A girl with snow-white hair and radiant platinum-colored eyes, which seed to hold the starlight, was hovering in the blue sky. Her legs were neatly together as she sat on a broom; a typical thod of flight for witches.
At a speed of 290 km/h.
It was fast, certainly, but for soone like her who could teleport freely, this kind of speed was nothing more than a leisurely ride to feel the cool breeze.
"Aah! This is boring!"
She shouted while speeding on the broom, her voice echoing as if it were bouncing back.
This was because her body wasn't actually real—it was an illusion.
"No matter how much I expand my senses, 20% is the limit..."
The White Witch and the Witch Queen, Scarlet, had ultimately failed to perfect the art of creating a second body through duplication technique.
The act of creating a second physical form itself was against the natural order of the world.
"Should I start rummaging through so ceteries?"
It had already been a century since she refused to use body duplication using a corpse, which involved granting souls to corpses, because she found it too vulgar for the Witch Queen.
She was starting to regret that decision.
"Well, I'll have to be satisfied with this, I guess~. After all, I've been trapped for hundreds of years."
Lying down on the broom, she crossed her legs, causing her skirt to flutter in a dangerously inappropriate manner. However, there was no need to worry about any perverts sneaking a peek this high up in the sky.
"Queen of Witches."
Before she could dwell on it further, a telepathic voice struck her ears with blunt force.
"Kyaah?!"
Startled, Scarlet flailed and fell off the broom. At that mont, a gray figure appeared in the air.
"Enough with the jokes."
At those words, Scarlet, who had been falling, suddenly stopped mid-air and dangled like clothes on a hanger.
Wearing a pouty expression, she straightened her skirt as she floated in the sa position and snapped her fingers.
The broom that had been hovering above quickly flew down to support her again.
"You're not the one guilty for peeking at a lady in the first place, are you?"
Scarlet struggled to get back on her broom, crossed her legs and folded her arms. She twisted her body to express her displeasure, but it seed to have little effect on the emotionless 'Divine Moon.'
"So, why did you co to find ? Why not co straight to my place, Fawn Prevernal Moon? I could've treated you very well."
The man with long gray hair and gray eyes, a cold yet neat-looking handso figure, ignored Scarlet's playful tone. He simply flicked his fingers.
Snap!
It was a light motion, but the result was far from light.
The sky, which had been a clear blue, began to turn into a deep purple. It was as if curtains were being drawn. Stars and galaxies densely filled the space above.
"Tsk..."
Scarlet frowned as she looked up at the countless stars. So had lost their light, and others flared as if they were about to explode. Yet, strangely, not a single 'new star' was being born.
"Looks a lot different than the last ti I saw it~."
"The universe is no longer giving birth to new worlds."
"Well, duh! That's because we're here."
"... That's not right. Even if we are here, another 'us' must exist in another world."
"You're talking about parallel worlds? Wow~ I don't believe in that stuff."
"Stop deflecting, Witch Queen."
"Ugh, whyyy~? Serious conversations are so boring. Can't I take a break? Please?"
Fawn Prevernal Moon ignored her words and pointed sowhere in the distance. There, a star that had lost its light was falling.
"Wow! It's beautiful, don't you think?"
Her casual comnt was t with a heavy response from Fawn Prevernal Moon.
"That's the world where the Black Dragon was born. Its collapse was instantaneous."
"Did you go and see it yourself?"
Scarlet's eyes sparkled as she asked the question, but Fawn Prevernal Moon turned his head.
In that direction...
Countless stars were falling, like a downpour.
It was too grand to simply be called a teor shower—these were enormous stars.
"All the worlds are dying."
"Is that wrong?"
"No. The birth and death of worlds follow their destined course."
"Then what's the problem?"
"A new world isn't being born. And... This world we're standing on isn't heading toward death."
Fawn Prevernal Moon took a step closer to Scarlet, his gaze growing more somber.
"That's the problem."
"Oh, really? I didn't know."
"Last night, one of the laws related to the death of this world collapsed. It must have sothing to do with you. What happened?"
"Uh! It's embarrassing. It's a lady's secret. Do you really need to know?"
"I didn't expect you to tell easily."
With that, Fawn Prevernal Moon stretched out his palm, and space began to solidify in his hand. It was not gray, black, or white—it was a mass of pure space.
"Huh? You wanna fight ?"
Scarlet pointed to herself with a bewildered expression.
"Why not think it over again?"
"I'm not here to fight. This is a warning."
"Ooh. You're scaring ."
She wrapped her arms around herself and shook her head dramatically, pretending to be frightened. Then, suddenly, she opened her eyes wide and smirked.
"But what can you do? This body is fake!"
Upon hearing that, Fawn Prevernal Moon tightened his grip, and Scarlet's body twisted.
Crack!
Her limbs snapped, and her body shattered into dozens of pieces, yet Scarlet's smile never faded.
"I told you! Co find at my place. Use that fancy space magic of yours!"
With a cackling laugh reminiscent of a witch, Scarlet's body crumbled into dust and disappeared.
Fawn Prevernal Moon remained expressionless and opened his hand once more.
In his palm was a ticket. It was smudged with the following words.
'If you don't co, I'll turn you into a frog!'
Crumple! Rip!
With a squeeze of his hand, the ticket was torn apart and disintegrated down to the atomic level.
Though it was a pity that he had lost Scarlet, who had maintained such a playful, carefree attitude throughout, it wasn't as if Fawn Prevernal Moon had truly intended to catch her.
