Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 131

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius – Episode 131

Academy Gumiho is a Magic Genius 131

Nightmare (1)

After healing Mary, I headed straight for the sewer.

The sewer the boy mentioned had no visible entrance, but several devices were nearby. The revolutionaries must have set them up.

—Though they all seem to be dead now.

‘…Not all of them.’

—Can you see that? I can barely see it, and you couldn’t have seen it with the naked eye. You didn’t use any divine power either. I’m impressed by your observation skills.

‘This has nothing to do with observation. I’m not seeing with my eyes, but listening to the pulse.’

The beating of the heart.

The movement of jaws chewing flesh and organs.

The trembling of the uvula swallowing blood.

All of it is clearly audible.

And all of it leads to one conclusion.

‘It’s the same demon I saw back then, right?’

—Ah~ That strange guy who suddenly appeared yesterday? Hah, I can only see the outline. I can’t see the details, but you seem to have recognized him.

‘I’m not sure either. It’s just that the stench I smelled at that moment is the same.’

The demonic scent emanating from demons and magical creatures is so pungent that it numbs the nose. Of course, this is just my subjective opinion.

Other people don’t react as sensitively as I do.

But I am particularly sensitive to the smell of magic, so I could detect subtle differences in the foul stench.

Even if hundreds or thousands of people were massacred in a sewer with no air circulation, and the smell of blood and corpses filled the air.

“Ugh, I don’t feel good. I’ve seen the bodies of residents collapsed everywhere a few times, but this hill of corpses so brutally killed is a bit much.”

“You’re being dramatic, Knight Commander.”

“You crazy fox. Do you even know how many bodies we’ve seen in the 15 minutes since we entered the secret entrance of the sewer!?”

“Don’t overreact so much.”

People’s deaths are unfortunate, but.

In the end, this is a world where the end of the universe is confirmed.

I clearly heard the phrase ‘regeneration of the destroyed world’ when I entered the other world. I don’t know where this world, this universe, belongs.

The scene I’m seeing now.

And Thermia, who is walking with me, is ultimately just a reproduction of the original. It’s easier to think of it as a kind of virtual reality.

That’s why my mind was calm even in the face of the massacre.

“Are you even saying that right now? I’ve been patient until now, but I can’t forgive you for treating the residents carelessly as a knight…!”

“2,834 people.”

“…Huh?”

Ignoring her dumbfounded voice, I began to slowly recite the number of bodies I had seen while walking.

It seems she doesn’t have good observation skills, which is not befitting of her position as Knight Commander.

“That’s a ridiculously small number compared to the people in a city of over 100,000.”

“Are you saying you’ve been counting all of them until now?”

“Not really. I wasn’t trying to memorize them, but I tend not to forget shocking things. 81 children under the age of 18 died, and the rest are all adults. Judging from their hands and the calluses and scars on their grips, it seems like there were many laborers.”

How does he know all that?

Is he crazy?

I walked on without any answer or reaction to her questioning face.

All my senses were focused on smell, not sight.

A few thousand corpses are none of my business.

“Are you serious about seeing all of that?”

“…Do you have to stick to that tone?”

“Stop talking nonsense! Answer the question!”

“Yeah, I saw and memorized everything.”

Why is she suddenly asking strange questions?

I tilted my head, not feeling anything particularly strange about the question, but I could feel shock through her helmet.

…Is it that strange?

I don’t really think so.

‘Remembering the faces and characteristics of corpses is basic, isn’t it?’

—What country’s basic is that?

‘If you hold a sword in your hand, swing it, and make a living, it’s natural.’

That’s how I’ve been, and that’s how those around me have been.

So I replied with a look that said, why are you asking that?

Then Thermia’s expression became very strange.

Even though she was wearing a helmet, I somehow knew what kind of expression she was making. And Tamamo didn’t show it, but she seemed to be thinking something similar.

“Forget about that, and focus on what’s in front of you.”

“Have we arrived already?”

“Rather than arriving, hoho… I wonder if I came to find you.”

“Y-You, why are you here…?”

That bitch I saw yesterday.

The demon wearing the bird mask walked over, step by step.

She looked down on us from the bone throne, as if she was overlooking everything.

It feels awful.

“Could it be that all the corpses in this sewer… are your doing?!”

“What if it is? I have a cooperative relationship with your master [referring to the Viscount].”

“I will cut off your head in this place and explain the situation to the Viscount. Be prepared!”

“Hehe, maybe it’s because you’re still young, but your brain is slow. Did you really think I would move in this land without my master’s permission~?”

“!!!!!”

Thermia’s face was shocked.

What the horned thing said was true.

Even though it’s a sewer where people’s eyes don’t reach, killing thousands of people in a day would clearly cause quite a stir in Frontier. Strange rumors would spread, and public order would deteriorate.

But the one who committed such atrocities so brazenly was the one who joined hands with the Viscount?

Then, in all likelihood, the Viscount is behind it.

Thermia wanted to have hope in a fleeting possibility, but she had no choice but to realize the reality at the demon’s words.

Although the dead were those who tried to start a rebellion disguised as a revolution, they were still residents of this city who had not yet committed any crimes. As a knight, it is right to protect them, but she didn’t know what to do in this situation.

