Ch.195Collapse – 2

“…..”

A sticky yet terrible silence descended. On top of that, a cold and chilling atmosphere accompanied it.

The mood filling the club room was mostly created by four people.

Priscilla Agnes, Rosaria Leone de Michaela, Laura Ercarenciana Cresenne von Yuperantis Bellium, and Elishier. These four.

It was understandable. To Erestica and Nika, Aria was merely a dangerous enemy who tried to destroy this world and recreate it according to her own taste.

There were no complicated backstories spanning hundreds of years or bad blood carried over from other worlds that made them enemies.

But for these four, it was different.

Laura had suffered endlessly because of Aria until she finally gave up her memories and lived for hundreds of years not as a possessed person but as Laura herself. Priscilla was half-broken, and Elishier was similar.

Rosaria too, though she had gone through fewer absolute regressions, had never experienced anything good while in the Starlight Order. So it was natural that all four of them were emanating killing intent.

“How fortunate you are. How shameless must one be to greet us so casually?”

“Ugh……”

Aria shrank back at Elishier’s sharp response. It would have been an unimaginable reaction from the Aria of the past, but the current Aria could be considered a completely different person.

Thanks to Latina’s persuasion, hadn’t she let go of her obsession with being special and her compulsion about herself? Naturally, she couldn’t help but shrink back as she tried to face the sins she had committed in the past.

“So, what do you want from us?”

Laura asked coldly. It was another sharp response. Aria fidgeted nervously before finally managing to speak.

“I came… to apologize…”

“Apologize… apologize, you say. How brazen of you to say such a thing. Let me tell you in advance, the reason you’re still standing on two legs is because you didn’t say you came to ask for forgiveness. Keep that in mind.”

Saying you came to apologize and saying you came to ask for forgiveness might sound similar at first, but there was a clear fundamental difference in meaning.

The former centers on the other person, while the latter centers on oneself. If there had been even the slightest hint of self-interest in her words just now, they would have thrown her out without further discussion.

“Go ahead and spill your guts. I’ll listen. Just remember that this isn’t because I have any intention of forgiving you, but solely because Mira sent you.”

Laura crossed her legs after finishing her words. The other three had similar reactions. Priscilla was somewhat more docile, but that was only relatively speaking. The chilling atmosphere remained the same.

Aria knelt on the floor. Her head bowed deeply. It seemed sufficiently lowered, though not quite touching the ground.

“…Because of my greed and arrogance… I brought you all to this world against your will, made you suffer… tormented you… treated you like parts… I’m truly, truly sorry… I don’t even hope for forgiveness… I just… wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“You don’t even hope for forgiveness? What kind of trick are you trying to pull? I can clearly see you’re trying to extract the word ‘forgiveness’ from us so you can run back to Mira.”

“N-no! Absolutely… not…”

Aria, who had been trying to defend herself, lowered her head again. It was because she felt the piercing gazes directed at her. Her already shrinking body became even smaller.

Even from Priscilla, who had the most moderate reaction, there was a sense of killing intent, so the other three were predictably worse.

“…Should we be here?”

“I’m not sure…”

Even Nika and Erestica, who weren’t the direct targets of those gazes, were cautiously reading the room.

They had heard about what had happened between those four and Aria. And precisely because they had heard, they felt even more like they didn’t belong here.

“I wish you would calm down a bit.”

Eventually, Latina had to step in. The atmosphere, which seemed like someone might slap Aria’s cheek at any moment, only softened after Latina reappeared with her eyes turning gray.

Just a little bit.

And it felt more like they were giving her a pass not because she was Latina, but because she was someone important to Mira. The tension hadn’t completely dissipated, as they seemed ready to tear into her at the slightest misstep.

“What you mentioned will absolutely not happen.”

“How can you guarantee that?”

“How could I not know when we share one body between two people?”

“That’s not objective evidence. I can’t trust it.”

“If you cannot trust me, could you not trust someone who was once Mira’s closest companion?”

At the mention of “Mira’s closest companion,” the four people who had been glaring at Latina as if they would devour her collectively flinched.

Indeed. Latina was the person who had given Mira severe trauma by being betrayed and killed by humans, and at the same time, she was important enough to be the catalyst for Mira’s betrayal of the humans she had tried to protect.

The four frowned slightly as they caught the implied meaning. If they said they couldn’t trust Latina here, it would indirectly suggest that they also couldn’t trust the judgment of Mira, who had kept Latina so close.

“…You’re cunning, aren’t you?”

Unusually, Priscilla spoke first. Latina calmly responded.

“I come from a world where one cannot survive without being so. I would appreciate your understanding.”

“From what I hear, are you saying you’re taking that woman’s side? Even if it’s you, not Mira—”

“I am not trying to deny the sins this woman has committed.”

At the voice filled with determination, Elishier, who had been about to object, stopped speaking.

“I’m not trying to deny her sins, but to make her face them directly without turning away. Not to hide them, but to help her reveal them. Feel free to criticize her all you want. But would you please do so after she has confessed all her sins?”

“……”

“I’ll take that as acceptance. Thank you for listening to me.”

The awkward atmosphere eventually had no choice but to become calmer. Confirming this, Latina’s eye color changed back to blue.

