The birth of the "True Hero," Chloe Obert.
That was supposed to happen simultaneously with Hinata's death.
However.
Thanks to Demon Lord Lumina's intervention, fate was rewritten.
What exactly was the cause?
When Chloe woke up and learned that Hinata had been successfully resurrected, she shed tears of joy.
They decided to sit down and talk calmly, so Hinata, the Hero, and Lumina relocated to the reception room. There, they held a discussion with the newly awakened Chloe included.
The children, their tension finally released, had grown sleepy, so Glenda had taken them to rest in a separate room.
The Holy Knights had likewise seen Hinata's revival and let their guard down, deciding to take a break as well.
They had been on edge since morning, holding meetings, and without realizing it, night had already fallen.
Setting future policy was important, but with Demon Lord Lumina now appearing on the scene, the hostile relationship with the Holy Papal State of Lubelius had ceased to be an immediate pressing concern.
Making enemies of the Free Guild was somewhat unavoidable, but it was hard to imagine that Yuki possessed the power to unite the various nations under the banner of a human coalition.
Most importantly, Hinata's revival had swept away their despair and dissipated the heavy, oppressive atmosphere.
For all these reasons, the formal meeting was postponed until the next day.
After seeing the three guests off, Nicolaus ordered a maid to prepare tea, then embraced Hinata from behind and refused to let go. Even when Hinata told him to release her, he was utterly unyielding.
"I never want to lose you again."
In the end, Hinata gave in, and the conversation proceeded as though Nicolaus weren't there.
Hinata's face was bright red, but Nicolaus couldn't see it from behind her. Fortunately for Hinata, both Chloe and Lumina had the kindness to pretend they didn't notice.
"I'm so glad, Hinata... you're all right. I thought your soul had been destroyed and you'd died for good."
"Yes, Chloe. I was surprised too. I never expected Lumina to come in person — let alone lend a hand in my resurrection."
"Hmm. As for that, I had expanded my intelligence network through the Church as well. To track down the one who stole Chloe from the Sanctum under my watch. I went out to gather more information once I learned of Chloe's revival. Had I not been present at that scene, your resurrection would not have happened."
Listening to this exchange, Chloe was deep in thought.
Her expression was filled with shock, clearly shaken by something.
Sensing this, Hinata and Lumina were about to ask with concern when— "I remember now. No... I've remembered.
It seems like...
The future is heading toward destruction.
In the future, I'm defeated by Yuki and killed.
I end up in a one-on-one battle with Demon Lord
But at the moment of death, I launched my own soul fragment toward the past. It carried the nature of a spirit of time.
In order to transmit my knowledge and experience...
As a result, my past self fused with it when Rimuru-sensei and I were working to prevent my rampage. That's when the merger happened.
So does that mean this is the second cycle now?
Perhaps it's actually been repeating many times over...
Even if this world keeps resetting, it seems I'm unable to perceive every instance.
Unfortunately, when I — the one who merged with the Hero's soul fragment — awakened, I couldn't recall the future's knowledge and experience.
Even now, I can only remember up to the last cycle, so this might genuinely only be the second time.
But judging from that memory, Hinata being alive right now is nothing short of a miracle.
I think... I managed to change just one action compared to last time.
A truly trivial action.
And because of that, the chain of events is now following a different path from the future I remember.
I want to see what becomes of this world's future.
And if possible, I want to save this world."
Chloe took a sip of the tea the maid had prepared, then spoke.
She shared what she knew — the past and future she had remembered.
The previous cycle — or perhaps one of many repeated cycles.
The last fragment of the Hero's power, which had merged with Chloe through Rimuru's summoning, had been unable to convey its knowledge to her despite possessing that power.
The ability she had gained was the Unique Skill "Time Travel," and its power was limited to jumping back to the past.
It was one-way, with complex conditions, and not a particularly useful ability.
In the previous cycle — or perhaps every cycle — Chloe would fly into the past along with the killed Hinata.
After an extended journey through time, when she woke up, she would be the one to kill Hinata.
That was supposed to be an endlessly repeating fate.
But this time was different.
Until now, Hinata had never been resurrected, and Rimuru was dead.
Hinata had only ever fought Rimuru once.
When Chloe and the others parted ways to return from the capital, Chloe always clung to Rimuru and begged him to stay.
As a result, they wasted some time, and Rimuru hastily used "Spatial Movement" to return to the Monster Nation.
Hinata, lying in wait outside the capital, always missed Rimuru due to these shifts in timing.
One could say Yuki's plans kept falling through every single time.
But this time, Chloe hadn't held Rimuru back.
She had held back because she didn't want Rimuru to think of her as a child. This decision drastically changed the situation.
First, without being detained, Rimuru returned to the Monster Nation without encountering Hinata and managed to protect his subordinates.
However, he was ultimately defeated by the alliance army of the Western Holy Church and the Farmus Kingdom, both hostile to the Monster Nation.
Hinata's Holy Knights boasted incomparable strength. No matter how hard Rimuru — stronger than any high-ranking demon — and his monster subordinates fought, they could not breach that wall of power.
