Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 180: Memoricidium

Cecilia stood at the window of the empty room. Her reflection in the glass was pale, overlaid on the world outside, where snow fell in a silent, perpetual curtain.

It dusted the pines, filled the footprints on the path below, buried the memory of steps taken just days before.

This was it. This was the world he had wished for.

A world where he quietly disappeared.

No war would be fought over his bones. No one would wear his name as a banner of vengeance. There would be no graves to tend, no portraits to avoid, no empty spaces at a dinner table that ached with absence. There would be no absence at all.

No one was hurt.

It must have been so terrifying, she thought, for him to imagine a world otherwise. To picture his death not as an end, but as a catalyst for endless, bloody consequence. Or to know that his love for her, for his brothers, for the world itself, could be the very thing that doomed it all over again.

The fear of that legacy, of being a cause of suffering even in death, or otherwise, must have been a shadow that dwarfed the fear of oblivion itself. Oblivion was clean. It was kind.

Was it truly the best solution for him? Memoricidium... The suicide of memory...?

But why...?

Why couldn’t he just dream of a world where he didn’t need to sacrifice? Was a safe, happy world, a world where Oathran Alicei simply lived, so unthinkable?

Was the duty, the burden of the Key, not just a responsibility he carried, but a thread so woven into the fabric of his identity that to pull it loose would unravel his very sense of self?

So—

To be Oathran was to be the one who died. To be the shield. To be the ending.

The snow kept falling, painting over everything.

Cecilia knew that this world was not real. It was a reflection, a scenario, a parable written in the language of high school tropes and magical academia.

She knew that the moment she tapped ’Yes’ on that glaring, indifferent system interface, she would be wrenched from this frozen stillness and returned to the real world.

To the real sun, the real sky, the real Oathran—still alive, still waiting, still bearing the weight of that choice.

But the knowledge was no comfort. It was terror.

If she couldn’t save him here, in this simplified, narrative-driven mirror... what hope did she have in the brutal, complicated reality?

If the answer didn’t exist even in a world built from dreams and fears, where could it possibly be found?

The failure here felt prophetic.

It whispered to her that the problem was insoluble, the fate was sealed, and her love was just another variable in an equation that always ended the same way.

Fate.

Returning to that world without an answer... it felt infinitely more frightening than staying here.

Here, at least, the agony had a border.

It was contained within this simulation, this snow globe of sorrow.

Here, she could spend an eternity sifting through the emptiness, looking for a clue in the negative space he left behind.

Such a perverse safety in the despair of a fake world.

Out there, in the real world, the stakes were his life. On the stability of continents, on the future she wanted to build with him and Eastiel and Arkai.

To go back empty-handed... to look into his real eyes, touch his real face, and know she had nothing to offer against the tide of his duty... that was a void far more terrifying than this silent, snowy room.

She stared out at the blank, white world. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

Anything.

Just give me anything.

Knock, knock.

Cecilia turned from the window, the movement slow, as if she were moving through deep water.

Headmaster Lazuardi stood in the doorway, his expression unreadable, a blend of professional concern and scholarly disquiet. "Miss Araceli," he said, his voice carefully measured. "Madam Serayu is here. Would you like to come and talk? Perhaps... answer some of our questions?"

Cecilia blinked, the world outside the glass, the world of erasure, seeming to recede slightly. She nodded gently. "Of course."

She followed him out, her bare feet soundless on the wooden floor. The main living area felt different. The clutter of books and magical detritus was the same, but there was something in the air. Curiosity, perhaps.

Serayu and Baswara were already seated at the heavy dinner table, the scene of their last shared meal now a council of inquisition. Serayu’s violet eyes were sharp, analytical. Baswara’s face was uncharacteristically solemn, his bushy brows drawn together.

Lazuardi guided Cecilia to the seat opposite the head of the table and took a place beside her, forming a triangle of interrogation.

Before the first question could be launched, Cecilia drew a slow breath. The numbness began to crack with a cold, clear purpose. She would control this narrative. She had to.

"Before... you question me," she began, "let me be the one who tells you about Oathran."

The three adults exchanged a glance. After a beat, Baswara gave a single, slow nod. Proceed.

And so, Cecilia spoke. She wove them a story, the story this world was supposed to hold. She told them of a boy named Oathran Alicei, cursed from birth.

She explained how Professor Baswara had found him, lost and alone as a child, his parents gone.

How they had eventually uncovered the terrible truth, that he was the living subject of their research, the obscure myth, the Key Bearer, a sacrifice written into the cosmos.

She told them the story. Baswara retired early from his prestigious post, dedicating his life not just to scholarship, but to guardianship and a desperate, private crusade to break an unbreakable curse. She described the room they thought was always a guest room as the boy’s home for years.

She gave them the timeline. The suggestion, seven days ago, for Oathran to finally taste a sliver of normalcy by entering the Athenaeum as a transfer student. To have an experience, however fleeting, of the teenage life fate had denied him.

And there, at school, he had met her.

And they had become... friends.

Of course, she couldn’t speak of bonds forged in ditches and betrayal, of love born from a death-wish and sealed by gacha magic.

She couldn’t explain that this entire reality was a metaphysical funhouse mirror reflecting Oathran’s deepest, most tragic desires. They would never understand that this was a world crafted for the specific wish of absolutely dying forgotten.

So she told them the story their own minds should have contained. A story now wiped clean, leaving only the haunting, logical gaps she was now filling with heartbreaking detail.

Serayu leaned forward, her gaze piercing. "If... the myth was true... and if this Oathran Alicei truly existed... and the memory of him was truly wiped from everybody’s mind as the myth suggested, then why..." She trailed off.

"Why do I still remember him?" Cecilia finished for her. She looked at each of them in turn. "Because only the people of this world would forget him."

She paused. Then, she delivered the line that was both a confession and a shield, the only explanation that could possibly make sense of her impossible knowledge.

"I... I am not from this world."

CLICK—CREAK!

The front door of the residence flew open with a violent, cheerful energy, shattering the heavy atmosphere.

"Senior! I found it!"

A man’s voice, bright with discovery, rushed into the room ahead of him. He strode inside, shaking snow from a travel-worn coat. His hair was a vibrant, unforgettable shade of green, like sunlit moss on ancient stone. His face was alive with excitement.

"Senior! I found concrete proof that the Key is real!" Jenggala announced, brandishing a sealed, ancient-looking scroll case. "And this artifact even detailed a potential way to break the curs—huh?"

He skidded to a halt, his keen eyes taking in the solemn gathering at the table. His triumphant expression faltered, replaced by open confusion. Then his gaze landed on Cecilia.

A stranger, pale and tear-stained, sitting in the heart of the room.

His brow furrowed. "Who’s this?"