Chapter 177 – Ghost Story (1)

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Translated by Jinmu

Read only at Novelbyu.com & Utoon.net

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Several days passed. During that time, I received private tutoring from Ryozo to catch up on my studies.

That was because recently there had been so many things happening that I had grown a little neglectful of my proper duty as a cadet, studying.

Not only me. Chloe, who had also returned to the academy, joined the tutoring too.

“…Chief, once you graduate, your employment is basically guaranteed already, isn’t it. And that’s not even all. Whether it’s a hero agency or some institution, you’d probably just pass straight through without any special procedures. Your existence itself is basically a résumé that says accepted.”

I agreed with Weapon’s words. Even today, calls had been pouring in from unknown numbers. Renowned agencies were now simply trying to contact me openly.

I ignored them all. If it had been a few months ago, I might have thought over those offers.

It was not like I dislike money. In my previous life and this life alike, I like money.

But recently I had changed the way I approached things. I wanted to be a little more faithful to cadet life.

The days we could laugh and enjoy academy life like this were not many. Even being generous, at most two and a half years. During that time, I wanted to live as cadet-like a life as possible.

After that, the Great War between humans and demons was scheduled to come. And the ominous future ahead was gradually emerging in an ever clearer outline.

After all, half a century ago the Sixth Legion Commander had been slain at the hands of the old Seven Stars, and in the present the Fifth and Third Legion Commanders had each had their heads cut off in turn.

And yet despite that, the demon side remained quiet without a single complaint. It was because the gate linking the Demon Realm and the human world still stood firm.

The gate would be destroyed the moment the Demon King resurrected, and that would be the opening signal of war.

To be honest, Agorna and Besna. The power of those two Legion Commanders had felt diminished.

If I had faced the two of them inside Gehenna in the Demon Realm, I wouldn’t have been able to confidently promise victory.

The reason I had been able to cut down Third Legion Commander Besna alone had a lot to do with the fact that his vessel was Assistant Manager Ha.

I was not being falsely modest. On their home ground of Gehenna, the Legion Commanders were truly overwhelming beings.

There was a reason the demon race, which followed only the logic of power, remained obedient.

Even now, with three Legion Commanders absent, the two remaining Legion Commanders were still ruling over the entire demon race. That was an ongoing fact.

For reference, something Media told me was that the place where the Seven Stars fought Sixth Legion Commander Basmon had been near the Gehenna Gate.

Since it was adjacent to his stronghold, she said he had been able to draw out power to a level nearly equivalent to the Demon Realm itself.

Then it made sense that three of the Seven Stars had died.

If that hadn’t been the case, there was no way the Seven Stars at their peak would have fought for seven days and nights.

‘It did seem strange that they struggled that much against Basmon, the weakest among the Legion Commanders.’

Put differently, it was also proof of just how strong the Legion Commanders would be in the Demon Realm.

The remaining Legion Commanders were likely just quietly waiting for their time. Waiting only for the Demon King to resurrect and destroy the Gehenna Gate.

‘But thinking about it now, just what kind of monster had the Hero of Origin been, to invade the Demon Realm and seal First Legion Commander Lycan?’

Even if it had been mutual destruction, I simply could not understand it by ordinary standards.

‘No wonder those devil bastards start frothing the moment Balor Hoakin’s story came up……’

The Hero of Origin was a great figure wrapped in veils.

Training seven disciples, blocking the passage through the Gehenna Gate, founding Hoakin Academy.

All the great trunks of human history had been achieved by that old man.

And yet his appearance and later whereabouts remained unclear. It was probably the game company’s intention to prevent Balor Hoakin from reappearing from the outset.

After all, if a mythical figure like him, who existed seven hundred years ago and was a super overpowered monster, reappeared, the story would end right there.

He was probably that sort of legendary figure who existed only in the setting.

“Geom-ma, are you even listening to me right now?!”

Ryozo’s raised voice shattered my train of thought. She kept tapping the textbook with the tip of her pencil lead.

“At this rate, how are you going to get full marks on the midterm written exam if you keep spacing out like that?”

“I’m not even planning to get full marks.”

“If you’ve already started, then you should aim for full marks. If your mindset stays that half-hearted, you’ll just end up like Weapon, stuck as a perpetual second place.”

At Ryozo’s barb, Weapon flared up.

“Do you think I want to be a perpetual second place? I’d like to try being first in written tests at least once too! And Ryozo, you sleep sprawled out all the time, so why are you always top of the class!”

“Want me to tell you how I study?”

“……”

Weapon’s face suddenly turned serious. His pride was too wounded to nod immediately. But even more than that, he wanted Ryozo’s study method badly.

Weapon let out a strained groan and nodded reluctantly. Ryozo gave a light shrug and said:

“Preview and review.”

“……?”

Weapon looked stunned. Ryozo let out a small sneer and added:

“Ah, I forgot the most important part. Study mainly from the textbook. And listen carefully to the professors’ lectures.”

“……”

“And you always complain that I sleep face-down, but even while doing that, I still listen to all the lectures. They say dolphins sleep with half their brain at a time, alternating. It’s kind of like that.”

A thick vein stood out on Weapon’s temple. Then his shoulders slumped. Because he knew those words weren’t entirely mockery.

It was just that the end of that statement had been absurd. She compares herself to a dolphin. And coming from Saki, who was famous for being smart, no less. Weapon felt a complicated emotion.

“……”

I watched the two of them chatting and then turned my gaze to the side. Chloe was diligently scribbling something in her notebook.

But she wasn’t diligently taking notes on Ryozo’s words. That notebook with a teddy-bear sticker on it.

I knew what that really was. A diary. And one page of it was crammed full of the words `I love you` written over and over.

In other words, the Love You Notebook. To me, that thing was scarier than DeX Note.

