Nightmare licked the corner of her mouth, steering the topic back: "Enow with the idle banter. Thou hast yet to answer my question. Why hath thy mood been so... somber from morning until now?"
"Um... well..."
Greg hesitated.
Ever since he found out this morning that Lily Carlo was actually Lilith Kahn, his feelings had been immensely complicated. It practically felt like a heartless woman had played with his sincere feelings.
No, he was being played by a heartless woman!
Recalling his sequence of encounters with her—
An esteemed main heroine had actually disguised herself as a background mob character to scam him out of affection and intel, and after using that intel to defeat Victoria, she had even smugly bragged, "Her Highness is far more impressive than you think!"
"Tsk, that damnable woman!"
"Oh? A damnable woman?"
Nightmare's ears instantly perked up. Her dark green eyes glinted with juicy gossip, her voice brimming with a malicious delight in chaos:
"That soundeth like quite a tale! Quickly, tell me the details! I am most intrigued by these mortal entanglements of love and hate! Which family's maiden is she? How is she damnable? Did she deceive thy feelings, or run off with thy fortune? Could it be... both at once?"
Greg glared at Nightmare in annoyance. "Shut it! It's not romantic drama! And there was no fortune to steal! I was... I was just played by a troublesome person!"
Naturally, he wasn't about to go into detail.
Given how well he knew Nightmare, if he spilled the whole story, this goddess with her twisted sense of humor would definitely bring it up to mock him every now and then for a long time to come.
"Oh? Played?"
Nightmare's interest grew even stronger as she paced around Greg's feet, her tail twitching in excitement:
"Someone capable of playing my other half? Now I am truly curious. Do share; I promise not to laugh... well, I shall try my best not to laugh aloud."
Greg didn't bother replying. He turned his head away and refocused his attention toward the dormitory building, refusing to converse through his actions.
Seeing his stubborn refusal, Nightmare twitched her mouth, seemingly intending to keep pestering him.
However, right at that moment—
Greg's gaze inadvertently swept past the lawn near his feet.
Faintly illuminated by the moonlight and a distant streetlight, he suddenly noticed a few wisps of dark, almost black smoke silently curling up from the cracks in the lawn.
Hmm?
Greg paused slightly.
There were no fire sources or combustibles nearby. Where was the smoke coming from?
Besides, wasn't the color of this smoke... a bit too dark?
Just as suspicion bloomed in his mind and he reflexively leaned down to get a closer look—
Hum...
An extremely faint vibration vibrated through the ground beneath his feet.
Immediately following that—
BOOM!!!!!!
An indescribable, terrifying explosion blending blinding white light and violent, searing heat erupted without warning directly beneath where Greg stood!!!
A destructive shockwave and scorching flames were like an awakened ancient beast, opening its blood-red maw to devour everything above!
The explosive roar instantly tore through the night sky. The terrifying soundwaves even made the windows of the nearby dormitory building groan under the strain!
At the moment between life and death, Greg's brain didn't even have time to think. Survival instinct and conditioned reflexes honed from walking the edge of danger numerous times drove him into action instantly!
After shoving Nightmare back into his shadow, he immediately activated the skill "Insubstantiality."
Within a thousandth of a second, his body transformed into an intangible shadow.
Blazing flames, flying dirt and rocks, violent shockwaves...
The moment all those lethal physical and elemental attacks touched his body, they passed straight through without resistance, as though passing through air.
Yet the instant the skill's effect wore off, the blistering heatwave and powerful force generated by the explosion struck Greg's re-materialized body full-on, sending him tumbling awkwardly across the grass before coming to a stop.
"Cough, cough..."
Coughing, he struggled up into a half-sitting posture and shook his head, which was dizzy from the deafening noise. Opening his eyes wide, he stared in shock at the spot where he had been standing.
There, the smooth lawn and ornamental bushes had completely vanished.
In their place was a terrifying crater over twenty meters wide and more than ten meters deep, continuously billowing strange, thick smoke into the air!
Deep inside the crater, something seemed to be faintly glowing, emanating unstable mana fluctuations.
"What on earth is going on?"
Watching this scene, Greg felt lingering dread. He was only a fraction of a second away from actually dying.
He had thought his luck had turned around today since nothing went wrong after he reached the surface, but it turned out the world was just holding back a massive disaster!
Even Nightmare couldn't help but sigh. "Honestly... art thou not a bit too unlucky at times?"
"I know that without you telling me."
Greg patted the dust off his clothes and stood up from the ground.
Right then, however, the lawn beside him was suddenly pushed open, revealing a hidden tunnel beneath it. A few people wearing lab coats crawled out from inside, looking quite disheveled.
"D-Did it succeed?"
The smallest of the three spoke with the trembling relief of a survivor, mixed with a hint of uncertain hope.
"The energy readings... before the explosion... peaked at over seventy-five times the theoretical safety limit..." a tall man holding a broken half-pen said. "According to the supplementary notes in Appendix C of Seventeen Collapse Models of Non-Steady State Alchemy Circles... this was undoubtedly a failure."
"Fuck! Then we—"
The third person was about to speak when he suddenly noticed Greg standing nearby, staring fixedly at them.
The atmosphere suddenly fell silent for a moment.
"U-Um..." One of the lab-coat-wearing individuals cleared his throat, trying to sound a bit more persuasive despite his trembling voice. "Excuse me... fellow student? Uh, whoever you are..."
He extended a finger covered in black ash and gingerly pointed toward the smoking crater, forcing a complex expression onto his face that mixed apology with sincerity.
"Please don't misunderstand! This was absolutely not an accident, let alone an explosion!"
His two companions behind him caught on instantly.
"Yes, exactly! This is a long-prepared, high-intensity, short-duration, controllable negative entropy backflow field demonstration by our Department of Alchemy!"
"Look at this crater! It might look irregular, but in truth, the ratio of its major axis, minor axis, and depth is infinitely close to the reciprocal of the golden ratio! This symbolizes our flawless application of the unified philosophical concept of beauty and destruction in alchemical practice!"
"Therefore!"
The person who seemed to be the leader continued:
"This is by no means public property damage or a public safety hazard! It was a forward-looking ideal experiment, even if its outward expression was... well... a bit passionate! But there was actually nothing wrong with this experiment!"
Greg: "What the #%XX is wrong with you Department of Alchemy bastards?! Are you all **#Ox?!"
Rate on N.U.
