*
Something went wrong.
After striking the neck of the Demon God who had become Magic Hat, I swallowed hard as I watched the surroundings change.
Grrr…
Mysterious smoke and flickering embers.
Screams erupted from everywhere, and the entire battlefield was engulfed in flames before my eyes.
“What the…?”
The university that had been behind us started to collapse. As if it had never existed in the first place.
Boom!!
Grand Hertz Academy vanished with an enormous roar.
[The hero and the mage fled from the battle.]
And right in front of me, the status window reappeared.
It had been filled with noise earlier, but now it displayed normally as if nothing had happened.
‘Just like the game…’
A sentence I had seen in the sequel, Black Heart. The game’s timeline was set in the future, meaning the academy was already destroyed by then.
[The issue was thinking their love was weak.]
A dry string of words. It was exactly like the message that popped up during the forced event when everyone except me died.
“Licht. My body is moving on its own.”
“Helmet-man. What the heck is going on…?”
Like a rewinding clock, the history I knew was repeating itself.
Kainel started running while holding Ariel’s hand.
They transformed into the hero and mage I remembered from ten years later.
“Wait, Kain! Let go of my hand!!”
“It’s not me doing it!”
Even as Kainel thrashed about trying to move of his own will, it seemed utterly pointless.
The hero couple fled the academy, as if it were their destiny.
‘Did I… not change the fate?’
I squinted at the fleeing hero couple’s backs.
What the heck was the problem?
Could it be because I failed to achieve the Grand Route?
This time I was sure I wouldn’t let this happen by resolving Kainel and Ariel’s trauma.
[Therefore, the party that lost its strongest force was annihilated.]
The Magic Hat shining white before me must have done something.
I quickly swung my sword at the decapitated Demon God.
“L-Licht. This….”
“Junior, it seems that Demon God did something…”
No matter how hard I swung my sword, I couldn’t stop my comrades from collapsing.
One by one, they were spitting blood and falling.
“How did they get hurt so fast?”
“What’s going on…!! Drake!”
Even with ultimate moves like 3D Magic Circles or Dragon Kill, was there no escape?
I could see Dennis, Drake, and Laplace—who had been completely uninjured—turning into a bloody mess.
“…This can’t be happening. This isn’t right.”
It felt like a scene straight from the ending of Black Heart. Watching this spectacle, one thing clicked in my mind.
If the game was modeled after this world, then the only reason the Grand Route ending wasn’t realized has to be because…
‘I originally couldn’t kill Magic Hat.’
That’s why there couldn’t be an ending when I caught the Demon King Magic Hat in the game.
In reality, the Demon King must not be dead.
“This is… the power of the Demon God. No, it may even be more than that.”
It looked like the only ones still standing around were those who hadn’t fought Magic Hat in Black Heart: Emperor Rock, the player Giseok, and Princess Sophia.
“Su-hyun. This feels just like the game.”
“I know! Attack that guy! Hurry!!”
As phrases kept appearing in the status window, I yelled.
[I couldn’t even set up a tombstone.]
No.
[I wasn’t able to retrieve any bodies at all.]
No, that’s not true.
I vehemently denied reality while continuously swinging my sword.
“Su-Su-hyun… I’m sorry…”
A trembling voice called out to me.
Turning around, I saw Pina buried under the debris of a burning building.
“Suddenly… I couldn’t use my magic…”
“……!!”
She wore the same outfit as the Nameless Saintess. Her white clothes and crying face were expressions I could never forget.
“I’m so sorry for not being able to help you…”
[Among them, just one, the Nameless Saintess—.]
Seeing the words appear in my status window, I immediately struck down. If this continued, it would become just like in the game.
“Pina…!!”
I quickly summoned a shield and pulled on the handle. With a clank, the rubble of the building floated away.
“Are you okay? Are you hurt…?!”
“Yeah… I’m fine. Thank you…”
Fortunately, she didn’t seem badly hurt. Pina sighed in relief as she leaned into my embrace.
What the heck was happening?
“Too bad. If we had just done a bit more, we really could have killed him!”
At that moment, a voice came from behind Pina and me.
“Magic Hat. Was this your doing…?”
“Yes! Because you didn’t achieve the Grand Route!”
The white-clad magician who had now become the Demon God, the Demon King of Truth, Magic Hat.
While I was off saving Pina, it seemed he had reconnected his disconnected head and body.
