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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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Her tongue touched my chest.
She licked it, her eyes filled with a manic glee.
“You will save this world! Preserve humanity, protect life, and deliver everyone from the arrogant gods’ calamities!”
“…”
“You are my believer, my apocalypse, my final mercy upon this ignorant world.”
She nestled against me, pressing her ear to my heart. Listening to its beat, she closed her eyes and whispered,
“The Apocalypse of Salvation. That is your name.”
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“Haa…”
Eris, her face flushed, hid behind her hair after parting ways with Daniel.
She wanted to cover her face with her hands, but she was holding the potted Yggdrasil sapling.
“I can’t even look at him.”
She grumbled to the sapling, which offered no reply. Perhaps it wasn’t developed enough to communicate yet.
Eris’s embarrassment had a reason.
She had run into Eve and Sen before meeting Daniel.
And they had told her about him. That he hadn’t simply been told about the future by a god…
But that he had experienced it through regression.
At first, she hadn’t thought much of it.
It didn’t seem to change anything, but upon reflection, it was different.
Seeing the future was a passive experience, like reading a story.
That’s why she had advised Daniel to keep his distance. It was tragic to be loved based on a vision of the future.
But Daniel had come from a future where he had loved her.
She couldn’t even look at him directly.
Eye contact made her blush.
He had actual memories of loving her!
She hadn’t asked for details, but she wondered how far they had gone.
‘They must have held hands… k-kissed? Or even… more?!’
Despite living for centuries, intimacy with a man was still uncharted territory for Eris. Had her future self experienced it all?
‘It… it wasn’t me, but it feels like it was.’
Her face burned. She wanted to confide in someone, yet it felt too precious to share.
“I can’t be like this.”
She stood in the hallway, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath, recalling her time under Yggdrasil’s shade, calming herself.
“These feelings… I’ll deal with them later.”
There was no point in getting flustered now. Daniel wouldn’t give her an answer.
And she knew he no longer saw her the same way.
She sighed and headed towards her room with the sapling.
“Hmm?”
“Hoooo…”
A languid voice.
She followed the sound and found the only active witch besides the retired Grand Witch.
Adriana, carrying a staff taller than herself, shuffled towards her.
She had returned from the Demon Realm Forest, having retrieved Sharcal’s hidden staff.
“Y-you look exhausted.”
Eris had spent a lot of time with Adriana while tracking the Tudogs, so she felt closer to her than other humans. Just as Adriana was about to complain about her ordeal…
“Oh! Oh!”
Sharcal’s staff flew from Adriana’s grasp, pulled by an unseen force.
It landed precisely in the pot containing the Yggdrasil sapling.
The sapling wrapped around the staff and began to grow rapidly.
“…”
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I opened my eyes. I was back in the familiar palace hallway, exactly as before.
Even my clothes, which had burned away when the mark appeared, were restored.
I checked my chest. The mark was there, dark and prominent.
I felt imbued with the power of time, as if my very being had become its embodiment.
“This is unsettling.”
A strange, unpleasant feeling lingered in my chest.
Who could I even tell about this?
How many would understand? Just yesterday, I’d been rallying everyone to fight the apocalypses, and now…
I was one of them.
‘I should start with Kurika…’
Thankfully, I had him. We’d already discussed the possibility of a third calamity.
It being me was a shock, but…
“Haa…”
I felt drained. I’d thought we were nearing the end, but it was far from over.
BANG!
“Waaaaah!”
“Stop! Stop it!”
Shouting from outside. At first, I thought it was just some commotion in the palace, but I recognized the voices.
“Eris and Adriana?”
I looked out the window. They were running around the palace garden, shouting at a giant tree.
The palace knights tried to intervene, but the tree showed no signs of stopping.
I recognized it as the Yggdrasil sapling.
I didn’t know why it was going berserk, but I decided to observe.
– KHAHAHAHAHA!
“…”
A chillingly familiar, deep laugh.
The boisterous, yet terrifying laugh of the skull-masked man.
– This is invigorating!
Kurika rushed down the hallway, his eyes wide with shock as he saw the rapidly growing sapling.
“Is… is that…?”
He stammered.
I’d never seen him so shocked. I was probably making the same face.
“Sharcal?”
We said the same name simultaneously and rushed towards the garden. The people there looked at us pleadingly.
“D-Daniel…!”
Eris, near tears, desperately tried to stop the sapling’s growth with magic, but to no avail.
“What happened?!”
It had been a small sprout just moments ago, before my trip to the Divine Realm. Now it was bursting from its pot, consuming the garden, speaking in Sharcal’s voice.
Adriana, back from the Demon Realm Forest, hesitantly explained.
The sapling had suddenly absorbed Sharcal’s staff.
She’d barely managed to get it out of the hallway and into the garden before it started growing uncontrollably.
“And then this happened. At this rate, it’ll grow as big as the real Yggdrasil.”
This was a disaster.
A giant tree, capable of destroying the palace, growing in the middle of the capital?
The humans would assume the elves had declared war.
And with our preparations for the apocalypse, they might even launch a preemptive strike.
“P-please calm down!”
Eris, unlike her usual self, was frantic.
“It’s not Sharcal.”
“Yeah.”
It seemed like Sharcal’s residual thoughts, lingering in the staff, had influenced the sapling.
– KHAHAHAHA! Are there no strong ones?! Is there no one stronger?!
“Ugh, this is already giving me a headache.”
That voice.
Stopping its growth was the priority.
Reasoning with it was pointless.
I ran towards the sapling and touched its roots.
It was growing so rapidly that I risked being engulfed and absorbed, but…
It stopped.
“Wow! It stopped!”
“Rescue everyone! Some people are trapped!”
The knights sprang into action, rescuing those caught in the sapling’s growth.
I looked up at the tree.
‘It’s not difficult at all.’
Stopping Shakarim had drained me, but stopping this massive tree felt effortless.
It should have been reassuring, but it filled me with unease.
“D-Daniel?”
“Astonishing.”
Eris and Kurika approached. They were surprised I’d stopped the sapling’s time, but…
Suspicion flickered in Kurika’s eyes.
I couldn’t hide it from him.
Looking at Eris, I remembered our first meeting at the Aios Academy festival, when she’d mistaken me for Ares, the recipient of Helios’s power.
[But there’s no way she could have mistaken me…]
Back then, I’d felt a strange mix of disappointment and pity for her, but…
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[Your Text Here]
No way I get caught up here🤪 🔫