“Ugh… What just happened?” Alec muttered as his consciousness started coming back ever so slowly. As far as he knew, he had just been in his room, thinking of a topic for his new novel. Now, however, he felt weird. ‘Did I die?’ he thought as he barely managed to crack open his eyes. All the light gushing in made him flinch.

Then, he remembered his conversation with the book person.

Taking in his surroundings, Alec’s first thought was simple.

‘What the fuck?’ he cursed in his head as he looked at the white walls and the square-tiled floors. He found the bed he was lying to be a bit too soft for his liking. Then he looked around once more to notice the lack of medical equipment. ‘Well, I’m clearly not inside a hospital. Not a modern one at least,’ he joked to himself. However, before he could laugh at his own joke, he thought about it again.

His eyes then widened as he lifted the white sheets covering him.

‘This… This isn’t my body! I have been transmigrated? I thought that was some kind of weird dream!’ he thought. The lean but full muscles under his skin made Alec shiver. They seemed incredibly well-trained. He admired whoever the previous owner of this body was. ‘The guy… What was he called again? Alec? He sculpted himself like a statue. Am I in some sort of fantasy world? This is unbelievable…’

‘System,’ he mentally commented. He was a seasoned web novel author after all. He knew that he would have a golden finger one way or another. At his command, a status window appeared in front of him.

[Name: Alec Greenwood

Strength: 26

Agility: 26

Health: 27

Mind: 23

Mana: 28]

‘Huh… The language is a bit weird, but I can read it for some reason…’ he mentally muttered. The language was blatantly alien but felt familiar. ‘I wonder how those stats compare to the average person?’

Then, something else attracted his attention.

‘What is this thing?’

In between his chest muscles was a magic-circle-like shape. What he found the most interesting was its intricacy. The details on it were incredibly fine. So much so that it would be impossible even for cutting-edge technology from his previous life to replicate.

‘Magic sure is interesting,’ he thought. The magic circle was hypnotizing. Alec could almost feel it calling out to him. That feeling lasted until he noticed that he actually knew something about this magic circle.

”Mana brain…” he muttered. ‘What? Why do I know all this stuff? It’s… Are my memories merging with the previous owner of the body? But why would I only receive this piece of memory? What does it signify?’

Without further ado, Alec closed his eyes to feel his mana. It was almost instinctual. As if he had done it many times before, the mana brain activated, dizzying him in the process. Before Alec could mentally express how confused he was, the sudden addition to his neural network started bombarding him with memories.

At first, Alec’s brows rose with curiosity. However, as memory after memory came back, that curious expression became a grimace.

‘I’m… I’m back…’ he thought. The memories were very fragmented, maybe a total of three or four days at best. However, they were enough to give him the necessary knowledge of what he had to do. His previous self seemed to have been in a hurry when he prepared the memory package.

‘The previous Alec— no. The previous me told me a simple thing,’ he thought as he revised the memories. ‘I should go to the library’s second level. I don’t know why, but he seems to have thought that I would find the answers I’m looking for there.’

As he sat there in deep contemplation, Alec felt a jolt coming from the mana brain.

Turning his head, he noticed that the room’s door had been opened, and two people had come in.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“You are… Iris and Evan?” Alec muttered. Hearing him talk, the red-haired guy and the timid white-haired girl both flinched in joy.

“You remember!”

“Welcome back!”

The duo jumped at him and took him into a tight hug. Alec smiled wryly at their enthusiasm.

“Only bits and parts. The past me has left some messages.”

“How?” Iris asked. Now that the excitement had passed, she seemed to be baffled by the fact that Alec had managed to retain this much.

“Mana brain,” Alec said. He didn’t explain further, as he probably wouldn’t be able to do so even if he wanted to. He closed his eyes for a brief second. Evan and Iris stepped back to give him space. “I have to reach the second level of the library. What are the results of the exam? And how many days has it been?”

“You did it,” Evan said. He looked at Alec’s chest for a brief moment and then continued. “First place. You will be able to go there right before the mid-term holiday. Only a day has passed. You woke up pretty quickly.”

