Chapter 226 – Walking Through Memories

Reα​d​ on̈ ‌K​a​tRҽa​d​îոցCa​f̃e‌

The hero who struggled to protect humanity.

What corrupted the blessed saintess who sought salvation.

Was the endless, unending time.

The repeating time.

Two years that would never truly end.

The loop repeated infinitely.

The future stagnated, unable to move forward.

Over 2,000,000 regressions.

A perceived time of four million years.

An eternity that even the saintess, blessed by the gods, could not endure.

However,

Even after surpassing two million regressions.

It wasn’t even half, nor a quarter, of the regressions she would have to endure.

Lucia, who had managed to piece together her shattered mind through extreme methods of pain, couldn’t last long either.

The 4,000,000th regression. A perceived time of eight million years.

Even Lucia, who had turned herself into a masochist, was crushed helplessly by the tides of time.

There’s a limit to running away while consumed by madness. Time devoured even insanity.

The 5,000,000th regression. A perceived time of ten million years. Lucia’s immortality broke.

Lucia, who had near-perfect memory as a side effect of her immortality, began to experience errors in her memory.

She started to forget. In a way, it was salvation.

She forgot that she was the blessed saintess.

She forgot the name Lucille.

She forgot Yoo-seong. She forgot Iris. She forgot Michael.

She came to believe she was just a student at the academy, Lucia.

She accepted the fake identity and fabricated backstory Yoo-seong had created for her as reality.

She deluded herself with false memories that never existed and accepted them as truth.

The time she spent fully as Lucia was as diligent as the early stages of the regression. She didn’t give up on the future, nor did she spare any effort in fulfilling her duties as a student.

Though she had peculiar sexual preferences, Lucia was an ordinary girl. She made friends, fell in love, and fought to protect people as a student of the academy.

The 30,000,000th regression. A perceived time of sixty million years. Her life repeated the same cycle.

The student Lucia also steadily broke down in the repeating time, and at some point, she became aware of her past as the saintess Lucille.

In the flow of repeating time, the saintess resisted, raged, despaired, and resigned. She endured as long as she could.

But once she passed the breaking point, Lucille returned to being Lucia. She forgot everything.

It was a desperate defense mechanism she had created.

There was no other way to endure the infinite time.

The 150,000,000th regression. A perceived time of 300 million years. Even the defense mechanism crumbled.

By this point, Lucia’s personality had completely worn away. Though her immortal body remained intact, the mind and soul within had finally eroded.

Her ego shattered.

Lucia’s personality died.

All that remained was an empty shell of a body.

Though no will resided within it, 300 million years of time had been imprinted on the body.

After repeating two years for 300 million years, Lucia had experienced every possible event.

Literally every event. That experience guided the body without a soul. It responded to external stimuli by drawing on past reactions.

There was no will of her own. The soulless body acted like a machine with an algorithm, producing pre-programmed responses.

To the outside, she seemed like a normal person. No one realized that Lucia was an empty shell without a soul.

The saintess Lucille had been reduced to a doll fixed in causality.

Yet, in a way, this was also salvation. Without a soul, she no longer suffered.

Time continued to repeat. Occasionally, Lucia’s personality would return, but it never lasted long. The personality would crumble quickly, and the frequency of her regaining her senses gradually decreased.

The 240,000,000th regression. A perceived time of 480 million years. Lucia’s ego no longer returned.

After that, time repeated with little variation. Since Lucia, who could create variables, only repeated the same actions, the changes were minimal.

The devils, who had inherited fragments of memory through repeated regressions, created some variables, but they couldn’t cause significant deviations.

And then.

The 374,104,561st regression.

A perceived time.

Of 748,209,122 years.

After spending over 700 million years.

The day after the academy’s entrance ceremony.

Lucia, sitting in the classroom to attend a lecture, stared blankly at the podium. A white-haired female teacher was conducting the first lesson. She already knew what the teacher would say, what gestures she would make, and how she would conclude the class.

The soulless body moved based on stored memories.

It naturally followed the actions Lucia would have taken.

Actions repeated so many times they could be counted in the hundreds of millions.

Without any deviation, it repeated the same expressions and actions.

It had always been this way.

As long as the regression repeated.

It would continue to be this way.

“…Huh?”

But as always.

Change arrived suddenly, without warning.

The touch of the seasons reached Lucia.

For the first time in hundreds of millions of years, life returned to her lifeless pink eyes.

‘Lucia’ widened her eyes, then looked around in confusion.

“Huh? Uh? What?”

Where… is this? A classroom? Why am I here? I was definitely in my bed at home… Wait, my chest feels a bit heavy. Huh? Was my hair this long? No, that can’t be right. And why is it this color? I’ve never dyed my hair… Am I dreaming? Is this a dream?

‘Lucia’ was utterly bewildered.

How could she not be? She had woken up in a completely unfamiliar place.

Even her body felt strange. Her chest now had soft, noticeable flesh, her hair was long enough to touch her shoulders and dyed blonde, and her legs felt oddly exposed.

‘Why does it feel so breezy down there… Eek, I’m wearing a skirt?!’

It took ‘Lucia’ some time to grasp the situation.

“…Is this the world of a novel?”

