is incompatible with the current level.]
[system: This aura art cannot be cast with the current Laurel. Stats will be adjusted by alternative means.]
[system: error 0x00f402b4]
Time stopped.
As if even the air had been given a sticky viscosity, movement slowed, judgment slowed, and the electrical signals sent from the brain slowed, until all things in the world became sluggish as grubs.
My senses sharpened, and my physical abilities reached their absolute limit.
A fist that had been swung thousands—no, tens of thousands—of times struck the monster directly between the eyes.
With a crunch, the monster's body separated from the ground with a bubbling sound, and black sludge surged upward.
“Kuhk!”
“No! Not enough! More!”
It was frustrating. It wasn't enough. I was still thirsty.
Like a runaway locomotive that could never stop, Schadenfreude endlessly gave birth to new magic circles.
What I was trying to reproduce this time was extremely dangerous magic, but surely it would be fine.
[Replication: Hiasen Luminos de Kaizen]
[Cast: Le Kaizen Familia]
[system: Unknown command.]
[Run-time error ‘492 at 0x00f14ec1]
The eighty-eight magic arrays that had protected the Kaizen Empire unfolded in parallel.
Even magic that would normally be physically impossible for one person to cast simultaneously because of time constraints became possible through Schadenfreude.
Laurel's restrictions desperately tried to obstruct the magic's manifestation, but the permanence and indivisibility of ‘Le Kaizen Familia,’ manifested through Schadenfreude, stood in sharp opposition to them.
At that moment, the maw of a wolf divine beast was summoned from one magic array that had escaped the restrictions, and it opened wide.
Thousands of sharp teeth, too numerous to count, gnawed the body of Jin Chronicle.
But it wasn't only his body that was being chewed.
Just as a whale takes in 70,000 liters of water at once to eat krill and plankton, it swallowed all the surrounding earth whole.
The ground split with a deafening crack, and the trees and buildings near the boundary snapped with splintering sounds.
“The demon's...! The demon's descent is inevitable!”
“Haaah... Yes, this is it! Sooo good... All of it...!”
The monster's shrieks, busy being gnawed apart, gradually grew quieter.
[■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle’s HP regeneration increases by 300%.]
[HP: 9471/666666]
[HP: 39720/666666]
[Error]
Every now and then, he took advantage of the brief recovery in his HP to create a mana storm and attempt to neutralize the magic circles.
The last remaining tentacle began its final resistance.
Thousands of branches split from a single tentacle and covered the sky. They shot forth with enough force to swallow all the streetlights and moonlight.
[Replication: Valum Venanons]
[Moonlit High Tide]
Chronicle's tentacles bounced away with a smack, like a pigeon hitting a window.
No matter how much they pounded and stabbed at it, the intangible circular dome would never break.
If you wanted to catch me, you should at least have brought a magic I'd never seen before, like that bitch did.
[■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle’s HP regeneration increases by ????% 뭵뛠먍샭햞.]
[HP: 8293/666666]
[HP: 59281/666666]
[Error]
The black sludge, repeating the cycle of regeneration and destruction, had been so thoroughly mangled that it was difficult to call it human anymore.
Each time it sluggishly rose from the ground, I gently stomped it back down with my foot.
The sticky tar clung tightly to my shoe and refused to come off.
A powerful grudge that wanted to devour my flesh sent a chill through me, so I threw my shoe into a puddle nearby.
Bloop-bloop.
Violent bubbles rose, and the shoe oxidized.
I sat down nearby, not far from him, and began watching the end.
He was deathly afraid of dying. He clutched the Laurel of Life tightly, as though he couldn't bear to let it go.
As I slowly savored the emotions that continued to spill out until the very end, a smile naturally spread across my face from the incomparable sense of fullness.
Struggling is always welcome. The more hope one sees, the more keenly one feels misfortune.
Isn't that right, NoName?
[■■■■■& %^$#$ Jin Chronicle’s HP regeneration has increased by ????% 뭵뛠먍샭햞.]
...
...
...
[Remnant Academy Vice Dean · Jin Chronicle has been defeated.]
[system: The command has already been processed.]
[system: Abnormal access.]
[Error]
...
...
...
[Part 1: Remnant Academy Invasion Operation END]
[Part 2: The Eternal Blade, Nocturne's Strange Tale]
[The penalty has been reset.]