Chapter 300
Chapter 300
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 300
Chapter Title: Arthur's Timeline
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Lovers, love.
To humans, these two words are inseparable.
No matter how much they despise a place, sometimes they endure it because of the one they love.
The same held true for the three women Arthur had brought back with him through regression.
With a lover by their side, they wouldn't make such mistakes.
Mary, who rose to the position of Supreme Commander, could avert disaster by heeding her lover's advice.
Sigrin realized through her ever-supportive lover that the emperor's throne wasn't everything.
Abella wouldn't sell out a world with a lover more precious than magic just for the sake of magic.
For the three, their lover was a kind of control mechanism.
And Arthur willingly took that role to prevent destruction.
At the point when Arthur regressed, the three women were already in significant positions.
One was a grand magician with a guaranteed future.
Another was already making a name for herself with her spear skills, a candidate for the empire's spear.
The last was none other than the empire's princess.
If Arthur blindly eliminated them, every organization they belonged to would become his enemy.
But he couldn't just wait for them to make mistakes and then remove them.
Because in the meantime, those three women would steadily ruin the world.
Destruction was approaching by the second.
So Arthur changed his approach.
Rather than wasting time and energy eliminating the three, he became their lover.
In fact, when Arthur became the lover of the three, they performed quite admirably.
Though even then, they ultimately couldn't stop the destruction.
Arthur had his own thoughts on the matter.
"If I regress while remaining their lover, I can persuade them right away and skip the process of becoming one. That way, I can confront the impending destruction without wasting any more time."
Arthur explained in detail why he had made that choice.
Krash had simply thought, vaguely, that Arthur needed those three women to support him after growing weary from regressions.
But behind that was this very circumstance.
"Yet now, in this place, I—their lover—no longer exist."
Arthur's eyes met Krash's once more.
"Because you erased me from this world forever with your own hands."
The one who erased him—the man who had regressed to protect the world from destruction.
That's what Arthur was saying: it was you.
Without Arthur as their safety net, the three were, unsurprisingly, spiraling out of control.
Krash fell silent in response to Arthur's words.
He understood why Arthur had made that choice and how he had lived and progressed until now.
And he realized how little he had tried to understand Arthur.
However.
"So in the end, the world before regression was one you were willing to discard."
The heat in Krash's eyes burned even fiercer than Arthur's.
Arthur had repeated regressions to prevent the world's destruction.
Even going so far as to regress with three seeds of destruction in tow.
He too had desperately lived to halt the regressions in his own way.
But that was ultimately Arthur's story.
Krash realized why Arthur had calmly accepted the world's destruction.
And why he hadn't acted more aggressively beyond using the best means at his disposal.
'My world was one Arthur was willing to discard from the start.'
To eliminate the three causes of destruction, Arthur had consumed the world where Krash lived.
For Arthur, if he was regressing anyway, there would be another world next, a fresh start.
But Krash had lived in that world firsthand.
Krash had seen with his own eyes his dear friends die, faced the death of his first love, and knew of those who sacrificed themselves in his place out of love.
They still lingered deep in Krash's heart even now.
Though their lives had surely changed greatly because of Krash now.
Still, Krash couldn't help recalling the pain and deaths they suffered in previous cycles.
That was another reason Krash clung so desperately to stopping destruction.
Krash knew of those cycles, so he had lived even more desperately to avoid repeating the same outcome.
"Arthur, I've realized anew just how meaningless the world is to you."
Arthur, with infinite regressions at his disposal, didn't value any single world.
That was why he hadn't valued his regression highly enough to keep it from being easily stolen by Krash.
The current Arthur let out a hollow laugh at Krash's words.
"You don't seem to realize that this world is what made me feel that way."
Arthur slowly rose from his seat.
He had somehow already moved to stand by the window.
"I'm not the Arthur you remember. My memories are, as you said, the ones Abella passed on. I didn't inherit the memories of all timelines. And even the timeline I did inherit was full of gaps, roots torn out."
Krash realized why Arthur couldn't wield his full power despite inheriting a timeline.
He hadn't received the memories whole, but in fragmented pieces.
In a way, Arthur himself had become truly half-broken.
"So I can't tell you exactly what the Arthur you knew was thinking. However."
He pointed to the scenery outside.
"It was always this world that betrayed me, not me betraying it.
In the countless timelines passed to me, I was betrayed endlessly, abandoned, and forcibly worshipped as a hero.
All while being saddled with a mission to stop the world's destruction, something I never wanted."
Arthur had clearly felt the pain from the fragmented timelines he inherited.
When the world was destroyed, he died and regressed again.
To survive, Arthur had no choice but to become a hero by force.
"Krash, don't talk like you know the whole world after just one regression.
No matter how well this world looks to you now, the irreversible moment will inevitably come."
A fragile smile formed on Arthur's face.
"And when that time comes, will you really not break?
Like when you tried to steal my regression.
Having experienced regression once already, could you truly resist seeking it again?"
