A Warmth to Cling To
Contrary to her pale, fragile appearance, Regina Strelitzia's hand was remarkably warm and soft.
I helped her up with deliberate gentleness. After wiping the damp streaks from her tear-stained face, I kept holding her hand, waiting beside her until the trembling in her legs finally subsided.
"Are you feeling a little better now, Regina?"
"Ah, um... S-Sian..."
"Yes?"
"You... you don't have to speak so formally with me..."
Her voice was barely above a whisper, still carrying a faint tremor. Underneath that tentative murmur lay an unresolved, aching anxiety.
Careful not to trigger any lingering scars, I offered a gentle smile. "Hm? Oh, it's just that I usually feel more comfortable speaking politely..."
"We're... we're friends, aren't we?"
"Of course we are. We share a secret that belongs only to the two of us. Don't you think so too, Regina?"
"Y-Yes! Yes! But... um, all the other friends I see speak casually with each other. Won't you... call me like that, too, Sian...?"
"Ah."
Only then did I realize what was driving her unease.
A young girl whose heart had shattered across an endless loop of regressions would be stained by countless betrayals and abandonments. To her, polite distance felt like an omen of detachment. She needed a tangible anchor—something solid to prove that I wouldn't simply slip through her fingers.
I softened my tone, weaving a touch of easy warmth into my voice. "Then... would it be okay if I just call you Regina?"
"Ah, yes...! Thank you so much...!"
"Come on, don't mention it. Compared to everything you've suffered through, this is nothing."
Exchanging small smiles, we turned and walked toward the threshold of the safe zone.
The instant we approached the archway, a rancid stench rolled out to meet us. Thick and suffocating, the tainted air drifted through the hall, saturated with the viscous, festering malice of undead monsters.
"Ugh..."
A shiver ran down my spine from the raw density of demonic mana permeating the corridor. It wrapped around us like an invisible boa constrictor, an unspoken threat that promised to swallow whole anyone daring enough to step inside.
"Ready?" I asked.
"Yes. Of course I am."
"Then let's go."
A bit of foul atmosphere wasn't nearly enough to stop us. I was already a seasoned Gold-tag adventurer who had crossed death's doorstep more times than I cared to count, and Regina had grown all too familiar with bloodshed over her near-thousand lifetimes.
As we moved down the dark stone passage, I broke the silence in a low, measured voice. "Regina, have you ever been down here before?"
"N-No... this is my first time in a place like this. I didn't even know there was a dungeon hidden beneath the academy grounds... How did you find it, Sian...?"
"...In the library. I was reading through some historical records about the war five hundred years ago."
Of course, that book was impossible to obtain through normal means. To unlock the hidden quest An Archaeologist's Testament—the prerequisite for revealing the Ancient Lich's Tomb—one had to exploit a very specific sequence of flags.
"Like I told you earlier, I'm someone who came from another world," I explained quietly.
"Yes."
"Because of that, I wanted to understand more about the history of the Arcana continent. While flipping through those ancient volumes, a faded parchment slipped out from between the pages."
I steadily detailed the contents of the quest, carefully omitting the fact that this entire world was an RPG and glossing over the existence of the game's canonical protagonist.
"I... I see..." Regina murmured under her breath, her crimson eyes widening in wonder. "Even after living through nine hundred and ninety-eight lives, I never once encountered such a thing. You really are extraordinary, aren't you, Sian...?"
Her voice trailed off for a moment. Then, tightening her grip on the massive hilt resting across her shoulder, she puffed out her chest and declared with sudden, fierce conviction, "D-Don't worry about a thing...! If any creepy monsters jump out, I'll cut them all down for you!"
I couldn't help but chuckle. "Thanks. I'll be counting on you, then."
"Y-Yes...!"
If the common fodder of the Level 30 Ancient Lich's Tomb consisted of skeletal soldiers, the denizens patrolling this Level 55 double dungeon, the Ancient Lich's Catacomb, were in an entirely different league: Death Knights.
Skeletons were mere lower-tier trash reanimated from the bones of common infantry. Death Knights, on the other hand, were terrifying Level 45 elite undead crafted from the preserved corpses of fallen martial champions.
To an ordinary first-year student at Arcana Academy, facing even a single Death Knight was an unmitigated disaster.
...At least, it was supposed to be.
Channeling mana into my blade, I sheared through a Death Knight's heavy armor along with the greatsword it tried to parry with, then glanced toward Regina. In the time it took me to dispatch one, she had already carved through five.
A crisp, metallic hum resonated through the vault. With every sweep of her blade, another towering armored fiend collapsed into severed pieces. With the featherlight pop of a single step, she flickered across the stone floor, tracing a blinding tapestry of luminous sword arcs in the dark.
Three more Death Knights crumbled into lifeless heaps before their blades could even fall.
"...There's, hah, no end to them," she panted softly.
"Tell me about it."
Even cleaved in two, the undead continued to drag themselves forward. Stripped of pain, fear, and every instinct of self-preservation that once defined their humanity, the remnants wandering this tomb had no concept of retreat.
"Grrrraaaagh..."
"Khaaaah...!"
"Guh... g-kkkrrr..."
Eerie, guttural groans scraped against the stone walls as a fresh wave closed in. Even with their arms severed and legs shattered, they crawled relentlessly forward through the pooling dark.
Regina watched the horde advance, her gaze turning cold and distant. Without a word, she raised an empty hand and began tracing intricate lines of light through the air.
