The Novel's Extra: Scrapped

In a shadowed room, filled with mugs of coffee and papers, Minori Nii was hunched over on his couch, holding his head.

The dim lamp in the corner of the room flickered erratically, the air in the room was dry and suffocating.

Static was charged as the threads of magic in the room pulled and twisted into jagged shapes. Forming something close to a spell circle before dissipating back into the fountain of webs that is Minori's magic pool.

A pungent sweet scent with no effects.

A painful gasp resounded as Minori gagged again.

'Charm'

A wind without flow.

Stacked papers were weakly knocked over.

'Air Blast'

A blanket of nothing over all light.

Shadows encroached upon the room, obscuring vision.

'Shade.'

Curls of black powder, an omen of death.

'Delayed Explosion'

The folding of fabric across space without an entrance.

'Short Warp'

Many more incomprehensible patterns went and passed. Each one causes the figure's pain to ease ever so slightly. 

Every spell geared for release only to be met without trigger.

Ever so slightly the figure uncurled and spat out a mass of blood and squirming black maggots.

"Caugh! Cough! Fu-Cagh!" Minori sputtered and coughed. More and more blood poured from his lips.

After a few minutes he let out a sigh and wiped his mouth. His throat hurt like all hell because the maggots drawn out from inside his magic stream kept trying to crawl back inside.

The black maggots were instantly incinerated as Minori looked at it with disgust.

"...close…way too close…"

He still felt sick to his core but at least nothing was trying to crush his psyche into slushy.

'I knew something was wrong… Lee Sang-Il, I knew he was too quick to give me a pass.'

It was the day after Minori's 'meeting' with Lee Sang-Il.

The boy hadn't slept a wink due to a nagging feeling something wasn't right. It took him almost three hours to recover from his state after the 'meeting'. 

Even then, after another five hours of searching Minori was unable to diagnose why the pressing feeling of urgency was still overbearing in his senses.

It was only when that urgency turned into a burning acidic pain that coursed through every single vein, that Minori began to understand.

There were many hints hidden within every interaction, he just needed to find them and figure out the cause to get rid of the problem.

First were the instructions Ori gave.

–"Now, before we go down this corridor I need to brief you on a few things. 1. Do not make a sound until we are inside the boss's room. 2. Try your best once you're inside. 3. If you show any expression, you'll lose."

Those were to make Minori focus on a task while the corruption began. The air of the place was sweet, so sweet it was sickly. 

To blunt Minori's awareness of the ongoing corruption, Ori made the two walk down a particular corridor. Each and every room filled with Djinn's spewing all kinds of viscera at each other. 

'This means they were trying to take my attention away from any sort of violent action and instead make me focus on facial expression and mental state.'

Second was the corpse that fell from the door the moment it opened.

At first Minori mistook it for a Djinn as its body decomposed at an incredible rate.

But after more thought there were signs that could point to the body being human. The sclera was milky gray while Djinns' were black, his body wasn't regenerating or pulsing much like a Djinns would after death and finally the ruptured threads of mana remaining from his neck and above had been frayed and tampered with by an external force.

'Going off of this we can understand that the attack will be originating from the magic circuit inside the body directly attacking the brain. And going off of the expression, it was quite painful.'

The final piece of information were the countless squirming threads that matted Lee Sang-Il's floor.

'They squirmed with every word he spoke…He made me kneel to get me closer to the floor where the threads were.'

Through his powerful observation skills, deductive reasoning and Arcana Interpretation genius Minori was able to figure out how to deal with the issue.

An unknown gift that created magical worms inside one's mana streams in order to take over their body, combined with a charm spell at least at high rank grade 8 resulted in an almost incurable virus of sorts.

Thankfully with a mixture of untriggered spells to wade off the maggots, wild blood and blood poison, Minori was able to spit them out and incinerate them.

Taking deep breaths before going to the sink to rinse his mouth, Minori began to realize just what he was up against.

'They knew I was human and Lee Sang-Il immediately tried to kill me. If I didn't catch on I would've died a painful death without knowing why.'

'How the hell do I even fight that? I only got rid of it because I was so far away from the source. I can't get other involved if all of them immediately fall because of that…thing.'

'Speaking of which, that ability. It wasn't a spell. It was probably a gift… it's a gift that definitely has its limits, even if it's boosted by a devil.'

"Huuu…calm down." Minori spoke to himself, his expression was not panicked but paranoid.

'Let's not think about it. I can guess its conditions later. Right now I need to be more worried about what happens next.'

'I destroyed the mass of black worms out of anger but that may have alerted Lee Sang-Il. No, it's safer to assume that it definitely alerted Lee Sang-Il. That means, from now on The Evil Society will definitely view me as an enemy.'

'They'll be on my tail to silence me since I survived the corruption. Telling me I passed was just to divert my attention, I'm sure of it.'

'But wasn't Lilith interested in me? Since when did they decide..! I killed Yun Hyun, I probably lost Lilith's interest when I did that.'

'Then the sympathetic look from Yoo Ah- no Ori when she escorted me back was simply her following orders.'

'That means she probably won't be so indirect the next time we meet…I think it's safe to say she won't ambush me while at Cube but the moment I step out and they find me, It's game over.'

'Despite that, I'm still up against a bit of a ticking clock…'

Minori remained silent in contemplation before his eyes closed in what could only be described as cogitation.

After a moment of time to unwind the stress in his mind, he established a skeleton plan. He could fill in the blanks depending on the situation.

'Alright. Seeing as I have no other choice. I need to make it to the Hero tower and inform someone strong of the whereabouts of the Djinn hideout.'

'I can roughly guess that the base is somewhere underground. I don't know the exact location, but if I can extract info out of Ori or another high ranking member of the Evil society…'

'But if that's the case, I need a way to leave Cube without Ori or any spies noticing. Thankfully, I know exactly who the spies are which makes this infinitely easier. I should still be wary of my movements though.'

'That's also a bit of a problem since Cube is asking cadets to leave if possible…No doubt I'll be intercepted the moment I step out… I'll have to work quickly. I think I may also know someone willing to help me get out unnoticed.'

"...okay… yeah. I think this might work…"

Minori let out a breath and opened his eyes, walking to the couch and picking up a watch before setting it ablaze.

I watched it crumble into pieces before cleaning up the mess.

"That should remove any trace of tracking Ori has on me. The Cube watches have the Great Sages AI so I don't have to worry too much."

Minori then cleared up a few things, burning papers on magic comprehension and hiding the one he needed to give to Jin Joohwa inside his floorboards.

He then put on his coat and headed out immediately, taking the lift to the floor of his potential collaborator.