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Translator: Vine
Chapter Title: Isabelle Luna
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Isabelle Luna.
Always smiling brightly, she was the spitting image of a sunflower.
She radiated such bright energy that even those who merely saw her couldn't help but smile warmly.
Lately, however, that smile had rapidly faded.
It was due to the death of her childhood friend, Lucas.
Sunflowers gaze at the sun and draw their sustenance from it.
Now that her sun was gone,
there was nothing left for her.
Isabelle always recalled that day whenever she fell asleep.
First-year students weren't usually sent to the Demonic Palace.
However, Isabelle, along with Lucas, was from the first-year special class.
Unlike regular first-years, the special class was comprised of highly skilled students who were deployed to the Demonic Palace earlier.
As such, Isabelle should have gone to the Demonic Palace as well.
But the day before they were to go to the Demonic Palace,
Isabelle had a quarrel with Lucas over something truly trivial.
The reason was that Isabelle had coincidentally come down with a terrible cold.
Isabelle insisted on going despite her cold, but Lucas adamantly refused, putting his foot down.
In the end, Lucas promised to buy her some good black tea for her cold on his way back, and then departed with his newly formed team.
And Lucas never returned.
Only the news of Lucas's death at the hands of an Apostle came back, with no body to be found.
He had been her childhood friend, someone she had grown up with her entire life.
The last memory she had of such a friend was an argument.
Isabelle was left utterly hollow.
A sunflower stripped of its sun withers.
She didn't eat, didn't drink, and didn't sleep.
Isabelle was slowly dying.
Then, one day,
a person appeared before her.
It was a boy who had insulted her childhood friend, Lucas, in front of everyone.
A boy who had committed an unforgivable act in Isabelle's eyes.
Hanon Irei.
Consumed by rage because of him, Isabelle changed.
Even if it meant her own death,
she resolved to ensure that the insult to Lucas was retracted first.
She became tenacious.
She ate, drank, and slept, dedicating her entire day to training.
To defeat him and show him just how remarkable Lucas had been.
She began to live again.
Hanon was a peculiar boy.
Perhaps because their first encounter had gone awry, he always seemed to sneer whenever he saw her.
Many in the class disliked him for it, and some even criticized him blindly.
But Hanon didn't bat an eye.
Instead, he would brazenly spout provocative remarks, as if daring them to criticize him more.
Yet, as if to prove his convictions,
Hanon would casually do things that surprised everyone.
He was a lazy genius; even when the class gave their all, he still defeated them, astonishing every member of the Martial Arts faculty.
'Just who is he?'
He was utterly unpredictable.
Perhaps that's why, lately, Isabelle could think of nothing but Hanon.
"Isabelle, are you alright? Are you tired?"
"Oh, sorry. Don't worry. I'm fine."
At that moment, Isabelle was startled by the voice from in front of her and replied.
This was the Demonic Palace.
To be distracted here, her mind must be wandering.
"Ugh, I'm sorry. You're all suffering because of me."
Then, the Divine Arts student, who was being supported by Ban from behind, spoke.
He was Gaisson, the third-ranked student in Divine Arts.
He was currently afflicted by an Apostle's curse, leaving him unable to exert any strength.
Normally, they could just purify it using Divine Arts.
Unfortunately, he had been cursed after expending all his divine energy during an intense battle with an Apostle.
As a result, the recovery of his power to activate Divine Arts was slow.
So, instead of pushing themselves,
Isabelle's team had decided to return to the surface to allow Gaisson to recover, and were now making their way back up the Demonic Palace.
"It's alright. Given who we were up against, it's a relief it ended like this."
One of Isabelle's team members, a male student from the Magic Arts faculty, comforted Gaisson.
As he said, the Apostle they had faced on the third floor was much stronger than usual.
It was clear that this Apostle had been residing in the Demonic Palace for a longer period than previous ones.
If Ban hadn't joined them as a team this time,
they might not have been able to defeat the Apostle.
CRASH!
"More importantly, why has it been so noisy up above, crashing and banging like that?"
Mina, a Martial Arts student and Isabelle's friend, who was walking ahead, frowned.
They were already climbing the stairs back to the first floor.
For some reason, it was exceptionally loud upstairs today.
"Is someone fighting an Apostle?"
"But the seniors and we all passed through already, so are there still Apostles left? Besides the small fry, that is."
The students whispered among themselves.
Isabelle also looked up the stairs, her expression showing her confusion.
Just then, Ban suddenly snapped his head up.
His eyes gleamed eerily.
"Everyone, get ready."
In the instant before anyone could fully comprehend his brief warning,
BOOOOOOM!
An explosion that shook the entire staircase reverberated.
Startled by the massive tremor, all the students crouched down.
A tremor that reached even the first-floor stairs.
Whatever was happening upstairs, it was clearly something serious.
"Let's go up quickly."
As Ban urged them, everyone ascended the stairs in a hurry, sharing the same urgency.
As they all reached the surface, a thick cloud of smoke was the first thing they saw.
"What on earth happened?"
Mina waved her hand, her expression bewildered.
A moment later, the smoke slowly began to clear, revealing the Grey Forest.
And the Grey Forest that was revealed bore traces of battle everywhere.
Giant roots severed at the top.
The ground turned into a grey wasteland, trampled by someone.
Even fragments of what were presumed to be Apostle corpses scattered here and there.
The scene before them was utterly unrecognizable as the Grey Forest they had passed through.
"Strange. It's different from the Grey Forest before. The aura of the Apostles fills this place to a terrifying degree."
Gaisson flinched, a look of unease on his face.
Even he, a devout believer in God and the third-ranked student in Divine Arts, found the place filled with such a potent Apostle aura that it made him recoil.
