Chapter 47
#047
1.
A blood-soaked alley.
My savior, Ceres, whom I met at the brink of death.
“Why did you smuggle out the True Ancestor?”
The moment I heard her words, my heart went cold.
“No, should I call it a fake True Ancestor here?”
There was no way Ceres could know that.
I hadn't reported the fake True Ancestor to anyone.
“How did Lady Ceres… know that?”
Where was the connection made?
I slipped out of Ceres's arms.
She didn't stop me.
Her black dress was patched with splashes of blood.
Ceres took out a cigarette and lit it.
“Cedric, I'm grateful to you. You lifted that tiresome precept. And the fact that I care about you is no lie.”
Confusion, chaos, questions.
I couldn't make heads or tails of any of it. My mind was in shambles.
“So I turned a blind eye to the parts that didn't make sense.”
Ceres closed her eyes as if tired.
Her eyelids trembled like a spasm.
“Knowing the precept that had never been revealed to anyone and approaching me because of it, recognizing the classified Project Z and trying to stop it, and even figuring out Iming and Gisela—the ones I was trying to lure with Project Z as bait—all of it. I let it slide because I found you cute. But now even a fake True Ancestor?”
“That's not it….”
Hearing her words, I suddenly realized.
It was enough to cause a misunderstanding.
I regressed.
I had obtained all that information through trial and error, at the cost of my life, together with Joker.
But how did it look to Ceres?
A weird guy who somehow got his hands on crucial information and carried everything out without failure.
“Who are you? What purpose did you have in approaching me?”
It wasn't strange at all for her to say that.
“Hoo….”
When she exhaled a long stream of smoke and opened her eyes again.
The warmth had vanished from those black pupils.
“Go on. I'll give you a chance.”
“I'm Lady Ceres's loyal dog. The fake True Ancestor was just… something I picked up.”
“Impossible. It was something managed by Geumniga. We set up a perception-suppressing barrier, so you can't use coincidence as an excuse.”
“A perception-suppressing barrier? I just found it there….”
Wait, hold on.
No way.
✧ [Fateful Encounter]: Chance of encountering key figures in the scenario ▲greatly increased▲!
Don't tell me this is…?
No wonder, fuck.
Even for a fake True Ancestor, it had been way too much of a blatant 'please take this stray cat home' box.
So that was because of the status-window adjustment.
But Ceres?
Why did Ceres know that much?
“If you tell me honestly even now, then….”
Ceres's words trailed off.
“…I'll make it as if none of it ever happened.”
I realized that this was Ceres's ultimatum—and at the same time, a major concession.
This was the Ceres mama who had ripped someone's eyes out the first time we met.
She was that suspicious, cautious, and meticulous.
And yet, on a day when everything looked suspicious, she was saying she'd forgive me if I told the truth.
Could I trust those words?
Could I lay bare my purpose and everything else, earn her trust, and then get her help?
After a long thought, I opened my mouth.
“As for the fake True Ancestor itself, I happened to recover it from information I got from Iming.”
“Iming ordered it?”
“Yes. But it looks like Iming doesn't know that the thing he ordered me to recover was a fake True Ancestor either. I didn't tell him, either. That fake True Ancestor ran away. I really don't know where it went.”
It was barely noticeable, but.
Ceres's expression relaxed ever so slightly.
“Why did you hide it and not even report it to me?”
“I'm truly sorry about that. But I needed the fake True Ancestor's power to save my sister.”
“You had a sister?”
“Yes, a sister who was on death's door.”
Ceres crossed her arms as if something displeased her.
“You should have asked me from the start. Instead of making a scene on your own.”
That couldn't be helped.
I saw how much Ceres liked Arbel's corpse in the first loop.
I had to be wary of her.
Besides, saving Arbel wasn't that simple a quest.
The premium route's ending only came once Arbel was killed.
My goal was to bypass that by turning the fake True Ancestor into a thrall and clearing it that way.
How would this plan look to Ceres?
I'd look like some vampire enthusiast throwing a tantrum and insisting on turning Arbel into a vampire when one Universalization could heal him.
There was only one way to clear up all these misunderstandings.
Tell her I had regressed, explain the status window, and lay everything out.
Then, from the parts Ceres found suspicious to the reason I needed the fake True Ancestor…
I could clear up every suspicion hanging over me.
If I showed her Joker's effect, I could even prove it.
…….
I really wondered if it was okay to do this….
“You're already deeply entangled.”
Seeing me hesitate, Ceres spoke in a soothing tone.
“Don't lie to me. Otherwise, I won't be able to protect you anymore.”
“…I'll tell you everything.”
The corners of Ceres's heavy, downcast eyes lifted slightly.
Her tightly pressed lips softened a little too.
It even looked like a faint sense of relief, as if she'd been waiting for that answer.
Good!
Cedric's hidden secret, coming right up!
“The truth is, I….”
What cut that resolve short was.
-Ding
A clear notification chime.
======
::: WARNING :::
- If you disclose the Death Game, a penalty will be applied.
- Please be mindful of your words and actions.
======
Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!
There was shit like this?
It's genre convention that a regressor is fucked if they reveal that they regressed….
But this is too much, isn't it!!!
If I didn't tell her about the regression, I couldn't properly explain the current situation to Ceres.
But the status window was stricter than the supreme judges who live in YouTube comments.
Ignoring the penalty was also out of the question.
Fuck.
Checkmate, Cedric.
…….
I shut my eyes tightly.
Ceres's lips twisted again.
“So you're not going to tell me.”
