Vol 4. Chapter 0: Prologue

It had already been more than a month since the cube-space incident at Kamov Mountain. Carillian Academy gave the first- and second-year students a long vacation. After all, this wasn’t some minor incident—calling it a calamity and accident for Carillian Academy wouldn’t be an exaggeration.

Looking across the entire history of Carillian Academy, aside from those few major events tied to life and death, there had never been anything worse than this. After all, the people who came to study at Carillian Academy—besides exceptionally talented commoner students—were the nobles of various countries. Losing even one of them was a huge headache, and also a massive loss for the academy.

Vinny didn’t know how many students never made it back from this incident, but thankfully, everyone around him did. Not a single one missing.

Andre got dragged away by those vines covered in eyes while saving Ferdi, but he survived in a miracle. His mental state was a bit messed up, with some aftereffects left behind—suspected to be from taking on too much mental contamination. He himself had been pretty seriously injured too, but thankfully there was Head Nun Feili. Under Head Nun Feili’s healing, Andre made it out without disaster. After more than a month of recuperation, he could basically get out of bed and walk.

Originally, Nun Feili said that mental aftereffects couldn’t be judged by whether someone could walk or not. You had to combine other factors too—like whether being exposed to similar scenes would trigger his scarred memories, and so on.

But Ferdi was extremely certain: that bastard Andre was completely fine. Finer than fine.

“Fuck, this kid pretended to be depressed and buried three pits for me. Made me lose three times in a row. I treated him to three big meals and five card boxes. This is mental trauma?? I think he’s just using it to scam food and drinks!” Ferdi said indignantly.

But even if he talked like that, Ferdi still felt extremely guilty toward Andre. After all, Andre had risked his life to save him. All that stuff was something Ferdi willingly treated him to—he was just talking big with his mouth. Everyone knew it in their hearts.

As for Isatia, she definitely was fine too. The reason she came back later was simply because she took part in the academy’s rescue work. After she got out that day, she didn’t leave—she kept helping rescue other students the entire time.

According to the instructors who were there that day, when Isatia escaped the cube space, she was in excellent condition, to the point people doubted whether she really came back from that dangerous hell.

After Isatia returned, the first thing she did was confirm Vinny’s safety—confirm whether Vinny was safe and sound.

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You could only say the destiny heroines were all individually loaded with skills. This disaster that dropped out of nowhere let you see it clearly.

The ones with stats showed stats. The ones with mechanics showed mechanics. The ones whose stats weren’t enough and whose mechanics weren’t enough showed fate. The ones with stats, mechanics, and fate flexed operations in all kinds of ways. It was like eight immortals crossing the sea, each showing their powers. Compared to them, Vinny got his ass beaten in the secret realm and almost lost his life. He really dragged the whole thing down.

But he was already pretty lucky. The unluckiest and most pitiful were the students who never made it back.

This debt had to be written onto the Church of the Dawn and the Pope of the Dawn—but you obviously couldn’t say that out loud. Just like the Church didn’t report Priest Foreno’s disappearance either. They lost a Master-realm priest and acted like nothing happened.

After all, at the Church of the Dawn, Foreno at most counted as a grand priest with a bit of talent. Priests at that kind of semi-grassroots level were everywhere—grab one and you got a handful. It wasn’t strange at all. Gone was gone. It didn’t count as a loss. Everyone just pretended not to know.

But even if they acted like nothing happened on the surface, the Church of the Dawn would definitely investigate it in secret. As for whether they could find anything, Vinny felt they wouldn’t. Dead people didn’t talk. The secret realm collapsed. Every trace and clue got “destroyed and wiped clean.” And the few people who knew were all loyal to him. They absolutely wouldn’t switch sides to the Pope.

As for exactly how many students never returned, Vinny originally thought it would be a huge portion. What surprised him was that it seemed like it wasn’t that many—though there were plenty who suffered severe injuries or mental trauma. You couldn’t help but sigh at the overall quality of Carillian Academy students.

But how the academy handled follow-up communication with families, and how compensation would work—that was Carillian Academy’s own business. If you handled that kind of thing badly, it turned into a complete mess.

Mm. For this whole month, Vinny and the group of card nerds gathered together to play cards to make up for the trauma in their hearts. Luckily, not a single card nerd was missing—none failed to return, and none had mental trauma severe enough to take a leave of absence.

You really had to say—card games had a kind of magical power. You played and played, and your sanity came back. Everyone was doing their best to forget what happened in cube space.