"Isabelle."
Just then, Ban called out to Isabelle.
Ban pointed somewhere.
There, a woman was carrying someone and running frantically.
Isabelle recognized the blue-haired woman's face.
It was Aisha Bizbell, a first-year student.
Isabelle's eyes widened instantly.
And no wonder, for the person cradled in Aisha's arms was Hanon.
"Ha-Hanon?"
As Isabelle murmured the name in confusion, everyone reacted.
"Hanon? That trash?"
Mina, Isabelle's friend, frowned.
"Oh, the famous transfer student."
The Magic Arts student showed interest.
"Mina, you shouldn't refer to a fellow academy student like that."
Gaisson admonished Mina.
At the very least, everyone seemed to know Hanon's name.
This meant that his actions in such a short period had been shocking enough to capture everyone's attention.
"Let's go."
Ban, the only calm one among them, spoke up and headed towards Hanon.
Everyone then turned and followed Ban towards Hanon.
Slowly, the team on the first floor came into view.
Among them, Gaisson was the most surprised.
"S-Saint Shirmiel?!"
The Saint, Shirmiel Saint Eden.
He was there, a figure with a status as high as that of a princess.
Other students were startled in quick succession.
The impact of the name 'Saint' was significant even among the students.
But Shirmiel didn't look their way.
He was simply using Divine Arts to heal Hanon, who was before him.
Soon after, everyone gasped at the sight of Hanon.
Hanon was in a terrible state.
His skin was scorched and burned in various places, and his left arm was completely twisted.
It was clearly a severe injury to anyone who saw it.
"…Seron, what happened?"
Ban asked Seron, who looked dazed.
Seron turned to Ban with a blank expression, then flinched.
"Uh, uh, Ban? When did Isabelle and Mina get here?"
He was so out of it that he hadn't even noticed Isabelle's group arriving.
"Seron, can you tell us what happened?"
When Isabelle asked again, Seron scratched the back of his head.
"Well, an Apostle appeared on the first floor, you see? What was it, they said that in the Demonic Palace, after ninety-nine repetitions of the same terrain, a dangerous Apostle appears on the hundredth repetition of the same terrain?"
Seron rambled on incoherently.
However, Isabelle's team was made up of intelligent and skilled individuals.
Even though Seron was rambling, they all understood perfectly.
The gist was that the Grey Forest had reached its hundredth iteration, causing a far more dangerous Apostle to appear than before.
For some reason, Hanon had known this, and he had led everyone to confront and defeat the Apostle.
That was the conclusion.
"Is that guy an idiot? If he knew something like that, he should have said something sooner and gathered people to fight!"
Mina, having heard the whole story, reacted with exasperation.
But it was Gaisson who refuted her words.
"No. The Grey Forest remained in the exact same state until we descended to the second floor. There might be a specific activation condition for the Grey Forest."
A condition where the Apostle doesn't appear until the number of people decreases to a certain point.
Indeed, there have consistently been cases of such conditions in past Demonic Palace expeditions.
Hanon knew this and waited until all the teams had gone to the second floor.
"Moreover, it's the Grey Forest. If there are too many people, the battle actually becomes harder."
Gaisson pointed to the ground that had turned into a grey wasteland.
As he said, the Grey Forest was indeed more difficult to fight in with a larger group.
Like it or not, they had to fight the Apostle with a small number of people.
"S-Senior…"
At that moment, Poara, who had been pressing her lips together, spoke.
"He was planning to stay in the Grey Forest until something unusual happened."
Even if the hundredth Grey Forest had shown no abnormalities.
Even if the Apostle's activation condition was for everyone to leave the area.
That would have been fine either way.
"He intended to wait until the very end to prevent everyone from being unable to return because of an Apostle."
If he guarded this spot until the end, the other students who had descended deeper into the Demonic Palace could return safely.
For that, Hanon willingly remained in the Grey Forest.
This was an academy.
What happened in the Demonic Palace also counted as a student's achievement and brought benefits.
Aside from the mission of protecting the world from the Demonic Palace,
Jerion Academy was a place where those who wished to make their names known throughout the world gathered.
But Hanon willingly waited on the first floor, abandoning all of that.
Solely so that everyone could return safely.
And the Apostle that appeared was so dangerous that the team would have been annihilated without Hanon's instructions.
If another team had remained, they wouldn't have even been able to stop the Apostle, and would have been annihilated.
Then, the exhausted students returning from fighting Apostles on the lower floors would also have been massacred in large numbers.
Therefore, Hanon threw himself into battle against the Apostle, defeating it even as he ended up in such a state.
"I didn't mean for him to actually end up looking like a burnt sweet potato…"
Seron muttered with a grim expression.
Everyone wore a solemn face.
Among them, Isabelle stared blankly at Hanon.
In her mind, the words Hanon had spoken on his first day at the academy
repeatedly echoed.
"I came here to ensure that such a stain on the prestigious Jerion Academy's reputation never happens again."
To prevent any more disgrace from befalling Jerion Academy.
Isabelle's eyes were opened.
She finally understood.
It also carried the meaning of ensuring that not a single student would die and that everyone could return safely.
As if to say, 'I will not allow deaths like Lucas's to happen again.'
'That's what he meant.'
Isabelle's fists clenched and trembled.
Isabelle had merely wasted her days, utterly shattered by Lucas's death.
But Hanon had trained himself and confronted the situation to prevent such events from happening again.
That fact made Isabelle feel as though she was being dragged down to the very bottom.
'I lost.'
She had lost to him in so many ways.
Isabelle gazed at Hanon, silently replaying her defeat.