The Wish That Can Never Come True
With what could never be granted—
Apple Flavor dragged her exhausted body forward and knocked on Hyuji's door with her frail, delicate hand.
Just as the desk attendant had said, the room was silent.
As expected, he hadn't come back.
"Where on earth could he be..."
She was starting to hit her limit.
She was already worn out from lack of stamina in the real world, and now she had no energy to spare in Deoen either. The basic fitness she'd built up during her time on Kiki Island had helped a little, but her starting point had been so abysmally low that it hardly made a difference.
I should head back.
By now, White Autumn and Jjoa had surely notified Lily. Time to regroup with them...
"Wah!"
"Huh?"
A pale blue ripple swept just over Apple Flavor's head.
The man who had launched an attack without so much as a word raised the ripple back into his palm, puzzled.
"What? You actually had the skill to dodge that?"
"Wh-who—who—who—who ARE you?!"
Why was he ambushing her out of nowhere...
Apple Flavor stumbled backward in a hurry, feeling the full weight of her unique trait, Single Dodge, and its majestic fifty-hour cooldown.
So even this garbage trait has its moment to shine.
"Hey, you. I've been curious about something for a while now."
But the trait was already spent.
All that remained to Apple Flavor was a trait sitting on roughly forty-nine hours, fifty-nine minutes, and fifty-nine seconds of cooldown—and a fragile body that hadn't even reached level 30.
"Are you a woman or a man?"
"Ugh..."
"Why'd you go mute all of a sudden? Not that I'd mind either way, if it comes to eating you—"
Swish!
Rose vines whipped up in an instant and bound the man's wrists and ankles.
The pale blue ripples vanished, and a captivating woman appeared before Apple Flavor, who was standing there half-collapsed.
"My, my. A guest. Combat is forbidden on the premises."
"Queen."
Ziiing...!
The Queen's crimson eyes locked onto the man at once.
His gaze went slack for a brief moment, but the instant the pale blue ripples washed over his body again, his eyes snapped back to normal.
Tsk. The Queen clicked her tongue in disappointment.
"Casting an illusion over your own body. You're something else, Blessed One."
"It isn't you I have business with."
"Then what?"
"The one behind me. Him—or rather, her."
The Queen turned her head.
A woman with an androgynous face was trembling uncontrollably.
Her treatment as an outsider seemed a touch excessive.
Had a Blessing already been laid upon her?
"Hwuh?!"
When the Queen's allure wrapped around Apple Flavor, her dazed eyes shifted into something considerably more intense.
Hahh. Hahh. Apple Flavor breathed deeply and slowly.
Something about her seemed a little off now, but better the allure than whatever that other Blessing was.
"What about this outsider?"
"No reason to explain. Hand her over and nothing happens."
"My, my. Something's happening in my resort, and you expect me to simply stand by and watch?"
"This is Crere's command."
The woman flinched.
The confident smile she wore cracked in an instant.
Seizing that opening, the Blessed One raised his illusion once more.
"What did you just say..."
"I've found a way to gather every Blessing. And that woman is the link that makes it possible."
"That's impossible."
"It's the truth."
"...You're serious?"
He'd truly found a way to collect every Blessing?
Crere—the man who hadn't shown the slightest interest across all that long stretch of time?
The Blessed One nodded.
"I am. You too must have a wish you'd need to see granted, wouldn't you say?"
"......"
"So hand the woman over, quickly. If the plan is delayed, it may become impossible to gather them all."
Especially with Lily being one of the Blessed.
"......"
"I'll take that as consent."
The Blessed One moved past the Queen.
He gathered up Apple Flavor and turned to leave—
Crunch!
—or tried to. Instead, his entire body was seized by rose vines and slammed to the floor.
The pressure was far, far stronger than before.
"Kghk! What are you doing?!"
"No. Not this woman."
"What? You have nothing to do with this woman—!"
"My, my. Nothing to do with her, you say?"
Thump.
Alice hid her flushed face behind her hands and let a laugh spill out.
Even in this very moment, as if she were picturing her.
"She's a close companion of my darling. And you expect me to simply hand her over? What would that make me in darling's eyes?"
"...?!"
"Consider yourself lucky I'm not taking your Blessing right now. If it weren't for Crere, I'd have crushed the life out of you where you stand."
Alice used her vines to force the Blessed One down onto his knees, then lifted his chin and flashed a bewitching smile.
As expected—a Blessing of the same mental lineage didn't work on her.
With a light toss of his chin, Alice released the vines.
"Kgh!"
"Get going. If you ever need to gather Blessings, my door is always open."
But—
"The moment you lay a single finger on anything connected to our darling, cooperation is off the table. Look elsewhere."
"...Absurd. Has the owner of Allure herself, what, fallen under someone's allure?"
The Blessed One sneered, but Alice seemed utterly unmoved and simply smiled.
"Stay, and I could always just kill you instead~?"
"I'm going. I am going..."
It's just that we've already touched her.
Bzzzt...
"What?"
"Tell Lily. If she wants to find the two men, have her come to the banana statue on Kiki Island."
See you there, then.
"Hey, wait a—!"
WHAM!
"They got away..."
"Darling! Darling!"
