Time Itself Freezes
The angry spectators. The blood droplets suspended in midair. The laughter steeped in madness. All of it stops.
As if someone had frozen time itself, the entire world solidifies. The same holds true for the Puppetry ability. The power that had tormented her for the past several days vanishes in an instant. She startles at the sight of her body obeying her will.
“Huh? Huh?”
And then she realizes one clear fact. In this bizarre scene where everything has halted, she alone can move.
That is not all.
A little more time passes, and the frozen moment begins to rearrange itself. The spectators recede, the pain recedes, and the puppeteer recedes as well. Just as it had for Yulise, Lily’s own suffering vanishes in the blink of an eye.
Lily is utterly bewildered, yet the miracles do not end there. The hero whose neck had been severed returns. The party members who had lost their lives rise once more. Though her faith is not as deep as Yulise’s, the quick-witted Lily immediately understands the truth.
“I’m… going back to the past?”
She also realizes that the regression is anchored to the ‘hero’s’ point of view rather than her own.
“What on earth is happening…”
She feels a brief wave of confusion but continues watching the scene before her. The long rewind becomes like a single strip of film, displaying each new scene in turn. Just as it had with Yulise.
Countless versions of the hero appear in sequence. Glimpses of him suffering behind the public mask flicker past one after another. The path he walked was steeped in grief, sometimes outright despair. When Yulise saw these moments, sorrow had pierced her. Lily’s own chest aches at every image.
“……”
But Lily is different. The heartache is the same, yet her eyes are drawn first to another truth.
She watches the hero’s monumental feats.
“He really broke through all of that…?”
The scene of him carving a path through tens of thousands of monsters on the day he came to save her.
“He even defeated Oleg?”
The desperate battle in the sewers while covered in curses.
“My god… everything Yulise said was true…?”
The day he first captured one of the Four Heavenly Kings and, on top of that, felled an ancient calamity. Every single scene she witnesses is a historic record. They are magnificent, awe-inspiring… and equally merciless.
Wherever he fought, his blood sprayed, his flesh was sliced open, his bones shattered. Even the observer feels her face twist at how constantly he was injured. Only his incredible regeneration erased the damage almost immediately. Beneath the surface lay countless unseen wounds. And a few that would never truly heal.
The moment he tore out part of his own soul while facing the ancient calamity.
The time he had temporarily severed his own pinky simply to test his limits. Lily had never known the hero possessed such an ability. He had never once used it in front of the party.
The power she now witnessed had been born of pure desperation—an ability that turned the impossible into the possible, that let him win battles that could not be won. To wield it, he had to throw away things no one should ever discard and endure pain no one should ever have to imagine.
The Authority of Sacrifice was undeniably powerful, yet it looked unbearably cruel. He had fought the Demon King’s forces while shouldering exactly that kind of torment.
In other words… she herself had done nothing but heap harsh persecution on a man who carried such burdens.
“……”
A bitter taste fills her mouth. Her heart grows heavier.
The hero’s story does not end there. The rewinding film continues all the way back to the very beginning.
The reason an ordinary man could become the hero. The reason he could rocket straight to the pinnacle of strength. And the reason she had always looked at him with needless suspicion.
In the filthy back alleys of the empire, brilliant light surges upward. As though blessing or consoling the road ahead of him. The piercing radiance is quickly swallowed by the alley’s darkness, but the result remains.
Thus the hero is born into the world, and he is made to carry the lives of hundreds of millions on his shoulders.
“……Ah.”
Lily loses her voice for a moment. It feels as if her breath has been snatched away. Even when she tries to speak, the words scatter in her throat.
Why? Had she felt the same awe Yulise felt at his deeds? Had she been moved by his nobility or bravery?
No. It is a far rawer, far more ordinary emotion.
What Lily feels toward Luke is guilt. Guilt for forcing one man to bear such a crushing burden. Guilt for never realizing the truth behind his actions.
Even after the footage ends, Lily remains motionless for a long time. Ironically, the return to the past does not come quickly this time. In a world stripped down to its components, only the hero’s logs drift chaotically through the void.
She stays behind and rewatches the records. Each fragment she picks up replays a scene. The pieces she chooses are moments burned deeply into her own memory.
The moment the hero climbed out of the sewer and she immediately picked a fight with him in earnest. He had been exhausted beyond limit after battling Oleg. He had endured the cycle of torn flesh and bone, of a mind ground down to nothing, over and over.
