The Blind SSS-Class Final Boss Is Obsessed With Me

Chapter 6: Weeping Willow

As I was heavily straining my mind to think of a way to reach my destination without encountering big danger or a huge swarm of monsters, Lyra was trying to keep the other imps away from me.

After the one that she froze in front of me, two more of the imps had noticed us and were dashing through the air toward us.

Lyra didn’t try to do much. She just jumped from the ground and grabbed the first imp by its neck. In an instant, bluish lines began to crack open its skin, which was obviously Lyra’s magic.

"Shree...!"

But the imp didn’t get destroyed immediately. Instead, it began to writhe in pain and started swinging its limbs aimlessly at Lyra.

She didn’t mind the fragile struggle of the monster as she simply threw it at the other charging imp.

Thwack!

The first one clashed with the second imp, and then with the deafening sound of "Boom!" the first imp exploded like ice, taking the second one with it.

And while all that was happening, my mind had finally succeeded in piecing together the hidden path.

"Stop," I shout out and hearing me Lyra, who was going to run again, stopped and looked back at me over her shoulder.

Her expression was a mix of intense urgency and growing irritation. "I told you not to slow down. Clara is—"

"The Great Bridge isn’t safe," I said. "The mana waves from the rifts are bottlenecking the area right over there. If we cross that bridge, we will be walking straight into a swarm of monsters before we even make it halfway through."

Hearing me, she turned around to look straight at me.

For a fraction of a second, a flicker of genuine surprise crossed her usually unreadable face. However, it was gone as quickly as it came.

She was a genius of mana manipulation. She knew how to read the flow of energy. And when she finally cast her gaze up toward the Great Bridge in the distance, she saw exactly what I had described.

The violet rifts were cracking above the stone path.

A normal student wouldn’t have noticed that. A trash half noble who couldn’t even cast basic spells certainly shouldn’t have been able to calculate atmospheric mana in the middle of a life-or-death sprint.

"How do you know that?" Her voice dropped to a low tone and was laced with suspicion. "You don’t even possess an active mana core."

"I have eyes, and I used to read while everyone else was busy practicing swordsmanship and magic," I lied smoothly without breaking eye contact with her. "We will take the old tunnels under the alchemy building. It leads directly to the lower parts of the Sunken Garden. It is narrow, which means monsters can’t swarm us."

Lyra stared at me for three long seconds and the distant screams of students getting ripped apart echoed through the courtyard.

"If this is a trap to save your own skin, Cian," she leaned in closer and whispered, "I won’t just shatter your limbs. I will make you regret every life choice you have made."

"Lead the way," she commanded.

I also didn’t waste a breath replying. I sprinted toward the heavy doors of the alchemy building’s basement structure.

The adrenaline and the fear of death were the only things keeping my legs moving. I was just a nobody, a guy who used to flinch when his boss raised his voice. And now I was trying to alter the plot of a world-ending novel just to keep myself alive.

Soon, we reached the iron grate leading into the tunnels. It was rusted, locked, and reinforced with a basic physical hardening spell to keep students out.

"Step back," Lyra said as she raised her hand. Bluish-silver mana began to gather at her fingertips, ready to blast the door into splinters.

"Don’t," I caught her wrist.

The moment my bare fingers touched her skin, a sudden jolt of freezing energy shot up my arm and made my bones ache.

Lyra flinched and her eyes widened slightly at the sheer audacity of a half noble touching her, which no one had dared to do until now.

"Are you asking to lose your hand?" she hissed.

"If you use raw mana to blast this open, the enclosed stone tunnels will amplify the sound," I explained quickly and released her wrist before she actually chose to amputate my arm.

"It will act like a bell for every sound-sensitive monster within a hundred meters. Look at the lower-left hinge. The hardening spell has a blind spot where the iron meets the stone. Freeze the stone itself, not the metal. Then it will snap the hinge without a sound."

Lyra looked from me to the rusted hinge. For the second time in less than five minutes, I saw a subtle look of astonishment in her eyes.

She must be surprised at how I was able to know all this. The hero had also done the same thing in the story, so that is how I know it.

However, even if she was shocked, she didn’t argue. She just placed a single, slender finger against the stone wall right next to the lower hinge.

Crack.

The moisture in the stone froze instantly. And the sudden drop in temperature caused the rock to snap instantly.

I moved closer, then after grabbing the metal, I pulled it open just enough for us to slip through. "After you," I muttered, gesturing into the damp darkness of the tunnel.

....

The tunnel was pitch black and smelled of stagnant water and old moss.

Above our heads, through the thick stone ceiling, we could hear the muffled thuds of heavy bodies hitting the ground and the frantic, desperate magic spells of the academy instructors finally engaging the monsters and demons.

We were moving as fast as possible. Lyra kept a small floating orb of blue ice hovering above her shoulder, casting a faint light over the stone walls.

As we ran, I noticed her gaze shifting toward me from time to time. She was analyzing me. To her, Cian Von Heist was supposed to be a pathetic, whimpering coward who begged for mercy.

But right now, I was acting completely opposite of that.

"You’re different," she spoke suddenly, and her voice echoed softly against the tunnel walls. "The Cian I know would be crying on the floor, waiting for someone to save him."

"The Cian you knew is no more," I replied as my eyes were fixed on the path ahead. "When you realize the world is ending, you either change or you become a corpse. I prefer living."

She didn’t say anything else, but the speed of her steps increased.

Up ahead, a faint glimmer of natural light began to pierce the darkness. It was the exit of the tunnel which led straight to the Sunken Garden, a place surrounded by massive trees and stone columns.

We burst through the exit. The contrast between here and the place we were a few minutes earlier was staggering.

Here the air was still, the sun was shining through the leaves, and the entire atmosphere was eerily beautiful and peaceful. There wasn’t a single rift that appeared in the sky. Nor any dungeons on the ground.

Lyra immediately scanned the area as her mana flared outward. "Clara!" she called out, but there was no response.

The garden was entirely vacant. There were no students, no monsters, and most importantly, no Clara.

"Clara!" She shouted again but with no response.

Suddenly, the temperature in the garden plummeted instantly, and the grass beneath Lyra’s feet turned white from the pressure radiating from her body. Then she slowly began turning toward me.

"You lied to me," she whispered. "There is no Clara here. You used her name to make me protect you."

A massive spear of solid ice materialized in the air right above her head, and its tip was pointed directly at my chest.

Just a small movement and it would impale me and freeze my heart before I could even blink.

But I still didn’t run. I didn’t even look at the spear. Instead, I looked past her, toward the center of the garden, where a massive willow tree stood tall.

Beneath its branches, sitting quietly on a stone bench, was a figure clothed in pure white robes. She had long, crimson hair that flowed down her shoulders, and a black blindfold was wrapped tightly around her eyes.

Then I smiled faintly and spoke without looking at Lyra.

"You should lower that thing."

"If you attack me now..." I took a slow step forward.

"...you’ll end up apologizing in about thirty seconds."