I Became A Flashing Genius At The Magic Academy

Chapter 265: Memory (2)

The garden of the divine spirit Leafanel was always filled with silence, and only the noise of her breathing filled the space.

It was a forbidden area where entry of any living being was not permitted. She had spent a very long time alone in this place.

Her own world.  

A place where no one could come, and no one would ever find her. It was more cold and desolate than cozy.

Leafanel remembered the moment right after she was born. That was a unique trait that distinguished her from other beings.

"Well done, little tree."

The moment she opened her eyes for the first time and greeted the world after being born.

There was someone who welcomed her.

He was… a mage dressed in a pure white robe.

Back when Leafanel was very young, even before she had consciousness as a follower… She was just a tree imbued with divine power.

The mage who existed in those ancient times called her in a gentle voice.

However, no matter how much she tried to recall, his face was cast in shadow, and she couldn’t see it clearly.

"... Who are you?"

Current Leafanel tried to ask, but the act of trying to converse with a memory itself didn’t make any sense from the beginning.

Still, strangely enough, he answered.

"I am… a wandering adventurer. Lately, people have been calling me a mage. It’s quite a strange title."

Leafanel’s heart sank. The mage in the white robe looked up at the sky and manipulated his lips into a smile.

"It’s time for me to leave. I hope you have good dreams under the warm sunlight, little tree."

After saying that, the mage turned his back and disappeared, and the memory ended there.

The flow of memory didn’t stop there but quickly fast-forwarded through Leafanel’s growth period.

Although it was an ancient memory, it also seemed like a recent one—the memory of that very day.

The story of the day Leafanel became a divine spirit.

By a stroke of bad luck... It happened right when she was awakening as a divine spirit, causing the barrier to weaken, and a woman slipped in through the gap.

She remembered.

"Oh my, what luck I have~"

Had she been in her complete state, she could have easily subdued such a light opponent with just the power of a follower. However, the problem was that she encountered this woman in the process of completely shedding her physical body and purifying her soul to awaken as a divine spirit.

Leafanel couldn’t do anything.  

Without any resistance, she helplessly had her heart taken away.

That...  

That sense of loss.  

No one would ever understand.

Because she was born as a plant, Leafanel couldn’t move a single step from this garden, and listening to the occasional visits and stories from Ha Tae-Ryeong and Florin was her only joy in life.

She dreamed.

One day, to be able to move on her own legs and go outside into the world. To roam this vast and beautiful world and become free.

When Ha Tae-Ryeong occasionally visited, weary from his adventures, he would share tales of his magnificent journeys.

"Hey. Look how amazing I am!"

Florin, who was also a loner like Leafanel, would summarize the events and stories happening in the outside world in books and tell them like fairy tales.

"Once upon a time, there lived a young princess. That princess..."

Whenever they visited, Leafanel was happy. She loved the feeling of having the empty space in her heart filled.

But it wasn’t enough.  

It was absurdly insufficient.

This was… A longing for freedom.  

She didn’t want to be satisfied with just hearing stories.  

She wanted to walk into the world on her own two feet and face the sky directly. To do that…

There was only one way.

To awaken as a divine spirit with a noble soul.

For tens, hundreds of years, she had lived for one single purpose.

She only focused on the goal of becoming a divine spirit, and continued her meditation and training.

During that process, her body became younger, and her mental age regressed to that of a child to prevent her mind from collapsing, but she didn’t mind.

As long as she could fly freely under that moonlit sky, it didn’t matter if she lost everything.

At that time, she didn’t know.  

That she would truly lose everything.

"I’ll make good use of this~"

Centuries passed again after she lost her heart. Her chest remained empty, with no energy flowing through it anymore, and she could do nothing in her hollow state.

However... She could still think. Leafanel lived for hundreds of years with the mental age of a child with endless yearning.

A savior? A hero? A heart? A soul?  

She did not ask for much.  

She just needed... a companion to ease her loneliness.

‘Poor child.’

A very long time passed.  

When Leafanel regained her sense of self again, she was able to meet Florin.

She had a sad expression.  

She might have been in despair, feeling helpless in her inability to do anything.

Leafanel cried out.  

"Don't go. I am here."

