The Villain Is Destined to Die: But as the Creator, I know All Endings-Chapter 214: It’s Just a Theory [3]

If you wanted answers, real ones, who would you reach out to?

The answer couldn’t be a guess, or theories, or opinions dressed as confidence.

But an answer anyone could trust.

If you were forced to choose only one person, knowing you could ask anyone, who would you believe truly knew the truth?

"..."

Abacus stared at the golden light before him.

A star, suspended in the void, glowing with a warmth that felt older than time itself.

He did not know the answer.

How could he?

How could anyone be certain that the person they chose would actually know?

It wasn’t impossible.

But certainly it was.

"...I don’t know," he said at last, lowering his head.

Everbright smiled. He couldn’t see it from where he stood, though.

She didn’t answer, but only offered a single statement.

The truth exists only with the one who decided how it would be.

Even Abacus, the head of the Moon Tower, a man renowned for his wisdom, found no words to refute it.

— — —

Even though Ayaka was ready to leave, his name made her pause.

Leon Valentine was known even outside Liora. He was someone... special.

And perhaps that was what piqued her curiosity.

Everyone else in the room thought the same thing. But the truth they did not know was far more complicated.

As someone who worked within the Twilight Order, Ayaka was already aware of what this person was capable of.

Eula was not a fool who would recruit a nobody. And although Leon possessed a Light affinity, that alone was nowhere near enough to convince Eula to take him in, let alone grant him the Eighth Seat.

Ayaka wanted to see what else he was hiding.

From what she had gathered, Leon was a research scholar working directly under the headmaster of one of the most elite institutes.

She had not seen what kind of potential Leon had shown Raizen, the kind that made him take Leon under his wing. But now that he was here, she would see it with her own eyes.

Even if she wasn’t expecting much.

Ayaka and Haibara returned to their seats and took the file the organiser had just handed them.

"Huh?"

Ayaka’s eyes twitched the moment she read the title.

[Mana Frequency Destabilisation During Core Phase Transition and Its Role in Secondary Affinity Resonance]

That was unexpected.

With a single glance, all six of them understood what it implied.

"Second Awakening...?" Esther muttered under her breath.

Just yesterday, she had been frustrated with Leon for not appearing productive. And now, he was suddenly standing here with a paper centred on something long deemed impossible.

It was a well-established fact: Mana affinities are determined at birth, shaped by the influence the mana core receives from genetics, environment, or, in rare cases, both.

Once a mana core had stabilised with an existing affinity, it was final.

There was no known method for a person to awaken a completely new affinity after that point. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Couldn’t get the curiosity in, Ayaka turned the pages. And not just her, but all the others as well.

But before she even turned completely, Leon spoke up from the podium.

"I will be brief; most of this will sound impossible until the last two minutes." He paused, stared at all of the faces, especially Esther’s, "So, please listen to the end."

Raizen narrowed his gaze as he looked up at him. The way Leon was looking at all of them made it feel like he would give them a long lecture.

"Hey, Ayaka," Haibara poked her elbow, and then whispered. "Isn’t he the boy they called Light Messiah?"

Ayaka nodded, "Yes... and I am surprised you knew about this."

"Hey now..." Haibara rolled her eyes.

Haibara was Ayaka’s assistant, working alongside her, they were partners and were on really good terms since A.R Magitech was a thing. Unlike Ayaka, Haibara didn’t like attention and liked spending time hiding inside her workshop.

"I know this will end up like everyone else, but I am curious to hear what he has to say," Haibara added, and turned her focus to Leon.

’Interesting topic though... even she got curious.’ Ayaka smiled.

Leon picked up the chalk and walked to the board.

TAP– TAP– TAP–

He started writing one line below the others.

[Affinities are fixed at birth]

[Mana frequency cannot be changed]

[Secondary awakening after the awakening is impossible.]

He paused and then added a giant text below it all.

[THESE STATEMENTS ARE INCORRECT.]

"...?!"

"What the–?!"

"What? " Professor Louise said, interrupting him. "What are you trying to do here?"

Leon tilted his head slightly.

"Yes," he answered calmly. "I will be proving all of them wrong."

The room stirred.

Professor Louise’s brows furrowed.

"Proving?" he repeated. "Young man, do you understand what you are saying? These are not opinions written on a board. These are conclusions reached over centuries of research. What opinion would this stack of your papers could give, huh?"

Leon turned to look at him.

"I understand that," he said evenly.

Louise’s tone sharpened. "Then are you here to challenge the field itself? Or are you wasting everyone’s time by presenting a thought experiment?"

A few gazes shifted to both.

Someone clicked their tongue quietly. Even Raizen and Esther exchanged glances.

Leon did not respond immediately.

Instead, he picked up the chalk again.

The sound echoed lightly as it touched the board.

TAP.

He underlined the first statement.

[Affinities are fixed at birth]

"This is not wrong," Leon said. "It is incomplete."

Professor Louise opened his mouth, but Leon continued before he could interrupt again.

"The same goes for the second."

He underlined the next line.

[Mana frequency cannot be changed]

"And the third."

He circled it slowly.

[Secondary awakening after the awakening is impossible]

Leon finally turned back to face the room.

"I am not here to argue definitions," he said. "Nor am I here to debate records written by people who never observed what happens between stages."

His gaze shifted briefly to Esther. Then back to the others.

"If this were a waste of time," Leon continued, "you would not be looking at the board right now."

Professor Esther’s lips pressed into a thin line.

For the first time since Leon stepped onto the podium, her earlier doubts wavered. The thought that she might not be guiding them properly quietly receded.

