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[Status Window]
Name: Soren Arden
◈ Stats
Stamina - 1.3 (E-) [Increased by 0.3]
Strength - 1.1 (E-) [Increased by 0.2]
Mana - 2.1 (E+) [Increased by 0.5]
◈ Special Effects
- Lunaris's Liquified Mana
└ Mana increased by +0.5
└ Mana Control increased by 200%
└ Mana can be materialised.
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Even amid the lingering exhaustion, the sight made his chest loosen a little.
The boost to mana control was worth every second spent fighting, every moment of pain when the curse had dug into him.
It was another tool, another unfair edge to stack on his side.
Not enough to erase the nightmares, but enough to make surviving them a little more likely.
It meant something else, too.
It meant that pushing his mana through unfamiliar paths, shaping spells away from his hands, manipulating the flow like Carlen had shown him, that wouldn't just be a desperate trick anymore.
With this level of control, copying Carlen's air circle didn't feel like a distant dream.
It felt like something he could reach if he kept trying, step by unsteady step.
"What was that?" Amelia asked.
She had watched everything from beside him, eyes tracking the bottle and the faint shift in his posture.
"Something to make me stronger," he replied.
His voice was still hoarse, but this time there was a thread of quiet satisfaction in it.
"Okay," she said simply.
No probing questions, no lecture, no comment about recklessness.
Just acceptance.
He closed the status window and slipped the empty bottle into his inventory out of habit.
With the catacombs cleared, there was nothing left to do here.
Soren walked back to the stone door, retrieved the book from its slot, and stored it away as well.
Then he and Amelia began the slow walk back the way he had come, their footsteps echoing against the stone.
The tunnels felt longer on the way out.
Each step reminded him that, for all the danger, he was leaving with more than he had come in with, more strength, more information, and unfortunately, more memories.
"...Wanna get something to eat?" Soren asked as they finally stepped out into the early morning air.
He tried to sound light, the way he might have on any other day, but the tremor in his voice was obvious to him.
Back after the mock duel, he had meant to go somewhere with Amelia.
He had promised her they would eat together.
Then his frustration had snowballed, pushing that plan out of his mind and replacing it with the desperate need to get stronger.
It felt a bit late now, but this was the only way he knew to make up for it.
"Sure," Amelia said.
She didn't smile, but the answer came without hesitation.
"What are you in the mood for?" he asked.
"I don't mind," she replied.
It was an honest answer.
Food was food as far as she was concerned, as long as it filled her up.
"Let's get pancakes then," he said.
"Alright."
They walked side by side toward the dorms, then past them, toward the small café that opened early for students.
The sky above them was just starting to shift.
Sunlight crept over the horizon slowly, staining the clouds a faint orange.
The chill of night started to lift, replaced by the cool dampness of early morning; the grass by the path was still wet with dew, and Soren's boots darkened as they brushed against it.
Students weren't up yet.
The campus was quiet, just them and the distant sound of birds waking up.
Silence stretched between them, unbroken, but it wasn't uncomfortable.
At least, not for Amelia.
For Soren, however, his mind was anything but quiet.
The nightmare clung to him.
It hadn't been just vague images.
It had been precise, detailed.
Isaac's life, his own past life, played frame by frame in a way he hadn't let himself think about in months.
He had seen everything again.
The harassment.
The vandalised car.
The blackboard covered in accusations.
Aria's face as she collapsed, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Her voice on the messages, accusing him, breaking in real time.
The final words.
— It's all your fault.
They had already been etched into him once.
The wraith's curse had forced him to read them again, carved deeper this time, as if to make sure he never managed to forget.
The survivor's guilt he had been carrying since that day had never fully left him.
It had gone quiet after transmigration, buried under new problems, new dangers, and the constant push to stay alive in this world.
But the curse had dragged it back up in full force, ripping away the thin layer he had thrown over it.
Now, it wrapped around his ribs again, cold and suffocating.
It reminded him how thin the line had been between "fine" and "destroyed."
'At least she was caught in the end…' he thought.
