The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 184

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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 184

“I saw the things you didn’t tell me.”

“….”

“I saw you continuously asking Dorothy questions, dying countless times, checking the collateral and water while doing so, and realizing that repetition makes the disaster stronger. Also, I saw you….”

Lillieta poured out her words as if vomiting them. Gideon watched what she was spilling out with a mask-like face, not moving a muscle.

She closed her eyes and said.

“I saw you… calling me a curse.”

The mask cracked.

The domain he had been controlling rippled like a water surface struck by a thrown stone.

Lillieta couldn’t see that. She gave up wiping the tears that kept flowing and opened her closed eyes. She captured him in her blurred vision.

“And I saw you… saying that since regression makes it as if nothing happened, it doesn’t matter what you do….”

In her pale vision, Gideon’s body swayed. Like scenery rippling beyond fog.

Had she really returned to reality? Wasn’t she still in those abyssal memories?

Lillieta breathed in while in a confused state. Instead of rose fragrance, the smell of sand and humid summer night air penetrated her nostrils.

This was reality, Lambcard Arena at midnight during the National Foundation Day.

She aimed a question at him, who appeared blurry.

“That’s all I saw. What on earth did you do after that?”

“….”

“Did you kill them? People? Just to vent your emotions?”

“….”

“With the reason that it would be as if nothing happened, what kind of things did you do? Like the Pascals who experimented on us, did you do things that shouldn’t be done? Is that why you absolutely didn’t want to tell me?”

No answer came back.

Lillieta wiped around her eyes with her clenched hand. She looked at Gideon with her barely cleared vision.

A face completely drained of color. Trembling jaw and eyelids. No groans or screams came from his slightly parted lips. As if he had become a doll made of wax rather than a person.

He was terrified.

Behind him, the domain he had controlled slowly crumbled. The black waves subsided and the suppressed demons regained their freedom.

Lillieta couldn’t see that side this time either. Gid’s reaction, that reaction which was as good as an answer, was too shocking.

And once again tears welled up, blurring her vision.

She stared only at his blurry figure as if he were beyond fog and asked.

“Gid, did you really do that?”

“….”

“Are all the things I saw true? Are they your real memories? You, you… to save just me, ignored the disaster growing stronger and kept dying, dying again, and then, after repeating such acts, you finally came to… feel I was a curse, and even… harmed innocent people. Is that the truth you hid?”

“….”

“…Before falling into the hallucination, I saw the magic circle inside the Red Queen’s mouth. This is actually fake memories fabricated by Pascal, right? If so, just say one word.”

She came to hope it was rather a lie. That all these things were nothing but stories Pascal had made up to separate and shake her and him.

She whispered desperately.

“I’ll believe whatever you say… please.”

“….”

Gideon said nothing.

Realizing what his silence meant, she buried her face in both hands. She called his name like a groan while trembling her shoulders.

“Gid….”

At that moment, sharp instincts that had been crushed under her confused mind sent a warning.

Rita immediately raised her head and twisted her body.

A staff with a demon head struck down at the spot where she had been standing just moments before.

From the demon’s mouth that had cut through empty air instead of her crown, thick black smoke burst out with a puff. It was smoke like a magic trick performance.

“…!”

Rita, who had avoided that attack by a hair’s breadth, covered her mouth with her hand to avoid inhaling the suspicious smoke and quickly drew Silvergrass.

But before she could even fire a matan.

Something pitch-black, massive, and unidentifiable surged from Gid, opened its mouth wide, and swallowed the Joker.

Half of its upper body disappeared. As if erased with an eraser.

The demon’s body, remaining only from the waist down, tilted precariously and then collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.

‘That thing….’

That thing that erased the demon. It was ‘something’ she had seen before.

In the closed greenhouse of Beacon Garden.

When Gid, who had been coughing up dark red blood right after regaining consciousness from nearly killing her, had swung his hand toward the writhing Doppelganger’s main body.

