I Became the Finance Director of an Academy on the Verge of Bankruptcy – Chapter 122

Chapter 122

Two Regressors – Part 2

『 Translator – Divinity 』

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“No, wait. Hold on.”

“Speak.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Before feeling flustered or offended, Chloe couldn’t understand this situation at all.

They weren’t exactly on the best of terms, but they had just agreed to cooperate. They had reached an agreement to analyze this unknown space created by Cassandra.

But to suddenly point an old sword, presumably Dark Sword, at her neck…

And Ruth Spero seemed incredibly serious.

‘Be careful, if that turns into Dark Sword, you’ll die.’

‘…Escaping is…’

‘If she was still Rank 6, we could buy some time with [Chain Binding]. But it’s different now that she’s Rank 7. At this distance, she’ll cut you down before you can even cast a spell.’

‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

‘Of course. Every time I see that sword, my neck aches.’

Chloe first heard the name Dark Sword from adult Chloe, and only after researching it did she learn it was something from fairy tales. It was only natural that Chloe, who came from an extremely humble background where even picture books were a luxury, didn’t know about it.

But she already knew that the artifact that granted all wishes, something that should only exist in fairy tales, actually existed. And that her future self was killed by that very sword.

It looked like just an old, chipped sword, but…

Perhaps influenced by Ruth Spero’s emotions, an ominous aura was slowly emanating from it.

It was annoying, but complying was the best option for now.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Those words you said earlier.”

“…’Strike while the iron is hot’?”

“Where did you hear that? How do you know what it means?”

“Well—”

Chloe, about to answer “I heard it from Adam,” stopped.

Come to think of it, it was adult Chloe, the self-proclaimed Goddess, who heard those words, not her. What if she answered that she heard it from Adam, and this crazy regressor went to Adam to confirm it?

Of course, Adam would say he never said such a thing to Chloe, and this inexplicable outburst would happen again.

Considering how she disguised herself as a stranger and threatened her before, she might disguise herself again and attack Chloe. Ruth Spero probably thought her disguised identity hadn’t been revealed.

‘But there’s no other answer. She must have also thought of it in relation to Adam.’

‘No, but you ran away with Adam for a long time! And you’re saying you heard those words for the first time? Don’t those words have a different meaning?’

‘…She said other strange things, but this was the first time she said that. It’s a phrase I’ve never heard before, even though I’m always with Adam. And for that regressor bitch to know it and react so sensitively… Don’t tell me…’

‘Don’t tell me what?’

‘Is it… after I died? After entering that cave?’

There was no time to question adult Chloe’s muttering, which seemed to have realized something.

Ruth Spero’s eyes gleamed dangerously at the unnatural silence.

“I’ll give you three seconds. Spill everything within that time.”

“Spill everything? What…”

“It was a bit strange, come to think of it. Adam should have been involved with you first, but he got involved with Beatrice first. And his growth rate is also steep.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“An absurd thought. But if it’s true, it’s a thought I can’t ignore.”

‘That bitch is using her head.’

‘What are you suddenly talking about!?’

‘No, wait, is she realizing this late because she’s an eternal last-place student? Anyway, that bitch is a regressor. It’s natural for her to be suspicious if there’s something different from the past she experienced.’

Drip.

Chloe broke out in a cold sweat between adult Chloe’s nonchalant muttering and Ruth’s increasingly murderous aura.

Why were these crazy bitches doing this to her? One was her future self, which was annoying, and the other was a regressor, and even a Rank 7, which was even more annoying.

‘If you’re just going to spout nonsense, forget it. I’ll handle it myself!’

‘…I’m not trying to push it onto you. It’s because that bitch is suspicious of you meeting me and changing things.’

‘Then what am I supposed to do!?’

‘This. It’s actually a good opportunity.’

‘Huh?’

‘In the end, I’m just a lingering thought in Dark Sword, and that’s why I was able to regress incompletely. So…’

If she came into contact with Dark Sword again, she could interfere with it.

She couldn’t hear the rest clearly. Before Chloe could retort with “What nonsense are you talking about?” or Ruth could unleash Dark Sword, unable to endure any longer,

Adult Chloe, a mental entity and a peak Rank 7 mage, grabbed Dark Sword. There were no wounds or blood since she was a mental entity, but…

The change was dramatic.

