“Sunbae... how could you ever think you don’t deserve to be loved?”

Reading the handwriting on the pages, Muen felt another painful squeeze in his chest.

Just from these lines, he could picture the girl walking alone through darkness—the despair and pain she must’ve endured.

And yet, despite everything, she had remained so kind, so strong.

Always smiling.

“I’ll save you, sunbae. I swear I will.”

Once again, Muen made a vow in his heart.

...

There weren’t that many experiments recorded in the notebook—barely over a dozen.

But every single one had ended in failure.

Which, of course, made sense. If she had succeeded, Muen wouldn’t be the one agonizing over this now.

“But still...”

His fingers trailed over the text on the title page.

“What exactly were the ‘materials’ she mentioned?”

Combining that with sunbae’s strange past behavior, Muen had a theory.

But he needed confirmation.

He flipped further.

The rest of the notebook was mostly blank—the records had stopped.

Still, just to be thorough, Muen carefully turned every page.

And then, on the final sheet, something suddenly fluttered out from the inner fold.

Quick as lightning, Muen caught the scrap of paper—it looked like a dried leaf, fragile and ancient.

A torn page.

Its edges were scorched black, as if burned by fire. The surface radiated a visibly ancient aura. The densely packed characters on it were even harder to decipher than the old texts on the shelves.

“What is this...”

He couldn’t understand it—but just looking at the page made his heart thud wildly.

His instincts screamed that this was what he’d been searching for.

...

...

“This is Aesoth script.”

Inside the flower-filled dimension, Meladomir glanced at the torn page in her hand as she tinkered with something, then arched a brow in interest.

“There’s still Aesoth script ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) left in this world? Now that’s rare.”

“Aesoth? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that.”

“Of course you haven’t. The nation of Aesoth was destroyed two hundred years ago.”

“Destroyed?”

Not conquered—destroyed?

“That’s right. Wiped out by an Evil God. Based on later readings, it was likely the Moon.”

Meladomir’s tone didn’t change. To her, it was a trivial detail.

“Someone in that country probably did something foolish enough to draw the Moon’s gaze. In the end, the whole place was annihilated. Hundreds of thousands of people fed to an Evil God.”

“...Didn’t the Church of Life intervene?”

“How could they? Even the Church of Life can’t monitor the entire continent. And things like this happen all the time. Every few decades, something gets wiped off the map. A tiny country like Aesoth—barely a few hundred thousand people—has no means of resistance.”

“If they’d managed to hold out a little longer, maybe they could’ve waited for the Church to respond. But they were too weak. In the end, they didn’t even earn a place in official history.”

Meladomir shook her head, not bothering to feign any sorrow.

When you’ve lived too long, even tragedies become dull.

“I see...”

Hundreds of thousands of lives—lost without even a ripple in history.

Muen couldn’t help but sigh.

But now wasn’t the time to lament events buried by time.

What mattered was what was written on this page.

“Then... Meladomir, can you translate it?”

“Of course.”

Her amber-red eyes glanced at him, her small nose wrinkling with disdain.

“You really have to ask? Are you doubting my scholarship, boy?”

“Of course not, how could I?”

Muen gave a sycophantic grin and began massaging her shoulders. “I just didn’t want you to tire yourself out since you seemed busy, Professor Meladomir...”

“Heh. Let’s say that was your intention.”

With a cold snort, she paused her work and began translating the torn page.

It didn’t take long. A few minutes later, all the information on the page had been decoded in her mind.

But her expression grew more and more serious.

That made Muen nervous.

“What is it?”

“It’s a method.”

Meladomir narrowed her eyes—rarely looking this uncertain.

“A treatment... for the Snake Transformation Disease.”

“R-really?!”

Muen almost jumped with excitement.

“There’s really a way to cure it?! What does it say?!”

“Tears of True Love,” Meladomir replied quietly.

“Tears of... True Love?”

In that instant, Muen remembered the necklace he’d given sunbae.

And the “materials” mentioned in her experimental records.

So just like when she’d suddenly asked him to collect Shali’s tears... the materials must’ve been the tears of people who felt genuine affection.

That would line up perfectly with the phrase Tears of True Love.

“Is there anything else?”

Muen asked eagerly. After all, just four words with no conditions or instructions—that was far too vague.

But after waiting a while, all Meladomir did was shake her head.