"Alice?"
Alice flung open my door and rushed inside.
Just when I'd been about to leave, too.
I approached her.
I'd only meant to get close enough to say a word, but she'd come in such a frantic rush that her face was thoroughly flushed and she was panting hard. And the closer I got, the more serious her condition looked.
"...Did something happen?"
"Yes! Darling's friends were kidnapped!"
"...I'm sorry?"
"It looks like another Blessed One and Cr-Crere are behind it..."
"What about Apple Flavor? Where is Apple Flavor?"
"Miss Lily..."
Apple Flavor crept out quietly from behind Alice.
She looked even more delicate than usual, and I tilted my head.
"...Do you usually transform or something?"
"Ah, no, it's not that... um, anyway, that's not the point here."
"She's right, darling. Two of your companions were taken. I suspect you're the real target."
"Are they out of their minds? The resort owner kidnaps their own guests?"
White Autumn fumed, seething so hard it seemed she'd broadcast the whole incident to the world at any moment.
Jjoa looked just as indignant.
I mulled it over, then asked.
"But why kidnap anyone at all? Did they need my Blessing? Even so, it seems far too reckless."
Alice flinched and took a half-step back.
I could see her fidgeting helplessly, like a child caught red-handed.
So there's something.
"...Darling. Please don't be angry with me."
"I'll listen first."
"...Crere and I have a contract. In exchange for securing the rights and operating license to this island, Crere promised to gather all six Blessings for me."
"Huh? So this happened because of you?"
At White Autumn's cutting question, Alice shook her head vigorously and cried out as if truly wronged.
"It's a misunderstanding! Yes, I told him to collect them, but I never told him to harm darling's guests to do it. I wouldn't even think of such a thing!"
"Oh really? Then why did Crere kidnap our party members?"
"...Crere never used to capture Blessed Ones or steal from them. He deliberately let some go because it made him money, or he sabotaged things so I couldn't obtain the Blessings myself."
"But if he's taking action now, doesn't that mean something has changed—a situation where he can actually gather them all?"
"You're right, darling. He must have found some kind of method."
From the very beginning, Crere had been serious about finding Blessings.
It was just that some impure motive had been mixed into that search all along.
"If he truly intended to give me the Blessings, he would have sought my cooperation. Instead, he acted without my knowledge. And on top of that, he harmed darling's companions. This is unmistakably—"
"How are we supposed to believe that? For all we know, you're acting right now, luring us off to some strange place."
Jjoa glared at Alice with sharp eyes.
Her suspicion was reasonable.
Alice's true goal had been the Blessings all along, and even now she remained bound to some unknown contract with Crere.
Whether she might betray them at the very end, once every Blessing was gathered, no one could say.
I turned to look at Alice.
Even with the situation backed into a corner, she still hadn't used her Allure.
Even if it didn't work on me, she could have easily swayed those two to her side, just as she had at the very beginning—yet she hadn't.
"Darling. I really..."
"Alice. Let me ask you just one thing."
I stepped right up to her, close enough to breathe the same air.
Her face was as flushed as it had been earlier.
I lowered my head slightly, meeting her gaze.
"D-darling?"
"That wish you long to fulfill more than anything."
The reason she absolutely had to obtain all six Blessings.
"What is it?"
A wish.
A wish that had to come true, that simply had to be made real.
The wish she had yearned for since long, long ago was—
"The past."
"?"
"I'm going to turn back time and return to the past. With a wish, it's absolutely possible—"
"That's nonsense."
My words spread through the air, cold as a blizzard bearing down on her, and Alice's mouth snapped shut.
When it came to races that manipulated space and time, no one understood them better than I did.
The power to slow time across an entire region, or to halt it altogether.
Or prophecies of the far future, passage into other dimensional timelines... and so on.
There were plenty of abilities tied to time.
And yet there existed one absolute law that even those two mighty races could not defy.
"The past can never be returned to."
"...You really believe that?"
"Yes."
I was certain.
I knew just how desperately I had once wished for it—and how, through it, I had endured it countless times, for a punishment-long stretch of agony.
And then I understood.
Time cannot be turned back.
Not even the Eight Seats or the Six Demon Kings could do a thing about it.
Absolute time—the time created by the Heavenly Gods and rooted by the Demon Gods—could not be reversed by any power in existence.
Even if it were possible, it would be nothing more than a 'virtual' dimension, or an illusion, fabricated from the history of the past.
A soul that has perished once never, ever returns.
"The past is an illusion. You can reach into the present or the future if you try, but the past is nothing but water already spilled."
Water you cannot catch—and must not catch—
"Why mustn't you catch it?"
Alice had overheard my murmur and was watching me with grave eyes.
"What's so wrong with trying? If you say it's a regret, if you say you'll die of regret, then of course you should fight tooth and nail to seize it."
"...Because it's meaningless."
"Not to me, darling."
Alice took my hand.
"So I'm going to seize it. But I won't abandon the present, either."
"......"
"Because the present is just as precious to me as the past."
"Alice."
"Darling..."
Ugh.
WHAM!
I knocked Alice flat on her back.
"Everything you said was fine, but why did you have to use your Allure?"
My hand moved before my brain could stop it, that's why.