The Return of Lilietta - Chapter 186

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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 186

“I had a hunch, but still, let’s talk before shooting, friend. You startled me.”

Oli sighed and grumbled. Rita silently passed by her and firmly stepped on the hand of the Joker trying to hide again. Her sharp heel dug into the creature’s flesh.

Kieee!

The Joker writhed its limbs and tried to grab her leg with its remaining three arms.

Rita moved her gun barrel without even looking that way. With successive firing sounds, the explosive rounds she shot blew up all of the creature’s remaining hands. An ear-piercing shriek echoed.

Regardless, she lowered her head toward the creature. As she tore through the Joker’s clothes—actually its skin—with her gun barrel, the artificial spirit’s voice suddenly came through.

[Suggestion: User, please refrain from tearing through the monster’s skin with this artificial spirit’s body. It’s harmful stimulation for the baby…]

Despite the nonsense, it was unusually small and timid in tone. It even seemed to be reading the mood.

Lillieta didn’t particularly respond, but lowered her gun barrel and lifted her foot. She continued tearing through the raging monster’s collar with her shoe tip and found what she was looking for.

A small magic circle was carved on its chest, right below the neck.

Olivia, who had quietly approached, examined the magic circle before she could say anything.

“What’s this? Why does a monster have a magic circle… It must be Pascal’s doing, right? Hmm, there are contamination prevention measures built in, but the activation trigger is when it contacts very strong contamination? What the hell is this.”

“What kind of magic is this?”

Lillieta asked quietly. Oli explained obediently without much questioning, noticing her unusual state.

“Magic that makes fragrance. From the smell, it’s patchouli scent. There aren’t many mages who learn such miscellaneous magic, but don’t tell me… That guy Raven supposedly lived by casting flower-scented magic on the Baroness of Napharoa while playing the fool. Is Raven really Pascal?”

At those words, her mind instantly raced at high speed.

Separate from her heart still unable to escape the shock of the witnessed memories, cold reason pieced together the given clues.

The patchouli scent she had just smelled.

The fragrance magic circle carved on the Joker.

The unidentified magic circle inside the Red Queen’s mouth.

Among the two caught in the Queen’s rose fragrance, only she experienced the hallucination.

A hallucination that showed not her own memories, but someone else’s.

Scenes cut off at ambiguous points.

Imagination that flowed to the worst because she couldn’t directly see what the mad Gid had done.

The sense of incongruity, parts that didn’t fit together, empty spaces.

What she saw was only Gid going mad because he couldn’t change the regression reference point.

But the subsequent fact, reality, was that Gid succeeded in changing the regression reference point and returned to right after her death.

‘The order… that’s how it should be. Gid, who was repeating the 3 days after my death, accepted Pascal’s proposal, and as a result went back to age 10 and spent terrible years… then somehow returned again to right after my death, and from there repeated the 1 year that Beacon noticed… and succeeded in returning.’

Gid, who had been wandering through timelines where only Dorothy existed, at some point reunited with Beacon colleagues who knew of ‘Rita Pascal’s’ existence, and then.

“Gid told us to inherit Pascal’s research and try returning together. To go back to where we were originally born, saying Rita would already be back there too. Since all other hypotheses had been discarded, this was now the only way to get Rita Pascal back…”

What Oli had said.

‘Since all other hypotheses have been discarded, we attempt to return.’

She hadn’t seen the process that led to discarding all those other hypotheses.

She also hadn’t seen the process where Gid, who had declared he would kill anyone, actually carried it out.

From then on, there was a gap in how he found what method to return again to right after her death.

There was also a gap in how Gid Pascal, who had been so broken, could maintain the appearance she knew, or at least manage to ‘pretend to be fine.’

Was this gap left by chance? Or was it intentionally edited?

Pascal can regress.

Upon returning, Gid lost his regression ability. What he told Oli about no longer being able to perform ‘tricks’ wouldn’t be a lie.

From his reaction to her earlier question, it seemed like rather than completely losing it, he could regain the ability if he tried to.

‘His eye color is normal now. Not that strange aurora light.’

Therefore, the one currently possessing regression ability would be Pascal, who should have the star.