This is that, right? “The Dawn of the Sword”? A web novel I read before.

The teacher at the podium is Angelica. The black-haired boy sitting in the back left is the protagonist, Eugene. The small blue-haired girl sitting diagonally to the right is the main heroine, Alice.

So what’s going on? Did I enter the world of a novel? Is that even possible? And why am I a girl now? Blonde… shiny golden hair… Eek, wait. Could it be…?

Soon after, ‘Lucia’ rushed to the restroom during break.

There, she confirmed the identity of the girl she had possessed.

Cutting her finger with the dagger she always carried happened shortly after.

‘Lucille’s’ eternal memories had reached their end.

‘Lucia’ began to sift through the tangled memories.

Gathering the surging memories and pushing them into one place, ‘Lucia’ muttered in a deep voice.

“…I’m really screwed, aren’t I?”

‘Lucia’ paled, cold sweat dripping down her face.

◆

Now, to sort out this mess in my head.

Let’s recap what’s happened so far.

I saw Lucille’s memories.

To explain what happened as it was.

I thought I had defeated all the enemies and reached the epilogue, but before I knew it, I was back at the prologue.

I repeated that. About 300 million times? Maybe more? I don’t know. At some point, the memories started flying by.

Anyway, I repeated it a lot. A whole lot. Probably more than the time humanity has spent building civilization.

It was like a Möbius strip, repeating endlessly. The saintess Lucille became the masochist Lucia, and then her mind shattered, turning her into the doll of Lucia.

My head was a mess.

The memories were so overwhelming that my mouth went dry.

Words failed me, and nothing came out easily.

After a long silence, I muttered in a faint voice.

“Am I really the one who possessed her…?”

Just like how Lucille forgot everything and became Lucia.

Maybe I’m just deluding myself into thinking I possessed her?

Maybe I was never a man.

Maybe all my memories are just delusions.

Maybe the novel’s story was just one of Lucille’s regressions.

Maybe I’m just another personality created by the insane Lucille?

It’s a shocking hypothesis that could shatter my identity. If everything is truly just my delusion, and I’m nothing more than a false personality created by Lucille… If that’s really the case, then I… I…

“Whatever, who cares~”

Yeah, it doesn’t matter.

What does it matter who I am?

Whether I’m really a possessor or just a delusion.

Either way, the fact that I’m ‘me’ doesn’t change.

Honestly, no matter how much I agonize over it, nothing will be resolved.

Worrying over something I can’t solve will only make my chest feel heavier.

“My identity isn’t the issue—the regression is the bigger problem.”

Right, this is a far more critical issue.

The root cause that turned even the saintess Lucille into a deranged, perverted masochist.

She regressed through infinite time.

For an eternity that no human mind could endure.

“My masochistic tendencies, my desire for destruction… all of it stems from Lucille.”

Even Lucille couldn’t endure it and lost her mind. In the face of infinite time, even a perverted masochist is no different from any ordinary human. They say time is undefeated, and that’s exactly how it was.

“If I stay like this, I’ll end up just like Lucille…”

I already knew the world was regressing. I had guessed as much from the clues Astaroth had dropped.

But I didn’t think deeply about it. I didn’t want to.

After all, there was no immediate solution. How could Lucia stop the regression of time?

I vaguely thought that maybe Eugene, the protagonist, could help later.

Surely an awakened Eugene would have some means, right? That’s how I optimistically reasoned.

“…Even I don’t want to end up that broken.”

To repeat the same time forever.

All the bonds I’ve formed reset.

All the efforts and achievements I’ve made disappearing like bubbles.

Starting everything over from scratch.

Forever.

“How could anyone endure that?”

I felt sorry for Lucille, who had to live like that for hundreds of millions of years.

And now, thinking that I’ll end up like that, my mind feels uneasy.

I want to find a way to escape the loop, but I know it’s all meaningless.

Lucille already tried every possible method.

And yet, she failed. What makes me any different? It’s the same.

“No, I don’t want it! I hate it as much as I hate getting pregnant! No, I hate it even more than that!”

Another fear has been added to my list.

It’s scarier than pregnancy. What do I do? How do I handle this?

I just thought that worrying over something I can’t solve is pointless, but this is something I can’t ignore.

I grab my hair with both hands, pulling at it while making a tearful face.

This is the first time since becoming Lucia that I’ve felt such despair.

“It’s okay.”

That’s why my reaction was delayed.

I had to let go of the hair I was pulling when I felt a hand tapping my shoulder.

Startled, I turned my head. There stood a blonde girl. A girl who looked just like me. No, that’s not the right way to put it.

It’s not that the girl looks like me—it’s that I look like her. Of course. She’s the original owner of the body I’m currently using.

“…Lucille.”

“Lucia.”

I carefully spoke her name.

Lucille looked at me with a calm smile.

A smile so worn and fragile, it looked like it could crumble at any moment.

Author Note

A/N (Author’s note):
The flashback to the past is now over.

From now on, it’s Lucia’s story again!

Translator Note

T/N (Translator’s note):
Mental breakdowns could have been a thing, too bad our Lucia is probably the most accepting person in the world who could accept any circumstance with an open mind.