I Got a Fake Job at the Academy

Chapter 745 - Side Story 18: What Makes a Relationship (3)

Rudger thought of a girl named Rene.

He met her not long after he left the Holy Kingdom, holding the hand of his teacher Grandel.

Having been confined only to the island called the Bretus Holy Kingdom, Rudger faced a wider and more beautiful world.

Rudger walked forward with a certain conviction, and encountered various members living in the world.

Rene's name was written at the very front of the bookmark among those countless connections.

'When I first saw her, she was just a child as innocent as could be.'

Naturally bright, Rene was a child who received plenty of her mother's love, like the warm sun on a spring day.

She was the complete opposite of Rudger, who was like looking at a cold night forest.

The paths they had walked, and even the paths they would walk in the future, would be different. So Rudger paid no attention to Rene. He thought she was someone unrelated to him.

But the warm light of the sun eventually permeates even the darkest places. Rene took an interest in Rudger and approached him with that innocent smile.

Having someone approach with goodwill like this made Rudger feel no small amount of bewilderment because in the Holy Kingdom, except for one friend, everyone had tried to kill him.

So at first, he just gave her perfunctory responses and moved on. Probably just that would have been enough for most people to give up on approaching him.

But Rene was not like that. Whether she was meddlesome, or conversely tactless, Rene kept clinging to Rudger, even throwing tantrums asking him to play with her.

If Rudger had yelled at her angrily there, their relationship probably wouldn't have developed any further.

But Rudger wasn't the type to yell angrily at someone. At that time, Rudger had nothing to do either.

So rather, having Rene meddle like this and ask him to play was honestly a welcome thing for Rudger.

Because it had been truly a long time since he had formed a connection with someone other than his teacher Grandel.

Perhaps deep down, he had hoped this child would continue to pull him along.

'Certainly, at least in those moments, it was a time when I purely enjoyed myself, forgetting all worries and concerns.'

Yes. That was a beautiful memory for Rudger too.

He also met the cheeky wolf cub Freuden Ulburg there. Although they didn't get along very well with each other, the three of them maintained a reasonably good relationship with Rene as a buffer between them.

However, the end of that memory met with the worst outcome.

The memories of that time, even now after so much time has passed, cause him to feel the pain of having his heart torn apart with a raw blade just by recalling them.

Even if it was something that couldn't be helped. Even if all the truth was revealed. Even if he received forgiveness from Rene.

Because the heavy burden named the past never disappeared.

'Having lost her memory and lived knowing nothing, then faced with the heavy truth and suffered, yet Rene endured.'

Rene wasn't just a bright child. She possessed a strong heart incomparable to anything else, a firm core that might waver momentarily but would never break. 

That was what made Rene climb up to where she is now, and created the opportunity to rescue Rudger who had fallen into imaginary space.

And now Rene was staring intently at Rudger, trying to say something.

Although it was the middle of a dark night, the soft moonlight was shining, so it wasn't difficult to make out objects.

Rene's face was red enough to stand out even in the blue moonlight. Her cheeks flushed as if holding a slight fever, and her eyes trembling, perhaps from tension.

It was a reaction shown when making a big decision and about to utter something important.

Rudger quietly waited to hear what Rene would say, neither rushing her nor ignoring her, so that she could organize her thoughts and fully express what was on her mind.

Waiting was familiar. Hadn't he endured three years alone in a space with no one?

Rene hesitated as if about to speak, mumbling her lips several times. Her clenched hands made fists then loosened powerlessly.

That appearance reminded Rudger of Rene from her student days that he remembered. Though she had matured more and her hair had grown longer to resemble her mother, Rene still retained her former self.

"Brother! I......"

Finally, as if having made some decision, Rene opened her mouth while staring directly into Rudger's eyes.

"I......"

Flap!

The sound of flapping wings rang out loudly from somewhere. Rene, who had been concentrating on Rudger, was startled by the sound and her shoulders trembled.

"Nothing to be startled about. It was just a pigeon." 

"Ah."

Rene, belatedly realizing she had been too nervous, nodded blankly. The resolve she had barely mustered scattered so futilely.

"So, what was it you wanted to say?" 

"Well, I mean......"

Rene said with her eyes tightly shut.

"I, I discovered a new magic!"

Having said that, Rene belatedly regretted her own action. That's not it. That's not what I wanted to say.

'Sh-should I tell him now that what I really want to say is something else?'

Yes, let me tell him quickly. This feeling I've been holding onto until now. Of course, I might be rejected. Just thinking about that is scary, but I hated doing nothing even more.

Before Rene could make a decision Rudger's reaction to those words was faster.

"You discovered a new magic? Is that really true?" 

"Ah, yes." 

"Congratulations, Rene. A new magic. If you're saying that, it must certainly be something new that didn't exist in the world."

Rudger praised Rene with pure admiration. It was a voice with even a faint but heated excitement that Rudger, who remained calm in any situation, didn't easily show.

"Y-yes, right?" 

"This new magic, is it related to your spatial mana? Is there something else possible besides traversing space?"

At Rudger's question, Rene's head spun. Her heart cried out that she should convey her feelings to Rudger right now, but her head cried out that it was proper to answer the question she had been asked first.

In that complicated situation, Rene ended up choosing the easier path.

"W-well......It was something that happened in the process of creating a dimensional passage to connect to the imaginary space in order to save you, brother."

