Ch.74Chapter 74. True Love Nurtured by the Abyss

“Where am I…?”

Upon regaining consciousness, Lucy found herself in a forest.

Looking around, she saw the remains of a burned-out campfire and several tents.

“Yaaawn~. Huh? Lucy, what’s up? You’re up early.”

Surprisingly, the one emerging from the tent was Ravin.

‘Why are you here?’

“Just couldn’t sleep~.”

Her mouth moved on its own, cheerfully giving a morning greeting.

Realizing she had no control over her body, Lucy also noticed that all of this was merely replaying events that had already happened.

“Were you planning to pounce on Rainfold’s tent this early in the morning?”

“E-even I wouldn’t go that far!”

“Ravin, Lucy. You’re too louuud…”

Arsil came out rubbing her sleepy eyes, and Naidrian, who had already been up exploring the forest, returned with Tigria carrying berries they had gathered.

“Everyone’s so diligent.”

“Rainfold! You should be ashamed for waking up later than Lucy.”

“Haha, I’m embarrassed.”

This was strange.

From the situation, this appeared to be the hero party during their quest to defeat the Demon King.

But why was Ravin here?

And why was everyone so friendly with her?

“Alright, today’s morning dish duty is Ravin and Lucy, right?”

“Ugh, that’s annoying. You do it, Arsil.”

“I was on duty last night.”

“We all went straight to bed without eating dinner last night!”

“Shut up! Follow the rules!”

“You should follow basic decency!”

“Come here! I’ll pound your belly with my fists!”

Ravin and Arsil growled at each other.

Was this how they were in Sewage Alley too?

The relationship between the two enemies looked oddly endearing.

“Hey, Lucy. Could you keep what I told you yesterday a secret from everyone?”

“Why?”

“Arsil doesn’t know what happened to Sewage Alley. If she finds out, she might abandon the mission. And those black-robed knights who were with Rina were definitely Imperial people. It would be better to identify who they are and then get revenge together with Arsil.”

“You two act like you want to kill each other, but you really care about her.”

“Sigh… I don’t have much choice. We’re the only three survivors left. No, four if you count Rina.”

“Who’s the other person?”

Ravin’s face softened.

“There is someone. Someone I really want to have.”

“Is it your lover?!”

“Not yet!”

Lucy giggled, enjoying teasing the blushing Ravin.

As they finished washing the dishes, Lucy made a promise to Ravin.

“When you find out who those bastards are who destroyed the alley, let me know. I’ll help you smash both the Church and the Empire.”

“Lucy…”

“A friend’s revenge is my revenge too. I never liked those guys anyway. Let’s just crush them all.”

Lucy gave a cool smile while patting Ravin’s shoulder in appreciation.

But in doing so, she accidentally dropped all the plates she was holding onto the floor.

“Ah…”

“Since Lucy did it, Lucy has to wash them again.”

“A friend’s dishes are your dishes!”

“Have some shame!”

Except for Ravin, they were all annoying people, but since Lucy couldn’t control her body, she gave up and just waited for this ridiculous play to end quickly.

However, time flowed steadily onward.

Day after day accumulated faithfully, and during that time, Lucy’s heart began to soften toward the hero party’s warm attitudes.

Although facing Rainfold was torturous because she couldn’t suppress her disgust, everything else was becoming tolerable.

That’s what she had naively thought.

“We did it! I’ve put the Demon King’s horn in the sacred casket!”

“Well done, Arsil!”

Arsil was panting, and Ravin was rejoicing.

After an intense battle, they had defeated the Demon King.

And Lucy felt her heart constrict with pain.

Surely not… it couldn’t be…?

“Now let’s go back and take down the Imperial leadership first.”

Despite her desperate hopes, nothing changed.

“Locate, rotate, move, crush.”

CRACK!

“AAAGH!”

Tigria broke and tore off her leg.

The pain transmitted directly to her.

As Lucy screamed and flailed, Arsil grabbed her arm, twisted it, and ripped it off.

“What are you doing?!”

