Ch.267267. Temporary Alliance

Aria sometimes had those kinds of worries.

‘Was this something that happened in a previous cycle?’

It wasn’t a side effect of regression. Just the déjà vu or confusion of memory that we all experience occasionally.

Just that much.

It’s not like she was confused about some incredibly significant memories.

Did I eat this menu item last time?

Who told me this joke?

Haven’t I already taken this course?

Very trivial and simple things like these. The kind that aren’t particularly important in life and can be overlooked.

The girl was born with the qualities of a hero who would save the continent, but she wasn’t the type of genius who neatly organized all her memories in drawers.

She often rummaged through her memories like sorting through disheveled clothes.

And now.

“This is my path.”

“Ah.”

The words Elenoa, who had somehow become her close friend, had said were pricking at her heart.

Aria, who had been lying in her dormitory bed, eventually couldn’t fall asleep and sat up, looking out the window.

The sky with its crescent moon was refreshingly clear.

“Aria Rius, if you’re only going to pursue the peace right before your eyes.”

“She said something like that back then.”

“Step aside, don’t block my path with your foolishness.”

Aria closed her eyes calmly and recalled that time. The academy’s main building, occupied by students already brainwashed by Elenoa’s propaganda.

Elenoa had looked down at Aria from the rooftop and warned her in a chilling voice.

“It’s to protect the kingdom. Sacrificing something small for something greater might be called the violence of the majority.”

Despite her youth, she knew the weight of the path she had to walk and the amount of blood that would flow beneath her feet.

“However, knowing everything and avoiding sacrifice in the name of protecting the small is also just violence.”

“I don’t care if they call me the resurrection of Heralhazad, or a villainess who murdered her own bloodline, I’ll bear it.”

She declared boldly, reaching out her hand.

“I’m going to Greyfond, my brother is not fit to sit on the throne.”

The scene of students who were determined to truly bring change to the kingdom, with thunderous cheers spreading.

If Elenoa had been let go there, her skills would have gathered an army several times larger.

It was none other than Aria who had managed the early suppression.

“This is difficult.”

Aria still remembered the heavy pulse of Elenoa that had been transmitted through the sword in her hand.

Elenoa Luden Griffin, who had looked up at her while covered in blood after being stabbed in the heart.

“Hm.”

Elenoa’s intelligent eyes gradually became cloudy.

“Aria Rius… my path is blocked by you.”

Elenoa, who had lived solely as royalty, finally bowed her head at the very end and uttered one honest sentence.

“Thank you.”

Aria lowered her head, rubbing her face. At that time, she couldn’t sleep, just like now, thinking it was the first time she had heard Elenoa’s true feelings.

“Haah.”

Why had she said such a thing?

She still didn’t understand.

When she had asked Deus Verdi about this, he had simply replied gruffly that there was no need to know.

Wait.

“Tsk, did I ask the professor about this in the first cycle?”

Or had she not yet asked the professor from the second cycle?

As Aria began to get confused, her thoughts naturally led to Deus.

In the first cycle, he had always been impatient.

Lying in a sickbed, he had sent her all over the continent like a chess piece.

As a result.

She developed a kind of obsession that everything was possible as long as the professor was there.

In the end, Aria was broken by the sight of Deus, mixed with failure and disappointment.

So in the second cycle, she showed an obsession close to distortion.

But the professor in the second cycle was like a different person. In the end, while resolving various incidents, Deus gave Aria freedom.

From the past that had stuck to her like the previous cycles, and from the future fate of having to save the continent.

Complete freedom.

Aria Rius, now just an ordinary girl.

The ordinary life she had longed for so much.

But the emptiness contained within it.

Ridiculously, human greed has no end, and even in the ordinary life she had wanted, Aria was still wanting something.

But she wasn’t ashamed of it.

She didn’t blame herself for being greedy.

This wasn’t something that came after finding freedom, but a desire that had continued since her hero days.

Proud of her unchanging feelings, Aria jumped up from her seat.

She opened the door and stepped outside.

She knew it was quite late, and that the dorm supervisor was patrolling outside, but for Aria, evading that was no challenge at all.

