Chapter 186 …
“I had a feeling, but at least say something before you shoot, my friend. You scared me.”
Ollie let out a sigh and grumbled. Rita brushed past her without a word and stomped hard on the back of Joker’s hand as he tried to slip back into hiding. The sharp heel of her shoe bit into his flesh.
Kieeeek!
Joker twisted his limbs and tried to grab her leg with his remaining three arms.
Without even turning her head, Rita shifted the muzzle. A series of gunshots rang out, and explosive rounds tore through his remaining hands. A shriek loud enough to hurt her ears echoed through the air.
Unfazed, she lowered her head toward him. As she prodded at Joker’s clothes—what was essentially his hide—with the muzzle, a voice from the artificial spirit suddenly rang out.
[Suggestion: User, I would appreciate it if you refrained from using this artificial spirit’s body to prod a beast’s skin. Such stimulation is harmful to the baby…….]
It was nonsense, but the tone was unusually small and timid. It almost sounded like it was watching her mood.
Lilietta didn’t respond. She lowered the gun and lifted her foot. Using the tip of her heel, she continued to pry apart the glowing collar of the beast until she found what she was looking for.
Just below the neck, on the upper chest, a small magic circle was engraved.
Olivia, who had crept closer, examined it before Lilietta could say anything.
“What’s this? Why does a beast have a magic circle on it…? Pascal’s doing, I guess? Hm, it’s got an anti-contamination measure built in, but the activation trigger is contact with much stronger contamination? What on earth.”
“What kind of magic is it?”
Lilietta asked quietly. Sensing her unusual state, Ollie didn’t question her and simply explained.
“A fragrance spell. Judging by the scent, it’s patchouli. Not many mages bother learning such miscellaneous magic, but… wait. That guy called Raven used to play at being a clown and cast flower-scent spells on Baron Naparoa, right? Could the real Raven be Pascal?”
At those words, her mind began racing at high speed.
Separate from the heart that still hadn’t recovered from the shock of the memories she had witnessed, her cold reason pieced together the clues.
The patchouli scent she had just smelled.
The fragrance magic circle engraved on Joker.
The unidentified magic circle inside Red Queen’s mouth.
Of the two of them caught in the Queen’s rose scent, only she had fallen into hallucinations.
Hallucinations that showed not her own memories, but someone else’s.
Scenes cut off at ambiguous points.
Because she hadn’t directly seen what the maddened Gid had done, her imagination had spiraled into the worst possibilities.
The sense of dissonance. The mismatched pieces. The empty gaps.
All she had seen was Gid, driven mad because he couldn’t change the regression checkpoint.
But the truth afterward—the reality—was that Gid had succeeded in changing the regression checkpoint and returned to just after her death.
The order… it has to go like that. Gid, who had been repeating the three days after my death, accepted Pascal’s proposal. As a result, he returned to when he was ten and endured those horrific years… then, by some method, came back again to just after I died. From there, he repeated the year Beacon noticed… and succeeded in returning.
Gid, who had wandered through timelines where only Dorothy existed, eventually reunited with Beacon comrades who knew of “Rita Pascal.” And then—
“Gid told us to inherit Pascal’s research and attempt a return together. To go back to where we were originally born. He said Rita would already be there. That all other hypotheses had been discarded, so this was the only way left to retrieve Rita Pascal….”
What Ollie had said.
All other hypotheses were discarded, so we attempt a return.
She had never seen the process by which those other hypotheses were discarded.
She had not seen the process of Gid, who had declared he would kill anyone, actually carrying it out.
After that, there was a blank—how he found a method to return to just after her death.
There was also a blank in how Gid Pascal, who had once been that utterly broken, managed to maintain the version of himself she knew. How he could at least pretend to be normal.
Was that blank accidental? Or intentionally edited?
Pascal can regress.
When they returned, Gid lost the ability to regress. When he told Ollie he could no longer perform “tricks,” that wasn’t a lie.
Judging by his reaction to her earlier question, it didn’t seem completely lost—more like something he could regain if he tried.
Right now, his eye color is normal. Not that strange aurora light.
