I Became A Flashing Genius At The Magic Academy-Chapter 381

"What should I do?"

"Should I tell him to stop right now?"

As one of the Twelve Moons, if she sternly said, "That doesn't seem like a very good idea," would it work?

Countless thoughts raced through the mind of Chunhwangjeong Palwol. But no matter how much she considered it, she couldn’t bring herself to act. It wasn’t just a matter of pride. If she were to back down here, it would only prove that her judgment was inferior to Marankalts.

The moment her intellectual superiority crumbled, everything that made Chunhwangjeong Palwol significant would become useless.

If Marankalts believed her knowledge was worthless, he wouldn’t hesitate to abandon her—or worse, attack her and take what little strength she had.

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"No! That can’t happen!"

She despised fighting.

In fact, she had never fought using her own power, not even once in her entire life. Her abilities as a member of the Twelve Moons weren’t suited for combat, and she had never even considered learning magic.

"That’s a discipline for inferior humans," she thought bitterly.

But even with such convictions, she couldn’t accept this.

"Still, this isn’t right!"

To cover the entire Bingbaek Mountain Range with Persona Gates? The idea was sheer lunacy.

“Magician, wait, let me—"

But before Chunhwangjeong Palwol could finish speaking, Marankalts had already completed his spell.

“Abula! Katarokum!”

Thud!

As Marankalts struck his staff against the ground, a gray wave rippled across the entire Bingbaek Mountain Range.

"Abula? Kata?"

The words were familiar. They were from an incantation used by magicians centuries ago. While she didn’t know magic herself, interpreting languages was second nature for someone like her, one of the Twelve Moons.

‘World, lose your light.’

And then...

“Abula... Nemeharum!”

‘World, be dyed in gray.’

Thud!

When Marankalts struck his staff again, a black wave engulfed the mountain range.

“H-ha...”

It was over. It was truly over.

Chunhwangjeong Palwol stared at the ground with dilated pupils, her tangled hair the least of her concerns.

"This is madness. Absolute madness..."

A faint purple sphere began to form atop the fortress of the Baekryeong Plateau. It was barely the size of a human head at first, but it expanded slowly, like an inflating balloon, until it covered the entire fortress in the blink of an eye.

But it didn’t stop there.

The purple sphere extended further, consuming the ground, transforming into a dome that spread in all directions. It swept through the lower cities, swallowing everything in its path.

“A-ah...”

Chunhwangjeong Palwol stood dumbfounded, staring at the overwhelming sight.

The wave of the Persona Gate was unstoppable, a tidal force no ordinary human could ever hope to resist.

“It’s done, my Moon,” Marankalts declared with a satisfied smile, watching the Persona Gate engulf the northern cities.

Only then did she realize something terrifying.

Every 9th-class magician had something fundamentally broken about them.

Be it their bodies or their minds.

In Marankalts, what was missing was a certain kind of emotion.

It was a flaw, yes, but it also freed him from the shackles of being ‘human,’ enabling him to make decisions with cold, unrelenting rationality.

Indeed, wasn’t this the most logical solution?

To minimize casualties and eliminate the aberrant lifeforms, all he had to do was trap them in another dimension.

“All of this... such a massive Persona Gate... how did you even create it?”

“Hmm? My Moon, I thought you would already know.”

“What?”

“What do you believe a Persona Gate truly is?”

It was a question she had never considered before.

The silence born from her ignorance was enough to wound her pride, and Marankalts merely chuckled at her reaction.

“The Other World... the force that pulls in another dimension, yes?”

“That’s correct. That’s what everyone believes. Even the black magicians who wield its power.”

“...But it’s different?”

“Not entirely. It’s similar, but there’s more to it. No one would have guessed just how close this ‘Other World’ actually is. It’s much closer than we imagined. Closer than even the human eye can see.”

He looked up at the sky.

The Second Black Tower always had a blood-red sky with constellations sparkling in its depths. The old man had spent countless years in this place, never ceasing to observe the stars.

“...Don’t tell me—!”

“That’s right. The ‘Other World’ is none other than the constellations in the sky. The stars represent countless worlds.”

For a moment, Chunhwangjeong Palwol almost stumbled backward but managed to catch herself.

"A mere human... uncovered this?"

If so, then he had essentially approached the very threshold of truth itself.

"And yet... he abandoned everything at the threshold?"

What could he have seen at that edge to make him despair so completely?

“A 9th-class magician is simply a human who has come closest to the stars,” he murmured, his gaze fixed on the heavens.

“But no matter how close a human gets to the stars, the distance between them can never truly be bridged.”

Even if a person climbed the highest mountain in the world, how much closer would they really be to the stars?

From the perspective of a god watching from above, would there even be a discernible difference between a human gazing up at the night sky from the ground and one gazing from the mountain’s peak?

To a god, both would still be nothing more than insignificant microorganisms tethered to the earth.

“...I see.”

It was only then that Chunhwangjeong Palwol understood why the old man had abandoned his pursuit of the truth.

He had realized it.

Even though he had come closest to the truth, he had also learned that as a human, he could never truly reach it.

And now, the dream he had once forsaken was being rekindled by Chunhwangjeong Palwol.