Woooong!!!

“What!?”

“………!!!”

Of course, even a peak Rank 7 mage like adult Chloe couldn’t steal Dark Sword or make it go berserk.

She had tried countless times in the past, but Dark Sword wasn’t something that could be destroyed or erased with ‘mere’ Rank 7 or 8 power.

As an object on a conceptual level, it was an artifact that had reached the realm of Rank 9, to make a comparison. That’s why adult Chloe wasn’t interfering with Dark Sword itself.

‘I was curious about this, so it’s a good opportunity.’

The reason why adult Chloe was able to regress, albeit incompletely. The ‘lingering thoughts’ absorbed by Dark Sword.

Strictly speaking, those thoughts weren’t Dark Sword itself, but merely byproducts. They were like stains that wouldn’t come off because they weren’t wiped away after being smeared with blood.

That’s why adult Chloe could interfere with them. It wasn’t difficult to find one specific thought among the hundreds, thousands of thoughts remaining in Dark Sword.

The thoughts of Adam Keynes.

‘What was the end of that bitch and Adam… after I died in front of that cave and they went inside?’

It was time to confirm it herself.

She sifted through the stains of lingering thoughts and finally found the thoughts of the person most precious to her, the one she was most familiar with.

‘…?’

She was momentarily puzzled by the strange trace that seemed like only half of the ‘stain’ remained, but she focused on the thoughts. The magic to use was already decided.

Chloe’s mana was insufficient, so she even chipped away at her own mana-made mental body to activate the magic.

[Death Rattle]

“That magic is—”

Just as Ruth Spero’s eyes widened in disbelief at that unbelievable magic,

A flash of light erupted.

***

“Ugh… my head…”

Chloe, who had briefly lost consciousness, opened her eyes, clutching her head. Before even addressing the throbbing headache, she instinctively cursed inwardly.

‘You crazy bitch! What did you suddenly do!?’

It was a remark directed at her future self, her adult self, who was always in her head, but…

…the reply that should have come naturally didn’t.

“…Huh?”

No sarcastic remarks, no arrogant remarks, not even a surprised response.

As if no one could answer her inner thoughts.

Although it was a perfectly normal silence, it felt incredibly long to Chloe, perhaps because she had been constantly conversing with adult Chloe in her mind for the past few months.

Chloe, belatedly realizing the situation, got up with trembling eyes.

“Where… is this?”

It wasn’t just the absence of adult Chloe’s voice that bewildered her, but also the fact that…

…her surroundings were completely different. It wasn’t that unnaturally white space anymore.

“A forest?”

She was in the middle of a silent forest. A strange place where even the sounds of insects, birds, and the wind couldn’t be heard.

Chloe was there. She wondered if it was a hallucination caused by magic, but even with her skills, she couldn’t find anything strange.

‘…If only my future self were here, she would have noticed something.’

During the festival, and in the various incidents afterward…

Chloe, realizing that she had been unconsciously relying on her future self, frowned. Wasn’t this similar to when she first learned magic?

Chloe muttered a small curse and calmly looked around.

‘It seems to be evening, and the size of the forest… is much larger than the range of my detection magic. But there are no life signs at all?’

A forest should be teeming with animals, birds, and insects. That’s why life detection magic wasn’t commonly used in forests. It was useless since it would detect hundreds of life forms.

But her life detection magic, used as a test, didn’t detect anything. There was no life in this area.

Not even…

‘The trees… are dead.’

Even the faint life signs of plants, which were usually detected, were nowhere to be seen. Upon closer inspection, the trees only looked healthy on the outside; they were empty shells, dead inside.

What was this forest? Did a place this strange exist on the continent?

An ordinary person might panic, but Chloe was a Rank 5 mage. Naturally, she wasn’t going to wait for rescue or wander through the forest.

There was a much simpler method.

[Flight]

Whoosh!

If the dead trees were blocking her view, she could just go higher.

Chloe, floating in the air with [Flight] magic, ascended to a position where she could overlook the entire forest. [Flight] magic wasn’t efficient and couldn’t be used for long, but for now, it was enough to check her bearings or find her future self or Ruth Spero.

And as Chloe looked down at the forest of dead trees from the sky,

“…What is that?”

She couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the ‘something’ that came into view.

