175. Was he a married man...?
175. Was he a married man...?
173 and 174 were serialized.
Episode 173 was also newly written.
...about 300 people skipped 173;;;;
********************
"Are you okay?"
"....Heo-eop.."
She was, so to speak, an angel who descended from heaven.
The summer when I was 13. When I was gasping in the middle of the training ground.
I still could not forget the taste of the cool, bittersweet green tea I drank when I was half-dead.
"Finishing move! Double thrust!"
"Whoa~~!"
She often came to our house.
Whenever I was with her, I did my best to show off.
As she smiled and as the time spent with her grew longer, I came to realize what kind of flame burned in my heart.
A simple goodwill.
A simple passion.
Something qualitatively different from those things.
'Love'
I loved that woman.
Deep in my heart. With all my heart and soul.
So I trained, I strove, I swung my sword with all my might,
"Do you vow to care for one another?"
"Yes. I do."
"........."
She became my older brother's wife.
...
..
.
"Fuck."
It was shit.
"Fuck... Fuck!"
No, it was shit for a damn reason.
"Fuuuuck!!"
I liked her first.
I knew her better.
No, to be honest, I had known from the beginning.
The reason she often came to our house was because of my eldest brother,
Her approaching me was just to build up goodwill,
Because I could instinctively tell that there was this thick wall drawn between her and me.
But.
Even so.
"...It's so goddamn──dogshit."
I still couldn't stand it.
I couldn't endure it.
There was no way I could live on like this.
'But what can I do.'
What on earth could I do about it.
Was there even anything I could do?
"Father...."
It was a marriage arranged by Father.
A command from the heavens that I dared not defy.
So could I ever dare to defy it?
No.
I could not.
Normally, it was something that should never be done.
No matter how hard I tried, I...
....I..
"....Right."
Anyway, there was only one thing I could do.
The man rose from his seat.
He rose with his sword in hand.
And toward that sky, toward the blue and high heavens, he swore an oath.
"If something stands in my way, I'll destroy it all."
If what blocks me is heaven itself
Then I'll destroy that heaven too.
...
..
.
The agony of grinding bone.
The exhaustion of having one's soul scraped away.
I passed out countless times, I collapsed again and again.
But the more I collapsed, the closer I felt to something.
Feeling that I could just barely touch something that would never be reached.
I strived, strived, and strived again,
"I heard you're pregnant? Congratulations, baby."
"Thank you, Father-in-law...."
"............."
Striving... I did...
"Right. Malseu, you congratulate her too."
"............."
...Was it possible just by striving?
The man slowly placed his hand on her belly.
On her womb, on the cradle of her baby, he laid his hand.
"....Ugh....."
He felt a tiny, tiny life.
Though it had not yet taken form, his innate senses told him.
There was life there. It was wriggling.
Not my seed, but another man's, was growing inside her body.
That fact disgusted him,
That reality enraged him,
And
"──Kkadeuk..."
"...Young master?"
Powerlessness.
Emptiness.
Unable to bear the nausea, the man fled from that spot.
"Urrp... Urrrp....!"
There was no time.
It was not a problem that could be solved just by striving.
Even in this very moment, she was being steadily violated, ravaged, becoming no longer mine.
So,
"....Real combat."
Let's stake my life and win her.
...
..
.
Fortunately, the child inside her was miscarried──but whether that happened or not, my task was set.
"Hwaaaaaap!!"
He felled goblins.
He felled werewolves.
He felled orcs.
He felled ogres.
The troll... well, a guild member intruded halfway, but he caught it anyway.
"...Good."
I could do it.
I could do it.
The more real combat I experienced, the more something inside me was honed sharp.
Soon, around the time a sword that could be raised toward heaven was being forged.
"...Little brother. What the hell are you doing right now?"
"I'm succeeding the guild master, you shithead!"
He threw his whole body at the heavens.
...
..
.
Heaven was strong.
It was damnably strong.
A feeling that I could never win kept welling up.
"Not yet...!"
But he did not fall.
"Ajijik....!"
Even when his two knees finally touched the ground, even when his head was driven down,
"Ki... Aaaaaaaaak!!!"
He rose once again.
He did not give up.
He swung his blade toward heaven.
Simple-minded.
A brandishing of the sword with no logic, no understanding, no martial learning.
But sometimes, does such simple-mindedness call forth a miracle?
─Seogeok!
".....Ah."
He cut it.
─Seogeok! Kkagak, kkagagak!
"Ah....Aaaa....!"
He cut heaven.
He cut, and cut again, and
─Kwadeudeuk, kwajik!
"──Aaaaaaaaaah!!!"
The moment he finally broke heaven.
The moment he truly held her in his arms.
The moment he held her child in his arms.
The moment he realized that everything of hers now belonged solely to him.
"[Heaven Breaker]"
The sword of immorality that broke heaven.
The sword of supremacy that took solely what it desired.
With that, my sword was complete.
****************
".....Whoa."
And watching this, there was only one thing I could say.
A combination of ignorance and conviction was just called horror, or something like that.
In a dazed state of mind, I recalled the scenes I had been seeing as a dream just moments ago and quietly murmured.