More than a month passed. Vinny felt he’d mostly recovered to a normal daily state. It was just that his card buddies seemed to have nightmares every night—dreaming they were still in cube space, getting startled awake. They’d slept like crap for days straight. They probably needed to see a therapist.

In that regard, Vinny thought he was doing pretty well. As a transmigrator and also an old online-trash-talker from his past life, relying on the powerful mental resilience he built from flaming people and getting flamed back, Vinny’s stress resistance was extremely strong—aside from the first day back, when he slept badly because Shicodale hadn’t returned yet.

But he didn’t get to be smug for long. Yesterday, he had a terrifying, extremely real nightmare. He dreamed the Church screwed him over, captured him, put an enchanted collar on him, and let the Pope control life and death. He became the Church’s gilded canary for a lifetime—forced to put on a fake smile and pray in public.

You could only say it was lucky it was just a dream. If Vinny had to obey those old dried meat freaks wearing human skin for a lifetime—becoming a puppet Saintess—he probably wouldn’t even last a day before he pinched his nose and died on the spot, stinking to death from the nauseating odor those old bastards gave off.

If his whole life got arranged by a bunch of rotten old things like that, what was the point of living? Might as well die early and get it over with.

But that dream really was scary and real. In that dream, the fact that he awakened the bloodline got discovered by the Church. He was arrested. Everyone who helped her was secretly executed and “handled.” And he was controlled by the Pope—unable to ever change back again—spending his entire life as Vanessa, a Church puppet on strings, unable to decide anything for himself.

After that, the Church of the Dawn had a Saintess again. But that wasn’t something worth being happy about. The Church didn’t stop rotting and falling. Instead, it escalated. Using its influence, it turned every human kingdom into a filthy mess.

To threaten her and prevent her from committing suicide, the Church made two layers of preparation. They captured people who were extremely important to her and used their safety as leverage to threaten her, refusing to let her kill herself. Using those excuses, they controlled her for an entire lifetime, arranging her life clearly and perfectly—along with many indescribable scenes, packed full of BAD END defeat CG.

Until her value was fully squeezed dry—at the last moment of her life—the Pope told her a despairing truth: the people most important to her had actually already committed suicide long ago because they didn’t want to drag her down. In other words, the Church had used corpses to blackmail her for her entire life.

In the end, she died amid endless despair, suffocation, and crushing guilt. The history books recorded: Dawn Saintess Vanessa Facilis died of illness in that year. As the great-granddaughter of Dawn Saintess Sophia Facilis, Saintess Vanessa revitalized House of Facilis and, with the Pope’s assistance, ascended to the Saintess seat, bringing blessings to the world, with outstanding merit.

Because she pitied the world and overworked herself, she died. Her daughter inherited the position of Dawn Saintess. But since the little Saintess was still young, the current Pope of the Dawn would assist her.

From then on, the Dawn Saintess completely became the Pope’s puppet. On the surface, it looked like House of Facilis rose again. In reality, the whole family was finished—gripped tightly by the Church, with no room to turn over again, unable to even live as free commoners.

That dream was way too detailed and way too real, to the point Vinny felt a chill down his spine every time he thought about it.

A lot of truths were often hidden beneath history books. In Church history, people got praised to the skies, yet the reality was the exact opposite.

You had to say, that dream really disgusted Vinny badly. It was too fucking messed up—especially a lot of those parts.

Vinny even suspected something unclean was messing with him in secret, forcing him to have this kind of disgusting nightmare. But no matter what it was, Vinny’s determination to resist the Church of the Dawn only became firmer.

Fuck. If he kept lying flat like this, the dream’s shit might actually come true! He really would become a plaything in the Pope’s hand!

He couldn’t go soft on those bastards. He had to hit hard!

If he didn’t kill those disgusting turtle-bastards, then he was the one who’d be unlucky!

But that dream also wasn’t that reasonable. Like the Pope in it—how could a human live that long? When Vinny was alive, it was him. When Vinny died, it was still him. A mortal living longer than a Blessing Angel, is that it??

“Stuck?” At that moment, a light, calm, pleasant voice entered Vinny’s ear and snapped him awake.

“Ah, sorry, Isatia. I spaced out just now.” Vinny came back to himself and apologized as he looked at Isatia beside him, her gaze fixed on the book in front of her.

These days, he’d been playing cards with his card friends until he got high on it, but was he, Vinny, the type who had no ambition and only knew how to play cards?

Eh... actually, he was. First week back to normal life: playing cards. Second week: still playing cards. Third week: hey! Vinny, Vinny—how can you be this degenerate?! Get it together!