The place Aria Rius arrived at after running down the corridor, even using special footwork techniques, was of course.

Crack! Crunch!

Slam!

“Elenoa!”

Elenoa Luden Griffin’s room.

“Oh my goodness!”

Elenoa was startled as she saw Aria enter after opening the door. She had definitely locked the door, but Aria had cleanly broken the doorknob to get in.

“…What are you doing?”

Aria was puzzled to see Elenoa sitting in a chair, in the middle of drawing. Seeing her up so late instead of sleeping, Aria noticed that Elenoa must have been deep in thought about something.

“I-I’m drawing! I usually draw like this when my mind is complicated.”

The man Elenoa was drawing was someone Aria had never seen before. He didn’t look like he was from Griffin lineage, but for some reason, Aria felt a strange flutter toward the man.

“Could this be…”

As Aria cautiously asked, Elenoa answered with irritation, feeling like her treasure had been discovered.

“It’s Shinwoo Kim.”

“…That’s really the professor.”

Seeing Aria staring at the drawing with her mouth wide open, Elenoa immediately blocked the drawing with her body.

“Only I get to see it!”

Although she had shared drawings of Deus before, she had never shared drawings of Shinwoo Kim with anyone.

This was a jewel box that Elenoa couldn’t show to anyone.

“Let me see too!”

“No! What are you doing suddenly coming here!”

The two started bickering in the early morning. In the end, Elenoa, who gave it her all, won.

“I’ll scream and call the dorm supervisor!”

Though it included a somewhat ambiguous threat, anyway. With Elenoa turning the drawing toward the wall, the storm passed.

The two faced each other.

“Why did you come here?”

To Elenoa’s blunt question, Aria boldly exclaimed.

“You! If the professor told you to, could you kiss me?!”

“…”

Silence.

Elenoa stared at Aria with her mouth wide open, as if the world had stopped for a few seconds, then shouted.

“That’s absurd!”

A rare harsh word spilled from Elenoa’s mouth. But there was no other way to express her current feelings.

“I’d rather! I’d rather lick Deus’s shoes, you crazy girl! Why would I do such a thing with you… ugh! Blegh!”

Elenoa pretended to vomit, covering her mouth as if she felt sick. In front of her, Aria boldly declared.

“I could do it!”

“Wow…”

“I could! Although I’d rather run around the academy naked than kiss you! But if the professor asked me to, I could do it!”

“…”

“Weakling! You can’t do it, right? I win!”

“D-don’t say such strange things! Deus would never ask for something like that!”

“Ha! You’re just scared because you can’t do it! How dare you challenge me with such weak resolve!”

Adding “you punk” at the end, Aria crossed her arms confidently.

Seeing this, Elenoa’s face turned red as she screamed.

“I can do it! I can do anything Deus wants!”

“Well, the professor wouldn’t ask for something like that anyway.”

“This is really!”

Elenoa was getting tired, wondering what kind of nonsense this sudden visit was about. To her, Aria boldly declared.

“Just like before, in the end, I’m the one who blocks your path!”

“…Before?”

Though she wondered what that meant, Aria continued with her speech.

“In the end, you’ll be defeated by me who has come across time! When you spend your first night with the professor, just put your ear to the door like a loser!”

“Hu, huhuhu.”

Elenoa lowered her head.

Looking at Aria who suddenly came to provoke her, her hand twitched.

“Come here, you!”

Immediately, the two entered into a second round. Thus, the two fought and bickered all through the early morning.

Though it got a bit intense at times with force in their hands, at some point.

The two, exhausted on their own, collapsed on the floor and received the sunrise gradually coming through the window.

“Ah, we stayed up all night.”

“Tsk, I couldn’t sleep at all.”

Despite their grumbling, there was a strange satisfaction in their expressions.

As they stared blankly at the ceiling with only rough breathing sounds, Aria spoke first.

“Hey, what if.”

“Can’t you not talk to me?”

“You ended up rebelling.”

“Are you really crazy?”

Is this something to say in front of a princess of a country? It was a statement that could lead straight to the execution ground, no joke.

