Chapter 290
Chapter 290: Oh Sure, Sure—So This Couple Is Really Going to Flaunt It Like This, Huh
The students crammed at the entrance of the Arcane Hall stared at the scene before them, and couldn't help but fall into a daze.
They stood rooted to the spot like shattered rocks wedged between cliff faces, not daring to move.
Mouths hanging open, jaws practically hitting the floor.
The scene before them—no matter when you saw it—was absolutely explosive!
Grand Knight Gwen had actually gone straight for Viktor's lips and kissed him!
Oh, wait a moment?
It didn't actually seem all that explosive, come to think of it.
Because Gwen was Professor Viktor's Fiancée to begin with.
This sort of thing seemed... perfectly normal, really.
But what had surprised them wasn't that.
As the former Grand Knight Commander of the Royal Knight Company, Gwen, at any time, always gave people the impression of someone utterly composed.
And yet today, they had witnessed a completely different side of Gwen.
It was a scene one would consider nearly impossible to see from Gwen.
Grand Knight Gwen had actually, right in front of everyone—
Shown off her love?!
Grand Knight Gwen had actually, in full public view, gone and shown off her love.
She had come to the Academy, gotten into a fight with the Top-ranked Freshmen from 2 consecutive years, and then proceeded to flaunt her affections with Chief Professor Viktor.
The entire sequence of events left every onlooking student thoroughly bewildered.
None of them could make any sense of it.
Wait—hold on, there was still something else!
The students suddenly remembered: the Top-ranked Freshmen from 2 consecutive years.
Whether it was Erika or Her Highness Princess Auréliane, both had a close relationship with Viktor.
And on top of that, Professor Viktor's reputation for having a fondness for minors.
"Grand Knight Gwen... couldn't have come here to... catch him in the act, could she?!"
The moment those words left someone's mouth, countless students' eyes lit up.
Now that made much more sense!
After all, connecting it to what Erika had said at the start, combined with Gwen's reaction when she appeared—
It was obvious. Grand Knight Gwen was jealous.
Viktor heard the students' murmuring.
Watching the tide of public opinion begin to drift in an extremely unfavorable direction, he could do nothing about it for now.
So he reached out his hand and grabbed Gwen's wrist.
He slowly drew her hands away from his face.
Then he extended his other arm and wrapped it around Gwen's waist.
Though she was wearing armor and the sensation was a little cold, the gesture was still far too intimate.
He did not turn to look at Erika and Auréliane behind him. In a tone that carried a quiet warning, he addressed the two of them flatly:
"You two."
"Don't take today's events to heart."
The moment his words settled, both Erika and Auréliane simultaneously startled.
At that point, the Crow on Viktor's shoulder began to beat its wings.
Within its solitary eye, a flash of pitch-black swept through.
Its gaze swept across ten thousand things, as if taking in every single person present.
In an instant, the students on the scene felt only a sudden darkness fall across their vision.
Their minds swam; their thoughts grew heavy.
They stared at the familiar Arcane Hall ahead and felt strangely at a loss.
At some point, Viktor's figure had vanished from where he'd stood.
Only a single pitch-black Crow tail feather remained in his place.
What had just happened?
The students glanced at each other, a wave of confusion rising in their hearts.
Just now—hadn't they seen Grand Knight Gwen arrive?
At the Royal Magic Academy, aside from the new students, most students were quite familiar with Gwen.
After all, she was Professor Viktor's Fiancée.
As Viktor's Fiancée, Gwen naturally attracted no shortage of attention herself.
Grand Knight Gwen had apparently come looking for Professor Viktor?
That much, it seemed, was all they could remember.
As for everything else that had happened before that—
It was as though it had all been forcibly forgotten. They knew nothing of it.
Oh right, there was one more thing!
After Grand Knight Gwen arrived, she had kissed Professor Viktor right on the mouth in front of everyone!
What the hell—why did she get to do that?!
Some of the students were indignant at such a brazen public display of affection.
At this moment, Vladimir also came back to his senses.
Just now, he had sensed a profoundly strange force.
That force was utterly peculiar—it did not resemble Magic Power; it carried no elemental attribute whatsoever; it had not even scratched a single one of the students present.
And yet, he could feel it.
The students on the scene were looking at each other, curiously asking one another what on earth had just happened.
A portion of their memories had been erased.
A light wave of goosebumps moved across Vladimir's body.
A Magic capable of... erasing the memories of a large group en masse?
That kind of Magic, operating so invisibly and without a trace—it was truly terrifying.
"So it was to reduce the fallout."