Then, fourth week: still playing cards.

He even came up with the excuse already: hadn’t played in ages, almost didn’t make it back, the card addiction kicked in, almost never got to play again!

Until Isatia came to find him and told him the written exam difficulty increased this term. Only then did Vinny test himself. He didn’t realize until he tested—his processor was just that trash. He’d been out so long, and after he came back, the vacation started, so he played cards nonstop. He forgot a ton of knowledge points.

While complaining about why his processor version was so outdated and how unfair it was, in a panic, Vinny could only ask Isatia to tutor him again. After all, once school started, it wouldn’t be long until first-year finals.

Isatia had no reason to refuse, so she agreed readily.

Today was the first day of Isatia tutoring Vinny. But Isatia didn’t ask to go to the library. Instead, they went to an empty high-end café. The two of them sat near a window and in a corner, somewhere they wouldn’t be disturbed, and studied.

Mm. Even though it was “studying,” it was basically Isatia force-feeding Vinny.

“It’s fine. Getting distracted while doing problems is normal. I get distracted a lot too.” Isatia even comforted Vinny. Her eyes never left the book in her hands the entire time, yet she still knew what Vinny was doing at every moment, making you suspect she had a second pair of eyes.

Really?

Oh. That did seem true. Isatia really did get distracted while doing problems—because it was too boring and too easy. She got distracted, and when she finished getting distracted, the problem was done.

Vinny glanced at the black-haired, straight-haired beauty beside him. Today, Isatia was dressed like usual—wearing a headband similar in color to her eyes, dressed in Carillian Academy’s women’s skirt uniform, paired with knee-high black stockings and brown loafers.

“But this is normal too. You’ve been doing problems for a long time. Your energy runs out, and you naturally can’t focus. Rest a bit. Relax your tense nerves.” As Isatia spoke, she finally moved her gaze off the book, looked toward the far counter, and pressed the service bell.

“Hello. What would you like?” A girl in a server uniform walked over and asked respectfully.

“Please bring us one Sweetberry Vanilla Cake and one Chocolate Velvet Cake. Thank you.” Isatia said calmly.

“Understood. Please wait a moment.”

“What is it?” Seeing Vinny looking at her like he wanted to speak but didn’t, Isatia asked.

“Uh... having you help me, and then you still have to spend money, I feel a bit bad.” This was a high-end café. The desserts here weren’t cheap. Even though for the Tyrel Empire First Princess, this price was nothing, there was no reason she should treat him for free, right?

“It’s fine.” Isatia didn’t say much.

That was just Isatia’s style. As a strong-type heroine too, if Aesphyra’s offensive style was a teasing, needle-threading combo that left you gasping, then Isatia’s style was silent confidence and force—a feeling of a capable leader and superior. You unconsciously accepted her judgment and felt at ease following her opinions.

Soon, the two cakes were served.

“Then I’ll accept it instead of refusing, Isatia. Which one are you eating?” Vinny asked.

“You choose. Both should be what you like, if I remember correctly.” Isatia crossed her black-stockinged legs, calm as ever, and stirred the coffee in her cup with a small spoon.

“Huh?”

“You like sweeter foods, if I remember correctly.” Isatia said calmly, showing no reaction to Vinny’s surprise.

“Uh...”

“Am I remembering wrong?” Isatia asked, but it was obvious she didn’t doubt her own judgment.

“No. You remembered exactly right.” Vinny shook his head.

He really did like sweet things—and the kind that were sickeningly sweet. It had to do with how, when he was little, it was hard for him to get sugar and desserts, so he developed a kind of craving and fixation on sweet foods. But when did Isatia learn that?

Was it daily observation...?

No way. Was the First Princess paying attention to him this carefully...?

That made Vinny feel flattered and overwhelmed.

“Then I’ll eat the chocolate one.” Looking at the exquisite Chocolate Velvet Cake, Vinny chose it.

“Isatia, do you also like sweet things?” Vinny asked as he watched Isatia pull the pink-toned Sweetberry cake in front of herself.

“Mm. Also because I like this color.” Isatia answered.

“Huh?”

“Pink. It looks good. I like it very much.” Seeing Vinny’s blank face, Isatia’s gorgeous violet eyes calmly watched him, carrying a faintly deep meaning.

“Just like you chose that black Chocolate Velvet. You also subconsciously like and choose black things, right?”

“Ah... uh...” Looking into those violet-agate eyes reflecting his own image, Vinny finally sluggishly realized Isatia seemed to be implying something.

This... should... just be a coincidence, right??