“…I have circumstances, so I can't tell you everything.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“…I truly wasn't trying to do anything that would harm Lady Ceres. Please believe that much.”
A long silence.
With slow breaths, Ceres's cigarette burned all the way down.
Ceres flicked the cigarette butt to the ground.
“Cedric….”
There was a fragility in Ceres's voice.
At the very least, it wasn't the cold voice of someone resolved to carry out a ruthless purge.
“How am I supposed to trust you?”
Disappointment. Betrayal. Pity. Melancholy.
A troubled voice mixed with all of it.
She bowed her head low and wrapped her arms around herself.
“You worked hard until now. If it's your sister you're worried about, there's nothing to worry about. I'll take care of her.”
Ha, so this loop ends like this too.
This is so frustrating I could die.
I closed my eyes.
How am I supposed to handle the next loop….
I closed my eyes.
Even if I struggle, it'll just be one hit and I'm done, so hurry up and send me off.
…….
But even after time passed.
……?
Ceres never killed me.
She had simply vanished as if she'd never been there in the first place.
Instead, a moment later, as if she'd passed the baton on.
Voices came from the other side of the alley.
“Do we really have to handle even this loser ourselves?”
“If the higher-ups tell us to do it, we do it. Don't get too careless. I heard he's dealing with the Death Sentence.”
“Alright, let's wrap this up cleanly and go drink after work.”
“What a thing. That Ceres Cassian isn't the kind of woman to shield anyone like this, yet here we are. What a joke.”
“Heh, maybe he's her kept man or something.”
Two men and one woman strolled into view.
Their black uniforms were adorned with several ornate carp embroideries.
They weren't wearing ID badges, but their affiliation and rank were obvious.
Geumniga hitmen.
Their flashy attire and bearing.
They were nothing like the mediocre troubleshooters I'd dealt with so far.
It wasn't hard to guess the situation.
As expected, the fake True Ancestor was tied up with Geumniga.
And somehow, Ceres mama was involved too.
They'd found out that I had smuggled the fake True Ancestor away.
It had been quiet this whole time, so how did I get caught?
Maybe that dumbass Shion, who ran off with the rice cake, got caught?
From her words—'Otherwise, I won't be able to protect you'—…
The moment I failed to clarify the facts, I lost Ceres mama's trust.
Her protection was over.
My execution had been decided.
At this point, what difference did it make?
The only difference was whether I died being chased by troubleshooters or got killed by elite assassins.
“Hello there, big brothers and sisters!”
For now, I rubbed my hands together obsequiously.
Even if I'm going to die, I should squeeze out as much information as I can before I kick it, right?
“I honestly don't understand the situation at all. If I'm going to die, could you at least tell me the reason so I can go out feeling nice and refreshed?”
“Bwahahaha! What a funny little bastard.”
The guy in front, holding a large saber, laughed heartily.
“Bwahaha! I hear that kind of thing pretty often.”
You can't spit on a smiling face, so I laughed along too.
“Hey, punk, did you think you could steal Geumniga's top-secret goods and still survive?”
“That's true, but… I'm Brother Iming's right-hand man. If you come at me like this, it'll just make things a little exhausting for both sides….”
“Kwahahaha! This bastard says Brother Iming!”
“Bwahahaha!”
The laughter cut off sharply.
“Know your place, asshole. You're just disposable toilet paper. Why the hell would Iming pick a fight with Geumniga just to save trash like you?”
“Let's wrap this up. How long are we going to keep humoring him?”
“Do it.”
Damn it.
You're being pathetically petty in front of a guy who's about to die.
“Stay still, and I'll send you off in one shot.”
My mana was almost depleted, but I still had enough strength to fight.
What's the point of living long and skinny? For a man, thickness matters.
It'd be unfair to die without even a peep, right?
I'm taking at least one of them with me using Death Echo.
“Come at me!!!”
-Clang!
As I raised my mana, the three of them lunged at me at the same time, as if on cue.
Right before my nose, just as I was about to form hand seals and fire the Death Sentence.
A pale blade flashed.
What the fuck, already…?
A man who had reached me in the blink of an eye.
He was swinging his sword right in front of me.
An incomprehensible speed, as if the middle frames of film had been cut out.
He was on a completely different level from anyone I'd faced so far.
This is a Geumniga hitman?
To think he could move faster than Sunming at full power, all with that calm expression.
Even if I reacted and dodged this attack, there was no retreat.
The other two were already marking the places I'd use to escape.
They were on a different tier from the run-of-the-mill troubleshooters.
They were professionals in the trade—people who had honed the art of killing to an extreme degree.
Wow, fuck. These bastards are no joke.
Right before the sharp blade split my skull horizontally.
-KWA-BOOM!!!!
The air before me exploded into blinding white.
A deafening blast. A vibration that rattled my bones.
The bastard swinging the saber was launched like a cannonball into the neighboring building's outer wall, his upper body bent backward.
-RUMBLE!
The building collapsed in a heap as he slammed into it.
The two who had been charging after him in sync gasped and rolled on the ground in shock.
What the hell?
What the hell is this?
Pushed down by the crushing force, I stared blankly with my mouth open.
No way?
“You fucking bastards….”
A stinging cloud of dust rose like a mirage from the center of the blast.
Against the gaudy red lights, a broad back stood towering with overwhelming presence, like a mountain range spanning a continent.
“You little shits, laying a hand on my younger brother without fear?”
The massive man let out a low growl thick with uncontrollable fury.
“Are you hurt, Rowen?”
“Brother Iming!!!!”
You came to save me!
I didn't believe you would!!!