The World Rewinds
The world split apart and reassembled itself. Everything froze in place, then, as if someone had pressed rewind, all creation began to flow backward. In this reversal where everything moved in inverse, the only one still moving normally was Ulyse. Only her.
She scanned her surroundings with a bewildered expression. It didn’t take long to understand the situation. After all, it was that intuitive.
Time is…
Locating Save Point!
Accessing Player Log!
It’s rewinding.
A day. Two days. The tape spun backward. The version of her poisoned by venom, the version of her swarmed by insects—they vanished in an instant. The rewinding time soon reached the desperate battle against the Insect King. Her eternally long week disappeared in the blink of an eye.
The miracle did not stop there. The hero impaled by the Insect King’s thorn vanished, and the party members surrounded by bugs blurred like illusions.
Viewing Log...
The rapidly reversing timeline soon condensed into individual scenes, showing fragments of the past. The hero being ignored by his party. The hero bleeding after being poisoned by venomous insects. The hero coughing nonstop ever since being sliced in half by the minotaur. Each image passed by like strips of film cut and spliced together.
Watching all this, Ulyse realized one common thread running through every scene.
They’re all rewinding with the hero at the center…
Exactly. Every replaying scene was framed around Luke. She, the observer, simply floated through it all like a ghost, able only to watch.
She asked him inside her heart.
Hero. Is this your doing?
The one who had caused this spectacle.
Having grown up hearing tales of heroes and studying their history, she understood it instinctively. Every hero in history had received one or two abilities from the goddess. And those abilities were so immense they could only be called divine miracles.
Ulyse believed this vision was a divine authority invoked by the hero. There was no other way such a sight could appear.
She continued watching the scenes while quietly reasoning to herself. The images that followed soon revealed sides of the hero she had never known. The hero deliberately letting insects bite him to build resistance to their poison. The hero rising alone in the dead of night, after everyone else had fallen asleep, to practice his swordsmanship. The hero hiding in a quiet corner after being cursed by the others, face twisted in tears.
The hero she had never seen was incredibly diligent—and painfully human.
That smiling face of his—which had looked like it wouldn’t bleed even if stabbed with the harshest words—crumbled easily when no one was watching.
When opinions clashed and arguments erupted, he would slip away to a secluded spot and vent his complaints alone.
Even then, his hand never left the sword. He grew angry, became sad, grew exhausted—yet he never stopped striving for the future. There was not a single scene of him secretly communicating with the demon king’s army or scheming anything at all.
"......"
The saintess felt a sharp pain in her chest as she watched. If she had to name it, it was guilt. The saintess, who should have defended the innocent more than anyone, had instead driven an innocent man into misfortune.
Every time Ulyse saw herself slandering or tormenting the hero, she frowned. Seeing her own behavior from a third-person perspective was so vicious it was difficult to look at directly.
With a face full of self-loathing, she murmured.
"I really am despicable…"
Of course, there were excuses. His body carried the unmistakable traces of evil called fragments of sin. She had hated him because of that very evidence. That didn’t erase what she had done, but it was an undeniable fact that she had possessed justification.
In truth, she still hadn’t understood why fragments of sin flowed from him or why she felt such discomfort whenever she saw him.
But that realization would come soon enough.
Accessing the First Log!
The scene shifted to show the hero from an even earlier past. It was a back alley in an imperial city. Piles of discarded trash bags rose like mountains, and the ground was littered with cigarette butts and shards of broken liquor bottles.
A single vagrant dressed in rags sat in that alleyway.
The saintess recognized his identity within seconds.
Ah.
It was the hero. The hero before he had become the hero.
Though his face was bruised and a hood covered his head, she knew instantly. There was no way she could fail to recognize the black hair and ruby-red eyes she had seen for the past six months.
He seemed lost in thought, gazing at the night sky with heavy, troubled eyes.
After staring blankly for a long time, he finally spoke.
One by one, he listed the deaths of his party members. Each death was horrific, enough to inspire instinctive terror.
Listening to his monologue, Ulyse felt goosebumps rise across her skin.
How?
