The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 181
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 181
Gid’s pupils wavered. He rubbed his face with dry hands before spitting out his words.
“Even if I succeed, I won’t be helping you.”
“Kuhehe, how naive, still so fresh.”
Pascal laughed loudly again.
“Hehaha, hahah, didn’t I just say that the process doesn’t matter at all? Your success too… would be nothing more than a process to me.”
His mouth, dripping with a mixture of blood and saliva, opened cunningly.
“Even if I tell you this, you won’t be able to refuse.”
“…”
“Because you won’t want to accept that child’s death. Because you’ll want to return to before that child died, no matter what it takes.”
Just like me.
The archmage whispered. Gid bit his lips until they bled. Blood dripped from his fists as his nails dug into his hands.
He couldn’t refuse that proposal.
Pascal muttered something under his breath, then began trembling all over. This time it wasn’t from laughter, but he still wore a smile.
“Now, break my oath.”
Mana swirled violently from the archmage’s entire body. As it began to run wild, he spoke cheerfully.
“Child who has newly become a demon’s host, try dying caught up in the rampage of one who was once a host. And let’s see what becomes of us.”
Tremendous mana exploded from Pascal. And Gid didn’t dodge, standing still in place to meet it.
Lillieta reached out toward him. She grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
Hoping he wouldn’t get caught up in that man’s rampage. Wanting to do so even knowing it was just a hallucination.
He turned around as his arm was pulled. He sees her. The eye with the eyepatch, the intact eye.
The fog that had been pooling around them crashed over them like a tidal wave. Swept them away. His arm that had been in her grasp disappeared.
Lillieta opened her eyes wide and watched the scenes reflected in the overflowing fog.
Gid dies in Pascal’s rampage. Opens his eyes. He, now a boy, fumbles over his body and realizes something.
Could it be that I’ve regressed to Pascal’s previous reference point? Caught up in that man’s rampage, I’ve come to his regression reference point instead of mine? Then.
Joy spread across his face as he muttered to himself. With the face of one who had succeeded, he ran out and searched among his comrades. Looking for her.
Rita Pascal? There’s no one by that name among us.
Despair and terror spread across his previously joyful face.
It was a scene she had seen just moments before. After this, he would discover Dorothy, harbor hope, and then…
Lillieta thought as she watched that scene being swept away by the fog.
Scene?
No, this is a memory.
Gideon’s memory.
The terrible memories he had been hiding.
‘Then… that’s why…’
In her confused and dizzy state, she desperately tried to organize what she was seeing. She tried to understand.
Certainly he had rarely lied. There were just things he hadn’t spoken of.
While repeating the three days after her death, he accepted Pascal’s proposal and died caught up in that man’s rampage.
Then he returned to the reference point Pascal had set for regression – the moment he had just created the ‘resurrected ones.’
‘But that point… was before Pascal had possessed me into Dorothy.’
Gid Pascal hadn’t realized that fact.
And coincidentally, Pascal never once possessed Lillieta into Dorothy after that.
As if only that timeline where she and he had lived together was an exceptional case.
Gid, who first regressed to age 10, believed Dorothy was Rita and endured for 10 years, before finally accepting that while the outer appearance was the same, the soul inside was not her.
And regression. Once again, age 10.
He meets Dorothy. After confirming she’s not her, this time he immediately regresses.
Gid Pascal at this time doesn’t know how to change a fixed regression point.
Age 10 again.
Check, regress, check, regress.
Searching for her who no longer exists, he circles between death and death like a hamster wheel. Those endlessly repeating scenes.
“Ugh…”
She covered her mouth as nausea rose. She felt dizzy.
Lillieta almost dropped Silvergrass, then decided to put it in her holster entirely, wiping the cold sweat that had thoroughly soaked her forehead with her empty hands.
Just how many times had Gid repeated that act?
And when did he stop?
How?
By what means did he find a way to change the regression point?
The fog that had settled seemed to ripple as if trying to answer that question.
Lillieta looked at the countless things flickering beyond the fog with shaking eyes, then bit her lips and stepped forward. This time backward. In a direction she hadn’t yet explored.
