#1. Yukline Office
Patriarch Yeriel was handling the affairs of the house. Her hands moved at a speed invisible to the eye.
There were countless kinds of “affairs.” Reports on Yukline’s various businesses, the family knight order, and the Magic Tower; future plans and budgets; rewards and punishments based on the reputations and achievements of vassals, and so on…
Yeriel would scrutinize all of them, judge them, support them, and personally see them carried out.
So that Yukline would not have a single blemish. So that the direction of its charge would not go astray.
So that Yukline might soar across this continent and become great.
“…You know. With a single word from me, with a single signature, billions of elne move.”
In that sense, Yeriel—no.
The “Patriarch of Yukline” was a giant of the continent who could handle tens of billions of elne in a single day, and therefore a person not easily approached.
“But I’m always irritated.”
Because she was often irritated.
Her position as the Patriarch of Yukline was one thing, but her highly sensitive and finicky personality was enough to make even Delric, the commander of the Imperial Knights, tread carefully.
“People don’t even know there was such a thing as destruction.”
Yeriel had her reasons.
Because the people of the continent did not know.
They did not know that this continent had already been destroyed once, and then regenerated.
“To them, the ‘Outer World’ was nothing more than some demonic spell Deculein cast. Sylvia was the sun who saved them from that prison, or whatever.”
The “Outer World” was a grand demonic magic Deculein had manifested with the help of the Altar, and the continent and all its people had been trapped inside it, nearly withering to death, only barely surviving thanks to Sylvia…
A false history.
“Does that make any sense?”
Yeriel glared at the person across from her. She slammed the desk again and again, her face twisted in utter displeasure.
“Haha… Well, it can’t be helped.”
The target of that needless anger, Lia, only smiled bitterly and scratched the back of her neck.
“The Professor himself wanted it that way.”
“…Yes. That’s true, but.”
Yeriel pouted.
“Anyway. You still haven’t found him?”
“No. Not yet.”
“If you people can’t find him, then nobody can.”
The only knight order in the history of the Empire to receive official recognition from the Imperial Family, the “Red Garnet.” Yeriel and the Emperor had entrusted that group, who were no different from heroes of the continent, with the same mission.
To find Deculein.
“Where on earth did that man go?”
Yeriel grumbled as she looked out the window.
Yukline’s sky was clear. With the most fertile land, and having grown the most commercially and scientifically, this territory was the greatest metropolis of the Empire after the capital.
All of it, thanks to Deculein’s legacy.
Thanks to the knowledge he had left in the Lighthouse.
“He couldn’t have died—”
“He’s alive.”
Lia cut off Yeriel’s worry.
“…Really?”
Seeing Lia so utterly certain, Yeriel’s lips twitched.
“Fine, then. Where on earth is he?”
“But Miss Yeriel, if the Professor is alive, what do you want to do?”
Lia asked. Yeriel answered at once.
“I’ll watch over his end.”
His end.
Yeriel knew.
That Deculein, in the end, could not survive.
That even if Deculein was alive and breathing now, his time was already limited.
“I want to be with him at the end. I want to show him this Yukline.”
“…I see.”
Lia gave a small smile. Seeing her like that, Yeriel raised her brows.
“Then what about you?”
“Yes?”
Yeriel pointed a finger at Lia.
“What do you want to do if you meet Deculein?”
“…”
Lia pondered silently for a moment, then suddenly looked into empty air.
Letters that appeared empty to Yeriel, but clearly existed upon Lia’s retina.
[ Victory ]
With the disappearance of the final boss, the main quest had been completed. The clear reward was a “ticket.”
What kind of ticket it was—an amusement park pass, admission to a club or buffet, or perhaps an item that would send her back to “Earth.”
Lia still only possessed it.
“I… I don’t know. There’s just a lot. Things I want to do, things I want to ask.”
“Like what?”
Yeriel narrowed her eyes. For no particular reason, her face looked suspicious.
“There are things like that.”
What she wanted to ask Deculein was why he had given her the diary.
What she wanted to do was…
“Fine. After you find him, what will you do? Keep being an adventuring party?”
“…”
Lia smiled bitterly without a word. Yeriel blinked.
“Why? Do you have another plan?”
“Yes. I’m thinking about it.”
