Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 182: Cherish It Properly

In the middle of nowhere, there was a field that was like a forgotten stretch of land where no creature ever cared to visit. The grass was a stubborn, winter-bitten brown, refusing to surrender completely, each blade stiff, cold. It was here, on this earth, that Cecilia knelt.

It was a journey through thawing memory. With each frantic leap through the teleportation network, putting distance between themselves and the creeping line of snowfall, the static in the adults’ minds had begun to clear.

The blank spots, the logical seams in their personal histories, started to fill with color and sound and heartbreaking detail. The further they traveled from the epicenter of the erasure, the more the ghost took shape. By the time they reached this field, on the cusp of the still-untainted winter, the last veil had ripped away.

Their faces, once full of polite confusion and scholarly concern, were now clearly horrified. Realization took place.

Baswara had his shoulders bowed under the weight of a love forgotten and violently remembered. Serayu’s composure was shattered, her violet eyes shimmering with unshed tears.

Lazuardi stood rigid, a grimace of self-recrimination twisting his features. Jenggala simply looked lost, the scroll case containing his ’discovery’ now a bitter artifact of their collective failure.

They remembered. They remembered the white-haired boy with the old eyes. They remembered the meals, the lessons, the quiet presence in the guest room. They remembered the doom they had tried, and failed, to outrun.

Baswara had taught her the spell. Not from a textbook, but from the deepest, most secret well of his knowledge. A ritual of ultimate connection, of two souls braiding themselves into a single, shared fate.

It was a spell to share the burden of the world. In theory, it should be enough to tip the balance.

The curse of the Key was its specificity. It demanded one soul. One particular, special soul to bear its weight and pay its price.

But what if that soul was no longer a single entity? If it was bound, irrevocably mixed, with another... what then? Would the curse recognize the bond? Would it split the burden? Or would it reject the impurity and shatter them both?

They didn’t know. No one had ever been this mad, this desperate, to try.

But they had to. Anything.

Kneeling in the stubborn grass, Cecilia closed her eyes. The world narrowed to the feel of the cold earth beneath her knees, the taste of impending snow on the wind, and the memory of a touch on her cheek.

With a thread of her will, she drew a thin, precise line of telekinetic force across her own throat. A searing sting, then the warm trickle of blood welling up, a crimson against her pale skin.

She brought her hands together, palms pressed, fingers interlocked, as if in prayer—or in a pact.

"Oathran Alicei."

She spoke his name into the stillness.

"With this, I bind my soul to you."

Baswara flinched, a raw, grieving sound catching in his throat. Jenggala looked away, unable to bear the sight.

"To share the weight of life and death..."

Her voice grew stronger, ringing across the field.

"...of time and rebirth..."

Serayu let out a soft, broken sob, tears finally tracing paths down her cheeks. Lazuardi offered a helpless, mournful smile.

"...memory and oblivion."

The final word hung in the air, a challenge to the universe itself.

For three agonizing heartbeats, nothing happened. Only the wind sighing through the dead grass.

Then—

BLAAAAAAAAAST!!!

A pillar of pure light lanced down from the leaden sky. It tore through the clouds with a detonation of power and struck Cecilia where she knelt.

Her eyes flew open, wide with shock. The shallow wound across her neck vanished, erased by the sheer, overwhelming force of the connection. And then she felt it.

The weight.

It descended upon her soul. A mountain, a dying star, the entire oppressive reality of the curse. For one flickering, excruciating moment, the full, unimaginable burden of the Key pressed down on her.

"AAAAAAAHHH!!!"

The scream was ripped from her. She felt it. The agony that transcended flesh. It echoed across the field, a human sound against the divine light.

But within that white-hot pain, something shifted. A balance, tremulous and unseen, began to tip. A scale that had been loaded for centuries with a single fate now groaned, recalibrating.

The curse was being paid—not by one, but by two.

Half of her soul was wrenched away, a tithe offered up. And in return, from the precipice of nothingness, half of his was returned.

"Now, now, aren’t you an audacious child?"

Through the blinding light and the soul-deep open wound, a voice called to her. It was impossibly beautiful, melodious, and held the timeless patience of deep waters.

