Mirac felt paralyzed, terrripping him like a noose around his neck, suffog every breath. His muscles were rigid, trapped in an atmosphere of palpable fear. His face, pale and marked by exhaustion, was a mask of pure horror.

  “P-Professor Shirkenn…?” he stammered with a trembling voice, uo prehend the horror unfolding before his eyes.

  The beating of his heart was the only sound he seemed able to perceive, pounding and unbearable.

  “W-What’s happeni-?”

  “Young Prince…” Vi interrupted him sharply.

  The tone of his voice was icy, devoid of the usual uainty, now transformed into something sinister and dominant.

  Vi's eyes glinted coldly, his gaze sid it sent chills down his spine.

  “Do you not remember what I told you a few days ago?”

  Mirac desperately tried to uand, but the horrifying se before him made any rational thought impossible: his left arm y torn a few steps away, and beyond it, the lifeless body of Edward, his entrails exposed like a vas stained with blood.

  A deep nausea gripped his stomace again, while his heart pounded with such violehat it seemed on the verge of exploding.

  But Mirac couldn’t say a word.

  It was as if his very voice had abandoned him.

  Vi moved forward with measured steps, eaent calcuted with an uling precision. His figure seemed to grow i, being more menag with each step, while, before him, Mirac remained paralyzed, trapped in a vice of terror that eveed him from breathing.

  With a slow, deliberate gesture, Viightened his tie, which began to stiffen unnaturally, as if the fabric were turning into steel.

  In an instant, the tie exteo a frightenih, almost a meter and a half. It no longer seemed like a simple accessory, but a lethal id and sharp like a bde.

  tinuing to advance, Vi stepped without hesitation on Edward’s entrails. The squishy sound of his shoes sinking into the old gardener’s insides echoed horribly in the air.

  Throughout all of this, Vi's face remained impassive, a mask of indiffereh no trace of humanity.

  When he was in front of Mirac, paralyzed by panic, Vi moved his arm with the speed of a striking serpent, raising the tie transformed into a bde. His voice, cold aionless, shattered the sileh a definitive sentence:

  “It’s time to end this charade!”

  Before Mirac could process the words, Vi hurled the tie towards him with surprising speed. The movement was so fast that the air seemed to split, produg a sharp sound.

  But Mirac's primal instinct, the same ohat had saved him moments earlier, awakened once more.

  An instant before the tie brushed against him, his body moved almost autonomously.

  He threw himself sideways again, to his left, nding on the white gravel with a muffled thud. He rolled onto his hands and khe cold of the ground stig to his clothes and skin, but he rose again with a nearly superhuman quiess.

  Without wasting any time, he ran towards the forest.

  However, as he fled, he couldn't help but gne st time behind him.

  There, where his face had been just moments before, the tie had struck the ground with terrifying violence, creating a gaping hole as though it had been hit by a giant sword.

  “Tsk!” Vi huffed, irritated. “It’s poio run, young Prince…”

  His cold and calcuted voice echoed through the trees, blending with the rustle of the wind.

  Without haste, and with a sinister smile that crept across his lips, Vi pulled the tie from the ground with the same casual gesture as someone drawing a sword from its sheath.

  Mirac then brought his gaze ba front of him and tio run desperately through the forest, each step agony.

  The pain gripped him, slowing his movements, while blood tio gush from his missing arm. His breath was bored, his lungs burned, and every now and then, he had to stop to catch his breath, leaning against the trees.

  But he knew he couldn’t keep going like this for long.

  ‘Why, Professor… WHY?!’ Mirac screamed in his mind, cold sweat slipping down his forehead, as his emotied against the traitor.

  Vi's voice slithered into the golden silence of the su, a poisonous whisper ed in an uling calm:

  “Do you want to py hide and seek, young Prince?”

  The tone was ft, almost bored, but beh the irony, there was a ferocity that pulsed, ready to explode.

  Step by step, Mirac felt the danger draw closer, while the weight of the shrinking distance became unbearable.

  However, as he ventured deeper into the forest, the trees grew denser, and the vegetation thicker, ing around him in an embrace that nearly cealed him. This py of shadows and thick branches gave him a small hope: if he could blend in with the trees, he might escape Vi’s line of sight.

  ‘Sh-Shit! I-I ’t go on…’

  He was too tired to keep running: his legs were as heavy as lead, his breath ragged, his vision blurring as exhaustion took over.

  Driven by desperation, he forced himself to run for a few more minutes, stealing precious seds from a fate that seemed iable.

  With o effort, after making sure Vi wasn’t behind him, Mirac hid behind a wild bush growio a tree. He let himself fall against the rough trunk, his legs stretched out in front of him, his chest rising and falling in a frantic rhythm.

  The air seemed never enough, and the throbbing pain of his wound threateo overwhelm him.