'As expected of NTR Academy.'
Did you think it would be normal?
Actually, they say the basic foundation is depravity.
I quietly blinked my eyes and exhaled heavily.
"That earlier stuff was probably..."
The time drawn through Squite.
Memories permeating that time... made the most sense given the circumstances.
I took several deep breaths, did some breathing exercises, then slowly looked around.
"....A hospital?"
Just how many times have I been hospitalized this month?
First, I turned my body sideways to get up.
But just as I was about to stand──my hand couldn't reach the bed rail?
"?"
What is this.
Why is this happening.
A tiny hand suddenly caught my eye.
Like a small child's, a wriggling little hand moved naturally according to my thoughts and will.
"....No way."
It couldn't be, right? Eh, no way.
With a sliver of doubt, I lightly loosened my clothes and checked my body.
"Uh....."
It was small.
Everything was smaller overall.
And in the middle of all this, the fact that only one area down below remained the same really was something, but except for that, every part had shrunk.
Moreover, even the clothes I was wearing right now had become massively oversized, which meant I couldn't help but know what this meant even if I didn't want to.
"I got younger...?"
"It's a side effect of pulling in 'time'."
"!,...Mai?"
Deureureuk. The sound of the door opening.
Mai, who had come in carrying Rhea in her arms beyond the door...
"...Were you always that big?"
"Ee-yei."
Heavenly Demon ☆ Awakening.
Mai spoke with a Heavenly Demon-like expression.
...No, wait.
"A growth spurt... but you've grown way too much for that."
"It's a growth spurt."
"Ah. Is that so?──you thought I'd go along with that!"
No matter how I looked at it, that was way beyond a growth spurt.
And if you're going to grow, you should grow alone; why did I devolve?
"It couldn't be helped."
"....Eunyu-eu..."
As Mai said this, she stroked Rhea's head.
"Side effects of [Descent]. On top of that, the awakening of [Squite]. Actually, Big Brother shouldn't even be alive right now."
Because it's a power too heavy for an 'ordinary person' to handle in the first place.
"But Big Brother managed it. He endured it. Even now, he's digesting 'time' in real time."
The proof is, you glimpsed 'time', right?
".......Then could that be..."
The things I dismissed as a dream...
"The process of turning that person's time, history, life──all of it into Big Brother's."
And the result is exactly what you see right now.
"The bed rail Big Brother is holding onto."
"....Huh?"
It broke.
No, it crumpled.
It crumpled like crushing an aluminum can.
'No, why is this....'
I didn't even put that much strength into it.
So flustered that I yanked my hand away, a clear grip mark remained on the rail.
Was I originally that strong? No, it wasn't. I could say with absolute certainty that I wasn't.
So this was...
"By digesting time..."
"The time trained. The time of enlightenment. You absorbed those kinds of 'time'."
However, no matter how much you absorb, you can't increase time that didn't exist.
Therefore, he got younger. He got juvenile. He shrank to create a gap in time.
Like splicing and pasting the middle of a video tape to join it together.
Right now, Chrono had reverted his body to a child's state to absorb time more perfectly.
And to return to his original state, he needed a certain amount of waiting time, or something like that.
"Are your questions answered now?"
"...To some extent."
"Then it's Mai's turn now."
"Your turn?"
Even if you ask something, I don't really know anything, so it'll be hard to answer.
Still, I decided to at least hear her out and took Mai's question.
"Big Brother... are you by any chance Cronus?"
"What?"
An unexpected question.
And one I had never even thought of.
"I can feel Cronus's 'divinity' inside Big Brother."
"....That, well."
Isn't that something I obtained long ago when I ripped Cronus's divine authority away?
At my answer, Mai shook her head in denial.
"It's much bigger than back then. Cronus's divinity. If before, it was at the level of a mere 'Apostle'──now, it really feels like he is right before my eyes."
".........."
A strange anxiety.
I hurriedly opened my status to check.
[Now loading....]
"...???"
But it wouldn't open.
The thing just kept loading endlessly, and the actually important stuff wouldn't come up.
"What on earth am I supposed to do about this."
A sigh escaped me without my knowing.
Then Mai sat on the bed, pulled me into her with one arm, and settled me on her lap.
"Don't worry. Until Big Brother is all grown up, Mai will stay by your side."
"....Is that so."
It felt a bit strange.
Mai soon stroked Rhea beside her and my head simultaneously, hugging us both tightly with both arms.
".......?"
"What are you doing?"
It was a bit stifling.
Dumbfounded, I looked up at Mai, and she fluttered her eyes as she murmured.
"Mai... might want a baby....."
"........."
I got this strangely hot and damp feeling near my shoulder.
That's not maternal affection liquefying and leaking out, is it?
It's just sweat, right?
As a side note,
"Chrono, you little shit, did you pass out too──huh...?"
"Huh?"
The door suddenly opened.
Beyond it, Mars had come running breathlessly.
"Uh.....you....so....."
Staring blankly at me, Mai, and Rhea, Mars spoke.
"...That bastard, was he a married man..?"
"No way!"
I don't know what kind of misunderstanding this is, but I really don't think so.