'What a naughty dream.'
Eloise felt a touch of embarrassment as she greeted the seventh morning of her second life.
Glaring at the intense sunlight pouring through the window, she muttered,
"Here comes that round sun again."
And her second utterance was,
"I don't want to go to work."
"Eloise, do you really need to make 'going to work' sound so grand? The office is just a five-minute walk away?"
Merlin spoke up— one of the great joys in Eloise's second life.
Merlin Pardel, her colleague on the Support Team at the Disaster Response Headquarters, was known for her large glasses and curly hair.
Support Team, they called it. But in truth, their main duties involved cleaning up after the esteemed mages and healers.
In cruder terms, they were lackeys.
And Eloise was a capable lackey on the Support Team.
"It's Monday, so everyone's on edge today, you know? Hurry up and get ready so we can head out together!"
"Yeah."
She gave a reply, but even after Merlin closed the bedroom door behind her, Eloise lay in bed for a good while longer.
Then, she reflected briefly on her previous life.
Orphaned from birth, she endured all sorts of hardships before finally landing a lowly civil servant position at the Magic Management Bureau under the Disaster Response Headquarters.
It was all thanks to the sudden catastrophe known as the Rainbow Hole.
'Can I really call that "thanks" when it was so horrific? Who knows.'
Anyway, while toiling away at the bottom rung, she awakened as an S-Rank Healer!
It happened the moment she encountered the Tower Master, Gerard, who was on the verge of rampaging from magic poisoning.
She had only just become his secret healer— he was the ace of the Rainbow Hole response team, after all— when she suddenly got caught up in a Purple Hole and died.
Her life, which she'd lived so fiercely and dramatically, could be summed up in just a few lines.
'Not much to it, huh.'
What was special was right now.
How did I end up living a second life?
Eloise closed her eyes.
Memories of her past life rose vividly before her.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Rainbow Hole.
Five years ago, these holes appeared out of nowhere across the continent's lands and skies, devouring everything in their path. We called them 'Rainbow Holes.'
The reason such a pretty name stuck to these horrific voids that sucked in objects, people, earth, water— anything and everything without discrimination— was simple.
The holes glowed in one of the rainbow colors.
Sometimes red, occasionally orange, other times blue...
Their locations, timings, and colors were all utterly irregular.
But there was one thing they all had in common.
Wherever a Rainbow Hole appeared, everything around it was reduced to ruins.
Whether alive or not, the Rainbow Holes swallowed it all.
The Rainbow Hole was a disaster, a calamity incarnate.
The continent hurriedly established the Disaster Response Headquarters.
Representatives from each nation, the Papal Vicar, and the Tower Master gathered to discuss ways to destroy the Rainbow Holes.
There were many attempts.
Multinational allied forces were sent in, and the temples offered prayers and sacrifices.
In the process, countless knights, priests, and mages perished.
Or rather, their fates were unknown.
No one who entered ever came back, so they were presumed dead.
The Rainbow Hole seemed like an unsolvable problem.
Yet human tenacity eventually found an answer.
Destroy the core inside the Rainbow Hole, and the hole itself vanished completely.
The problem was that reaching and destroying the core was no easy feat.
You had to battle unidentified magical beasts in unpredictable environments.
And the only ones capable of dealing effective damage to those beasts were mages.
From then on, mages became the continent's heroes, painstakingly destroying Rainbow Holes one by one.
The Disaster Response Headquarters grew arrogant, proclaiming they had conquered the Rainbow Holes.
People returned to their daily lives.
As if that offended something...
Another problem erupted.
"Run! Pekka Toom's gone mad! He's attacking us— aaagh!"
The skilled mage Pekka Toom lost his reason and turned on people.
With skin turned from white to black, eyes glowing red, he assaulted them more like a demon than a man.
That day, he killed two hundred people before smashing his own head and committing suicide.
A research team was assembled once more. Delving into ancient texts and the Magic Tower's forbidden tomes, they uncovered the truth of the 'Pekka Toom Phenomenon.'
It was colloquially known as magic poisoning.
When mages overused their magic, mana invaded their bodies, turning them into mindless monsters.
Eradicating the Rainbow Holes required mages, but their potential madness terrified everyone— and fearing their madness meant leaving the Rainbow Holes alone, dooming the continent.
The continent plunged into despair once more.
"God will not abandon us."
The temples raised prayers, and as if in response, a solution appeared.
Healers capable of curing magic poisoning.
Just as Rainbow Holes had appeared out of the blue, healers suddenly emerged among us.
