Chapter 192………………………………………….
Riena’s demonic energy collided with my divine power.
Riena unleashed a storm of demonic energy upon us, trading it for her own lifespan, and I continuously released divine power to purify it.
How long had the stalemate lasted?
Suddenly, Lucy—who had been perched on my shoulder—tilted and fell to the ground.
“Don’t worry about me! Just focus!”
Lucy shouted, stopping me just as I was about to turn around.
“I’m just a little tired. If I rest for a moment, I’ll be fine. Just a moment…”
But unlike her words, Lucy couldn’t get back up right away.
For a moment, my heart dropped, but hearing her steady breathing, it seemed she had simply fallen asleep.
Poor thing. She had scraped together every last bit of her strength to give to me, and it looked like she couldn’t stay conscious anymore.
I was worried about Lucy, but just as she had said, I couldn’t afford to divert my attention right now.
Terrence and I endured stubbornly even though the air was so thick with demonic energy that our skin stung.
“…Ugh.”
But Terrence had reached his limit as well.
Bending one knee, Terrence grimaced.
After handing all his strength over to me to reduce my burden, he now looked as if he couldn’t even remain standing.
“It’s alright, Idel. I’ll rest for a moment and get up again soon.”
Even so, he forced a smile as if trying to reassure me.
“…Okay. Then rest for a moment.”
The moment my reply ended, Terrence’s head dropped forward.
Even though he had lost consciousness, his body didn’t fall backward, and one hand was still tightly holding mine. That was just like him.
Now only I remained.
Without even having the chance to wipe the cold sweat soaking my forehead, I poured out my divine power with everything I had.
“How about you give up already?”
At that moment, Riena called out from the other side.
“It’s hard, right? Feels like you’re going to die squeezing out every bit of strength you have, doesn’t it? Let’s relax together. Just give up.”
“Shut up! I’m perfectly fine!”
“Putting on airs, are we?”
In truth, Riena wasn’t entirely wrong.
For a while now, my head felt like an overheated machine, burning hot, and my vision was blurry.
Every joint in my body ached, and my breath was coming up to my throat as if I had just sprinted at full speed.
I wanted to give up right then. I had the urge to throw everything away.
But I couldn’t.
Rather than some noble mission to save the world or humanity, the only thing desperately driving me was the thought that I had to protect the precious people beside me—and the happy future I wanted.
Most of all…
‘I only just recovered my memories of the second timeline, and now the world’s supposed to end already? No way!’
There were still so many things I wanted to do with Terrence.
I wanted us to sit together and talk openly about the second timeline. And the confession I never managed to properly say before dying—that I loved him—had to be fulfilled this time.
Face to face.
Out loud.
‘And also, and also!’
Terrence and I still had to progress further in our relationship!
Amazingly, in the second timeline, Terrence and I had never even held hands.
My memories from the first timeline had only returned partially, so I didn’t know about that, and in this third life we hadn’t gone beyond kissing due to various circumstances.
And now the world was going to end before that?
No matter how I thought about it, that was nonsense.
How could this happen when we loved each other this much?
If it really came to that, even if I died and only my soul remained, I fully intended to grab the goddess Miela by the collar and shake her somehow.
While I was firmly resolving not to back down for somewhat questionable reasons, Riena’s voice rang out.
“Your last struggle is pitiful. Fine, I’ll praise you for holding out this long. But the absolute amount of my demonic energy and your power is completely different.”
Riena wore the most annoying expression I had ever seen on her face.
“Look—now that those two beside you collapsed, you’re clearly being pushed back—”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“…What?”
“Riena, since our powers are clashing like this, I can feel your agitation. You’re very afraid of something right now.”
“What are you talking about!”
“Are you afraid you might lose to me?”
“Still acting smug! Look carefully! Who’s the one cornered right now—huh?”
Riena’s eyes suddenly widened before she could finish speaking.
The balance between the two opposing forces that had been perfectly even until now had begun to collapse.
“W-what? That’s impossible!”
And it was the demonic energy that was being pushed back by divine power.
“That can’t be! My demonic energy should be far greater!”
“It is greater.”
I recalled something Lucy once told me.
“You know? The blessing we possess works depending on the owner’s will.”
Because of that, Riena—whose desire to be loved was enormous—could exert tremendous influence over people, even ignoring their own will.
Meanwhile, since I didn’t have a motive as strong as Riena’s, even when I used the blessing, I gained only a small amount of persuasiveness.
“But right now, it seems my will is stronger than yours.”
A blessing was originally a power based on divine power.
Even if the principles were similar, there was nothing strange about that.
The difference in quantity hadn’t changed, but strangely enough, my divine power drove back the demonic energy more and more as time passed.
In a way, it might have been natural.