His own memory had not been erased—perhaps because his power was not particularly weak, and erasing his memory would have been difficult. Or perhaps, Viktor simply trusted that he would not let anything slip, and so had not used it on him at all.
But regardless of which it was, Vladimir at least understood one thing clearly.
"...That young Knight girl."
"Something is not right."
***
A light breeze drifted across a vast expanse of emerald-green grassland, raising rolling green waves across the earth.
Black feathers drifted slowly down from the sky, and 2 shadowed presences descended alongside those drifting feathers, landing on the grass.
The feathers that fell one by one gathered on the ground, their energy beginning to swirl—until 2 human silhouettes gradually took form.
The moment the energy dispersed, Viktor and Gwen stood on the grassland.
Feeling the cool spring breeze, Viktor looked toward Gwen.
She was just as elegant and beautiful as ever, clad in her beast-face armor.
The breeze stirred her fine silver hair, letting it drift through the air.
Her expression was like frost—like a cold and bewitching Knight from amid wind and snow.
Looking at the Gwen before him right now, Viktor fell silent.
That was right.
He could clearly sense it—the Gwen standing before him now.
Was just like the one he had seen before. The real Gwen.
The cold, unfeeling Gwen.
The killing machine that was so singularly fixated on the justice within her own heart that it felt nothing at all.
Once she had set her mind on something, the will within her heart would never shift.
In that moment, she had even wanted to kill Erika and Auréliane.
And so, in a tone of cold indifference, he quietly questioned her:
"Gwen."
"Do you know what you were about to do just now?"
Hearing Viktor's words, Gwen's expression remained flat, but her eyelids lowered.
As though she had lost control over her own emotions, her voice rang out—devoid of any feeling.
"I know."
"It is precisely because I know that I intended to do it."
Her voice carried an absolute, ironclad resolve—as though in her mind, killing those 2 was unquestionably the right thing to do.
Yes. Identical to the Valkyrie Viktor had come to know.
Exactly the same.
Viktor looked at her, and felt immense, helpless frustration.
Gwen having become like this now—he found himself completely at a loss.
He couldn't even bring himself to scold her, to warn her, to rebuke her.
Why had Gwen turned back into this again?
He had done everything within his power to hold it at bay. He had done everything he possibly could.
All because of that Goddess, and those damned Devotees?
For the first time, Viktor felt so utterly powerless.
If things continued like this, was he just going to have to brace for the ending that awaited him?
Or else—right now, here, in this moment...
Viktor looked at his own palm. Magic Power stirred faintly within his hand.
In this moment, an impulse rose within him.
An impulse that, once acted upon, would undoubtedly haunt him for the rest of his life.
Suddenly, Viktor's eyes widened slightly.
A cool, pale-white hand closed around his large palm.
Despite the constant sword training she did that should have left calluses in her palm, he felt none.
Just like that, Gwen held Viktor's hand and gently pressed it against her cheek.
The same kind of coldness.
And her other hand traced along Viktor's shoulder and found its way to his face.
Viktor looked downward, watching Gwen.
He let her cool hand wander freely across his face.
At the same time—
Gwen's emotionless voice began to rise softly.
"I had a dream."
"I dreamed that I had forgotten you. Forgotten everything that had anything to do with you."
Like a block of deep-winter ice gradually beginning to thaw.
A voice with no feeling in it, yet carrying words that held a warmth entirely unlike her.
"In the dream, I was terrified."
"And so, in my cowardice, I chose to run away."
"So cowardly that I ran from reality. Even gave up on myself."
"Hopeless."
Her glacial gaze carried a depth of profound sincerity.
"I don't want to keep struggling with it anymore."
She released the hand that had been holding Viktor's, and moved her other hand away from his face as well.
Then, on her own, she opened both arms.
Of her own accord, she pulled Viktor's broad frame into an embrace.
"I don't want to lose you again."
"And I don't want to spend my life only ever following behind you, watching your back."
"So..."
In that hazy moment, Viktor stood frozen.
Clouds gathered; the sky gradually began to release a soft, gentle rain.
Gwen buried her face against his chest, as though trying to merge herself completely with him.
Carried on the wind.
Her final words resonated in Viktor's ears.
"Please—on your path, wait for me."
The soft patter of rain kept drumming against the fine blades of grass, and scattered droplets kept leaping up from the leaves.
Whoosh—
An almost imperceptible stirring, like countless Nature Spirits treading softly across a bright and vivid field.
Nothing remained but the silence of rainwater sliding off grass blades and falling into the earth.
And within that quiet—Viktor's long, unbroken stillness.
Gradually buried in the sound of the rain.