Chapter 78
Chapter 78
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 78
Chapter Title: Failed Holy War (1)
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Because of that incident, I had a dream.
A dream of a white figure draped in white robes gazing down at me for a long time.
In the dream, I was crying, and the moment I realized the thing looking down at me was myself in a burial shroud, my breath caught in my throat, jolting me awake.
“Hah, hah...”
I was so startled that my breath reached all the way up to my chin.
How long had it been since I’d woken up in bed gasping for air like this?
I wiped away the cold sweat soaking my forehead and shoved aside the heavy blanket pressing down on me.
And that’s when I locked eyes with those white irises staring down at me.
“!!”
The instant my hand instinctively flew to my chest, the owner of those eyes spoke up.
“It’s me.”
The familiar voice belonged to Arthur Usher.
Thank goodness I hadn’t completely lost my reason.
Arthur, who had been watching my behavior, lit the candle on the desk nearby, pulled over a chair, and sat down.
He must have been about to ask about my odd actions.
“Your breathing was unsteady, so I was debating whether to wake you. Did you have a nightmare?”
“Oh, the dream. Yeah... it was just a dream. Sorry if I worried you. This hasn’t happened lately, but the weather must be getting to me.”
“Hmm.”
Arthur sat in the chair, scrutinizing me carefully.
Yeah, honestly, I knew I seemed off myself.
Probably especially because I hadn’t taken off my holster even while lying in bed.
I debated whether to emphasize that my gun was in a “safe state,” or just pretend nothing was wrong, pull the covers over me, and roll over.
Fortunately, Arthur didn’t press further on that point.
He just crossed his legs and observed me intently.
“Anything else you want to say?”
The tense atmosphere dragged on until I volunteered the information myself.
Arthur gave a faint smile that tugged only at the corner of his mouth, shrugged, and stood from his seat.
“No. Just... I suddenly wondered what you saw in that dream.”
My eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, so I could clearly see Arthur’s expression.
It was weary somewhere, evoking pity.
But at the same time, that empty smile carried something unsettling.
Unfortunately, I knew that expression well.
The mature look unique to someone forcing a smile, tinged with exhaustion.
It was the exact expression I used to wear as a child.
“Arthur.”
I called out to him as he headed back to the sitting area to tidy up the candlestick and set up the partition.
He stopped but didn’t turn around.
“You have a lot of questions for me.”
“......”
“Conveniently, so do I. If there’s something you absolutely have to tell me, please don’t hide it.”
It was far too sharp a conversation for the middle of the night, but I didn’t fully trust Arthur either.
He clearly had a pitiful upbringing worth pitying, and though our relationship was complicated now, he didn’t exactly dislike me.
Judging by appearances alone, my impression of him was pretty good too.
But...
‘The one who tried to shoot me was Arthur.’
Among the people I suspected were connected to my future, everyone except Judith had unstable soul rifts.
Well, maybe Judith did too, but I hadn’t noticed anything strange about her yet.
In any case, among those with unstable rifts, the one who seemed most likely to cause me fatal harm was Arthur.
I wanted to trust him, but I couldn’t.
That was my honest feeling.
“Arthur.”
He still didn’t respond to my call.
I spoke quietly to him as he returned to his spot and straightened his bedding.
“Good night.”
“Yes, sleep well.”
For now, this was the best I could do.
Rather than suspecting and confronting Arthur, maintaining this uneasy status quo without rushing toward catastrophe.
In the end, I kept dreaming of myself in a white burial shroud staring blankly at me, pinned down not by sleep paralysis but something like it.
.
.
.
Consecutive nights of insomnia scrambled my mind.
Every time that inexplicable conviction hit—that everything would end only if I died—I paradoxically became acutely aware of my guardian angel’s presence and gritted my teeth.
‘This is an illusion.’
I knew full well that my death wouldn’t solve anything.
Judging by the letter I’d written myself, now that I was aware of Ebon’s existence, the coming destruction was already set to repeat.
Total annihilation for everyone, or another cycle premised on someone’s death.
Those were the only two “solutions”—or rather, non-solutions—presented to me now.
“You keep having suicidal thoughts?”
“Yes.”
“It seems the repeated accidents and disasters are driving the patient to extreme thoughts. Try to relax your mind...”
Even the academy counseling I’d hoped would offer some solution was utterly disappointing.
The counselor, who seemed stuck in mannerisms, just repeated the same lines and handed out superficial remedies.
It was so deflating it almost felt intentional.
I felt none of the expertise I’d expected from them.
-Flutter, flutter, flutter.
I was reading the abridged creation myth of the Creation God Aegis that the counselor had given me, then tossed it onto the desk.
