The Villain’s POV in the Academy-Chapter 180

Chapter 180
What on earth happened?
I slowly looked around.
But my vision was somewhat blurrier than usual. It felt as though I were underwater… as though I were in an unfamiliar place. Was it because the light of the ‘flame’ was too bright?
On top of that, my body felt strange.
It was as if I were overflowing with strength, yet at the same time utterly drowsy. I couldn’t quite explain it. Korean had never been my strongest subject, so no proper sentence to express this state came to mind.
But something was wrong.
That much was certain.
Aaron, Iri, and Chairman Kharitonov.
The sight of the three of them gathered together was rare enough. And I didn’t understand why they were making such faces. Did I have something strange stuck to my face?
Or maybe I just looked disheveled from having woken up.
But why was I sleeping here in the first place?
My mind wasn’t just hazy—it was confused. It felt as if my brain had melted like jelly and tangled into a mess. I even felt nauseous.
‘Something… something…’
My thoughts didn’t connect smoothly.
As my consciousness gradually cleared, I realized that something was wrong with my body. I lowered my head to look down at myself.
And I realized.
“Huh…?”
My body was strange.
It wasn’t my body.
No, to be exact, it was my body—but it had turned into something like translucent jelly. From fingertips to toes, it let light pass almost completely through.
And around me, something jellyfish-like was wrapped. A light similar to the ‘flame’ shimmered and wavered.
To put it simply, I was inside the body of a ‘flame.’ No—perhaps I had become a ‘living flame’ myself.
What was this?
I didn’t know.
I had never once thought the words “I don’t know,” but I truly didn’t understand what was happening.
My heart pounded and my breathing grew ragged. Amidst the confusion in my head, only the feeling that “something is wrong” tightened around me.
Kkiieeeeeeeek—!
A beastly scream rang out.
The moment I heard it, I realized.
That was my voice.
But the more new information I took in, the more chaotic my mind became.
What was happening? What? What?
Fragments of memory suddenly surfaced.
They were likely from last night.
I had definitely been in my room, investigating the identity of the ‘device’ as per Iri’s request.
Continuing the work while suffering from a splitting headache was extremely difficult. Even so, I pressed on with responsibility. I even thought to myself that once it was over, I hoped someone would praise me.
And then I discovered the truth.
The device was meant to investigate my biological reactions and brainwaves. To be precise, it was a device that collected ‘brainwave pattern’ information. Someone had created it to scan inside my brain.
Realizing this, terror consumed me.
I had never done anything that would earn me such grudges. Who in the world was creating these devices and scattering them throughout the Academy, and for what purpose?
I knew I had to tell Iri and Aaron immediately. But at that very moment, I confirmed the wave pattern emitted by the scanner to collect my brain data.
And I was horrified.
If my calculations were correct, the ‘flames’ struck by this scanner’s waves would inevitably turn into man-eating ‘monsters.’
There was no time.
I hurriedly left my room and headed to the exhibition hall on the first floor via elevator. But after that, my headache worsened, and my memory became fragmented.
The only thing I vaguely remembered was that before the ‘flames’ could turn into monsters, when I was desperately trying to contain the situation—someone had come to me.
‘And after that… what happened?’
I was sure something terrible had occurred… but I couldn’t remember. It felt as though someone had locked away my memories, or blocked the gaps with a massive boulder.
‘Why am I in this form…!?’
I strained my head desperately.
Remember. Remember. Remember.
I tried with all my might to restart my dazed brain.
-You don’t need to know.
A voice spoke.
-Forget it. There’s no need to remember. Just sleep for a while. I’ll take care of everything.
It was a sweet voice, like a lullaby.
Listening to it, I slowly drifted off to sleep.
And once again, I dreamed.
“So, the reason you’ve called me at this hour is because of that girl?”
Vladimir grumbled.
What he was staring at was Miyu, inside the water tank.
No—was that even Miyu anymore? To our eyes, it looked only like giant ‘Clione’ swimming inside the tank.
If one focused intently, Miyu’s faint silhouette could be seen inside the body of the largest one. She had become almost translucent, nearly invisible, though faint outlines of her clothes and hair remained, making it possible to guess her position.
“How could she end up like this?”
“Well…”
“It’s my fault.”
As Vladimir hesitated over how to respond, Iri spoke up.
“Miyu was acting strangely yesterday. I had a bad feeling. No… actually, it had been like that for quite a while. But even though I stayed with her the whole time, I dismissed it as nothing. Then maybe thirty minutes ago? I got worried and went to her room, but she was gone…!”
She rambled on.
Iri seemed completely shaken.
Her turmoil weighed on my chest like a stone, but that attitude wasn’t helping the situation at all.
“Iri.”
“It’s my fault!”
“Iri.”
She continued to blame herself.