Chloe had returned to the academy the day after the Pertinax Auction House incident. She had been so happy she literally hopped like a rabbit.

The club members welcomed Chloe back. I too welcomed her without reserve. The image of her running at me with a knife that day was still vivid, but I just let it go. It wasn’t like it had happened only once or twice.

We filmed a horror movie from the very first time we met, so what couldn’t happen by now.

‘The casting is Chloe as the ghost, me as the human.’

Perhaps sensing my gaze, Chloe gave an embarrassed smile and quietly hid the notebook. Then she started taking down Ryozo’s lecture in a different notebook.

‘If you do your off-task work openly enough, the other person doesn’t notice it.’

Or maybe she had manifested the Blessing of the Crow.

Whichever it was, one thing was certain: studying wasn’t even in Chloe’s field of vision.

“This part is especially important. There’s about a ninety percent chance it’ll appear on the test. Even if the question is an essay, each professor has their own pattern when setting questions. The professor who analyzed the deeper layers of the Demon Realm usually, on a three-year cycle…”

Given Ryozo’s drowsy personality, I had thought she’d just point out the essentials. But she explained things with full sincerity. She didn’t miss even the faint scribbles barely visible in the corner of the textbook.

Weapon, meanwhile, pretended not to listen while secretly taking notes with his phone.

…And so, the two-hour tutoring session came to an end.

“Let’s stop here for today. Next study session will be after classes again tomorrow.”

As she was closing her teaching materials, Ryozo added:

“Ah, and tomorrow fifth and sixth period, Human History and Blessing Aesthetics, is a lecture with a high grade-weighting, so neither Chloe nor Geom-ma better doze off. Concentrate.”

“Thanks. Good work.”

“Yeees~.”

Only then did Weapon stand up as well. He mussed up his hair and grumbled:

“Then I should go do blessing training. In this damn practical-combat-focused academy, written study alone won’t keep you alive.”

“Come to think of it, Weapon, you’ve been going somewhere after school every day lately. Was that the training room?”

At my question, Weapon shook his head.

“No, the music room. My weapon takes the form of an instrument, remember.”

Right. A recorder.

Weapon kept talking.

“The training room smells too much like sweat, so it kind of sucks. But there’s a music room in Aaron Annex out on the southwestern edge.”

“The southwestern edge is basically the middle of nowhere. There aren’t even any other buildings nearby.”

Ryozo tilted her head. Weapon shot back:

“There are way more people using it than you’d think. I practice alone in the wind-instrument room, but the piano room is always packed. I happened to see it through the hallway window yesterday. Female cadets were lined up in front of the piano, waiting their turn.”

“They’re waiting in line for turns? People don’t usually pull number tickets just to play piano. Not these days, when the world is full of apps that can substitute for instruments on tablets.”

Weapon clicked his tongue like an old man.

“Good grief, Saki, what would you know about instruments? Electronic sound and real instruments differ in tone color. No matter how advanced the times get, you can’t reproduce that.”

Ryozo’s brows rose into the shape of a 八. But she soon waved her hand as though it were too troublesome to bother with.

Meanwhile, Chloe kept tilting her head with an uncertain expression.

“The more I listen, the stranger it sounds. Aaron Annex was shut down last year, after all. They said the facilities were too old, so it was being repaired.”

Weapon shook his head frantically.

“Th-th-that can’t be! I just said it. There were a ton of people there! And Chloe, how do you even know that?!”

“My older brother Nox is a second-year, you know. Last year I heard in passing that Aaron Annex had become a closed building. Nox used to enjoy going there because it was quiet, so I remember it clearly. And also…”

Suddenly Chloe stamped her foot and thumped the floor.

“To begin with, the music rooms are only here in the main building on the second floor.”

No sooner had she finished speaking than Ryozo’s and my gaze both turned toward Weapon. His complexion began turning ashen.

* * *

“Black hair, is it.”

The one who muttered that was a man in white robes standing upon an altar. Even his feet were veiled in white cloth, leaving him to exist without form, like a ghost.

Below the altar stretched a gray world drained completely of fragments of vitality. That place was both a location and a phenomenon, an abyss without bottom.

A deer-headed demon bowed flat and pleaded with the man.

“Th-this is all because I failed to stop it in time. B-but I simply could never imagine, with such irreverence, that the human bastards would strike down the lords. P-please show mercy.”

The man in white turned around very slowly.

Kugugugugugugu.

That trivial movement alone made the whole area shake. The only place untouched by the earthquake was the altar on which the man in white stood.

Jeobeok.

The man’s foot trampled down the steps. The demons, who had been gathered in disorder, all lowered their heads at once.

“You ask for mercy.”

The man spoke. His voice was so close to emptiness that nothing at all seemed to cling to it.

“Tell me. If I were to grant you mercy, could you in turn show mercy to me?”

“……!”

“Mercy is something only those who stand against the heavens may bestow by nature. Yet I too am merely a low creature beneath the heavens. Then why is it that you ask mercy of me?”

The man in white came to a stop before the deer-headed demon.

“I ask you.”

The mouth of the man who had been looking down upon the demon opened once more.

“Was the one who killed my brothers a being that stood against the heavens?”

The deer-headed demon lifted his head without meaning to. He saw the exalted countenance of that great one. Behind his head, a black sun was greedily devouring the light of the world.

Every demon, as though by prior promise, shed black tears.

“Ahh. Lord Quarn, master of Gehenna-”

Sssssss.

At that instant, the deer-headed demon vanished as though devoured by space. As though existence itself had been erased, without leaving behind even a single trace.

The man, Second Legion Commander Quarn, looked up at the sky. With eyes in which only emptiness swirled, he stared endlessly at the black sun.

“The day of meeting is not far off, O One Beyond the Heavens.”

The black sun merely remained silent.