The experiment Pascal proposed to Gid was ‘making a star’s previous user go berserk, and seeing what happens when a new user gets caught up in it and dies.’

The result was a change in the regression reference point. Gid Pascal regressed to long before he obtained the star.

The law that a star’s user cannot regress to before the point they embedded the star in their eye could be broken by utilizing the previous user’s rampage.

Also, Gid Pascal succeeded in ‘returning.’ By utilizing the mismatch between body and soul and the star’s explosion.

‘Wait, come to think of it, how did Pascal return? He was in his own body. He didn’t have conditions like soul-body mismatch?’

This part was also a gap.

She’d skip it for now.

Anyway, if Pascal figured out the experimental results and the return method. And if the point he wanted to regress to was before when he obtained the star.

‘He’d want to make Gid go berserk… and try to regress to a more distant past through him.’

If the current Gid was someone who had somehow restored his mind that had fallen to such depths and could at least pretend to be fine.

Making someone with that level of mental strength go berserk wouldn’t be easy.

The most certain way to make him go berserk would be…

‘It was me.’

Using Lillieta.

Either killing her, or making her see his memories and distance herself from him.

‘If I point my gun at him…’

The patchouli scent that suddenly appeared amid the confusion.

The digestive scent that suddenly arose when neither the Black Joker nor the ‘Black Dragon’ could have eaten anyone given the time and circumstances.

The magic circle carved on the Black Joker.

According to Oli, the activation trigger was contact with stronger contamination.

A condition that seemed to assume Gid would attack it.

A means solely to disturb her.

Pascal, who could regress.

Gid’s memories with gaps. The sudden patchouli scent. Pascal’s purpose of making Gid go berserk.

‘…Elaborately woven, perhaps even created through repeated regressions.’

A trap.

Created so that she would see Gid’s memories, push him away, point her gun at him, and thereby make Gid go berserk.

Cold sweat ran down her spine.

‘No, no, he couldn’t have regressed that freely. If he had repeated until getting the desired result, he wouldn’t have panicked so much at Hanna’s oath during the Mimic attack.’

Or perhaps even succeeding in the Mimic attack didn’t produce the desired result, so he gave up on that and moved to the next opportunity…

Her head felt like it would burst. She shook her head.

‘Stop. Abandon areas where only speculation is possible. Focus only on parts with clues. What’s certain now is…’

He and she had fallen into an elaborate trap. As a result, Gid went berserk and fled after becoming a monster.

The Black Dragon made of thorns. The blood pooling in pit-like eyes.

That was Gid?

Thinking about it again made her feel dizzy. She took deep breaths, enduring the vertigo.

‘I shouldn’t have pressed him immediately. Instead of interrogating, I should have been more calm, composed, and addressed the empty parts…’

But in that moment, she absolutely couldn’t do that. Even now the shock hadn’t subsided.

What Gid had been hiding was such a deep abyss.

To the extent that she belatedly understood so keenly why he had so hated to speak of it.

To the extent that her impression of Gid as a person completely changed within her. To the extent that she had no idea how to treat him going forward.

No, maybe she no longer needed to worry about that.

‘Can we… meet again?’

The Black Dragon that had pierced through his body and grown. An unfamiliar monster.

She gasped for breath.

She had calmed a berserk Gid before.

But was there a way to restore someone who had become a monster?

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ve never even tried such a thing.’

Then should she give up on him like this? Would she never be able to meet him again like this forever?

Had he really completely become a monster?

Was this the end?

Like this, in just one moment?

She couldn’t believe it.

If there really was no way, if it couldn’t be undone, would she have to subjugate the monstrous Gid? Together with Beacon?

Wasn’t it all because of her that he became like that?

The reason he went mad like that was also because she died, wasn’t it?

Before she could even decide how to treat him going forward, before she could properly digest the memories she had seen, he was going to disappear?

She felt like she was going insane.

Everything felt like it was her fault.

In an instant, everything had become a complete mess.

Just yesterday, right beyond that wall, when she had walked the festival streets with him wearing masks, it felt like a distant dream.

It didn’t feel real.

Lillieta bit her lips until they bled.

“Rita?”

Suddenly, Olivia called her name with an anxious voice.

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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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