In the middle of that, he had even received a sweet invitation to join the Demon King’s army.
“Fuck… I still have to save the people first, don’t I?”
Yet he endured every trial and defeated Oleg. An achievement no one had witnessed. Had the underground waterway been breached, tens of thousands would have died. The entire city might have been annihilated.
It was a deed that should have earned the praise of countless people. Instead, all he received was criticism and suspicion.
She had interrogated him. She had hurled accusations at him. Later, in a fit of rage, she had spewed every wounding word she could think of.
What had he been thinking then?
“…”
She is no mind reader, so she cannot know for certain. But one thing is clear: afterward, he had wept bitterly. One fragment shows Luke struggling to hold back tears in front of Yulise.
“……”
With a bitter taste still in her mouth, Lily plays another scene. This time it begins the moment she was taken by the teleport scroll.
The hero’s party had been thrown into chaos. They searched the exhausted city for her, investigated beyond the walls, discovered the traces of the teleportation, and after long discussion… the hero set out alone.
Into a land swarming with tens of thousands of elite monsters. Armed with nothing but a single sword.
Lily imagines it. What had he been thinking?
The battle that erupted in that demonic territory was fiercer than any before. Although none of the monsters matched a Heavenly King, there were still tens of thousands of creatures that would be ranked as named monsters. Taken together, the fight might have been even harder than facing one of the Four Heavenly Kings.
In truth, the hero’s blood sprayed and his bones shattered. His mana ran dry from casting spells. Arrows and thorns gradually pierced his back. His regeneration visibly slowed.
Again and again he offered something. He charged straight into impossible odds by sacrificing his own future.
Lily watches the entire sequence from start to finish.
The battle is less fierce than it is heartbreaking. The hero carving through tens of thousands of monsters looks less imposing than he does desperate. With every step forward, the number of body parts he sacrifices increases. Every choice is the best move available to him—the optimal wound that still lets him swing his sword, the calculated pain that remains survivable.
After advancing for what feels like an eternity, he finally reaches her. Seeing her pathetically bound in spider silk, he speaks.
『You really… are a handful, aren’t you…? You know that…?』
He smiles with heartbreaking fragility, as though he might collapse at any second.
Lily imagines it again. What had he been thinking in that moment?
As she said before, she is no mind reader. She cannot know his exact thoughts. But as a mage who prizes logic, she can connect the events and infer.
First he had fought a life-or-death battle with Oleg, then immediately afterward had a vicious fight with her. They had torn into each other until he ended up sobbing in a corner. He must have hated her. He must have been furious.
And in that state, she had been kidnapped. Honestly, he probably hadn’t wanted to come after her. His emotions were already raw, and the prospect of cutting through tens of thousands of monsters was overwhelmingly difficult. Logically, abandoning her and striking at the Demon King would have been the smarter choice.
Yet he had advanced. With nothing but a single sword.
He fought through tens of thousands of monsters, offering years of his lifespan, parts of his organs, his pinkies and ring fingers, even his left eyeball. He suffered mana depletion dozens of times, took hundreds of arrows, endured the agony of his flesh being torn thousands of times.
When he finally stood before her after all that—when he had chewed through every hardship and still offered her that fragile, sorrowful smile—what on earth had he been thinking?
“……Ugh.”
Nausea rises. Lily clamps a hand over her mouth. Emotions surge up her throat, threatening to spill out.
She finds herself repulsive. She cannot know all his thoughts, but if she dares to guess… Luke must have felt his fate was unbearably unfair. He had given his entire life to oppose the Demon King. Even though he must have hated her, even though he must have been exhausted beyond limit, he had still smiled at her.
And all she had ever given him in return was cruelty.
The weight of guilt crushes her.
“……Ah.”
She draws a shaky breath. Her breathing grows unsteady. Tears slowly leak from her eyes.
Even though she knows the scene is only a recording, she whispers hoarsely.
“I-I’m sorry…”
The hero was not a spy for the Demon King’s army. He was not a fallen Heavenly King. He was not a cold-blooded traitor without blood or tears.
He was an ordinary person who could grow angry, who could feel sadness. He was simply a pitiful man the world had pushed into becoming a hero.
“I’m so sorry…”
She repeats the apology again and again. She watches the footage, infers his thoughts, feels her heart break, and cries. After repeating the cycle for a long while…
Lily returns to the past.