Free Web NovelChapter 597: Chapter 596- Forgotten and the nature
"Tell me something, XXXX. Why does it feel like every time we’re together, you’re avoiding my gaze?" Lex asked the woman beside him.
Even as he spoke, she was looking away, as if they hadn’t been curled up together just moments ago.
"You’re imagining things," she replied coldly.
"What do you mean by that?" Lex frowned. "I can see it clearly. For some reason, you keep avoiding my eyes."
Before she could respond, he gently pinched her chin and turned her face toward him.
"Can you look me in the eye and tell me you’re not ignoring me, XXXX?"
The girl met his gaze.
Her eyes were as lifeless as ever.
Whenever he looked into them, they seemed cold, distant, completely unreadable. Yet the more time he spent with her, the more he realized it wasn’t because she lacked emotions.
She was simply afraid to reveal them.
And when he looked past the walls she had built around herself, he could see it clearly.
Nervousness.
Fear.
"What are you afraid of, XXXX?" he asked softly, tucking a few loose strands of hair behind her ear.
She immediately tried to look away, visibly affected by both his gaze and the question.
Lex didn’t let her.
His hand cupped her cheek, gently but firmly keeping her from turning aside.
"I won’t let you go until you tell me," he said quietly. "Unless you decide to push me away, I’m not going anywhere without an answer."
She continued staring at him.
For a brief moment, her gaze wavered.
She still hesitated.
Lex sighed.
Leaning forward, he rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.
"Whatever the reason is," he murmured, "I swear on my love that I won’t be angry. So please... just tell me."
Silence followed.
Another long pause.
And just as Lex decided not to press any further, she wrapped her arms around him.
She hugged him with all her strength.
Her face buried itself against his shoulder while her fingers clenched tightly around his shirt.
It was the first time she had ever taken the initiative to embrace him.
And she held him so desperately that it made Lex uneasy.
After what felt like the longest minute of his life, he finally heard the answer.
The reason she had never been able to give herself to this relationship completely.
"It’s because..." Her voice trembled. "I know... you would forget me."
Slowly, she pulled away.
Her eyes shimmered faintly, moist with tears as she looked at him.
Then she whispered,
"Just like... you forgot my name."
....
"Ah!"
Adrian gasped as he snapped back to his senses.
His breathing came in ragged bursts, sweat coating his forehead as he stared at the desk before him through blurred vision.
Gripping the edge of the desk, he took several moments to steady himself and calm the pounding of his heart.
"What... was that?"
A memory?
A dream?
No.
He remembered every second of it with unsettling clarity.
It was something that had happened long ago, back when he had been dating... her.
"Her?"
His brows furrowed.
For a moment, he sat in silence, carefully sorting through his thoughts. Then frustration began to creep in.
He... couldn’t remember her name.
His girlfriend.
Someone who had once been incredibly important to him before she suddenly disappeared one day.
She was the one who had given him the novel that made him aware of this world.
She was...
"What was her name?"
He scratched his head in annoyance.
His memory wasn’t bad. There was no way he could remember a person so vividly, recall her voice, her expressions, even the feelings attached to her, yet somehow forget something as simple as her name.
And yet, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t remember it.
[Host, please calm down and take a few deep breaths.]
Adrian leaned back in his chair, his shoulders finally relaxing.
A wry smile tugged at his lips as he muttered, "I must be going crazy because right now, I swear you sound like her, System."
He meant it as a joke.
A passing remark.
Normally, the System would’ve ignored him regardless, but this time the silence felt... different.
No response came.
Not even the usual mechanical prompt. freēwebnovel.com
Adrian blinked, momentarily caught off guard.
The smile on his face faded slightly as he waited for another second.
Nothing.
"...System?"
Still no answer.
Shaking his head, he let out a quiet chuckle.
"Yeah, I’m definitely losing it."
Pushing the strange feeling aside, he rose from his seat.
At this rate, he needed a cup of coffee before he actually drove himself crazy.
....
He first brewed himself a cup of coffee before returning to his studies.
Dual Chanting.
Hmm...
Two elements could only cooperate when their fundamental natures complemented each other rather than opposed one another.
It was such common knowledge that even someone with no formal guidance in sorcery would know it.
Fire and water.
Earth and air.
Air and earth.
These were combinations that should never be forced together.
The same applied to their derivative attributes and affiliated elements.
Attempting to merge opposing natures was an invitation to catastrophe. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
The nature of mana was something humanity still barely understood.
To most people, mana was simply a source of energy. Yet that description failed to capture what it truly was.
Mana was a force capable of overriding the world’s natural flow.
Imagine the world as a perfectly straight line stretching endlessly into the distance.
A fixed path upon which reality naturally moved.
Mana was the force that allowed that line to bend.
A gust of wind naturally formed because of differences in pressure and temperature. A river flowed because gravity pulled it downward. Fire burned because fuel, heat, and oxygen existed in the correct balance.
Everything followed a sequence.
A cause.
Then an effect.
Mana ignored that sequence.
Or rather, it inserted itself into it.
When a mage cast a fire spell, they weren’t creating fire through ordinary combustion. They were using mana to overwrite reality and declare that fire should exist at a particular location.
The world accepted that declaration and adjusted itself accordingly.
That was why scholars often described mana as an external variable imposed upon reality.
The problem arose when two contradictory variables were introduced simultaneously.
Fire sought expansion, heat, and violent transformation.
Water sought flow, absorption, and stabilization.
Each possessed a nature that fundamentally rejected the other.
When a mage attempted Dual Chanting with compatible elements, the mana structures merged smoothly. The two flows reinforced one another, creating a more efficient and powerful phenomenon.
But when incompatible elements were forced together, the mana itself became unstable.
The spell formula would continue trying to resolve two opposing instructions at the same time.
One side demanded expansion.
The other demanded suppression.
One sought movement.
The other sought restraint.
The result was not balance.
It was conflict.
And mana was an energy source far too powerful to tolerate internal conflict for long.
The spell structure would begin to collapse, creating distortions within the mana circuit. At best, the spell would fail and discharge harmlessly.
At worst...
The surrounding mana would lose its programmed direction entirely.
A fireball might erupt into a storm of molten fragments.
A water spell could explode into superheated steam.
Sometimes the mana itself would detonate before either element fully manifested.
That was why experienced sorcerers never viewed Dual Chanting as simply combining two spells.
It was closer to negotiating between two living concepts.
Every element possessed a will of its own.
Not consciousness or thoughts.
But an intrinsic nature that dictated how it wished to exist.
The moment those natures rejected each other, the spell stopped being a tool and became a battlefield.
And reality was unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle.
"Haah...this feels like scratching the surface. Need to dwell deeper."
