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Chapter 158. Huge Gain?

The grass by the lakeside was stained red. The elements composed of a person’s life were spilled all over the ground.

No matter how strong the body may be, losing the source of consciousness means losing life. The scene was as chilling as the dark gloom woven by the muse.

The death of others is always a source of fear. Especially when it involves the gory separation of the body, no further explanation is needed.

The bright, sunny lakeside with cherry blossoms swirling around had abruptly turned into a chillingly dark path of the night.

Fortunately, the surroundings were calm. No one was watching, so there were no screams to be heard.

And to me… that chilling sensation was conveyed intact. Since I shared the experience of ‘neck severing’, my body also began to grow cold.

To die without putting up a fight. What could be scarier than this…

Squirming—

…existed.

As mentioned before, death is terrifying. A blood-soaked corpse tightens the heart just by looking at it.

What’s even more grotesque is when a breathless corpse suddenly moves.

Swoosh…-

An eerie event unfolded. The upper body of Lyman, whose neck had been severed, raised itself.

This was absurd. Surely, someone was controlling him with something like telekinesis.

Yet the movements were somehow refined. It wasn’t the bizarre motions of a mannequin… it was acting like a real ‘person’.

Clink clink—

The corpse casually walked over and picked up its severed head. At the moment it reattached it to the neck like a helmet—

“Ugh! It’s been a while since I died, and my neck is stiff.”

The corpse that had its head cut off came back to life. Lyman, with focus restored in his eyes, moved his neck as if nothing had happened.

Had he never really died? But the blood on his neck remained. It was certainly not something that could be ignored.

“Hey, wake up.”

Lyman said, shaking the Pain Noose wrapped around his wrist. He didn’t know how he had come back to life, but there was still another body left.

Lyman approached that body and pinched its face. Instantly, warmth returned to the frostbitten visage.

“Argh! My neck!”

I awoke, startled, and immediately felt my neck. I checked in a panic, thinking it could’ve been severed too. Luckily, it was intact.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Lyman grinned at the sight of me.

“Okay? Hell no! Do you have any idea how much that hurt?”

“Well, it’s fine since you’re alive, right?”

Lyman said nonchalantly, loosening the noose.

As he flashed a provocative smile, I wanted to give him a solid punch.

-User’s emotion towards Lyman: Neutral

At least it was fortunate that my feelings had changed.

*

Lyman washed the blood splattered all over his body in the lake’s water. Then he pounded and roasted a monster that had approached from the surface.

He and I were sitting on a rock, using that as our lunch instead.

“Does it taste bad? Why are you grimacing while eating?”

“I just got through that, so there’s no way I’d feel good about it.”

“You’re not still sulking, are you? You expected to come back to life.”

“Still, it hurts like hell.”

You may have experienced it before, but for me, it was my first time having my neck cut off. If I hadn’t been connected by that noose, I would’ve simply been lying there, cold as ice.

“Well, you already knew that the Pain Noose doesn’t just share pain, right?”

To be precise, it’s a soul connection. The pain inflicted on that soul is naturally shared, including the ceasing of breath.

Usually, the moment the neck is severed, I should have died too. But since Lyman’s soul remained intact, I could remain unscathed as well.

This meant that if connected to an ‘undying existence’, I too wouldn’t have to die.

“So you knew you would be fine. That’s why you didn’t stop me, right?”

“I told you, I know just about everything.”

“Then you must know how I ended up in ‘this body’, right?”

“….”

Death is impartial to everyone, even in this world. No matter how strong or how high your achievements, once your breath stops, you are just a corpse.

Even those pesky Enviel and King Talema couldn’t escape that fate.

But Lyman was different. It could be excessive protagonist bias, but he was ‘undying’… fated not to die. He had lost the concept of ‘death’ long ago.

“So that means… you also know how many days I have lived, and from whose womb I was born?”

“That’s right.”

“Then you know all the secrets I kept hidden?”

“….”

“Wow, I wonder if I should keep him alive or not.”

I felt chills when I saw Lyman pop his wrist. He had a clearly villainous expression as if he was planning to silence me.

‘What part of him looks like a protagonist?’

Then Lyman, with a meaningful gaze, asked me,

“So, is the conversation we’re having now part of the future you already know?”

The future, indeed. As someone who had cleared the main story, I couldn’t possibly not know the future. Unless some sort of intervention occurred.

So when I waved my hands in denial, Lyman said:

“Then saying you know everything doesn’t necessarily include the future.”

“It did include it. Until not long ago, that is.”

“Not long ago?”

To the questioning Lyman, I explained how the future had become twisted.

It originally wasn’t clear how the main story was supposed to play out, and how my involvement would complicate things ahead.

“So, back in the original timeline, you were destined to be expelled, and in a fit to avoid that, everything became twisted?”

“I was sweating bullets trying to clean up that mess.”

Thanks to that, the flow was roughly similar to the main story. The aftermath of trying to revert that flow was like searching for stones thrown into a river.

Thinking it would be easy to retrieve them, I tossed them but ended up with the ripples turning into gigantic waves upon return.

Eventually, everything became annihilated, reaching a point of irreparability. An example being that the people who should have perished were still very much alive.

“So, Saint Nebia, and Heidern were originally supposed to be dead.”

“The Saint Nebia was saved because she was necessary. Heidern’s survival was unexpected, though.”

“Then Professor Radian too…”

He was the only one I had formed a friendship with during his time at the academy. What would have happened if he had died as per the original story? Lyman clicked his tongue in disbelief and asked.

“So if everything flows negatively… do you know what kind of future would unfold?”