Riena—whose heart was as unstable as a wrecked ship in a storm and who had no expectations for the future, even sacrificing her lifespan—could never defeat me.
“Right now, no one in the world is more desperate than I am.”
Despair spread across Riena’s face.
“T-that can’t be…”
I didn’t miss that moment when a crack appeared in Riena’s heart and pulled up my divine power with all my might.
Including the strength Terrence and Lucy had given me.
Now was the chance to turn the tide.
Fwoooosh!
The divine power gathered into a concentrated, spear-like shape and pierced through the demonic energy in an instant.
“Ah!”
The tip of the spear struck Riena directly, and she rolled across the ground, wounded.
With its master in that state, the demonic energy filling the area lost its power and scattered.
I gently released Terrence’s hand and staggered toward Riena.
I had succeeded in turning the tide, but since I had poured out all my divine power, I was nearly completely exhausted.
Still better than Riena, who lacked even the strength to stand and could only crawl along the ground.
“This can’t be! Why should I lose to an idiot like you?!”
Riena glared at me resentfully.
“An idiot?”
“Of course! Drinking poison just for some man? Aren’t you insane?”
She seemed to be talking about my previous life that she had seen through our souls’ resonance.
“The most important person in the world is yourself! Throwing away your life for someone else? That’s madness! You’re crazy! You—and that guy who even gave up his blessing for you—are blinded by love! I can’t understand it!”
“…Yeah. You wouldn’t understand. Someone like you who’s never given up anything for another person—let alone your life—wouldn’t understand.”
“W-what do you know!”
“I saw your memories too. Whenever you dealt with others, you always calculated everything, didn’t you? How much benefit that person could bring you, and how many times they would repay you if you showed them kindness first.”
“You…”
“Even with the Cassius family—your own relatives—and with Mikhail, your lover, you did the same. It was a rather bitter life.”
Riena let out a sharp laugh.
“Bitter? What nonsense! That’s the smart way to live!”
To me, it looked like a forced smile.
“No. You already know you were wrong.”
At that moment, her forced smile vanished like a lie.
“The reason you were so shaken earlier was that, right? Because you started wondering if the values you’ve clung to all this time might actually be wrong.”
“No! Are you crazy? Don’t make things up!”
But her excessive agitation only proved my guess correct.
Through the resonance of souls, Riena had seen the lives of Terrence and me—a life of sacrificing for each other.
It seemed that had brought some kind of change deep inside her heart.
They say seeing something once is better than hearing about it a hundred times. Perhaps that saying applied here.
Riena, who had firmly believed her way of life was right across three lifetimes, had only begun to doubt it after indirectly experiencing someone else’s life.
“I-I’m not wrong! You’re the strange ones! In the end, people live alone in this world! Of course family and everything else are less important than yourself!”
As she said that, Riena shook her head.
Even when I approached her and drew the self-defense dagger from inside my clothes, she focused only on denying me rather than escaping or defending herself.
She had already completely lost the will to fight.
‘She probably lost half her motivation even when we were clashing earlier.’
A bitter taste filled my mouth.
If she had at least continued trying to kill me until the end, it might have been easier on my heart.
My memories of when Riena and I had once been friends had just returned, and now taking the life of such a defenseless opponent made resistance rise inside me.
Just as I thought once again that I was too soft and simply tightened my grip on the dagger—
“Idel!”
Terrence’s urgent shout rang out from behind me.
When I turned around, a familiar dark figure entered my sight.
It was the Shadow charging toward me.
‘Damn!’
Because the situation above had been so urgent that I couldn’t leave even for a moment, I had ultimately never gone to finish off the Shadow.
Enough time had passed for it to recover.
‘But it’s still moving slowly!’
I tried to reach for the transparent belt around my waist.
My plan was to turn invisible and avoid the Shadow’s attack.
But I soon realized that wasn’t necessary.
The Shadow’s target wasn’t me.
The Shadow’s arm, its end sharpened like a blade, pierced straight through Riena’s heart.
I blasted the Shadow away with the divine power I managed to squeeze out and checked Riena’s condition.
With the Shadow’s arm lodged in her chest like a shard, Riena barely moved her lips.
“I-it… executed me… because I gave up…”
Losing the will to fight meant she had also lost her mission as an apostle.
In other words, the Shadow had taken revenge on Riena for abandoning her mission at the very end after coming this far.
At the same time, it prevented me—another apostle of the goddess—from killing Riena myself, intending to trigger the Monster Wave.
Because the Shadow’s purpose from the start had been to cause the Monster Wave.
‘If this continues… the Monster Wave will…’
For a moment, despair washed over me.
But then a thought flashed through my mind—
There might still be one way left to stop the catastrophe.
