NOVEL NEXT Chapter 993
<993 – Retrieved Purity (7)>
Thanks to all the other spirits forfeiting, the only players left in the game were Roseblim and Oknodie.
And Sadi Chocolate.
“I don’t get why everyone is struggling like that.”
Without a shred of fear, Sadi Chocolate immediately activated the card.
Standing beside Oknodie,
even sticking to Oknodie’s shoulder with <Adhesive> magic.
“Ugh, what is this! It’s sticky!”
“This adhesive magic won’t come off until I want it to. If something happens to me, Oknodie, you’ll be in the same boat. How’s that? Feeling like a hero yet?”
“That’s cheating!”
“The absence of any guidelines on what’s forbidden means you can do anything, right?”
Sadi Chocolate’s strategy was to hitch a ride on Oknodie’s bus.
They were set on discovering the exploit for an effortless win!
━━━
[Time] Dawn
Activation Condition – Overcome <Trial of the Card: Survival of the Dawn>.
Activation Failure Penalty – Dinner for the night results in being eaten.
━━━
The dimensional gate that appeared before Sadi Chocolate manifested a crystal ball emitting faint light and a massive darkness threatening the orb.
Sadi Chocolate, capable of implanting <Terminals> in all sentient beings, felt their own terminal embedded in the darkness.
‘This is bad.’
That was a spawn of the darkness created when a professor from the Gift Academy set up a laboratory during the summer and the test subject went out of control.
It’s a type of mana infection that engulfs the target and turns them into a shapeless darkness just like itself.
The orb’s function was mental protection.
Reminding oneself of who they are repeatedly to maintain their identity and protect against contamination.
But as the power is used, it diminishes.
Relying on the orb leads to waning light until it eventually disappears.
Driving away darkness and calling forth light.
This is dawn.
The disappearance of light and the arrival of darkness.
This is night.
An absolute confidence in oneself and the ability to protect the mind from mana infection.
Even for the competent individuals among the Academy’s fourth years, managing a test subject born from a professor’s lab going out of control is nearly impossible.
In the first place, a regular experiment wouldn’t require summer issues.
Illegal research.
Unauthorized experimentation.
Personal experiments with no funding from the academy.
It’s easy to assume that the results from such dubious activities led to that condition, and one could easily guess that the professor who conducted such an experiment is probably somewhere inside the belly of the Evil Dragon Principal.
How would the original Sadi Chocolate have overcome this?
‘Using mental partitioning via the terminal, I would push the mental contamination and fear from the dark spawn onto another terminal and keep my core intact.’
With a well-developed meta-cognition, she could foresee her own strategy, its dangers, the resulting conflicting relations, and what the outcome would lead to.
She would likely be targeted and killed by the enraged Oknodie as a ‘victim’ in a closed-room murder case.
Whether that would be mere in-game murder or something far scarier awaits is uncertain, nor did she wish to know.
“Oh dear. This is a problem. At this rate, we’ll end up happily being part of the dark spawn together.”
“I’d really like to hit you if you keep saying stuff like that without a hint of fear.”
Oknodie glared at Sadi, who was stuck to him like gum, with a face of annoyance before stepping forward.
He had already grasped how inefficient it would be to try getting rid of Sadi.
Using magic inevitably requires ‘calculations.’
With Oknodie’s thought process laid bare through the terminal, as soon as equations surfaced in his mind, Sadi Chocolate could instantly implement ways to shatter, hinder, or nullify them.
With their bodies and minds nearly in close quarters, every magic of Oknodie would be sealed.
Thus, Oknodie aimed his magic toward the dark spawn that wouldn’t be disturbed.
<Hideout of Darkness>
As the thought flickered in his mind through the terminal, he realized it was quite smart.
This is the application of taming and dimensional magic.
Create connections to a comfy dark space and lure it in with dark mana to trick it?
Clang.
He severed the linked spatial magic.
This would allow him to toss the enemy that had come through the dimensional gate into another dimensional gate, isolating it as a lost soul somewhere in the universe!
Just like that, the activation trial would be cleared.
[Activation Success, <Time: Dawn> card placed.]
The card completed its placement and began emitting magical energy, attempting to reclaim the entity that had been expelled.
[Conducting recovery of the Dark Spawn.]
[Coordinates cannot be found.]
Herein lay the problem.
The dark spawn that needed to return had already been kidnapped and didn’t return!
[Coordinates cannot be found.]
[Coordinates cannot be found.]
