.｡.:✧ Chapter 27 ✧:.｡.

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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“Be quiet, for now, your disposition will be discussed again this evening.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched the knight slam the door roughly shut behind him, for if we had been taken away immediately, we would have had no chance to prove our innocence.

The reason we were able to stay was, surprisingly, due to the dean’s help.

The imposing woman with the glasses was Heini Rosales, a royal inspector.

She wanted to arrest us for trying to steal the Sun King’s treasure, but the Dean stepped in and stopped her.

He argued that she didn’t have proof that we had stolen it yet, and that she couldn’t arrest students simply for being there.

After some back and forth, Heini Rosales said she would check it out later in the day and that they were searching the academy.

‘No, you’re going to arrest us without even doing a proper search?’

I was incredulous, but I guess it was because of the testimony that we were arrested at the scene.

Since there were four of us, we had to spend the day together in a large common room, and I coughed to get their attention.

“Come here, let’s discuss what happened yesterday.”

We definitely had a culprit.

Although I do remember subduing the culprit, who was using Cockatrice magic, with a self-inflicted wound.

“Who the hell was he?”

Strangely, my head was foggy and I had no memory of him.

It wasn’t just me.

Rin, Ares, and Hayun remembered the exact same situation, but they couldn’t remember anything about the culprit.

I pieced together the situation one by one, but I couldn’t remember.

“I think it must have been some sort of magical intervention……”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I nodded, agreeing with Rin.

I cleared my throat and extended my index and middle fingers.

“There are two things that are strange about this situation.”

[The events of last night are distorted in the memories of everyone at the Academy.]

[Our memories of the events are intact, but only our memories of the culprit are gone].

“Come to think of it, we’ve only lost our memory of the culprit, but we remember the circumstances clearly.”

“That’s right, some of the professors even said they saw us stealing, so their memories have changed.”

Rin added, nodding at Hayun’s words. Ares looked at me, frowning as if something was bothering him.

‘What’s wrong?’

He looked uncomfortable, but I ignored him and continued.

“Well, there are a lot of contradictions about the situation that are easy to prove, like the fact that they saw us stealing yesterday and didn’t arrest us right away, but let us sleep in our dorms.”

“Right. If they saw us stealing, they should have arrested us.”

Hayun’s expression brightened a little.

“The important question is why our memories were left behind…”

I grunted as I couldn’t figure this part out, and Rin waved a hand in the air.

“Well, it’s probably because of my magic.”

“Huh?”

“I cast a spell on you last night to help you sleep, and it actually taps into your memories and mind a bit to help you sleep.”

Rin threw up her hands in embarrassment, realizing it was a scarier spell than she thought.

“Ha, but it’s never failed me, because like I said, I’ve used it often.”

“Okay, keep telling me about it.”

“Hmph, so I guess the magic that manipulated people’s memories yesterday got mixed up with my magic, and our magic canceled each other out.”

“But isn’t that weird too, we lost the memories of the culprit but not the distortion of the events?”

I asked, and Rin shook her head.

“That’s the thing……”

Just then, the dean walked through the door.

With a look of urgency on his face, he walked right up to us.

“We have no records of the missing student you were talking about, and no one remembers her.”

“What?”

Not just erasing the memory of the culprit from us, but erasing the memories and records of the culrpit that had been planted in the minds of students throughout the academy.

In other words, we’d been accusing someone who didn’t even exist.

Then Rin chimed in from the side.

“That’s it. Maybe the wizard cast his spell twice, the first time distorting people’s memories of that night. That was canceled out by my magic, but the next spell, the one that erased the culprit, was right on target.”

That would explain the phenomenon, but it didn’t answer the question.

Few mages had access to the entire academy in the first place.

As we moved on to the subject of wizards, the dean slipped in beside me and patted my side.

“You guys didn’t really steal it, did you?”

“Ha, good, how do you remember what happened yesterday?”

The dean frowned and began to recall his own memories first.

“The magical alarm went off. In fact, our academy’s underground vault is hidden in the building next to the large tree where you were. But when you came out, the guards arrested you…”

“And you put us up in the dormitories? You caught us stealing right away, so where is the stolen treasure?”

“……?”

When we finally put the pieces together, the dean gave us a look that said something wasn’t right, and we were convinced again.

“We were wondering if our memories were wrong, but thank goodness we’re right. Their memories are full of contradictions.”

That didn’t mean we had an immediate solution.

With all the records gone, there was no way to pinpoint the culprit.

A heated discussion about the magic that tampered with the memories took place between the Dean and Rin, and Hayun watched them, her fingers twitching.

Ares discreetly called me over to the corner of the reception room.

“What’s going on?”

Judging by his unhappy expression from earlier, I knew it wasn’t going to be good.

‘Come to think of it, it’s been a while since we’ve talked.’

“I heard from the conversation earlier, why didn’t you rescue Rin immediately yesterday?”

“……what?”

His eyes burned with determination and a sense of justice, like a paladin slaying evil.

“From what I heard, even if Rin didn’t go through that pain, you could have rescued her, right?”