Lia had spent quite a long time on this continent.
But now she had a ticket in her possession, and she could vaguely guess where that ticket’s destination might be.
The problem was that there was only one ticket.
“The person I love might be here.”
In Lia’s heart, Deculein’s final appearance was still vivid.
His face, as he regarded her as Yoo Ara; his figure, so much like Kim Woojin, still flickered before her eyes.
“Love?”
“Yes. If he really is that person.”
And so.
If, by any chance.
If she found him, and he really was Kim Woojin.
And if, on this continent, he truly could not avoid death.
“There’s something I want to give him.”
She intended to hand this ticket over to him.
#2. Desert
A desert where scorching winds raged.
Clinging sand caught at the legs, and heat imbued with mana warmed the skin. In that place, on those desolate dunes where human footprints could not long remain,
there was a man crossing indifferently.
Step by step, there was a man setting his feet deep into the ground as though it might melt beneath the heat.
“…”
Walking on in silence, he suddenly swept his gaze around him.
The distant sun, the light and heat descending with brutal weight, the horizon empty and seemingly infinitely open. He stepped on his own shadow stretching across that orange-red earth with one foot.
Then…
Shaaaaaaa—
A clear wind blew. It was an air current imbued with mana. Sparkling like starlight, it revealed a certain “place” hidden within this desert.
It was a cabin.
A simple dwelling made only of wood.
“…Are you inside?”
As he asked, the man flung open the wooden door.
Creeeak—the space beyond, opening with a groan, was neat. Orderly. Clean without a speck of dust.
A scene very much like “him,” one might say.
“Still the same.”
Murmuring softly, the man hung his temperature-control robe and turban on a coat rack, then sat in any chair.
“Have you arrived?”
A voice suddenly flowed in. The man turned toward it and smiled faintly.
Sitting there with glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, wearing a black robe as he read a book, was—the worst evil of this era.
The most famous worshiper of the Altar, recorded even in textbooks; the common enemy of the continent, a villain who deserved death…
“Deculein. It has been a long time.”
Deculein von Grahan Yukline.
No, he was no longer a noble, so the latter part was unnecessary now.
“Yes. It has been a long time for you as well, Your Highness Creto.”
Yet Deculein’s figure, as Creto faced him now, was still composed.
In a body that would soon meet death, on this continent where all people resented and hated him, while waiting only for “the day he would fall,” he had lost none of his more-than-noble bearing.
“What became of Quay?”
At Deculein’s question, Creto laughed quietly.
“He died.”
Quay was dead.
He had protected Creto at the moment the continent was destroyed. The doll in which he had manifested had become dust. Creto had let those remains, which could hardly be called remains, drift into the sea.
Quay had died that way, but Creto had been troubled by a strange emotion for some time.
One corner of his heart felt hollow, and at the same time relieved.
“When he died, I felt empty, as though a part of me had been hollowed out.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Yet I also felt proud of his final appearance. The way he looked, as though he had finally reconciled with himself, is still vivid to me.”
Creto looked at Deculein. Deculein walked over with steady steps and sat across from Creto.
“I see.”
Deculein spoke as though it were nothing.
Creto asked him, as though he already knew it was not nothing.
“You would know. The answer regarding me.”
The answer regarding me.
That was the origin of the “strange emotion” Creto felt toward Quay.
“That is the only reason I came to find you.”
Whenever Creto thought of Quay, a passion always swelled within him to the brim.
It could not be explained as simple pity or sympathy. It was something the present him could not possibly understand, and Creto wished to know the true nature of that feeling.
“Your Highness.”
Deculein smiled at him.
“Why are you seeking from me the answer that exists within Your Highness?”
Deculein’s gentle voice etched a crease between Creto’s brows.
Creto asked back indifferently.
“…You say it exists within me.”
“Yes. Your Highness Creto’s name, and the life Your Highness will now seize, will be Your Highness’s answer.”
—There was no other reason Quay saved Your Highness.
“…”
At Deculein’s words, Creto fell into quiet contemplation.
Amid the creaking wooden planks of the cabin and the sandstorm tapping at the window, for a long while.
He silently, calmly searched through his thoughts, and at last let out a hollow laugh.
“Pfft. Is that so.”
