chapter_0184

I looked around. One of the dormitory buildings had completely evaporated, leaving only a few peripheral fragments, and the nearby park had been plowed through. It looked more like a battlefield than an academy.

The cause was obviously Aria.

I took a breath. I hadn’t yet fully mastered the memories I had regained, and I needed more time to eliminate the dissonance between my soul and my body.

But even with that, the gap between the two worlds was overwhelming.

A dark fantasy world where the protagonist must suffer and struggle, and a yuri romance novel world where that wasn’t necessary, were fundamentally different.

If the enemy was weak, the protagonist wouldn’t be in a dire situation, so the enemy was made overwhelmingly strong, and if the protagonist couldn’t defeat them, the story wouldn’t progress, so they were given some ability to respond.

As the settings of the enemy and the allies were alternately strengthened, inflation gradually set in. It would be more unusual for the yuri romance novel world to be weaker than the dark fantasy world.

It made sense that Aria had been so obsessed with my power.

” Who did that belong to?? What are you talking about, Mira? I really don’t know what’s going on.”

Leona asked in a confused voice. With her miserable appearance and Aria’s venomous expression, it seemed that something had already happened. If she had been a little later, she probably wouldn’t have seen anything good.

“I’ll explain later. Have you thought about what I said? Between Aria and me, who would you choose? If you haven’t choose yet, you’d better choose quickly. It’s time.”

“……”

Leona’s expression darkened as she alternated between looking at Aria and me.

She must have realized it from what had happened a while ago. No matter how difficult it was to choose between the two, the time had come when she had to.

Leona hesitated for a long time before speaking with difficulty.

“……Mira. The Aria over there isn’t the Aria I know, is she?”

“Probably not.”

I answered honestly. While the Aria Leona knew and the current Aria were definitely different, I could explain the rest after everything was over. This much was enough to make her understand the current situation.

“Is there any way to restore her to her original state?”

“That depends on her, not me. What do you think, as her childhood friend? Do you think you can restore her?”

“……No.”

Leona lowered her head in despair and mumbled something. After mumbling for a while, she made a determined decision and aimed the Holy Sword at Aria, not me.

“Honestly, I want to believe it. I want to believe that I’m mistaken and that she can be restored to her original state. But I don’t think that’s the case.”

A very bitter voice followed.

“……It feels wrong. I’m sorry, Aria. I can’t trust you.”

The golden irises glistened with tears. The Holy Sword began to emit a faint light. I watched that for a moment and blurted out.

“You want to fight? in that state?”

“Uh, yeah?”

Leona, who had been sobbing, finally looked down at her own appearance.

Half of her shirt was burned off, exposing her underwear and bare skin on her upper body, and her skirt was gone, leaving her in just her panties on her lower half.

She was wearing shoes without socks, which was quite a sight. It seemed that she hadn’t been able to restore her clothes after being attacked.

“Kyaaaaaaah!”

Leona screamed. Tears welled up between her tightly closed eyelids. Leona sat down, covering her chest and panties with her arms.

She had been so focused on the situation that she hadn’t noticed, but now she was aware of it.

“Y, you’re not supposed to look there! Mira! Look away!”

Leona turned her back and crouched down, emphasizing her buttocks, and I took off the clothes he was wearing and offered them to her.

Leona took the clothes almost like I was snatching them and hastily put them on, sitting with her thighs tucked in so that they covered her entire body.

Her flushed cheeks and tearful eyes looked up at me. I turned away. I pretended I hadn’t seen anything.

“I’ll deal with Aria. Just stay like that for a while. It shouldn’t take long.”

The reason we could have this conversation was because Aria was gasping for breath as if she was about to collapse at any moment. She didn’t have the spare capacity to exploit our weaknesses.

“Why did you have such a useless desire? You should have destroyed it instead of sealing it.”

“Heek, useless desire, Mr. Mira…… you’re being harsh…… there’s nowhere left to go…… hah, hah.”

Aria was sweating coldly and smiling faintly.

“A little more than half is in, heek, don’t you think…… Mr. Mira…… might be…… too big……?”

“It’s because you’re too small.”

The conversation, if heard by someone who didn’t know the context, would be highly misleading. Even Leona, who had just been in danger of dying, looked confused.

When I thought about it, Leona had teased me in a similar way when we were first getting close. Maybe it was because they were childhood friends and had similar personalities.

“I’m sorry it’s so tight…… will you forgive me for this……?”

Aria drew a magic circle in the air. It wasn’t the usual faint blue magic circle, but a sinister red one.

“What? Are you going to fight in that state? That’s unexpected. Won’t your body burst soon?”

“Of course I’m not going to fight in this state, huff, no. I need a little more time…… to do what I want……”

“What do you want to do?”

“A life-threatening gamble.”

As she spoke, Aria’s eyes flashed.

The body that had disappeared in an instant appeared again at a distance smaller than half a fingernail, and the space next to it shattered as familiar yet unfamiliar monsters poured out.

