The Solution

“Senior, how could you ever be unworthy of love?”

Ewan’s heart ached anew as he gazed at the words inscribed on the page.

Just by reading these characters, Ewan could envision the despair and agony the girl must have endured, walking alone on a path shrouded in darkness.

Yet, despite it all, she remained so gentle, so resilient.

Always smiling.

“I will save you, Senior. I promise.”

Ewan vowed once more in his heart.

****

The pamphlet recorded only a few experiments, merely a dozen or so.

Each one, however, had ended in failure.

This was to be expected; if they had succeeded, Ewan would not have had to worry about it at all.

“However…”

Ewan’s fingers traced the words on the flyleaf.

“What exactly are the materials written here?”

Considering Senior’s peculiar behavior in the past, Ewan had a theory.

But it still required confirmation.

He continued turning the pages.

What followed were large stretches of blank space; the records had ended.

Although it seemed unlikely there would be any further discoveries, Ewan meticulously flipped through every page out of caution.

Just then, on the very last page, something suddenly fluttered out from a hidden fold in the flyleaf.

With quick reflexes, Ewan caught the paper, which felt as brittle as a withered leaf.

It was a torn fragment.

The edges bore black, burnt marks, as if scorched by flames, and the paper itself exuded an ancient aura visible to the naked eye. The dense, intricate script covering it was even more challenging to decipher than the archaic texts in the ancient tomes on the bookshelves.

“This is…”

Though he couldn’t understand it, merely seeing the fragment made Ewan’s heart pound fiercely.

His intuition told him this was precisely what he had been searching for.

****

“These are Aesop characters.”

Within the space that once again bloomed into a sea of flowers, Teacher Mera, busy with some clinking and clanking, took the fragment and glanced at it. Her eyebrows immediately lifted, and a look of keen interest appeared on her face.

“Aesop characters still exist in this world? How rare.”

“Aesop? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it.”

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

“Destroyed?”

Not merely perished, but… destroyed?

“Precisely. It was annihilated by an evil god. According to later observations, it was likely the doing of the Moon.”

Teacher Mera’s tone remained unchanged, as if this were merely an insignificant matter to her.

“Most likely, someone within the nation did something extraordinary, drawing the Moon’s attention and ultimately leading to their destruction. Hundreds of thousands of people all became sustenance for the evil god.”

“But… didn’t the Church of Life intervene?”

“How could they? Even if the Church of Life is powerful, it can’t monitor the entire continent. Such incidents are all too common here, occurring roughly every few decades. A small nation like Aesop, with only a few hundred thousand people, stood no chance against the threat of an evil god.

If it had managed to hold on a little longer, perhaps it could have awaited rescue from the Church of Life. Alas, due to its inherent weakness, it ultimately met a fate so obscure it didn’t even qualify for a mention in official history.”

Teacher Mera shook her head, not bothering to display even a hint of regret.

When one has lived through such an immense span of time, events that would otherwise be extraordinary naturally begin to feel numb.

“Is that so…”

Ewan couldn’t help but sigh, witnessing how the lives and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people failed to even cause a ripple in the long river of history.

However, Ewan had no time to lament over matters long buried by time; he was more concerned with other pressing issues.

“Then… Teacher Mera, can these words be translated?”

“Of course.”

Teacher Mera’s amber-red eyes darted to Ewan, and her small nostrils twitched disdainfully. “You actually have to ask such a question? Boy, are you questioning your teacher’s knowledge?”

“Certainly not! How could I?”

Ewan sidled closer with a fawning smile, thoughtfully massaging Teacher Mera’s shoulders. “I was just worried you were busy, Teacher Mera, and didn’t want you to get tired.”

“Heh, let’s just pretend that’s what you were thinking.”

Teacher Mera gave a cold, expressionless scoff, then paused her work to translate the fragment.

The translation was swift. Within minutes, all the words recorded on the fragment transformed into comprehensible information within Teacher Mera’s mind.

However, her expression gradually turned solemn.

This couldn’t help but make Ewan nervous.

“What’s wrong?”

“This is a method.”

Teacher Mera narrowed her eyes, stating with a rare hint of uncertainty, “A method to treat… the Serpentification Disease.”

“Rea… Really?”

Upon hearing Teacher Mera’s words, Ewan was so excited he nearly jumped on the spot. “The Serpentification Disease can really be cured? How? What method is described?”

“Tears of True Love.” Teacher Mera slowly uttered the four words.

“Tears of True Love?”

In an instant, Ewan thought of the necklace he had given Senior.

He also recalled the ‘materials’ mentioned in Senior’s experimental records.

Indeed, just like when Senior had suddenly asked him to collect Sally’s tears, those materials were likely the tears shed by ‘those who harbored love.’

This also fit the four words, ‘Tears of True Love.’

“What else?”

