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As if I had turned to stone, I stood still in a space where everything had stopped, taking in the situation.
I had been about to die, unable to dodge an enemy's absurd attack that had appeared out of nowhere, so what was going on?
The thing that had been hurling spells at me like it meant to kill me any second was frozen too, like a stuffed specimen.
Looking around, I saw that my comrades were all frozen just like that thing, and I felt as if I were standing in the middle of some enormous exhibition hall full of figures.
It was too vivid to be a dream, and too absurd a scene to be my life flashing before my eyes.
I set my thoughts aside for a moment, decided to walk around and see, and carefully began moving my feet.
A battlefield...
No, it was the scene of a one-sided massacre.
With a single gesture, half of my comrades had scattered like dust, and horrific magic I had never seen or heard of covered the sky.
On top of that, there was this phenomenon where everything seemed frozen, as if time itself had stopped.
Faced with this bizarre sight for the first time, I couldn't help but frown.
I quickly scanned the area to see if anyone besides me was still moving, but I couldn't find a single moving person anywhere on the battlefield.
Wondering if something had gone wrong with my ability along with time stopping, I quietly opened my mouth.
"Status."
[Status]
Name: Benjamin
Age: 23
Talent: Reader
Body: 334
Mana: 0
Status Ailments: Muscle pain, hair loss, hemorrhoids, fear, time stop.
Thankfully my ability still seemed to work, and I let out a sigh of relief.
The status window, also called the "Grace of the Gods" or the "Blessing of Mana," was a mysterious ability that had appeared after the Great Collapse of the continent.
Using magic or exerting power beyond human limits required a force called mana, and anyone who succeeded in sensing it could open a status window that neatly summarized their own abilities.
Being able to grasp information about oneself in real time meant being able to know what talents one lacked and what effort one needed to make.
But at the same time, it also let people see just how untalented they were and how they had no future at all, which led many to give up.
I too was someone who, because of a mana score stuck at "0," had chosen to give up rather than make an effort.
[Mana]
Manipulation: 0
Accumulation: 0
When I pressed my hand against the word "Mana" in the status window, more detailed information appeared.
Manipulation was, literally, the ability to move mana as one intended.
Accumulation showed how much mana had built up in the body, and as you can see, both of mine were stuck at "0."
[Reader]:
Can read the flow of mana that someone has created.
But thanks to my talent, Reader, which literally let me perceive mana as if it were text, I could recognize anything as text as long as a certain flow of mana existed, even without having any mana myself.
That was why I could open the status window anytime, even without mana.
[Cursed Flame Baptism]
Even those black fireballs frozen in front of me right now could be seen as text like this thanks to this convenient talent.
The problem was that since I didn't understand the formulas that made up the spells and simply perceived them as text, I had no idea what I would actually need to do to use a spell like that.
Well, even if I did understand the formula, it wouldn't have mattered since I had no mana to complete it anyway.
"So then."
I silently stared at the black fireballs that hadn't moved an inch, as if someone had fixed them in place, then turned toward whoever was standing behind me.
"Is it your doing that the world's stopped like this?"
Where my gaze landed stood a single figure, deeply wrapped in a white robe.
"...Yes."
A voice I could describe no other way than clear and pure.
If it weren't for the situation, it was an attractive enough voice that I might have tried pestering her to take off the robe and show me her face.
"Don't come closer. If you have something to say, say it from there."
But given the circumstances, letting her get close was dangerous, so I raised my sword to threaten her.
Seeming to understand my intent, she stepped back once, as if to show she wouldn't approach, and held out her hand.
"First, look at this."
[A Lifetime]
The moment I recognized the text that rose from her outstretched fingertips, my mind went hazy, and when I opened my eyes again, I was standing somewhere different from before.
No matter how many times I blinked, it was too dark to tell where I was.
"What? Where the hell is this now?"
Teleportation? Or some spell that blocked my sight?
Since she was a mage who could stop time itself, I supposed nothing she did now should really surprise me, but it was still a little disorienting.
"...A book?"
Just then, a giant book came into view at the edge of my vision.
It was so large that I wondered how long it had even been there.
But that doubt only lasted a moment. My body moved naturally on its own, as if it had always meant to, and began examining the book.
[The Academy's Rank X Sword God]
What was Rank X supposed to mean?
If it referred to someone worthy of being called a Sword God, was it talking about Duke Snowtier?
Setting that lingering question aside, I turned the next page and found the name Aden written there.
"If it's Aden..."
I did know who that was.
He was the promising newcomer who had suddenly appeared at the academy one day, the subject of rumors that his future after graduation would be something to watch.
I remembered joking, back during my mercenary days, that this promising talent had once been my classmate.
Of course, I had withdrawn from the academy myself less than a month after enrolling, so I'd never actually crossed paths with him.
