“I stopped it.”
Since I had made the hand complete a full circuit around the clock face, I had used up the artifact’s maximum allowance of twelve minutes. Then what point in time was this?
Tesilid gave me the answer.
“Ai, tell me comfortably.”
“……”
“Ai?”
“……”
It seemed to be right before I confessed that something was wrong with me.
“Wait.”
Feigning nonchalance, I brought the teacup to my lips and tilted it. Pretending to wet my throat, I flicked my gaze over Tesilid’s head.
[ World Destruction Rate: 23% (-) ]
The number had been turned back, too. Then now……
Stay calm. I had to stay calm. Calmly, I had to make up for my mistake.
First of all, it seemed there was nothing good to be gained by telling Tesilid about the Demon King’s curse. If so, continuing the conversation was dangerous.
I would avoid it.
“Sorry, Lid.”
“Ai?”
“Later. Let’s talk again later. I suddenly feel tired right now……”
With a listless gesture, I pressed a hand to my forehead. It was an act, but there must have been no small amount of sincerity in it. It was true that I was mentally exhausted.
His expression sank.
“The aftereffects are lasting quite a while.”
“I guess so. I used Divine Descent, and I inherited the Demon King’s throne.”
“……”
“Then I’ll rest a bit.”
I looked toward the bed and placed my hand on the armrest. But the one who rose from his chair first was not me, but Tesilid.
A tall, handsome man, so tall I had to crane my neck far back, blocked my way. One of his hands slowly reached toward my face.
My body flinched and tensed. Because it overlapped with the memory of him rummaging through my mind as if bestowing baptism and finding the curse.
“Are you perhaps feeling that unwell……”
In that instant, my excessive wariness ruined everything. By the time I realized he had only meant to check my temperature, it was already too late.
I had unconsciously turned my head and avoided his hand.
“……”
“……”
At the rejection he had never experienced before, Tesilid’s hand froze in midair, and I, belatedly realizing what I had done, stiffened at the shoulders as well.
This mistake was fatal.
Awkwardness hovered between the two of us.
With trembling eyes, I lifted my gaze and studied Tesilid.
On his expressionless face, all emotion had died away. In that cool head where reason functioned well, what would he, so quick-witted, think?
“Ai.”
The low resonance of his soft, beautiful voice wrapped around my ear from close by. He bent his upper body all the way down toward me where I sat, bringing his face close.
At that moment, his two arms braced on the armrests on either side of me and the chair back supporting my spine were no different from walls. I could not escape anywhere.
Before I knew it, expression had returned to the handsome man’s face. It was a splendid smile, his lips drawn up gently and neatly.
But the words that came from those lips only heightened the tension further.
“This is strange. There’s no way you’d act like this toward me.”
“……”
“Are you hiding something from me?”
“……”
I knew it instinctively.
Ah, I’m done for.
“We are absolutely on the same side, so hiding something from me can’t be your will. Then, is there some prohibition placed on you?”
“……”
“Avoiding my hand was a good sign. Thanks to that, I noticed. Well done.”
It was a terribly benevolent interpretation. His interpretation, stubbornly determined to see only the good side, was compulsive.
“It’s all right now. If you can’t say it with your own mouth, you can borrow mine.”
“What?”
He took his hands off the armrests and straightened his back. Because what he was about to do required both hands.
He lightly placed one hand on my throat, and with the other, he wrapped his own. It was just when I felt as if our vocal cords had been connected.
Astonishingly, Carpeios’s voice came out through his lips this time.
“……”
“……”
The temperature of the silence was cold. This time, especially so.
A voice like a sentence fell.
“You’re cursed.”
“……”
“And with a curse that will inevitably be fulfilled.”
“……”
[ World Destruction Rate: 66% (▲43%p) ]
Was this the side effect of trying to hide it? The increase was far larger than before.
“It’s all right. We just have to find a way.”
Of course, Tesilid did not look all right at all. On the outside, he pretended to be calm, but it was clear that inside, he was quietly going mad.
His gaze, released into empty air, looked like an effort not to face reality.
He thrust a hand into subspace and took out a luxurious hardcover book.
“I have a question.”
What followed was obvious.
[ World Destruction Rate: 80% ]
[ World Destruction Rate: 90% ]
[ World Destruction Rate: 95% ]
And then……
“This won’t do, Ai. I truly don’t want to leave behind any danger at all.”
[ World Destruction Rate: 99% ]
It repeated again.
Those eyes, that expression, those words, that number.
Everything was no different from warning signs.
[ “Prophecy of the End” activates. ]
There was no need to watch any further. Desperately, I reached out and seized his jaw. Then I devoured his lips, along with his words.