“There’s nothing else. Just those four words.”

“Just four...?”

Muen stared wide-eyed at the densely inscribed torn page in his hands.

“What do you mean, just four words?! There’s so much writing on this page!”

What kind of scam translation was this? That whole chunk of script, and all it meant was Tears of True Love?

“All of it has been distorted.”

“Huh? Distorted? What does that mean?”

“It means it can’t be translated.”

Meladomir snatched the page from him and snapped her fingers.

A crystal floated behind her, refracting a holy light from who-knows-where that fell onto the torn page.

In an instant, all the densely written text vanished—leaving behind only a few lonely characters on the ruined parchment.

“A certain force tampered with the rest—turned it into something like...”

She tilted her head in thought.

“...like the mosaics in those books you teenagers secretly read. Pure nonsense.”

“...That analogy...”

Muen’s mouth twitched. Then realization dawned—and his face went pale.

“So the method on this page... it’s wrong?”

“No. Quite the opposite. That proves it’s right. Because something worthless wouldn’t be worth hiding.”

After a brief silence, Meladomir examined the torn page again, stroking her smooth chin. Her eyes glittered with curiosity.

“How interesting... I didn’t think anyone had really found a way to treat the Snake Transformation Disease—and then had the nerve to try passing it on. The plagues sown by Evil Gods aren’t something that can be dispelled so easily.”

“Maybe... that’s exactly why Aesoth drew the Moon’s attention. And was destroyed.”

“Can you break this distortion?” Muen asked hopefully.

“No.”

Meladomir sighed and shook her head.

“It’s clearly the power of an Evil God. And suggestion and spiritual interference are precisely what the Moon excels at. What’s been done to this page isn’t just a curse—it’s a law. No one can reverse it. Not even me.”

“Not even you...”

Muen slumped, disappointed by the answer.

But he quickly pulled himself together.

At least now he knew hope existed.

And that alone meant he couldn’t give up.

“But if the Evil God was strong enough to erase all the real information... why leave the phrase Tears of True Love behind?” he asked.

“Heh... Maybe it’s to give you hope,” Meladomir smirked darkly.

“And then watch you struggle in the maze it designed—like a bug chasing an unreachable light in the dark. That’s the kind of sick pleasure Evil Gods enjoy.”

She tilted her head, studying him with a knowing look. Her crimson eyes glinted like she saw right through him.

“Oh? I was wondering why you looked so off. So we’ve got another fool willing to walk into the maze, huh?”

“Then just call me a fool,” Muen said with a bitter smile.

If he weren’t a fool, he wouldn’t have ended up like this. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

“In that case, I’ll give you a hint, foolish disciple.”

Meladomir sighed helplessly.

“Since, well... I am your foolish master, after all.”

“A hint?”

Muen’s eyes lit up. He wanted to throw himself at her flawless, pale thighs in gratitude.

In times like this, the big boss never let him down.

“Though to be fair, it’s more like a personal theory than a real hint.”

Meladomir clasped her hands behind her back and turned to face the distant void.

Despite her small figure, in Muen’s eyes, her back looked immeasurably grand.

Then came a thunderous sound—the giant gears hidden beneath the flower fields began to turn once more. Massive mechanical structures rose from the ground, casting shadows across this false sky and earth.

As if something was being... hidden.

“Tears of True Love sounds overly broad. Without any conditions, it could be anything—a potion, a magic spell, a gemstone, a necklace.”

“But I lean toward it being... actual tears.”

“Actual tears?”

“That’s right. Because the Snake Transformation Disease—more than a change of body or appearance—is a spiritual erosion.”

“And something to reverse that? I don’t believe it would be an object. It’s far more likely to be something born from intense emotion.”

“Which means...”

Muen’s eyes sparkled.

Sunbae’s experiments—her direction had been correct all along?

She simply hadn’t found someone who truly loved.

And that’s why she failed?

“But—”

Meladomir glanced at him, her tone shifting.

“I think... it’s not that simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told you before—the Moon excels at suggestion. So even this answer that was deliberately left behind... might be a kind of suggestion itself.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Just that...”

She raised her hand and grasped at the air, like catching something invisible.

But her palm remained empty.

“There’s something obvious—some crucial factor—right in front of our eyes.”

“But it’s been hidden. Like a sleight of hand. Even I didn’t notice it until now.”