C189
The man's expression changed completely as he looked bewildered at Ethel, who suddenly appeared and took his drink and drank it.
"Ethel!"
Ethel continued to fall, blood spilling a dark red.
Terence shouted, lifting her.
"Ethel, Ethel! Snap out of it!"
Ethel wanted to respond to his words, but she could only breathe heavily due to the tremendous pain that invaded her.
She felt like her insides were burning, her mind was fuzzy, and she had terrible headaches, one after another.
Headache. I see, he has borne this pain all his life since he was born.
It's understandable that he got angry when she told him not to consume the "Devil's Claw" again.
Only now did Ethel truly understand Terence.
"A doctor! Get a doctor immediately! What are you doing? Call him now!"
While Ethel had these thoughts, Terence desperately searched for a doctor and scolded the people around him.
Following the sound of urgent steps, as if someone were calling a doctor, she heard Jack catching Samuel, who was trying to flee, and asking him who had ordered it.
Samuel made absurd excuses, saying he didn't know anything and that the woman lying there was his sister, so why would he kill her?
Ethel used her superhuman mental power to cling to her fading consciousness.
She then barely managed to open her mouth.
"The person behind this… Baron… … Celestial whale… that drink… causes… death…"
She wanted to tell him in detail that Samuel was just a pawn and that the mastermind was Count Baron and the poison's principles, but she could only utter a few words.
Just that made the blood rise beyond her neck, and Ethel let out a scream.
Terence quickly helped Ethel spit out the blood and squeezed her hand.
"Ethel, it's okay. I understand everything, so stop talking now. The doctor will arrive soon. You'll heal when the doctor comes. If only he would come... Damn it, why isn't he here yet?"
As it was her own body, Ethel intuitively felt it. She couldn't avoid death.
Terence probably felt the same. Still, he had hope.
Ethel engraved his kindness in her heart again and said the last words she wanted to leave behind.
"That… bad drug… please… stop it... Okay?"
"Yes! I won't consume it ever again. Even if I die, I won't touch it. I swear."
Finally feeling relieved when she saw Terence blindly nod his head and promise her he wouldn't.
There was something else she wanted to tell him.
They were obvious things like saying she wanted him to become emperor or that it would be better to change his irregular lifestyle habits from now on.
But no more words came out.
No matter how hard she tried to move her tongue, only a sound like air coming out of her mouth came out.
She felt the time had come.
"Ethel? Ethel? No! Don't close your eyes. You have to hold on! Yes, look over there. The doctor is coming. You just have to hold on for a moment. Please, just a moment..."
Her chest was stained red with the blood she had spat out, her hair was tangled, and her expression was very distorted.
Terence, looking more disheveled than Ethel had ever seen, held Ethel's hand to his face and pleaded.
"I have something to tell you. Didn't I tell you a moment ago to go away and never appear in front of me again? That was all lies. It wasn't my intention. I'm sorry."
"......"
"I didn't want to show you such a pitiful image of being solely dependent on drugs. I felt so ashamed that I suddenly said something I couldn't say. Also, I said before that I would become emperor, didn't I? Forget it. Now that I think about it, the position of emperor, it's not really that great..."
What is he saying now?
The voice reached her ears, but her muddled mind refused to understand it.
She wanted to at least listen to the end, but this damned poison didn't seem to allow even that.
It won't work. She no longer had the strength to even open her eyes a little. Her eyelids were too heavy.
Ethel inevitably closed her eyes.
"Ethel? Please, no, Ethel! Open your eyes..."
In the end, everything stopped.
Her desperate voice, the murmurs of the people, even the heartbeats inside her body.
In the last moments of her life, Ethel only thought.
“Even if I don't know anything else, I should have left this message.”
“I dared to hold you in my heart.”
-----------------------------
When Ethel's world darkened, my consciousness awakened.
After being dazed without thinking about anything for a while, I finally realized who I was.
Yes. It was me.
A person who lived and died in another world and was possessed by the novel <Return and Walk on a Flower Path>, a novel I had always enjoyed reading.
At least that's how she perceived it.
While arguing with Liena, I was trapped again in the soul resonance.
And then I began to see Ethel's memories....
I don't know. At some point, I completely assimilated with the Ethel in my memory, and until just a moment ago, I thought I was her.
From Ethel's perspective, I felt her emotions and sensations, and when Ethel was heartbroken by Terence, I also felt pain.
“Why?”
It wasn't like that when I looked at Liena's memories.
