Chapter 184 …
“I saw the things you didn’t say.”
“…….”
“I saw you constantly asking questions to Dorothy, and I saw you die countless times. I saw the scenes where you checked your collateral and the water, and I saw you realize that if you repeated it, the disaster would grow stronger. And also, I saw you……”
Lillieta spoke as if vomiting out her words. Gideon, with his mask-like expression, didn’t flinch and silently watched her pour everything out.
She closed her eyes and spoke.
“I saw… you call me a curse.”
A crack appeared in his mask.
The domain he controlled trembled as if the surface of water had been struck by a stone.
Lillieta didn’t notice that. She gave up wiping her endlessly flowing tears and opened her closed eyes. She captured him in her blurred vision.
“And I saw… you saying it doesn’t matter what you do because once you return, it’ll be as if it never happened…”
In her dim vision, Gideon’s body swayed like a scene shimmering beyond a fog.
Was she really back in reality? Or was she still trapped deep within those abyssal memories?
Lillieta took a confused breath. Instead of the scent of roses, the smell of sand and the humid air of a summer night pierced her nose.
This was reality—the Ramcard Arena in the middle of the night of the founding festival.
She pointed a question at the blurry figure before her.
“That’s all I saw. After that… what did you do?”
“…….”
“Did you… kill them? People? Just to release your emotions?”
“…….”
“Just because it would all be undone later, what kind of things did you do? Like Pascal experimented on us, did you do things you shouldn’t have done? Is that why you never wanted to tell me?”
No answer came.
Lillieta wiped her eyes with her clenched hand. With her vision barely clearing, she looked at Gideon.
His face was completely drained of color. His jaw and eyelids trembled. From his slightly parted lips, no groan or scream escaped. He looked like a wax doll rather than a human.
He was terrified.
Behind him, the domain he had controlled slowly crumbled. The black waves receded, and the suppressed demonic beasts regained their freedom.
Lillieta couldn’t see that either. Gideon’s reaction—the response that was, in itself, an answer—was too shocking.
And again, tears gathered and blurred her vision.
She stared at his hazy form beyond the fog and asked:
“Gid… did you really do it?”
“…….”
“Everything I saw… it’s all true? Your real memories? You… you kept dying over and over just to save me, ignoring the growing disaster, until in the end, you made me feel… cursed, and even… harmed innocent people. That’s the truth you hid?”
“…….”
“Before falling into the hallucination, I saw the magic circle inside the Red Queen’s mouth. That was actually a false memory created by Pascal, right? If so, just tell me.”
She wanted it to be a lie. She desperately hoped that all of this was just a story Pascal fabricated to separate and shake them.
She whispered, pleading:
“I’ll believe whatever you say… please.”
“…….”
Gideon didn’t say a word.
Realizing the meaning of his silence, she buried her face in her hands, shaking, and whispered his name like a groan.
“Gid…”
At that moment, the sharp instinct suppressed beneath her dazed mind sent a warning.
Rita immediately lifted her head and twisted her body.
The staff with a demon’s head came crashing down where she had just been standing.
From the demon’s mouth, instead of her head, thick black smoke erupted with a puff. Like theatrical magic.
“……!”
Rita narrowly avoided the attack. Covering her mouth to avoid inhaling the suspicious smoke, she swiftly drew Silver Grace.
But before she could fire the magic bullet,
Something massive, black, and unidentifiable surged from Gideon, opening its jaws and swallowing the Joker.
Half of the monster’s upper body vanished—erased as if by an eraser.
The lower half of its body wobbled and collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut.
‘That is…’
That thing that erased the monster. Something she had seen before.
In the closed greenhouse of Beacon Garden.
After almost being killed and just regaining consciousness, when Gideon, coughing up dark red blood, swung at the writhing doppelgänger’s core,
That black thing crushed it as if trampling it. A shadow resembling the shape of vines contracting in the flames, something writhing in pain.
The moment she first realized that he had things he was hiding from her.
Lillieta looked back at Gideon, holding the magical rifle.
“That just now…”
She couldn’t finish her sentence.
Gideon’s silhouette twisted. Veins bulged, flesh rippled. Around him, black energy swayed like waves hitting the water’s surface.
He stood there, left hand covering his mouth, not holding his sword, as if restraining something inside from escaping.
Rita knew well what this was a precursor to.
Demonization from worsening corruption.
Vassals are usually resistant to corruption due to the Oath within, but in special circumstances—like depletion of Oath or severe injuries—they can’t resist corruption and may become monsters like non-vassals.
She recalled Pascal’s words to Gideon during the hallucination.
“You’ve used it, so you know… once you use it even once… it leaves a trace on your soul. You could call it corruption…”
Countless times, Gideon had muttered to the stars.
How long can you stand still? The cost?
Will it corrupt me?
It’s already broken, so it doesn’t matter.
She spoke, voice trembling without her realizing.
“Gid… you… that…”
“Ah.”
Behind the hand covering his mouth, he gave a bitter smile. A hoarse voice followed.
“You found out… everything.”
From the one person he least wanted to be caught by.
Gideon swallowed his next words.
Her vision danced in disarray.
In this distorted and twisted world, the only clear, beautiful thing was the person before him, screaming:
“Is that corruption? Are you being corrupted right now? You need to—Serah—”
“Rita, this isn’t something that can be treated.”
Gideon gently interrupted her and added:
“It’s the past I buried and the sins I wanted to discard.”
“What?”
“Hmm… Returning wasn’t a phenomenon intended by the stars. Neither was making the Oath again. It was a kind of miracle, a chance to bury everything and start anew. I realized it when the color of the star in my eyes disappeared immediately after returning.”
He explained kindly, smiling.
“I didn’t want to miss that chance, Rita. So after returning, while taking the Oath again… I used the new Oath as my restriction and my benchmark.”
“Benchmark?”
“To remain the me you know.”
Gideon smiled faintly.
His love was unbearably heavy and twisted. No—perhaps it wasn’t even love anymore.
The person he knew as Rita Pascal could never love someone who would destroy the world for her sake.
She wouldn’t want him to repeatedly return in order to revive her dead self. She wouldn’t want him to kill or harm innocent people for her.
Rita Pascal cannot love someone for whom nothing exists beyond her.
The one she could love—the heroic Squad Leader Gide Pascal who once led comrades beyond the last line of defense to end the war—wasn’t this broken, hollow man.
Ironically, Gideon knew this better than anyone, even as he repeated his madness.
He knew that the more he did this, the less she would love him. He knew he was turning into someone she couldn’t love.
And yet, he couldn’t stop. He simply couldn’t give up.
Everything was his sin, his alone.
If he truly loved her, he should have stopped before it degraded.
He didn’t.
He did all of it not for her, but for himself, unable to endure the reality that she wasn’t there.
This wasn’t sacrifice.
He knew perfectly well that he was selfish and blind.
He also knew that she would never love the man he had become.
So when the opportunity came, he forced his ruined self into the framework of a new Oath.
He separated the past and buried it in memory, immersing himself in the identity of “Crown Prince Gideon” to remake himself.
To return to the heroic Squad Leader Gide Pascal she could love, the one with conviction, responsibility, and passion, leading comrades to end the war beyond the final defense line.
To not evade the responsibilities given.
Not as “Gide Pascal,” blinded and clinging to Rita Pascal alone, ignoring everything.
But as “Crown Prince Gideon,” able to observe his surroundings, thus having a chance to be loved by her.
He had sworn to live that way.
