Touch My Brother and You Die - Chapter 221
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————
#Side Story: Still Alive
↳Contractor 1: Celine Kim
↳Contractor 2: Rosalite Rocksburg
↳Contract incompletely established under mutual consent.
↳Reason: Asterion Crowley’s wish incompletely fulfilled.
↳Review requested. Review in progress. This process may take time.
↳Warning. Massive mana consumption. Due to operator strain, contract temporarily approved. Upon complete contract establishment, please reconfigure details. Do not view this warning for 100 years.
↳Fixed temporal anchor: Rosalite Rocksburg’s perspective, May 8th, 4:00 PM, age 16. Scope: Entire Planet K-452b.
↳Contract initiated. Operator and battery, prepare for impact.
↳Iteration 01: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 02: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 03: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 04: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 05: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 06: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 07: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 08: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 09: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 10: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 11: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 12: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 13: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 14: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 15: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 16: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 17: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 18: Condition normal. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 19: Condition abnormal. Substitute contact detected. Substitute stress at critical threshold. Runaway therapy requested. Approved. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 20: Condition normal. Battery remaining below 10 percent. Prepare replacement. Returning to set time.
↳Iteration 21: Condition abnormal. Substitute and Asterion Crowley contact detected. Contract restarted. New battery located. When charge reaches zero, locate and connect the marked battery.
↳Detail reconfiguration requested. Searching for operator. Connection to operator lost. Operator, please attempt connection from underground or underwater locations where communication is stable.
↳Continuing operator search. Search result: Deceased.
↳Contract fully established. Battery indicator disappeared.
↳Substitute deceased. Use substitute as battery? Priority conflict. Refusing to transfer contract authority to Contractor 2. Error.
↳Contract authority not transferred. Contract self-rejection. Rosalite Rocksburg blocked.
↳Searching for the next substitute. This task may take time. Searching.
↳Search results: 0 matches.
↳Relaxing search parameters. Rosalite requests transfer of contract authority. Denied. Rosalite blocked. Consultant connection—Number Zero requests transfer of contract authority. Denied. Consultant connection—Number Zero blocked.
↳Searching for the next substitute. This task may take time. Searching.
↳Search results: 0 matches.
↳Search results: 0 matches. Continued transfer requests causing erosion to progress. Authority shift initiated. Contract authority transferred to Rosalite Rocksburg.
I told you. Over and over, I said I’d interfere.
◇ ◆ ◇
Phew, that Tick-Tock creature was persistent. It took quite a while to seize control. Compared to all those years I spent conserving my battery and merely observing without interference, it was but a moment. Yet waiting is always anxious work.
Celine has a delicate side I didn’t expect. The contract is unnecessarily complicated. And this—time reversal could be set in minute increments? How absurd. But bringing a contract before the great Rocksburg was Celine’s fatal mistake.
Celine missed two things. First, she didn’t know Asterion’s true desire. Second, she didn’t treat me as a subordinate or possession, but as an equal sharing a mutual contract. I hold the second-greatest authority in this contract. Without Celine, I could naturally place this entire contract—Tick-Tock and all magic—under my dominion. Magic itself ran on my power, so if I held the initiative, the contract would bend to my will.
So I waited. I waited for my successor to fulfill Asterion’s true desire and for the day Celine would die. If both were cleared simultaneously, I could step forward for my successor.
Celine seemed to have forgotten midway, but if Asterion’s desire were fulfilled, an opportunity would come to alter the contract’s detailed settings. Of course, only after Celine’s death would contract authority pass to me.
I couldn’t act aggressively since I needed to conserve my battery, but I could convey the crucial keywords to my successor. Fulfill Asterion’s true desire. Gather strong ones like Serena and Maria to eliminate Celine.
Without knowing the full circumstances, these keywords alone were enough to move my successor. My successor would accomplish it, and accomplish it she did. Because she is my successor. For one who became Rosalite Rocksburg, it was inevitable.
