Two hours before the exam…
Standing by the window, watching how crowded the academy was with prospective students was a woman with red flame hair smiling. The distance between where she watched and where the crowd was so far but she could still see it as flame emerged right in front of her fire color eyes, enhancing her vision.
"It's always fun watching my would-be-students flocking to the academy."
The flame enhancing her vision dispersed as she closed her eyes and turned around.
"That said, why would you two be here instead of studying for the exam?"
Sitting across from her were two figures each having a striking appearance. One was a boy with snow-like hair and golden eyes. And the other was a girl with dark green hair tied in a ponytail and sharp violet eyes.
Lux Virtus and Grace Callaghan.
Answering the red-haired woman was Grace. She stood up from her chair and walked closer to the woman who stood still as she watched the little girl being known and friendly with her.
"Nuria. Stop this bullshit…"
"Oh my, looks like I have a very rude student here."
The red-haired woman, Nuria said. There was a teasing tone in her voice.
"I know you'd recognized me."
"Hmm? What do you mean?"
Her expression was getting uncontrollable, there was a playful smile on her face as time passed.
Seeing that, Grace shook her head in disbelief at Nuria's childish behavior.
'She is always like that…'
Grace said inwardly. That was not a hate comment, but something akin to a compliment for her old friend.
A smirk also plastered on Grace's face as she decided to play along with this nostalgic foolish conversation.
"Well… I wonder what did I mean?"
Grace said while pouting. She acted cute and all as if she was really a brat. But, what she did wasn't just for nothing, it was actually to try to get Nuria irritated by her act.
Lux who saw his master acting cute like that had raised his eyebrows in confusion.
All this time being together with her for almost 10 years, it was the first time he had seen her master like that.
Normally, she would always be strict and her guard would always be up wherever and whenever. But now, for the first time, Lux had seen her master lowered her guard completely around that woman who was supposed to be the Octagram's academy headmaster as well as the most popular of one of the eight heroes.
Nuria Crimson.
"Oh. Looks like someone needs to be disciplined. Hmm?"
Looking around the room, several tables and walls had portraits and paintings as well as figures of Garuda.
Garuda was another one of the 8 heroes. If Nuria was the most popular hero, Garuda was the most respected hero until now. He was reported as MIA (Missing In Action) at the war in the land of Africa a few decades ago.
Everyone still hoped that Garuda was still alive wherever he was. However, the two girls who were his teammates back then, who had even fallen in love knew that the person would never come back.
"It seems someone needs to know how to forget a person after they married," she said, but there was bitterness left on her face as she said that.
As she heard that, Nuria's stare became cold. Her cold and sharp stares were directed at the girl in front of her, there was a significant difference between their height so it looked like Nuria was doing a dominating stare. But, Grace stood firmly and stared Nuria back.
"What do you even mean by that, little girl?"
There was no more teasing tone in her voice but cold and demanding.
"You know full well what I meant, big girl."
Challenging Nuria, her whispering voice sounded like a snake's hiss.
The atmosphere of the room suddenly became heavy and intense.
Sparks flickered around Nuria's hand like a match, while a swirl of wind slowly formed under Grace's feet.
"Umm…"
Noticing there was another person beside them, that was Lux, both of them immediately ceased.
"Huu… Sorry for getting annoyed over such a small thing, grass…"
"No, it's me who is sorry for bringing up a sensitive topic… wait, did you just call me grass?"
"Hmm? Maybe you heard it wrong, I literally called you Grace."
Said Nuria, her head tilted as she play innocent.
Grace's sharp stare was interrupted by the very person to who she directed her stare. Gesturing her hand to a chair, Nuria invited her guest to sit down first.
"Take a seat first, would you?"
When the two of them sat in their respective chairs, separated only by the desk where Nuria was working on her paper. The pile of papers on the table was burnt without leaving ashes by Nuria's fire. The papers were actually not charred but just moved to another place. You could say what Nuria did was a teleportation ability using her versatile fire.
A different reaction was coming from the two youths. Lux was surprised and confused as to why would she burnt those papers, this was the reaction coming from someone who didn't know Nuria's abilities. In contrast to him was Grace who kept her unchanged expression when the papers were burned because she knew what did Nuria just do.
"So, what's your business to come here?"
"Nothing. I just came to see if you recognized me in this form. And you did."
Nuria raised her eyebrows and slightly gasped.
"Oh yeah… What happened to your body? You look even younger and smaller than when we fought at the first catastrophe."
"Something happened when I was exploring the ancient ruin in Greece…"
"Did you got cursed?"
"Something like that. I failed to solve the puzzle and this is what happened to me after 20 years."
"20 years? So it was in 2010? Do you happen to know what is the name of the curse?"
As Nuria's curiousness built up and started writing on a paper. On the other side, Grace was shaking her head with a little grief was expressed.
