Chapter 372: Bloom

The instant her palms touched the Golden Door, Liya felt a stab of pain lance through her mind.

Complex, chaotic, disordered, colossal information—laced with traps and crises whose full shapes could not be seen—surged into her head all at once.

Liya’s heart sank again.

Whoever built this door seemed not to have applied any hidden structures at all, like an unbreakable security door that nonetheless lays out the entire lock core for all to see.

Confidence—or rather, conceit.

Anyone could inspect it, anyone could try to break it, but the maker of the door seemed to have already cast down a mocking gaze.

You are not capable.

This frankness only made it feel more thorny.

As her perception spread and, with nothing obstructing it, the structure of the whole door grew clear in her eyes—seemingly ready to be cracked—those intricate arrays and frameworks were like a ball of thread a cat had just played with: there was no way to find the starting end.

She didn’t even know where to begin; how could she continue?

At this moment, she finally understood the source of the door-maker’s confidence.

This door was big.

Yes—big.

Stretching across this wide space, it made a single person before it as small as a bug.

Precisely because of that, the door could, freely and without scruple, stuff in all kinds of arrays and frameworks—useful or useless.

Those arrays and frameworks wove together, constrained each other, and built the supremely complex composite structure before her eyes.

You had no way of knowing which framework was redundant and meaningless, and which array, if nudged even slightly, would cause irreparable consequences.

“Then, faced with something like this, what should I do?”

Liya shifted her stance and lightly rubbed her hands, chasing the chill from her palms.

She glanced back quickly, found that figure in the crowd with pinpoint accuracy, and felt at ease; all the panic turned into little rabbits fleeing.

Then she continued.

This time, under deliberate control, the picture forming in her eyes became very different.

An incomparably vast, incomparably intricate diagram slowly unfurled before Liya.

Countless mana-lit lines, the bottommost frameworks, precise and complex alchemical machinery—all arranged in neat rows beneath her gaze.

Though still chaotic, still mixed with truth and falsehood, still elusive—at least now these things looked... like a book.

And as long as it is a book, it can be read, understood, mastered.

Just as the girl had done for more than the past ten years.

......

......

“I didn’t expect you wouldn’t go help with the breaking.”

Keeping most of his attention on Liya while wandering about, Muen had unconsciously drifted to the edge, looking like a seasoned slacker expertly “touching fish” during work hours.

Not far from him, another slacker was even worse—already asleep, sleeping so sweetly that drool was running from the corner of her lips.

“Mm? Huh?”

The intellectual beauty named Phil dazedly wiped her mouth; it took her ages to come back from the pleasant dream she’d been interrupted from, her bright eyes finally focusing on Muen before her.

“Why should I go?”

Phil yawned and stretched; beneath her robe, a near-perfect figure only slightly inferior to Liya’s showed in its contours.

“I’m good at magic, but I’m not good at breaking that kind of thing. Not everyone has a way with those, or else with so many people here, we wouldn’t have scraped together only a pitiful few breakers.”

“Makes sense.”

“But you not going, Mister Muen—that surprises me.”

“Eh? Me?” Muen blinked.

“Yeah. You’re that one’s disciple. Stuff like this can’t possibly stump you!”

Phil looked at Muen; the same strange light as when they’d first met shimmered in her eyes.

He had the distinct feeling... he was being misunderstood again.

Muen’s mouth twitched; he silently turned his gaze away.

“Speaking of which, leave Miss Margarita aside—I didn’t expect that hot-tempered Annie would volunteer for this,” Muen said, switching the topic.

There were five people working the break: Liya, Narisqi, Margarita, Freya’s knight Brian, and Annie.

The biggest surprise, in truth, was Freya’s God’s Attendant Knight, Brian. Many hadn’t expected him to be a mage of such high attainment; when that man in black stepped out of Freya’s shadow, quite a few jaws hit the floor.

Muen, however, didn’t feel much about that. To him, the fact that a snotty little loli like Annie would take initiative on a thankless, backbreaking task was far harder to believe.

“Don’t underestimate Miss Annie. As the finest alchemist here, if she doesn’t act, the operation may run into huge difficulties.”

Phil smiled. “After all, the door’s complexity isn’t just Magical.”

“Oh, oh.”

Muen stroked his chin with a composed look of I totally knew that already.

“So that means... the breaking is going smoothly, right.”

Hm?

Phil’s willow brows knit slightly. Her suspicious gaze swept over Muen’s carefully tensed, unreadable profile...

He obviously understands this stuff, yet he’s deliberately asking me?

What’s that supposed to mean?

Though puzzled, Phil still answered by reflex:

“For now, I’d say so.”

“For now?”

“Since it’s something crafted so meticulously, until the very end—hmm?”

In an instant, the laziness and leisure on Phil’s face vanished; a heavy expression like a dark cloud swept across her features.

“What is it?”