Behind my back, the clock hand was rewinding.
✠
After experiencing it about twice, my head began to function fairly calmly. I thought.
Twelve minutes wasn’t enough. I would have to roll things back to before Tesilid came to the bedroom altogether if I wanted to cleanly escape the situation of being suspected.
‘I should use the artifact one more time right now.’
Once I had decided, I couldn’t hesitate. Just as I was about to reach for the pocket watch on the table—
A problem arose.
“……”
By now, it should have been the point when Tesilid, with a gentle expression and gaze, told me, “Tell me comfortably.” But right now, there was no tenderness on his face.
To be precise, he had no room to be tender.
With eyes sunk dark and heavy like the deep sea, he stared at me. A sage-like gaze unique to an existence that had lived for ages pierced right through me.
“Ai.”
“……”
“What did you do to me?”
Part 2, Chapter 176
“……”
It felt as if my mind had become a vacuum.
Having succeeded in drawing an affirmative answer from my silence, his face hardened.
Tesilid closed his eyes, filling his lungs with a long inhalation. It was to draw in his senses.
“It feels like the central axis of the world has shifted ever so slightly.”
“……”
“It isn’t unfamiliar. When did I feel something like this before?”
“……”
“I remember. When I killed my past self before the regression.”
“……!”
As expected of a Ninth Circle transcendent who had mastered the laws and providence of the world. He pierced straight through to the truth in a single direct trajectory.
That terrible experience of attempting suicide that was not suicide for a week. The look in his eyes as he summoned it from his memories was, naturally, not good.
“You rolled the world back? Why?”
“……”
[ “The Word Spirit That Constructs the World” declares an emergency situation. ]
[ “The Word Spirit That Constructs the World” searches for a way to handle Lid’s abnormal awakening. ]
I tried not to let even the slightest pretext or clue slip, but as always, the intuition and insight of a regressor honed over a thousand years showed no mercy.
“Could it be.”
“……”
“I destroyed the world or something?”
“……”
“I did.”
“……”
It did not end there.
“But there’s no way I would have just done it for no reason.”
“……”
“There must have been a reason for me to do something like that……”
“……”
It was only a matter of time before he found the final answer.
In this state, even if I used the artifact, we would only repeat the same situation. The transcendent would notice the rollback again.
‘Lord Word Spirit!’
[ Notice. An emergency upgrade patch has been applied to the artifact “Pocket Watch That Runs Backward.” ]
The world turned back again.
✠
I barely held back the impulse to suck all the air in the room into my lungs. Tense, I stared straight ahead.
“……”
The handsome man buried in the chair had his eyes closed and was breathing evenly. He looked as if he had fallen asleep.
Slowly, he opened his eyelids and raised his gaze to meet mine.
“……”
“……”
The quiet, still atmosphere possessed by a transcendent made it feel as though I were facing not a person, but a vast lake at dawn.
I swallowed dryly.
Had the upgrade patch been applied properly?
With every nerve and every sense, I watched Tesilid’s reaction. So that I could pick up even the smallest clue.
It was then that he made a sudden move.
Warmth slipped beneath my palms, which had been gripping the armrests tightly, and pried them open.
Before I knew it, he had come right up to me and was holding both my hands as if supporting them from below. In that state, he naturally and slowly pulled me to my feet.
The moment I flinched after discovering his unfocused, finely trembling red eyes, he stretched out his arms and pulled me into a tight embrace.
“Lid?”
It was a powerful hug, almost as if he were forcing me into him. A little rough, and a little suffocating.
“Just for a moment.”
“……”
“Just for a moment, like this.”
And yet the voice he poured into my ear was a threadlike whisper, so faint it could be mistaken for breath.
As if he were afraid I might shatter even from the vibration of the air he himself created.
That was when I realized. The hand wrapped around my shoulder was trembling faintly.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I’m being like this either.”
“……”
“I think I had a dream, a bad dream, just for a moment.”
“……”
“So let me stay like this, just a little.”
Possessed by an anxiety with no clear substance, he made excuses for why he had to keep me imprisoned in his arms.
Despite the upgraded rollback, scars remained on him.
Why hadn’t I realized?
At the foundation of his destroying the world lay extreme anxiety. Only now did I truly feel what it meant to him that I would die.
I knew what I had to say.
“Lid, I will never leave your side.”
“……”
“I’m going to live with you in this timeline.”
“……”
“So don’t be anxious.”
Only after repeated soothing did the trembling that came from him subside.
“……All right.”
I found and covered the lips that gave that docile answer, leading him to a place where he could rest well.
