The Academy’s Deceased Ate It All

There was no way.

"…There's no way."

There was no way. It couldn't be. It mustn't be.

Inside my head, those words were the only ones running on an endless loop.

A doppelganger.

One of Milited's doppelgangers.

An ability that came in at well under half the strength of the original, and on top of that, carried a massive restriction — it could only summon doppelgangers of people who were no longer in this world.

It could only be used on those whose genetic material — blood, hair, that kind of thing — he'd consumed.

What mattered here was that phrase, people who were no longer in this world.

In fact, the original had a scene where Alice Blesbuck, who'd been lured into a trap and locked away in a sealed dimension, was freed — and her doppelganger melted away and vanished.

But none of that was the point.

The point was that her doppelganger was standing right in front of me now.

Which meant Ji-na — my little sister — had been to this world at some point, and on top of that, that Milited had taken her blood or hair from her.

And it had clearly said Shadow Walker as it was conjuring Ji-na's doppelganger.

And Shadow Walker had been active at least a hundred to a hundred and fifty years before now.

If — by some impossible one-in-ten-million chance — what it had said was true.

If that were the case.

Then she was already—

"There's no way…."

Bang!

In the middle of nearly grabbing at my own head, what dragged me back was a thunderous noise that sounded like heaven and earth shaking apart.

Less a bang than a KRAKK, really — that kind of roar.

I knew what it was the moment I heard it.

A gunshot.

"Ah…."

Ji-na — my little sister — was leveling a gun barrel at me.

Right in front of my eyes was the back of Jin Ye-seul's hand, clenched around something.

She opened her fist, and a crushed lump of lead dropped out.

"……."

Normally she'd already be snarling like a wild animal and baring her hostility, but for some reason she didn't say a word. And it wasn't just her. Every gaze in this place was fixed on me.

"Hmm."

Milited watched me with an expression I couldn't read.

It looked, in one way, as though it had known the whole time, and in another, as though it was startled by something it hadn't expected.

But none of that mattered.

A piece of trash I could kill whenever I felt like it had stopped being any concern of mine a long time ago.

What mattered to me was the figure of Ji-na in front of me, pulling the hammer back with a sharp click.

"…Hold on, Shadow Walker? Wasn't Shadow Walker supposed to be a man…?"

Evangelline's puzzled voice — and I found myself nodding without thinking.

Yes. Even in the original, Shadow Walker was mentioned as originally being a man.

So this had to be nothing more than Milited's cheap trick to throw me off…!

That was what I thought, and I turned my head — only to see Jin Ye-seul, for some reason, silently avoiding my eyes.

And then something flashed through my mind.

Bird's Tongue.

Shadow Walker's legacy that allowed its user to take on the voice, the form, and even the shape of someone else's mana.

It had even been mentioned in the original that Shadow Walker had taken countless guises using that legacy.

Then — could it be… really….

"…A pepperbox revolver? Awfully retro taste."

Looking at the pistol in her hand — its multiple barrels packed tightly together like some kind of Gatling gun — Jin Ye-seul murmured the words softly. It looked like a deliberate attempt to shift the topic.

She lowered her stance and curled her hands like a beast's claws, and black scales began to push their way out of her skin. They wrapped seamlessly across her entire body. From there, the others fell into their own ready stances, each prepared to jump into combat at a moment's notice.

Choi Hyun-woo drew the Dragon Scale Sword without a sound, and a buckler and a crystal orb circled in the air around Han Su-yeong.

Lee Yu-na quietly gripped her hilt and scanned her surroundings, while Ivan had already manifested his magic bow from the vambrace on his hand.

In Lee Ye-eun's case, her hair ornament broke apart and moved as though it had a will of its own, latching onto the shafts of the arrows she conjured to serve as the heads.

Kath Ryle, Alice Blesbuck, and Evangelline Loengreen were each circulating their mana aggressively.

"Go."

It was Milited who fired the opening shot.

Its shattered body forced its mouth open with effort, and on the roar of the Landschi-shaped doppelganger, well over twenty doppelgangers came charging at us.

Jin Ye-seul and Choi Hyun-woo were the first to surge forward to meet them, and the brawl was on again.

In the middle of that chaos, I just stood there, my eyes blankly tracking Ji-na as she fired the gun at Jin Ye-seul and scattered daggers at her.

[Pull yourself together, you slow-witted fool!]

A pain like a hammer slamming into the back of my head cracked through me, brief and brutal as a thunderbolt. The pain vanished as cleanly as it had come, and Sbeungali's voice rang through my mind, blistering loud.

[Do you intend to stand around like an idiot and just die without lifting a finger? Even when you fought me, when I dragged out every wretched bit of past you'd never wanted exposed, did you not still turn your killing intent on this Sbeungali all the same? Even if what that Milited bastard said is true, that thing is nothing but a doppelganger! Keep on like this and you'll lose everything you still have!]

