Chapter 343
The white bandage crafted by Theo, engineered with extra absorption capacity to handle inhuman volumes, was now being tested to its absolute extreme.
It struggled to absorb something whose intensity did not merely surpass ordinary infinity, but even transcended mathematical concepts such as Berkeley cardinals, a raw foundation for the first dimension in the world of the game Flo Viva Mythology, which served as the basis of their reality.
Buuuuk!
"...."
Now, while she was still drifting and struggling against the storm of romantic sensations and that anomalous physiological surge, Aldraya's footsteps continued to move forward almost automatically.
Her consciousness, partly submerged in a sea of new emotions, prevented her from fully paying attention to the direction and path she was taking.
Her body, which usually moved with precision, now merely followed the flow of corridors already memorized deep within her mind.
Unbeknownst to her, her path began to curve, drawing closer to a region of the Star Academy saturated with complex memories and traumas that had yet to fully heal.
She kept walking, drawing nearer and nearer, until only dozens of meters remained.
And across the corridor, brightly illuminated by neon lights, there appeared a silhouette that immediately pierced through her foggy awareness.
A man with a firm posture and an aura that was impossible to ignore stood casually in front of a classroom door.
His face was handsome, his eyes usually harboring darkness and ambition, his hair neatly styled, and a thin smile curved on his lips, reminiscent of a stalking cat.
He was Ilux Rediona.
Not merely an ordinary student, let alone forgetting that he was the main protagonist of the game Flo Viva Mythology, the very center of all narrative fate and conflict that moved their world.
Yet, in Aldraya's eyes, he was also something else.
The man who had nearly, driven by lust and uncontrollable power, raped her.
A catastrophe that could only be stopped by Theo's timely arrival, back in the end of Arc One, Episode Nine.
"An unexpected encounter."
There, at that very point, full awareness finally struck Aldraya like a blunt blow.
She realized where she was standing and who stood before her.
At the same moment, that same awareness also dawned upon Ilux on the opposite side of the corridor.
Earlier, from a distance, Ilux had assumed that the slender silhouette with white hair was merely one of the teachers passing by, an ordinary sight in the academy corridor.
His mind, perhaps occupied with other matters, had failed to recognize it immediately.
However, as the distance closed and the figure became clearer, a delayed and shocking recognition seized him.
It was not a teacher.
It was her.
Aldraya Kansh Que.
The former mysterious teacher, one of the Thirteen Supreme Angels he had once respected and feared, whose status had now fallen and who had officially become a fellow student seated on the same benches as him.
And then, their gazes met.
Not an intimate, close-range stare, but a look exchanged across dozens of meters in a crowded corridor.
Yet within that brief visual exchange, something unmistakable was etched upon Ilux's face.
All his relaxed demeanor and confidence seemed to evaporate for a moment.
His expression changed.
Instead of the usual cynical smile or self-assured look, what surfaced was a subtle twitch at the corner of his eye, tension in his jaw, and a fleeting glimmer of something deep within.
It was dread.
A spontaneous and profound terror, perhaps born of memories of his failure, of deeply rooted guilt, or of pure fear toward the power and mystery still surrounding Aldraya, even though her status had fallen.
He remembered that night, remembered how his plan had been shattered, and remembered exactly who he had been facing.
"An intangible density."
At that very moment, a drastic change crossed Aldraya's face.
Her flat expression, like a frozen lake, suddenly cracked, replaced by something far deeper and more terrifying.
Her face darkened, not due to a change in skin color, but because of an internal shadow so powerful that it seemed to absorb all surrounding light.
Her neutral atmosphere vanished, replaced by a gloomy aura radiating from every pore of her being.
And that change did not stop there.
In a span of time too brief to even be called "long," a horrifying phenomenon began to unfold.
From within Aldraya's body, from the depths of her core that may have long been hidden, a dark miasma poured forth.
Not mere darkness, but an extremely dense darkness, so compact and substantial that it felt real.
This miasma erupted violently, like an emotional volcano that had been restrained for far too long.
Its density was so extreme that the area directly behind where Aldraya stood was instantly covered.
What covered it was not ordinary mist, not smoke that could be seen through, nor gas that could disperse.
It was an absolute, shaped darkness, a kind of dark matter that seemed alive and full of desire.
It blocked the view of the corridor wall behind her, creating a backdrop resembling a fragment of starless night sky transplanted into the academy corridor.
"G… teacher Aldraya? I mean, Aldraya. Uh, hello. We… we meet again here."
Even as his body trembled subtly, even as every fiber of his muscles screamed with a primitive urge to flee from the terrifying aura emanating from the figure before him, Ilux forced himself to suppress his fear.
He clenched his fists at his sides, his nails digging into his palms, using that small pain as an anchor to remain standing.
He was a man, he had a reputation to uphold, and fleeing in this crowded corridor would be an unforgivable defeat.
Thus, with a resolve painfully dragged up from the deepest recesses of his heart, he chose not to remain silent.
With an awkward motion, almost like a robot learning how to interact, Ilux finally opened his mouth.
The effort was obvious from the furrow in his brow and the way his lips trembled briefly before producing sound.
He struggled hard, very hard, to piece together words.
His mind, usually fluent in crafting schemes and speeches, now felt stuffed with cotton, empty and difficult to shape.
He had to find something neutral, something that could serve as a bridge over the chasm of trauma and darkness stretching between them.
Therefore, he assembled a greeting, the most basic and safest opening words he could manage.
"Evaporating without being touched."
Naturally, amid all the tension and the awkward attempt at communication from across the corridor, Aldraya's reaction was nothing like what might have been expected or feared.
Her gaze, or rather the entire orientation of her face, did not shift toward Ilux.
There was no sharp stare filled with hatred, nor an empty look of disregard.
Instead, Aldraya's face remained angled downward.
Her chin nearly touched her chest, hiding her expression from the outside world.
Her eyes remained fixed, firmly planted, on the surface of the corridor floor beneath her feet.
The glossy, cold marble floor, with its long-stretching connecting line patterns, became the only object within her field of vision.
She stared at the path that linked the students' classrooms with the teachers' offices in the Star Academy, as if all the answers lay there, or at least a focal point that could hold her back from something far more terrifying.
To be continued…