Academy’S Gumiho Is A Magical Genius [EN]: Chapter 311

Academy Gumiho is a Magical Genius – Episode 311

Academy Gumiho is a Magical Genius 311

Surprisingly Warm (1)

Seungwoo stared blankly at the sky.

In a world of monochrome, there was no distinction between the sky and the ground, but somehow it felt brighter than before.

Even in monochrome, there were distinctions.

Last time, it was completely covered in black, but now it was a world infinitely close to gray.

“Is my mindscape completely breaking down?”

It didn’t seem like it.

Seungwoo decided to carefully examine his mindscape.

Well, there wasn’t anything particularly grand about it, but there were definitely areas with significant differences. Especially the areas Seungwoo had hidden away.

“When did the mountain disappear?”

The area with the mountain and flowing sea.

Originally, Mount Tai [a famous mountain in China, often used metaphorically] should have been standing tall here.

Of course, as a mountain within the mindscape, it wasn’t an ordinary mountain.

‘The Corpse Mountain is gone.’

Corpse Mountain. A mountain of corpses.

A mountain that had been piled high with the deaths of comrades who protected his back, loved ones, and the monsters he had killed until it seemed to pierce the sky, was once here.

Instead.

‘…A bare mountain? Why is this here?’

A mountain without trees stood in its place.

The Corpse Mountain didn’t literally mean a real mountain.

It was just a metaphor for how many corpses were piled up like a mountain.

But suddenly, the Corpse Mountain, which had been as massive as Mount Tai, had turned into a mere bare mountain. Even if the mind was a free-spirited concept, it shouldn’t have changed this easily.

‘There’s a reason why treating mental illness is difficult.’

The massive mountain of corpses was like a wedge.

The weight of his comrades that Seungwoo had been carrying until now.

The weight of life for the things he had killed.

Those things all came together and were deeply embedded like a wedge, that was the mountain.

‘I don’t know what’s going on.’

Seungwoo shook his head and turned his gaze.

“…Mountains are mountains, but I never thought the sea would end up like this.”

Drip, drip.

Water flowed from the ridges, from the peaks that stretched along the mountain range.

It was quite different from a valley.

Unlike the water in a valley, this liquid was originally gushing out from the mountain itself.

The liquid flowed endlessly, filling the base of the mountain.

‘Where there’s a Corpse Mountain, a Sea of Blood always follows.’

A sea of blood.

If corpses were piled up like Mount Tai, it was only natural that blood would form a river, and eventually, droplets of blood would become a sea.

In this area of the mindscape, there was a sea that formed a pair with the Corpse Mountain.

But now it was gone.

Following the same logic as the bare mountain, something else replaced the sea.

“A stream?”

The sea was no longer vast.

As if there had been a drought, the wide sea had dried up.

The color was very murky, but it was closer to water than blood.

Why is this really happening?

‘Is it because I haven’t killed much lately?’

Certainly, compared to the past, there were fewer instances of getting blood on his hands.

But that had nothing to do with erasing the traces engraved deep within the mindscape.

The mindscape is a place that reveals the mind without hiding anything.

The mountain of corpses and the sea of blood.

Both were proving without exaggeration that he was mentally exhausted and gradually breaking down.

No matter how hard he tried, his broken mind and emotions would not return.

But what is this?

Why is it changing now?

He couldn’t understand.

“What kind of meaning should I give to this?”

Seungwoo wasn’t a psychologist.

Drawing trees, drawing people, drawing houses.

He wasn’t well-versed in the mental discipline of discerning a person’s psychology and mental state through such means. Evaluating it with his own subjectivity was Seungwoo’s best bet.

‘Certainly, everything that catches my eye has become more gentle than before.’

A world of monochrome.

A bare mountain without a single tree or blade of grass.

A short stream so quiet that you couldn’t even hear the trickling sound.

The world that combined these things… strictly speaking, it was ominous.

Nothing was positive.

But compared to before, it was much better.

‘Before, it was definitely…’

Seungwoo recalled the past.

Thinking back to his mindscape from before, yes.

The sky was as dark as pitch, so you couldn’t see an inch ahead.

In some cases, a sinister and eerie crimson sky, as if blood had been sprinkled on the night sky, enveloped the mindscape.

Based on the largest Mount Tai made of corpses, it stretched out to form a ridge, eventually becoming a mountain range made of corpses.

The blood flowing down from the mountain range pooled on the ground, becoming a sea.

There were so many corpses that the blood never dried up.

Rather than drying up, it was piling up, so its scale was comparable to Mount Tai, resembling a vast ocean.

‘It was a very desolate mindscape.’

You couldn’t feel any vitality.

If someone were to peek into the mindscape.

Without being told, they wouldn’t believe that the scene before their eyes was the inside of a living person’s mind.

Even the world after the apocalypse wouldn’t be this hideous.

It was a very cruel and terrible world.

‘It’s much better compared to that.’

The world with a bare mountain and a monochrome sky.

Comparing it to a world where a few corpses were floating on a sea of blood made of corpses, the former would obviously be much more pleasant and refreshing.

Seungwoo also preferred the former.

This was a good change, but.

He didn’t know why it had gotten better at this particular time.

“Was there an opportunity for the scenery in my mindscape to improve?”

