༺ Traces ༻
“F-Frey… wake up…”
“Oh, are you leaving already? Then… see you later.”
Frey, who had been holding her hand for a long time while talking in a bizarre way, let go of her hand and began waving with a melancholic expression.
“…Huh?”
After a moment of hesitation, Frey noticed ‘Kania’ standing in front of him and opened his mouth with an apologetic expression.
“Oh, Kania… I apologize. Because of the ordeal, you looked like my mother.”
Frey smiled and talked as if it was no big deal, but ‘Kania’ just stared blankly at him.
“Hey, you don’t have to worry? Rather, it was nice to see my mother after a long time. It seems that my mental health has recovered a bit. The first ordeal doesn’t do any harm to me.”
Frey, thinking that Kania was overly concerned about him like always, said in a calm voice to reassure her.
‘He really…used that purification method…’
However, Irina’s complexion turned pale as she was thinking about the effects of the curse she had cast to kill Frey.
❰12 o’clock Curse❱, which Irina cast on Frey in exchange for a year of mana exhaustion on the first day of her regression, is one of the most terrifying curses in the world.
But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to lift the curse.
The only way to do so is to endure all the pain inflicted by the curse for 24 hours and then destroy a clock one minute before its hour hand strikes 『12』, announcing the beginning of the next day.
Compared to other terrifying curses of similar strength, at first glance, the way of lifting it appears to be fair, although a bit frustrating. However, in reality, this isn’t the case at all.
First of all, the pain suffered for 24 hours due to the ❰12 o’clock Curse❱ curse is agonizing enough to cause death, so it’s impossible to endure it for an entire day while holding on to your consciousness.
The person who lasted the longest was recorded to have endured it for a mere six hours. It’s all that needed to be said to describe how terrifying the method of purifying the curse is.
And, even if you somehow manage to break the clock, it doesn’t end there.
Even after breaking the clock, you will keep suffering from that excruciating pain until you die.
Of course, most people would rather choose death than constantly suffer in agony till their last breath…
“In just a few more days, the first ordeal will end. So don’t worry…”
However, for a person who has a reason not to die.
A person who shoulders the destiny to protect the world from the Demon King.
He will have no choice but to suffer for eternity.
“Kania, you’re acting a little weird today. Are you really all right?”
“Oh, yes… I’m fine.”
Irina continued to think about the curse, which she had placed on him, and when Frey asked her a question with a worried look on his face, she finally came to her senses and answered.
“Come on, eat this.”
“…Yes?”
“It’s because your face looks pale. If you faint here, the situation will become problematic.”
Then Frey, who looked at her quietly, quietly held out a fish skewer to her.
“Anyway, it doesn’t matter if I fall as long as I can kill the Demon King, so your health is more important, so don’t hesitate to eat.”
“……Yes.”
When Irina kept hesitating, Frey said that with a stern expression as he waved the fish skewer at her, and in the end Irina was forced to grab the skewer with her trembling hands.
“By the way, what about the future? According to the newspaper I read earlier… I’m supposed to be in my dormitory at Sunrise Academy.”
Eventually, when ‘Kania’ began to eat the fish slowly, Frey, who was looking at her cheerfully, heaved a sigh and muttered.
“I’ll need your stealth skills to sneak back into the dormitory… When do you think your dark mana will recover?”
“Uh… I think it’ll take another day or so.”
“Hmm, is that so? Well, I guess I’ll just recuperate for one more day.”
In response to Irina’s words, Frey nodded his head and mumbled as such before lying down on the bed.
“By the way, Kania, what happened to the ‘Scroll Merchant’ that I ordered you to take care of last time?”
“Scroll… merchant?”
When Irina reacted to the word ‘scroll,’ Frey spoke with a sharp look.
“Yes, the ‘Mastermind’ who was the real culprit behind the last ‘Performance Evaluation Incident’.”
“Oh, yes… I’m investigating.”
“Be sure to catch him. Something’s odd.”
Having said that, Frey coughed slightly and lay on the bed. Meanwhile, Irina, who was staring at him, said in a hushed tone.