“True.”

When I admitted it like it was no big deal, Ares became even more vociferous.

“Then why did Rin have to suffer like that!”

“……”

The woman’s gaze snapped to us.

She seemed puzzled as to why we’re suddenly fighting, but I’ve been racking my brain to come up with a decent excuse.

I can’t tell him that in a previous life, Rin was the Commander of the Undead Army That slaughtered everyone on the continent, and that I was checking to see if her near-death experience would cause her to go into an awakening-like state and change.

‘How should I explain this?’

But Ares must have heard me roll my eyes, because he snapped back and snarled.

“Tell it to me straight, Daniel McLean. If you make a wrong move here, you’ll die before the knights get their hands on you.”

Ares bared his teeth at him.

At first, I didn’t know how I was going to explain myself to a kid who didn’t know me, but it was hard to stay calm when he’d come out like this and touched my feelings.

I grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze, and Ares frowned, releasing his grip.

“If you don’t know anything, please shut up.”

“What?”

The entire human population of the continent had died.

When I stopped by a nearby village to check the veracity of the rumors that even I, a forest dweller, had heard.

The place had already been slaughtered by the Undead Army.

A mother had died with her child wrapped in her arms.

Then the mother came back to life and pulled out her child’s tongue and ate it.

Then the child came back to life, this time to pluck out the eyes of his friends.

As they fled, hoping to survive somehow, the Death Knights hunted them down, chuckling and laughing.

Their spears were skewered with human faces as if they were apples.

“Why did I watch her die? Why did I do that? Because it was necessary.”

Rin was a dear childhood friend and a frayed first love.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but she had written letters to my sister and cleared up misunderstandings with her own friends to protect me from expulsion.

In a previous life, she had killed me and Eris, and while that was still traumatizing to me, I couldn’t hold the current Rin responsible for that.

But apart from that, I knew.

What the future holds for that sweet, kind girl.

On my choice, the end of the continent depends.

That’s why I tested Rin, to see.

It wasn’t just for me, it was for her.

If I can get a clearer picture of what made Rin the Undead Commander and rescue her, I can prevent the annihilation of the continent and allow her to live a normal life.

If I couldn’t.

I would have to kill her.

This was a matter that could not and should not be judged by my own feelings.

So I was actually a little afraid.

I was seeing hints of that mood in her recent behavior.

‘What if the reason she changed is internal and not due to something external.’

I initially thought it was more likely that something external had caused Rin to become that way.

For example, a curse, brainwashing, infection, etc.

Because she was very different from the Rin I knew, and she was in tears the moment she killed me.

But when she grabbed me last night, I sensed an aura similar to that one in Rin.

What if that was the true nature of the girl called Rin?

Unfortunately, in that case, I would have no choice but to kill her.

After all, if that was her true nature, it would break out one day.

Couldn’t I stay by her side for the rest of my life and protect her from decaying?

Of course, it was simply a matter of possibility.

Even if she had that instinct, it was possible that she wouldn’t decay.

It was my position that no matter what the odds, if it had the potential to wipe out an entire continent’s population, it had to be eliminated.

“You, what the hell are you talking about?”

Ares asked as he looked at me, There’s a lot I want to say, but I can’t., but Rin and Hayun intervened and pulled us apart.

“Don’t! I’m sure Daniel had his reasons.”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“……”

I watched Rin trying to stop me with a forced smile, but my chest ached. The pain around my heart still persisted, and I felt sorry, but I looked away.
“Yeah, I love a good fight, but this isn’t the time for it.”

Ares nodded in understanding as the dean interjected, and I said nothing, trying to think of a way to resolve the situation.

“In the end, it’s just a matter of discovering the existence of the student we don’t remember.”

All we have to do is find out how he suddenly disappeared. Then the Templars and the Inquisitor would recognize that something magical had happened.

“But you’re sure it was a student?”

Hayun tilted her head and asked, and I couldn’t give a definite answer. In fact, I had doubts about whether the culprit was a student or not.

That’s when Rin answered.

“Yes, he was a student. I have a feeling he was close to me.”

“Yes, he was close to you……”

I was close to Rin.

With Rin…… Was close?

“Wait a minute……”

Something flashed through my mind, and I immediately looked at the dean. However, before he could respond, the answer had already formed within me.

‘Shit.’

I remembered that I had carelessly overlooked the key to the solution in my past actions.

As a bitter taste caressed my tongue, Rin narrowed her eyes and nodded vigorously, turning to me.

“It’s there! It’s still there!”

“……what?”

I asked, wondering what the hell she was talking about and what I had just realized, but Rin looked around and whispered in my ear.

“I talked to the dean and told him not to throw it away.”

“……!”

I looked at Rin in surprise, wondering how she knew that, but she didn’t have much of an answer other than a wry smile.

Anyway, I put that aside.

I walked straight up to the dean and spoke quietly.

“The video footage that was monitoring Rin contains the image of the culprit.”

If I were friends with Rin, I would have spent time with her.

We had surveillance footage of Rin’s behavior in the academy over the past few days.

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