Chapter 187

187: The Art of Language

When Lina returned to the classroom with complicated feelings, the previous class had just ended. She happened to run into the teacher packing up textbooks and leaving the classroom.

Upon seeing Lina, who had been caught skipping class and brought back, the female teacher shook her head with obvious helplessness and sighed. But in the end, she left without saying a word.

This left Lina feeling quite awkward.

She sat back down at her desk, her mind full of questions, and ignored the whispering and pointing from nearby classmates as she thought to herself about the mechanics of this illusion.

From what she could tell so far, as a product of a divine miracle, the illusion she was trapped in had become virtually indistinguishable from reality.

This was especially true regarding the people existing within the illusion. It had genuinely given Lina a huge scare.

But surprised or not, Lina still needed to find a way to leave this illusion. After all, there was likely still a fight going on outside, and she had to get out as soon as possible to help everyone.

But this raised a major problem: how to leave.

First, the normal method of escaping an illusion, which was finding contradictions between the illusion and reality, was basically ruled out for Lina. This was not only because the realism of this illusion was already nearly perfect, but also because...

So many years had passed. Even if there really were some contradictions with reality, Lina might not necessarily be able to distinguish them!

For this reason, Lina had to consider another method of breaking through the illusion: destroying everything within it.

In other words, destroying all the things that existed in the illusion, including these people who looked so lifelike in her eyes.

This method was not impossible for the current Lina. After all, she still retained her original strength and appearance. That was right, even her appearance had not changed!

As for why Hagen and the others could still recognize her at a glance... although Lina was reluctant to admit it, she had to acknowledge that after so many years, the changes in her appearance were honestly negligible.

Especially in terms of height and build, there had been almost no growth. She still had that cute little lolita look from before.

The only thing that had changed was her heart.

Ahem. Back to the main topic. As a former Saint Substitute, even after two years of completely slacking off on training, Lina still possessed enough power to destroy the entire orphanage.

Although she could not cast Super-Tier Magic like Noren to physically nuke the place, she could freely cast high-tier magic. Meanwhile, at the orphanage, Father Hagen was the strongest combatant, and he could barely manage to cast one or two high-tier spells. The gap between him and Lina went without saying.

But honestly speaking, even with this method of quickly clearing the illusion, Lina was still unwilling to use it.

Because even if this was just an illusion, Lina still could not bring herself to attack ordinary people who had no power to fight back.

This was the baseline of being human. If Lina could not even uphold this, then what difference was there between her and people like Howard?

"Sigh... so what exactly should I do..."

Lina lay sprawled on her desk in distress, feeling like her eyes were about to spin into spirals.

"You... is something on your mind?"

It seemed Jasmine had noticed something was off with Lina. She looked up from organizing her notes and asked with some confusion.

"...Hm? Jasmine... Lady Sister, are you concerned about me? Lina is so touched~"

"..."

Jasmine froze slightly. She had apparently not expected Lina to counter with a question like that. Her cheeks turned a little red, and she seemed unsure how to respond.

『Maybe... I should just admit that I'm concerned about her? That way I could also ask what's bothering her, and maybe I could even help...』

『Ack! No no no! If I admit it directly, won't she say I'm being nosy!? She'd hate me then, right?』

『Aaaaah! I really am bad at talking to my little sister! There's no choice. I'll smooth things over first and ask her later...』

After a brief internal struggle, Jasmine rearranged her expression, put on an icy look, and said coldly, "If you don't want to talk about it, forget it. It has nothing to do with me anyway."

"..."

Hearing Jasmine's response, Lina immediately fell into silence.

It was not that she was angered by Jasmine's answer. Rather, she was silenced by Jasmine's extraordinarily terrible way with words.

In fact, as soon as Jasmine had started talking to her, Lina had secretly wrapped a golden thread of God-given Magic around her finger and used it to cast [Mind Reading].

Since the gap between their levels was so large, Jasmine had not detected Lina's small movements at all.

As a result, Lina had heard every bit of Jasmine's internal conflict just now clearly.

Now she was certain. Back in reality, when Jasmine said she often avoided her because she did not know how to communicate with her, she had not been lying.

With language skills like this, Lina could not imagine how many communication books Jasmine must have secretly read in order to develop such nearly hopeless social skills by the time she became Saint.

But although Lina already knew Jasmine's thoughts through mind reading, on the surface she still had to act somewhat normal. So she put on a wronged expression and spoke to Jasmine in a whining tone:

"Waaah! Sister, don't be so mean to me! I was just thinking about what birthday present I should give you today since it's your birthday."

"..."

Hearing Lina's words, Jasmine once again fell into a brief silence. At the same time, Jasmine's inner voice rang in Lina's ears again:

『Wow! Lina said she was thinking about a birthday present for me! She does care about me!』

『No no no! How can a little sister give a present to her big sister? It should be the other way around!』

『Besides, Lina doesn't have much allowance to begin with. I shouldn't let her spend money!』

"I have no need for something so meaningless."

Damn it, Jasmine. You are seriously unbelievable!

Lina no longer knew what to say about Jasmine. She could not help but marvel at how good her own temper must have been in the past to still maintain her enthusiasm for Jasmine despite language skills that could only be called an art form.

This time, Lina genuinely did not know how to respond to Jasmine. She could only give a helpless bitter smile and turn her attention back to thinking about how to leave the illusion.

Just then, the class bell rang quietly, and another teacher Lina found familiar walked in with a textbook under their arm.

『Sob! Why is Lina ignoring me again? Did I say something wrong!? I clearly read "The Art of Speaking" that I borrowed from the teacher, so why does it feel like it still isn't working!?』

Jasmine's inner voice rang in Lina's ears again. She could only silently complain in her heart.

Jasmine, it really is impressive that you actually know your language skills have problems!

But then again, you are actually reading books like that!?