The nauseating herbal smell infiltrated his nostrils, making him want to gag. But he had to be strong, as his friend was lying unconscious, once again.
“You think he never stopped taking drugs?” Alexei asked with his arms crossed. His eyes were closed, probably because they were tearing from the incense. Evan could swear that they were doing this just to shoo away visitors. The only people who could bear this smell were the ones who were comatose.
“Probably so,” he said with a choked voice. He looked at Alec’s unconscious visage and sighed deeply. He was currently sitting on a chair, hunched over and supporting his head with his hands. His shoulder-length red hair curtained his face, blocking his friends from seeing his miserable expression.
“We should have noticed. I swear we did everything to monitor him,” Thomas muttered. There was no need to, as the three had gone through this together. They all knew that Alec should have had no way of getting his hands on more dangerous stuff. At least nothing that would knock him into a coma.
“I know,” Evan said. He was the person who had spent the most time with Alec out of the three. Therefore, he was the one who had been affected the most. “I know but still…”
“He suddenly left the exam, ran to the infirmary, and collapsed in front of it,” Thomas said. “Is that the actions of a normal, healthy person?”
“Will he ever wake up again?” Alexei changed the topic. He knew that the others didn’t have an answer, but still asked anyway.
“He will,” Evan said. He didn’t know why he trusted Alec that much, but he knew he would make it through somehow.
“What if he loses his memory again?” Thomas asked while fiddling his thumbs. Both Alexei and Evan turned their heads to look at him but didn’t answer.
“Can you guys leave me alone for a little bit?” Evan asked. There wasn’t anger in his voice. His face was an ugly frown, Alexei and Thomas assumed he was about to cry, so they left to give him some space.
When the duo left the room, Evan’s bitter expression disappeared. An angry and resolute glare of his washed over Alec as he straightened his posture.
‘Alec didn’t do this to himself,’ he thought. Right from the beginning, his own drug theory hadn’t made much sense to Evan. As far as he knew, Alec had been a rather animated person. Although he had a certain coldness in his actions, he wouldn’t really hide his emotions that much. It would either show in his cynicism or his actual daily life.
‘No, Alec wasn’t one to wallow in misery, he has always strived for the better. There is nothing he hates more than taking a step back,’ Evan reminisced. ‘We were doing disciplinary committee work. He studied well, made a new friend, regained his magic, and got even better at it. He even got a mana brain. He was coping better than anyone else could. So, what triggered this?’
Then, Evan felt something strange in his mind. It was as if he couldn’t think as he wanted. He had experienced this feeling many times before, but for some reason, he remembered the feeling only now.
‘This feeling… It will disappear again. I will forget and become oblivious once more,’ he thought to himself. He knew there was only one option to hold onto it. A desperate measure, something that would change him for the rest of his life.
Without further ado, Evan willed up his system panel.
[Name: Evan Coates
Level: 26
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Strength: 15
Agility: 16
Health: 15
Mind: 20
Mana: 25
Points: 36]
Evan’s eyes wandered over his stats. Pristinely well-adjusted, ready for explosive growth, and an exemplary distribution for a close combat mage. He was well over the average level of an academy student. If he were to keep his stats this way for longer and train for a few more years, he would be on his way to becoming a legend well into his eighties.
However, a crazed determination flashed past his eyes.
‘If it’s for Alec, if it’s for him, it is worth it,’ he thought. There was no hesitation in his mind. Only a blazing fury against something he didn’t even know existed. ‘If someone can do it, it is Alec.’
Taking a deep breath, Evan slammed his system panel with vigor. A few seconds later, years of his hard work had slipped away. His entire life’s worth of accumulation, all poured into a single stat.
[Mind: 56]
As soon as he confirmed the stat distribution, Evan’s eyes started shaking. He started seizing in his chair and toppled over shortly after. The sudden increase in his mind stat was too sudden for him to be able to handle.
‘I can endure! This is… This is nothing compared to…’ he thought as he looked at Alec, who was silently lying in his bed.
Frothing from his mouth, Evan pushed himself off of the ground. Wiping his mouth with his arm, he started thinking. Right now, his mind stat would probably be higher than the average Professor, as the mages usually spent more points on their mana, rather than mind. Only a few mages who focused more on academics and research would distribute evenly between their mana and mind stats.
As Evan’s mind churned, a sharp glint appeared in his eyes.
‘Something has been going on in the academy for a long time,’ he thought. ‘Why did I notice it now?’
Then, he looked around. Everything seemed to be the same, but there was an unnerving stillness to his surroundings. He closed his eyes and punched through a mental threshold. The increase in his mind stat had caused a fundamental change in his thought patterns. Although they were taught that the mind stat wasn’t directly effective in making a person smarter, that was true for the average student. Once someone had enough points in a certain stat, they would start having qualitative changes.
‘Anti-memetic magic,’ he thought to himself. ‘There is something in this room and I can’t perceive it. But that is not important.’
‘The reason I managed to realize, to react, wasn’t because I changed,’ he thought to himself. Everything was starting to make more and more sense. ‘Whatever is doing this to us, it is getting slowly weaker. It is making more mistakes. And the more mistakes it makes, the more we remember.’
‘Alec has become more erratic lately. He leaves the dorm at night without saying anything, he stares in a random direction for a long time without talking. If someone were to watch his life from a third-person perspective, they would be confused as to what was going on. It’s as if his life is fragmented, and he is living a few separate lives at the same time,’ Evan thought. He started pacing around the room. ‘But what I know is, he has been fighting against this thing without us knowing. Hell, he might have not known it himself. How can something be strong enough to control the minds of an entire academy like this? An academy of mages at that! I doubt Alec has the ability to constantly put up a fight against this accursed being. It is too strong.’
‘So, he must have made some preparations. Something that would lead him to the truth. Where did it go all haywire?’ Evan kept following those thoughts. ‘Or did it go haywire at all? Is this a part of his plans? Is there no one I can ask for help? Someone similar to… Alec..?’
Finally, Evan understood what he had to do. He stormed out of the room without looking back. Alexei and Thomas were standing next to the door, waiting for him to come out. Both were surprised by his sudden departure, as they couldn’t even call out to him.
“Hey! Where are you—?” Alexei was about to shout before Thomas stopped him.
“Don’t. This is probably something we shouldn’t meddle in,” he said with a grim frown.
“Why?”
“Evan has always come to us willingly in these matters. If he is not asking for help, it is either that we can’t help, or we shouldn’t help,” Thomas explained. Alexei nodded with a bitter expression, stood still for a few moments, and sighed.
“But should we really do nothing at all?”
“What do you suggest?” Thomas asked with a raised brow.
“Why not do what we can, when we can? If we can’t help, we can ask for it from someone else,” Alexei suggested. After the duo looked at each other silently for a few seconds, they nodded at the same time and turned around to head for their destination.
As the infirmary building calmed down, Alec was left alone in the room.
For a moment, everything seemed to stand still. Then, a piece of wet cloth that had been on the bedside table seemingly started floating. The cloth caressed Alec’s face gently, then went back down to its previous place.
An ethereal sob echoed throughout the room before disappearing into the uncaring wind…