They cured mana poisoning through physical contact with mages.
The Disaster Response Headquarters rounded them up and managed them systematically.
Healers were graded from S-Rank to F-Rank based on their mana-curing abilities and deployed accordingly.
The initially haphazard Disaster Response Headquarters learned through trial and error, solidifying into a supranational organization.
The Rainbow Hole response system evolved similarly.
And three years ago, Eloise joined the Support Team at the Magic Management Bureau under the Disaster Response Headquarters, by which time the system was firmly in place.
When she received her acceptance letter, Jacqueline, the teacher at the orphanage, was overjoyed, practically jumping for joy.
"Eloise, you're the pride of our orphanage!"
A steady paycheck, a stylish uniform, and room and board provided.
Working up close with the heroic mages, serving the continent with a sense of mission!
She thought it was a pretty great job.
That notion changed after six months on the job.
The pay was peanuts.
Room and board were provided solely to summon them at any hour during emergencies.
And the mages she'd thought were so cool...
"Heal me right now! Get a healer over here! Or should I barge into the healers' dorm myself? I don't care about the rank! Anyone, just bring anyone— noooow!"
Were nothing more than entitled complainers.
Endless overtime and mages who griped no matter what she did wore her down.
Her initial sense of mission vanished before she even realized it.
'Oh, but I've still got something going for me.'
The stylish uniform.
The high-quality white blouse, navy vest cinched at the waist, and skirt of just the right length were comfortable for moving around in.
Above all, they were beautiful.
The gold-thread embroidery and the Magic Management Bureau badge made of gold and rubies boosted her self-esteem, somehow.
Yeah. Life here wasn't all bad.
And the regular meals were delicious, too.
Eloise made an effort to find the positives so she wouldn't impulsively quit this hard-won job.
At the orphanage, skipping a meal a day was routine.
The food was awful, and even then, she often yielded her portion to the younger kids.
The dorm here was two to a room, but having her own bed was nice.
And so, she adapted to life at the Magic Management Bureau and got by reasonably well.
Though she occasionally clashed with those entitled mages, earning her boss's ire.
Eloise's situation improved after she met Gerard.
As later revealed, Gerard had an allergy to healing powers.
So he rejected healers and managed his mana with self-made potions.
But unproven drugs had their limits in controlling mana poisoning.
In the end, he reached the brink of rampage, and that's when Eloise encountered him by chance.
Gerard Norvark.
Meeting him was a turning point in Eloise's life.
The emperor's second son, born to a mage mother— a bastard son.
He had renounced all rights as a prince early on, entered the Magic Tower, and risen to become its Tower Master, an SSS-Rank Mage.
The hero of the Norban Empire.
'And my partner.'
Upon meeting him, Eloise awakened as an S-Rank Healer.
But she didn't want to be a healer.
She'd seen too many lives ruined in that short time due to healing powers.
To mages, healers were mere tools; to the Magic Management Bureau, replaceable parts.
She preferred the unassuming life of a lowly civil servant.
The day after intertwining with Gerard on the verge of his rampage,
"P-please keep it a secret."
Eloise knelt and begged the stern-faced Gerard when he sought her out again.
"In exchange, I'll take responsibility for healing you, Lord Gerard! I'll be your exclusive healer!"
For some unknown reason, Eloise's healing didn't trigger Gerard's allergic reaction.
Normally, healers were assigned by the Magic Management Bureau's system.
It was a regulation to minimally protect healers' rights: each healer, based on their rank, was assigned 3 to 5 mages, rotated monthly.
It also prevented fights among mages over high-ranking healers.
Indeed, early on, two mages had battled over a B-Rank Healer and leveled a building.
However, reporting one's awakening as a healer to the Disaster Response Headquarters was mandatory.
A supranational law for disaster response.
Violators faced severe punishment, regardless of status.
Hiding Eloise's existence posed a huge risk for the Tower Master Gerard, lauded as an impeccable gentleman.
It could turn the entire Magic Tower and Disaster Response Headquarters against him.
Eloise figured if he refused and reported her, there was nothing she could do.
Yet, unexpectedly, Gerard accepted her proposal.
"I'll keep your secret."
He was polite and courteous.
"So don't be so frightened. Incidents like last night... won't happen often."
Eloise's heart fluttered at this side of him, so different from the beastly night before— it was beyond her control.
The two maintained their secret relationship as exclusive healer and mage.
Her partnership with Gerard was fulfilling.
'I was happy.'
But happiness was fleeting.
On the day a top-difficulty Purple Hole appeared, Eloise's happiness shattered.
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