Magic Academy's Bastard Instructor - Chapter 278: Lasting Happiness to You [6]

Chapter 278: Lasting Happiness to You [6]

Karina had no intention of turning back.

She was already at the edge of breaking.

She had burned through an absurd amount of the frequencies she had accumulated over twenty years. What remained was no longer excess, but her foundation.

If she were to rewind again now, she would not be spending stored reserves. She would be spending herself.

Of course, she knew she would not immediately cease to exist yet.

But what was the point?

What was the point of throwing away nearly fifty years of her life for this?

Fifty years of repeating grief. Fifty years of watching him die. Fifty years of trying to change fate, only to be dragged back into the same abyss.

She understood she could not go back anymore because she was stuck.

Trapped inside this broken paradox, this warped timeline that no longer resembled the world she had once tried to save. And for the first time in decades, Karina felt helpless.

For a while, she drifted like a lone body in an endless ocean, doing nothing but trying to preserve whatever sanity she had left.

She had done everything correctly. The order. The sequence. The triggers. Even her stepfather was dead now, killed by Vanitas Astrea just as events once dictated.

Everything was how it should be.

Except for one thing.

Vanitas Astrea kept dying.

No matter how she arranged the pieces, no matter how exactly she aligned them, he would still meet his demise.

But somewhere along the line, something changed.

“What the…”

Vanitas Astrea, whom she had just mentally incapacitated, whom she had entombed in ice and deprived of his memory, was walking around as if nothing had happened.

As if she had not frozen his very neural pathways.

As if she had not erased him.

It made no sense.

He should have been a husk. A hollow shell.

Instead, he was alive and functionally present.

And what shocked her even more came later.

“Charlotte…?”

Charlotte moved into the dormitories of her own accord.

In previous loops, when she left things to their own device, Charlotte never moved. When she interfered, Charlotte still refused.

So what was different now?

Was it…

Was it this mentally wiped Vanitas Astrea?

Had removing something from him altered the pressure of the world itself?

Nevertheless, Karina waited and observed.

To her surprise, everything began progressing exactly as she remembered.

“The Wyndale family is finished, huh? Well, let me personally ensure the bloodline ends with you, you sadistic little shit!”

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

It was an almost embarrassing sight.

Vanitas was absolutely demolishing Desmond Wyndale’s family jewels without a hint of elegance.

Karina wasn’t even sure if this was how it had unfolded in the timeline she remembered. She had never witnessed this particular moment so clearly before.

But regardless of the method, the outcome was undeniable.

Charlotte was alive.

Desmond was dealt with.

And this time, it had not escalated into an irreversible murder in cold blood. There were witnesses, provocation, and proper justification.

Which meant… Vanitas Astrea was absolved.

Not only had he saved Charlotte from taking her own life, but he had also stopped Desmond in a way that would not send him to a prison cell.

For the first time in what felt like centuries, Karina felt something bloom in her chest.

Hope.

“….”

And it was taken away from her far sooner than she expected.

“…”

Vanitas Astrea was dead again. According to the reports, he had been killed by the former Great Power, Mikhail, within the frozen prison in the north, Index.

Karina stared at the news report for a long time, unable to process them.

Index?

That wasn’t right.

Vanitas Astrea was supposed to stop Mikhail there. That confrontation in the frozen prison was meant to be his turning point. The moment he earned a massive boost in reputation. The moment the public began to slowly move away from his shady past.

It was supposed to be a victory that was the foundation for his standing.

Instead, he had died there.

Killed by the very man he was meant to defeat.

The newspaper crumpled under Karina’s grip.

This was wrong.

Karina had a simple rule for when to turn back.

Whenever Vanitas Astrea died.

So she returned once again.

She barely had any frequencies left. There was no time to sit back and observe before making careful adjustments. Every move had to be exact.

The next item on her itinerary was clear. She would follow Vanitas discreetly, all the way to Index.

She froze time and stepped into the frozen world with confident strides. Inside, she moved freely and disguised herself as one of the guards.

The reports had not exaggerated anything. It didn’t take long before chaos reigned across the entire facility.

Corpses staggered through the halls by a necromancer commanding the dead. The place had been thrown into complete disorder.

And then came the decisive moment.

“He doesn’t have enough mana…”

Vanitas, believing he could cast his spell in time and intercept Mikhail’s incoming attack before it reached him. His reserves were insufficient, and his casting speed was lacking.