“Well then, won’t you tell me now?”

“The magician who challenged the Twelve Moons and defied the odds... tell me about him.”

Chunhwangjeong Palwol bit her lip hard.

***

A gentle breeze swept through, carrying the salty tang of the sea.

The sun poured its golden light down through the open sky, shimmering across the waves.

This was the Barangka Cliffs, located on the continent’s northwest edge.

“Wow...”

Standing atop the vast, seemingly endless cliffs, Eisel couldn’t take her eyes off the breathtaking view. Her mouth hung open in awe, unable to fully grasp the magnitude of nature’s grandeur.

“It’s... beautiful.”

No matter how vividly one might describe it, others wouldn’t believe it. Even standing here, it felt as though the world itself was far away, out of reach.

Nature’s wonder.

A masterpiece so colossal that no human could ever create it.

She wanted to throw off her shoes, walk barefoot on the cliffs, and let a light dress flutter in the wind. But she wasn’t here to enjoy herself.

“So... there’s supposed to be a pillar reaching the sky somewhere around here?”

Dressed in a casual outfit of a denim jacket and jeans, Hong Bi-yeon pressed her fingers to her temples.

The temporary blessing Full Frame had cast on her seemed to be wearing off gradually, and a headache was beginning to creep in.

“A pillar, you say?”

“Yes. A massive one.”

“Uh... sure...”

Eisel widened her blue eyes as she scanned the cliffs again.

The vast, open view.

The horizon stretching endlessly.

There was no sign of any pillar.

“Idiots. Of course, it wouldn’t be visible. If it were just sitting out in the open, magicians would’ve long since stripped it bare.”

“That’s... true.”

“So, how do we find it?”

“Well, I brought this with me,” Full Frame said, pulling out a dull cube fragment. It was the Constellation Shard they had received from Arain, the leader of the knightly order.

Seeing it brought back memories of the previous summer vacation, when they had uncovered some of Baek Yuseol’s secrets. The girls fell silent for a moment, lost in thought.

“Back then, we saw the life of someone named Baek Yuseol. But all we could do was observe. We couldn’t interfere. This time, it’s different.”

“Different... how?”

“This time, we’re going to travel through time. Like Baek Yuseol did.”

“Like Baek Yuseol...”

Time travel.

The weight of those words made Eisel’s eyes tremble.

No doubt, she was thinking about her father.

“That’s why there’s something I need to emphasize to both of you,” Full Frame said, looking back and forth between Eisel and Hong Bi-yeon.

“No matter what happens when we get there, we cannot interfere. Not easily, at least.”

Her gaze lingered on Eisel, her tone firm.

“Events of the past cannot be changed. Not even Baek Yuseol could do that. Remember that.”

Indeed.

Even Baek Yuseol had been unable to alter the future. To protect the present, he had chosen to deceive the past instead.

“The past cannot be changed. Ever.”

Those words rang in Eisel’s ears like the toll of a bell.

"The past cannot be changed. The past..."

She understood. She knew.

She wouldn’t make such a foolish mistake again—not now, not after everything.

That would be an insult to Baek Yuseol. To her father.

“...I’ll keep that in mind.”

When Eisel nodded with resolute eyes, Full Frame smiled, seemingly satisfied.

“All right. Let’s split up and start searching. If anyone finds anything, press the brooch I gave you to send a signal. I wish we had smartphones... Maybe Baek Yuseol could invent some for us.”

“Smartphones?”

“Yeah. It’s like a portable notebook you can use to talk to people even when you’re far apart. Feels like magic, doesn’t it?”

“Magic can’t do that, though.”

In this world, saying "feels like science" would probably be more accurate.

“Anyway, it’s a place that hasn’t been discovered for centuries, so don’t expect it to be easy. But I think you two might be different. You both have... a special destiny. As for me...”

Full Frame stopped herself.

A special destiny.

She believed that she, too, was bound by such a fate, though she couldn’t yet fully accept its reality.

“All right, then! Let’s go!”

With those words, Full Frame waved the cube fragment high, a bright smile on her face.

And then—

The world blinked into darkness.

There was no sound. No explosions. Nothing.

The bright sky turned gray in an instant, and as the girls began to sense that something was wrong, they all turned to look at the sea.

There it was.

A pillar.

Yes, a pillar, quite literally.

A massive silver structure piercing the earth’s core and connecting the sea to the heavens.

How had they not seen it before?

It was incomprehensibly enormous.

The girls exchanged glances. In a world stripped of sound, they couldn’t hear each other’s voices.

They simply met each other’s eyes, nodded once, and then dashed off the cliff, leaping into the air.

Behind them, wings of red, blue, and gold unfurled.

The three girls flew toward the silver pillar standing in the gray world.

And high above, at a slight distance, Hae Gong Siwol watched them, clutching the air.

"Chunhwangjeong Palwol... quite impressive."

Forcing Full Frame to come here of her own accord... He didn’t know how she had figured out this place’s location, but it didn’t matter.

When she reversed time there and awakened her true destiny...

The other fate-bound existence, the one known as Baek Yuseol, would vanish from this world forever.