As our bodies tilted, the fluttering canopy parted as if it had been waiting and swallowed us.
I covered his uneasy emotions with other sensations.
✠
We rested for five days straight. Since it was just the two of us in a place with no interruptions, it was good for spending intimate time together.
There were no forced duties or roles here in the name of dungeon rules either, so compared to the Heizenberg mansion, we could live a life not merely free, but indulgent.
Tesilid left at dawn today, saying he would visit the human realm.
Only when the affairs of the royal castle and the Magic Tower could no longer be postponed did those old virtues called restraint and patience reluctantly pull him out of bed.
Seeing as he was trying to finish handling his retirement as he had originally planned, it seemed I had succeeded in concealing the fact of the Demon King’s curse from Tesilid.
The rollback became a secret I would carry for the rest of my life. However, it was not a secret I kept alone; there was someone who shared it with me.
Agnes, who had spent five days in the Hall of Saints of the Word Spirit Church before returning, asked me. She had not been affected by the rollback.
For me, it was obvious because I was the artifact’s user, and Agnes seemed to have had her memories protected along with mine because she was a heroic spirit bound to me.
I took out a strawberry shortcake, set the dessert table, and said,
“Probably. I think he believes he dozed off for a moment and had a bad nightmare.”
“Um, that strategy……”
“No, it’s fine……”
Her putting it indirectly only made it more embarrassing.
We had gotten through the crisis, but we had only returned to square one. In the end, the problem of Demon King Carpeios’s curse threatening my life still existed.
Agnes did not deliberately open her mouth, but the way she stared at me was already the same as asking, “What are you going to do?”
“Hmm.”
Starting from the corner, I nibbled away at the strawberry cake with my fork and put it in my mouth.
While the soft, fluffy texture spread through my mouth, the piece of cake before my eyes gradually lost its pretty shape.
[ “The Word Spirit That Constructs the World” advises that you should treasure your life. ]
[ “The Word Spirit That Constructs the World” urges you to be all the more careful, as the Word Spirit Church has not yet fully taken root in this world. ]
It was a message for me, and for the world.
Since Lawful Evil had lost its divinity, the existence of a god who would supply new sanctity to this world was essential.
That existence was none other than our wonderful and magnificent “Word Spirit That Constructs the World.”
However, the Word Spirit has the characteristic of interfering with the world through me. I serve as a sort of passageway.
“If I’d known it would come to this, I would’ve made religious activities my top priority……”
[The “Word Spirit That Builds the World” snaps angrily that you should be thinking about surviving, not sinking into regret as if everything is over.]
“Please don’t get angry. I have every intention of cherishing and preserving my life.”
Only the strawberry garnish remained on the plate that had been reduced to ruins. I poked at it mischievously with my fork and opened my mouth.
“Actually, I have a method in mind.”
“Though I don’t know if it’ll go as planned.”
I popped the strawberry into my mouth. The fresh juice bursting inside seemed to make motivation well up in me.
“Let’s see.”
I rummaged through my inventory. I intended to use the reward I had received for completing the mission to occupy the Winchester Kingdom.
When I opened the lavishly decorated vintage wooden box, potion bottles even more ornate than perfume bottles showed off their colorful forms.
[ “First-Aid Potion Box”
A box containing potions with special effects. The list of contents is as follows.
Remedy for Aftereffects of Divine Descent (1/1)
Extra-Strength Sleeping Drug (1/1)
Extra-Strength Amnesia Cure (2/2)
Gender-Swap Potion (1/1)
Animal Transformation Potion (2/2)
Stamina Potion (3/5)
…….]
I had already taken out and tried a few of them. Their effects were truly extraordinary.
[The “Scales That Judge Souls” is deeply saddened by the fact that it was blocked for five days.]
I took out one of the remaining potions.
It was a potion of a mysterious hue, as though blue gemstones had been melted down and bottled. If I drank it, it felt as if it would take me down into the deep sea.
“I’m going to use this.”
Part 2, Episode 177
[The “Architect of the Skyscraper of Trials” watches with great interest.]
[The “Poison-Tongued One Who Tunes Balance” nods, saying that’s not bad.]
[The “Eye That Watches the Chaos of All Things” opens its eyes wide as if enlightened.]
It seemed Agnes had realized it too.
“I’ll have to process it a little, since I’ll need to use it in an urgent situation.”
I took out my alchemy tools. After pouring the potion into a flask and working on it for quite some time, the liquid was condensed into a pill.
“I wonder what it’ll actually taste like.”
Honestly, as long as it wasn’t more bitter than death, it would be fine.
“The medicine is ready, and next I need to prepare……”
“Someone who will kill me sincerely.”