It was a tree of unimaginable size.

No, could she even call it a tree? It was so massive that it was strange she hadn’t noticed it before, even though it was obscured by the other dead trees.

But unlike what the word ‘tree’ implied, it had no leaves or signs of life. Rather, it was filled with bare branches, ashen gray as if burned by fire.

But even so, its sheer size gave off an overwhelming presence.

And coincidentally, Chloe ‘Piste’ felt like she knew what it was.

‘The… World Tree.’

The one her master, the Elven Archmage, had told her about, the one that always appeared in the elven history books he gave her.

The parent and mother of all elves. It was merely a magical tree, but after an impossibly long time, it reached Rank 9 and created the elven race.

It was a tree that was worshipped as a god or condemned as a heretic by countless religions in the past.

But why was she seeing the burned World Tree? If so, that meant…

‘Is this the elven forest?’

She had heard from the Elven Archmage that the forest where the World Tree resided was hidden and inaccessible to monsters or other races. That although you could see the World Tree from afar, you could never approach it.

Even the Archmage, who was clearly an eccentric among elves, praised the beauty and richness of that forest.

But what she saw now were dead and decaying trees and the World Tree, burned black.

‘…The last spell my future self used was definitely [Death Rattle].’

It was a spell she had heard of. To be precise, it was a spell with the highest danger rating on the forbidden magic list, a spell that would earn a mage the scorn of others just by knowing it.

A magic that could awaken the spirit of the dead and hear their last words. It wasn’t dangerous in itself, but the problem was that [Death Rattle] was the basic requirement for learning ‘necromancy.’

Along with summoning magic, which summoned monsters and caused terrorist attacks, it was a magic that caused countless chaos and deaths on the continent and was thus forbidden.

Putting aside why her future self learned it,

‘But it can only awaken the spirit of the dead, it can’t transport someone somewhere or change the surroundings.’

Even if her future self was an exceptional mage, the magic itself didn’t have that function. In other words, it was highly likely that even her future self hadn’t anticipated this situation.

Why did this happen? The reason was easier to guess than she thought.

‘That pure white room earlier, you said it was filled with high-level spatial magic.’

It was clearly a room that Cassandra couldn’t create with her rank. Could it be that something happened because of the spatial magic in that room? Perhaps it was the influence of Dark Sword.

But there was something that couldn’t be explained with just that.

‘Since [Death Rattle] was used, this place itself must be related to that magic.’

And adult Chloe used that magic on the lingering thoughts in Dark Sword, specifically Adam’s thoughts.

…There was no need to dwell on why Adam’s thoughts remained in Dark Sword. Adam must have also died at the hands of Ruth Spero, by that Dark Sword.

She tried not to feel anger or any other emotion at that fact. Grasping the current situation was the priority.

And so, a question arose.

‘But what does Adam’s death have to do with the World Tree?’

The World Tree and the elves were already burned and eradicated by Rank 8 monsters long ago. Her master, the Elven Archmage, was the only survivor.

That happened before Chloe, and even Adam, were born. Then, for [Death Rattle] to be related to this place…

It could only mean one thing.

“The place where Adam died…”

…was here.

Right after that thought,

BOOOOOM!!!

“…!?”

Far away, near the burned World Tree, beyond the reach of Chloe’s detection magic, a roaring sound and a dust cloud erupted.

Chloe hurriedly cast a defensive spell and flew towards it, finally finding the two she was looking for.

However,

“This… is impossible.”

“…I think so too, you eternal last-place student.”

“You damn witch.”

“I had to become a witch to stay by Adam’s side. Unlike you, who was busy being praised as a hero and wasn’t there for him.”

“………”

The atmosphere between the two was on a different level from the animosity between Ruth and Chloe.

They were clearly the same Ruth Spero and, strictly speaking, the same Chloe Piste, and yet…

They were gloomy and murderous, as if they genuinely wished for each other’s death.

“What… are you two doing?”

“………”

“………”

Even when Chloe hurriedly intervened, nothing changed.

Chloe finally realized. The ‘escape’ that adult Chloe mentioned, and how Ruth Spero killed her future self. In the ‘future’ that adult Chloe didn’t tell her about…

There were things that she couldn’t even imagine.

A complete regressor and an incomplete regressor.

The two finally faced each other.