[Look at the others! Despite your shameful display, they're saying nothing, just fighting for you! Doing the work that was supposed to be yours!]

"……."

[Pull it together, you worse-than-a-cretin! If a man who killed and devoured this Sbeungali is going to die this pathetically, I'd sooner just take that body of yours for myself!]

…Right.

He was right.

Outmatched was the word, I suppose. Every one of my companions was holding their own, but the bare minimum was one person handling more than two opponents, and their wounds were stacking up. At this rate, every single one of them was going to go down.

And Sbeungali was right.

As much of a fool as it made me, he was genuinely right.

Out of everyone here, it was me — the one who had dragged everyone into this — who couldn't afford to keep acting like this.

"Kya, ggh!?"

A scream from Jin Ye-seul snapped my head around.

Several daggers were embedded in the ground around her, spitting out electricity like miniature lightning rods, and Jin Ye-seul was caught between them, unable to so much as move — and the moment I saw that, I launched myself toward her.

The one pressing Jin Ye-seul was none other than her doppelganger.

I nearly faltered for an instant, but I bit down hard and swung my sword at her.

The doppelganger darted back, and in that gap I managed to pull Jin Ye-seul out of the electric prison.

"Ji, Ji-hyeok… sorry. She's trickier than I thought…."

…Even in a situation like this, she was apologizing to me with that look of guilt on her face. I forced a smile.

"No, it's fine. Doesn't look like she's a good matchup for you, so I'll take her instead."

"Ah, mm…."

"And."

"Hm?"

"…I'm sorry for falling apart like that. For making everyone worry."

I turned my head and looked forward.

The thing was calmly and quickly reloading its rounds.

"I'm okay now."

With that, I charged straight at it.

Mid-reload, it snapped off the trigger again and again at my face and chest, but I calmly raised my right arm and blocked each shot.

Once you've been drenched in Minerva's blood, ordinary attacks just don't reach you.

Even so, the impact landing on me felt heavier than I'd expected. Probably shouldn't catch one to a vital spot, I was thinking when the thing suddenly flung daggers at me.

What it was aiming at wasn't me.

The scattered daggers buried themselves around me as though tracing the lines of a cage, and without hesitation, it pulled the trigger on the daggers themselves.

"Kuh…?!"

For a moment, a pain like every muscle in my body twisting at once shot through me.

The very same technique it had just used on Jin Ye-seul.

"…Heh."

And by sheer coincidence, I happened to have resistance to lightning.

Some time ago, in Professor Abel Grossman's class, she'd handed out Mana Resonance Stones to each of us to raise our resistance to a status ailment of our choice. And what I'd picked back then was the lightning one. Its attack came through as nothing more than a faint tingle in my body.

The instant I lunged, it threw a punch at me.

I went to block it casually, only to feel something crack into my face earlier than I'd anticipated, then feel something else slam into my body a beat later.

Scorpion's Hooves.

The technique that landed additional strikes on a target on a time delay.

This too was Shadow Walker's legacy.

"Khh, ngghhh…!!!"

I immediately seized both of its wrists.

In response, it shifted its footing as if performing some kind of acrobatic trick and fired round after round into my exposed stomach. A horrific pain bloomed across my undefended midsection.

But there was a far more devastating sight playing out in front of my eyes.

"…Ah."

There was a scar on her neck.

There was one on her wrist too.

It really was Ji-na.

This wasn't some fantasy Milited had cooked up to throw me off — it was a doppelganger built off the real her.

Even though the faint hope I'd been clinging to had just been ground into dust, I clenched my teeth and forced my body to move.

The World Tree's Branch erupted out of me with a furious surge of energy.

It seized the thing by the ankles and the wrists, and the thing watched me without expression. Just as I was about to wrap it up like a cocoon and immobilize it completely, that gaze made me bite down on my lip without realizing it and yell:

"With that look in your eyes…!"

"……."

"Wearing her face — don't look at me with those eyes…!!!"

And then, the mouth that had been firmly shut opened.

"Oppa."

Ah.

"Op… oppa… what's wrong? It hurts… I'm hurting, oppa…."

Ah. Ah, no.

"Oppa, I don't want to die… save me, oppa…."

It was her voice.

That voice, those words, dragged up a memory I never wanted to see again.

Oppa, I don't want to die. I don't want to die like this….

Hm? Oppa, let's live… let's live together, okay, let's not die… please?

I only have you now, oppa — if you die like that… and then if you do that to me too, how am I supposed to live…? Please? Oppaaa… please….

Hm?

You know better than anyone… if you die like that, I'll follow you. I'll die with you.