Instead, a different emotion surfaced.

It was pride, even though he hadn’t even started yet.

Professor Louise and Professor Theo exchanged no words. Both had leaned forward now.

Leon faced the board again. He walked towards it and drew two big circles apart from each other.

"This is not incorrect knowledge," he said calmly. "It is incorrectly examined."

He wrote beneath the first circle.

[Unawakened Core – Cold color]

Then beneath the second.

[Awakened Core – Crimson color]

"In every record," Leon continued, "we are told what happens after a core transitions. A cold core awakens and becomes crimson. That is what we know"

He turned around.

"But no one asks the obvious question."

He paused.

"Why does the core change color?"

No one answered.

Leon let the silence sit for the time being.

In most classifications, color is treated as a marker. Every game or story follows this to make its players classify the power level with a single glance.

It’s for convenience.

But...

In the world of Rebirth of the Fivefold Calamities, it is not.

Leon moved back to the board and drew four small stars inside the cold core.

"Core mastery is measured by stars. Each star represents repeated overloading, repeated synchronisation, and repeated strain."

He added a fifth star.

"When the fifth star is formed, the core reaches saturation."

He circled it.

"At this point, everyone assumes the transition is instantaneous."

Leon picked up the chalk again and drew a thin fracture line across the cold core.

TAP!

The chalk broke.

"It is not."

"...."

Haibara’s mouth snapped open. She wanted to ask something, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.

She was invested.

"During transition," Leon said, tapping the fracture, "the mana core destabilizes."

It was a bold claim.

He drew faint, broken lines between the core and the surrounding mana field.

"The resonance between the human body and the respective mana affinity weakens. And after a fraction of seconds, it returned to normal."

He drew five different affinities between the two circles and connected two affinities with the mana core, leaving the other three as they are.

"Imagine, during destabilization, when the resonance of the human body with its actual mana affinity weakens, what will happen when someone tries resonating with other affinities he never had?"

He finally turned to face them again.

"This moment is brief. So to do that, one needed a reaction rate of a billion per second."

This was impossible to achieve by a normal human, but there were certain ways one could do that. Lumina was able to do that, and in the future, Ethan would too.

Leon won’t be explaining this part, he will show them solid evidence that it is possible.

"On page twenty-nine," Leon said, "I have listed the cases used to establish the original theory. The same records every institute here relies on."

He waited for them to turn the pages. Once they did, Leon continued.

"So far," Leon continued, "all existing conclusions are built on two observations. Before transition, and after."

He lifted his gaze. "None of them document what happens during it."

No one spoke.

Time passed, and for the next hour, Leon discussed each and every case he mentioned in his paper.

Awakening failures, core fractures, resonance loss incidents.

Leon went through all of them.

Not once was he interrupted.

He showed a recorded case where a subject’s mana throughput dropped to zero for a fraction of a second during transition, and how a human body became incapable of drawing any mana during the core transition to a higher rank.

This created solid ground proof of his own theory, which he was proposing to them.

He turned to face them. "This concludes my explanation," Leon said. "If you believe this is flawed. I am open to discussion."

He bowed.

For a moment, no one reacted, not because they were confused. But because every single person in the room understood exactly what he had just explained to them.

"Well done." Raizen was the first to stand.

Even during Leon’s interview last month, Raizen had not expected this. Challenging an established field was one thing, but pointing out structural flaws in century-old hypotheses and supporting them with records was another.

That was not something a student of Leon’s age should have been capable of.

Raizen had come here to judge students. Instead, he found himself observing a researcher.

"You’ve done something difficult today," Raizen nodded, and took his seat.

Leon inclined his head slightly in a mannered way.

Raizen turned. "Professor Esther."

"Yes—!" Esther straightened instantly.

"I believe I may want my scholar back."

"...What?" Esther blinked, genuinely stunned.

"Headmaster—no, wait—!" She turned toward him, flustered. "You told me he would be under my supervision for the entire year. My assigned work with him isn’t finished yet!"

She looked almost offended at the idea of losing him.

Then she turned sharply toward Leon.

"Leon," she said. "What exactly were you doing all this time when you already had work like this prepared?"

Her voice lowered dangerously. "I was this close to failing you."

Leon scratched the back of his head.

"Sorry, Professor Esther," he said honestly. "I was busy refining my papers. I lost track of time."

"....Ahem." Esther turned her face away. "That’s... good, I suppose."

"Haaah..." She exhaled slowly. "I’m impressed. Genuinely."

Her gaze softened.

Then she tilted her head to the right.

Unlike during Alice’s presentation, Ayaka wasn’t asking questions.

She and Haibara were flipping through Leon’s paper again, this time. Haibara had even pulled out a pen and underlined parts.

Esther’s lips curved upward.

They’re hooked.

Ayaka stopped on one page, as her eyes narrowed slightly.

"Haibara, this section..." she murmured to her assistant.

Haibara leaned closer. "Yeah, I was looking at the same thing. He cross-referenced Eclipse’s third archive. Who even thinks of that? Is he really a first-year student?"

Ayaka raised her eyes at Leon. She closed the file and smiled.

Leon’s eyes twitched at her reaction.

"I have a few questions."

[A/N: Sorry for the missing days. Caught a nasty fever.]

[A/N: Had two great news for you all. First, the book "The Villain Is Destined to Die: But as the Creator, I know All Endings" had received translation in 5 different languages. Second, I have reached out to some great artists to hand draw Leon, Eula, and Alice’s character. It should be uploaded in my discord sever in March. Thanks for the support!]