Chapter 54

When he opened his eyes, his stomach felt bloated.

No, he hadn't overeaten, but did it make sense to "wake up from sleep and feel too full"?

Right in front of him were the remains of burned ashes and embers, and above them hung a heavy, large iron pot.

The kitchen in the basement of the castle.

He had safely returned to Hartmann Castle.

As he raised his body, creaking and rattling sounds came from all over.

He had been worried since a third of his upper body had been blown away, but fortunately, it had been fully restored.

The new muscles and bones seemed to be fine too.

Speaking of which.

Seeing the messy counter, he couldn't help but sigh.

While it was fortunate that he could use such a workaround, it was a headache to figure out how to hide it.

Moreover, Leandros had been by his side when he died.

He should have at least told him that he wouldn't die.

Then, no matter what excuse he gave later, there would be a greater possibility that they would just accept it with a "that makes sense"!

But the water was already spilled.

Depending on how he proceeded from now on, he could keep the secret...

"Your Grace."

"Aaaaaaah!"

Mother of God!

Clutching his chest, he turned his head to see two people sitting in a corner of the kitchen.

Leandros and Arndt were watching him with expressions that looked gloomy even at a glance.

Moreover, above the two, red numbers and descriptions he had seen somewhere before were flowing down.

[Leandros looked at Arenheit, who was moving like a living person. He couldn't believe it even though he saw it with his own eyes. The shallow belief that what he had seen might have been an illusion...]

[Arndt couldn't think of anything. A method to wake the dead. How in the world could such a method exist...]

The text that hadn't been visible when he first returned to this world.

Reading those descriptions, he briefly speculated.

Perhaps these texts and numbers were only visible for a short time after he died and woke up?

The descriptions mixed surprise, melancholy, and concern toward him.

"...How long have you been there?"

"Since last night."

Assumptions really did catch people.

Not just catch them, but slam them down.

He needed to make a plausible excuse somehow.

"Well, actually."

"Claiming it was a state of apparent death won't work. Pretending to be dead won't work. Saying you were continuously unconscious due to excessive bleeding won't work. We know it wasn't a coma. Chronic illness, temporary seizure, near-death experience won't work. Do you have any other excuses you've prepared?"

Had they just sat there all night thinking about this?

Having all his potential explanations blocked, he was left speechless.

Looking at him opening and closing his mouth, Arndt muttered.

"There can't be any other reason. It's not an ordinary phenomenon. I've never seen a dead person come back to life. This is abnormal. I absolutely..."

Arndt's face was filled with distrust and wariness. The description being rapidly revised behind him reflected the same.

This couldn't continue.

What if one of them left Hartmann Castle, claiming he was a monster?

He couldn't guarantee how the story would unfold.

"Wait, I can explain everything."

But what excuse should he give?

That he wasn't actually Arenheit?

That as a regressor, he would come back to life until he died in the south, so don't worry?

Words that would surely be mistaken for mental derangement.

Then what words could he use to reassure them?

"So, actually."

Just as Arndt's expression crumpled,

Leandros asked.

"Is it because of your mother, the former Duchess?"

[Leandros was certain. That on that night, everything was as good as decided. If so, he had to tell this truth.]

Arndt and he looked at Leandros.

Why was that person suddenly being brought up?

Regardless of whether they were looking or not, Leandros was muttering to himself as if he had figured out all the clues, saying things like "I see. So that's why at that time..."

"What are you saying? Please explain so we can understand, Sir."

"I cannot disclose it carelessly."

Then Leandros glanced at him.

"Unless Your Grace commands it. I will follow your will."

"That's, that's fine. It's okay to tell Arndt."

What is it! He was curious too!

Having inadvertently given permission, Leandros heaved a deep sigh and slowly began.

"It was when Hartmann was still prosperous. It was a day when the Duchess had particularly bad dreams..."

And so the story began.

One day, the Duchess woke up from a restless sleep.

The uneasy Duchess stayed in her study all day and became strangely busy from that day on.

Leandros stood by the Duchess but couldn't understand what was happening.

Then one day.

The Duchess called Leandros and made a request.

-'I have a favor to ask of you.'

-'Command anything, my lord.'

-'When the time comes for him to stand alone, don't ever abandon him. No matter what happens, you must protect Arenheit until your death.'

-'Is there any doubt? I will serve him with my life.'

-'And, if I die.'

Leandros said he genuinely thought the Duchess had gone mad with her appallingly shocking request.

But the Duchess persistently asked, and in the end, Leandros had no choice but to nod.

For good reason.

"Why did you agree?"

"I venerated her. She was like my heart."

It seemed Leandros had a deep connection with the Duchess.

After reluctantly making the promise, as if it had been waiting, the Hartmann family began to collapse.

And he fled the castle with only Arndt and Leandros by his side.

Leaving behind family members who were being arrested one after another.

Days spent in hiding, evading pursuit from the royal palace.

The royal palace announced the execution of the 'ringleaders' of the rebellion.

Leandros witnessed the execution with a feeling as if his entire body was being torn apart, and afterward, he took him to the bodies of the Duchess and her family, who had been thrown into a cave like trash.

"The Duchess said she wanted to protect her child through that. I didn't understand the meaning of those words at the time, but if Your Grace's revival is her will."

The calm tone broke off briefly.

Arndt and he could only listen with half-open mouths.

