Chapter 32: Tattling

Despite my rage, I was not without hope. Five years was a long time, and I had spent whatever free time I had plotting and planning. Of course, I had little hope that any of those plans would work, but I was at least going to try them before I decided how I wanted to end things. That being said, I had avoided this next plan for a good reason. There was a very high likelihood that I would end up dead or so severely wounded that even I would be unable to heal myself. Still, it’s not like I had anything better to do, so I got to work.

I stepped outside and began drawing in the aether I needed for the first of two spells, the beginner-class void spell Weight Consumption. Void magic was centered on the element of nothingness, with higher-class spells being capable of completely removing a person or object from existence. In contrast, this spell removed almost all of a person or object’s weight from the world and was considered quite useful for carrying heavy objects or climbing steep mountains. Once the spell was activated, a simple hop was all it took for me to find myself twenty feet in the air before I began to fall back to the ground, though much more slowly than I would have expected. Still, that had all functioned exactly as I had expected.

Next, while Weight Consumption was still active and I was in the air, I cast the intermediate-class wind spell, Gale. This spell, despite being intermediate-class, was one of the simplest spells to understand. All it did was move aether away from the direction you wanted the wind to blow, creating a low-pressure environment that the surrounding aether quickly filled, forming a strong breeze. Normally, this spell was used to help pilot ships or deflect strong winds in a storm, but if I used it in the direction I wanted to travel, I believed I could fly.

Of course, controlling the winds while you’re being blown by them is easier said than done, and I quickly found myself in a tree. Thankfully, I was mostly unharmed, but the same could not be said about my second crash or my third. The second broke my leg, forcing me to set and heal it, while the third somehow killed me. I’m still not quite sure how, but I suddenly woke up in bed and immediately understood why nobody else used these two spells together.

This continued for the next few dozen loops. Some injuries were instantly fatal, others produced minor or significant injuries that had to be healed before I could progress, and the most unpleasant were the ones that I couldn’t heal. In those instances, all I could do was wait for the prince to find me. Thankfully, it was never a particularly long wait, and his programming kept him from asking any questions. However, I still somehow felt like he was judging me.

However, with each attempt, my accuracy improved and my flying stabilized. Gradually, I was even able to increase the wind’s speed until I was leaving even carriages in the dust. It was an exhilarating experience, and I would have found it beautiful if not for the bugs and birds that occasionally hit me. Still, I was progressing, and before long, I managed to reach the place I’d been aiming for since the earliest loops, the royal capital. Back then, I thought that if I reached this point, I might be able to make it all the way back home, though now I knew that there was nowhere I could go where the prince would not follow. His programming would ensure that he found me no matter where I hid.

Escape was impossible, and everyone around me was, in some way, a slave of the game’s programming, but how far did that programming reach? Would the gods have really bothered putting the entire world under their control when escaping the academy was impossible? If not, there was a chance, however slim it might be, that I could convince the king that the prince had gone insane. Then, when the prince finally reached me, the king would be able to save me with his own divine magic. This plan could work!

Okay, so the plan didn’t work, and I was an idiot to ever think it would. Somehow, I managed to actually land without breaking anything and get a meeting with the king and queen almost immediately. However, he refused to do anything about his son trying to kill me. Initially, I thought that maybe I’d arrived too late and that the prince had already sent his parents a letter containing his own version of events, but nope. They had no idea that the prince was interested in Holly or that he was planning to leave me. Instead, the king merely refused to believe his son could be wrong. He was certain that his divine blood made him infallible and refused to hear any claim that he might be wrong. Part of me wanted to believe this was simply his programming, but somehow, I knew that wasn’t the case. These were his true thoughts. This man truly believed that both his son and himself were perfect in every way. It was maddening to witness, and I left my audience more certain than ever that this country should not exist.

In fact, I was seconds away from calling up Logos and telling him that I’d chosen my ending when an attendant of the queen appeared beside me. He informed me that the queen wished for me to have tea with her. I had no idea why she would want that or if there was any point to such a meeting when the king had already refused me, but curiosity got the best of me, and I agreed. Mere minutes later, I was in the midst of the most beautiful garden I had ever seen, while sitting across from a woman whose expression was unreadable as Roman’s and who exuded a pressure that seemed to rival even that of Eros.