The body with its changed owner was busy reading the room, with no trace of the confidence it had shown just moments ago.

“I understand. I’ll believe that you came to apologize. However, I won’t just believe it blindly. Answer my questions. The outcome can change depending on your answers.”

“Y-yes… I understand. What is your question…?”

“What was the catalyst?”

It was a brief question with no context, but there could only be one catalyst being referred to here. The reason she suddenly came to them saying she wanted to apologize.

Aria April was someone who treated outsiders as mere parts, hurled verbal abuse even at her childhood friend Leona, and endlessly elevated herself while obsessively clinging to Mira in the name of destiny.

If she had changed so dramatically, there must have been some catalyst.

“That was… thanks to Sister Latina.”

Aria revealed every detail of the conversation their souls had shared in the mental world. When she finished speaking, Elishier was the first to snicker.

“So she wasn’t called a saint for nothing.”

“Indeed.”

The amusement didn’t last long. Elishier, with all traces of humor gone, glared at Aria. Aria’s body shrank as if trying to sink through the floor.

“But that doesn’t mean we should forgive what we went through.”

“Y-yes… that’s right…”

While Nika and the chairman completely stepped back to observe the situation, the four put their heads together to consider how to deal with Aria.

They wanted to return what they had received in kind. But when it came to actually paying her back, they were concerned about Latina inside her. After all, regardless of whether Aria’s soul was there or not, that was still Latina’s body.

Even with healing magic, if something went wrong, Latina would be harmed too. As the four were racking their brains for a good solution, the necklace inside Elishier’s chest vibrated.

There was only one person connected to this necklace. Elishier quickly put it on. The tense atmosphere melted away, and all eyes turned to the necklace.

“Elishier, do you have a moment?”

“As many as you need. What brings you to contact me?”

“You heard about the problem with the time axis earlier, right? I heard Leona explained it to you all.”

“That is correct.”

“Well, we found a solution for that? But I don’t think we can solve it without affecting you all. Can you prepare for battle? Right now.”

“Prepare for battle? It’s not impossible, but…”

Elishier tilted her head. Noticing the question in her voice, Mira’s voice also changed to an apologetic tone.

“I understand this is a really important time… but, well, it’s the same here.”

The confusion was soon resolved. At this rate, the entire world would collapse before long, and they couldn’t just stand by if preventing that was the goal.

“Imperfect ones… I understand.”

“We’ll try our best to eliminate them at our level. But just in case some leak through.”

“Leave it to us. No one will get hurt.”

“Thank you, everyone.”

“It’s nothing. It’s what we must do.”

With those words, the magical communication device returned to being an ordinary necklace. Elishier looked around. Everyone was silently preparing for battle. Even Aria, who had been trembling on the floor, stood up with a “Hya!”

The gazes briefly sharpened at her unnecessarily cute battle cry, but dispersed again when they confirmed her eyes had turned gray. Instead, Rosaria approached and extended her hand.

“Can you fight? If not, stay with me.”

Although she had burned monsters when manifesting miracles, she had never trained in that way, and most of her activities as a saint had been more for boosting morale rather than engaging in actual combat.

“In the past I would have fought, but now I cannot, so I’ll stay with you.”

“In the past?”

Latina expressionlessly made a V-sign with both hands toward the puzzled Rosaria.

“How do you think someone as delicate and fragile as me could spread faith in such a world?”

“Um, because you weren’t normal?”

“……”

Rosaria laughed heartily at Latina, who withdrew her hands with a blank face. She thought to herself that she had expected the saint from the other world to have a rigid personality, but she was more relaxed than expected.

“It seems to be starting soon.”

Erestica’s voice changed the mood. True to her words, the wind blowing through the open window stopped, and the fluttering curtains were gradually freezing in their wave-like motion.

Before long, all movement in the world came to a halt.

After the demon god and goddess disappeared to stabilize time, Leona took her place beside me. The holy sword was gleaming more brilliantly than ever.

I opened my mouth in a joking tone, partly to lighten the mood.

“Are you ready, Hero?”

“Of course, Savior.”

“……”

Seeing my peculiar expression after immediately losing the upper hand, Leona giggled.

“Don’t make that face. I’m super embarrassed being called a hero in front of you too.”

“Alright, Leona.”

“Yes, Mira.”

Fortunately, her mood, which had sunk at the mention of sacrifice being necessary, seemed to have mostly recovered. That was why I had joked around, after all.

‘I hope it doesn’t come to that.’

The goddess and demon god had disappeared saying they would try their best to prevent that from happening, but one should always prepare for the worst.

If someone really had to be fixed in time and support it with their body… honestly, I’m not sure. In a truly desperate moment, I might just jump in without thinking.

Besides not wanting to do the same thing as Aria, there was one more reason I needed to protect this place. I didn’t want to lose the relationships I had built here.

Considering that, it wasn’t hard to predict what I would do. I just had to hope such a situation wouldn’t arise.

“Mira. Something’s coming.”

At Leona’s murmur, I also aimed at eternity. Indeed, I could see fragments of the past approaching from far away.

“…Something impressive is coming right from the start.”

It was the previous Succubus Queen Astaroth, flickering like an old video.