Chapter 134

Chapter 134

Ding!

[SYSTEM | You have completed viewing the second story of ‘The Destruction of the World’.]

[SYSTEM | You can now view ‘The Truth of the World’ through the remaining ‘System Error’ fragments.]

[SYSTEM | Please collect the remaining fragments.]

“…”

I collapsed onto the bed, almost falling forward as I gasped for breath.

My mind was hazy.

It felt like I had lived through far too long a time.

Sian Terezia’s timeline alone had been overwhelming. But the System had immediately followed that by showing me Leilyranda Jackmüller’s time as well.

It didn’t seem like I had any choice in the matter.

I was dragged through that long span of time without any say, feeling the frustration that Sian and Leilyranda had experienced right alongside them.

Leilyranda Jackmüller wasn’t so different from Sian.

She too lived through repetition, repetition, repetition.

However, in Leilyranda’s case, she wasn’t chosen by the gods.

Leilyranda was forced into repetition by the will of the demonic beasts.

The seeds of destruction had begun to sprout once again.

Idelbach and Arschen had no intention of repeating their previous mistake. They already knew what a broken hero looked like.

They didn’t use a person as an axis. Instead, they made a place the axis.

The location chosen as the axis was somewhere I had once heard called the mirror of the world at a temple.

That place was the Kima Desert.

Like Lake Yusta Winter, it was called a mirror of the world.

I couldn’t understand how a desert became a mirror, but that vast desert became the axis of the world, and thus the world repeated.

A world that failed repeatedly and descended into destruction.

[Repetition makes the world desolate.]

[It’s like repeatedly copying a document on a copier—the pixels gradually break down and the image becomes blurrier.]

The world’s resolution deteriorated.

Lower resolution meant cracks had formed.

Through those cracks, bugs could invade the world.

The first thing the bugs did was choose their own axis, unlike a thousand years ago, to become a bit stronger.

That was Leilyranda Jackmüller.

<Why do I remember everything?>

<Your Highness the Princess.>

<Why do I have to bear it all?>

Leilyranda was initially full of confidence that she could handle it.

But once, twice, three times…

Through the repeated failures, she grew frustrated.

However, the biggest difference between Leilyranda and Sian might be this:

While Sian himself wished to become a hero, Leilyranda chose someone else to make into a hero while remaining a supporter herself.

That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I was the same way, after all.

<Why don’t you remember?>

<…You seem agitated.>

<Why do I have to bear it all? Why am I the only one suffering?>

The bugs that chose Leilyranda gave her no explanation whatsoever. They simply left her to it.

<Cassis Luwin.>

<…Yes, Your Highness.>

Cassis appeared every time.

Every time he appeared with the same cold, expressionless face, quietly looking down at Leilyranda or going to the battlefield to fight demonic beasts.

And every time, he was defeated.

<You are not a hero.>

At Leilyranda’s firm declaration, Cassis showed no particular reaction.

<Someone who loses this much couldn’t possibly be a hero.>

<…I suppose you could think that.>

The princess gradually gave up on saving the world and began to grow angry at humans’ selfish nature.

<Let’s get revenge.>

<I refuse.>

<Why? You’re frustrated too! You’re angry too.>

<But it’s not like there aren’t people who trust and follow me. I have no intention of betraying their trust.>

So at some point, the princess told Cassis to get revenge, to take revenge on these selfish beings who only cared about themselves.

But the weight of betrayal that Cassis and Leilyranda experienced was clearly different.

Cassis always set out to save the world. Whether he failed or not.

<Do you think you’re a hero?>

<No.>

<Right. You’re not a hero!>

If he were a hero, he wouldn’t have failed this much.

But Cassis continued to repeat his failures, and Leilyranda’s hatred toward the world grew.

She killed all those who tormented her, and in the next life, she killed those who only cared about their own interests. In the life after that, those who opposed her, then those who annoyed her.

Setting aside the destruction of the world entirely, Leilyranda repeated the world while pursuing personal vengeance, yet still nothing changed through the repetitions.

Kill and die, then come back to life.

