Ch.2012077

Carisia recalled what had just happened. Though Ortes himself didn’t seem to notice, he had called her by her name, “Carisia.”

It had been truly a long time since he first met her and gave her that name. Considering how their relationship had later devolved into petty bickering before settling into the formal titles of “employer” or “boss” as it was now, one could say they had finally come full circle.

Why had Ortes made such a “mistake”? Carisia thought she understood his feelings.

It was a kind of liberation. This long, drawn-out battle. What had begun with her singular determination to destroy the White Light had eventually evolved into a struggle against all Ten Towers for Ortes’s goal, and now it was finally reaching its conclusion.

Arguirion’s scheme to resurrect the Demon King. The Pope who had suddenly appeared, desperately trying to undo all of history.

The final move that would end it all. The last sprint toward the moment they had been waiting for. It was understandable that his carefully maintained composure might slip a little.

Carisia knew that feeling herself. At the summit of the White Light. When she had shattered the night sky of the White Light and welcomed the open heavens. Hadn’t she spoken much more lightly than usual in the face of the unburdening that came with finally setting down a weight that had encompassed her entire life?

Now, what Ortes had feared most—the resurrection of the mythical Demon King—would be completely sealed off.

As Arguirion’s entirety oxidized in the explosion, the vanguards who had upheld the Demon King’s will would vanish from this world.

There might still be something the Demon King had arranged, like mental parasites, but those could be dealt with at leisure.

It was the moment when Carisia envisioned a future together with Ortes.

Finally, the otherworldly magical power contained within the sacred artifact began to expand. This was different from the expansion needed to crack the dimensional wall and summon the other dimension. This was like a fuse being lit for an explosion.

As the magical power boiled up, it engraved surreal patterns throughout the entire space where the artifact was located. Colors that couldn’t be defined by a single term shone brightly, and from the places touched by that light, space itself began to be deleted.

The crack reached its limit. The artifact shattered along with the space itself, and a sphere of magical light appeared. They were at the center of a catastrophe caused by the mutual annihilation of sacred power and otherworldly forces.

Even the outer shell of the Ten Realms couldn’t withstand this power. The explosion, fueled by the sacrifice of the Demon King’s authority, was destroying the Demon King’s legacy.

Soon, the Ten Realms began to emit a sound like a scream, spewing forth knowledge from the mythical age and infinite magical power. Not something with physical form, but something like a concept. Memories latent within the liquefied magic that the Ten Realms were pouring out.

The mutual annihilation of the artifact bomb burned even more fiercely, using the magic overflowing from the Ten Realms as fuel.

Carisia felt elation, while Ortes felt shock. Coincidentally, if their thoughts were converted into sentences, they would have been identical:

‘The Ten Realms are being destroyed!’

At this moment, even Carisia couldn’t have recreated this. This interference was only possible because Arguirion and the Ten Realms contained the same authority of the Demon King. But once a result had been observed, it might be possible to reach it again someday.

For the first time since the declaration of the Magic Era, the Ten Realms were collapsing. Not a change in who controlled the towers, but the collapse of the Ten Realms themselves. An unprecedented achievement and an outrageous act that undermined the foundation of magical society.

At the center of this great collapse…

Was the Pope.

Upon witnessing this, Carisia felt an inexplicable chill. The magical explosion that had already begun should have been beyond even the Pope’s ability to interfere with.

Perhaps if this had happened before Carisia reached the level where she could break the Pope’s time suppression. But now, even the Pope couldn’t stop the entirety of the magic Carisia had cast.

But he had to.

The Pope began to sing. It was a kind of sacred hymn. Golden cracks began to spread from his throat. It was the precursor to the sacred rupture that Ortes had shown when facing the White Light.

“For the time you have spoken of, our battle shall cease!”

Time stopped. It was neither time freezing nor time suppression. It was something even more powerful that bound even those who had escaped time suppression. Carisia could think but couldn’t move. The Pope’s own divinity, a holy spirit achieved by burning his soul. He had reached the realm of Infinite Sacred Light.

Even the waves of flowing magic solidified in midair. The explosion, perfectly rounded, was trapped, unable to release its power.

“They prepared a great pile of wood for nine days, and on the tenth morning, with many tears, they laid the body on top of the wood pile and set it on fire. The prince asked, ‘Who will twist my fate and guide my soul to the underworld?’ Yet the scales of fate pushed him into the abyss.”

