Chapter 142

The color shimmering across the basilisk's eyes didn't belong to the original story.

Not gold… but dark violet?

Mikhail lowered the hand he'd stretched forward. The mana lingering at his fingertips pulsed like a second heartbeat, and his gaze froze in place on the scene ahead.

His mind, meanwhile, raced. It chased down any clue that could explain what he was seeing—spinning through pages until it stopped before a shelf with a different index entirely. The fragments he found lay scattered like puzzle pieces torn from their rightful places.

Mikhail swallowed hard and called up every piece of information that could account for the dark violet.

An unidentified mana that gradually fuses with the anomaly's power and amplifies its effects into something far greater.

The dark-violet gleam flared bright—as if confirming his guess—then vanished in an instant.

Mikhail took in the sight and curled the fingers hanging at his side into a fist.

I know where that power comes from and what it does. Which is exactly why I know it should never appear in the original progression—why it can't.

The main storyline had shifted. The moment that reality hit him, the single-minded train of thought he'd been riding splintered outward like a runway forking in every direction at once.

"……"

Mikhail bit his lip. If he were being honest, he wanted to deduce the cause of the sudden change, map out the fallout, and identify every point where he could intervene.

But none of that was something he could afford to think about right now.

The crisis bearing down on them demanded his immediate attention.

If the approaching anomaly combines fully with the dark-violet mana's effects, the basilisk will become incomparably stronger than anything in the original progression. Even if everyone here charged in at full strength, it wouldn't be enough.

Mikhail swept his gaze slowly across his surroundings.

Can we run? No… there's not enough time. We'd be caught in the rampage before we got anywhere. And I have no intention of turning my back now. So if we have to face this basilisk head-on….

Mikhail dropped his eyes to his feet and began retracing the key points that could anchor a response.

Meanwhile, the final attack window of the second phase had closed.

Instead of craning its head upward again, the basilisk went limp and toppled over the edge of the distant cliff.

THOOOM—!

The ground-shaking impact rippled through the cavern, and cheers erupted from every corner.

"Yes! You foul-tempered lizard! We finally brought it down!"

"That was the last stage, right? So how long did the whole subjugation take? Sixty-seven minutes? Holy—that's a new record!"

"Hey, butterfly! Broadcaster! Over here! Come this way! Get me on camera too!"

The elation spilling from Salvator's ranks was no different.

"One, two…. Good lord, how many stages was that? Felt like it went on forever. Anyway, now that we can finally relax, let's rest up until the final scores come out."

"Oh, didn't someone say there's a hot spring in the headquarters basement? God, I want to go already. I'm not getting out of that water until I'm half asleep."

But amid the jubilant crowd, Mikhail alone held his silence.

Then he raised his head and surveyed the participants around him.

The basilisk's mutation was about to begin.

To prepare for the threat closing in, he needed to plant the weight of his voice now—turn it into a lifeline people could grab hold of when the chaos hit.

I won't reach everyone… but the capable ones will follow my lead.

Mikhail drew a deep breath, gripped his staff, and strode toward the front.

"Hm? Mikhail, where are you going?"

"Hey, don't get too close to the cliff edge. It's dangerous."

Puzzled glances and worried voices trailed after him, but Mikhail didn't stop.

"……"

He came to a halt at the edge of the cliff where the basilisk had fallen. He scanned the murmuring crowd of participants, then raised his staff high overhead.

CRACK-CRACKLE!

Blinding arcs of electricity leapt from the staff. The cavern fell silent in an instant. Every wide-eyed stare locked onto him, and Mikhail spoke.

"Don't drop your guard. The fight isn't over."

A beat of stunned silence settled between them. Then, from scattered pockets across the crowd, came the soft clicks of tongues, scoffs of disbelief, and crooked stares.

"What—you just march up front out of nowhere and say that? The final round of the campaign always plays out the same way. And you're telling us the fight's not over?"

"Oh, come on. Hey, young master of the North! Did things get boring once Verte disappeared? Looking for some kind of impromptu match? Because if so, I'd be happy to—"

The pushback and sneering hadn't even had time to run their course.

CRACK. CRACK.

A sound like thick ice fracturing began reverberating through the cave.

"!"

Every voice cut off as if slashed by a blade.

What filled the void was an uneasy murmuring.

"Wh-what? What is that noise all of a sudden…?"

"Th-this is weird. Nobody said anything about something else happening at the end of the campaign…."

Mikhail faced the crowd—gripped by confusion and staring back at him—and declared in an iron voice:

"Everyone, grab your weapons and steel yourselves. Whatever's coming next will be far stronger than anything we've faced."

---

The organizers' encampment sat at the mouth of the Cave of Contemplation.