Ravin tried to stop the other party members, but she was no match for them with their changed expressions.

Pierced by Naidrian’s arrows and with one eye crushed by the shield knight’s tackle, Ravin used all her strength to throw Lucy off the cliff.

“Ravin!”

“I’m sorry, this is the best I can do with my limited strength…”

With a sad smile, Ravin whispered:

“If by chance you survive, and you meet a black-haired man with the surname Lee, tell him I really liked…”

But before she could finish, the shield knight’s sword pierced through her abdomen.

“What are you doing?! We agreed to spare Ravin!”

The last thing Lucy saw was Arsil grabbing the shield knight’s collar in anger.

That was the end.

Lucy fell into the river below the cliff and never resurfaced.

And so ended the first cycle.

“AAAGH!”

“Whoa! What’s wrong? Had a bad dream?”

When she woke up again, Arsil was beside her.

Lucy grimaced and tried to attack her, but once again, she had no control over her body.

“I’m going to establish an academy in Sewage Alley and transform it completely. I want to make it a place second to none!”

“There she goes with that talk again.”

“Shut up, Ravin!”

A new journey began, though one she had already experienced.

This time, she spent notably more time with Arsil.

Ravin was still a member of the hero party.

CRACK!

“AAAGH!”

“Lucy!”

Once again, they defeated the Demon King.

The mage severed the hero’s leg.

The only difference was that it was Ravin, not Arsil, who cut off Lucy’s arm.

“What are you doing, you bastards!”

Arsil stood by Lucy’s side, drawing holy power into her dragon-scale gloves, but she was naturally outmatched.

Arsil fell, pierced by the shield knight’s sword.

“We were supposed to… go back together…”

The light faded from Arsil’s eyes.

“Lee…”

“Hey! We agreed not to touch Arsil!!”

This time it was Ravin who protested.

Unable to escape from the cliff, Lucy stared hopelessly at the shield’s edge coming down on her.

CRUNCH.

The second cycle ended too.

Third cycle.

“I chose our bond over my race’s destiny… I have no regrets…”

Naidrian lasted the longest.

In the end, her bow broke, and she fell to Ravin’s hidden weapon.

CRUNCH.

Dead again.

Fourth cycle.

“Love… *cough*… I still don’t understand… but friendship… I think I know…”

Tigria, turned into a porcupine by Naidrian’s arrows, died on her knees.

Rainfold approaches.

Death approaches.

CRUNCH.

It repeated over and over.

Dozens of times became hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands.

Lucy had thought she might survive and escape at least once, but after her attempts exceeded the hundreds of millions, she gave up hope.

CRUNCH.

Death.

CRUNCH.

Death again.

Only the person dying with her changed.

In cases where she was close to Rainfold, no one helped her, and she was killed on the spot.

CRUNCH.

“How many more times do I have to die?!!!!”

She wanted to scream in frustration, but her body still wouldn’t obey her will.

Die, then repeat a new journey.

Completely devastated, Lucy eventually lost her mind.

The puppet with her body tirelessly continued the journey with her companions.

She didn’t even know which attempt this was.

It must have been over hundreds of millions.

This journey would end in death too.

As she was losing her sanity, Lucy suddenly realized that her soul had separated from her body and was looking down at herself.

“Oh my, are you the hero?”

The one who recognized her astral form was Adora, one of the demon heroes.

The illusionist didn’t assume a formal posture despite meeting the hero.

Lucy could easily tell that she too was a being devastated by these countless repetitions.

“Illusionist… what are you doing…?”

“Spear-wielder, can’t you see?”

“Don’t know… head hurts…”

“Haha… I must be going crazy too. I’m seeing things.”

Following the spear-wielder, the dual-wielder also appeared.

They were all floating in the air like ghosts.

“Why… doesn’t the Demon King… deploy us…?”

“The Demon King said that his death is the first condition to escape this cycle. Don’t you remember he asked us to take care of what comes after?”

“Not at all…”

Denarua also appeared outwardly intact, but her eyes were completely dead.