After all, the Witch Queen had been hiding her true body for hundreds of years.
Finding even a trace of her through her double was fortunate enough.
But still... I learned sothing good.
Fawn Prevernal Moon murmured as he looked down at the flow of the world, then turned and disappeared into the distance beyond space.
In the sky, hundreds, thousands of stars were still falling.
When all the stars finally extinguished, the one that remained would likely be... The only one left.
———
In autumn, a small event held on campus stirred a strange sense of excitent in the students.
It was ti for the academy tournant to select the representatives for Stella's 'League of Spirit' team.
While one might think of a small-scale competition when hearing academy tournant, Stella was different.
Entire clubs were ford by students who enrolled specifically to participate in the League of Spirit, and with nearly a thousand elite Stella magic warriors participating, the scale was beyond ordinary.
The audience for the academy tournant alone surpassed tens of thousands, making it more prestigious than most mid-sized regional competitions.
Fla smiled brightly as she submitted the application for her team, the Fla Team.Its mbers included none other than Baek Yu-Seol, Eisel, Ma Yu-Seong, and Hae Won-Ryang.
Though there were no substitute mbers, the five were more than enough to lead the ga.
For a hastily-ford team, they could easily be considered one of the top contenders.
The only issue was that most of the mbers had little to no experience with the League of Spirit.
In other words, with less than two weeks until the competition, they would have to cram in practice.
'How much were these guys even interested in the ga in the original story?'
Baek Yu-Seol wasn't even part of the original romance fantasy, so he was out of the equation.
As for Eisel, she was described in the original as a multi-talented beauty, a character with traits like [Versatile] and [All-Rounder], so it was briefly ntioned that she beca as skilled as a pro player just by watching a few League of Spirit matches.
In fact, she participated in a tournant and won.
At that ti, the exhilarating thrill of defeating Hong Bi-Yeon's team, their rivals in the academy tournant, and then advancing to the world championship to even beat Jelliel!
It was an unforgettable sensation.
The catharsis was so electrifying that she read the scene of their victory more than ten tis.
'I still can't forget it.'
That feeling, the mont they clinched the win. It was thrilling beyond words.
'Ma Yu-Seong and Hae Won-Ryang...'
In the original story, there wasn't any specific ntion of them participating in the tournant.
League of Spirit was originally just a side story, and Eisel tead up with various supporting characters, including Pung Harang, rather than the main cast.
'Baek Yu-Seol? Don't even need to think about it.'
Whatever it is, he's good at it. He said he had never played before and didn't even want to, but once the ga began, he'd probably be the most reliable asset on the team.
"Wow..."
The professor who received the application adjusted their spec and clicked their tongue in awe.
"The team mbers are formidable. This is going to be quite exciting. Even the Stella representative team will have to be on edge."
"Well, we haven't practiced seriously or anything, so there's no need to be nervous. Pure magic warriors and pro players are different."
Full of humility, Fla responded modestly, but then soone lightly tapped her on the shoulder and spoke.
"You're right. Pro players and magic warriors are indeed different."
"Huh?"
Though the tap on the shoulder wasn't painful, Fla felt annoyed and rubbed her arm as she glanced at the person who had touched her.
The girl standing before her towered at around 170 cm. She was so tall that Fla had to tilt her head back to look up. Her bluntly cut bangs gave her an air of straightforwardness.
'Ga Yu-Rin...?'
No doubt that she was wearing the Stella Academy uniform. However, Fla had never run into her at academy before. Yet the na rang a bell.
It wasn't because she was famous, but because in the original romance fantasy, Eisel had awakened during the tournant and crushed her first opponent. It was none other than Ga Yu-Rin.
"You might be great as magic warriors, but the arena is different. Did you really gather such a team thinking you could win? It's not happening, so why don't you just give up?"
After spitting out those cold words, Ga Yu-Rin submitted her application and turned around to walk away.
Even to another girl, her confident stride was impressive and sexy, but her attitude was so rude that it left Fla feeling shocked.
"What's her deal?"
"Haha. Sorry about that. She's always been a bit headstrong, as you can tell. She's preparing to beco a pro player."
"Yeah, I figured."
It wasn't Ga Yu-Rin picking a fight that bothered Fla; it was that she hadn't picked a fight with Eisel instead since that would've been normal.
'Ugh. I feel bad for Eisel.'
With how much the original story had changed, Eisel didn't even get the chance to form her own team.
Originally, this part was supposed to Eisel joining the tournant with a sense of purpose to escape all the entangled relationships with people like Emperor Skalven and Princess Hong Bi-Yeon, but now, none of that had happened.
The fact that Eisel was stuck in the study room, focusing on her work even as the tournant approached, just revealed how comfortable and stable her life had beco.
"As you probably know, Spirit players are often looked down upon by magic warriors. That's why she's so on edge. And you didn't even prepare for the tournant, so she probably thinks you're dismissing the competition entirely."
It was a fair point.
There was even a saying that those who couldn't handle life as a magic warrior escaped to the League of Spirit. Not that Fla ever dismissed them.
After all, she only ford this team to get away from Skalven, that jerk.
Why would she have any reason to look down on others?
"Sports are sports, and battle is battle. There's nothing to dismiss about that."
"If all magic warriors thought like you, things would be much better. Anyway, here's your application. From now on, the League of Spirit training ground will be open to you, and you'll have the opportunity to practice. It's a short ti, but make the most of it."
"Oh, don't worry. We will."
Two weeks?
One day would be enough.
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