“….”

Radian’s death would trigger a route to a bad ending.

With citizens of the Empire incited and various extremist races in the mix, Lyman would lose his mind, as allies and Mirona perished.

“Everyone dies. Including you.”

Releasing all his power, the entire continent would shatter into pieces. It would truly be a divine punishment descending from the heavens.

I had eliminated every worst-case scenario to thwart that. An example would be devouring Enviel.

“So, if it flows positively?”

At least that would mean the continent’s destruction wouldn’t occur. At the same time, by eliminating the ‘unknown entity’ maneuvering the Empire from behind, peace would come.

Yet, the characters would shed more tears than joy. The protagonist, in the end, would leave forever with his ‘rest’.

“I see.”

“….”

“Ha… then I can feel at ease.”

Hearing that, Lyman was strangely pleased. Despite hearing about a future where he dies, he seemed satisfied, as if that was a goal to be achieved.

“How did you feel watching that?”

“Hmm.”

Although it’s classified as a relatively positive route, it wasn’t entirely a pleasant feeling. Losing a protagonist you cared for is a sad affair.

It was ironically amusing that the protagonist was the one asking about his feelings regarding such an ending.

“Can I ask a question now?”

“…?”

At this point, I felt that I had answered enough. Now it was his turn to answer in return.

“Have you ever once wished to live?”

“….”

“Surely you must feel wronged. You didn’t even want that ‘body’.”

Saying this to an immortal might be odd, but it was a question centered around Lyman’s true intentions.

He was asking the very things he wanted to know from the protagonist himself. How surreal was that? If there were a successful nerd like me, I would want to find him.

“You know about me and you still say that?”

Yet the response I received from him seemed quite unsatisfactory.

“You know all too well what kind of life I’ve lived.”

That foolish mother didn’t just take responsibility and ended up cursing both her child and her disciple.

The child became an undying body, while the disciple faced unfortunate endings with every reincarnation.

The total count of reincarnations was five, and now only one remained.

With the singular goal of breaking the curse, Lyman had lived on. Even if it meant burning his own life away.

“300 years, or rather, 320 years? It might sound like a deception, but living long isn’t all that good.”

Lyman said while picking the fish off the bones. His response implied he didn’t lack enthusiasm for life.

Continuing to attend the academy when there was nothing left to learn was futile. He was a mere student only attending for the sake of purpose, not because he identified as one.

He likely had never even thought of himself as a student.

“I’ll break the curse as planned and disappear from this world. Otherwise, that wouldn’t be good for you either, right? If you know everything.”

Lyman dying at the end was a happy ending for the world. Although it would be sad, when faced with the destruction of the continent, choosing to live was all we could do.

What I had just asked stemmed solely from personal feelings.

“In the end, it’s a conclusion beneficial for both of us.”

“Well, that’s true. Provided it doesn’t twist further.”

The protagonist did not falter at all, even after having his world’s ending spoiled. Despite the world following the rails laid before it, it could not be allowed to change due to my existence.

That was a good ending for the ‘protagonist’ and for ‘me’.

Having finished his meal, Lyman stood up.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a creator or a prophet. As long as you don’t interfere with my goals, there’s no reason for hostility.”

As long as we don’t hinder each other, we can do whatever we like. Then Lyman looked down sharply and continued speaking.

“Of course, if you insult or mock me, things will be different.”

“….”

I felt chills again. That was indeed a blunder on my part, so I had no grounds to refute.

“But the fact that the future has been twisted means we don’t know what will happen next, right?”

“Probably.”

‘Aisha’, who shouldn’t have popped out right now, has shown up. We had certainly stepped into the unknown.

“Then, is there a different ending waiting that is neither ‘good’ nor ‘bad’?”

Lyman smiled gently as he proposed a hypothesis. Then, he began to put his shoes on, as if he had completed what he needed from me. He had taken them off to enter the lake earlier.

“Anyway, don’t worry about me using you just because you know everything. The chance of ruining a good ending because I relied on you would be even higher.”

Lyman had seen plenty of people over his long years. He must have clearly noted how a group relying solely on one person ended up in miserable straits.

“I’ll go my way, you go yours. Of course, we may meet occasionally to share opinions.”

Having finished putting on his shoes, Lyman started walking out of the forest. Surprisingly, he let me go without much struggle.

Isn’t it typical for someone with a temper like him to threaten and immobilize you before making use of you?

“Oh, and.”

At that moment, Lyman stopped on his path. We were still close enough to talk.

“I’m sorry for mentioning your family back there.”

He seemed to be referring to the time when I was pulled up by the surface while talking about ‘family troubles’. Despite being a fake threat, it’s something difficult to overlook if one is a human.

How odd that the ‘demon’ seemed more human. I was baffled by his distinctly inhuman demeanor for Lyman.

“Can I make one last request?”

“…?”

Lyman’s gaze turned towards me from the forest. His usually sharp eyes contained a gentler light.

“There was a time I trained Jenny, Mary, and Luska, and they bring you up often.”

“….”

“If anything happens to me, take care of them.”

Lyman, who had never even made any requests of the professor, entrusted something to me. I could tell that he truly believed in me.

And on the rock where Lyman had been sitting, there was a certain black sphere left behind. Just as I was thinking it might be something he had forgotten, I touched the black orb.

[‘Black Gem’ responds to the user’s Spirit Power.]

As the gem seeped into my body, multiple windows sprang up before me.

[Transcend Class Activated! The path to advancing to the higher job ‘Outlaw’ has been opened.]

‘What a huge gain?’

Surviving as the Academy Scammer!

 

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