The light was bright enough to illuminate the world, so intense that it made everyone forget the night entirely.
What sort of situation was the girl at its center in now?
The aurora was so overwhelming that approaching it was impossible. All Kree could do was kneel and lament, nothing more permitted to her.
"Ah, Nerim... Why? All I ever wanted was for you to be happy..."
A voice of regret escaped her lips. Where had it all gone wrong? What should she have done instead?
When that light finally faded, who would emerge from it?
"What a pointless farce. Making yourself miserable on your own, appointing yourself the tragic heroine—quite the handful."
For once, Vittorio spat out words of contempt with undisguised venom.
They were not directed at anyone in particular; he simply felt a pure, uncomplicated disgust toward the situation before him.
"And yet... Well then, I wonder how this will unfold."
But the glimpse of his true face was fleeting. Instantly, the mask of the jester returned, and he watched the outcome of this crisis with the same frivolous attitude as always.
Tension blanketed the surroundings.
Yonayona and the Elful sisters had already assumed combat stances. Their opponent had declared they would save Kree.
If that was the case, what would follow was self-evident.
Before long, the light subsided... and there stood the girl, unchanged from before.
But the one difference was...
"Hmm? Wait... Why am I here?"
The fact that something irreversible had occurred—that alone was the fatal difference.
"Huh? I don't get it! Where is this?"
An innocent voice echoed through the scene, utterly out of place.
Her appearance matched the innocent impression, but to those who had heard Nerim's words earlier, it only felt incongruous.
In fact, her complete lack of awareness made the observers feel an inexplicable sense of unease.
...Having sacrificed all her memories, she had gained immense power.
But in exchange, she had lost everything. That is to say, the purpose she was meant to have kept was also gone.
Presently, Nerim had nothing. A vacant, innocent girl who understood nothing, left only in utter confusion.
—However.
"Huh? What's this?"
The young girl picked up the diary.
She seemed to scan through it, then began flipping the pages with astonishing speed.
Finally, she snapped the massive diary shut and tucked it lightly under her arm.
"Oh, I see..."
She slowly looked up.
"—I have to defeat the bad people."
Her eyes widened as she stared down the people of Mynoghra.
In that instant, a gale of holy power erupted from her, swirling around like a tempest.
Was it the same as before? No, this torrent of power surpassed even that—it was the miraculous force she received from God after casting aside all her memories.
Just how precious that wish had been was clear from the light raging to engulf the city.
God had indeed granted this wretched girl power commensurate with the sacrifice.
And the miracle only grew brighter, attracting further wonders.
"God! Give me the power to defeat the bad people!"
In that instant, the sacred aura emanating from Nerim—once so immensely powerful—swelled to an even greater scale.
Why on earth?
A sacrifice had already been made and a divine miracle had descended. Nerim should have only acquired the power necessary to save Kree.
Yet the phenomenon that occurred seemed as if Nerim had gained even further power.
"I see, so that's the trick. This is troublesome, everyone be on your guard."
Sweat trickled down Vittorio's brow.
He alone had noticed the mechanism behind it.
The act of offering all one's memories could grant tremendous power. But it was a double-edged sword.
No—perhaps it was not an exaggeration to call it a signpost to ruin.
Because to lose all memory is the same as losing all purpose.
Certainly, the meaning of things, words, and how to move one's body remained, so on the surface, she would appear to be an ordinary human.
But within her, no reminiscences would exist, and therefore, no desires or cravings born from those memories would arise.
What makes a person human is memory. That was precisely why Nerim had suffered so much.
If she lost everything, all that would be born is a doll that can only live and converse.
That was the intended conclusion. The divine punishment meted out to one who, in their desire for an extraordinary miracle, had surrendered everything. The fate of a hollow, all-powerful doll.
But the diary she possessed had changed everything.
Memory was irrelevant. The act of reading the diary—an action now ingrained in her brain as pure habit—had given her purpose and pointed out the path the hollow doll should walk.
An exception that even the gods had not foreseen was there, and as a result, the being known as Ritrain=Nerim=Quolia was correctly reborn as the perfect Holy Maiden capable of saving everyone.
And at the same time, this left behind a tremendous bombshell.
Unknown to anyone, the ability granted to the Diary Holy Maiden had been designed through a somewhat irregular mechanism: first granting the miracle, and then erasing an equivalent amount of memories from the maiden.
In this divine design, the act of one who has sacrificed all their memories seeking further miracles of God was not considered.
The possibility of an empty doll asking for miracles through reading a diary was never taken into account.
No countermeasures were established for this either.
A divine design flaw... this conclusion was instantly deduced and judged by Vittorio, considering the bizarre phenomenon that the system was allowed to function in this world.
In other words, divine miracles could be bestowed without limit.
The girl from the diary could wish for them as much as she desired.
"Seriously? That's pretty troublesome."
Even Vittorio couldn't help but want to hurl insults at such a sloppy design.
However, the shattering of light that signaled the start of battle unfortunately interrupted those thoughts.