Ewan eagerly awaited more, as, no matter how he thought about it, the phrase ‘Tears of True Love’ alone, without any prerequisites, was far too broad.

Yet, after waiting for a long moment, he only saw Teacher Mera shake her head. “There’s nothing else. Just those four words.”

“Four words?”

Ewan’s eyes widened, and he shook the fragment, which was covered in dense, complex characters. “But there are so many words on this!”

What kind of translation was this? Could such a large passage only convey the meaning of four words?

“Those words were distorted.”

“Eh? Distorted? What does that mean?”

“It means they’re untranslatable.”

Teacher Mera snatched the fragment away and snapped her fingers.

A crystalline orb shimmered behind her, refracting holy light from an unknown source onto the fragment.

In an instant, the dense characters on the fragment vanished, leaving only a few lonely words pitifully clinging to the page.

“Some power affected those words, making them similar to…”

Teacher Mera tilted her small head in thought. “Similar to the meaningless mosaic you pubescent boys often see in certain books.”

“That analogy…”

Ewan couldn’t help but twitch his lips, but then he quickly reacted, his face paling. “So, the method recorded on the fragment is wrong?”

“No, quite the opposite. This precisely proves its correctness. For something erroneous would have no value in being deliberately concealed.”

After a brief moment of solemnity and confusion, Teacher Mera again scrutinized the fragment, stroking her smooth chin with an expression of keen interest. “Intriguing. I never expected someone could actually cure the Serpentification Disease, and foolishly intended to pass down this method. The calamity unleashed by an evil god is not something easily dispelled. Perhaps it was precisely for this reason that ancient Aesop attracted the Moon’s attention and brought about its destruction?”

“Then can Teacher Mera break this power?”

“No.”

Teacher Mera sighed, shaking her head. “Clearly, this power comes from an evil god. Suggestion and mental influence are precisely what the Moon excels at. What has been imposed upon these words is akin to a certain rule. No one can break it, not even I.”

“Not even you, Teacher?”

Receiving this disappointing answer, Ewan felt a pang of despair.

However, he quickly rallied.

At least this time, the existence of hope had been proven, hadn’t it?

Then there was no reason to give up.

“But if the evil god had the power to erase this information, why bother leaving these four words?” Ewan couldn’t help but wonder.

“Heh heh, to give you a glimmer of hope, then watch you struggle in the labyrinth He deliberately set. Like a tiny insect chasing an unreachable light in the darkness—isn’t that the evil god’s twisted sense of humor?”

Teacher Mera smirked, her lips curving into a wicked grin. She tilted her head, observing Ewan, a flicker of understanding in her crimson eyes, as if seeing through everything. “Oh, my, I knew you seemed off. It appears another fool willing to enter the labyrinth and suffer has emerged.”

“Then consider me a fool,” Ewan said with a helpless, bitter smile.

If he weren’t a fool, he wouldn’t have fallen to such a state.

“Since that’s the case, I, the teacher of a fool, shall give you a hint.”

Teacher Mera sighed helplessly. “What can I do? I’m a fool’s teacher, after all.”

“A hint?”

Ewan’s eyes brightened. He was so moved he almost lunged forward to hug Teacher Mera’s fair, tender thighs right then and there.

When it truly mattered, the powerful ones were always reliable.

“It’s more of a personal guess than a hint, really.”

Teacher Mera clasped her hands behind her back and turned to gaze into the distance. Though petite, in Ewan’s eyes, her silhouette seemed to grow immensely tall.

At that moment, Ewan heard a tremendous roar. The colossal gears hidden beneath the sea of flowers began to turn once more, and massive mechanical structures rose from the ground, enveloping the false sky and earth.

It was as if… something was being obscured.

“‘Tears of True Love’ sounds like a very broad phrase. Without any preconditions, it could be a potion, a spell, or even a gem, a necklace.

However, I am more inclined to believe… it refers to tears themselves.”

“Tears themselves?”

“Precisely. Because the so-called Serpentification Disease, more than physical and external changes, is fundamentally an erosion of the spirit. I don’t believe a lifeless object could reverse such spiritual erosion; it’s far more likely to be something evolved from intense emotion.”

“Which means…”

Ewan’s eyes lit up.

Senior’s previous experimental directions were all correct?

It was just that she hadn’t found someone who ‘truly harbored love,’ which led to her failures?

“But—”

Teacher Mera glanced at Ewan, her tone suddenly shifting. “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mentioned before that the Moon is very skilled at implanting certain suggestions. So, this answer, which He deliberately left, might also contain a subtle hint.

This doesn’t mean the answer is wrong; it just means…”

Teacher Mera reached out, grasping at the air as if catching something, yet her palm remained empty.

“A very important condition or factor, one that should be obvious, is right before our eyes. Yet, as if under an illusion, even I haven’t noticed it.”