The stalker.
The girl who had ruined two lives without a second thought.
Back then, after everything, Isaac had watched as she was arrested.
Evidence had come out: her confession, the digital trails, the way she had photoshopped pictures to frame Aria and twist the truth.
In the end, the world had agreed that Aria wasn't the one at fault.
But that didn't undo anything.
Even with the girl behind bars, it hadn't changed the fact that Aria was gone.
It hadn't changed the sleepless nights.
It hadn't erased the look on her face when she said it was his fault, or the way his own guilt had eaten him alive afterwards.
Transmigration hadn't erased it either.
It had just given him a different name to use while carrying it.
He walked a few more steps, then glanced sideways at Amelia.
Her profile was calm.
Eyes straight ahead.
Ears flicking slightly at the morning breeze.
The only sign that anything was different was the faint tension in her jaw.
"...Wait, why did I wake up like that?" Soren asked.
The question slipped out before he could stop it.
He disappeared into his own head so often that he had nearly ignored the oddest part of all this, that Amelia, out of all people, had been the one to let him sleep on her lap, to stroke his hair until he calmed down.
For someone so seemed so emotionally distant, it was… unusual.
"...When I found you," she spoke softly, eyes dropping for a moment, "you were crying."
Soren froze mid-step.
He hadn't realised that.
He hadn't realised any sound had left him at all.
"Whenever I had a nightmare," she continued, gaze turning forward again, "Mama would stroke my hair. I thought it might help you, too."
She said it without looking at him, as if simply stating a fact.
Then, after a small pause, she raised her hand and reached toward him again, fingers brushing lightly against his hair.
The touch was soft.
Gentle.
He hadn't realised how tightly he had been holding himself until that moment.
His shoulders, which had been stiff since he woke up, loosened slightly.
Almost without thinking, he leaned into her palm.
The warmth seeped through him.
His heartbeat, which had been tight and rapid ever since the dream, settled into something closer to normal.
'So she was trying to help…'
"It was nice," he admitted quietly.
If he had woken up alone down there, in the dark, after being forced to relive everything, he wasn't sure what kind of state he would have been in.
Maybe he would have panicked.
Maybe he would have stayed on the floor longer than was safe.
Because she had been there, because she had used something from her own childhood to comfort him, he had been able to come back to himself.
He truly was thankful.
Not just to Amelia.
To Lilliana, with her worried eyes and clumsy scolding.
To Olivia, with her awkward kindness.
To Felix, even to Carlen for teaching him mid-duel.
In the months since transmigrating, the people around him had shifted from "characters in a game" to something else entirely.
They had become his friends.
That made the dream cut deeper.
The nightmare was a reminder.
Mistakes had consequences.
He had seen what happened when he moved too late, when he assumed things would resolve themselves over time.
He had watched what happened when he acted incorrectly
He couldn't do that again.
Quietly, without saying anything out loud, he made a decision.
He couldn't save everyone.
That much was obvious.
He wasn't the protagonist, he wasn't the hero, and he didn't have the kind of power or narrative protection that Alex did.
But he didn't need to save everyone.
He just needed to protect the ones within his reach.
Soren believed Alex would handle the rest.
The Hero's personality was unchanged from the game: reckless, kind, stubborn, unable to ignore people in trouble.
And now, in this world, Alex was even more powerful than his game counterpart, wielding a [Divinity] that could slow time itself.
Soren couldn't see a route where the protagonist would truly need the help of an extra like him to save the world.
That was Alex's job.
Soren's goal was smaller.
As long as the people he cared about were alright, Soren was happy.
He truly believed that.
No more cracks.
No more watching from the sidelines while someone he cared about shattered under the weight of other people's cruelty.
No more standing still and calling it "being careful."
Not again.
The nightmare, as terrible as it had been, had done more than just hurt.
It had made everything feel sharper, more real.
It had taken the vague sense of fear he carried around and focused it into something solid.
A mission.
A promise.
It was time for him to set the story right, to bring it back onto the correct path.
To fix the cracks.
————「❤︎」————