While Thermia was so confused.

I looked up at the demon with a look of disbelief.

It was the first time I had seen her so closely for so long.

I just stared blankly at her.

It wasn’t because the magic emanating from her was unusual, and it was even less because she was beautiful.

Just.

“Andrealphus.”

It was as if I knew that bitch.

The name naturally came to mind.

The moment I said the name.

Zzzt──!!

A large amount of something flashed through my mind.

It was a fleeting piece of information that I wouldn’t normally pay much attention to, but strangely, it kept lingering in my mind. It was as if it was trying to remind me of this information by force.

‘Marquis of Beauty.’

A being with both the beautiful peacock and human sides, who explores knowledge and spreads it widely.

His military power is the lowest among the seventy-two nobles, a Baron-class demon, but the “Art of Subjugation,” written during the days of leading the legion, has been passed down through generations with the alias Marquis of Beauty, along with the title of ‘Marquis’ within the legion.

In other words, his military power is at the level of a Baron, but his influence and status are comparable to that of a Marquis. He is obsessed with mathematics, physics, geometry, and astronomy, and inherits the mission of spreading this knowledge to ignorant humans and leading enlightenment.

He likes human sacrifices and, in return, grants humans the bodies and abilities of birds other than peacocks, the parent of birds.

“Why am I… thinking about this? No, in the first place, isn’t this even part of the novel?”

My head is dizzy.

Even in the midst of that, I thought about where her existence originated from.

There were enough clues.

Above all, the powerful clues of the name and the “Art of Subjugation” struck my head.

‘Originally, Andrealphus is one of Solomon’s 72 demons, and the “Art of Subjugation” is the totality of demonology. The name of the demon inscribed with the seal of Ars Goetia [a grimoire or textbook of magic], the first volume of 『Lemegeton』[a collection of magical texts].’

My thoughts are not organized.

The information is just intertwined, drawing a huge map.

Only after drawing the outline of the map did the headache gradually subside.

‘Let’s organize, let’s organize… Ah, my head really hurts. Who the hell put this prank in my head?’

It only subsided.

The headache itself did not disappear.

But with this level of pain, I can endure and withstand it.

In the meantime, I listed things about her in order.

I knew something about Andrealphus.

Thanks to my devout teacher, I learned demonology to oppose demons and read the Bible many times.

Of course, unlike him, even if I memorized the entire Bible, I despaired of this damn reality and didn’t believe in God.

I knew about the king in the Old Testament.

And about his familiars.

“…Who are you?”

Andrealphus looked incredulous.

It seemed that from the moment I said her name, her atmosphere became fierce.

I don’t know why she’s acting like that, just because I said her name once.

“H-How dare a lowly livestock call my true name…?”

I was going to kill him as soon as I found him the day before.

I spared him because he was handsome, but he doesn’t even know his place.

Marquis of Beauty, Andrealphus spread her hands.

“I need to find out how you knew something that you shouldn’t have been able to say. I’ll have to rummage through your head.”

A huge wave of magic resonated through the sewer.

The huge magic comparable to a lake is engulfing all directions.

After that, the world turned crimson.

* * *

The world has changed.

The Marquis of Beauty felt sick at the sensation of space twisting, grabbed her stomach for a moment, and then looked around.

“Is this the fox’s memory?”

It’s more desolate than I thought.

A plain with nothing.

The only things there were were the wide, desolate land and the sky.

“…Tch, it seems I crash-landed again. That’s why her power is useful, but I’m reluctant to use it.”

Usually, when you enter someone else’s memory, the type that first catches your eye is determined.

Some have beautiful memories, and others have painful pasts.

This is a technique in which the most deeply engraved memories in the brain unfold, but since it is only a imitation of the power of ‘compatriots’ that is not originally hers, she often crash-lands in strange places like this.

The original goes directly into the mind and heart.

Her one bypasses through the medium of “dreams”, and errors occur frequently because the process is added one more time.

She walked in this desolate memory.

There wasn’t a single cloud, so she opened her parasol in the scorching sunlight and walked for a while.

After walking for about 20 minutes, she saw the air distorted.

The distorted door in the form of a ‘door’ was gripping the entire space.

‘Hmm? Did I open the door to the next dream in his head?’

I didn’t really do that.

The Marquis of Beauty, who was suspicious of the space distorted in the form of a door, took a step towards it, and only then did she know the cause.

‘You were here, handsome but livestock who knows what you shouldn’t know…!’

Beyond the distorted space was Baek Seungwoo.

The dream owner I finally found.

The Marquis of Beauty hurriedly tried to approach him.

Right at that moment.

“Hey, Seungwoo. What are you doing?”

“…How about knocking before coming in, Eve.”

“What are you saying between us? We’re not in a relationship where we need to hide anything to the point where we need to knock. Right?”

Thud!

Baek Seungwoo’s body moved to match the gaze of the person who opened the door and came in.

But somehow the movement was very unnatural.

The physique is the same, but the condition of the muscles and joints feels very different.

But what was more unnatural was something else.

“…What, who is that?”

Why doesn’t he have a tail and fox ears?