Chapter 70: Must I truly walk on water for you to believe?

“…What should I say?

The atmosphere is truly difficult to interrupt.

‘What kind of trap was it that caused such a reaction?’

No matter how I look at it, the object only looks like a key.

To hide such a disturbing illusion inside it…

I definitely thought it was a malicious prank, but this seems like an overreaction.

The shattered crystal orb.

I need to gather up even the broken shards and purify them, completely erasing this monstrosity from this world.

Ciel’s earnest appearance as she firmly insisted on this.

When she mentioned it might be an item related to demons, even the Saint’s switch was triggered.

Rather than exploring the situation, all her attention was now on purifying the demon-possessed crystal orb.

Everyone’s eyes were spinning, and it was hard to stop them.

After a brief hesitation, I casually intervened.

“Stay back. If it’s a dangerous object, I’ll handle it.”

Originally, my plan was to just pretend to use magic.

I was thinking of casting an illusionary spell, creating a flashy effect, and then telling them there was nothing to worry about…

But when my hand touched the remnants, my face flushed with surprise.

‘…Huh??

I feel a faint connection.

The presence of someone else possessing the same crystal orb.

This should be a one-of-a-kind item… ‘so who is it connected to?’ I can’t make sense of it, but…

This is the illusion that made Ciel have a seizure.

Whoever it is, they definitely aren’t an ally.

What I had to do in this situation was clear.

Stop the sabotage and move into reprogramming.

I wasn’t trying to pull off anything too elaborate.

It was just a simple matter of adding a single line of code.

‘If I put an infinite loop into an information transmission spell…’

Endlessly pounded information into the mind.

A perfect mental attack.

‘If I just blabber some random words, the information will endlessly repeat, flooding the enemy’s mind, attacking their sanity.’

Without much thought, I mumbled the first thing that came to mind.

[It’s a pity. This game of hide and seek is my win.]

The world was already doomed.

In the first cycle, Riyan, facing the demon, muttered those words with a disturbing smile.

At the same time, Riyan’s expression twisted.

It was almost there.

Just a little more, and I could have reversed time.

But of course, I was caught at this moment.

Since it had been proven that time reversal was impossible, trying it would have been meaningless.

I had already known that for some time.

But this kind of ending… I hated it.

I wanted to hold on just a little longer.

A mage deceives the world, after all.

Even if time reversal was impossible, maybe there was another way.

I tried not to stop struggling, but in the end, this is what happened.

Naturally, my teeth gritted.

If only I had been luckier.

If only I hadn’t had that cursed mana, barely reaching the average level of an adult male…

No, even if I had just been born during the early stages of the original world, before everything had gone to ruin, everything would have been different.

Those thoughts kept coming to mind, but regret doesn’t change reality.

Marbas came closer, grinning unpleasantly.

His body had already been shredded, but he grabbed Riyan’s neck with ease, lifting him up.

Before twisting his neck, the demon sneered.

A mockery of Riyan, who had completely failed.

[Do you have any last words, Ttwdyae?]

Everyone was already dead.

No matter what words were left, they meant nothing.

Riyan, his face twisted in a scowl, was about to snap back, telling the demon to hurry up and kill him without any nonsense, but… he stopped.

The demon seemed to be acting strangely.

[Ttwdyae… Ttwdyae? Ttwdyae Ttwdyae? Ttwdyae Ttwdyae?]

The demon babbled in incomprehensible, bizarre words.

He looked at Riyan with a horrified expression.

[Ttwdyae… Ttwdyae? Ttwdyae?]

The demon was babbling like a baby.

But the meaning was clear in his tone and expression—it was definitely directed at Riyan.

‘Is this your doing? How did you manage it?’

It must have been something similar to those words.

The demon’s face, filled with grief, slowly lost all light from his eyes.

The demon had lost consciousness.

Looking at the fallen demon, Riyan paused for a moment, clearly bewildered.

Though he was startled, he was also a reincarnator.

Even though he had only recently recalled his memories from his previous life, he knew what he needed to do in this situation.

“Good luck.”

Although he didn’t fully understand what had happened, it seemed like the fickle heavens had decided to side with him this time.