In truth, Creto himself had already had some idea.
Not only because of the name Creto, but because there were countless things on this continent that resembled the emotion he was feeling now.
“If one day I have a child, and lose that child, will I feel this emotion again?”
Creto said.
Deculein shook his head with a pleased expression.
“That is an emotion I, too, do not yet know.”
“…I see.”
Creto smiled despite himself and looked at the desk. A wand lay neatly upon it.
Suddenly, a thought arose from it.
“Are you going to Locralen now?”
Locralen.
Because the promised day had arrived, Deculein would now go there. Locralen, the master of Locralen, would be waiting for him in the form of the past, and would open the door.
After that, everything would proceed according to everyone’s memories.
Without the slightest deviation, the knot would surely be tied.
“…Yes.”
Deculein gave a faint smile.
#3. Locralen.
…Epherene was in Locralen.
As an archmage, she had dismantled kaidezite and devised a plan to endure 385 years within this limited space—140,525 days, or 3,372,600 hours.
The reward for enduring that impossibly long time was only one thing: a single meeting.
Here in Locralen, Epherene could face Deculein of the past, and her far too young self, and be satisfied with only that.
Because she would meet the person she had thought she would never see again.
Because she could see his face, hold him in her arms, and speak with him.
It was happiness so full and absurd that she herself had not dared hope for anything beyond it.
———And yet.
“…Thank you.”
Epherene did not know how many times she had already said those words. In Locralen, filled with temporal energy, she looked up at the person who had remained with her—at him, so dreamlike.
“Professor.”
“There is no need to thank me.”
Deculein said.
Epherene found even the fact that he spoke like this strange. That he moved was strange, and that his face was made of skin was strange.
“Do you know how many years it’s been?”
“Why should I know?”
That curt tone, the sight of him walking with firm steps as he swept his gaze over Locralen’s scenery—everything.
It was exactly the same as before.
A figure she had missed so much that tears nearly came.
“Where have you been all this time? No, which time period’s Professor are you?”
“You do not need to know.”
Deculein said.
He was still hiding himself, but Epherene did not mind. She followed behind Deculein, who was striding busily somewhere, trotting like a rabbit…
“What should we do? For 385 years?”
She asked.
Deculein came to a halt.
In Lokralen, filled with temporal energy—in that place of tangled time where everything had come to a halt—he faced Epherene and spoke.
“We need to find a way to make time flow again.”
“······.”
Those words left Epherene flustered.
Of course, it was just like Deculein, more than anyone else, but to Epherene, it was a little—
“Do you intend to spend 385 years here?”
Deculein asked. Epherene pressed her lips tightly together.
“That cannot happen, Epherene.”
As he said that, Deculein smiled.
“······.”
Epherene knew it too, of course.
That if she was with Deculein, they would be able to find a way out of this temporal energy.
Since long ago, even things impossible for me alone, even things everyone said could not be done, always became possible when the professor was with me.
“······It will be difficult.”
Epherene murmured quietly.
Right now, Deculein was here, and they had 385 years.
If she was with the person she loved, even that endlessly long span of time would become nothing more than a tiny moment.
“Difficult?”
Deculein asked back, frowning.
“Yes. When it comes to decomposing temporal energy, I’m more of an expert than you are, Professor. Even for me, it’s impossible.”
“No. I believe I already know how.”
“······What?”
Then Deculein placed a hand on Epherene’s shoulder.
Tap—
It was only the touch of a hand, yet Epherene’s heart trembled.
“Epherene. I stand in contact with the truth. Dismantling a magical space of this level is no trouble at all. Though, of course, I will need your help.”
“······.”
Though, of course, I will need your help.
From that phrase, Epherene gained a measure of hope.
“Pull yourself together, Epherene. We cannot remain here for 385 years.”
Deculein roused her with those words. Epherene felt a little sulky.
“······Why not? Time is stopped anyway. We won’t age, and we won’t die.”
“No. Here, you will age, and you will die.”
“How—”
“You will be worn down mentally.”
“······.”
As Deculein said, 385 years was a long time. No magician could endure it easily.
“To endure 385 years here is no different from being isolated from the world. If you spend 385 years in this place, could the you of 385 years later face a world that has not changed by even a single second? Could you communicate with the people of that world?”