Oppa… I don't want to die….

So please, put that down….

Please….

A sound I couldn't even describe leaked out of my throat.

The words coming out of that mouth had stolen the breath and the speech from my throat.

The breath barely rattling out of my body was the last protest of someone crushed under a guilt that no amount of time would ever thin.

"Oppa…."

[Hey — Yu Ji-hyeok! Hey!]

I could feel Sbeungali shouting something at me, but I couldn't react.

There was a metallic click.

I lifted my head and looked through the tears blurring my eyes, and a pitch-black gun barrel was right in front of me.

"…Die."

With that, another deafening KRAKK rang out.

But the lead round didn't pierce my head.

A shadow had climbed up my body, and out of it had jutted Minerva's arm, her fist clamped tight around the bullet.

Then both her arms and her tail shot out and seized the doppelganger of her in an iron grip.

In a haze that was barely half-coherent, I moved the World Tree's Branch, wrapping the thing tight like a cocoon and locking it firmly in place.

"Hahh… hahh…."

I was hauling in rough breaths, fighting to keep my half-collapsed body upright, when a notification window surfaced in front of me.

[! The Seven Calamity 'Milited' has completed reconstitution of its body. !]

[! The Seven Calamity 'Milited' has gained resistance to every harm that has wounded it until now. !]

[! The Seven Calamity 'Milited' will continue to evolve and adapt. !]

In the time I'd wasted, its first adaptation was already done.

A heavy crash rolled through the space immediately after, and I caught the sight of Choi Hyun-woo vomiting blood as he was hurled back.

Lee Yu-na barely made it in time, throwing herself at the Milited bearing down on him.

"Hm? What now…."

And Milited, watching Lee Yu-na still managing to wound it, frowned slightly in puzzlement. It swept its hand lazily through empty air, and at that gesture, half a dozen or more doppelgangers lunged at her almost in unison.

"Lee Yu-na, fall back! They're targeting you!"

Ivan shouted as he loosed a massive arrow of mana to cover her.

Evangelline and Han Su-yeong followed by hurling ice and fire respectively, supporting him.

"Drink this, Hyun-woo, quickly. Milited is composed of extreme poison and acid…!"

"Ugh…."

In the meantime, Alice was getting a potion into Choi Hyun-woo.

Lee Ye-eun had her hands full just keeping blessings going for everyone while firing arrows to harass the enemy.

Ironically, because Milited had sealed off the battlefield into an isolated space so we couldn't pull anything funny on it, she couldn't use her two strongest abilities — Call of Nature and Call of Spirits — either.

"You've lost."

Milited drew in one slow, deep breath and looked at me precisely.

"In numbers, that is. Well, there are other reasons too, but those aren't really important."

…Just as it had said, we were the side losing on numbers now.

I was about to throw on King of Thorns and force the situation back open by any means—

"But…."

For some reason its voice wavered, sounding strangely strengthless.

"Khh, hhk… I'm tired of getting… slapped around like this anymore…."

The next instant, it burst into tears.

Fat tears began to pour out of both its eyes like a waterfall.

The sight raised the hair on the back of my neck.

It wasn't simply that I was thrown by the sight of it sobbing.

When the Milited version that broke into tears at the slightest provocation surfaced, its preferred attack was to spew out a smoke that melted and corroded everything around it.

Even Choi Hyun-woo or Jin Ye-seul wouldn't escape critical wounds, not now that it had 'adapted' to everyone's mana to some degree.

We had to stop it right now.

By any means necessary, in the literal sense.

[! Skill 'Dragonification' activated. !]

[! Dragon Blood is starting to surge out from your heart…. !]

[! You feel parts of your body transforming. !]

I was about to barrel into it head-on — crude as the plan was, the idea was to muscle through it with my whole body — when:

"…Huh?"

A massive lance had punched straight through Milited's chest.

The lance, faintly but unmistakably, carried holy power.

"Th, this is…!?"

With a wet thwock, Milited's startled upper body exploded apart.

The holy power and the toxic essence of the Seven Calamity had clearly reacted against each other.

"Wooo-hoooo!!!"

A buoyant voice — sounding more excited than the situation called for — rang out right after.

A strange wind blew in behind it, and it set about shredding through Milited's doppelgangers without mercy.

"No one's dead yet, right?"

Belluna Hunt, holding what looked like some large box in her hand, beamed as she asked the question — a stark contrast to the sobbing Milited.

"What the hell — what is all this…!"

And there was Ahn Do-hun, his expression saying he'd been half dragged along, looking horrified.

And lastly, Jin Ye-jeong, breaking through the seal of the isolated space with a frantic expression as she scanned for Jin Ye-seul.

Reinforcements no one had been expecting had arrived.

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