“Then I’ll go outside for a while. Young Master, please wait here.”
“Yes, thank you, Kania.”
So, having finished conversing with Frey, Irina trudged out of the secret base.
“Sigh…”
Irina, who had been walking alone in the woods for a long time, plopped down when she reached the river.
“I… I…”
Soon, Irina stared blankly at her feet as a fish passed her by, and began to mumble in a crestfallen voice.
“I just… just wanted to fix everything…”
When she first regressed, she knew this was a mission given to her by the God.
This is the mission that God gave her because they took pity on her for not being able to protect her friend, protect the Empire, and kill the Demon King.
So, without hesitation, she cast the most dreadful curse she knew on Frey, who was as evil as the Demon King in her previous life.
However, Frey was actually a Hero who did his best to protect everyone.
And due to the curse that I cast on him, he will suffer from unforgettable and excruciating pain for the rest of life, on top of his lifespan being cut short because of me.
“Sigh…”
Such thoughts kept haunting her mind and seemed to pierce her heart as she kept biting her nails. So, she clenched her teeth and plunged her face into the flowing river.
“…Puh.”
It was an act she did intending to regain her composure by cooling her head in the cold river water. However, instead of cooling her head, it became even more complicated.
Just like pouring water on a raging fire, it vaporizes instantly instead of cooling it down. Irina, who had suddenly become depressed, muttered as she felt the water dripping from her head.
‘I used to come here… to play with Frey…’
Irina’s eyes, which had their light, memories of Frey glimmered.
“Irina… Why can’t I catch anything?”
“You moron, you didn’t use the bait.”
After hours of fishing with no bait while brimming with anticipation, Frey cried out, asking why he couldn’t catch a single fish.
“Ah! Help! U-Using magic isn’t fair …!”
Frey, who declared that he was confident when it comes to playing water, charged at her, and then kept stumbling repeatedly because of her water attribute magic and began to cough out water. As a result, Frey began arguing with her in frustration.
“Wow… It’s delicious… But why is it delicious?”
“…is that a compliment or a sarcasm?”
Frey mumbled mischievously as his eyes twinkled while he was nibbling on the salted grilled fish. .
And…
“I’m not eating this crap anymore… So you eat your heart out.”
When she dragged him, who forcibly began changing and offered him her grilled fish, he spoke coldly and trampled on the grilled fish mercilessly.
“Back then… I just thought he had changed for a while due to the shock from his mother’s death…”
And that he was just grieving for a moment, that he would laugh and play with her again someday. These thoughts flooded her mind as she kept grilling fish by her lonesome.
In order to somehow appease her emotions, which were becoming more and more complicated as she reminisced about the past, Irina began walking away from the riverside that was filled with her childhood memories.
However…
“…Fuck.”
Everywhere she went, memories of Frey still lingered, so Irina came to a standstill and settled down on the ground.
“What should I do… in the future?”
She drank the highest-grade transformation potion in Frey’s room so she could stand in front of him, adorning Kania’s disguise as a mask.
However, sooner or later, she will have to show herself in front of Frey.
I don’t know how I should react at that time… what I should say… No, is it even right to pretend to know in the first place…
‘…I don’t know.’
Irina has lived her entire with the ideal that if she encounters a question, she must find an answer unconditionally. However, today, she couldn’t live by that ideal.
It was because the confusion and chaos caused by the intertwining of her self-rationalization and guilt was shaking her heart.
For the first time in her life, Irina refused to find the answer. Suddenly, she lifted her head with her brows furrowed.
“…what?”
From the woods in front of her, a strange mana was emanating.
It was a meager amount of mana that an ordinary person would never detect, but Irina, whose mana sensitivity had reached new heights, could feel the mana in detail.
“This dark and sinister feeling… it’s dark mana…”
Irina, who had been feeling the mana for a while, concluded that it was dark mana. She then scanned the surroundings nervously and murmured.
‘…Did Kania arrive?’
Irina, who was not yet ready to make contact with Frey or his allies, gulped and staggered up.
‘…Hmm?’
After a while, Irina stretched out her arms and tried to sense the mana a little more closely, but she frowned and tilted her head.
