Episode 5

His body was growing lighter.

His breathing was becoming easier, as if by some lie.

At the same time, the thin body in his arms was slowly growing cold.

“……Hey. Stop this right now.”

He tried to pry her hand away, but her fingertips were already as cold as ice.

“Stop it right now, Odelli!”

“I can’t.”

But Odelli clung to him and desperately shook her head.

“If not now…… I’ll never be able to do it again.”

“Don’t! I never asked for this!”

Ludvil shouted, the veins standing out on his neck.

That fierce cry did not last long.

Before long, it turned into a desperate plea.

“Please…… stop. I’m begging you…….”

But it was already too late.

Odelli smiled faintly, then collapsed limply in his arms.

“It’s all right now.”

Before he could answer what on earth was all right, that nothing was all right.

“If you keep going that way, you can escape. ……So live.”

Summoning the last of her remaining strength, Odelli pointed somewhere with trembling fingertips.

“Live. That’s my last request.”

The corners of her lips were still curved in a faint arc.

Until the very moment her breath ceased.

For someone who had boasted she would live longer than him, Odelli died so very emptily.

It was an age far younger than the average lifespan of a purifier.

Now that Odelli was dead, a new purifier would soon be born.

The Cardel family would surely click their tongues, saying they had to tame a newborn specimen from the very beginning.

It was merely that her death had come a little sooner—the fate of purifiers that had remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

It had always been that way, and it would continue to be.

That was how the story should have ended.

And yet…….

There was one person.

One person who could not accept the flow of that fate.

“You said you’d live longer than me…….”

His scabbed lips trembled.

Ludvil’s fingertips brushed down Odelli’s cheek, as though tracing the face of the girl who had closed her eyes in his arms as if asleep.

“……That was a lie.”

“Odelli.”

“Please answer me…….”

His shoulders shook.

It did not take long for his suppressed, ragged breaths to turn into sobs.

The moment he let out one cry, he broke down completely, weeping his heart out.

Because he had continued living as a test subject, Ludvil remained small and emaciated even after reaching adulthood, nothing but skin and bones.

A figure utterly different from the one Odelli remembered.

And yet, his eyes alone were alive.

Burning even in the darkness.

“God, demon, anyone, I don’t care. It doesn’t have to be a miracle. A contract, a curse, anything is fine, so please, just one more time…….”

Hot tears fell over Ludvil’s lips.

As if wringing himself dry, he prayed in desperation.

“Take everything. My name, my memories, my soul. So please, bring her back…….”

At that moment, the empty air rippled.

As though time had stopped, the air twisted, and a jewel radiating light appeared.

It was a blue crystal the size of a palm.

It trembled and pulsed faintly, like a living heart.

“This is…….”

One of the many sacred relics of the Cardel family.

For hundreds of years, while building up their image as descendants of dragons, the Cardels had collected many sacred relics and stored them underground.

One of those had suddenly appeared before Ludvil.

And then the scene changed.

A floor splattered everywhere with red blood.

Ludvil lay collapsed on the ground, his entire body drenched in blood.

The blue jewel was still clenched in his hand.

Surrounding him as if to encircle him were knights of the Cardel family in silver armor.

Someone shouted as if grinding their teeth.

“This deranged test subject dares steal the family’s sacred relic!”

The knight standing at the very front drew his sword. Then he drove it down toward Ludvil’s heart as he lay there like a corpse.

Without realizing it, Odelli flinched in shock and ran forward.

But at that moment.

The jewel shone brightly, bursting with a blue flash.

An intense light swallowed Ludvil’s body.

Like a burning star.

Brilliant and cruel.

And then…….

Everything vanished.

The blood, the pain, even the blade that had pierced him.

In the quiet darkness, for the first time, time began to flow backward.

The red blood pooled thickly across the floor was sucked back into his body, and the knights surrounding him withdrew their swords and retreated backward.

Everything rewound as if on a spring.

And when he opened his eyes again.

Ludvil had returned to ten years ago.

To the very day he had been sold at the slave market and dragged into the underground laboratory of the Cardel family.

‘……The Jewel of Regression.’

The ring Ludvil always wore on his hand.

That was the true identity of the jewel set into that ring.

He did not know what had triggered it.

Only that, on that day, the jewel had responded to Ludvil’s voice as he knelt and prayed before Odelli’s corpse.

He had been chosen, and obtained the ability to turn back time.

“This is impossible.”

When Ludvil first experienced regression, he denied reality.

“……I can turn everything back.”

Next, he felt hope.

“I can save you.”

Ludvil laughed, filled with joy.

“We can live together.”

This time, he fled with Odelli.

But he was nothing more than a powerless slave. Before he could even leave the Cardel territory, he was caught and executed on the spot, and Odelli was dragged back underground.

Time turned back again.

The jewel had become subtly smaller than before.

‘I have to grow stronger.’

Ludvil chose to escape from the Cardel family first.

While serving a retired knight, Ludvil held a sword for the first time in his life.

The boy who could not even hold a sword properly and staggered under its weight became stronger than others his age through painstaking effort.

But he was nowhere near fit to become a knight.

Ludvil decided to devote this life to mastering swordsmanship. He immersed himself in training until he became an old man.

When he died, time turned back again.

The jewel became even smaller than in the previous regression.

In his new life, he became a knight of House Cardel.

Then, waiting for an opportunity, he fled with Odelli.

The two hid aboard a cargo ship and escaped to another country, where they built a small cabin on a rural estate and lived together.

“Odelli.”

Ludvil took a newly bought pair of silver rings from his pocket.

“I cannot offer you anything expensive, nor any grand promise…….”

They were the most expensive rings he could buy after scraping together every coin he had saved.

With trembling hands, he slipped the smaller one onto Odelli’s finger and the larger one onto his own.

“But they are proof that I will stay by your side forever.”

Slowly, deeply, he kissed the ring on her hand.

With the face of a man afflicted by a terrible first love, he whispered.

“……I love you, Odelli.”

His unadorned, raw confession held nothing but pure affection.

As if this moment were the last one he would ever have, never to come again, Ludvil embraced her with everything he had, desperately and completely.

But Odelli’s body had already been ruined beyond repair by long years of exploitation.

At the age of twenty-nine, she died.

Ludvil despaired, but it was all right.

He still had many chances left.

‘……I must find a way to heal her body.’

Ludvil traveled all across the empire, searching for a medicine that could cure Odelli’s body.

But there was a limit to the information a knight of lowly birth could obtain.

‘I need power.’

Time turned back again.

The jewel became smaller.

He joined the war as a boy soldier.

He threw himself in recklessly.

Absurdly, he was immediately pierced through by an enemy blade and died.

Time turned back again.

The stench of blood on countless battlefields.

Screams burning amid the flames.

The names of comrades who fell to the edge of a blade.

He died countless times.

He broke down countless times.

Through his achievements, he became a viscount, then a count, then a duke.

The title of grand duke was minor among the thousands of achievements he had seized.

He saved this land, conquered enemy nations where medicine had advanced, and learned magic in an attempt to bring about miracles.

He even became the head of the underworld and dabbled in all manner of forbidden arts.

But he could not save her.

No matter what he did.