The black thing that had crushed it as if trampling it. Some shadow that resembled the form of vines contracting in flames. Something that seemed to writhe in pain.

The moment when she first realized that he was hiding things from her.

Lillieta turned back to Gideon while holding her magic gun.

“Just now, that thing….”

And she couldn’t finish her words.

Gid’s silhouette was twisting. Blood vessels bulged, and his skin rippled unevenly. Around him, black energy swayed like a water surface meeting a storm.

He stood blankly with his left hand, not holding a sword, covering his mouth. As if firmly suppressing something trying to burst out from within.

Rita knew well what those symptoms were a precursor to.

Demonification due to deepening corruption.

Oathbinders have resistance thanks to the Oaths in their bodies, so they don’t get corrupted easily, but in special situations like Oath depletion or severe injury, they might not be able to overcome corruption like non-Oathbinders and become demons.

Pascal’s words to Gid in the hallucination came to mind.

“You’ve used it, so you know, right? That thing, once you use it even once… leaves traces on the soul. You could call it corruption….”

The countless Gids’ soliloquies thrown toward the star came to mind.

How long can I stay stopped? What’s the price?

Am I getting corrupted?

I’ve been broken for a long time anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

She unconsciously let out a trembling voice.

“Gid, you, that thing….”

“Ah.”

Behind the hand covering his mouth, his face showed a bitter smile. Soon a hoarse voice flowed out.

“I’ve been found out… completely.”

By the person he least wanted to be discovered by.

Gid swallowed the rest of his words.

His vision danced dizzily.

In the distorted and warped world, the only person who appeared clearly and beautifully alone asked him like a scream.

“Is that corruption? Are you being corrupted right now? Call Sister Sera immediately―”

“Rita, this isn’t something that can be treated.”

Gid gently cut off her words and added.

“Because this is the past I buried and the sin I tried to abandon.”

“What?”

“Well… regression isn’t a phenomenon the star intended. Neither is making the oath again. That was a kind of miracle and opportunity, an opportunity to bury everything and start anew. I realized it when I saw the star’s color that had been dwelling in my eyes disappear right after regression.”

He smiled while kindly explaining.

“I didn’t want to miss that opportunity, Rita. So when I made the oath again after regression… I made that new oath my constraint and guideline.”

“Guideline?”

“A guideline for being the me you know.”

Gid smiled faintly.

His love is excessively heavy and twisted. No, perhaps it’s no longer even love.

The person called Rita Pascal that he knows absolutely cannot love someone who wouldn’t care about destroying the world for her sake.

She doesn’t want something like endlessly repeating regression to revive her dead self. She also doesn’t want him to kill or harm innocent others for her sake.

Rita Pascal cannot like a human who has nothing but her.

The person she could love, Gid Pascal whom she considered closer than anyone else, wasn’t such a broken and empty human being.

Ironically, Gid knew this fact better than anyone while repeating his insane actions.

That the more he acted this way, the less she would like him. That he was transforming into a person she could never love.

He simply couldn’t stop even knowing this. He simply couldn’t give up no matter what.

Therefore, all of this was his sin, his problem alone.

If he had truly loved her purely, he should have stopped before it became corrupted.

He couldn’t do that.

Gid did all those things not for her sake, but for himself who couldn’t bear the reality of being without her.

This isn’t sacrifice.

Therefore, he knew precisely that he was selfish and blind.

He also knew well that she could never love him who had gone mad for her.

So when the opportunity came, he forced his ruined self into the framework of a new oath.

He separated the past and buried it beyond memory, immersing himself in the identity of ‘Prince Gideon’ to remake himself.

To return to being the heroic Squad Leader Gid Pascal she might be able to love, who had conviction and responsibility and passion, who led his comrades beyond the Last Line of Defense to end the war.

He would not avoid the responsibilities given to him.

Not as ‘Gid Pascal’ who was blinded by clinging only to the existence called Rita Pascal and turned away from everything else.

He would live as ‘Prince Gideon’ who could look around him, and thus had the possibility of being loved by her.

He had sworn this.

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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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