Even after the war ended and he laid down his sword, the desolate landscape in his mindscape showed no signs of improvement.

Rather, the mindscape itself was breaking down and collapsing.

Corpse Mountain and Sea of Blood. It was heading towards an even more terrible appearance than that.

In the end, Seungwoo also gave up on his mindscape.

Even if he experienced good things, if his mind was so hideously broken, anything he did would be worse than death.

It would be much better to have rest.

Seungwoo looked at the desolate landscapes of his mindscape and gave up hope that he could live a better life.

But why, of all times.

“Why is it that only now, when I don’t have much time left to live, do I feel there’s room for improvement?”

The term of his limited life was over.

Only now, when he was wishing to die, did he see signs of something getting better.

It was a strange feeling in many ways.

It was dizzying and subtly bizarre.

This wouldn’t do.

‘I’ll go deeper.’

Staying here for too long was giving him a headache.

Step, step.

Seungwoo left the mountain and river behind and walked far away.

To a deeper place.

A world that was completely broken and tangled like a severed skein of thread came into view. There were no mountains or seas here.

No, there was nothing at all before that.

It was full of traces and scars of being completely broken.

This was the deepest part of Seungwoo’s mindscape.

It was so broken that you couldn’t even deduce its original form anymore.

“But this place is still the same as before.”

Looking at the still broken and neglected area, Seungwoo thought.

Yes, the Corpse Mountain and Sea of Blood could somehow change.

But not here.

Because this area had been in a consistently broken state from the very first time he could observe his mindscape until now.

“It was like this when I was young.”

The very first time.

When he was young, before he had mastered the sword.

Seungwoo, who had reached a certain level and was devising his own swordsmanship, observed his mindscape for the first time.

In that mindscape, there was neither a bare mountain nor a Corpse Mountain.

The only thing that existed was an earnest desire for a better tomorrow.

That hope became a light, illuminating the barren mindscape.

After that, his hope was broken, the light faded.

It took roughly 10 years for corpses to pile up on the barren land to form a mountain, and for blood to drip and pool to become a sea.

10 years. Enough time for even nature to change.

The only scenery that hadn’t changed during that long time was now unfolding before Seungwoo.

“It’s still empty even now.”

It should have been.

“This place is like a broken window again. I might get stabbed if I’m not careful.”

He reached out and touched the torn part.

The sharp and empty sensation that he had felt when he touched it before should have been felt through his hand.

But the sensation transmitted through his hand felt somewhat resistant.

It was as if he was gently pressing down on a net. No, a spider web.

There was some resistance, but if he pressed down hard, it would definitely break.

That was exactly the sensation.

“…Why is this?”

As soon as he touched it, he quickly realized what it was.

It was very easy.

“A bandage? If not, is it a scab?”

The mind is very profound, but it has simpler aspects than you think, so when something happens, you can often grasp the principle behind it more easily than you think.

This was also the case.

The sharp parts, like a broken window, were slowly sticking together.

The void was being filled with something. This suggested that the mind was recovering, even if only very slightly.

“…Ah.”

A word popped out of Seungwoo’s mouth.

It wasn’t a word he consciously uttered.

It was a word that had been lingering on his lips ever since he saw the bare mountain.

“Why, now of all times?”

Why now… is it recovering?

Why now… is it getting better?

He truly couldn’t understand.

The mindscape he had observed to organize his own thoughts only made Seungwoo even more confused.

His head was spinning.

The headache was so bad that Seungwoo needed rest now.

As he was contemplating whether to get up from the mindscape and go home to rest, at that moment.

Thump!

Something caused a great tremor in the mindscape.

Wondering what was going on, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and there he saw the sky collapsing in a terribly broken state.

Like a cracked window in places.

The sky was collapsing, scattering its fragments in all directions.

“What? Why is that collapsing?”

The thing that had just collapsed was also an area of the mindscape.

That side was just as empty.

Then why is that collapsing?

One side was recovering, and the other side was collapsing as before.

A confusing emotion swept through Seungwoo’s head.

He tried to analyze the cause, but the extraordinary brainpower that usually worked well had stopped working today.

No matter how much he pondered, he kept getting stuck in the middle.

As he grabbed his head, a fox floating in the sky was leisurely watching this spectacle.

─Hehe, it seems like you have a headache.

Brown fur and nine tails.

Tamamo, who was in her original animal form, not a human body with fox ears and tails, sneered as she looked at the hideous and desolate surroundings.

─This will also be growing pains that make you stronger.

The scale was huge for growing pains.

Even though he was looking at his mid-twenties.

Anyway, if you grow in pain, it’s growing pains.

Isn’t that right?

─If you grow, it’s growing pains, and if you don’t, you die.

Tamamo could feel Seungwoo’s emotions.

Although she could only read the surface of his emotions, the shell, and didn’t know the inner thoughts he wanted to hide, that alone was enough to know the changes in the mindscape.

─But if it’s you, who is so clever, you’ll figure it out soon.

In other words.

She understood everything that was happening in Seungwoo’s mindscape. But she didn’t feel the need to explain it to him.

Because pain only becomes growth when you stand up on your own.

The fox, who liked to watch others and had a bad temper, rested her chin on her short paws and watched the series of moments.