The tragic emotion in that smile made Arthur's body tremble slowly.
For some reason, Krash felt like Arthur was crying even as he smiled.
"Krash, regression is a curse. This world has long been trapped in the abyss of that curse, repeating eternally.
Those who taste regression will inevitably fall victim to the curse that makes them choose it again."
Arthur shuddered at his own ugliness and weakness.
Even if those were just memories from inherited timelines.
Arthur had glimpsed the choices and failures he made across countless timelines.
To Krash, the current Arthur looked like a tower on the verge of collapse.
"...I've spent my whole life collapsing."
So Krash opened his mouth.
"My legs were already shattered, dragging myself pathetically across the floor.
Yet I crawled. Because there are worlds where you can only advance by crawling."
Even after seeing others walk and run countless times.
Krash never gave up, crawling desperately over and over.
Even if he couldn't stand on the same level as them, he crawled endlessly to chase after them.
"Haha, so you're saying you stood on your own two feet? That since you've collapsed before, you can just stand again?
Don't make me laugh. Even those who've collapsed can't always stand back up. Someone who's already squeezed out their last strength to rise once—do you think they can do it again?
That's something only those with strength left can say."
As if speaking of himself.
Arthur flatly denied Krash's words.
"You're saying that because you still haven't stood up."
But Arthur paused the moment he heard the next words.
Krash gave him a bitter smile.
"I've never stood on my own two feet in my life. Even now, I'm still crawling desperately."
Those who stand on two feet can see farther into the world.
They know well how grueling it is to crawl on the ground, so they strive even harder not to fall.
They reflect on themselves, foresee the future, and carefully tread safe paths.
But Krash had none of that.
Krash didn't see the future.
He crawled forward desperately even on thin ice.
To protect this present, he gathered everything he had and threw it into the fray.
Because stopping destruction would bring the future.
Krash was still crawling desperately on the ground.
"What does a crawler like me have to lose by collapsing?"
He might slip a little, but he wouldn't collapse.
Silence fell over Arthur's mouth.
Because he understood what Krash meant.
Fundamentally, the way Arthur and Krash advanced was different.
As Krash said, he was throwing everything away solely to stop destruction.
In contrast, Arthur couldn't do that.
He wasn't crawling like Krash; he stood on two feet trying to avert destruction.
So he couldn't discard everything.
Because he wanted to carry what he held into the next world.
That was the contrast between Krash and Arthur.
The wind blew.
The breeze entering through the window tousled Krash's hair.
The deep blue hair symbolic of the Valheim family.
Beneath that fluttering hair, Krash looked at Arthur.
"I think I get why we could never get along."
Regret filled Krash's face.
Arthur had once trusted him enough to speak of regression.
Yet Krash had betrayed that Arthur.
Because the paths they pursued were too different.
Krash couldn't tolerate Arthur's regression, where he tried to hold onto everything.
In the end, the two had drifted apart.
"...So you're saying I was greedy?"
"No, it's just that I'm the twisted one."
Krash knew well that he was a worn-down human.
Through the events before regression, something deep inside Krash's heart had shattered.
And that had taken root solely as the goal to stop destruction, sustaining the current Krash.
"Arthur, I will stop the destruction."
So Krash could say this with unwavering sincerity.
"Even if nothing but a handful of ashes of me remains in that world, I will stop every destruction I can."
That was the goal of Krash's life.
"So this time, hold tight to what you have."
We'll handle stopping the destruction.
Krash turned, grabbed the door handle to leave the lion's den, and thought he'd head where everyone was training.
"...Krash."
At that moment, Arthur's voice came from behind.
As Krash slowly turned his head, a distant wistfulness and loneliness filled Arthur's eyes.
"In that timeline, I kept endlessly replaying the day I killed you."
Arthur had said with his own mouth that he hadn't inherited all the timelines.
So Krash realized Arthur didn't know all the timelines where he betrayed him.
"Whether it was regret or something else, even now I don't know."
The hatred directed at Krash, but beyond it, the wistfulness and regret.
Various emotions reflected in Arthur's eyes.
Arthur clutched his chest tightly.
"At least, if I hadn't killed you then, could we have built a different relationship?"
Krash fell silent at Arthur's question.
The current Arthur was trapped in the timeline he had inherited, unable to escape.
Krash realized that fact.
What would Arthur have been like without inheriting the timeline from Abella?
At least he wouldn't have needed to wear such a pained expression.
"Who knows."
The timeline Arthur spoke of no longer existed.
So Krash couldn't give him the answer he wanted.
"This damned world never goes the way you want anyway."
"...Yeah."
Arthur said no more.
Perhaps because his appearance, unlike the one Krash remembered, held a feminine softness.
Arthur merely gazed at himself with eyes full of loneliness and regret, blaming himself.
How had he and Arthur lived in that world?
Maybe he too had grown strong enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Arthur, like now.
With such thoughts, Krash closed the door to the lion's den and left.