The Academy's Time Looper

Below Athen lay over ten spiritual figures, all crowding around the position right below Athen's descending feet.

It was like a Plinko machine...but Athen was the Plinko.

Perhaps sensing Athen's impending descent, the spiritual figures suddenly all looked up...at the exact same time.

All of a sudden, there were now over a hundred pairs of eyes intensely and carefully watching Athen every more.

Feeling his skin start to itch and tremble due to the hundreds of gazes on him, Athen shook his head.

Making eye contact with the figures, who were staring at him with pure bloodlust and untamed desire in their eyes, Athen's confidence started to waver.

Ignoring the crawling sensation that coursed through his entire body as a result of all the attention, Athen carefully scanned the area below him for the perfect target.

And there, right next to the trunk of the tree, lay the perfect candidate.

A familiar one at that...

With greenish-yellow eyes and silky black hair, Alice, surrounded by a light-blue hue, lifelessly stared up at him from beside the tree trunk.

She just happened to be in the perfect position, right? It wasn't like Athen wanted revenge for her almost imprisoning him and ruining dreams!

Phasing right through some low-hanging branches, Athen pushed his shoes together and made them perfectly perpendicular to the ground.

Then, after Athen descended for a couple more seconds, he finally felt his shoes suddenly touch something concrete again.

Taking a short glance downward, Athen spotted his two shoes sitting right atop Alice's glossy black hair.

Shrinking under the pressure of Athen's weight, Alice's figure started crumbling, lowering both her and Athen.

And, in stark contrast to her original personality, Alice didn't have a pissed-off or arrogant expression on her face, despite Athen being stacked on her like two Jenga pieces on each other.

Feeling himself get lower to the ground and closer down to the horde of spiritual figures, Athen smiled before propelling himself upward.

Phasing right through the branches above him, Athen immediately raised both his hands up as high as he could.

With both his arms stretched up to the sky, Athen continued ascending...until, finally, he went right through the tree's highest branch.

Right above him, overlapping with the half-crescent moon, lay his diamond...his precious diamond.

The thing that had given him hope.

A gemstone he considered useless at one point now seemed to be the most important thing in his life.

"...how ironic..."

After discovering it was a fake diamond, Athen wanted to smash it into pieces out of anger.

Yet...now, he was risking his life just for the chance to get it back.

Glittering under the moon's shine, the diamond, frozen in the air, appeared to be waiting for Athen as it floated in right above the highest branch of the tree.

Seeing the diamond between his stretched-out hands, Athen slowly moved his palms closer and closer together until they were less than a centimeter away from it.

If his hands got any closer...he knew what would happen.

They would simply phase through the diamond.

At that moment, as Athen's hands patiently surrounded the diamond, he felt himself start to fall.

And this time, as he looked down, Athen saw the green grass of the forest below him, devoid of any figures..

As Athen titled his head and looked further downwards, he saw the hundreds of spiritual figures to the side.

"...they learned."

None of them were close enough for Athen to land on their head and jump back up again.

They had purposely gotten out of Athen's landing zone to prevent him from escaping into the air once again.

And...as he had learned from his previous experiences, Athen couldn't phase through the ground below him to escape.

Actually, he couldn't even touch the ground.

His shoes, still surrounded by the light-blue hue, would simply float above the ground as if there was a barrier separating him from the floor below.

However, Athen actually considered this a good thing in the past, as if it were not for this barrier, he would permanently phase through the ground until his ability was deactivated.

Then, he would inevitably suffocate to death or be crushed by stone and dirt.

But now... this meant there would be no escape if he fell now.

His landing zone was empty...but surrounded by hundreds of spiritual figures, like a moshpit right before the beat drop of a song.

Moving his trembling hands so close to the diamond that his fingers started to flicker in and out of sight as they phased through the diamond before going back outside, Athen closed his eyes.

If there was one good thing about this damned world where everyone was a spiritual figure...it was that there was no noise.

Everything was silent.

Nobody in this world could make noise.

While some may find this lack of sound creepy, Athen personally found solace in it.

In his overcrowded and trashy hometown, it was almost possible to find a place that wasn't noisy.

It could have been midnight in the most secluded alleyway in the town, and Athen still would have heard drunks screaming loudly or the echoing footsteps of the homeless wandering the town.

However, as Athen focused on his body, that pure silence faded.

"BA-dum... BA-dum..."

"BA-dum... BA-dum..."

Breaking the silence, the sound of Athen's heartbeat emerged.

It was odd, really...he was a spirit, yet he still had a heart and some of his other organs?

How was that possible!?

Unfortunately, Athens did not currently have the time to consider the contradicting aspects of this unnatural power.

Shaking his head, he muttered.

"Yet...during the middle of a war, those damned philosophers do."

In the end, Athen knew his only chance of getting out of this situation alive was for him to activate his power again somehow.

Even if he left the diamond behind and ran, his capture would be inevitable, considering the sheer number of people following him.

He would just be prolonging the eventual choice.

If activating his power took him inside this world...then it also had to be able to take him out.

As the sound of his heartbeat slowly faded away, returning silence to the world, Athen clasped his hands together.

However...nothing happened.

Immediately opening his eyes, Athen attempted to look downward...but his head wouldn't move.

In fact, despite his brain's desperate commands, his entire body didn't budge a single inch.