But Florin could not hear Leafanel’s voice.

‘I will definitely save you...'

Florin left with a sorrowful expression, and her visits became rare. The last time she saw her, she felt Florin’s blessing intensifying... Perhaps that was why.

Young Leafanel did not understand well.

And so, decades passed again.

When even the feeling of loneliness had grown dull, someone came by.

"What a great place to get some training done."n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

It was Baek Yu-Seol.

At that moment, after such a long time, Leafanel desperately opened her eyes and called out to him... But...

“One million twenty-one! One million twenty-two!”

Of course, he didn’t hear her.  

Besides, she couldn’t understand why he was shouting One million twenty-one when he had only done twenty-one push-ups.

He was engrossed in his training with his back to her, and as time passed, he became more and more attuned to this space.

The energies that had been faintly lingering due to Leafanel’s breathing for many long years...  

They were absorbed into Baek Yu-Seol. If he had been an ordinary mage, this would have been impossible. 

It was a very ominous sign... But for Leafanel, it was a stroke of luck.

‘What are you doing here right now? Can’t you hear my voice? Can you hear me? Can't hear me? You can hear me but you’re ignoring me?’

“Ahhh! What the hell?! You scared me!”

He heard her voice.  

At that moment, even though Leafanel had already lost her heart, she felt as if her heart was trembling—or rather, about to burst.

Her chest swelled with emotion, and an indescribable sensation surged throughout her entire body.  

She felt a happiness greater than the moment she had awakened as a divine spirit.

Leafanel instinctively knew.  

The boy before her eyes was kind. She could strongly sense a similar soul to her own emanating from him.

“How much will you give me?”  

“Huh?”  

“Just kidding.”

… Of course, he had quite a mischievous side, but even so, he granted her request.

A heart.  

He brought her a heart.

Although it was absurdly weaker and smaller than the heart she originally possessed...

“Ah.”

Because of that, she could breathe again. She could open her eyes again. She could speak again.  

And once more, she could harbor hope.  

Though it was very small and fragile, having a vessel meant she would have another chance to awaken as a divine spirit someday.

‘... Thank you.’

Leafanel had little experience with social interactions, so she was not good at expressing her emotions. However, in that single word of gratitude, there was a surge of emotion that could hardly be conveyed through the limited human language.

Yes.  

This is what hope feels like. Leafanel felt for the first time that day.

"Oh my, it's been a while! Nice to see you again, huh?"

... Until that woman reappeared.

Leafanel sensed it instinctively. The woman was trying to use the same trick she had used on her centuries ago.

Now that she had lost all her strength and was weakened, she couldn’t resist the woman.  

Desperately, she tried to call out to Baek Yu-Seol, but a thick mental barrier lay between them, making even that impossible.

However, Leafanel wasn’t so naive as to fall for the same trick again. Even though she had lost all her power and couldn’t do anything, she was a wise divine spirit who had lived for centuries.

"Oh, oh my?"

Leafanel chose to corrupt herself. The process of tainting her noble soul with her own hands was excruciatingly painful, but she thought it was better to do this than to have everything taken away from her again.

As expected, since Leafanel had corrupted herself, the woman could do nothing and expressed her anger, gritting her teeth.

However, there was nothing the woman could do.  

Because the corrupted Leafanel had a level of dark magic even higher than the woman's.

"Just wait and see... I will come back and devour you completely."

Those words sounded quite threatening.  

Around this time, Leafanel realized that the woman's energy, which had once disrupted her heart, had become so faint it was hard to detect.

Surely she had been defeated by someone.  

Leafanel slowly opened her eyes. 

A tear, resembling dew, rolled down her cheek.

She hadn’t intended for this to happen.  

She had no idea that her tainted energy would pollute the World Tree and cause it so much pain... Because of her, the World Tree was still crying out, and Leafanel’s heart grew heavier.

‘I must return...’

At this rate, she would never be able to face that boy again. She couldn’t continue to make the World Tree suffer.  

She had to return to where she originally belonged. The strong determination etched into Leafanel’s heart slowly began to shine.

Saaah...!!

The violet mist that had filled the garden began to slowly fade, turning into a pale green.  

The process was very slow, but it was unmistakably a purification phenomenon.