The first to emerge was a lion-like demon. It had wings twice the size of its body on its back, large spikes on its front and hind leg joints, and a mace at the end of its tail.

Its red eyes blazed as it looked at me. Its claws, twice the size of an average canine’s, scraped the ground. Poison and sulfur dripped from its mouth.

There were dozens of them, if not a hundred.

But my eyes were fixed on Aria, who was behind them, casting a spell on herself. It looked like she was about to do something.

I accelerated and reached out my hand. A magic circle appeared in the air, and a magma sphere fell on Aria.

-Kwaquaquaqua!

And, the monsters that had just been summoned were blocking the magma with their bodies. More than ten of them melted away as they forced their way through, but more kept coming to fill the gaps.

Poison and sulfur mixed with their saliva dripped from their mouths. If I tried to avoid them, it would be simple, but the collateral damage would be enormous.

I erected a hemispherical barrier in the air. I shot lightning from the barrier in the exact opposite direction of the sulfur’s trajectory. The lightning pierced the sulfur and hit the throats of the monsters opening their mouths.

The monsters that were hit by the lightning exploded from the inside out. Acidic blood and flesh splattered everywhere. The ground bubbled where the monster’s fluids touched it.

‘Was this her plan from the start? To use them as meat shields?’

The monsters were still pouring out, dying faster than they could emerge, and they weren’t attacking me. Instead, they were blocking my path and serving as Aria’s meat shields.

The reason she summoned lion-like demons was probably because of their tough skin, which gave them extreme resistance to physical attacks as a racial trait. But that didn’t mean they were weak to magic.

This would take too long. I stomped the ground. A shockwave tore through the area, flattening everything in its path. The nearby barriers rippled like a stormy sea.

‘If only I had the Holy Lance……’

With the lance, breaking through would have been much easier. Any number of them would have melted away as soon as they appeared.

But for some reason, I couldn’t use it. Ever since I met Latina, I couldn’t summon divine power. It kept flowing back into me as soon as I tried to draw it out.

I had no choice but to use something else. I drew a magic circle on my palm. A sinister black sphere, rotating clockwise, appeared.

The black sphere made the monsters howl and react. Of course, they would. It was a power used by demons, and how dangerous it was was engraved in their instincts.

The sphere, which had been rotating clockwise, slowly stopped. Slowly, in this case, meant a fraction of a second, as I was using body enhancement and acceleration at the same time.

-Kuo

The flow of air changed. The sphere began to rotate in the opposite direction.

The monsters that had been blocking the way between Aria and me, serving as meat shields, floated in the air. Their front and back legs, with nowhere to step, flailed helplessly.

Everything inside the barrier was sucked into the sphere. The defense wall, with their claws and fangs embedded in each other, and the lion-like demons, twice their size, were of no use.

They simply couldn’t withstand the pressure and were repeatedly sucked into the sphere, disappearing.

I fixed the black sphere in the air and increased my running speed. I sliced one of the monsters blocking my way in half and approached Aria.

“As I thought, I’m still the protagonist after all.”

It had taken only 2~3 seconds to cut through the monsters in front of me and reach Aria, but from her expression, I could tell that it was already too late.

“Now that it’s succeeded.”

The power that had been flowing back into my body burst out.

.

.

.

“Didn’t it suddenly get quiet outside?”

“Huh, really?”

The four people, who had been resting in a tent specially made for the Saint, turned their heads. The outside, which had been bustling with activity and festival-like atmosphere, was strangely quiet.

The Saint had appeared and healed all the injured, and there were no monsters, so it was supposed to be noisy outside. It was unusual for it to be this quiet.

The four people nodded in unison and got up. They pushed back the sofa, which didn’t return to its original shape even though the pressure from above was gone, and opened the tent.

“……Huh?”

The tent didn’t open.

No, it wasn’t just that it didn’t open. It had completely solidified, not even moving a bit. Rosalia, who was confused, pounded on it with her palm, but to no avail.

There was no sound, no movement, nothing. Even the fist she had hit with didn’t hurt.

“What’s going on? How did this……”

“……The same thing is happening with the others.”

Laura touched the cup on the table. This time, there was no response either. The four people realized the seriousness of the situation and each tried to open their own tent, but everything inside was the same.

“Is it magic?”

Priscilla, who had tried to lift the pillow and blanket but eventually gave up and returned, asked with a serious face. The other three also replied with serious faces.

“I don’t know. If it was magic, you would have felt it…… hmm, can any of you use magic? I can’t draw out divine power.”

“Same here. I can’t use magic either.”

“I can’t either, but I don’t understand what’s going on. To begin with, whether this is magic or not is questionable.”

Each of them fell into thought, but they couldn’t come up with a solution. This was the first time they had encountered such a situation. It was unusual for things to be so quiet that even touching them didn’t make a sound, and for them to be so immobile that they didn’t even react.

It was as if time had stopped.