‘Did it work properly?’

The ritual had already been broken, and he had tried to rework it.

But he still had doubts about whether it would have any effect.

***

Riyan stood in front of the fallen demon, his mind racing.

Despite the sudden turn of events, he couldn’t afford to let his guard down.

He glanced at the crystal orb fragments in his hand, wondering just how much more there was to this mystery.

‘How did it turn out like this?’ he thought, trying to make sense of the situation.

The answers he sought were elusive, but one thing was clear—this was far from over.

But that curiosity soon disappeared.

A more important issue was now interrupting me.

‘…It seems like the script got tangled.’

I had a rough idea of what that relic was.

I could also easily understand what purpose the so-called sage had in creating this place.

A crystal orb that connects minds across time.

And it was set to only work for Ciel.

Originally, Ciel’s mind would have connected with the spirit of the vessel who died hundreds of years ago.

The sage, who was also from Korea like me, would have passed on important information to the protagonist.

Items and knowledge to help secure a happy ending.

This place is likely a warehouse of those things.

But something went wrong.

Someone tampered with the crystal orb, and Ciel’s mind was connected with the spirit of some other villain, not the sage.

The method to release the door.

The explanation of the things in the warehouse.

I couldn’t get that important information.

‘This is more troublesome than I thought.’

Of course, even without the proper release method, it was possible to open the massive door by using a workaround.

I could read all the spells written on it and reverse-engineer them to inject the proper incantation.

But that method would take too much time.

The sage must have been a true sage.

The barrier was of a high standard, made with a large amount of money and effort.

They even used Dragonheart for a single door.

Still, it would probably take at least five hours.

‘It’d be better to deal with this quickly, though.’

The original knowledge might be written somewhere.

No matter what happens, I must secure that information.

For that, it’s better to act now before anyone notices this ruin.

I need to get inside quickly, but the regular route is blocked due to the error.

Naturally, my expression becomes serious.

And soon, I feel a gaze.

A blonde girl is staring at me, lost in thought.

“You don’t need to worry about this problem, Professor. Surprisingly, sometimes the simplest solutions work,” she said to me.

What she pulled out was a large mace.

She swung it wildly and then threw it with a vicious force.

The overwhelming physical power.

It was as if proving the saying that if your body is good, you don’t need to worry about your head.

But…

‘Logically, there’s no way something like that would work.’

Complicated spells exist to block such attacks.

A barrier that prohibits attacks using both magic and weapons.

The very fact that she swung the mace was denied.

The Saint paused for a moment and then swung her fist, but…

While pure martial arts are rare, they’re not impossible.

Naturally, I had prepared countermeasures for that as well.

A straight punch wouldn’t work.

A kick obviously wouldn’t work.

Even a knee strike wouldn’t work.

But a headbutt… that works.

Well, it’s inefficient to prevent every single action, so they probably didn’t block that.

But in the end, it means nothing.

Even if you hit the door with dozens of missiles, it would still be fine.

‘How could a headbutt break such a door?’

“Thanks for the effort, but you should stop and come back.”

I said to the Saint.

I had been trying to avoid sounding like I was worried about my student, but given the situation, I had no choice.

The sight of blood flowing from her head.

I’d feel bad if she got injured because of me.

I looked at her with sympathetic eyes…

The speed was increasing.

The gap between the headbutts was getting shorter and shorter.

A tiny, but noticeable dent had formed in the huge door.

I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

The barrier should make something like this impossible.

The fact that she’s doing this with pure physicality is hard to believe.

But even when I rubbed my eyes, nothing changed.

In fact, even stranger things started to appear before my eyes.

Her acceleration was reaching the speed of light.

Now, it was difficult even to track her movements with my eyes.

She was easily overpowering the construction tools used for this kind of work.

The giant door now had a crack in it.

A small fissure slowly grew larger.

And then, the massive door collapsed helplessly.

The Saint smiled brightly at me.

Covered in blood, the girl proudly declared:

“Let’s go, Professor Riyan! I’ve cleared the way!”

I was momentarily stunned…

But then, I nodded silently without any comment.

It wasn’t that I was intimidated by this crazy girl.

“…Really.”