  He gasped deeply, struggling to stay scious.

  But he was losing too much blood, aing this far had already been a miracle in itself.

  Mirac didn’t have time to wonder why Vi had tried to kill him, or how he had dodged his attack to avoid the same fate as Edward.

  Now, at this moment, there was only one priority, one goal that resonated loudly in his mind, above all else: survive.

  'F-First... I-I have to stop the bleeding...'

  With this thought fixed in his mind, Mirac began to think frantically for a solution. Perhaps he could tear a piece from his shirt and use it to dress the wound.

  At first, it seemed like a reasonable idea, ohat may work.

  But as soon as he grabbed the sleeve of the shirt to get to work, a thought struck him: the torn shirt, while capable of stopping the bleeding temporarily, wouldn't be nearly enough.

  After all, Mirac was losing too much blood, and a simple piece of fabric certainly wouldn't be enough to solve the problem.

  ‘Dammit!’

  After thinking for another couple of seds, when all hope seemed lost, Mirac came up with another solution, an eveer one! Ohat had a 90% ce of w, and therefore of saving him!

  ‘T-The magical gauze!’

  With a silent sigh of relief, Mirac realized that the gauze was still ed around the finger of his right hand, the one he had mao save, and that now it represented his only new hope.

  'L-Let's try it!'

  With clumsy movements and numb fingers, Miraged for the knot of the gauze.

  His hands trembled so much they seemed useless, and every movement was apanied by a dull pain that pulsed along his arm.

  His teeth and hands worked desperately together as he tried to grab that thin strip that kept slipping through his sweaty, bloodied fingers.

  His heart pounded furiously in his chest, eg in his ears.

  Every failed attempt tightehe knot in his stomach, a silent cry of frustration that stricted his throat.

  It took seds that seemed endless.

  However, in the end, with o imprecise tug, the knot gave way.

  A sigh of relief escaped his lips, a brief moment of respite amidst the chaos.

  But that brief pause sted little.

  When he finally unrolled the gauze between his hands, Mirac lifted it before him, staring at it with wide, incredulous eyes.

  Indeed, it was then that, with a jolt of realization, he became aware of a errible problem: the bandage was too short!

  In fact, sidering the wound on his finger for which it had been used, it was surprisingly long. But it wouldn't even e close to c the eump.

  'D-Damn it! What do I do now?!'

  His mind searched desperately for a solution, but it was nearly impossible to think clearly knowing that a killer was roaming the woods. Every rustle in the branches, every moving shadow seemed like a prelude to a fatal blow.

  However, Miraew that the danger wasn’t immediate.

  After all, Vi hadn’t chased him. Or rather, he had done so with an uling slowness, as if sav eaent of this macabre "hunt."

  So, Mirac still had a little time before Vi mao find him.

  A, despite this awareness, Mirac felt as though he was on the verge of giving up.

  He could feel his body warming up slowly, a sensation that was the plete opposite of the cold agony he had felt during his previous death.

  'D-Damn it!' he cursed inwardly, his teeth grinding uhe weight of frustration. 'I-I wao live this life to the fullest! I-I wao explore this world! M-Make my family and father happy! And now? I-I’ll die here, without having achieved any of that!'

  Tears began to choke his vision, clouding the world and filling the air around him with a suffog sense of helplessness. With his breath broken and a strangled sob caught in his throat, he cast o g the "magic gauze."

  For a moment, he lost himself staring at it, his hand clutg the fabri anger, as the tears ran down his face, wetting his cheeks.

  ‘I-If only… I had a little more…’

  And it was exactly as he fihat sentence, when his body seemed on the verge of giving out pletely, that an ued thought made its way into his mind.

  ‘Wait a moment! I want more?’

  The shadow of discement that had nearly suffocated him began to fade, swept away by a new, feverish glow of hope. His eyes, still glistening with tears, lit up with an indomitable determination.

  ‘O-Of course! How did I not think of this before?!’

  Despair gave way to an idea as provocative as it was vexing.

  ‘Tsk! Unfortunately, I have no other choice...’

  Under normal circumstances, Mirac would never have dared to do what he was about to attempt. Never!

  The pride ament he had always harbored towards Math would have stopped him, like an insurmountable wall built by his ow.

  But now, with his life hanging by a thread, all that bitterness suddenly seemed meaningless—an unnecessary burden he was ready to cast aside.

  With death breathing down his neck, with the world seemingly trying to rip the st spark of hope from him, there was no longer any room for hesitatiret.

  The promise he had made to himself months earlier—survive, at any cost!—became the only bea in the chaotic darkness surrounding him, the only truth that mattered to him at that moment!

  So, with the st of his remaining strength, Mirac ched the gauze in his hands and whispered words that, once, he would never have ceived of saying, or even dared to think:

  “Multiply by ten...”