Chapter 209
Chapter 209
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Translator: crow
Chapter Title: Guardians of Fate (2)
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In truth.
Remier did not blindly trust the existence of the Guardians of Fate.
How could she?
The value of fate they discussed.
Their stance of safeguarding that fate.
From the perspective of an archmage, it was all too illusory.
She knew far too much to accept their existence at face value.
Even so.
Remier respected the Guardians of Fate.
Guardians of Fate.
Their existence held mysteries too profound to outright deny.
Some might call them phantoms without physical form, existing only within barriers—
Others might deem them beings who had transcended the flesh.
The efforts of whatever group had birthed the Guardians of Fate.
Their obsession and madness to transcend time and space.
It was enough to inspire awe in any mage, and the Guardians exploited that fully.
They concealed their identity as phantoms born of corrupt desire and arrogance, packaging themselves as abstract entities.
Proclaiming themselves great transcendent beings dedicated to protecting the grand value of fate.
For example.
What bound the archmage was not the lingering ghost of a desirous past, but a great transcendent will.
That was why Remier could not escape their shackles.
'If I were to abandon them... what would happen?'
A sense of duty.
A sense of responsibility.
The only path for a great mage to break free from those shackles was the collapse of the illusion the Guardians had created.
However.
The Guardians of Fate had no intention of ever relinquishing that illusion.
Not until they had thoroughly exploited Remier's sense of duty and responsibility to subjugate her completely.
"Wandering Star Remier. Do you intend to abandon the fates you can correct?"
"..."
How could she not?
Her sense of duty and responsibility clouded the great mage's eyes.
In the end, she could not bring herself to doubt the Guardians of Fate.
It happened suddenly.
Remier felt doubts about the existence of the Guardians of Fate.
The trigger was exceedingly simple.
"H-Huh... Eeeek!!!"
Startled to the point of tumbling backward.
The pitch of that unseemly yelping voice leaping out.
The reaction the Guardian of Fate showed upon being startled by Rishir was all too human.
There was not a trace of the transcendent demeanor they usually displayed in their flustered state dominated by bewilderment.
A crack formed in the illusion that had blinded the archmage's eyes.
For the Guardians of Fate, who had staked everything to subjugate Remier, this was the worst possible situation—
"Wh-What are you...!? How, how...?"
Right now, they were too busy composing their shocked emotions.
In the end, the archmage's suspicion, which had not been quelled in time, spread—
And for the first time, the archmage harbored doubts about the act of 'observation' itself.
"Rishir...?"
"Hm? Oh? Lady Remier?"
"...!"
Remier was accustomed to observations by now.
She was as flustered by Rishir's response as the Guardians of Fate.
Her dilated pupils. Her quickening breath.
Remier asked in a trembling voice.
"C-Can you see me...? No, can you perceive me...?"
"Pardon? Er... I'm not sure I grasp the intent of the question, but it seems like it."
"How...? You should clearly be nothing more than a remnant of memory existing only within the observation..."
"Remnant of memory? What do you mean by that?"
The Guardians of Fate trembled at the full-fledged conversation between the two.
They had finally snapped out of their shock and faced the situation squarely.
'This is dangerous...!'
The Guardian of Fate urgently shouted toward Remier.
"Remier!!! Stop this! You must not intervene further in a time line that is not the present!"
"Intervene...? What are you talking about?"
"The inexplicable phenomenon occurring in the Mage Tower—the source of the regression has affected the observation! You've felt it too, but this is not the observation we know!"
"..."
The source of the regression had influenced it again, causing an anomaly in the observation.
In other words.
It was not that the act of observation itself was strange; this time was simply an exception.
The Guardian of Fate's plausible sophistry muddled Remier's thinking.
"Observation...?"
Rishir mulled over the word.
"Lady Remier. Observation? What exactly are you talking about?"
"Remier! Do not listen to that thing at all costs! If this continues, it may spiral out of control!"
"..."
The Guardian of Fate's meaningful warning plunged Remier into agony.
"That thing..."
She too could not be certain that the being before her was truly 'Rishir'.
Assume the act of observation was false.
Assume what she was witnessing now was an illusion crafted by the Guardians of Fate.
Then.
What exactly was this entity addressing her?
The possibility that it was truly Rishir was slim.
After all—
She was the only one who knew about the Guardians of Fate.
How could Rishir know anything to intervene in an illusion created by the Guardians of Fate?
"Think about it, Remier!! How could that one know to intervene in the observation!? What stands before you is at least not that person!"
The Guardian of Fate, thinking the same, persistently hammered at that point.
"You're right. I never told Rishir anything. He knows nothing about you, nothing about observation. With no knowledge, he couldn't intervene..."
"Exactly! Just as you say!"
"...But. With that boy, you never know."
"...What?"
Remier was reminiscing about Rishir with trembling eyes.
About the sight of him unleashing 'Dark Swordsmanship'.
That figure casually defying logic.
The current situation.
Was it just her imagination seeing a connection between the two?
"Remier, snap out of it!!!"
The Guardian of Fate's cries no longer reached Remier.
"Rishir... By any chance, can you explain to me what's happening right now?"
Remier's mind was now entirely filled with his presence.
Remier gazed at Rishir's slowly moving lips.
And then, the moment Rishir opened his mouth.
An anomaly occurred.
At the same time.
Sensing some incongruity, Rishir headed to the Land of the Stars and stared directly at the massive 'eye' observing him.
Through that eye, he had glimpsed Mage Tower Lord Remier.