A herbal tea meant to soothe the mind, a mysterious package supposedly containing “fresh air,” and this one book—that was the full extent of the expert’s prescription.
I’d been told to drink it, so I downed the now-cold herbal tea in one gulp and stretched languidly in the simple chair.
My mind was so foggy that I dozed off in the same position for a while. When I came to, Arthur was already gone somewhere, and Theodore still hadn’t woken up.
-Whoooosh!
-Roooar...
Storm-driven rain poured down as if it would shatter the window glass, and I just stared out at the scenery.
The herbal tea that was supposed to clear my head instead sharpened my senses with a sense of futility over the pointless effort.
‘Snake oil peddlers.’
In a surge of frustration, I shoved the “fresh air” package right in front of Cookie’s snout.
Cookie, blasted in the face with what I assumed was fresh air, thought it was a new game and bounced around excitedly.
Having thus exhausted all my “prescribed remedies,” I concluded that I had to pull myself together on my own.
‘I wasted time.’
In the end, no one could solve my problems but me.
As I thought that, I heard movement from the dressing room.
“You awake?”
Theodore emerged from the room, looking even more haggard than I felt after my sleepless night, his hair a messy tangle.
“......”
“Arthur was already gone when I opened my eyes. Probably headed to the training room in the dorms. Aren’t you hungry? Normally the sun would be high in the sky by now.”
“......”
“Theodore?”
Had I spoken too casually without thinking?
There was no reply from Theodore.
Finding it odd, I rose from the chair and approached him.
In the meantime, Theodore had been mumbling something to himself intently.
“Theodore. What?”
“......You must not call it...”
“......!”
It was a passage from Ebon.
Only then did I realize this was Theodore’s sleepwalking symptom.
‘Will talking to him wake him up?’
Until now, Arthur’s ironclad vigilance had prevented any chance of me being alone with Theodore in this defenseless state.
To be precise, Theodore had never shown “this symptom” when we were alone together.
‘He said he even talked with Shirley to some extent.’
This might be an opportunity that wouldn’t come again.
I decided to ask Theodore the question that had been nagging at me.
“Theodore. Look here.”
At my words, Theodore turned his head toward me, his eyes dull and unfocused.
His lowered eyelids trembled faintly as if he were still lost in a dream, and though he turned his head as if looking at me, his gaze was fixed somewhere on the floor.
“Theodore. That passage—how do you know it?”
“The Ebon of the Lichten region...”
“Yeah, how did you first learn about that Ebon?”
“It was...”
That’s when Theodore opened his mouth.
-Rumble! Boom!
A thunderous roar so massive it made the napping Cookie leap up exploded suddenly.
Before I could stop him, Cookie bolted into the bathroom, and the commotion he caused made Theodore stagger.
“Ah, ah, no...”
As if the thunder were a signal, Theodore stumbled out of the room.
I followed him out, hurriedly shutting the door to keep Cookie from dashing after us.
“Theodore. Ebon, who did you hear about Ebon from—”
“Again, another failure... Please just give up and shoot me...”
“Shoot you? What on earth does that mean?”
My heart sank at Theodore’s loaded words.
Because, coincidentally, the only one with a weapon that could be described as something to “shoot” with was me.
“Did I really kill you? With my own hands?”
“It failed... I know better than anyone that there’s no other way...”
“What failed, and how? What did I do to try to change your fated death?”
Theodore staggered down the long dormitory hallway.
I trailed after him closely, careful not to startle him awake.
If anyone saw this bizarre scene, it’d make for prime gossip.
In the old days, it might’ve ended up in the school paper as “Arma Cruise bullies a junior five years her junior.”
Now, it’d probably be something even more ridiculous, like “Aegis’s Executor attempts to exorcise White House’s one-eyed demon” or “Aegis’s will cures Theodore’s incurable illness”...
“But still, I shouldn’t have done that...”
Now Theodore was descending the stairs toward the first-floor entrance.
The storm raging outside masked the sound of his footsteps.
“If everything was going according to its will...”
“What will? What happened to us?”
I asked urgently, but Theodore just kept mumbling over and over that everything had gone wrong.
Reaching the end of the dead-end hallway, Theodore tottered forward, oblivious to the wall in front of him as he tried to keep going.
“Ugh, Theodore. You can’t go this way.”
I quickly blocked the space between the wall and his forehead with my hand.
Theodore kept bumping his forehead against my palm.
He should’ve woken up by now, but he didn’t.
I had to extract the information I wanted from this severely afflicted sleepwalker.
“Theodore. What did you fail at? What did I do?”
Theodore continued banging his forehead against my palm rhythmically before finally speaking.
“Before the Holy War began, I said we failed because we couldn’t find all the weapons...”