Chapter 131
In a sky where the sun had not risen, naturally there was no such thing as the sun setting. Instead, like flipping over a sheet of paper, the world's colors changed in an instant. It took less than a second for sunset glow to settle over the blue sky.
“…….”
For a moment, the Hollow Earth theory crossed his mind. A stupid conspiracy theory claiming that a world similar to the surface existed inside the Earth. It was nonsense no less ridiculous than the flat-Earth theory or the donut theory, but Mystery was the kind of thing that would greedily swallow even that bullshit and make it real. Maybe a conspiracy theory drawn in by the grimoire's aura had settled here.
‘The Hollow Earth theory is the conspiracy theory that there is a world, complete with a sun and all, inside the Earth. Maybe the Earth stole the sun that originally existed.’
Of course, it was just a hypothesis, and even if it were true, it wouldn't be a problem. He had no intention of drilling through the mantle and going underground anyway. Just find the grimoire and deal with it, and that would be the end of it.
The problem was that, with the sun gone, the school had lost its yang energy.
Since ancient times, the sun has symbolized yang and the moon yin. Thanks to that, yang energy was strong by day and yin energy at night. But in this space there was no sun, only the moon hanging quietly overhead. It was a moon that did not reflect sunlight, but shone of its own accord.
Lone Moon.
The lonely moonlight, with no source to give it light, was driving away the sunset glow and dyeing the sky black. Like ink spreading across a sheet of paper, the sunset was being swallowed by the night sky and disappearing.
Ian stood in the school's playground, silently looking up at the scene.
Most likely, that night sky was the result of the Goddess of Night using her power, as well as the Hollow Earth theory.
Yes, it was that being often called Nut or Hecate. The fallen goddess who gave everyone headaches whenever she appeared was chewing up the day and calling forth the moon. Off in the distance, it almost felt as though a single three-headed statue were slowly emerging.
A truly overwhelming sight.
If he'd seen something like that in reality, he would have called the Bureau immediately, but this was a fictional space created by a grimoire. Even if monsters of that level were running wild here, it didn't feel frightening. If anything, it was interesting.
‘Even the gods that appear in Greco-Roman and Egyptian myths only end up harming humanity once Mystery gets hold of them.’
Well, not all gods in mythology are kind to humans anyway. In a way, you could say it was meticulously faithful to the source material.
He had long known that with Pygmalion's appearance, the beings of Greco-Roman mythology had become real, but seeing a divine being with his own eyes still felt quite novel.
Of course, even so, it wasn't a real god but just some creepy bastard wearing its skin, so he wasn't too worried. As for ways to kill it, one would turn up sooner or later if he looked hard enough, so being afraid of it would be ridiculous. Worst case, he could just throw a creature from the Outer Sea at it.
“……Phew.”
He'd let his thoughts wander too long. Ian waited until the sky was sunk into complete darkness and took a cigarette from his pocket.
A special cigarette from the Alchemist School. A thing that purified the lungs and broke one's addiction to tobacco.
It was expensive, so he didn't want to smoke it often, but his mouth felt empty, so he took one out and put it between his lips.
Fssst.
Once he lit it, smoke with the sweet scent of lemon candy rose in puffs.
From the sky, snow fell. Rain fell. Leaves dropped, and cherry blossoms fluttered down.
In a place where the four seasons coexisted, the temperature varied wildly, so with every step he took, the air wrapping around his body changed from moment to moment.
Traits he hadn't even noticed until he realized his memories had been tampered with. It made sense—after all, they had implanted the memory of a "new semester" in his head. A new school term is supposed to start in spring.
Now that he was aware of it, things were different. Ian stood where neither rain nor snow was falling and quietly stared at the field.
[Run faster!]
[Huff, huff……!]
On the track, three male students were running side by side. However, they weren't in very good shape.
Their legs were either torn open with the muscles ripped apart or shattered so badly the bones punched through the skin. Every time they ran, blood splattered down and bits of bone and flesh flew, but they didn't stop.
One of them had had his leg severed completely and was crawling along the track with his arms. Naturally, the skin and muscle had all been shredded away, leaving his bones and organs exposed.
“…….”
A ghost story about students and teachers who loved running and kept running around the track even after death.
They were the sort of things that couldn't be seen when the sun was up. Probably spawned by the special nature of a school at night. Not exactly surprising.
‘Summoning the grimoire... impossible, huh. Probably because the two Outer Gods have manifested through the grimoire as a medium.’
It wasn't much of a problem. It was a shame he couldn't use re-creation or summoning magic, but there were quite a lot of other spells Ian could use. In the first place, not being able to use magic without a grimoire made it nothing more than a grimoire stand.
‘Everything I brought is still here... and it works... no problems. Good, let's go.’
Before going into the school, Ian lightly loosened up and rolled his stiff wrists. Then he casually tossed away the cigarette butt and headed for the front gate.
The front gate was covered with ghosts about the size of elementary school students. The deformed things stared straight at Ian and hurled curses at him.
He ignored them. He didn't have much time to pay attention to the voices of mere petty ghosts.
Middle school gets out before sunset, but high school doesn't. Since most high schools have evening self-study, students don't completely disappear until after 10 p.m. This place was no different.
[PM 10:13]
After checking the numbers on his wristwatch, Ian took a shard of glass from his pocket and narrowed his eyes.