Lucy ignored them and floated in the air, watching the journey that was proceeding on its own.

Soon it would be the moment of the Demon King’s subjugation.

“You there, even if you’re just an illusion, would you listen to me?”

“……”

Lucy didn’t answer, but Adora started rambling on her own.

In a voice devoid of vitality, she spoke to Lucy as if complaining.

“Do you know why this is happening?”

“……”

“It’s because the Goddess is angry. Our Demon God played too many pranks.”

Originally, the Goddess and the Demon God had agreed to compete by nurturing only their own races and providing minimal assistance, to determine who would rule this world.

However, the Demon God blindfolded the Goddess, kidnapped the 1st hero she had appointed, and turned him into a Demon King through all kinds of torture.

“GODDESSSSSS-!!!!”

By the time the 1st hero’s desperate screams reached the Goddess, the corruption was already complete.

The Goddess lost the 1st hero right before her eyes.

Causality punished the Demon God, but Angria didn’t care at all.

The Goddess swallowed her tears and appointed a 2nd hero.

But the Demon God approached the thief who was a hero party member and promised to fulfill his lustful desires if he would make all the female party members his.

When the thief feared the hero’s retaliation, the Demon God said that if he made the women submit to him and say they loved him, the hero would leave without a word.

The Demon God’s scheme was highly effective.

The thief went even further and executed the 2nd hero, which delighted the Demon God, who clapped with joy.

When the Goddess, who had hoped her beloved humans would resolve this themselves, belatedly discovered this, she became furious.

As written in history, when the Great Purification Flood occurred, even the Demon God was terrified and hid behind the Demon King.

For the 3rd hero, the Demon God instilled vanity in a fledgling hero party that hadn’t even fully matured.

This hero party, which didn’t even leave its name in history, charged recklessly at the demon army and died pathetically.

Finally, the 4th hero, Luciana Estel.

As everyone knows, she died due to her companions’ betrayal, and although she managed to defeat the Demon King, the demon heroes appeared.

[“I will never forgive you.”]

The Goddess, who personally visited the Demon God, suppressed all her anger and only uttered these words before leaving.

Angria mocked her from behind, but the Goddess didn’t respond.

“By the time we started to feel something was wrong, it was already too late.”

Clearly, the Demon King had died, and they had stepped forward, but somehow the demon hero party was waiting in the rear.

After the Demon King died again and they were about to step forward, they were back again.

“The Goddess couldn’t contain her anger and turned the 4th hero’s journey itself into an infinite save-and-load section.”

They speculated that the reason the demon heroes and the Demon King retained their memories was because they weren’t races governed by the Goddess.

The Goddess didn’t stop there; she created the Arrogant Saga and distributed it to other dimensions, bringing back only the victorious scenarios to apply.

It was so popular that the number of victorious scenarios easily reached hundreds of millions, but they couldn’t prevent Lucy’s death.

Only then did the Demon God panic and try to stop it, but due to his previous tricks, causality had limited his power.

The situation wasn’t good for the Goddess either.

As the cycles repeated and accumulated, causality continuously weakened the Goddess’s authority to make her give up.

But even after hundreds of millions of cycles, the Goddess still hadn’t stopped the save-and-load repetition.

The minds of the Demon King and demon heroes had been shattered long ago.

“As long as the Goddess exists, we cannot escape this hell.”

Empty laughter, empty eyes.

Lucy wasn’t much different from them.

“That one… is strange. There’s something very dark inside… but he doesn’t become a demon…”

“A porter… seems like a class I’ve never heard of…”

“Come to think of it, dual-wielder, you’ve been watching that porter quite intently, haven’t you?”

“He… feels different somehow.”

“I don’t really know… Wow! He grabbed the Demon King’s horn with his bare hands?!”

“This is somewhat, no, very surprising…?”

“Ah, he put it in the casket. Illusionist~. It’s almost the climax~.”

The spear-wielder called to the illusionist with hollow eyes.

The illusionist led Lucy to the air on the opposite side of the cliff.