I experienced the same things that Liena experienced from Liena's perspective, but at that time, I had a clear consciousness that I was myself.
It was a view of someone else's life from a step away.
But why was it different this time?
"Maybe, maybe I really am..."
As doubts in my heart began to grow, the once dark world suddenly became brighter.
I was standing in front of a grave.
The word "Ethel" was engraved on the tombstone erected over the grave.
Although it was a rather clean and old tomb, only the name Ethel without a surname was there.
Someone placed the red rose I was holding next to the tomb and said,
"If you were here, you would scold me, wouldn't you?"
It was Terence's voice.
That's when I realized I was looking at Terence's memories.
"Why suddenly?"
Wait, now that I think about it, the sphere that formed when Liena and my powers collided must have hit Terence who was beside me.
Could it be that there was a soul resonance between Terence and me?
If so, it didn't seem impossible for me to see Terence's memories now.
"......"
In the memory, Terence remained silent and stared at the grave for a while before turning away.
After taking a few steps, a building with a familiar appearance appeared in front of him.
A small but cozy temple.
It is located in the Wandering Forest, and I have been here before with Terence.
It was here where I first heard the voice of the Goddess Miella while praying.
"Hello, I'm here."
However, unlike then, Terence spoke quietly in the tranquil temple with no one around.
"Answer me. You always watch over all life in this world, including me."
Then, a strange but chilling voice came into his head.
"You have come, my apostle. Now all that's left is to destroy the world by flooding it with demonic beasts."
Seeing that he calls Terence his apostle, is this the voice of the Evil God?
My first impression was that it was different from Miella's, but strangely similar.
But what Terence said later was enough to astonish me.
"The person I called was not you, but Miella. Did you think I wouldn't know until the end? In the end, you and the goddess are different but the same."
What? Miella and the Evil God are the same being?
As if to prove that his words were true, the voice of the Evil God changed.
"As expected, you noticed. Well, I didn't really hide anything."
A completely different tone of voice from before.
It was Miella's voice that I had been hearing for a long time.
"Why do you try to leave life on this land, but at the same time try to kill each and every one of them? Is that fun?"
"Well, yes. I would be lying if I said it wasn't fun, but that's not the original reason."
"Tell me the original reason."
"It's hard to explain it so you can understand. It's not exactly the same, but if I were to compare, I would say it's similar to the sea."
"The sea?"
"The sea is the birthplace of life and is indispensable for many forms of life, including humans. But it's not always beneficial. Sometimes it turns into a towering tsunami and claims many lives. It's similar to that."
"Do you think that's an answer?"
"Did you really think you would get a clear answer from God?"
"......"
"First of all, if it were a category that could be clearly understood by a simple human mind, I wouldn't have called myself God. If you want to know the answer, why don't you go to the sea or the land and ask? It provides all sorts of valuable things to humans, but why do they sometimes get angry and kill them?"
"Are you saying you're like the land or the sea?"
"I'm no different."
While Terence frowned, Goddess Miella spoke as if soothing a child.
"Hey, human. It would be better for your mental health if you understand me and the Evil God simply as a kind of natural phenomenon. Just assume that's how the natural course of things goes."
"...natural course?"
"That's right. The typhoon doesn't have any malice in destroying your home. The sun doesn't shine on you because it has good intentions."
"......"
"I don't intend to preserve life with good intentions, nor do I intend to destroy it with malice. That's how it was from the beginning. I guess the reason we talked about whether it was a god or an Evil God was actually just to avoid your confusion."
"...."
"More than anything, the original purpose of calling me wasn't to answer questions like these, right?"
Terence paused before responding.
"That's right. Whether it's the world or God, it's fine by me. My goal is to save one person."
In front of a god trying to protect the world or destroy it, he dared to give an order.
"Miella, rewind time. This is the choice of the apostle you have chosen and who has survived until the end."
Miella fell silent as if assessing something.
"You really have no will to destroy the world in the slightest. All you can think of is saving that woman. If you had even a little bit, a monstrous wave would have erupted."
Finally, the goddess sighed to herself.
"That's why randomness is so annoying. Once one side is decided, there are no conditions except that the other must come from those around it."
"The story is getting long."
"Yes, yes, I know. Even if I'm a god, I can't force your will. A monstrous wave won't happen if you don't want it to, but that doesn't change the fact that the Apostle of the Evil God won. In the end, it's neither one nor the other. There are enough reasons to rewind time."
"So you're saying you'll do it?"
"Yes. I will. However... there are conditions."
---
Previous - TOC - Next