If Baek Yu-Seol saw it, he would have said, ‘This is like a human air purifier,’ and if Eisel saw it, she might have described it as ‘A reconfiguration and decomposition of mana crystals. It's a very beautiful phenomenon.’

Leafanel didn’t know such technical terms, so she was unaware of just how extraordinary her actions were.

A follower purifying dark magic on its own and converting it into divine energy...  

It was perhaps the most mysterious sight the magical world had ever seen.

“... Is this what a noble soul is? To witness such a sight with my own eyes—I am truly fortunate.”

Gasp!

At that moment, Leafanel was startled by a voice and quickly opened her eyes.

Somehow... There was someone in the garden.

No, to be precise, it was a dark mage.

With spiky hair and tattered clothes, he looked like a beggar, but she could feel a very intense dark aura emanating from him.

“Whoa, don’t be on guard. I don’t have a taste for tormenting followers. If anything, I tend to take care of them. Although, when they sense my energy, they all run away.”

Chelven appeared utterly exhausted. He frowned and let whatever he had been carrying on his shoulder drop heavily to the ground.

“Ugh...”

It was that woman.  

The one who had taken her heart.

The woman, whose entire body had been brutally torn apart and left in shreds by someone, was trembling all over and could barely stand. 

Chelven kicked her forcefully, sending her rolling, and then drove his palm directly into her chest.

Thud!  

“Guh, ack…!”

He covered her mouth as she coughed up blood, and his expression twisted in irritation as he pulled something out from her chest.

It was... a large, beautiful pearl that didn’t seem like it could have come from a dark mage's chest.  

The pearl, about the size of a palm, emitted a rainbow-colored aurora from different angles whenever it caught the sunlight.  

“The heart of a divine spirit... This is my first time seeing one in person.”

Leafanel looked at Chelven with calm eyes.  

“It’s your heart. Seeing how you're not excited even when looking at this, I suppose a divine spirit is still a divine spirit.”

He carefully approached Leafanel and placed the pearl at her feet.

“It’s already deeply tainted with corruption. I suppose it can’t be helped, given how much time has passed. It’s unfortunate, but a divine spirit like you should be able to purify it and make it yours again soon.”

After saying this, Chelven turned around and hoisted the woman onto his shoulder once more.

“... Why?”

When Leafanel asked with a voice filled with curiosity, Chelven paused for a moment, then turned back to meet her gaze.

“I didn’t originally intend to return it...”

His sharp gaze seemed to pierce through her soul. Leafanel met his gaze head-on without blinking even once.

“I could strongly sense that boy’s presence from you. His name was Baek Yu-Seol, wasn’t it?”

Upon hearing his name, Leafanel’s expression changed for the first time.

“It seems I misunderstood something. It was an unnecessary fight. I almost made a huge mistake.”

He had thought Baek Yu-Seol was behind Soya’s manipulation. But it was only after clashing with him directly and sensing his mana in battle that he realized.  

The pure and earnest sincerity he felt from Baek Yu-Seol…  

It was a soul that no villain could possess.

“Baek Yu-Seol... fought desperately for you. Knowing that he could die.”

But he didn’t die.  

‘At that moment, because I spared his life…’

That was probably one of the few 'right choices' Chelven had made in his hundreds of years of life.

“This heart belongs to Baek Yu-Seol.”  

Chelven softened his sharp gaze directed at Leafanel and gave a light smile as he spoke.

“You have a very good bond with him. I’m almost envious.”

After saying that, Chelven disappeared.

Leafanel lowered her head to look at her heart, which sparkled like a rainbow.

‘Baek Yu-Seol’s gift…’

The pearl floated up lightly, then flew over to Leafanel and landed in her hands.

She held it tightly and closed her eyes.

It felt as though the warmth of someone who couldn’t possibly be felt was reaching her here.

‘And... My gift...’

Her rosy lips gently curved into a blooming smile.  

The wind began to blow.  

It was a very powerful storm.

A gentle swirl started in Leafanel’s chest, and a dizzying sensation that seemed like it could sweep away even her mind enveloped her soul.

And so, holding her heart close, she savored this feeling.  

Until the day faded away, for a long, long time.