“There’s a problem.”

“Wh—”

Muen tensed slightly, then coughed and forced composure:

“The one with the problem can’t be Liya, right.”

“Of course it’s not Liya.”

Phil gave Muen an odd look, then glanced toward the field, saying meaningfully:

“It’s the other one—the one who looked least likely to have a problem.”

......

......

“What’s going on?”

Before the door, Annie—who had been focused on reverse-reading the operating laws of the alchemical mechanisms—snapped her eyes open and locked onto the tall, thin figure nearby. A savage killing intent flashed across her baby-fat little face.

“Narisqi, what the hell are you doing?”

Though the five of them were decoding simultaneously, and working from different directions, their goal was the same, so they were bound to affect one another.

Annie was being affected now—by Narisqi. Negatively.

“I... n-no. It’s just a small accident, a small accident! I’ll stabilize it soon, very soon!”

Sweat streamed down Narisqi’s forehead; the pride from earlier was long gone from his eyes and brow. He stared fixedly at the door before him, hands channeling mana to break it, and those hands had begun to tremble.

Wrong.

This was very wrong.

It shouldn’t be like this.

He was the leader of the Revelation School, a genius in this field. No one here matched him in this domain; therefore, he had rightly taken on the most crucial core task.

By rights, everyone here should be his foil—the green leaves that set off the blossom. He would open the door and win everyone’s praise and admiration; anyone hoping to advance further would owe him a favor for it.

He would also win Miss Freya’s favor—the future Saintess’s favor—just like before; he would win... win her...

But...

Why?

Why did it turn out like this?

It was just a tiny oversight—no, not even an oversight. For the Revelation School, meticulousness and prudence were etched into their bones.

But at that moment, facing a seemingly insignificant small magic framework, he’d habitually used substitution—without grasping the framework’s essence, he temporarily replaced it with another magic of identical effect to ensure operation.

Yet that one small substitution turned that tiny framework into the first domino to fall; the chain reaction spread with frightening speed, and more frameworks began to fail.

At this rate, it would soon reach the core, leading to consequences beyond repair.

Not just him—he would drag everyone here down with him!

Forget being owed; even if he got out of here afterward, those furious people would tear him to pieces!

“It’s not over... it’s not over!”

Veins crawled across Narisqi’s forehead; bloodshot lines flooded his eyes. Still he kept trying to plug the widening breaches. No matter what, this breach could not be allowed to spread from him, from—

“Narisqi!”

Annie’s roar snapped him out of it. In a daze, he realized everyone was looking at him.

No one here was blind; pretty much everyone had noticed something was wrong.

“Hey... don’t tell me... we’re going to fail.”

Before the gamble began, they’d all been informed of the price of failure.

Some had already gone pale and turned to run.

More stared at Narisqi with fervent hope, wishing the much-lauded genius would step up and turn the tide.

But hope soon turned to despair.

Because... even Narisqi himself... gave up.

“S-sorry. I can’t do it.”

He let his hands fall in defeat, letting the collapse spread faster. A deep hum rolled from the door; some terrible killing intent was brewing.

It was over. Finished.

No one could save him, no one could save anyone here.

The collapse was beyond control; soon, every magic array in the entire door would detonate at once, and under that colossal force, no one would survive.

This game was alrea—

“It’s not over yet!”

Startled, Narisqi looked up and saw the girl he had just “reminded” step away from her original position and plant herself before him.

Without hesitation, she pressed both hands onto the door—now scorching hot from the unraveling magic.

She was going to—

“Heh.”

Narisqi blinked, then gave a self-mocking laugh. “It’s already over.”

If he couldn’t do it, how could she possibly manage it?

Even if she was a Saintess candidate, in his impression this Saintess candidate—aside from looks and figure—had nothing particularly outstanding; that was why he’d said what he [N O V E L I G H T] said.

Looks and figure were useless at this moment. Unless someone could construct over a hundred magic arrays within a single minute to slot in, even ten Saintess candidates couldn’t stop the coming tragedy.

“Miss, please go. If you leave now, maybe before the blast—”

“I said, it’s not over yet!”

The girl’s suddenly raised voice cut off Narisqi’s advice.

It also stilled all the noise in the hall—the restless crowd, Annie who had been about to curse.

Everyone stared, stunned, at the girl whose back looked so delicate and slender.

“Before this, I learned an important principle from an important person.”

The girl glanced back at Narisqi.

Then, specks of starlight around her began to kindle, one after another.

“That principle is...”

Brilliant starlight linked into arcane strands and, at a jaw-dropping speed, began constructing magic arrays.

“When no one believes in you...”

The girl slammed both hands down on the scorching door again. In that instant, a greater roar burst forth.

“...at the very least, you must believe in yourself!”

Bright light flared with the hum, casting the image of the girl with hair flying— holy and proud, like a true Saintess.