I soothed Agnes, who was horrified.
“It’s the Demon King’s curse. I can’t get around it with some halfhearted pretense. It’ll have to be enough to deceive the entire world. And for that, I have no choice but to stake my life too.”
Agnes could not easily set aside her concern. I wanted to reassure her, but making empty boasts would only backfire.
There was something more important than that.
“Then before we put the plan into motion, I should give Reed a heads-up.”
“Why?”
“Now, now, calm down, Agnes.”
I persuaded her calmly.
“It’s impossible to handle everything from start to finish without Reed knowing anyway. Even if I tried to hide myself away and do it in secret, with his insane information network, he’d end up hearing news of my obituary. Then the world might end at that moment.”
“So even if I keep quiet about the Demon King’s curse, I should at least give him a heads-up about what’s going to happen. Like, even if something like this or that happens, it’s nothing serious, so don’t be surprised…… something along those lines.”
“I will. By the way, why hasn’t he come back yet after going out at the crack of dawn? The sun’s about to set.”
I had to finish this by tonight. Because.
[ Time remaining until the “Trial Version of Genre Change Ticket” ends: 11 hours 15 minutes.]
The time to draw a new Genre Change Ticket trial was approaching.
Thanks to the battle royale genre, I was staying comfortably in the harem palace dungeon, but there was no way I would draw battle royale again consecutively.
There was a high chance the new trial genre would shove me back into the human world.
Even so, it felt far too wasteful to spend my entire fortune of ten billion cash to buy and use a Genre Lock Ticket. I absolutely had to talk with Tesilid today.
However.
“……”
A long time had passed since I sat facing Agnes at the table and waited.
Just as I felt my sense of time blurring amid the long silence, the clear sound of birdsong seeped into the room.
“Yes.”
“I know.”
Tesilid Argent still had not returned to my palace.
Good heavens, staying out overnight. How could he do this?
[ Time remaining until the “Trial Version of Genre Change Ticket” ends: 15 minutes.]
And of all times, it had to be now.
“What on earth is he doing that he hasn’t come back? Is he avoiding me, by any chance?”
I started to get a little angry, but then worry came first as I wondered if it might be a scar left by the rollback.
This wouldn’t do. I wouldn’t be at ease unless I hurriedly went to check whether he was all right.
The remaining fifteen minutes all passed, but Tesilid did not return home until the very end. As if I had been waiting for it, I gripped the armrest and sprang to my feet.
“Yes. As soon as we leave the dungeon, I’m going to Reed.”
He was obviously at the royal castle or the magic tower, so finding him would not be difficult.
[ Using the “Trial Version of Genre Change Ticket.” Would you like to check the result?]
Given the situation I was currently in, I had a feeling I wouldn’t draw a good genre.
The gods also refrained from promoting their own genres and quietly waited only for the result.
[ Your genre is “Obsessive Angst.” ]
Normally, it would have ended there, but this time, unusually, a message I had never seen before was added.
[ Warning. This genre has a high probability of concluding with a sad ending. Caution advised.]
“That’s too much.”
At a time like this, couldn’t a genre that gave me a happy-ending buff come out?
Maybe because I had no luck, the trial genre wasn’t straying from the flow of my life.
Well, what use was lamenting? I had no choice but to overcome it on my own.
“Let’s go, Agnes!”
I opened a gate leading to the mortal world. After taking a deep breath while looking at the rift in spacetime that had opened, I stepped forward.
Usually, the place where one entered a dungeon from the mortal world became the place of exit. But I had entered the harem dungeon through the sky aboard the Ark, so I could not predict where I would be when I returned to the mortal world now.
[ You have entered the Pan-El District, the capital of the Holy Kingdom of Elfenheim. Adjusting the current time according to the time difference.]
So even when I was dropped out of nowhere into the capital of the Holy Kingdom, which was practically an enemy state, I did not panic.
After all, I intended to break a teleportation stone and head straight to wherever Tesilid was likely to be.
But a problem arose.
“What? Why can’t I use the teleportation stone?”
No matter how many teleportation stones I broke, the winds of spacetime did not move me to the royal castle. The wind mixed with particles of light could not even wrap around my body and scattered feebly.
There were three possibilities in such a case.
The teleportation stone was defective, a dungeon burst had occurred, or spatial transfer was being obstructed.
In my case, it was the third.
“……What is this place?”
Only belatedly did I look around at my surroundings, and I was taken aback.
A dark, damp space made of stone walls and iron bars. There was a name for a place like this.
“……Ha.”
I had walked right into the underground prison of the Holy See of the Order Church with my own two feet.