Inside the command tent—surrounded by the sprawling contingent of medical teams, technical crews, transport units, and defense forces—stood Germain Lowell, Guild Master and chief overseer of the Joint Suppression Campaign.

"—Hey! Can you hear me? Hey!"

Germain screamed into the communication stone until his throat was raw, then bit down on his lip and slammed it onto the table.

"Tch."

He raked his sweat-matted hair back from his forehead. Just when he'd believed the campaign's curtain call was all that remained, he'd been blindsided by an emergency no one saw coming.

A total mana blackout. And only on signals going in—nothing coming out is affected.

Germain stared at the magic tool that relayed the cave's interior onto a display screen and let a groan escape.

"Wh-what the hell! Now the ground's shaking too! What is going on in there?!"

"Damn it! There's nobody here who can tell us anything! Just do what that young lord said and grab your swords! Everyone, get ready to fight!"

"N-no! I'm done! I'm exhausted! We're—we're running! Or hiding somewhere! Maybe someone will come rescue us if we just wait it out…."

The basilisk had been slain. All that should have remained was a safe march to the exit. Instead, unidentified sounds had begun tearing through the cave—and every line of mana communication leading inward had gone dead.

"What in the world…."

Germain muttered in a voice scraped raw, then crossed quickly to where the technicians were stationed and asked:

"The teleportation circle at the end of the cave—can't it be activated? Reinforcements, defensive magic tools—is there no way to get anything to the site quickly?"

The technicians bowed their heads and answered in subdued tones.

"No, sir. Our deepest apologies. No matter how many signals we send, there's zero mana response coming back. It appears any interaction with the interior formulas is impossible."

"What about repositioning the signal relay point? Could we route around whatever's blocking it?"

"We're sorry. We've already tried. Same result."

"God damn it."

Germain dragged both hands down his face, unable to contain the fire eating through his gut, then turned back to the screen.

CRACK. Snap.

The sharp fracturing sounds had grown more distinct in the interim. The tremors running through the ground were now visible to the naked eye.

And as if that weren't enough, from somewhere deep inside, the wailing cries of magical beasts hummed and echoed.

"……"

Germain bit his lip hard, tore his gaze from the images on the display, and turned on his heel.

He pictured the staging area lined with bladed weapons and combat-grade magic tools, started toward it, and spoke to the aide at his side.

"This is an emergency. Arm every member of the defense force to the teeth. Leave a skeleton crew here—everyone else enters the cave."

The instant Germain stepped from the tent into the open air—

SHAAAAAAA—

As if the weather wasn't bad enough.

A curtain of rain greeted him. Germain clicked his tongue in displeasure and looked up at the sky.

The storm clouds that had been no more than distant smudges on the horizon when the participants entered the cave had, at some point, swallowed the sky whole and were now hammering the earth with a downpour.

---

"……"

Verte opened his eyes. His eyelids dragged as though weighted with iron, and the blurred shape hovering above him resolved into the white canvas ceiling of a medical tent.

His body, meanwhile, was swaddled in soft bedding.

"You're awake."

The voice that reached him in a familiar cadence made Verte turn his head to the side. Sitting in the chair beside the bed was Noen.

"Ah…."

A thin groan slipped through Verte's lips as he pieced together where he was.

The pain needling through every inch of his body. The unfamiliar surroundings. And the last memory before he'd lost consciousness.

All of it pointed to a single conclusion.

A faint, hollow smile crossed Verte's face, and he spoke in a voice that cracked with every syllable.

"I… lost to Senit."

Noen exhaled a heavy sigh and opened his mouth.

"Yeah. Completely."

Verte looked at Noen with a blank expression. Noen held the gaze in silence for a moment, then bowed his head.

"And this is hard to admit, but… after you went down, we gave up the fight too."

Verte said nothing again. Noen paused, then continued—untying each knot one at a time.

"We had no will left to keep fighting, and no reserves to do it with. If we'd stayed in, it wouldn't have been strange for someone else to get hurt. So I… made the call to forfeit on my own."

Noen blinked several times with the look of someone reliving it all, then let a bitter smile settle at the corner of his mouth.

"But I know this decision must be deeply disappointing to you. I wouldn't blame you for being angry—for holding me accountable in whatever way you see fit. Verte. Whatever you have to say, I'll take it without—"

"You did well."

Verte cut him off in that splintered voice, and when Noen stared back at him in stunned silence, he offered a thin smile.

"I've got no intention of blaming any of you. At the end of the day, nine-tenths of this was my mistake—no, all of it. You all just suffered for going along with my stubbornness."

"……"

"Once this campaign is over… the one who owes a formal apology is me."

Verte pulled his gaze from Noen and looked up at the ceiling again.

An expanse of white pouring down as vast and distant as an open snowfield. Verte let a quiet sigh fall and closed his eyes.