When I called her name sternly, she whipped her head toward me. Gripping her shoulders tightly, I spoke with firm emphasis.
“Calm down. It isn’t your fault.”
Yes. It wasn’t Iri’s fault.
If blame were to be assigned, it would fall squarely on the one who caused this mess. I already had a rough idea who the culprit was, and once this case was settled, I intended to make them pay dearly.
In fact, Iri deserved praise for finding Miyu’s location this quickly. It had been the right decision to entrust Miyu to her care during the festival.
Of course, I hadn’t predicted something like this would happen when I made that request.
“Calmly tell me what you’ve found so far.”
“……Yes.”
Fortunately, perhaps because Iri had grown after going through various incidents since entering the Academy, she quickly regained her composure and explained the whole situation.
When her story ended, Vladimir frowned and asked.
“So, to summarize: someone targeted ‘that girl’ and scattered machines around the Academy, and those machines drove the ‘Living Fireworks’ into a rampage? That girl tried to handle it and ended up like that?”
“That was the hypothesis.”
It was actually a bit more complicated than that, but there was no point telling Vladimir, who didn’t really know what kind of kid Miyu was, the full details.
“So why did you call me? You could handle something like this on your own.”
“The affinity is bad.”
Module online, [Cloud Spider].
As leather gloves slipped over my hands, I snapped my fingers. Invisible threads shot toward the ‘fireworks’ that had turned into monsters.
Swhick!
With a crisp sound, a tank was split in half. The massive clione inside was severed in two as well.
Night-sky-colored liquid from the broken tank gushed out and spread across the floor. The halved clione flopped on the ground.
But it didn’t die.
A new lower body grew from the severed upper half, and a new upper body grew from the severed lower half.
I snapped my fingers again.
Tchak!
When I cut the divided things, they split again. Each time I sliced them, their numbers multiplied terrifyingly.
“……Physical attacks don’t work.”
“That’s right. I checked before you came. And another thing.”
When I left the shattered pieces, they writhed and rapidly began to grow. Some took on forms resembling beasts, others took on plantlike shapes and started rooting into the floor.
Because of that, a small ecosystem sprang up near the broken tank in an instant. Of course, it was a type of ecosystem you couldn’t see on Earth. Some of the animals even resembled primates.
They all looked different, but they shared one thing in common: they began to radiate clear hostility toward us.
-Kieeeek!
-Kyaaaaaaak!
Birds and beasts charged at us. Plants extended vines trying to grab us.
Startled, Vladimir deployed a shield.
Pzzzzzt!
Those that hit the invisible energy barrier immediately turned to ash and vanished. Vladimir turned to me and asked.
“W-what on earth is that?”
“They evolved too fast.”
They were things that had originally repeated dying and being reborn every thirty seconds. Their life cycles were as short as bacteria or viruses, so their evolution proceeded at a terrifying speed.
“They were fine inside the tank, but when external stimuli came in they became aggressive and evolved into different forms. Also, they seem to regard anyone who approached within a certain distance… their territory, I guess, as enemies. Of course…”
I fired a mass of threads and destroyed the ecosystem. The nearly microscopic shredded individuals could no longer divide or evolve and simply disintegrated.
“There was a limit to their division and evolution. If you cut them down to roughly one cubic millimeter or smaller, they died outright.”
“Then you could have handled it yourself.”
“I wanted to save Miyu.”
If I had decided to kill all these giant cliones, I wouldn’t have needed to step in at all. I could have brought Stingray Corporation soldiers and wiped them out with flamethrowers.
But that wouldn’t save Miyu.
Miyu was currently assimilated with a clione that looked like a queen specimen. I had no idea how she’d ended up like that, but in any case, with my module setup specialized in ‘cutting’, ‘destruction’, and ‘severing’, it would be nearly impossible to separate Miyu without injuring her.
“There’s also the festival left. I want to put this out with as little fuss as possible.”
“……So what do you want me to do?”
“I’ll open the path. You shield Iri and help her get to the queen. Can you do that?”
“Who do you take me for?”
Vladimir smiled arrogantly.
But Iri looked somewhat flustered.
“W-why me?”
“The electromagnetic waves emitted by high-level Adaptees like us accelerate the mutations of those things. If a normal Adaptee approached, Miyu’s condition could become unstable. But with your pure spec, you should be able to fight without module assistance.”
“……!”
Iri’s eyes widened.
Of course, if we judged pure spec alone, I would be far stronger than Iri, but that would mean I couldn’t use powerful game-changers like [Cloud Spider]. Also, deactivating all the other modules would take time.
By contrast, Iri only needed to deactivate two or three modules, so her preparation would be much simpler.
“Can I… do it?”
Iri asked with a worried face.
I checked the time casually.
1:00 a.m.
If we handled it quickly, we could finish before dawn. With that thought and a confident expression I answered.
“You could do it. You would.”