Kill again, die with the destruction, then return again.

<Ah.>

She realized this life would never end.

Hello Leilyranda

There was a being that greeted the completely broken princess.

Won’t you answer?

It was the world’s error. A bug’s existence.

It was also a being that manifested as a demonic beast in the current world.

Are you tired?

— We’ll teach you how to end it.

— <…>

— You can end this endless regression.

— <Yes. I accept the proposal.>

Leilyranda accepted the bug’s proposal.

<If this world is going to be destroyed anyway, I’ll destroy it with my own hands.>

If this world was always going to be destroyed anyway, she would destroy it with her own hands.

Not destroy it ambiguously like this, but completely destroy it so it could never be restored.

And so end this regression forever, bringing the entire world along to end this insufferable life.

“…This is exhausting.”

I buried my face in the bedding while dry heaving.

The difference between Sian and Leilyranda seemed to show in the conclusions they reached after repeated regressions.

If Sian ultimately saved the world to stop the regressions, Leilyranda was trying to destroy the world to stop the regressions.

“Destroy” didn’t simply mean the destruction that Sian and Leilyranda had experienced so far.

“It means completely destroying this place so that the world cannot be replicated…”

[That’s what it means.]

“You didn’t know?”

How could the gods not know this?

[As I said, the connection has been consistently poor due to the errors.]

[It seems to have evolved much more than a thousand years ago.]

[The connection keeps cutting out.]

[Exactly. And we had no idea it had made contact with humans like that.]

I groaned and struggled like someone suffering from a hangover, barely managing to think.

So was Leilyranda’s repeated transformation into a demonic beast and back also because she had the bug’s help?

I didn’t know.

But in this situation, there was definitely one thing I could understand:

“…Lord Cassis really wasn’t a hero.”

I had arbitrarily decided he was a hero and kept pushing him.

<Do you know why I came here?>

<I came here solely because of you.>

<It is true that I came here to protect you.>

Until now, I had thought Cassis should be at the forefront of everything regarding saving the world and such.

That made sense because he was the hero designated by the original story.

“I think I need to consider ways to save the world without Cassis.”

[Hmm, well.]

[Cassis is already doing well, isn’t he?]

“But…”

I felt uncomfortable. The fact that someone who was living well went bankrupt because of me, and was now rolling around battlefields because of me.

“And stopping Leilyranda should be the priority. Bluntly speaking, if we fail this time too, you could replicate and reset things, but if Leilyranda succeeds…”

If Leilyranda succeeded, the world would be destroyed according to her wishes, and the System would be destroyed too.

If that happened, it seemed like even the gods wouldn’t be able to do anything.

[That’s right.]

[That would be the first priority.]

“Then as Cassis said, I should return to the capital first.”

I needed to return to the capital, expose Leilyranda’s true nature, and strip away her authority. I had to prevent what the bug wanted through her, so there would be a ‘next’ opportunity.

Good.

Now I finally felt like my mind was returning.

As soon as Cassis finished the battle and returned, I would go back to the capital too.

As I was thinking this and crawling down from the bed, I heard noisy sounds from outside.

Cassis had told me not to go out, but it should be okay for just a moment, right?

I carefully opened the barracks door.

And I came face to face with Roen, whose face was pale as a sheet.

“Roen.”

“Irina, come out right now!”

“What?”

“Lord Cassis… has been injured.”

Huh.

Roen rushed past me. He roughly dragged the bed I had been lying on just moments before to the center.

Following Roen, knights rushed into the barracks carrying a stretcher.

There was a terrible smell of blood.

Ah.

“Call a physician immediately!”

“Please contact Luwin right away. Luka will come soon.”

“Your Grace, you must not lose consciousness.”

“Lord Cassis! Can you hear my voice? Lord Cassis.”

I hesitantly backed away from Cassis’s barracks, which had instantly become chaos.

Not only did it seem like a place I shouldn’t be.

“Lord Cassis.”

The possibility of Cassis getting hurt was something I had never once considered.

Even though I had witnessed Cassis dying like that while looking into Leilyranda’s past.