‘Is it not Kania?’
When the warlocks unleash their dark mana, it spreads irregularly in all directions unless they channel it in one direction.
However, the dark mana that she is feeling now is long and thin… It flows like a stream.
As if intending to lead her somewhere.
“…Gulp.”
With that dangerous thought in mind, Irina began to carefully approach the place emanating the dark mana.
It was also suspicious that she suddenly felt dark mana in an ordinary mountain forest where she and Frey used to play once, but she was struck by what Frey had said earlier.
‘Obviously…the real culprit behind the performance evaluation incident was the scroll merchant.’
Until now, she had thought that Frey was the culprit in the ‘Performance Evaluation Kidnapping Incident’.
However, now that she realized the truth about Frey, she only considered him as a victim.
Of course, there is no way that Arianne is the culprit… The scroll merchant, who is knowledgeable in magic, created scrolls to deceive her.
And it is clear that such an unidentified merchant has some purpose.
The last thing she faced in the earlier incident was a terrifying entity called the Dark Golem who drove the Sunrise Academy to the brink of ruin.
So, there must be some reason why they were sent here.
“Phew…”
Irina, who had finished organizing her thoughts, quietly headed towards the direction where the dark mana was coming from, but suddenly stopped.
‘…It’s dangerous.’
Even though it’s essential for her to immerse herself in something in order to distract her troubled mind from all the worries, that doesn’t necessarily mean she can ignore the danger.
If there is a dangerous existence such as the ‘Dark Golem’ here, not only will she be in danger, but Frey will as well.
‘For now… For now, I’ll have to retreat…’
Eventually, Irina gave up chasing after the dark mana and began to return to the secret base.
– Claaap!!
By the time she got close to the secret base, suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and it began to rain.
“…Ugh.”
Irina’s gloomy heart became even more complicated since she felt as if the weather represented her current inner turmoil.
“Young Master, are you doing all right…?”
Of course, she had no intention of getting drenched in rain, so she rushed to the secret base. However, Irina froze at the scene that unfolded before her eyes.
“…Where did he go?”
The bed Frey was lying on was empty.
Irina, who had been watching the scene frozen for a moment, soon ran out of her secret base with a pale face.
– Rumble! Claap!!
“Young master!!”
She hastily cried out in the stormy weather, but her voice returned as a futile echo.
“Frey!!”
As she mournfully screamed Frey’s name once more, only her echo returned. Irina then began searching anxiously.
But when the intensifying tempest prevented her from seeing, she clenched her fists and mumbled.
‘He should still be around here… Right now I can do it… Right now…’
Soon, a faint light glowed from her hand.
It was Irina’s trick. Several months of mana exhaustion, forced herself to figure out how to squeeze a miniscule amount of mana from the very depths of her body.
“Ugh…!”
But it wasn’t long before agonizing pain haunted her, as a result of attempting to generate mana by force.
‘This is … not a problem … My mana circuits have been burned and cut off several times … This amount of pain is…’
Of course, it was Irina, who had frequently injured her mana circuits in the previous timeline, but squeezing her mana circuit forcefully was a formidable task even for her. Her eyes became bloodshot as blood began to drip from her lips.
“Huh… ha…”
After squeezing out all the mana that remained in her body in her palm, she muttered and blew her mana in the shape of a sphere into the sky.
“Frey… Find Frey Raon Starlight… Find him.”
Then the spinning mana sphere began emanating light and flew away.
Watching the light move with a miniscule amount of mana would revolutionize magic in the future. This had always helped her to win when she used to play hide and seek with Frey as a child. Irina then began to run in full speed.
“Frey! Are you there!? Frey!!”
Irina, who was chasing after the sphere while screaming desperately, muttered as her expression hardened at the sight that entered her field of vision.
‘Is this… where I was before?’
Realizing that she had arrived back at the place where she had discovered dark mana earlier, Irina noticed the sphere rapidly flying toward the place where she had felt the presence of dark mana. She then began running in that direction with an appalled look on her face.
“Oh no! No!!”