Wondering if the protagonist of this book could really be that same Aden, I flipped through a few more pages.
The Aden inside this mysterious book had, through some minor incident, ended up learning swordsmanship from his father.
Once his father realized he had talent, he sent Aden to the academy at eighteen along with his childhood friend Aria, and from there the story truly began.
Being the protagonist of the novel, Aden started running into crises from the very day he enrolled, but he endured all manner of jealousy, envy, and slander from various villains and slowly rose to prominence.
But on graduation day, an ancient being revived by some unknown force forced everyone into a bloody battle, and the story ended, almost anticlimactically, with the line that everyone had died.
"...Everyone just dies like that?"
I couldn't help but make a dumbfounded expression.
The book described the ancient being as having a protection, a kind of barrier guarding its body, that no attack could get through.
But Aden alone had managed to pierce the ancient being's protection using his talent, Ignore, and after a desperate struggle he had succeeded in landing an attack, though it only managed to break through the barrier and wasn't enough to kill the ancient being.
His brutal death followed right after that defeat.
Feeling a bit hollow, I was about to close the book when, as if urging me to read it once more, the first page suddenly flipped open on its own.
With an indescribable feeling, I turned the page, and there, slightly different content was written.
It described a scene where Aden, having failed to kill the ancient being, was forcibly sent back into the past by someone.
Confused and unaware of why he was suddenly alive again, Aden soon grasped the situation and began to act.
Knowing what was coming, he trained thoroughly, fought through countless battles, and grew far stronger than he had been before, to a degree that was beyond comparison.
But despite all that effort, the ancient being was revived once again.
And though he fought fiercely, in the end he failed to kill the ancient being a second time.
By this point, the taste in my mouth had turned bitter.
If the content before the regression had its sweet moments along with its heartbreaking ones, then after the regression, it was nothing but relentless, brutal content, so much so that I wondered if it really needed to push him this hard.
"I need your help."
Before my tangled thoughts could sort themselves out, her voice reached me again.
The book that had been in front of me vanished at some point, and she, still wrapped in her robe, stood before me.
"Time has already been turned back, but to stop him... this child alone isn't enough."
"Shouldn't you start by explaining the current situation in detail?"
In response to my question, she slowly walked in front of me and answered.
"The time in which I can directly face you and speak is far too limited."
"Only with your talent can Aden be helped to stop the ancient being's revival."
"My talent, you mean... Reader?"
"Yes... The story I just created was also something you read with your talent."
The ability to read the flow of mana.
I supposed that meant I had been able to read the artificially created span of time using it.
"Please help Aden. Only that child can stop him once he's revived... If he can't be stopped, this world faces nothing but ruin."
"Ruin, huh..."
I could roughly guess what that woman wanted, and I understood, to some degree, why it had to be me.
But my stubborn nature wouldn't let me just sit and listen quietly.
Especially not in a situation where I didn't even know who she really was.
"But see, I'm the type who hates leaving things unsettled... you'll understand, right?"
Since the sword I'd been holding had vanished when I came into this strange space, I swung the edge of my hand like a blade and attacked her.
Just as I thought the sudden attack had landed cleanly, my hand stopped, as if it had been blocked by something.
"Huh? Look at that."
For someone whose mana score never grew no matter what, the only means of survival was to push my body to its absolute limit through training.
I'd been through something like a strange experiment in the past, so I couldn't really call it all my own effort, but when it came to training my body, I was more serious about it than anyone.
If I hadn't done at least that much, I would have died several times over, even if I was already alive.
As a result of that effort, I had managed to achieve a Body score over 300, and had recently become one of only two S-rank mercenaries in the entire mercenary world.
They said there used to be more S-rank mercenaries before... well, the number itself wasn't really the point.
And yet, even though I hadn't swung an actual sword, my attack hadn't just failed to land, I hadn't even managed to reach anywhere near her.
No, to begin with, it didn't feel like the attack had been blocked so much as it felt impossible to attack at all.
Just like the ancient being's protection I'd seen in the book.
"Unfortunately, there's no time."
Just as I tried to attack once more, the folds of her robe writhed as if alive and subdued my body in an instant.
It happened so fast that all I could do was lift my head and look at her.
"The longer time remains stopped like this, the greater the distortion of time will grow. So let's save the detailed story for the next time we meet."
"Talk about it next time we meet? Well, this is really something, forcing your help on me like this."
"The distortion of time that has already occurred will surely have negative effects, but... I believe I can use it to offer you a bit of help as well. Please, I entrust Aden to you."
With those final words, an enormous flow of mana, unlike anything I had ever seen, began to rise from her body.
As I stared blankly at the sight, I found myself gradually enveloped in pure white light.
And when I finally opened my eyes, I was in the academy dormitory room, five years in the past.