In the end, Rimuru faced Hinata in single combat and was completely annihilated on the spot.
Subsequently, in that battle, a massive number of souls were harvested, and
With joint signatures from Milim,
Taking advantage of that opening, Yuki moved to seize the Sanctum.
Every time, when Hinata returned, Lumina — driven into a fury — would order a recovery operation for the Sanctum. That had been the pattern in every cycle.
It was here that Chloe would acquire Hinata's soul and fly into the past, but Hinata, whose mind had been broken by Yuki's mind-control "Curse Crystal," could only hand over her abilities and soul energy to Chloe.
She shared none of her knowledge or emotions. Chloe had to accumulate power on her own through self-study and endure a long journey through time.
Therefore, there had never been any hope that Hinata's ego would return upon awakening as a True Hero in the first place.
While Hinata fought the Hero, Lumina was also in the midst of battle.
On Clayman's orders, Milim was attacking.
Or rather, not so much an order as instigation.
Based on Yuki's advice, Clayman had whispered to Milim that Rimuru's death had been orchestrated by Lumina.
Deceived by those words, Milim flew into a rage.
Even Lumina was at a disadvantage against Milim. After three days and three nights of battle, Lumina was defeated by Milim.
But Milim was not unscathed either — in her weakened state, she was killed by the Hero who had awakened under Yuki's command.
If Milim had known the truth of Rimuru's death at this point, the future might have turned out somewhat differently, but there was nothing Chloe could do about this.
The only fact Chloe knew was that Milim had killed Lumina.
However, as a result of this, the Demon Lords' forces suffered a massive reduction.
Milim, Lumina, and
Carrion, who had been hiding, ultimately died protecting Frey in the ensuing turmoil.
The Eastern Empire launched its invasion, and Clayman began his assault on the Demon Lords.
The result was that the world was plunged into chaos.
Amid that chaos, Chloe, following Yuki's orders, went to hunt down Guy and lost her life.
This was the sequence of events as Chloe knew it — a situation vastly different from the present.
When Chloe finished speaking, silence fell over the room.
The content was far too much to simply brush aside, and they wanted time to think it over for themselves.
Whether time truly repeated was impossible to verify, but the story of the previous world's collapse could not be ignored.
"So... my resurrection really was just the result of coincidence after all..."
Hinata murmured softly.
In truth, it was precisely because she had fought Rimuru in the capital that Rimuru had been able to analyze her abilities to some extent and develop countermeasures.
If their first encounter had been an all-out war with no escape, defeat would have been certain.
And it was her delayed return caused by the encounter with Rimuru that led to her awakening as a Demon Lord — but the magnitude of the changes and ripple effects caused by that awakening was beyond even Chloe's imagination.
A completely different path from the previous cycle.
For Hinata, because Rimuru's curse-breaking had been performed, she was able to survive without having her mind destroyed.
For Lumina, the worst-case scenario of Milim's assault never occurred, and she could now celebrate being reunited with Chloe in peace.
In the past, the Hero who had saved Lumina's life during the battle against Veldora.
And the first friend she ever had — the person dear to Lumina's heart.
It was through a promise made to that Chloe that Lumina had been entrusted with guarding the Sanctum where Chloe slept.
When the Sanctum was stolen, Lumina had been so enraged she thought she might go mad, but that everything had turned out well was a stroke of incredible fortune for her as well.
This time, everything had fallen into place through an almost miraculous series of positive developments.
"What matters most to me is that Chloe is safe.
Of course, since Hinata was a part of Chloe, Hinata's survival is also a cause for celebration."
"Thank you. But when I think about it like this, changing the path of fate really is a miracle, isn't it?"
Everyone agreed with Hinata's words.
Because it was Hinata — who had possessed her own will as a fragment of the Hero and walked alongside Chloe through such vast stretches of time — that her words carried such weight.
Even if she had obtained the Hero's soul fragment and recovered her final memories, there was a limit to what she could do.
After all, you cannot change a past that has been determined and confirmed.
That is to say, until the moment of the Hero's birth in the future, no attack could be effective against her — she was invincible.
Chloe, who had traveled to the past, would forge her soul through that journey, and the safety of that process was absolute.
As long as the result was already confirmed, the events leading up to it were protected from everything.
Like a butterfly waiting for the moment of emergence, safe within its cocoon.
This past world was the promised time for nurturing and protecting the Hero.
That was precisely why the act of killing the past Yuki to change the future was impossible.
As long as the "confirmed event" existed — that Chloe, as a child, had interacted with him, spoken with him, and been cared for by him — Yuki could never die before that point.
The law protecting the Hero applied to every event the young Chloe had perceived.
This was the essence of the "Hero Development Program" — the effect of the ability.
The composite effect of the Unique Skill "Infinite Prison" and the Unique Skill "Time Travel."
A time period with an absolute, coercive force that protected confirmed facts — what could be called a time prison. That was the time Chloe had journeyed through.
That was why.
