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Chapter 370
The barbarians had been acting like they hadn’t eaten for days.
Rebecca, standing right before us, seed the sa—her nutritional state was a wreck.
Considering that it hadn’t been long since we parted ways, this ant she’d fallen into this condition right after we separated.
“Your guild is here in this region, isn’t it? Why the hell have you been wandering around without even eating?”
She shook her head violently instead of answering.
We had taken her into a forest nearby for now.
Originally, we intended to escort her straight to her rcenary band—no, her guild—but she insisted that she absolutely couldn’t return there.
“My family… they mustn’t see like this.”
She murmured while staring blankly at the ground, her voice hollow.
I didn’t know the reason, but I could at least tell this was sothing she was stubbornly clinging to.
“There’s sothing I have to do…”
Raising her empty eyes, she looked up at .
“Would you… take a request?”
“…I’m not a rcenary.”
“First the treatnt. Then you tell us what happened. That’s the order.”
The mont Luna extended her hand, a multicolored glow seeped into Rebecca’s cheek.
The ugly scar that had marred her face shrank instantly, vanished, and was replaced by smooth, fair skin.
“Here. Water.”
Rebecca grabbed the waterskin Luna handed over and gulped it down desperately.
Then, after wrestling with herself, she finally spoke.
“But… this must be kept secret. If I betray the rules…”
A few years there and she’s practically one of their full-fledged mbers.
“Then don’t say it.”
“Leon?”
Luna widened her eyes at , clearly expecting to dig for answers.
But I made myself clear.
“She says she doesn’t want to talk. Why force her? I’m not going to make my life complicated by hearing sothing I don’t need to.”
When I gave up cleanly and turned around, Rebecca flinched and grabbed my sleeve.
“What, what do you want? You think I’m your errand boy? Want to actually smack you?”
“N-no… I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything. Why we acted like this. What we know. So… please help . Please…”
Her head drooped as tears stread down her face.
Whatever she’d been holding in finally burst.
She cried loudly, and Luna gently held her, comforting her.
I didn’t rush her. I simply waited.
It took about thirty minutes before she cald down.
As we sat around a small campfire in the dark forest,
the ghost wolf, Muyeong, poked his head out of the shadows, dropping a freshly hunted deer with a thud.
“Thanks. I’ll eat it later.”
— Grrr…
The beast let out a short rumble, accepted my touch, and lted back into the shadows.
“After we ca down from Sky Island that day, I returned to the Watchers’ branch. I was completely exhausted and needed a few days of rest. But what I found there… was Felibank, dying with fatal wounds, and the rest of the Watchers already dead.”
“Felibank?”
“He was the one who followed our leader with absolute loyalty. And he also managed the entire Watcher corps.”
Back when I dove into the deep sea to fight Dagon,
the Watchers had stopped his minions, the Deep Ones, from devouring humans to strengthen Dagon.
If not for them, there could have been thousands of casualties.
I had unknowingly owed them more than I realized.
Rebecca trembled as she recalled the past and quietly conveyed what Felibank told her.
During her ti trapped in R’lyeh, the extermination operation had gone smoothly—until the very end, when the leader of the Watchers suddenly suffered a rebound.
“Rebound?”
“Yes. The leader wields imnse power, but she also carries both a curse and a limitation. If she doesn’t periodically weaken the curse, it eats away at her strength—and she can’t use her power properly.”
The Watcher leader certainly possessed overwhelming strength.
Honestly, she was stronger than any human I’d ever t.
Her authority was so imnse that even I had to be cautious.
But even she had restrictions, it seed.
“Since the major threat was resolved, she left the remaining tasks to the others and entered seclusion to weaken the curse. But the mont she left… internal strife broke out.”
The instigator was a man nad Garlan.
“He’s the one who harbors the greatest hatred toward you. He was furious that the leader wanted to work with you instead of killing you.”
“…Toward ? They never even t . Why the hell hate that much? Because of so future they foresaw?”
Even if they had foreseen sothing, this level of hostility made zero sense.
Luna spoke in a hardened voice.
“Is it not prophecy, then?”