Ortes took a step forward. A pressure greater than time suppression. Ortes somehow broke through the temporal judgment imposed around him and advanced toward the Pope.

“Who can overturn the judgment of the scales? What can change the strict judgment of the great Aigio?”

But the Pope’s sacred hymn did not end with ‘stopping.’ He unleashed the reversal holy spirit he had endlessly studied. Insufficient to reverse the entire world, but enough to reverse this space.

He would turn back time until before the artifact exploded, grasp both the artifact and the Ten Realms, and amplify the reversal. It was the Pope’s final gamble, burning his own soul.

“Only time, flowing from the beginning of all things to their end, can erase the fate placed on the scales. That which waits at the end of the world.”

“Do you truly intend to destroy the world—!!”

Ortes shouted. Even that shout was rewound.

“!!—dlrow eht yortsed ot dnetni ylurt uoy oD”

The form of the artifact was being restored to the point before it cracked, and the broken Ten Realms were also returning to their original state. The Pope cleverly used the fragments of the collapsed Ten Realms. The only one who could interfere with reversing time was moving.

The Pope absorbed the artifact and the convergence of divine objects into the restoring Ten Realms. The ‘sacred object’ was placed on the ‘altar.’

With a concentration that had reached the realm of self-mastery even for a demigod, he twisted the connection points of the Ten Realms. Using himself as a catalyst, he explored the realm of the primordial god.

A final desperate attempt to properly restore world history. As his brother had said, if he made even a single mistake somewhere, this world would collapse.

What form that destruction might take was too terrible to even speak of. It might be a cold, cooling extinction, or it might be a destruction where the same moment repeats eternally, never allowing a formed end to come.

But the Pope believed that all of those were better than the continuation of this corrupt world. The traces of the Demon King had to be destroyed.

It was the moment when the Ten Realms and the artifact, the artifact and the Pope, connected. A sensation of clicking into place with the dimensional wall itself. The world trembled. The Pope’s smile finally disappeared.

A holy spirit bestowed for the sake of a righteous world. Slowly, the fate of the world itself, wrapped in the dimensional wall, was being rewound.

Time that had flowed for 2074 years was organizing its traces. Moons named after magical attributes flowed in reverse, and the wheel of time moved toward 2073.

At that moment, someone resisted. Ortes’s last possible technique: overwriting. Somehow capturing something connected to the artifact entwined within the Ten Realms, he awakened the artifact’s will.

The artifact’s consciousness, which should have been annihilated in the explosive magic, had been revived by the Pope’s reversal. Although it could do nothing but scream, Ortes had given it one last chance.

The artifact’s will resisted. She struggled, thinking that anyone other than the Pope’s god would be acceptable.

She heard it.

No. Not you.

A voice. The moment she heard that voice, the artifact intuitively understood why Arguirion’s consciousness, which should have been revived like herself, had not responded.

Because their cause was closer than ever before, bowing its head.

This place was already Arguirion’s presence.

The Pope had designed the pantheon to “be able to contain any god.” That was necessary to hold the primordial god who had left no trace in this world.

But “he” was also a divine being. If any god could arrive at the pantheon, then likewise, “he” could also arrive.

That, at least, had to be rejected. The artifact knew what that magician had been doing outside the world until now. The blurred totality of Arguirion’s consciousness had not hidden their memories.

The artifact, entangled in the dough of consciousness, knew the atrocities Arguirion had committed using otherworldly power. What was sacrificed for talents to be born, how the Eidolons were corrupted, and also the number of humans that Nastion had secretly offered as sacrifices.

The Pope, too, could sense the approach of the divine being. The sacred object, which should have had no consciousness, had gained one and was summoning a god. A god that should never come. A god whose very existence should be eradicated from this world.

The Pope and the artifact resisted with one mind. The cause of the ruined era. The cause that had turned a lover into a madman. It was an existence that neither of them could accept.

Their resistance was effective.

No.

Their resistance was ▙▚▜.

Their resistance was ineffective.

The wheel moved. In the exact opposite direction of what the Pope had wished.

Time, which had been at the edge of 2073, found its original place again. But it didn’t stop. To bring forth the concept for his own arrival.

2074.

2075.

2076.

2077.

The Demon King had returned.

The Demon Lord had returned.