"No. But this curse made my age growth reversed."
"Reversed?"
Scribbles began to fill the paper that was originally blank.
"Huu… Try using a status appraisal artifact to me…"
The confusion was shown on Nuria's face but then she only nodded and used the ring with a tiny Storage Cube instead of jewelry. Immediately, a magnifying glass materialized as a blue light at first and then became a solid object.
While using the artifact, if one looked carefully, they could see a glow emanating from the magnifying glass indicating it was being used. There were some artifacts that required mana—mostly artifacts that had an active skill option, and that artifact was one of them.
When the artifact emitted light, it meant that the artifact was being used and using mana. This type of artifact was rare even almost non-existed among man-made artifacts, such as storage cubes and smartwatches, which didn't require mana to use.
So, mana consuming artifact was often found in dungeons or ruins. For example, the Avatar Mask was in that category.
Although there were also artifacts found in dungeons and ruins which was not in the category of mana-consuming artifact or even a hybrid of the two category–could be used using mana or without mana. Zio's sword, Retro, was in this category.
Once used, Nuria could see Grace's information screen.
===
[Profile]
Name: Grace Callaghan
Age: 17
Gender: Female
[Stats]
Strength: D+
Agility: D
Intelligence: D
Stamina: E+
Magic: C
Charisma: D
Luck: D-
[Blessings]
> [Swordmaster]
[Talents]
> [Swordmanship lv.5]
[Traits]
> [Flow lv.3]
> [Enhanced Mind lv.2]
[Curses]
> [Time Reversal]
===
"What?!!!"
How shocked Nuria was when she saw her old friend's status information. She couldn't imagine how much Grace must have suffered, who had lost almost all of the skills that she had trained for years. Even her age which was supposed to be 56 this year was changed to 17, how was it possible that there existed such an extreme curse as this?
"Is this… for real?"
Grace could only lower her head, as well as Lux who looked away when Nuria looked at Grace with a really worried face.
"It is real. By the way…"
To her surprise, Grace looked unfazed and didn't care about her situation, and it turned out that when she looked down, she was looking at paperwork that dropped there.
"Who is this?" Grace said as she picked up the paper.
"Huh?"
A portrait pasted on it was of a silver-haired girl, with eyes that resembled the color of ice. Looking at it, Nuria's eyes shone with recognition.
"Ah. It's one of the best students of the last year's second-year student. She grew at a rapid pace! I intended to teach her personally but there was something off about her."
"Heh… It's rare to find someone with S rank potential such as hers."
"Right!"
Realizing that the topic had been strayed, Nuria shook her head and stared at Grace seriously.
"Don't try to change the subject, Grace! Tell me why the skills you have trained for so many years disappeared like this, even your age too. Don't you feel sad?"
"What can I do? It's my fate."
"But…" Nuria paused just to exhale a breath stuck in her throat.
"Your stats were supposed to be already at S-rank. Your swordsmanship too should be at level 10. Even you lost all of your skills."
"I can still fight off a B-rank monster and A-rank villains with what I have now."
"Still, if we don't take care of this matter soon, in a few years you will lose everything."
Grace snorted and placed her feet on the table.
"Lose everything? As if I will let that happen."
Nuria got a bit excited as she heard Grace say that.
"Then…!"
With her hand, Grace gestured to her right side where Lux was sitting quietly from the start. He flinched a bit when everyone's attention was suddenly directed toward him.
Looking back and forth between Lux and Grace, Nuria narrowed her eyes as childish thoughts surged up in her head.
"Your boyfriend?"
"Yes— I meant NO, NO! He's my disciple!! How can you even think that?!"
"Heh…"
Nuria used the artifact to Lux.
"Oh?"
***
Having a conversation with an old friend who I didn't see for decades was indeed a pleasant feeling except that when you met them, they were bringing a piece of bad news along with them. Just like how my old friend, Grace was.
It had been almost 20 years since we didn't see each other. Today, we were reunited in the very academy we'd built together. But, it felt sad when I saw her unfortunate state.
She lost almost all the skills she had been trained for years just because of a nonsense curse that reversed her personal 'time'.
As she and her disciple bid me goodbye. I could just stare blankly at the door where they had left, it needed me a solid ten minutes to reclaim my mind.
"Poor Grace…"
She was the youngest member of the eight heroes and was the most unfortunate member among us. But, this time, her bad luck was beyond everyone's expectations.
"I can't lose you too, Grace… I've lost all of my old comrades... now only the two of us are left…"
I could not. I swear it. I won't let you leave me alone in this world, Grace.
"I will try everything to save her…"
A shadow emerged behind her, the figure resembled a human. The shadow was complete and plain dark. No face, featureless, the only thing that could be recognized from the shadow was that it just resembled a human stature.
"Find out about the curse and the ruins…"
She paused for a moment. A flame sparked in her palm.
"... as soon as possible!"