Chapter 7
It was not an ordinary creature, but a cursed enigma—born from absolute darkness before manifesting through the filth carried by mankind.
Tsuuuuf!
'According to the game records, Ar'tushamth did not attack immediately.
It watched first, slipping into the minds of the students, disrupting their focus, sowing suspicion and accusation among them, until one finally lost control and struck their own friend.
That was where the calamity began—bellies torn open, blood splattering across the hall floor, and screams echoing long after their bodies had gone still.
Some students tried to play hero.
They moved before Ilux, pretending to be brave to prove themselves before a god they did not understand.
And as expected, they were butchered.
Ripped, torn apart, ruined.
This game world showed no mercy.'
The initial scenario was meant to be like that.
A tragic yet grand beginning, designed to mark the young hero's first awakening from darkness.
At the Star Academy—where everything about Lu Core and the glory of Human Change was studied with arrogance—an unnamed student made what seemed to be a trivial mistake.
He distributed something called an impure relic—a thing that, in the world of Flo Viva Mythology, was not only tainted physically but also spiritually.
The item was not merely a forbidden artifact.
It was a small mirror reflecting something humanity was never meant to know.
Within a day, the balance of that grand academy crumbled.
The sacred aura of the place decayed into the stench of blood, and from the cracks of reality emerged an entity even the elite scholars could not bear to look upon.
The entity was called Ar'tushamth.
In the old game records, it was not just a monster—it was an existential anomaly.
It stood between spirit and matter, between the real and the unreal.
It could not be called alive, yet it could not be called dead either.
It was a riddle mocking the boundary between God and man, between creator and creation.
When it appeared, the sky above the Star Academy darkened to deep blue like an ocean that had lost its bottom, and the ground beneath the students' feet hissed as if rejecting the weight of its presence.
No one knew its true form.
Each who saw Ar'tushamth beheld something different—for one, perhaps an angel; for another, a shadow of a demon.
And when chaos reached its peak, one by one the students began to fall.
Not from physical wounds, but because their minds were shattered by the creature's contradictions.
With his heart pounding, Theo watched the event unfold from behind his computer screen.
He knew the entire sequence was meant to happen—he even remembered it down to the final seconds.
The screams of students losing their bodies, blood dripping yet never touching the floor but floating midair like liquid glass, and Ar'tushamth's laughter that echoed from every direction—all of it was truly thrilling.
Theo wanted to close his eyes, but they refused.
The game demanded he witness.
It wanted him to become part of the story that once was rewritten only for entertainment.
And at the peak of madness came Ilux Rediona.
The orphan with eyes Theo once thought too pure for such a cruel world.
He walked through the green flames of spiritual fire without faltering, his Lu Core pulsing in rhythm with the earth's heartbeat.
The battle began, just as Theo remembered—but quieter, more sacred, and far more brutal.
Every movement from Ilux was a prayer; every strike from Ar'tushamth, a curse.
And between them, the world trembled in search of balance.
Theo knew how this story would end.
Ar'tushamth would fall, Ilux would rise as a symbol of hope, and the first arc of the third episode would close with bitter victory.
'Damn it, this is completely off-script.
Ilux should've already obtained the Mahtu halfway through the first episode, after that insane bargaining sequence that made any player think twice before getting involved.
But now, the relic was destroyed—accidentally—by some stupid buyer who didn't even understand the value of what they held.
Worse, they ran away.
Escaped, damn it, without the slightest hint of guilt.
I still remember how crucial Mahtu was.
It wasn't just a component.
It was the only material capable of piercing Ar'tushamth's existence—an entity unreachable by even five layers of Human Change hierarchy at Star Academy, at least not without consequence.
But now, the main material for forging Mahtu is gone.
It'll take three months for new stock to appear.
And Ar'tushamth's arrival at the Academy? Just hours—or if I'm unlucky, minutes.'
Fuuuuuh!
'Another option? None.
I've turned everything upside down searching for alternative routes in my game notes, but nothing can replace Mahtu's function.
Ar'tushamth isn't something that can be defeated with magic, swords, or conventional tactics.
Without Mahtu, Ilux will die there.
And if Ilux dies, I have no idea what will happen to this world.'
Suuufhh!
'So, like it or not, I have to take the one step I least wanted to—asking for help from Erietta Bathee.
Yeah, that annoying woman who always challenged me to duels every time we met, even in ridiculous places like markets, tower rooftops, or empty training rooms.
Every single time.
But this time, I have to talk to her.
Not to duel, but to negotiate.
At first, she looked at me as always—flat, cold, as if I were just a noisy fly buzzing near her ear.
I explained everything—about Ar'tushamth, the broken Mahtu, and Ilux who would fight without his main weapon.
And she stayed silent.
For a long while.
Until finally, she took a quiet breath and said she'd help Ilux, as long as I kept my promise to find Mahtu's main material and deliver it myself to the blacksmith who knew its forging secret.'
Yet fate, which should've gone smoothly, always had a way to mock those who tried to rewrite it.
In the game, Ilux was supposed to buy the sacred weapon Mahtu—a sharp wooden spike carved from the roots of the sky, capable of piercing the heart of nonmaterial spirits like Ar'tushamth—from an old merchant in the lower district of the Star Academy.
But this time, reality played out differently.
In the market buzzing with haggles and the hum of magical winds carrying scents of coal and metal, Mahtu broke.
A careless buyer—perhaps an NPC, perhaps not—touched it too roughly, snapping it like a brittle twig, then fled without a glance.
That crack was not just a fracture in the object—it was a fracture in the script.
Something that should've stood firm in the narrative now lay shattered into fragments of absurdity.
And worse, the main component of Mahtu—the fibers of a century-old Vynara tree—had vanished from the market for at least three months.
Yet the battle between Ilux and Ar'tushamth would happen in mere hours.
Theo froze, then laughed softly—the bitter laugh of someone who realized he now stood between "what should be" and "what is."
This world no longer bowed to his knowledge.
He was no longer the writer controlling everything behind the screen, but a pawn dragged by a story in rebellion.
Amid the chaos, one name crossed his mind.
Erietta Bathee.
The girl who had haunted his every step with that blank stare and strange obsession with duels, always appearing where she shouldn't be.
In empty hallways, on the academy rooftops, even in the underground chamber where Theo wrote his notes.
To be continued…