If nothing changed, he would fail.

So Karina intervened.

In that fleeting instant, she fed him just enough mana to complete the spell.

———!

The air trembled.

Yet his positioning had been wrong from the start. Even if his spell fired, Mikhail’s attack would still collide with him. He would be washed away without question.

Karina tried to freeze time again, but she was a fraction too late.

So she did the only thing she could.

She lunged forward and shoved Vanitas out of the trajectory. The spell that had been meant to swallow him whole instead took his arm.

And just in that nick of time, time had frozen still. Karina, who was nearly about to be swallowed by the spell instead, moved away, saving herself in the process before resuming time once again.

The Professor had lost his arm.

But he was not dead.

Karina had preserved the severed limb the moment it was torn away. She made sure it did not deteriorate and lose what little vitality remained within it.

Later on, when the immediate danger had passed, the arm was reattached.

And just like that, she overcame the obstacle before her.

But Karina knew better than to feel relieved.

This had only been the second of many hurdles she would have to face. The first had nearly driven her to the brink of madness.

Compared to that, this one had ended quickly.

Still, the path ahead remained long.

* * *

As time passed, Karina came to learn a certain truth.

The Professor’s deepest and darkest secret.

He was not Vanitas Astrea.

The realization came as she observed him more closely. In his free time, he studied the world in an unusual way. He read about its culture and its customs, and even familiarized himself with social norms and history as though he were a foreigner trying to adapt.

And yet, in public, he played his role flawlessly. He did everything he could to pass as the real Vanitas Astrea.

Was this always the case?

Had the person she knew never truly been who he claimed to be?

The answer became clearer when she followed him all the way to Estelle.

“…I see.”

There was no doubt about it now. This Vanitas Astrea was investigating the past of the previous Vanitas Astrea, approaching it like an outsider piecing together the truth of another man’s life.

As if he were someone who had inherited a name but not the memories attached to it.

Could this be an aftereffect of her memory wiping?

It was obvious that a different presence had taken over. The change was too distinct to ignore.

But was such a thing even possible?

Vanitas Astrea should have been left a hollow shell. That had been the expectation.

Yet he moved as if he had reasons to. Nevertheless, he was certainly not the original Vanitas Astrea.

Yet he moved as though he had his own reasons.

Nevertheless, he was certainly not the original Vanitas Astrea.

And for reasons she could not immediately explain, this Vanitas felt far more familiar to her than the one who had lived for twenty-six years under that name.

There were some similarities, of course. But this Vanitas Astrea seemed different in a way that was difficult to articulate.

He was more… reasonable. That was the closest word she could find.

And just when she began to settle, another hurdle rose to destroy her brief sense of peace.

Vanitas Astrea was killed once again.

This time, it was the Gambino Crime Family. The cause was a misunderstanding involving the Head’s daughter, Anastasia Gambino.

Karina turned back time once again.

* * *

When the Gambinos killed him, Karina moved the pieces behind the scenes to ensure Vanitas would survive the next time.

When the club went on their trip to witness the phenomenon known as Zen’s Comet, an Archdemon appeared from nowhere and sought to claim his life. Karina intervened and pulled him back from the brink once again.

When the Blood Moon rose and Vanitas Astrea was cut down by a Dullahan, she poured enough mana into him to guarantee he had the firepower to unleash his spells after the next cycle.

He survived because she made certain he could.

When the Ainsley Marquess Family targeted him, and the Head personally ended his life, Karina stepped in directly.

She cleared every one of Astrid’s obligations so the latter could attend the Saintess’s inauguration ceremony. That single adjustment allowed Vanitas to use her presence as a scapegoat and dismantle the Ainsleys’ plan before it reached its conclusion.

Time and time again, Vanitas Astrea died in events where he should have survived.

And time and time again, Karina Maeril stepped in to save him from every impending death that awaited him.

Whenever he died, she turned back time.

When circumstances could not be adjusted from afar, she interfered personally.

She moved one piece here and another there. She redirected people’s paths. She supplied him with mana. She amplified him and empowered him.

And when all else failed, she hunted down those who had killed him and erased them herself, sometimes without even knowing who they truly were.

Vanitas Astrea had many enemies who wanted him dead.

Karina made sure they would never succeed.

A world without the Professor was not a life worth living.

Until one hurdle, where Karina wasn’t sure what to do.

“….”

Charlotte’s inevitable death.