Rene calmly conveyed to Rudger what she had seen and discovered.

"My mana is related to space, right? So I needed to open a door leading to imaginary space. It wasn't very difficult. Because beyond dimensions, most of it was imaginary space."

It was then that Rene first realized how vast that unknown world invisible to the eye was.

If the present world she lived in was a small island, imaginary space was a vast ocean. It was a boundless sea whose depth, width, and what lay beyond the horizon could not be fathomed.

In that boundless sea, Rene had to set the coordinates of where he was staying based on the materials and objects Rudger had handed over.

More than prying open space and creating protective artifacts that could adapt to the environment beyond. Clearly specifying where in imaginary space Rudger was located was the most arduous and difficult task.

The only thing she could deduce was to go downward from the position where Rudger had fallen from the Crystal Corridor. However, due to the nature of imaginary space, just because Rudger fell downward didn't mean it went down the z-axis in coordinates.

In that situation, if she entered wrongly, there was a risk that Rene, who was going to rescue him, could also become lost in imaginary space.

So Rene devoted herself even more to research to narrow such margins of error. Time and again, along with her familiar, she peered into the cracks beyond dimensions and updated countless coordinates.

In the midst of that, Rene was able to discover something by chance.

"What exactly was it?"

Rudger became deeply interested in Rene's words.

Dimensional travel related to spatial magic was Rudger's long-cherished wish and task that he had studied for a long time in order to go meet his mother.

Although he had achieved that wish, his interest in spatial magic that he had cultivated until now hadn't disappeared. Even while operating with countless changed identities, there was an unchanging essence in him, and that was being a mage.

A mage who had the world's greatest mage as his teacher, at that.

Rudger loved magic. That's why he showed great interest in the possibility of a new horizon of magic that Rene was talking about.

"It was a world exactly like ours." 

"Exactly like?" 

"I don't know in detail. I saw it hazily through the dimensional barrier. But if I didn't see it wrong, it was certainly similar to our world. Isn't that fascinating?" 

"Hmm. Certainly fascinating. You saw a world the same as or similar to this place beyond dimensions." 

"At first, I thought I had set the coordinates wrong and was observing our world as if looking in a mirror."

"But that wouldn't be it. The possibility of glimpsing your own world through dimensions is extremely low. That would be no different from facing your own eyes with your own eyes." 

"Then after all, if what I saw wasn't an illusion......" 

"Right. It would be a world beyond another dimension, similar to this world."

Just as this place and Earth are divided by dimensions. It is also divided into other dimensions.

Why was Rene able to find this, which hadn't been discovered until now, while researching?

'First of all, it would be because the restrictions Lumensis placed on the world disappeared.'

Lumensis placed restrictions on people born with spatial mana so that humans couldn't escape from within the cage.

The curse named excessive blessing of a god was a harsh fate that eroded a person's body and caused them to die around the time they became adults.

Not only that, but even when using spatial magic, they greatly twisted coordinates to prevent long-distance direct movement, and especially created a cage with divine power to prevent going outside.

'Second, it would be because Rene continued to search beyond dimensions through the spatial mana she awakened.'

The dimension they are in now is a small island floating in the middle of a vast ocean. From that island, Rene was the only person who looked at the ocean outside the island, and at the same time was a sentinel who could confirm what was beyond it.

Although the original goal was to find Rudger, and this matter was just something stumbled upon.

Nevertheless, it was undeniable that this was a discovery of the century.

Because they learned that there were islands similar to this one in other places too.

"However, it felt different from the world called Earth where you lived, brother. It's certainly similar to our world, but strangely different, that kind of feeling?" 

"Hmm. You said you glimpsed a dimension?" 

"Yes, that's right." 

"Perhaps what you saw might be some kind of branching point split off from this world."

Rene's eyes widened.

"A branching point?"

"Yes. Worlds all exist in their own forms. Like how Earth and this place are different, other dimensions would certainly be different too. But you said you felt a sense of déjà vu there, some kind of similarity. That intuition was surely not wrong. What you actually saw would have been this world with a different directionality." 

"Such......" 

"The power of dimensions is infinite. Since it's a place where space-time is twisted, we can't say there isn't a place that is the same as where we lived but different, that met a different ending."

Multidimensions. What Rene saw might have been a fragment of that.

"Of course, even saying this is just a hypothesis. Because I haven't properly seen it myself. But the fact that you brought this up means you need confirmation too."

Rene nodded seriously, even forgetting what she had to say to Rudger in the first place.

"Yes, that's right. There's a way for me to figure it out alone, but still, the more people the better. Especially if it's you, brother, who stepped into this field before me." 

"That's too much praise. The current me doesn't even reach your toes." 

"That's modesty. You were the first to establish this theory, brother. Above all, you look the most interested." 

"That, I can't deny." 

"It's still just a possibility so I can't be certain, but if I really do research in this direction, won't you help and join me then, brother?"

The exploration of new magic was a very tempting proposal for Rudger, who hadn't fully decided what to do yet.

Yes. These various options must be the freedom he had wanted so much.

"Let's do that. I want to taste that first flavor of glory too." 

"Great!"

Rene jumped up from her seat with joy, thinking she had finally done it.

"Huh?"

Belatedly, the thought flashed through Rene's head: Huh? Something's strange. I don't think this is it.

But it was too late to turn back.