Then Arndt, who regained his senses faster than him, asked.

"Then, are you saying that the former Duchess sacrificed her body to give His Grace the special ability of resurrection?"

"I don't know how it was possible. In life, she was proficient in all kinds of magic and sorcery. It's meaningless to debate now whether this is taboo or not."

"How could that be..."

Even as Arndt and Leandros conversed, he couldn't escape from the shock.

Then suddenly, it occurred to him.

"The study."

"What?"

"I need to go to the study. Leandros, where did you put my cloak when you returned?"

"I placed it in the bedroom along with Your Grace's... body when I returned."

Regardless of their bewilderment, his feet were already rushing out of the kitchen.

After finding the black stone in the inner pocket of the cloak, which hadn't even been dusted off, he immediately headed to the Duchess's study.

The Duchess's study was still massive, intimidating, and desolate.

Of course, it was all just a facade.

When he drew back the curtains covering the entire wall, a large painting was revealed behind them.

Was this the first time he had seen the painting intact?

He should have realized it immediately when told about the painting hanging in the Duchess's study.

Taking a step back, he began to smile gradually.

The painting depicted a single staircase.

At the very bottom of the stairs, kneeling on the ground, were small, naked people.

Hundreds of them, showing only their backs, were kneeling and raising their hands toward the sky.

Above them, just one step up, demonic beasts were intertwined, tearing apart people.

Above that, even larger and more blasphemous beings sat on white chairs,

And above them, an even more ferocious and repulsive being occupied a black chair.

Around them, black and purplish monsters flew around blowing golden trumpets.

And presiding over all creation,

And simultaneously playing the leading role in the painting.

A being with golden yellow cloth and an ominous, wicked crown placed on its head.

Between the draped yellow cloth, benevolent eyes were visible.

A god of the outer cosmos in human form.

To think that his younger brother, who had been wailing that he couldn't return on a distant planet, was 'that person' worshipped by Hartmann.

After appreciating the painting for a moment, he opened the hidden door with the half-horn.

This time, there would certainly be an intact book.

* * *

The Duchess's office had a thick layer of dust from not being cleaned for a long time.

After roughly wiping it off with his hand and sitting down, he could see dust floating in the dim light.

Before him were two books.

One of them was a splendid book with a red cover and golden decorations.

When opened, about half of the total pages were blank white.

Could it be the story his brother had been writing?

In the book, which was in a pristine condition without a single torn page this time, were written stories he had read once.

From stories he hadn't experienced to everything he had experienced in his past life.

The newly updated pages and the very last page that wasn't.

[In a world created in tragedy, where madness and incomprehensible beings have nested within the arrangement of 'that person.'

The outsider from another world, inhabiting Arenheit's body, will bear Arenheit's karma instead.]

He didn't know that 'that person' was his brother.

It felt strange to directly see his dead brother being treated like a god in a completely different world.

This was something he could write instead from now on.

The other book was much smaller in size, but it had a considerable number of pages.

This one was closer to a bundle of papers than a book.

When he opened it, the string holding the papers snapped, and papers spilled everywhere.

A quite refined handwriting caught his eye.

[...When I wake up from a dream, I always feel like my body isn't mine. In that revelation, I move with will, but at the same time, I just struggle in an unknown flow.]

The person who wrote this was undoubtedly the Duchess.

There was only one person who would mention revelations.

What was written on another paper?

['That person's' revelations are so clear that it was all too easy to avoid the consequences. But this is limited to areas not governed by him. To know a higher will, a greater sacrifice is needed. Can I accomplish it?]

Most were like this, but there were also some notes about when demonic beasts would appear and what would happen when.

Most seemed to be collections of the Duchess's personal thoughts.

In modern terms, it would be considered a diary.

As he quickly gathered the scattered papers, a completely blank page caught his eye.

But upon closer inspection, the paper wasn't empty.

[Die.]

What was this?

Below it were other papers.

[Everyone dies. The revelation is never wrong.]

[I tried again. The revelation is never wrong.]

[I did it again. Despite waking up many times, the revelation is never wrong. This didn't happen.]

[Why? Die. Everyone dies. Everything disappears. What remains after death? Is this what 'that person' wants? Why? If so, why is everyone alive? To die at the appropriate time? Why did it happen like that? What does 'that person' want?]

The page lying at the very bottom of the rustling papers had only one hastily scribbled line.

[If this is the end of the star, give people the last hope to survive.]

His gaze remained fixed on the writing for a long time.

Why had she left such a note?

There was only one assumption he could make now.

The Duchess had seen the end of this world through a revelation.

And she tried countless attempts in "dreams" to change it.

But she couldn't achieve it with her power alone.

Eventually, the Duchess found another method.

[The outsider from another world, inhabiting Arenheit's body, will bear Arenheit's karma instead.]

Whether it was because the Duchess served 'that person.'

Or because 'that person' had decided so, and therefore the Duchess made a similar decision, he didn't know.

[The outsider from another world will bear Arenheit's karma instead.]

If she could dream revelations, she would have anticipated the fall of the Hartmann family.

Even how her end would be.

Yet she bore Arenheit, accepting everything.

And she placed a curse of immortality on him.

For the outsider who would come in the distant future, after she was gone,

[The outsider from another world will bear instead.]

Because this outsider was the last hope that could save everyone.

He had come here to save everyone.