"You..."
No matter how she looked at it, this was undeniably herself.
A little younger, perhaps, but there was no way Linl could fail to recognize her own face. Snapping back to reality, she drew her sword.
"What are you?”
Three years had passed since the world turned upside down. Two years since dying of natural causes had co to be considered a blessing.
Anything abnormal was considered a harbinger of death. And the child before her, bearing her face, was unmistakably abnormal.
Whether Linl reacted or not, the young-looking Linl only kept smiling at her in amusent.
"So this is what you looked like before you grew up. Well, I guess that makes sense, considering you are human—”
"..."
Linl—
ground her teeth without moving rashly.
Over the years, she had seen countless enemies stand proudly before her. She had seen those faces twist into shock and despair.
But at so point, she stopped seeing even those expressions. Once she reached her current level, her opponents simply died while still wearing confident smiles.
So this ti, too, that should have been enough. Cut off that neck before the enemy realized her strength.
'Absolutely not.'
Rather than trusting experience, Linkel chose to trust instinct and slowly stepped backward.
"Hmm?”
The girl moved at that action.
Tilting her head, she pulled her feet from the lake and gave a small laugh as she waved a hand.
"Why are you running away?”
"..."
Linl gritted her teeth at that remark, still retreating, and muttered,
"I’m not running.”
"Ah, sorry if that sounded mocking. I didn’t an it that way. It’s just…right now, I look like nothing more than a young girl to anyone who sees .”
As though implying she had once been sothing far beyond that, the girl t Linl’s eyes curiously.
"I was wondering how a creature with instincts sharp enough to fear this could still exist in this era.”
"Ugh."
Goosebumps appeared on Linl’s neck.
If that thing took even one more step closer, it would be over.
Linl abandoned instinct. Her sword moved faster than thought, flying toward the smiling girl’s throat.
It should have reached her and was about to—
"Nightchaser."
A voice overflowing with irritation shook the air from behind her, where monts ago there had been nothing.
It was a familiar vibration. Familiar, because she had recalled it countless tis before.
"I told you if you disappeared on your own even once, I’d lock you back in the Abyssal Sea. So what kind of nerve made you think…”
"..."
Linl turned her head.
And their eyes t.
*t*t*
After crossing over into the real world, Nightchaser would sneak out from the depths of the lake every night under the excuse of wanting to look at the moon.
If Great Void noticed her because of that, I’d be the one dealing with the consequences, so that day too I had gone up to drag her back—
Only to find two Linls there.
"Jern."
"...Linl?”
One was Nightchaser, wearing the appearance of the Linl I knew, smiling wickedly.
And the other was a Linl who looked like what I imagined she would look like if she had grown older, except twice as beautiful and twice as imposing.
No matter how long I had known Linl since the orphanage days, I had never experienced the last 5 years alongside her that would have allowed to get accustod to this appearance.
So the words wouldn’t co out properly. Linl was the one who moved first.
-Crunch.
"Where the hell have you been all this ti without telling anyone a single word?”
"...Well."
"Do you have any idea how hard I searched for you? I searched half the world. And since the other half had already disappeared, after that I had no choice but to search the sa places all over again.”
Linl stepped closer and grabbed my shoulders.
I could feel the sa crushing pressure I’d felt back in the mid-layer pressing down through her grip. I wasn’t exaggerating.
And as I desperately tried to produce the best possible answer, convinced that one wrong response would make the second god to die at human hands…
"I’m glad…”
-Thud
As though my answer didn’t matter, Linl buried her forehead against my chest.
"I’m glad you’re alive…”
"...I’m sorry."
"...Sniff."
I’d gone through a lot myself, sure.
But in the end, I had vanished without saying a word. From Linl’s perspective, I might as well have abandoned everything and run away. Or died sowhere no one would ever find.
But it seed Linl had spent those entire 5 years searching for without stopping.
And that—hurt more than I expected.
For a while, I gently patted Linl’s trembling back and tried to calm her down by explaining everything I’d gone through.
"I was in the Abyssal Sea. A completely different world. There’s no way you could’ve found .”
"Why were you in a place like that?”
"I needed to find a way to kill Great Void. And I managed to find one, to so extent.”
"...Really?”
"Yeah. I know it’s hard to believe, but…”
"I believe you. If you hadn’t found a way, you wouldn’t have co back at all.”
"Fair enough.”
Linl lifted her head, glaring at again with reddened eyes as I nodded.
"THen why didn’t you co to the mont you returned?”
"To you…? Ah, the capital? Well, about that…”
"This idiot’s still a rookie, that’s why.”
Nightchaser suddenly cut in, dipping her feet back into the lake.
"This rookie doesn’t know how to hide his presence yet. Look at him. Even now he’s leaving traces behind.”
"...Huh?"
Linl looked down at my feet, and her eyes widened in surprise.
The ground where I stood had caved inward, water bubbling up and forming a tiny lake.
Every footprint I had left behind was the sa. And as the water slowly overflowed, carving little streams into the surrounding earth, Linl titled her head in confusion.
"What is this? Magic?”