“It’s… not prophecy. Not exactly. We don’t have holy marks like saints.”
“Then what?”
“It’s sothing we experienced.”
A bombshell.
Not foresight.
Experience.
aning….
I had already killed them once before.
“When? I’ve never t any of you. I’ve never killed you.”
[Correct. You have no record of killing them.]
Even the Librarian confird it.
So were they all just collectively delusional?
Her next words crushed that assumption.
“Yes. You never killed us. Not in this world. But what if this world… isn’t the first?”
Her words silenced .
“We call it the Closed World. A world where humanity’s greatest hope—you—betrayed humanity, killed us all, and closed the world yourself. A world where that outer-dinsional monster won.”
She shivered violently.
“I still rember it… Those blue eyes you had when you killed …”
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After a long pause, I asked,
“Did all of you… take so kind of drugs together?”
* * *
They needed to speak sothing believable.
What?
This is the second run of the world?
I killed humanity?
Why?
For what reason?
And world repetition?
That’s nonsense.
“A nest of lunatics, that’s what this place was.”
“You rember my senior—ryl Dyne?”
“Of course.”
“Who do you think taught her the Soul Split ritual? You think she could learn sothing like that just from a vague prophecy?”
I closed my eyes.
“…Go on.”
“The leader said so of her Authority ca from you. It’s a power you don’t possess right now.”
I gave soone Authority?
Why?
There had to be a reason.
You don’t just hand that over lightly.
“We don’t know why. Only the leader does. Our mories of the Closed World are only fragnts.”
She pulled sothing from her arms.
“The leader said the Closed World was an irregular occurrence, and because of that irregularity, impurities ford—impurities that let us awaken fragnts of those mories… through dreams.”
I looked at Luna to ask whether such a thing was possible.
From my perspective, it wasn’t.
But if it was in the realm of Authority…
“Hmmm… Even the Tree of Sephiroth shouldn’t be capable of sothing this large-scale… I can’t say for certain.”
“And the Archangels… you’re strange too. In the Closed World, the Archangels weren’t like this. Sothing… changed.”
Rebecca then revealed a paper docunt.
“In here are the individuals the Watchers must observe, judge, protect, or eliminate.”
Nas, identities, statuses.
Many were people I’d already t.
And most of them had red lines through them—killed by the Watchers.
“So this was your standard for killing.”
“The leader always said: ‘If you’re unsure, see them yourself. Judge for yourself whether they must die, may die, or must be spared.’”
And according to Rebecca, most of the ones killed had indeed matched the conditions.
“So, to summarize: the leader weakened, internal strife erupted, and the Watchers were wiped out?”
“Yes…”
“No other survivors?”
“At present, only the leader and I. Felibank passed away shortly after eting .”
I clicked my tongue.
“Lovely organization you’ve got.”
“And your leader? She didn’t do anything after all this?”
“She never forgives betrayal. After returning, she beheaded all the traitors who killed our comrades… then vanished sowhere.”
“And the instigator?”
“He wasn’t among the corpses.”
Garlan escaped with a small group of loyalists.
Rebecca continued.
“What I took from headquarters was this docunt and ryl Dyne’s preserved corpse.”
She revealed a magical artifact containing the sealed remains.
Then another item—a sword wrapped in cloth.
“Felibank gave this. He said it was the leader’s sword… and that I must hold onto it. And… that if such a situation ever occurred, I must deliver it to you.”
“To ?”
“Yes. He said… you’d understand when you saw it.”
She clearly didn’t understand what Felibank had ant.
Honestly, neither did I.
But when I unwrapped the sword…
My mind clicked instantly.
Ah.
‘So that’s why he wanted to see it.’
Even Luna widened her eyes.
“That Felibank guy… how close was he to the leader?”
“I don’t know exactly, but he had been by her side for a very long ti.”
This one sword alone was enough.
I knew the leader’s identity.
And I knew what she had wanted from .
The pure white, silver blade looked impossibly durable—untouched by any damage.
Of course it was.
It was forged with orichalcum—divine tal.
If this was the leader’s sword, then there was only one possible answer.
“…So it was you.”
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