Does Spring Come Even for a Dying Esper

On the day of the Hidden Dungeon isolation incident, Brenda was unfairly caught up in the situation as a cadet participating in field training just before graduation. For this reason, the special investigation team felt very sorry for her.

The reason Brenda was able to come out of the dungeon alive was thanks to the sacrifice of the investigation team members. They insisted to Iberis that the young student who had nothing to do with them should not die here. In fact, some sacrificed themselves for the two of them.

Iberis also agreed with his colleagues’ opinions and desperately protected her. Brenda, who survived hell with Iberis, wandered severely due to the shock of that time. She even thought about dropping out of the military academy with only graduation left.

That’s why she actively helped Iberis in reporting Livio. She wasn’t afraid of being marked by her superiors because she no longer wanted to become a soldier. Above all, she wanted revenge on Livio, who had tried to kill her. However, instead of going to prison, Livio was only sentenced to a dishonorable discharge and got away.

After the trial, Brenda changed her mind, graduated from the military academy, and immediately applied for the position of Iberis’ aide-de-camp. She couldn’t ignore Iberis’ expression as he sat dejectedly on the day of Livio’s sentencing for corruption. So she decided to live as a soldier.

Some might laugh or point fingers at the idea of choosing a career path because of someone else, but Brenda wanted to help Iberis, who had suffered much greater pain than herself, even if only a little. She hoped to repay her debt to him in this way.

She was prepared for it to be difficult, but life in N-zone was a series of hardships every day. Nevertheless, Brenda didn’t regret it. But lately, she kept wondering if it was the right choice.

“If I hadn’t been here… would the Major not have pushed himself so hard?”

“Don’t think like that, Lieutenant. As you know, the Major has a self-sacrificing side.”

“But still…”

“It might be that he’s held on this long because you’re here.”

“What?”

Brenda’s eyes widened at the unexpected words. She looked at Lucas as if to ask what he meant.

“You must have felt it too, but the Major doesn’t have much will to live right now. He’s mentally very exhausted.”

“…”

“So I told him to think of you and the families of his deceased comrades to instill some motivation. Only then did he start cooperating with the treatment.”

“Ah.”

“The Major is a person with a very strong sense of responsibility. I think he would have broken down faster if you weren’t here. So don’t blame yourself.”

Lucas gently comforted Brenda, who was overwhelmed with deep self-reproach. His words were sincere. Sensing this, her dark eyes wavered greatly.

“Thank you for saying that.”

Brenda bit her lip as if overcome with emotion, her eyes reddening. Then she bowed her head towards Lucas.

“I beg you, Captain. Please save the Major.”

Brenda pleaded earnestly. She had opened her heart completely after seeing Lucas guiding Iberis every day for the past month, meticulously taking care of everything from meals to medication. And she was convinced that Lucas could save Iberis.

“I’ll try.”

Lucas didn’t ignore Brenda’s appeal. Rather, he responded seriously. He liked her loyalty.

“Huu.”

Lucas sighed softly as he recalled the conversation with Brenda. He pushed aside the test results and moved the mouse. Lucas’s face became even more serious as he checked the matching rate data on the laptop monitor.

Ten days had passed since they tackled the A-class rift. During that time, Lucas had increased the guiding time with Iberis. Yet there was no noticeable change. Moreover, the matching rate, which had been steadily rising, had stagnated.

69%

Lucas glared at the matching rate figure that had been stuck at 69% for a week as if it were his enemy. The fact that the matching rate wasn’t changing despite increasing the guiding time was not a good sign.

“It would be good if we could exceed 75%…”

Click, click. Lucas muttered while meaninglessly pressing the mouse button. It’s natural that the higher the matching rate, the more effective the guiding becomes. That’s also why the minimum standard for forming a pair is 75%. They believed that at least that much was necessary for effective guiding.

It was already quite remarkable that he had been guiding with a matching rate that hadn’t even exceeded 70% for the past month, but Lucas wasn’t satisfied. His goal was, after all, Iberis’s complete recovery.

That’s why the stagnant matching rate bothered him. To be honest, he wanted to aim not just for 75%, but to surpass 80% and even reach 90%. If the matching rate could reach that level, there was a real chance of escaping the terminal diagnosis.

However, while 80% might be possible, reaching 90% was difficult. Usually, such a high matching rate only appeared between Espers and Guides who had each other’s Names.

“…Should I ask the Lieutenant General to look for a Name partner?”

Lucas took out his phone, considering whether he should look for a Guide who was Iberis’s Name partner. He found Winfried’s number but paused before pressing the call button.

Iberis had never informed the Defense Force whether he had a Name on his body. Since even the military couldn’t force information about Names, they lacked information. No, it wasn’t just lacking – there was none at all.

However, Lucas was certain that Iberis had a Name. He recalled how Iberis would sometimes fidget with his right ankle during their conversations. It seemed like a very old habit. His Name was probably there.

The problem was that there was no way to confirm if Iberis really had a Name on his body. After all, not everyone could see the Name that appeared on an ability user’s body.

In fact, in the early days of the Name phenomenon, anyone could see the names on ability users’ bodies. This led to various problems. There were frequent incidents of people with grudges against ability users finding and killing their Name partners, and innocent citizens were murdered just for having the same name.

Even organizations like the government and guilds started using Names to manipulate ability users to their liking.

However, about 30 years ago, it became difficult to discern the Names engraved on ability users’ bodies. Suddenly, even when a Name appeared, it became invisible to those unrelated to the person.

Scholars claimed this was an evolution of ability users to protect themselves and their Name partners. Whatever the real reason, at present, only Name partners, blood relatives, or those with special abilities could confirm Names.

Machines were invented that could detect engraved Names, but Iberis was unlikely to cooperate. The fact that he hadn’t revealed whether he had a Name until now was as good as saying he didn’t want to find out.

“A Name partner…”

Lucas thought about the name engraved near his shoulder blade. He had once searched for his Name partner too. That’s why he had investigated Korea. He had discovered that the unfamiliar name, difficult to pronounce, was Korean.

But no matter how much he searched, there was no Esper with that name. Since being Korean didn’t mean they only lived there, he searched other countries with the help of the intelligence department. However, there were no significant results.

Since there was no absolute need to find his Name partner, Lucas had lost interest at some point. What was urgent for him was avenging his parents and his sister’s recovery.

If anything, Winfried was more active in trying to find Lucas’s Name partner. Having been paired with her Name partner for over 20 years, she said the happiness a Guide gets from guiding an Esper whose soul is connected to theirs is immense.

Winfried, hoping Lucas wouldn’t be consumed by revenge, seemed to want him to find comfort through his Name partner. For Lucas, it was just troublesome and burdensome.

“No, not yet.”

Lucas put down his phone after hesitating whether to contact Winfried for help. The thought of someone else guiding Iberis strangely dampened his mood. Didn’t it feel like he had failed? He was seized by an inexplicable sense of resistance.

“We don’t even know if we can find them anyway…”

Lucas cleared his mind of thoughts about Iberis’s Name partner and pondered ways to increase the matching rate and guiding effectiveness. In fact, the answer came quickly. It wasn’t that there was no method, he just didn’t like it.

“…I guess I have to do level 2 guiding after all.”

Lucas swallowed a sigh with an uneasy expression as he muttered the method he had found. His neat brow furrowed slightly.