Rishir conversed with her through it.
"What the hell is going on?"
But their conversation refused to mesh.
Soon, frustration mounting, Rishir sought another approach.
Entrusting himself to senses sharpened in the spiritual realm through repeated Guardian Star descent practices(?).
"..."
A moment later.
Rishir extended his arm toward the 'eye', surrendering to those senses.
His energy slowly began to erode the eye.
Thus, the power that had been showing an observation manipulated by the Guardians of Fate's will started displaying distorted imagery under the external energy's corrosion.
"No, wait. What's happening!? Lady Remier!!! Sorry!!! Don't be startled!"
Rishir's shout did not reach Remier.
"...!"
Rishir's waist bent like a bow, his head tilting skyward.
Then, his wide-open eyes and mouth began emitting light.
Crack—
Crack crack—
Cracks appeared throughout their location, light seeping from the fissures.
Soon, the floor crumbled.
The walls and ceiling collapsed.
There was no plummeting pull dragging them down.
No debris burying them.
Whoosh—
A wind encompassing the entire area brushed their skin.
Before they knew it, they stood in an endless expanse of grassland.
"This place...!"
Guardians of Fate.
They were beings who had transcended the flesh.
In other words, spiritual entities without physical bodies.
Thus, there was always a place that welcomed them.
The Land of the Stars, which embraced all souls.
"...!"
Remier looked up at the sky in shock, sensing a powerful presence.
An eye floating amid the night sky—
Countless pupils within it gazed down upon them.
It was so vast it filled her entire field of vision.
However.
In the vast night sky where stars flowed like waves, it was merely one among many.
Even among those stars, the ones shining especially brightly gathered around the giant eye.
The flow was natural, yet the arrangement contrived.
Unconsciously, Remier connected those stars with lines.
Her gaze, looking up at the night sky, naturally shifted to even farther reaches.
To deeper, higher places in the night sky.
"...!"
And thus she discovered it.
The Star Giant looking down upon them from there.
Remier was not afraid.
She recognized it as an existence that only manifested in the spiritual world.
Separately, Remier was overwhelmed.
She recognized it as an entity that absolutely reigned in the spiritual world.
"Ah, aah...!"
Nearby, the trembling breaths of the Guardians of Fate could be heard.
The Guardians of Fate hurriedly acted to escape the place.
The space surrounding them and Remier was steadily being eroded by reality.
And just as that erosion threatened to engulf even the night sky—
The Star Giant seized the giant eye.
The gray girl stood dazed in place.
Her body shuddered, light returning to her vacant eyes.
Remier.
She had returned from the rift in time.
Back in reality, she urgently scanned her surroundings.
It felt unreal, but it was certainly her office.
On the desk lay the hourglass, the key to the rift in time.
"...!"
Remier's expression turned to horror as she gazed at the hourglass.
The regressing hourglass.
Its upper half was completely filled.
Just as when she first discovered it.
Just as before she had first performed 'observation' through it.
Remier picked up the hourglass and focused her mind on it.
Guardians of Fate.
Their voices no longer reached her.
When she had conversed with Rishir during the 'observation', Remier's mind had been filled with thoughts of him.
But now, returned to reality by the 'Star Giant'.
Her mind was now filled with that transcendent being.
"Why..."
Why had it appeared before her?
A sequence of events flashed through Remier's mind like a montage.
A moment later, she arrived at one hypothesis.
"No way—"
'The Guardians of Fate defied logic, so the Star Giant intervened to correct it?'
It was a truly vague assumption, but to Remier now, it was the best she had.
Remier looked at the hourglass.
The hourglass now completely filled by the Star Giant's intervention.
At this point, she was convinced.
"Star Giant..."
It was the source of the regression.
Perhaps. It might have saved her from the false entities masquerading as Guardians of Fate.
"..."
Remier sank into contemplation for a while, organizing her thoughts.
For some time now, she had been recalling a particular memory.
It was a memory related to the shamans she had met during her wanderings to pay the price—
They had offered tributes, claiming that encountering her was guided by the spiritual beings protecting them.
"Guardian Star..."
A magic purist.
Busy days paying the price for the hourglass left Remier with no spare interest for shamanism, naturally.
However, for some whimsical reason back then, she had taken interest in their ritual and observed it in detail.
"Ha."
The gray girl let out a wry, self-mocking laugh.
She had unknowingly begun recreating that ritual.
Of course.
Not to blindly offer thanks to spiritual entities like those shamans.
She wanted the truth.
About the Guardians of Fate.
Exactly what they were.
Exactly what had become of them.
Remier conducted the ritual infused with that desire.
The hourglass.
She offered it as tribute to the Star Giant.
—...Lady Remier? Lady Remier? Are you inside?"
Remier did not hear the voice from beyond the door.
"...!"
The ritual recreated through magic.
Her attention was fully captivated by its astonishing functionality.
The hourglass offered as tribute vanished as if it had never been there.
"..."
Intense curiosity lit up Remier's eyes.
Then, where had that hourglass gone?
"Lady Remier?"
"Hm?"
At that moment.
Remier snapped to attention at Rishir's voice from nearby.
"Sorry for entering without permission. It's just that—..."
"...Wait."
"Pardon?"
Her brief delight at seeing the face she wanted to see faded quickly.
Remier hastily cut off Rishir's words.
Her trembling gaze fixed on Rishir's left hand.
"That... where did you get it?"
Rishir tilted his head, looking at the hourglass now clutched in his left hand.
"Huh? Yeah, where did it come from?"
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