(Why? Why didn't that flame react to me?)
Classes were cancelled for the day following the selection conducted by Dogma and her group. The sheer scale of the unrest among the students had made it a necessity.
Hugo returned to his room after a brief conversation with Fee and the others, yet he remained in a state of agitation quite different from the rest of the student body.
He had never expected the existence of Reincarnators to be revealed so suddenly to Luminous Academy. The fact that the secret he’d guarded for so long had been broadcast to his friends was one thing, but the discovery that the so-called Hero Candidates were fellow Reincarnators was just as shocking.
What was happening to the ones Dogma had taken away? She had claimed she had no intention of killing them, but that was only for the moment. If they were deemed a threat to this world, they might be eliminated just as she had warned.
If that happens, maybe I'm next...
Hugo shook his head, physically tossing the dark thought away.
Lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, he began to analyze the concept of "Reincarnators"—something he hadn't given much deep thought to until now.
(Come to think of it, why did I reincarnate into this world in the first place? And into a person with the same name, no less...)
Dying to save someone and then being reborn in another world immediately after... It was such a standard cliché in manga and anime that he hadn't scrutinized it before. But why had he ended up here, specifically?
"There is no reason" felt like the most likely answer, but several things didn't sit right with him.
The fact that Yugo Kurei had become Hugo Clay seemed strangely meaningful. In most of those stories, a god-like entity acted as a guide during the reincarnation process, but he hadn't experienced anything of the sort. As he pondered this, Hugo suddenly realized a specific detail and caught his breath.
(Wait. Now that I think about it, the Hero Candidates were always sticking together, weren't they? Was that because they knew they were all Reincarnators?)
Cyan was the most obvious example. He had formed a duo with another student also named Cyan—likewise a Hero Candidate—and had frequently moved in a group with Woz and Torin.
He’d also heard that Isaac, before his death, had been involved in a dispute with them. The web of connections between the former Hero Candidates was surprisingly thick.
Reflecting further, Anhel and the Warrior Shrine Maidens had mentioned several times how the former Hero Candidates had tried to woo them.
He had assumed it was simply because they were beautiful, but perhaps those were deliberate actions for the Reincarnators. That would explain why they had all been so desperate to win them over.
(They knew about each other. Does that mean they all reincarnated as a group...?)
The answer was almost certainly yes. It was "collective reincarnation," another common trope.
While their exact relationship remained a mystery, it was highly likely that the individuals dubbed Hero Candidates had been gathered by someone and sent to this world as a single unit.
Then there was the question of whether they had known Hugo was one of them.
The answer there was almost certainly no.
If they had known he was a fellow Reincarnator—or even suspected it—they would have called him out during the selection.
Hugo was well aware of how much they hated him. At least one of them would have jumped at the chance to drag their enemy down with them.
Yet, the former Hero Candidates had made no such move. Just as Hugo had been ignorant of their status, they hadn't considered for a second that Hugo was a Reincarnator.
(So... strictly speaking, I'm separate from them...?)
They were both Reincarnators, but their circumstances differed. They belonged to a different camp.
As he began to grasp the distinction between himself and the former Hero Candidates, he also deduced why the Flame of Judgment hadn't identified him.
That magic item wasn't designed to detect just any Reincarnator. It was a tool that reacted to a specific trait shared only by the former Hero Candidates who had been purged today.
Hugo hypothesized that the flame hadn't reacted to him because his reincarnation had taken a different form. It was then that he realized there was yet another faction of Reincarnators besides his own and the Hero Candidates', and his eyes narrowed.
(Lost and the Masterminds are definitely Reincarnators, too. They’re the ones tearing this world apart.)
Lost, who knew that Hugo had once been Yugo, was unmistakably from another world.
Given that he possessed information the former Hero Candidates lacked, it was certain that he represented yet another faction.
Hugo realized that there were currently at least three distinct groups of Reincarnators in this world: the former Hero Candidates, the Masterminds, and himself. And that was when his own abnormality hit him.
Everyone else had allies. They had experienced reincarnation as a group. He alone was outside that loop, having reincarnated entirely in isolation.
Hugo began to wonder about the reason behind this anomaly, but at that moment, the door opened. His roommate, Ryuga, had returned.