A hundred years can turn a newborn child into an old person.
A newborn child and an old person cannot understand each other, and emotional communion between them is naturally impossible. Then what of 385 years, nearly four times that span?
It would isolate Epherene as someone who no longer belonged to the world.
Like Demakan, it would reduce her to a being out of step with the secular world.
“I came here because I do not want you to become like that. To help you.”
“······Even so. You’re with me, Professor.”
Epherene timidly talked back. Deculein let a faint sneer touch his lips.
“It is 385 years, Epherene. Do not underestimate it. No human being can remain constant for 385 years. Your feelings toward me will certainly change as well.”
“······Pfft.”
At that moment, Epherene laughed despite herself. Looking at Deculein, she stuck out her tongue.
“What are you talking about?”
“······What did you say?”
As Deculein narrowed his eyes, Epherene let out a deep sigh and clasped her hands behind her back. Shaking her head, she stretched her neck out rather arrogantly.
“I’m confident about that.”
“Confident?”
“Yes.”
Epherene thumped her chest as she spoke.
“I can confidently say they won’t change.”
“······.”
As if he found the sight absurd—perhaps even a little cute—Deculein let out a hollow laugh.
“So.”
In that instant, aiming for that opening.
Epherene strode up to Deculein.
Her long hair scattering, she slipped straight into Deculein’s arms while he was completely off guard, wrapped both arms tightly around his waist, buried her face in his chest······
Thump—
And hugged Deculein.
“Let go.”
Deculein said. Shake, shake—Epherene answered with the crown of her head.
“······.”
Deculein sighed.
A space that had stopped. Lokralen, where time did not flow and not a single sound could be heard, held only Epherene and Deculein.
“What do you intend to do?”
After a brief silence, Deculein asked. Epherene lifted only her eyes and looked up at him.
“What do you mean······?”
At her cautious question, Deculein answered in a low voice.
“I can wait.”
“······.”
“For as long as you want. Here, I can spend time with you.”
At that moment, Epherene’s face almost brightened with joy······ but then she regained her composure.
“For as long as I want?”
She asked while looking into Deculein’s eyes. Deculein nodded silently.
“Until you are ready.”
“······.”
It was a tempting offer.
Epherene could remain here with Deculein forever.
And Deculein, too—
“You don’t have much time left either, do you, Professor?”
Deculein, who had come here now, stood on the edge of death.
In Lokralen, he could live for hundreds of years, but if he left this place—
“······You’ll die before long, won’t you?”
Her voice as she said that was blue, and drenched in sorrow.
In contrast, Deculein smiled brightly.
“It is all right.”
Epherene glared at him with eyes full of worldly dissatisfaction.
Ziiiiing— as if she might pierce him with lasers, and then, phew.
She shook it off with a single sigh and hugged him a little tighter.
“······One year.”
Epherene said.
“If it’s one year, you can probably establish the theory, Professor, and I can carry it out.”
“······.”
“Then let’s begin without the slightest delay. While researching together, let’s stay together for just one year.”
One year.
Compared to 385 years, it was far too short, and yet, precisely because of that, it could be happier and more precious.
Deculein asked.
“One year will be enough, but are you all right with that?”
“Of course. If I said a hundred years, you would hate me, Professor.”
Epherene smiled brightly.
“Even if we stayed together for 385 years, I wouldn’t want it if you came to hate me, Professor.”
“······.”
She wanted to show him a side of herself Deculein would like, and she wanted to become a magician Deculein would praise.
“Instead, during that one year······.”
Because Epherene had always carried pride in herself, she did not want to beg for someone’s love.
She did not want an uneventful 385 years.
“I want you to look at me a little too, Professor.”
Even if not as much as she loved Deculein,
She wanted the person named Epherene to exist within Deculein’s heart now.
Not as some mere disciple, not as a somewhat cute fellow, but simply as a “woman” who would remain in his memory.
“Would that be possible?”
At Epherene’s question, Deculein let out a sigh that was almost a smile.
That was enough.
“Yes. I’ll work harder.”
Epherene released Deculein from her embrace. Instead, she linked arms with him.
“Let’s take a look around Lokralen together. Like a break before we start researching······.”