A Villain's Will to Survive novel Chapter 276

Chapter 276: Your Responsibility (2)

As the volcano erupted, the continent's axis trembled, the crust heaved, and the searing heat from deep underground writhed like a living thing. A storm laced with ash swept across the land, and the gas and mana exposed to the air ignited in a chain of massive explosions.

Boom—! Boom—! Boom—!

If the end of the world had a shape and came with fireworks, this would be it. The Magicore wrapped around the volcano had long since lost its function, warped, shattered, and splintered from direct contact with the magma infused with mana. The spell Epherene cast to support it was far too weak—completely useless in the face of such destruction.

The deafening roar pressed in on Epherene’s muffled ears, the rivers of magma crashing down in torrents, and the blistering heat of wild mana—all of it unfolded in slow motion.

The disaster that would go down in history, capable of erasing both Yuren and the Ashes, played out with terrifying clarity. Every explosion etched itself into her mind like a web spreading across glass, while volcanic ash descended with a weight as heavy and majestic as a giant's hand.

Eeeeee—

The ringing in her ears pounded through her skull.

“Help...”

Through the haze, Epherene turned her eyes back to Deculein, hoping—even then—that he would save her.

However, the moment she met Deculein’s eyes, the last of her hope slipped away.

Deculein’s clear blue eyes—Yukline’s eyes—met hers in silence, conveying everything without a word—this was her doing, her responsibility to bear, a catastrophe born of her greed and masked by the naivety of misplaced kindness.

“Do you understand now?” Deculein said.

Kraaaaaaaaaash—!

In the blink of an eye, the magma swallowed Deculein whole and dragged him under the flow of magma, while the puppet, Arlos, had already been torn in half and was crumbling.

“... Ah.”

Watching Deculein and Arlos disappear before her eyes too quickly, she dropped to the ground in a daze. The ground beneath her was searing hot, hot enough to sear her skin—but it might as well have been ice, as she didn’t feel a thing.

Gruuuuuuuumble...

Then came the tremor from behind—a grinding noise that felt like it was splitting the earth—as Epherene turned toward it with hollow eyes, a bitter laugh escaped her lips, and a single tear slid down her cheek.

Ruuuuuumble...!

The magma rose like a tidal wave, surging toward her and rising high enough to scrape the sky, shimmering in the light—brilliant and deadly—as it moved to swallow Epherene whole.

“Shit...” Epherene muttered, grinding her teeth.

Something inside Epherene snapped as a heat she didn’t understand burned in her chest—fury at this madness of nature, fury at herself for charging in blind and thinking she could do anything—and gritting her teeth, she reached into the fire.

As the magma roared and its molten maw reached toward her like a living beast, Epherene poured every ounce of mana and focus into the spell, calculating the pattern, forming the circuit, and creating the magic circle in a flash—burning through her entire body’s mana in a single breath.

As a result...

Whoooooosh—!

A vivid aura flared to life as a transparent barrier rose to block the magma, and with her eyes widened, Epherene reached out without thinking to press a finger against the shimmering surface.

“... There.”

It was a spell born entirely of Epherene’s own power—an application of allotropy, the most basic characteristic of carbon, drawn from a fragment of Deculein and Luna’s thesis.

By synthesizing the caster’s mana into a polymer and linking it in a hexagonal framework like a beehive, the spell formed a barrier—an intricate web of covalent bonds at the sub-nano scale—that Deculein had once defined with a single word as nanotube.

Therefore, there was no way that damned magma could ever break through this invincible barrier...

“No, it’s not?!”

But something was wrong—a hairline gap in the spell let a narrow stream of magma slide through.

“Oh, it’s hot!”

At first, it was just heat, but in the very next moment, it set Epherene’s heart ablaze.

***

“Ahhhhh—!”

On the couch in the Head Professor’s office at the Mage Tower of the Imperial University, Epherene suddenly let out a scream that was more than just a scream, her whole body trembling as if something unseen had torn through her.

“Oh, it’s hot! It’s hooooot—! Ahhhhhh! Help me. Oh, no! I can’t even see! Oh, my heart!”

Whether she’d lost her mind for a moment or experienced another prophetic dream, an outburst like this wasn’t all that surprising for one such as Epherene.

Seated in his chair in the Head Professor’s office, recovering his mana, Deculein turned to Epherene and inquired, “What is it?”

“Ughhhhh... Oh?”

Epherene thrashed in her sleep before snapping awake, bolting upright and gasping for breath as she looked over at Deculein, then down at her chest where her hands had scratched raw, not realizing they were hers.

“... Wow. Wow...”

Then, wearing the calmest expression she’d had all day, Epherene leaned back into the couch.

“Time to go. We’re heading back to Yuren,” Deculein said.

“... Professor, it was yesterday you created the Magicore, right?" Epherene asked.

“Indeed.”

Then, when Epherene saw the Magicore resting on Deculein’s desk, she realized what she’d seen in her dream was the future.

“I’m so glad—”

“Has a volcano erupted?” Deculein inquired.

“Yes,” Epherene replied, startled by the question, though her answer came with honesty.

“Did the Magicore fail to hold it back?”

“... Sorry? I’m... not entirely sure, but no, it didn’t seem to work.”

Then Deculein gave a nod, and although Epherene had explained it all terribly, he somehow seemed to understand the situation.

“Have you come to understand it now?” Deculein inquired.

Epherene said nothing as she pressed her face with both hands, the experience so vivid that she couldn’t tell if it had been a prophetic dream or a regression.

“... Yes.”

Epherene realized that sometimes good intentions without strength lead to worse outcomes than actual cruelty—that the wish to save everyone might, in the end, be what destroys them all, and...

“Professor, how is it you always know everything?” Epherene asked, unable to hide the question that had remained in her thoughts.

“What is it you think I know?”

“You already decided that we couldn’t protect both places from the volcano—even before the Magicore was made."

“It was a calculation,” Deculein replied as he pushed himself up from his chair. “The sulfur in the atmosphere, the mana concentration, the heat of the magma, the recorded cases and cycles of past volcanic eruptions—factoring in all of it, including the projected capacity of the Magicore I intended to create...”

Deculein was undoubtedly a brilliant professor, but Epherene struggled to keep up with the thoughts spinning through his mind—and of course, he never bothered to explain them.

Is this what it means to be a supervising professor? Epherene thought.

“The conclusion is clear—the Ashes were never within protection.”

Epherene held her silence, her lips drawn tight.

The memory of that disaster—the explosion—still played before Epherene’s eyes as if it had happened barely five minutes before she woke up.

Thud—

Before she realized it, Deculein’s dress shoes had stopped right in front of the couch.

“Tell me.”

Epherene looked up at him.

“Will you surrender?”

Although Epherene’s heart was still racing, the professor remained calm—just like always—as magma rushed toward him, and even knowing what was about to happen, he hadn’t flinched, his composure almost unreal.

“I get what you are trying to say, Professor,” Epherene said.

Deculein looked down at Epherene in silence.

... This structure—composed of polymer atoms arranged in a hexagonal honeycomb framework—is defined herein as a nanotube. It is a form most commonly observed in carbon, though it can also be synthesized through artificial means. The general length-to-diameter ratio of the nanotube is as follows.

Whoooosh—

Snap–!

Numerous small molecules linked together = polymer

Poly means many, referring to many tiny molecules linked together to form something solid.

“Aha!”