“Mid-term holiday?” Alec asked. There didn’t seem to be anything about it in the memory package left to him.

“Mm. The week after the exams is a holiday,” Evan explained.

“Which means?”

“The day after tomorrow, there will be an award ceremony. You will be taken there after that I think,” Evan explained. “I don’t know what will happen afterward.”

“I see...” Alec muttered. As he contemplated the memories in his head, something weird caught his eye. “You two… Why did you come here together? My memories don’t tell me that you have interacted much in the past. Or did the past me just not bother mentioning it to me?”

Evan and Iris looked at each other for a second before Evan answered.

“No, we barely know each other,” he said. “After you collapsed, I reached out to her.”

“What? Why?” Alec asked. Although the answer was inside the memory package left to him, nowhere was he told that Evan knew anything.

“She is the only one who has lost her memories like you. Also, you have been hanging out with her lately way too much. Not to mention the fact that you agreed to a completely meaningless challenge to keep her by your side.” Evan continued his explanation. “I thought that she might be the only person that could help us in this ordeal.”

“Ordeal?” Alec asked. “You are… Aware?”

“Yes. I have increased my mind stat a little bit,” Evan said expressionlessly. Alec then turned toward Iris.

“You… The past me told me that you have some sort of innate resistance,” he mumbled. No matter how much they wanted to talk further about the topic, that being would come and wipe them once more if they spoke too much. The fact that they were able to know that there was something wrong with the academy was a testament to the weakening of the being.

“Yes,” Iris said. “I have recently remembered some… Requests from you. That’s why I went searching. But I forgot what I was searching for in the middle of it and went into a loop.”

“A loop?” Alec asked. His gaze shifted toward Evan.

“She was constantly switching between following two different people,” Evan explained briefly.

“If Evan didn’t find me, I might have eventually starved to death because I had practically forgotten all about myself,” she said. “I think that being came for me after attacking you.”

“Probably. It went through most of my memories. There was no way for it not to notice you.” Alec said. He thoughtfully hunched in the bed and placed his head on the back of his hands before continuing. “I’m sorry for endangering you,” he said. Even still, he knew that what had to be done, had to be done. Some part of Alec told him that sacrifices were inevitable in the path to salvation.

“It’s not a problem,” Iris answered. Ever so slowly, her decisive nature seemed to be coming back.

“Did you at least manage to get the necessary information?” Alec asked. Which Iris promptly nodded in answer to.

“As you have said, completely normal students have started acting erratically. Their actions are becoming more and more unhinged,” Iris said. All three knew what that meant. Not everybody was like them. Alec had high amounts of points in his mind and mana stats, had a cluster of memories that were immune to erasure because they didn’t reside in his brain, and was a person with good control over his own mind. Evan had a mind stat that was unimaginably high for an academy student, and Iris seemed to have an innate resistance to anti-memetic magic.

If even their memories were being erased, and that caused their personalities to change, how could the normal students stand on their own?

“Good job Iris,” Alec muttered. Just as he was about to continue with another question, the door of the room was opened, revealing familiar faces.

“You are awake?” Alexei asked as he went in. Behind him were six other people. One was expectedly Thomas. However, the other five were not people Alec had expected to see so soon.

The first two who followed them inside were Edward and Douglas. These two were Senior students who would be graduating soon. While Edward would return to whichever prestigious family he came from, Douglas would probably go searching for jobs. Alec personally felt like he would do a great job as a bodyguard, but that was something Douglas had to decide on his own.

The other three who followed them were the three disciplinary committee members Alec had painstakingly recruited after a bunch of interviews, which he, unfortunately, lost the memories of.

“Yes. Thanks for visiting. But I can’t help but be curious about why this many people came over,” Alec answered.

“We want to know what is happening,” Thomas said loudly. “And we want to help if we can help with it.”

This was the first time Alec heard the guy talk that assertively, which made him involuntarily smile.

Although he was about to tell them that everything was okay and they didn’t need help, the mana brain which had been thinking about the information given by the Iris alerted him to an approaching danger.

“Actually, we might need your help…”