A split second later, her urgent warning rang out.
"Sian, stay back...!"
The geometric array she had drawn flared into brilliant, blinding crimson. A spell circle of absurd complexity materialized in midair, and the ambient temperature inside the chilled catacomb spiked violently in an instant.
It was a tactical, miniaturized variant of Hellfire—a spell of supreme mass destruction that typically demanded a ritual chant from dozens of high-tier battle mages working in unison.
BOOOOM!
A thunderous detonation ripped through the narrow corridor. A raging tempest of incinerating flame bloomed outward from empty space, roaring like an unleashed beast as it engulfed the vanguard of Death Knights in an apocalyptic conflagration.
Scraps of molten steel and scorched armor clattered against the stone tiles. Reduced to smoldering slag whose original forms were impossible to discern, the undead finally ceased to move.
"Phew..."
Regina dusted off the hem of her uniform with a faint sigh, turning back toward me with a shy, triumphant smile. "I think... this area is... all cleared out."
"Incredible work, Regina. Thank you."
Yet, something was clearly wrong.
Her knees trembled violently beneath her skirt, her stance swaying as if caught in a sudden vertigo. When she spoke, the breathless quaver in her voice sounded far worse than before.
Unlike earlier, when she had seemed emotionally fragile, right now Regina looked physically on the verge of total collapse. Alarmed, I lunged forward to close the distance.
My arms caught her waist just as her strength gave out entirely.
She gasped for breath against my chest, wheezing so raggedly that it was hard to believe this was the very same girl who had dismantled a squad of high-level monsters like soft tofu only seconds ago.
"Regina?!"
"Ugh... I-I'm fine, really. Just... please give me... a moment, hah, to catch my..."
Even while leaning heavily on my arm, she desperately strained to push herself upright. Her face was as pale as chalk, bathed in cold sweat, yet she stubbornly insisted she was fine when she clearly wasn't.
"Stop it! You're clearly not okay!"
"N-No, really... hah, this... this will pass quickly...! So, please..."
Her words fought to deny reality, but her body told the unvarnished truth. Her heart hammered against her ribs at a dangerously frantic rhythm, and all strength had completely drained from her limbs.
Taking shallow, agonizing breaths, she forced the words out between gasps.
"Th-This is... because of the regressions... My body is... far too weak to withstand... the magnitude of power I'm channeling... It really will heal quickly, I promise..."
Of course. No matter how peerless her mana control was thanks to a thousand lifetimes of experience, Regina's physical vessel was still merely that of an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl.
Pumping raw Aura through unconditioned meridians and topping it off with a high-tier strategic spell—even a reduced version—was practically suicidal. There was no way her physical body could bear that kind of strain without breaking down.
"We're stopping right here to rest for a while."
"W-We can't... If we do, because of me... you'll fail the exam, Sian..."
"Who cares about that? Let me fail," I said firmly, lowering her gently to the floor and sitting down beside her. "It's not like I desperately need to be in Class A anyway. Right now, taking care of you is a hundred times more important. We're friends who share a secret, aren't we?"
Unlike the high-strung nobles who staked their entire futures on academic rankings, I was just an extra dragged into this academy against my will.
Good grades were nice if they came naturally, but tending to the girl who had been broken because of my choices came first.
I brushed a few stray strands of dark navy hair from her damp forehead. Perhaps the reassurance finally allowed the exhaustion to catch up with her, because her heavy eyelids slowly began to flutter shut.
"Sleep if you're tired. I'll stand watch."
"...Thank you. Truly, thank you so much..."
"Don't mention it. It's the least I can do."
Unable to look her in the eyes, I kept my gaze fixed on the cracked ceiling of the tomb.
Regina had been broken because of me. Did I truly have any right to accept her gratitude?
The sensation of resting in someone's embrace.
The gentle touch of hands cradling her with unconditional care.
The radiant warmth radiating from another human being.
And the strange, feverish heat rising to flush her own cheeks red.
To the regressor, Regina Strelitzia, everything taking place inside this cold stone dungeon was entirely, dizzyingly new.
At least in this single moment, she was no longer a string-bound marionette dancing to the tune of a predetermined 'destiny.' She was acting under her own free will—as a girl named Regina Strelitzia.
The damp, frigid draft whistling through the ruins. The nauseating stench of rotten flesh. Even the sticky, black blood of the Death Knights clinging to the floor... for the first time in an eternity, none of it felt repulsive.
The taste of freedom, experienced for the first time in centuries—no, millennia—was intoxicatingly sweet. And the warmth she had received for the first time since falling into this unending cycle of regressions was so agonizingly gentle that it made her want to weep.
"..."
Regina knew it intuitively.
She could never let go of this girl named Sian, who had boldly promised to rewrite her fate.
If she lost the fragile hope that had finally appeared after thousands of years of torment, she would truly shatter beyond repair. Her sanity had already worn down to its absolute ragged edge centuries ago.
So, even if she had to offer everything she owned... even if she had to surrender her very flesh and soul, she had to keep Sian pinned by her side. She had to ensure that Sian would never abandon her.
If she didn't want to lose her mind completely... if she didn't want to become an empty shell hollowed out by destiny's strings forever...
I won't let you go. Never, ever again.
Burying her face deeper into Sian's embrace, Regina tightened her grip around her waist, whispering a vow into the silence of her own heart.