As she began walking backward, the fog flowed like water. Various scenes could be seen hazily beyond it.
She could see him with his Beacon Squad comrades. She stopped and peered in for a moment.
He confesses.
There’s someone I’m looking for. Like us, she’s Pascal’s Child…
Ethan asks back.
Rita? Don’t know her, who is that?
Gid grits his teeth. Ethan frowns and continues.
Her face looked exactly like Dorothy’s but she’s a different person? So you’re searching because her soul might be in another body? What the hell kind of bullshit is that?
Luca’s eyes widen.
Wow, there’s such an amazing Mage Gunner? That’s so unrealistic… If she had that level of skill, word would have spread to the city, but I’m hearing about this for the first time.
Sera tilts her head.
If such a child existed, there’s no way I wouldn’t know. You know I’ve treated so many Pascals. I’ve never heard of her either.
Oli asks back.
Someone who only exists in your memory, is that really a real person? Didn’t you have some vivid dream and mistake it for reality?
Is brings out tea.
You seem very tired lately, how about getting some rest, junior.
Taking a sip of tea, he bursts into laughter and draws his gun, pointing it at his own head.
Lillieta couldn’t bear to watch him pull the trigger and turned her head away.
There was another scene in that direction.
She could see young Gid Pascal, who had escaped the training facility alone, wandering through the ruins near the facility. He was going through the corpses of abandoned children one by one.
He was looking for something. Until his small hands became covered in blood.
She looks in another direction.
She could see Gid Pascal wearing the gray uniform of the Last Defense Command. He was researching something in Command’s library.
She could see the pages spread out. Magic to change appearance. Techniques to identify people by bloodstains. Cases of souls being switched. Legends about magic that deals with time.
She turns her head and walks.
She could see him having become part of the city’s upper class. In the study of a massive mansion, he throws down a pile of documents, grabs his head, and mutters.
Just where are you, Rita.
She walks.
She could see him facing Pascal. Pascal’s mad laughter could be heard.
I wondered where my egg had gone.
So it was you?
You too will fail endlessly.
I am your future.
Gid’s face contorted. Lillieta closed her eyes at the scene of him stabbing Pascal with a blade.
She walks.
Her breathing became labored. She clutched her chest and continued walking with her eyes closed. Then the texture of the floor changed and she opened her eyes.
As the fog cleared, the revealed landscape was a white space. Not much different from when it was covered in fog.
The one-eyed Gid Pascal she knew was sitting there. In that place with nothing, in the empty air before him, a ‘star’ was floating.
He had removed his eyepatch and looked up at it with both his familiar amber eyes and the artificial eye that rippled with five colors exposed to her.
The star rippled with aurora-like light. Then Gid responded as if talking to himself.
“The collateral… I can confirm it?”
“If I give up like this, the times I hold dear will become yours. You think you can digest all of that? The meaning of that is…”
“Those times will change as if they never existed? They’ll become things that never happened…?”
“Does that mean everyone will forget? Even me?”
“I don’t really understand what you mean.”
“Anyway, I can confirm the collateral before choosing to give up. How unnecessarily merciful.”
“Show me the collateral I wagered.”
Aurora-like light spreads wide. Gid looked up at it with eyes of the same color.
Crouched like a wounded beast, for a long while.
Suddenly he reaches out his hand. As if groping for someone unseen’s face, he carefully caresses the empty air. His fingertips tremble.
He grits his teeth.
He speaks in a hoarse voice.
“You’re telling me to give this up.”
I can’t do that. He mutters.
“Again, I’ll do it again.”
Again.
Then the star shines.
Blood bursts from his temple.
As if struck by an invisible bullet. As if the moment of being pierced by a bullet had been delayed. As if time had been frozen.
The white space is erased and finally the scenery is revealed.
The scene of Beacon’s comrades screaming in shock and shouting as they rush over, and his figure shooting himself in the head and breathing his last, came into view.
It was the continuation of the scene he had avoided earlier by turning his head.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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