Despite her earnest cry, the sphere continued to fly rapidly to the place where the dark mana lingered was emanating, as Irina could only watch in horror. Soon, she muttered.
‘If… If Frey was attacked while I was away… or, if Frey, who was suffering from hallucinations, headed there on his own…!’
The torrential downpour had messed her hair up and drenched her clothes, but she kept running.
“Ah!”
Then Irina stumbled on her foot and rolled on the dirt floor. She grabbed her sprained foot and groaned for a moment before she getting up staggeringly while clenching her teeth.
“Frey!! Can you hear me!? Frey!!”
Irina’s gait staggered as she dragged her injured foot and continued to yell Frey’s name. However, the moment she came out of the thicket, she momentarily stopped to catch her breath.
“Gasp, gasp…”
Her arms and legs were all scraped and scarred, and her sprained feet throbbed in pain.
The mana she barely mustered by squeezing out her mana circuits was only enough to launch two fireballs.
However, despite such a desperate situation, Irina trudged on and began to head towards her sphere.
‘…This is?’
Dragging her sprained foot, she arrived at the entrance to a cavern hidden under a shade.
– Whoosh…
Irina scanned at the entrance of the cavern vigilantly as it was permeating dark magic. She then noticed the sphere fly past her and enter the cave..
“…Whoa.”
After seeing that and making up her mind, Irina stretched her arms forward so that she could shoot her fireball at any time, and then she cautiously began to enter the cave.
‘…It’s definitely not Kania’s mana.’
As she moved deeper and deeper, Irina quietly fell into deep thoughts.
Although she is a warlock, Kania, who has a good heart, could never emit such sinister mana. In other words, the existence that lies beyond is not Kania, but an evil being.
Whether it’s a warlock hiding here or a demon… If it emits such a sinister mana, it must be quite the powerful existence.
‘Can I win?’
Irina momentarily thought as such, but soon shook her head to shake off her doubt.
She can’t predict what will happen to Frey if she backs away now.
So, she must do whatever it takes to get him out of here.
That is the only thing she would focus on for now.
– Screech…
As Irina moved carefully with that determination, she gulped upon noticing her flying sphere melt and disappear in front of a gate made of stone.
Frey is in front of me. Maybe it’s already too late, or maybe Frey is waiting eagerly for someone’s help.
Opening this door means I can’t turn back. I will face Frey, whose state might not be normal.
– Creak…
But if she didn’t open this door, she had no idea what would happen to Frey, so she carefully opened the door while listening to her pounding heartbeat.
“…Young Master?”
There Frey’s figure, standing still with his back turned to her, came into her view.
“Yes, Kania.”
And after a while, as Frey replied to her in a sane voice, ‘Kania’ approached him with a slightly relieved expression on her face.
“What the hell are you doing here…”
“Are you interfering in my hallucinations again? Because I told you not to.”
“Huh?”
Then, when Frey suddenly began spouting mysterious words, she inquired with a bewildered look.
“I came out of the secret base for a while because I was feeling frustrated… The forest that appeared in my dream last time, where I was chased by the Werewolf with Irina, became a reality.”
“I-Is that so…”
Irina muttered as such while trying to comprehend his statement, but then she suddenly frowned and asked a question.
“By the way, why a werewolf?”
“You wouldn’t know, but from what I saw in my dream back then, Irina and I were being chased by a pack of wolves and a werewolf. I don’t know why there was a werewolf in such an ordinary forest…!”
Then Frey, who was giving her an explanation, suddenly grabbed his head, lost his balance, and was about to collapse on the floor.
“Y-Young master?”
“Ugh… my memories, my memories…”
Feeling confused, Irina flung her body in order to catch him. But Frey, who let out an aggrieved groan, soon lost consciousness and collapsed on the floor.
“Damn, what the hell is this…”
– Creak…
Irina, who was feeling perplexed by this situation, suddenly stretched out her hand with a puzzled look when the stone gate behind them suddenly opened.
“K-Kania?”
“…..!”
She soon froze after she saw the person behind the door.
“…Why are you here?”
Frey’s younger sister, Aria Raon Starlight, was staring blankly at her, who had become a physical wreck.