[Coordinates cannot be found.]
[Coordinates…]
Like a lagging game, dozens, hundreds of the same phrases popped up on the card.
The murmurs of panic grew, wondering if something would happen.
“…How about returning the card before something actually goes wrong?”
“I don’t want to. I kidnapped it, so it’s mine now!”
“You’re really… impressive. Thinking of stealing from the principal.”
“Am I a bit much? Hehe.”
Sadi Chocolate expressed deep admiration for the audacious theft of a current Great Evil Candidate.
[Lost Dark Spawn.]
[Error report sent to the creator.]
In the end, the situation culminated with the error report transmission.
Ultimately, only Sadi gained enormous benefits.
‘Heh, how naive. Even if I dump all my inner weaknesses onto Cooking Oknodie, my true nature remains gentle. It’s laughable that I got duped this easily.’
Moreover, Sadi Chocolate’s flattery towards Oknodie wasn’t said without intent.
Because in her turn, she had reused Oknodie to overcome a crisis, she wanted to naturally negate the adhesive magic and drop off!
Pleased that she had succeeded in the perfect crime without anyone knowing, Sadi Chocolate realized that the hem of her clothes was still stuck to Oknodie’s shoulder.
What is this?
It’s the magic I cast.
I definitely released it, why is it still sticking?
“Finally, the moment I’ve been waiting for~!”
As she watched the excited Oknodie, Sadi realized the fact that Oknodie had also cast the same magic she had.
The actions were the same.
Only the goals differed.
Sadi’s goal was to hitch a ride on Oknodie.
Oknodie’s goal was… to torment Sadi Chocolate.
“If you’re enjoying an effortless win, you should expect a punishment, right?”
The blood drained from Sadi Chocolate’s face at those words.
━━━
[Item] Cheonryeong Mountain Range
Activation Condition – Succeed in <Trial of the Card: High Altitude Adaptation>.
Activation Failure Penalty – Forced warp to somewhere in the Cheonryeong Mountain Range on 12 random dates in a year.
━━━
Cheonryeong Mountain Range.
While not as high as the Shinjung Mountain, known as the Garden of Gods, it looms over the harsh line between the Western and Eastern regions, which is harsher than the Dragon Master’s peak.
At the moment where the great dividing line that splits the world was marked as ‘an object,’ Sadi Chocolate became dumbfounded.
‘Well, I mean, it’s not like something couldn’t be an object just because it’s called the Cheonryeong Mountain Range…’
An object refers to any material thing that has a definite shape.
Considering past patterns, she’d expected something sinister like a dreadful magic tool, and yet Sadi Chocolate was caught off guard by the wide-ranging scale of the Dragon Principal’s card game.
“Ugh…!”
“This isn’t the energy from the middle realm.”
“What the heck? Despite clearly being outside the range, this mana pressure is insane!”
The spirits panicked.
An enormous presence that would definitely qualify for ‘the upper world’ was felt.
It felt like an area of excessive mana density similar to the dragon veins at the peak of each dragon master, surpassing the pressure of any common peak.
For the first time, Sadi Chocolate cursed her ability to sense mana.
This was different from Titosso’s Titos Beam.
While Titos Beam was the painful light that burnt the sensory organs, this felt like suffocating in mana, drowning just from breathing.
<Advanced Mana Technique>
The way to endure is simple.
By constructing dual realms to isolate external mana.
Or through mana techniques to control the influence of high-density mana.
It’s either by skill or cultivation.
If you can’t resist, you won’t hold out.
‘But it’s okay. Judging by previous rules, the time limit is a mere minute.’
Just hold out for exactly 60 seconds.
With clenched teeth, Sadi Chocolate counted the time.
And when 60 seconds had passed,
the dimensional gate began to close.
Just when she was about to exhale a sigh of relief, Oknodie’s hand reached out to the decoration on the dimensional gate.
“You’re not seriously…”
“Hehe.”
Sadi Chocolate’s ominous premonition proved correct.
Clunk.
The decoration spun 360 degrees counterclockwise.
The closing dimensional gate swung wide open as if it had just been unlocked.
Reset.
A countdown to restart from zero.
“Can I just pass my homework to someone else?”
“No…”
“Did you reflect on it or not?”
“I did…”
“I don’t trust you, so let’s do another round!”
Clunk.
The timer started spinning again without delay.
“Save me.”
The torture of Oknodie’s dimensional gate continued for another five minutes until Sadi Chocolate declared her forfeit.