~Chapter 121~
The Manager lost consciousness for a moment, but quickly woke up. As soon as he opened his eyes, pain throbbed in the back of his neck.
Maybe Nocturne tried to knock him out. But the Manager had blocked his pain sense, so he could stay awake even if hit. Even though Aria had restored his pain, he still couldn’t truly faint.
“Ugh…”
The Manager groaned and looked up. Nocturne was looking down at him with cold, murderous eyes. For a second, the Manager thought it would be better to just pass out.
“W-wait.”
When Nocturne clenched his fist, the Manager closed his eyes out of instinct. At that moment, Aria’s voice cut in.
“Nocturne, that’s enough.”
Nocturne reluctantly lowered his hand. Even though his whole body ached, the Manager couldn’t help but smirk.
“Are you having fun?”
Nocturne asked him. Oops, maybe he let his expression slip, but it didn’t matter. The Manager answered with a relaxed face.
“I’m just glad the saint is still kind.”
And that kindness would surely become Aria’s weakness and lead to her destruction.
“Aria didn’t save you because she wanted something in return.”
Suddenly, Nocturne spoke to him. The Manager looked at him with a confused face.
“What you do with your life is your choice. But…”
“You’d better pray that Aria doesn’t break.”
The Manager wanted to mock him, like, “Why would I do that?” But the murderous air from Nocturne kept his mouth shut. Nocturne looked down at the sweating Manager for a moment, then turned away coldly.
‘…Damn it.’
The Manager stayed silent and watched the situation. But soon, his face was full of confusion.
Aria approached the Eshafe boy and suddenly hugged him.
‘Is she saying goodbye?’
“Sera, what are you doing?”
Nocturne also looked confused and went to her. Just then, Lance called out.
“P-princess, stop!”
“Lance?”
“Your Highness is trying to break the boy’s brainwashing with her power!”
The moment he said that, not only Nocturne and the knights, but even the Manager was shocked.
“Sera, if you do that…!”
“Princess, stop!”
Everyone tried to stop her. But Aria didn’t let go of the boy.
“Are you crazy, princess? If you do that, you’ll die too!”
The Manager shouted desperately.
The Sacrifice was already completely broken and about to self-destruct. There was no way Aria could break years of brainwashing in such a short time. If she tried, she’d be infected by that damaged mind and get brainwashed too. Then she’d die with the Sacrifice.
The Manager never wanted the only S-class mental-type Eshafe to die so easily. He wanted to see her break, not just die in vain.
This wasn’t the ending he wanted. The Manager couldn’t understand her actions anymore.
He’d lost control of the situation.
“You didn’t act like this when your allies were brainwashed during the war!”
Back then, Aria was more rational. She abandoned the allies she couldn’t save and moved forward bravely.
“I’m recreating the war, but why do you keep acting differently?”
Aria laughed coldly.
“So, you did all this to break me with the war.”
Just as the Manager said, Aria was remembering the war during all of this.
Memories of having to abandon her allies for victory. The last words of friends who told her to leave them behind. The painful choices of sacrificing those she cared about for the bigger goal.
“Back then, I wanted to do this.”
In the past war, Aria wanted to drop everything and save her brainwashed comrades. She wanted to rescue them. But she couldn’t.
She was the commander and the princess.
She had to look at the bigger picture, destroy Cambiata, and save the captured citizens. She had to sacrifice a few for the many.
But all those choices slowly broke her down.
She lost friends she’d shared life and death with, and in the end, saved people like the Manager instead. Even her very existence as Ariadna was dismantled.
‘But I’m not Aria anymore, so I can do it.’
Aria gently stroked the boy’s hair as she held him.
She saw the faces of her fallen comrades in him. Aria whispered softly,
“I even saved people like him. Don’t you think I can save you?”
‘How foolish…’
The Manager mumbled, but suddenly sensed something strange.
Even in this urgent moment, it was strangely quiet. Nocturne and the knights, who should have been stopping her, said nothing. The Manager tried to look around, but his body wouldn’t move.
‘What is this?’
Right then, his vision flashed white.
“Ariadna!”
The Manager woke up at the sound of a sharp voice.
He was still in the isolation room. But the situation was completely different. It was noisy, and the knights were rushing around.
‘Did I just faint standing up?’
The Manager, still confused, looked around.
There were way more people inside. The rescue team that waited outside had come in. All the healers were working desperately, using their powers on Aria and the boy who were lying on the floor.
“Aria, wake up!”
Nocturne, who always called her Sera when she was fine, now kept repeating her real name with desperate emotion.
Aria’s face, in Nocturne’s arms, was covered in blood.
What happened?
“He’s awake!”
Suddenly, the Eshafe boy opened his eyes. The Manager looked at him in shock.
How was that possible?
Did she really work a miracle?
“No pulse!”
But then, one of the healers treating Aria screamed in fear.
The Manager couldn’t believe his ears.
Was she really dead?
“Aria, Aria…”
Nocturne held her, mumbling like a madman. The deep, dark despair was definitely real.
“…Did Aria really die?”
The Manager had mixed feelings.
He had succeeded in breaking Aria, but the process was a mess. He didn’t even feel much satisfaction from controlling everything or destroying the perfect existence.
‘It’s still my victory, I guess.’
He never expected Aria would risk her life just to save a single boy.
How foolish.
Aria—Great Ariadna, Saint Ariadna, woman blessed by God, and the world’s only S-class mental-type Eshafe.
The Manager never forgot the shock when he first saw her.
In the country ruled by Cambiata, where Eshafes were treated like slaves, the Manager really thought he was better than them. But when Cambiata fell, for the first time, he thought maybe “Normals” weren’t greater than Eshafes.
For the first time, he felt fear.
Maybe he wasn’t special. Maybe Eshafes were superior.
But in the end, he won.
As the Manager tried to get up with a feeling of victory, he collapsed back onto the floor because of a sudden heat.
He slowly turned his head, full of a primitive fear.
Nocturne was holding Aria in his arms, glaring with killing intent.
At first, it looked like Nocturne’s anger was aimed at the Manager. But it wasn’t. That anger was aimed at the whole world. The air grew hot, and everything was silent, crushed by Nocturne’s emotion.
The Manager suddenly remembered a rumor from a few months ago. People said Nocturne Bendrix went mad after losing Aria and turned the entire mountain of Litton into ashes in just one day.
A chill ran down the Manager’s spine.
Maybe Nocturne was about to offer the whole world as Aria’s grave.
Right at that moment—
A blackout hit again.
Like the night sky falling, thick darkness instantly swallowed the theater.
“What… what’s going on?”
“Is it another blackout?”
People murmured in anxious voices.
But the Manager was caught by a completely different question.
‘What was that, just now?’
Right before everything was swallowed by darkness, the Manager saw it clearly.
Nocturne, drowning in despair, suddenly looked as if he’d found hope when the darkness came.
