Chapter 143

"Noen."

A few minutes had passed. Verte spoke with his eyes still closed, his voice settling low.

"I… just want to sleep a little longer."

"…Sure."

Verte listened to Noen's reply from somewhere beneath the darkness. He caught the rustle of someone rising from a chair, then footsteps trailing toward the opposite end of the tent.

"Verte."

Even when Noen called his name, Verte only lay there with his eyes shut. Noen drew a deep breath, raised his tone half a notch, and pressed on.

"Get better soon. There's plenty of work waiting when we get back to the institute."

Verte answered with nothing more than a quiet huff through his nose. Noen returned the gesture in kind—then stepped outside.

Patter. Tap.

With the last trace of company gone, the only sounds left inside the tent were raindrops drumming against the canvas and the choppy crackle of a broadcast feed bleeding through the walls.

Verte peeled back the eyelids he'd drawn shut.

The journey he'd charged through with a single goal in sight had ended in defeat. The flag he'd planted on the barren field inside his mind lay shattered—like a ferryboat torn apart by a violent squall.

Thoughts that had lost their center scattered in every direction, like water spilling with nowhere to flow.

"Hah."

Verte let a sigh that bordered on a lament slip free and closed his eyes.

His consciousness drifted downward, slow and heavy. But what met him this time wasn't the same pitch-black void as before. It was a vast, blank whiteness stretching endlessly in every direction.

Crunch.

Verte stood in the unfamiliar space for a moment, then moved. Each aimless step produced the sound of snow crushed underfoot, and his ankles sank deep into the ground with every stride. Yet neither his fingertips nor the tip of his nose stung with cold.

"……"

He moved his legs like a machine, crossing the white plain—then tilted his head back on impulse and looked up.

Across a sky dark enough to unleash a blizzard, a handful of sunbeams lay scattered at wide intervals.

They looked like light seeping through the cracks of a closed door.

Verte stared blankly into the open air. Behind those thin rays of light, stories he'd once absorbed without meaning to shimmered like heat haze.

I'm Noen Atman. And these are our classmates. Looking forward to working with you, Verte Fischer.

Verte reflected in silence. The first voice to reach him belonged to the moment he'd first met Noen and the colleagues he had now.

Back then… during the Great Northern Incursion, when the magical beasts overran the borderlands and reduced everything to rubble? Apparently Joseph Senit recovered every last body after he retook the area. Even built each grave with his own hands.

The second was a voice that had drifted from a nearby table in a pub—one they'd stopped at during an academic trip to the North.

Don't dress up running away as something justified. Don't live your life trapped in a victim complex. Verte Fischer. If you can't even face a single mistake head-on, you'll never reclaim the North.

And… the last.

The truth he never wanted to confront—the words that had struck at his most painful blind spot. Mikhail Senit's voice.

"Hk… hhrgh…"

The faint sunlight had filled the sky before he'd noticed. Verte's breathing grew rougher and more ragged until exhaustion was written across every line of his body, and his feet ground to a halt.

"……"

The downpour of light had swallowed the air entirely, erasing even the boundary between sky and ground. Verte stood swaying in place, then raised a hand to shield his eyes. His shoulders curled inward again and again, as though the white radiance were trying to consume him whole.

"…Ngh… mm."

A sound halfway between a groan and a breath escaped him. The white surge that had been pressing up against the underside of his clenched eyelids vanished in an instant.

Verte blinked in bewilderment and let a question fall from his lips. He lowered his hand and turned to look behind him.

Like a withered, gnarled tree, a hunched silhouette stood rooted in place—casting a long shadow across the ground.

Father…?

Verte recognized the figure immediately. A trembling breath scattered from his lips, and he swallowed hard.

He turned his head forward again and took in the scene that had materialized before him.

The ground had split into two distinct zones, laid out like piano keys.

The black that sounded sharps and flats. The white that sounded the natural notes.

—You… you could be our chance. Our hope.

His father's voice rang like a phantom. Verte stared at the vista spread before him, then bit down on his lip.

He could feel it instinctively. He could go either way.

And depending on which he chose, he would hear different sounds—see different things.

"……"

Verte walked toward the boundary between the two zones. But at its edge, his feet refused to cross. He hesitated, faltered—then let his head drop.

What caught his downward gaze stopped him cold.

His father, standing on the far side. His own feet, planted on the border.

From both of them, the same pitch-black roots had sprouted.

Verte drew a long, slow breath and closed his eyes.

The moment he chose his answer, the deliberation ceased.

Shaaaaaaa—

Consciousness had already returned to reality. Verte blinked several times to the sound of hammering rain, then slid a hand free from beneath the blanket and raised it high.

The fingertips suspended below the tent ceiling were stained an ugly black—the polar opposite of the whiteness he'd just left behind.