Actually, just rolling around with the princess like this was already worthy of execution.

“Different from now. Your brother, in your view, wasn’t qualified to be king.”

“…Is some evil spirit possessing you?”

At Elenoa’s murmur, Aria quickly turned her head. She wondered how she knew, but then remembered that Deus and Orpheus had previously explained to her about the secrets tied to the royal family.

“Right. So you rebelled, but I stopped you.”

“Me? Stopped by you? That’s funny.”

Elenoa snorted, but she didn’t take Aria’s story lightly.

She knew that Aria and Deus had a unique relationship.

They sometimes talked about things she didn’t know.

Elenoa thought that what Aria was saying now might be one of those things.

“You got totally crushed.”

Though in reality, it had been quite a struggle, but well.

Who knows that now?

“Anyway. In that situation, if you were about to die… what kind of last words do you think you’d leave?”

Even as she spoke, Aria didn’t really expect an answer. No, more precisely, she knew that the same answer as the Elenoa from the first cycle couldn’t come out.

Just a personal desire.

A question that couldn’t be explained by anything else.

“You’re really annoying from the morning.”

Elenoa sighed despite her irritation. An answer had already come to her mind.

“What would I say? I’d be super annoyed at losing to you. I’d be really angry…”

And then.

“In the end, I’d say thank you.”

“…”

“If I’m rebelling to that extent, the state of the kingdom must be terrible. I would have rebelled because of my duty as a princess, but from the perspective of Elenoa as a woman… no matter how unfit he was, I wouldn’t have wanted to kill my brother.”

She rebelled because she was a princess.

She expressed gratitude because she was Elenoa.

“Yes, I see.”

Though it felt somewhat complex, Aria smiled with relief.

“This time, I’ll help you walk your path from your side.”

“R-really? You’ll connect me with Deus?”

Elenoa turned her head in surprise to look at Aria. To her friend, Aria gave a playful smile.

“In return, you help me too. Help me connect with the professor.”

“…What are you saying?”

“Silly, with how many other women the professor has, do you think we have any competitive edge one-on-one as students?”

“I’m a princess, so I could somehow lock him up and start from there, right?”

That scary habit doesn’t go away.

Aria sighed and shook her head.

“Would that break the professor’s will?”

“…No.”

Elenoa immediately realized that this method would be the quickest way to lose Deus, even as she said it.

“First, let’s seduce the professor together. Surprisingly, the professor is weak to people with unwavering hearts.”

She recalled how he had married Erika Bright, who had always been by his side in the first cycle.

“Hmm, will that work?”

“Tsk, are you just going to sit back and watch? Are you going to just watch Findenai pounce on the professor? Are you going to just watch Professor Erika enjoy her wedding night?”

“…I don’t want that.”

“Right? I don’t want it either. I really, really don’t want it. May such a world perish.”

“That’s straight-up rebellion.”

You really love rebellion.

Aria thought to herself.

“Anyway, let’s conquer the professor together. Unlike the others, we’re young and fresh. In 10, 20 years, we’ll eventually win.”

“That’s… true.”

Even when Deus reaches around 40, they’ll still be in their 20s.

“We’re forming a temporary alliance for each other’s paths.”

“…”

As Elenoa pondered with her lips tightly sealed, Aria subtly extended her hand.

Lying next to each other, Elenoa finally sighed and took her hand.

“This is strictly a temporary alliance. Only until right before going to bed.”

After saying that.

Elenoa turned her head again to look at the ceiling. For some reason, she didn’t feel like getting up.

“Hey.”

Perhaps that’s why.

Elenoa called out to Aria again.

“What.”

Aria’s sharp response.

“He’ll be coming back, right?”

At the heavy question, Aria couldn’t answer immediately.

In fact, she knew that the possibility of surviving and returning after defeating Raizer, the god of lightning, was very slim.

From the beginning, no one from this continent could guarantee survival.

But.

“Of course.”

Aria resolutely ignored such possibilities and answered.

“That’s right.”

Elenoa nodded with her eyes closed.

After a little while, the two were asleep, making quiet breathing sounds.