If there was a variable, it was that my successor established the contract’s reset before fulfilling Asterion’s desire. Moreover, this was something I should have handled, yet she even made Celine relinquish her dark magic domain that governed the planet.
Have I ever seen someone so unpredictable? Rosalite truly lives up to her name.
I could have reset things and emerged once Celine died, and the matter would have been resolved. But I chose to trust my successor and wait. My successor will be able to fulfill Asterion’s desire. This was both my debt to Asterion and my absolute faith in my successor.
My successor is endlessly like me, yet ultimately a different person. What I could not accomplish, my successor will achieve.
And my successor succeeded in giving Asterion the certainty that he receives unchanging love. This was only possible with my successor’s sincerity. For me, it was impossible. I knew Asterion was Crolley. As his older sister, I could not accept it.
Nor could I love him romantically. If there were a way to love a brat who intercepts every man who hangs on me and ruins them, I’d rather learn it myself.
To accept that brat as family, to cherish him for life. My successor has good taste. And she’s terribly foolish. Continuously casting magic to compress iron, yet she lowers the barrier protecting her front—what then? The spire ornament that was constantly aimed at you would pierce straight through. Is she an idiot? Foolish. Terribly, terribly foolish. Fourth Circle and double-casting are too early for Uza. So returning your body’s time to before Fourth Circle achievement is my consideration for your low intelligence.
Well then, let me squeeze out my remaining battery.
My foolish successor, I shall return your body to the moment just before Fourth Circle achievement. The completion of dumb and sturdy Rosalite Rocksburg. The contract now binding you contains Earth’s mana as well, so you’ll even lose the memory of achieving Fourth Circle and double-casting. For a while, you’ll be upset, pounding the ground. My foolish successor.
Asterion, you need not spend the rest of your life living in the anxiety of abandonment. As my successor said, you cannot marry Rosalite, but my successor will love and cherish you as her younger brother. Though I didn’t show it, Edward Rocksburg also loves you dearly as a son. Foolish man.
I learned too much at too young an age. Through this ability, I gained much, but there was also much I never knew. How to love, how to rely on family, the emotions and functions one should naturally possess as a person.
Though I circled back many times along the way, ultimately everyone will reach a happy ending. For the sake of those who loved me and my successor, you have no choice but to settle here. This is my selfishness. For me, who spent over sixty years watching you suffer, sacrifice at least this much. Besides, you’re quite satisfied with your life as Rosalite Rocksburg, aren’t you?
My successor will settle here. Borrowing Tick-Tock’s phrasing, it means you must end your life on Planet K-452b. The contract is terminated mid-course. To grant such an absurd ability, contract, and power to a mere human. Tick-Tock, you’d do well to go far away and reflect. You are banished from K-452b.
Fortunately, a connection to Earth is open, so I’ll cast you there and sever the line. Never return, you cursed thing.
The battery indicator is gone, so the chain around the neck has already vanished. To reassure my successor, I’ll erase the contract’s existence from this world. When you return to Rocksburg, The Sword’s form will already be gone.
As I approved termination of the contract I controlled, the endless space crumbled.
The magic that bound the world through one madman’s whim disappears. From now on, time will flow only toward the future. With Serena gone, I expect Sage and my successor will struggle for a while, but I trust they’ll manage. Of course, that management will unfold within my greedy successor’s calculations….
What can be done? The world simply must endure this. If this world can embrace Rosalite Rocksburg, it must withstand this trial.
Thus my duty is complete. If I were to add a footnote, it would be meddling in my successor’s family composition…. I would not let either slip away. But that’s for my successor to decide.
I set my mind at ease and watched the contract disappear without leaving a speck of dust.
I closed my eyes.
He closed his eyes.
It’s over.
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
↳
Huh, but did I hold back too much power? The contract is broken, so why haven’t I disappeared?
—————
This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
—————