It was a watch given to him by a school ghost story. The moment it passed midnight, no one knew what might happen—a bomb-like object. So at the very least, it was right to finish the job before then.
“Phew.”
Ian watched his breath drift in the cold air for a moment before opening the school gate and stepping inside. The gate instantly turned into iron bars and tried to crush him, but when the mirror was slammed into it, it turned into glass shards and scattered across the floor. The beautiful fragments shattered together with the evil spirits.
“Ah, you’re here.”
On the first floor of the building, Lee Seo-ah, who was sitting in the shoe-changing area, turned to look at Ian and said. Ian checked the few ghosts standing at attention behind her and let out a small chuckle.
“The ones you picked out?”
“Yeah. One of them is Hanako of the restroom. Come on, say hello.”
Lee Seo-ah smiled slyly and looked at the small ghost in the form of a girl. The girl, her face full of bruises, shuffled out timidly and bowed her head.
[H-hello... I'm Hanako from the restroom... I-I was beaten by the master here and chose capture instead of being erased... sob...]
“Mm-hm. After subduing them all when they came at her in a swarm and compressing them into a single entity, she became a pretty strong evil spirit. A masterpiece, a masterpiece.”
Lee Seo-ah smiled proudly, then stood up with a little heave-ho.
“That white Outer God is waiting on the second floor, and the black Outer God is waiting on the third. I think we can move slowly.”
Ian nodded.
They had split their forces for no other reason than the school's special nature. To make it easier to search a school that, for some reason, got bigger and more structurally complex at night, they had spread everyone out separately.
If Lea and the Lord of the Outer Sea had been ordinary humans, this would have been something absolutely never to do, but fortunately the two of them were beings of a completely different order from ordinary people. There was no need to worry about them being picked off one by one just because they were separated.
Their current bodies were, through the special nature of the space created by the grimoire, built out as what was essentially illusion itself. In reality, they were just walking grimoires. Thanks to that, if anyone other than Ian touched them, their bodies would burst like balloons. Mystery was no exception.
Even if, really if, they were taken down, they'd just lose their forms and return to the grimoire. Then he'd just summon them and use them.
They didn't die, but they were also ones whose death wouldn't matter. They were the perfect resources to send out for reconnaissance. The two of them didn't like it, but that wasn't really an obstacle, so it was fine.
The reason Lee Seo-ah had been sent to the first floor was that, unlike the two of them, she was a human who could actually die. Thanks to that, he could reunite with her quickly.
“I took a quick look around, but there wasn't anything special on the first floor. Ah, I did find one book like this.”
Lee Seo-ah rummaged through her coat and pulled out a single red book. Ian stared at the book closely, then tilted his head.
“It’s not a grimoire?”
“Right. It’s a ghost story called Red Book. A novel that drives you crazier the more you read it? Something like that.”
Lee Seo-ah smiled brightly and tossed the book behind her. The evil spirits following her tore it to shreds.
“I picked it up just in case, but if you say it isn't a grimoire, then there's no need to keep carrying it around.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“Yeah. Ah, I haven't checked the library or the pool yet, so if we just stop by there, the first floor is done. The basement... I found the stairs leading down, but it felt a little off to go there.”
“Good job. Let's all regroup and go to the basement together.”
At the same moment he answered, an arm from an artificial body model flashed past Ian's vision and flew at him. But before it could even reach him, Lee Seo-ah's guardian spirit hacked the arm to pieces with a blade. The finely sliced bones and flesh fell to the floor.
The guardian spirit checked once to make sure Ian was unharmed, then shot toward where the model had come from. A few seconds later, it returned carrying the model's head. Ian gazed at the blood-dripping head and wore a faint smile.
“...Indeed, she's strong against mental domination, and she has combat power too, so traveling with her is easy.”
Most of the people Ian had moved with so far had shown themselves to be vulnerable to mental attacks. By contrast, Lee Seo-ah, despite being under continuous memory manipulation, seemed to have adapted to it to some extent and wore a fairly calm expression. Even when she heard frogs croaking, she hadn't shown much reaction.
Of course, memory manipulation wasn't a mental attack, and it was possible that the mental attacks of the Laughing Buddha or other entities here were stronger, but in any case, it was true that Lee Seo-ah was quite useful. It had been a while since he was in a situation where he didn't have to step forward himself, so he felt at ease too.
‘Yeah, I can let myself coast a bit too. I only need to handle the last part myself.’
When they found the grimoire, he'd have to act directly whether he liked it or not, but right now there was no need to do so. It was far better to conserve his stamina while getting help from Lee Seo-ah.
Ian turned to look at her, thinking that.
“Let's go to the pool first. Check the library after that, then head up to the second floor.”
“Yeah. Let's go, let's go.”
Lee Seo-ah hummed to herself with her hands behind her back. After a moment, she gave a sly smile and raised both hands, as if she'd picked something up from somewhere.
“Ian, I'll teach you everything.”
“No, it's fine. Let's just go to the pool.”
That was his immediate answer.
“...Hing.”
Lee Seo-ah let the corners of her mouth droop.
Unfortunately, there wasn't anything special in the pool except for the water ghosts. The library was the same. There wasn't a single thing that looked like a grimoire; there were only ghost-story books mixed in among the ordinary books.
And so the first-floor search was over.
Now it was time to head to the second floor.