“Thanks to you, I was able to overlay the original world line I remember onto this one!”
He spread his arms wide and laughed madly. The “original” world line he remembers? What on earth did he mean?
The powers of a Demon God can influence even other worlds. Did he use that to summon parallel worlds?
‘No. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have said “original.”’
The hero couple escaping from their childhood trauma. It felt like watching a parallel world from when I wasn’t there.
“Are you starting to remember now? My lord?”
“What am I supposed to remember?”
The questions and answers were on two different wavelengths. Magic Hat tilted his head as if he found it strange to look at me.
“After the Nameless Saintess died, you could have killed me!”
He pointed at Pina, dressed in the Saintess outfit, mocking me. It seemed he recognized her as the Nameless Saintess.
“It’s called the power of love. I was really envious of that!”
Hearing those words, I pieced together something.
Something Giseok had said before this battle. And the status window that appeared right before this.
‘Did I meet Pina when I was the Saintess?’
Dreaming within a dream, or memory loss.
If I truly met the Nameless Saintess and defeated Magic Hat, that would make sense of why he was so obsessed with me. After all, there was that talk about soul inheritance a moment ago.
“To have the power to shroud the truth of the world, and yet to fall to noble love!”
“Are you saying I met you and killed you, and then time rewound?”
No matter how much I thought, I couldn’t come up with a better answer, so I shouted at the transformed Magic Hat.
“Yes! That’s probably it! I don’t know what wish you made!”
“Then I’ll just have to kill you again.”
Powers disappear when the caster dies. So if he truly overlaid the world line where we fought, killing him again would solve it.
“No, it’s already too late for that, my lord.”
I sliced my sword toward him, but the attack was blocked effortlessly as though he were swatting away bothersome flies.
‘What kind of power…!!’
Crash!! I was slammed into the wall.
I felt my bones crack and my insides rupture, blood pooling within.
Even in that dire situation, I gripped my sword, trying to steady myself and rise again, just then—
“I’ve now even copied the power of the God of Light, Starter!”
I saw the grinning face of the Demon God, Magic Hat. He approached me, his white hair streaming.
“No one has worked as hard as I have in this world.”
He spoke sweetly.
Cough…!
In that moment, my body flushed with hot blood. A sharp dagger pierced my abdomen, and my face contorted in pain.
“I used all the powers of the Hero Church to eliminate the heroic companion.”
With a scornful sneer, Magic Hat glared at me.
“But you brought that Saintess right in front of me, as if mocking me. This makes it the second time.”
It seemed his earlier attempts to pretend to fight had just been a formality, purely for entertainment. Magic Hat began to beat me as if he were taking out his frustrations.
“So I’ve changed my mind. Having lost my life once, what more can I lose?”
“W-why…”
Magic Hat smiled warmly at me, even as he licked the blood that had dripped from my body.
“If I could become a woman and monopolize the love of Licht who killed me….”
He turned back to Pina, staring at her with a grotesque smile.
“I’ve been curious just how much fun it would be…!”
Fun. That ridiculous reason for killing and trampling people.
“That’s… you think that will go your way…?”
“W-what?!”
Magic Hat’s approach toward Pina, now the Nameless Saintess, came to an abrupt halt.
The glint of a bloody axe severed his arm again, and crimson droplets painted the ground below.
“Seems you forgot your baggage, Magic Hat.”
“Oh, but isn’t that Emperor Rock?”
If Magic Hat had overlaid the future where he was supposed to exist, then Rock Grancia wouldn’t be included in that version.
“I didn’t expect to be stopped like this. In the original, I would have used Queen Bellin as a hostage to threaten you…”
Magic Hat looked at me, grinning once more. No matter how many times I saw that chilling smile, I couldn’t get used to it.
“Alright then. Allow me to show you my true power.”
He began to boast without a hint of shrinking back.
“If I possess both the powers of the God of Light and the God of Darkness, just what could be possible?”
He turned his gaze toward the black-haired woman casting healing magic beside Drake.
“Sage Azmodius.”
The two I had failed to link the love line with.
Had I failed the Grand Route and couldn’t prevent this?
“No, now you can call me Deus Ex Machina.”
With a single utterance from Magic Hat, the sage’s body twisted grotesquely, transforming into the form of the Demon God from a book.
A mass of black monstrosity, made of mechanical parts and flesh.