How could he know their fates in such detail? Was he simply guessing? Had the goddess told him? Or perhaps…
All sorts of questions surged through her mind. But those questions did not last long. The very next scene was far more shocking.
The hero, having steeled his resolve, called upon his power. Ulyse could not see the system window, but she could tell he was looking at something.
Then he began to offer the most precious thing he possessed as the price. His relationships.
The moment he named it as the cost, countless lights surged from every direction and enveloped him. Some were so beautiful they hurt to look at. Others were so red they sent chills racing down the spine.
The saintess understood instinctively. She finally knew where the fragments of sin she had seen had come from, and why she felt that unpleasant sensation every time she looked at him.
It was all because the hero had sacrificed his bonds. In doing so, he had become a hero—and simultaneously, a villain. Of course he had never committed any evil deeds, yet the world would henceforth view him as one. Just as she had.
Aah…
Ulyse felt a shiver run down her spine. This emotion was, in a word, awe.
──The Sun God Church had passed down a certain prophecy since ancient times. In the distant future, when chaos returned to the world, a hero stronger, nobler, and braver than any other would appear.
Until now, Saintess Ulyse had believed that prophecy was wrong. She had thought the goddess had chosen the wrong person. She had believed he was neither strong, nor noble, nor brave.
She had been wrong. She had simply been too foolish to see it.
He was nobler and braver than anyone. How could anyone call a man who willingly walked into hell anything but brave? Who could dare say that someone who sacrificed everything for the single purpose of saving the world was not noble?
"......"
The saintess watched the scene for a long time, as if entranced. Then, at one point—
The world suddenly went black.
Player Log Access Complete!
Branch Point Confirmed.
Setting Save Point.
The saintess regressed.
*
"Haaah?!"
"Mm, you’re awake?"
"You must be tired. Sleep a little longer. It’ll take quite a while before that hero guy finishes dismantling the corpse anyway."
When Ulyse opened her eyes, she was inside a tent. Her hero party members were there, each passing the time by maintaining their weapons, meditating, or resting.
Having just woken up, her mind was still foggy with confusion.
"H-how…? You all should have died… You were definitely eaten by the bugs…"
It felt like she had just woken from a long nightmare, or perhaps returned from a brief hallucination. The experience had been so absurd that it didn’t feel real.
"What? Pfft! Ulyse, what are you talking about? Still half-asleep?"
"…Even as a joke, don’t say things like that."
"You must really be exhausted. Rest quickly. Stamina is important."
"N-no, it’s just that all of you…"
Her confusion lasted only a moment. She soon realized this was no dream. There was no way she could have dreamed something so vivid. The sensations, the despair, the eternity she had felt—they could never have been a dream.
Thanks to that, she was able to accept the truth quickly.
She had returned to the past.
*
Several days passed after her regression. A few party members seemed startled by Ulyse’s subtly changed demeanor, but they adapted after a few days.
The point she had returned to was a few days before the hero’s body had been sliced in half by the minotaur. It was the exact moment when the labyrinth expedition had begun to go horribly wrong.
After days of worrying over how to save him, the saintess had managed to rescue him safely. And now they had reached this point.
Poor man…
She gazed at the hero who had fallen asleep right on top of the pool of blood spilled by the minotaur. He looked so exhausted even now; she could hardly imagine how much pain he must have endured when his body had literally been cut in two.
Perhaps because the man himself had survived, the curse’s effect—which had briefly vanished—had returned. She could tell from the subtly unpleasant sensation she felt whenever she looked at him.
"......"
But.
It’s all right.
She now knew this feeling was false. She knew it was an artificial emotion created by the curse. She even knew that the fragments of sin still rising behind his back were simply the price he had paid.
If that was the case, she could easily overcome an unpleasant sensation of this degree.
She quietly clasped her hands together as she looked at him.
May blessings accompany your future path.
She could not pull him from the hellish road he had chosen. She could not become a mighty shield to protect him from suffering. She was far too weak for that.
But… she could at least offer him support. If not a shield, then at least an umbrella that could ward off the rain and wind.
She would bless the path of the man walking toward hell for as long as she lived.
Saintess Ulyse von Yugrasia made that resolution.