Therefore, the one who currently possesses the power of regression—the one who holds the star—must be Pascal.
The experiment Pascal proposed to Gid was to drive the previous user of the star berserk and observe what happens when a new user is caught up and dies.
The result was a change in the regression checkpoint. Gid Pascal regressed to long before he had ever obtained the star.
The rule that a star’s user cannot regress to before the moment the star was embedded in their eye—can be broken by exploiting the previous user’s berserk state.
And Gid Pascal also succeeded in “returning,” by using the mismatch between body and soul and the explosion of the star.
Wait. Then how did Pascal return? He came back in his original body. He didn’t have conditions like body and soul mismatch.
Another blank.
She pushed it aside for now.
In any case, if Pascal discovered the results of the experiment and the method of return—and if he wished to regress to a time before he obtained the star—
He’d want to drive Gid berserk… and use him to regress even further into the past.
If the current Gid was someone who had, by some means, restored the mind that had once fallen into that abyss—someone capable of at least pretending to be sane—
Then it wouldn’t be easy to push him into a berserk state.
The most certain way to do so would be—
Me.
Using Lilietta.
Killing her. Or letting her see his memories and drive her away from him.
If I point my gun at him…
Amid the chaos, the sudden patchouli scent.
The funeral incense that had abruptly appeared even though neither Black Joker nor the “Black Dragon” would have devoured anyone at that time.
The magic circle engraved on Black Joker.
If Ollie was right, the activation trigger was contact with stronger contamination.
A condition that assumed Gid would attack it.
A method meant solely to unsettle her.
Pascal, who can regress.
The blanks in Gid’s memories. The sudden patchouli scent. Pascal’s goal of driving Gid berserk.
…A meticulously constructed trap. Perhaps one cultivated even through regression itself.
A trap designed for her to see Gid’s memories, push him away, point her gun at him—and drive him berserk as a result.
Cold sweat ran down her spine.
No. No, he couldn’t have regressed that freely. If he’d repeated it until he got the desired result, he wouldn’t have been so startled by Hannah’s oath during the Mimic attack.
Or perhaps the Mimic attack had succeeded but still didn’t yield the result he wanted, so he abandoned that path and moved on to the next opportunity…
Her head felt like it was going to burst. She shook it hard.
Stop. Discard the areas that are only speculation. Focus only on what has evidence. What’s certain right now is…
She and Gid had fallen into a carefully laid trap. As a result, Gid went berserk and fled as a beast.
The black dragon made of thorns. Blood pooling in eyes like pits.
That was Gid?
Thinking of it again made her dizzy. She steadied herself with a deep breath.
I shouldn’t have cornered him like that. Instead of interrogating him, I should’ve been calmer, more composed, and examined the missing pieces…
But in that moment, she simply couldn’t. Even now, the shock hadn’t faded.
What Gid had hidden was such a deep abyss.
She now understood too late why he had so desperately not wanted to speak of it.
Her impression of Gid had completely changed. She had no idea how to treat him going forward.
No—perhaps she wouldn’t need to worry about that anymore.
Will I… ever see him again?
The black dragon that had grown through his body. The unfamiliar beast.
She gasped for breath.
She had calmed a berserk Gid before.
But was there any way to restore someone who had become a beast?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve never even tried something like that.
Then should she give up on him? Would she never see him again like this?
Had he truly become a beast?
Was this the end?
Just like that?
She couldn’t believe it.
If there was no way—if it truly couldn’t be undone—would she have to subjugate Gid as a beast? Together with Beacon?
When it was practically her fault he had ended up that way?
When he had gone mad because she had died?
Before she could even decide how to treat him, before she could properly process the memories she had seen—he was simply gone?
She felt like she was losing her mind.
It all felt like her fault.
In an instant, everything had turned into chaos.
Just yesterday, on the other side of that wall, they had worn masks and walked the festival streets together. Now it felt like a distant dream.
Nothing felt real.
Lilietta bit her lip until it bled.
“Rita?”
Suddenly, Olivia called her in an anxious voice.