A female voice, gentle and chiding, as if speaking to a daring infant.

Before Cecilia could even process it, another voice cut in. Cold, stern, devastatingly beautiful in its severity.

"You... don’t ever try this again in the real world."

A male voice, its tone leaving no room for argument.

"In the real world, you can make both yours and his soul perish at once. This is not a binding curse you can play with."

The warning was absolute. This was a forbidden gambit, and the true version held annihilating stakes.

"Then, what should I do in the real world?!" Cecilia screamed into the light. Her tears evaporated instantly in the radiant, heavy energy that now connected her to these vast, unseen presences.

The gentle, chuckling female voice returned, a soft contrast to the pain. "Didn’t we choose you as the ninth player already?"

The male voice laughed then, a sound like distant, rolling thunder, not unkind. "We admire the essence of your soul."

"So cherish it properly."

The light intensified, swallowing the field, the sky, the memory of the grass, the sound of her own heartbeat.

Everything dissolved into absolute, blinding, silent white.

***

"AH—CH!"

Cold.

Why, oh why, in his infinite cosmic lack of foresight, had he slept last night wearing only his thin sleep pants?

COLD!

He shivered violently, his breath misting in the air before him.

Ahhh... so this was how it felt to truly be erased. To be unmade from the world’s memory and left as a ghost in the machine, stripped of possessions, of presence, of even the basic dignity of a shirt.

This was... depressing.

Cringe as fuck.

He stood on the edge of a busy school hallway, students walking past him, their chatter a meaningless buzz.

He couldn’t touch the lockers, couldn’t snatch a stray jacket from a hook, couldn’t interact with the physical world in any meaningful way.

All his things, the school uniform, the box of savings, the very bed he’d slept in, had dissolved into nothingness.

But the cold was nothing compared to the real ache.

The most heartbreaking thing had been watching Cecilia. Seeing her running across the frost-white grounds, her voice screaming a name that no one else could hear.

He had been right beside her the entire time, screaming her name back. He’d seen the confusion in Angela’s eyes, the blankness in the faces of every student she accosted. He’d been there, unable to lift a hand, to speak a word, to offer a single shred of comfort.

That powerlessness was why he hadn’t been able to follow her when she’d finally fled with Lazuardi through the teleportation gate. The gate’s officer only authorized two people! They couldn’t see him! The spell for the teleportation only carried them!

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.

Ah. He hoped she’d just leave this world already. Cut her losses. But they hadn’t completed the final task.

That meddling old coot! If Baswara hadn’t interrupted with his thunderous morality yesterday night, they could have... well.

Then she’d be free. Wouldn’t she?

Though he was sure she could negotiate with whatever capricious power ran this place. She’d get out safely, right? And he’d... fade back into the real Oathran. In the real world.

Cecilia...

She must have been so sad. And he had been forced to stand by and watch her heart break. He couldn’t hold her. He couldn’t catch her tears. He couldn’t whisper that he was sorry, that he was here, that he loved her.

Then what was the damn point of it all? What was the point of being erased if the one person whose grief he wanted most to spare could still remember him?

"Stupid curse," he muttered aloud to the empty air, his voice thick with scorn. "Can’t even do your job properly?"

That was the moment he realized something was... off.

Why were the students in the hallway, the ones who had been walking straight past him just moments ago... suddenly looking at him? Their steps slowed. Their conversations died. Their eyes, previously gazing through him as if he were a pane of glass, were now focused. On him.

Weren’t he... invisible? He’d been a non-entity since the first snow fell.

So... what the actual fuck was...

"Oathran Alicei!"

The voice was sharp, crisp, full of disapproval. It sliced through the murmuring hallway.

Oathran turned, a slow, bewildered pivot, toward the source.

Professor Suna stood there, her hawk-like eyes blazing behind her spectacles, her arms crossed over her chest. She glared at him, her gaze sweeping from his face down to his bare chest and sleep pants, then back up with intensified outrage.

"You! Public indecency!" she snapped, her voice echoing in the suddenly silent corridor. "Wear your clothes properly in public!"

Eh?