"……"

Verte stared at them for a long moment, then clenched his outstretched fingers into a tight fist and sat up.

"Hah…"

The body that had taken the basilisk's attack head-on felt like a toy held together with cheap glue—barely hanging on. The mana circuits inside him were tangled beyond recognition, knotted like a hopeless snarl of thread.

No matter how he looked at it, clean movement was out of the question.

But Verte didn't care. His condition, his injuries—none of it mattered at this point.

Rustle.

Verte rose from the bed with the same hard-set expression he always wore, then shuffled toward the noise leaking from the adjacent tent and pressed his ear close.

That basilisk—what in the world happened so sudden—!

What he'd dismissed at first as meaningless static turned out to be a live feed reporting the battle still raging inside the cave.

Th-this can't be real. Nobody said anything about the basilisk coming back a third time!

And that lizard—it's gotten massive, and its claws and tail look wrong. Its temperament seems… way worse too.

The basilisk… changed?

Verte's eyes flew wide with shock.

"Everyone, quit dragging your feet and move! Now! Every second counts! We enter the cave the moment preparations are complete!"

"Did you put on your protective robes properly? There are magical beasts positioned inside, so don't let your guard down for a second."

As if bracing for the emergency they'd just heard reported, sharp commands, hurried footsteps, and the clatter of bladed weapons and armor rang out one after another beyond the tent walls.

So that means… the situation right now is—

Verte had absorbed every scrap of commotion around him. He pulled his attention inward and stood still.

The fragments of information alone were enough to piece together the broad picture.

Inside the Cave of Contemplation, the basilisk appeared to have undergone a new mutation and was running rampant. Enough to pose a serious threat to every participant's safety.

"……"

Verte lowered his gaze to his blackened fingertips and fell silent for a moment.

But what followed looked nothing like the Verte from before.

He snapped his head up and strode to the bedside table. He snatched the glass bottle labeled analgesic and drained its contents in one swallow.

Right. My reckoning with Senit isn't over yet.

His throat bobbed several times. The bottle—which moments ago had been filled with a pale pink liquid tinged with a clear sheen—was now empty and transparent.

Clink.

Verte set it down with a grimace. He wiped the corner of his mouth and pulled on a nearby jacket.

Not his own—an unnamed medical staffer's outer coat.

If I grab a robe from the defense force's tent and blend in with the crowd while everyone's scrambling, I can make it back to the cave's center.

Verte took a deep breath and pulled the jacket's hood over his head.

He picked up an umbrella and turned toward the tent's exit—then paused, glancing back at the empty bed.

"……"

Verte lowered his eyes and lingered for a beat. But he gathered himself almost immediately, smoothed his expression into something resolute, and stepped toward the outside.

Shaaaaaaa—

His footsteps pushed through the driving rain. In a voice barely above a whisper, Verte murmured to himself.

Sorry, Noen. I still have a responsibility to see through.

---

RUMMMBLE—

The ground shook without pause. Ethan swept his gaze over the basilisk as it revealed its new form beyond the cliff's edge.

Grrrrrrr….

Eyes blazing a molten gold. Golden crystals jutting from its elongated body like tumors.

And a killing intent that cut across his cheek like a bitter gale.

Every facet of the creature radiated overwhelming pressure. Ethan sensed just how brutal this fight would be and scanned his surroundings.

"Wh—wha—! What! What is that! What the hell is that thing! I don't care how well we did—this kind of penalty is cheating!"

"Dian! Get a grip and pick up your weapon!"

Ethan hardened his voice at Dian, who stood rooted in place blurting the same panicked shout on repeat. He shoved a weapon into Dian's empty hand, then turned and pushed toward the front.

"Everyone, weapons up—get ready to fight. No sloppy moves!"

Ethan called out to those still unprepared as he advanced through the formation.

The clank of steel rattled up from every direction in response, and a moment later he reached Mikhail's side—a few steps back from the cliff's edge.

"……"

Mikhail looked barely able to keep his feet under him, yet his eyes hadn't left the basilisk for a second.

Ethan watched him for a moment, then raised his voice.

"Mikhail. Is there a way to take that thing down?"

Only then did Mikhail tear his gaze from the basilisk and look at Ethan. His expression was the same guarded stillness as always, but Ethan caught the faint tremor rippling through those dark-blue eyes—and held his breath.

"There can't be a single mistake. Can you do that?"

Mikhail's quiet question carried a thin undercurrent of doubt and unease. But Ethan only tightened his grip on the sword in his hand. He wasn't about to shrink back or flinch—not when Mikhail was standing right here doing the same.

Ethan answered the hesitation in Mikhail's voice like a rebuttal—mouth curling into a confident grin, triumph already threading through his words.

"Yeah. Trust me."