"Rather than magic…I beca sothing a little different from a human? Sothing like that, anyway.”
"Huh...?"
Linl blinked those bright, clear eyes that hadn’t changed at all since childhood.
We were close enough that our noses could practically touch.
Feeling strangely pressured, I took a step back and shrugged.
"Just by existing, I leave marks on this world. Marks that Great Void can notice.”
"And we really can’t let that guy notice us yet, right?”
At so point Nightchaser had walked over and was now grinning at in amusent.
"So I was teaching this rookie god how to walk around without damaging the world. He probably would’ve learned by tomorrow—but then you showed up today.”
I glared at Nightchaser hard enough to kill her, and she imdiately hid behind Linl.
Fortunately, Linl seed to interpret the word "god" taphorically rather than literally, because she simply looked at the girl hiding behind her and asked sothing completely different.
"I see. But who is she?”
"S-soone I t in the Abyssal Sea.”
"In the Abyssal Sea? There are people living there?”
"Sothing kind of like people. It was lonely, so I brought one back with .”
"…Then why does she look exactly like ?”
"Well, that’s—"
The answer that rose naturally to my lips suddenly got stuck in my throat.
Nightchaser was the Surface. The mirror that reflected the person her target most wished to see.
So of course she had appeared as Linl. In the Abyssal Sea, where everyone hid blades behind their tongues, the purest person I knew was Linl.
But saying that out loud in front of the actual person felt more tortuous than having my nails ripped out.
"Well, you see, I have this one ability…”
"I told her to imitate you.”
Before Nightchaser could say anything weird, I crushed her mouth shut with pressure and continued the explanation.
Linl imdiately asked the obvious question.
"...Why?"
"I got lonely being by myself. So I asked her to copy the faces of people I knew. My mories are stuck 5 years in the past, so that’s why she looks like that.”
"Aha, I see."
For so reason, Linl wore an expression mixed half with disappointnt and half with satisfaction as she grabbed Nightchaser by the back of the neck and lifted her up.
"Hey, put down.”
"Hmm, so this is how you imagined what I’d look like, Jern?”
"I said put down, human.”
"Didn’t you make her a little too cute? I don’t think I looked like this…”
"What’s with her? A mont ago she was trembling in fear of —”
"I was not.”
Linl softly wrapped an arm around Nightchaser’s neck (though to it looked more like strangling her) and smiled with bloodshot eyes.
"Still, I’m glad I was able to help sohow. Tomorrow…can you co out of that lake?”
"Yeah. The mont I get out, I’m going to see my master first, then discuss things with the Imperial Princess.”
The Empire had fallen. That statent was half true and half false.
The capital had rely been conquered by Scarlet Abyss, which was practically the sa thing as total annihilation, but as long as Sharmia was alive, the embers still remained.
If I could use the people gathered around her, then even with my incomplete abilities—
"...Ah..."
At those words, Linl lowered her head.
"Well, um…Right. You were gone for 5 whole years. It makes sense you wouldn’t know what happened.”
"...Is sothing wrong?”
A sense of dread made ask imdiately.
Just as Linl said, I knew absolutely nothing about what had happened to this world.
All I had were a few things Heavenly Balance had ntioned in passing, and that woman hadn’t even left the mountain.
If Sharmia had died, then…
"The Princess is alive and well. Honestly, we’ve only managed to hold on because of her.”
"...That’s a relief."
The fear vanished at once. If that was the case, then this wasn’t the worst outco.
As I thought that, Linl awkwardly tapped her fingers together and continued.
"And your master—Dercia is missing.”
"What??”
"Not long after you disappeared, she returned to the Elven Forest and secluded herself there. Nobody knows what she’s doing.”
That insane elf, in tis like these?
Frowning deeply, I imdiately revised my plans.
'I guess I need to drag Master back first.'
Dercia was far more versatile than a half-baked god like .
In the first place, the only reason I’d even dared consider my plan to drown the world in the Abyssal Sea was because she existed. I absolutely needed her help.
"Still, aside from that, Sir Brimdal and Carose are fine, my adoptive father’s fine, the orphanage is fine…everyone’s okay.”
"...Really?"
I could feel my expression visibly brightening.
Because the situation was far, far better than I’d expected.
Everyone I loved was alive and unhard. And after that, Linl continued listing people I’d worried about, reassuring that they were all safe.
Everyone except one.
"But Linl.”
Scratching my cheek, I finally said the na.
"What about Elisia?”
"...”
For the first ti, Linl fell silent, and my heart dropped.
"Don’t tell —”
"She’s not dead! It’s not what you’re thinking.”
Linl hurriedly waved both hands to calm down again.
"Phew, thank goodness. Was she hurt or sothing?”
If it were just injuries, unless they were unbelievably severe, I could heal them—
"...It would’ve been better if she died.”
I couldn’t say a single word after hearing the hatred mixed into the end of Linl’s sentence.
"If you asked people to na the worst Upper Tier among Scarlet Abyss right now—everyone would pick Nihil, forrly the wizard Elisia.”
The silver-haired girl from my mories…
...had beco a Fallen.
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