“This is the best spot. Though it’s all meaningless…”

Lucy silently followed her.

Nothing would change anyway.

“By the way, there’s no thief in this journey.”

“Are you still obsessing over such details, dual-wielder? Such expectations only make it harder for us.”

“…Hmph.”

“Look, there’s not even a close companion this time. No one is taking her side.”

As the illusionist said, without anyone to intervene, the hero’s arms and legs were easily severed.

Watching herself wailing, Lucy felt nothing.

Ah, so another cycle will end like this.

Rainfold raises his shield to strike her.

She hoped the next cycle would have her soul separated like this one.

Honestly, it was much more comfortable not having to physically feel everything.

This was the only wish of the hero whose mind had been shredded by hundreds of millions of cycles.

“This is dragging on…”

The spear-wielder muttered in dissatisfaction.

As Rainfold was about to speak in response to the other party members’ request to confirm the contract details,

“Secretary: Art of Space Compression.”

A miracle occurred.

“Naidrian, shoot!”

Before the archer could even draw an arrow, someone moved at the speed of light, embraced the dismembered Lucy, and leaped toward the cliff.

It was the porter.

“Ah…!”

Time slowed down.

Both the demon heroes and Lucy watched with wide-open mouths as the porter flew directly toward them.

In extreme slow motion, Lucy saw the faces of the party members looking at her from the cliff with distorted expressions.

Among them, Rainfold’s hideously contorted face showed no trace of the beauty that had once moved her heart.

CRACK.

Perhaps due to the air pressure, the porter’s mask slowly broke.

Finally, his face was revealed.

It was ordinary.

Black hair, black eyebrows, a nose neither high nor low, dark blue lips.

But

His eyes burned with intense determination.

“Ah…! What a beautiful soul…!”

The dual-wielder admired.

“I’m jealous! I envy the hero! If only we had someone to save us like this…!”

The spear-wielder burned with jealousy.

“I definitely returned to this time frame again…! Porter, who exactly are you…?!”

The illusionist was shocked.

But all the demon heroes could only exhale hot sighs at Lin’s subsequent actions.

They regretted that his gaze, as he genuinely checked on Lucy whom he held preciously in his arms, was not directed at them.

“Who on earth is that man…?”

At the illusionist’s dazed murmur, Lucy’s nose reddened.

Her chin trembled, and tears welled up.

So that’s how it was.

That’s how he looked when he saved me.

He worried about me more than anyone.

“Lin…”

“Did you just say…?!”

“LIN!!!!!”

She called out with all her might, but he couldn’t hear.

She reached out her hand, but she couldn’t touch him.

“So you weren’t just an illusion! Who sent you here?!”

“LIIIIIN!!!!!!!!!”

My only ally

My best companion

My Lin

Only you could save me…!

“Is the porter’s name Lin…? Anyway, I must catch you…!”

[Oops! I’ve been caught!]

“Abyss!”

[How was it? Your impressions after confirming all the truth firsthand? Oh, wait a moment. I’ll hear that when we get back!]

“You traitor!”

Before she could deploy her illusion, the Abyss snapped its fingers first.

The surroundings were instantly dyed with black energy, and Lucy collapsed on the bed in the same position she had been reaching out.

“Huff… huff…!”

It was her room in the imperial palace.

The still bluish dawn moonlight illuminated her.

Lucy curled up in a corner, avoiding the light.

[Now you understand, don’t you?]

The Abyss whispered obsession.

[You must never let him be taken from you.]

The Abyss encouraged greed.

[Only Lin is your savior. He’s a man of a completely different caliber from those other trash!]

The Abyss instilled twisted love.

[Where is your only ally, your best companion, your Lin? At least~ he’s not by your side right now, is he?]

Lucy looked up at the Abyss.

[Cherish that desperate, burning feeling. Show it only to him.]

Then the Abyss looked back at her.

[You want forgiveness, don’t you? You want Lin to love you, don’t you?]

Until the morning sun rose.

Lucy nurtured her affection for Lin while listening to the Abyss’s wicked words.