Even though Chloe possessed memories of the future, her own ability served as shackles, and there was almost nothing she could do.
The only window Chloe had to act was from the moment she merged with the future Hero's soul fragment before Rimuru's eyes, through her journey to the past, until she awakened as a duplicate existence.
In that sense, the decision not to hold Rimuru back had yielded the greatest possible effect.
When Rimuru was detained, the result was a world where Rimuru died and Hinata was broken.
Because Rimuru was not detained, the result was a world where Rimuru awakened as a Demon Lord and Hinata acquired the "Hero's Egg."
It was, as Hinata said, a coincidental outcome.
But that coincidence had produced an extraordinarily convenient result.
Acquiring the Hero's Egg was something that was supposed to happen because Hinata's soul abilities had flowed into Chloe.
In that regard too, the present Chloe was incomparably stronger than any previous iteration.
Because Hinata's will had accompanied her to the past, Chloe had not had to endure the journey in loneliness. And under the guidance of Hinata — an outstanding teacher — she had been able to master every technique in Hinata's repertoire.
It was precisely because that foundation had been laid— The Ultimate Ability "King of Space-Time"
awakened.
The reason she could now recall her future memories was thanks to this ability.
Something the previous Chloe could never have achieved.
Under normal circumstances, "Absolute Severance" and "Infinite Prison" would have merged with Hinata's "Mathematician" and "Usurper" to grant the Ultimate Ability "King of Hope" — and that would have been all.
But this time, she absorbed the power of Hinata's soul without waste, in a pure state untainted by any residue of Hinata's soul remnants, and awakened accordingly.
What that awakening brought was the absolute power to dominate time and space.
The awakening of two Ultimate Abilities: "King of Space-Time" and "King of Hope."
Having awakened to this power, Chloe gained the ability to memorize any span of time she had experienced, replaying it over and over again as many times as she wished.
In combat, she could now observe an opponent's attack and then restart from the beginning.
This granted her absolute superiority, elevating Hero Chloe to the pinnacle of existence.
And then...
Through her awakened ability, Chloe came to understand.
The beings who had transcended the laws of this world.
Those who possessed Ultimate Abilities.
Lumina before her very eyes.
Her beloved Rimuru.
And she realized that Rimuru's existence had been indispensable to this rewriting of fate.
Perhaps it was because Rimuru had obtained an Ultimate Ability and broken free from the laws of fate that this miracle had occurred?
No, more than that...
Had Rimuru perhaps survived in the previous cycle as well and awakened to an Ultimate Ability?
Such a question arose in her mind.
If Rimuru had survived, surrounded by the deaths of his companions, drowning in despair and rage...
Might he have found some way to help Chloe and interfere with the past?
(No... even for sensei, that would be impossible.)
Chloe shook off her own speculation and stood up.
"I've lingered too long. It's not strictly necessary for me to always be at Yuki's side, though."
With that, she prepared to leave.
Despite having awakened to an Ultimate Ability, Yuki's control — the "Three Commands" — remained in effect.
From this, it could be inferred that Yuki also possessed an Ultimate Ability.
Chloe could not attack Yuki.
Therefore, even with the strongest ability now at her disposal, she could not slay him.
As long as his desire was to bring chaos to the world, she would eventually need to defeat him decisively.
When she told Hinata and Lumina this— "Don't do anything reckless, okay?"
"Indeed. Yuki is an enemy of mine as well. Chloe, don't do anything dangerous."
"Hehe, I'm fine! Just as I can't make a move against Yuki, he can't make a move against me either.
If he does, his control will be解除解除 — that is, it will be released.
So I'm safe. Unlike the previous world, this world is stable.
If there's anything to watch out for... it would be the movements of the Eastern Empire.
Yuki's subordinates have likely already begun their operations, and we need to prepare countermeasures on our end as well.
Ideally, we could form a grand alliance among the nations surrounding the Great Forest of Jura."
"The Eastern Empire? Such a thing could not be our enem—"
"Don't be so sure, Lumina! Overconfidence is dangerous!
The Eastern Empire has numerous "Otherworlders" where the summoner takes the lead.
The high-combat-ability individuals summoned by Yuki are enlisted in the Eastern Empire's military.
That is a formidable fighting force — many of them are stronger than high-ranking demons.
And above all... that country houses the "Scorch Dragon Veldora."
You must never let your guard down."
Chloe admonished Lumina.
Lumina, reconsidering in light of Chloe's words, amended her thinking.
If a nation with genuine military power were to launch organized military operations, it would indeed pose a threat.
"So then, the best course of action would be to visit Rimuru and propose an alliance?"
"Yes. I believe sensei will definitely help us.
More than that, I believe the key to saving this world lies with sensei."
Chloe agreed with Hinata's words.
Lumina felt a small pang of jealousy toward Rimuru but held it back and consented.
The Monster Nation, the Western Holy Church, and the Holy Papal State of Lubelius.
The policy of forming an alliance was decided in their discussion.
This would later come to be known as the "Holy-Demonic Alliance," and it would indeed be realized.