(...What... is going on?)
And then — two days before the decisive battle.
She had met that lovely princess, and learned the future had changed.
After watching the Archbishop's shock and composure crumble — finally relieved that she'd be free of the nightmares — she went to sleep that night.
She had a terrible nightmare.
A nightmare that began with a hellish vision of Ermes dying, for reasons she couldn't fathom.
(Why? Wasn't the future supposed to have changed?)
Precognitive dreams were delivered in the form of lucid dreams. There was no looking away — and now, confronted with that incomprehensible hell in a state of full awareness and consciousness, Nina's mind raced.
(What even is this... I've never had a prediction like this before. I can't make sense of it — if I don't know the cause, how am I supposed to deal with it — !?)
Confusion and the terror of helplessness. As those feelings crashed together, pushing her to the very edge of disarray — the scenery before her eyes shifted.
(...Huh?)
Whether it was a peculiar intuition unique to those who receive precognitive dreams, or her own innate instinct —
For whatever reason, in that instant, Nina understood.
—
The dream
had switched.
She realized.
This was no longer the same precognitive dream — some other factor, some other force... a dream being "shown" to her by a will beyond her own.
And what appeared before her was —
(……No.)
It was a deeper hell still.
The nightmare visions she had seen before. The worst possible manifestation — one she had desperately tried to avoid ever seeing again, one she thought she'd managed to avert.
—Every conceivable scene of Ermes's death. All the worst possible futures, flooding in at once.
(Stop. Why—)
—She saw him, powerless, shielding Katya and the others from the Archbishop's divine punishment.
—She saw him, pierced through simultaneously by the laughing church soldiers.
—She saw him, his heart pierced through by his brother Lucius.
(I don't want to see this—!)
Even screaming that, she couldn't look away — this was a lucid dream, and so she couldn't avert her gaze. She couldn't wake up from it either.
Again and again, over and over, repeated endlessly. Meticulously, methodically varying each one... first making her fully aware of every action she could take, then showing her the worst that lay beyond.
It was as if... it were punishing Niina for her own inadequacy. As if demonstrating that no matter what she did, the future could not be changed.
Things were supposed to have changed — yet the scene before her carried far too much realism and plausibility for her to declare that such a vision was impossible.
And then she realized.
This was—
The Archbishop's perspective—
Future sight—
That's what this was.
Broader than Niina's. More detailed than Niina's.
It predicted and saw through every action she could take, sometimes even turning it to its advantage. Obstinately, fanatically trying to fulfill the goal of killing Ermes. Showing her the force of that obsession, the power of that will.
No matter how much the future changed, it was irrelevant to her. The future she was trying to bring about still held not a single shadow of doubt.
As if declaring just that, relentlessly, thoroughly — it shoved the truth in her face: your power cannot change this. You can do nothing.
(Stop it. That's... something I know better than anyone...!)
And it was precisely because Niina truly could do nothing that the sight cut so deeply.
She was the only one who knew everything, the only one who could change things — yet she could do nothing.
As someone who had gained the same power of foresight, she had tried to resist. But in truth, she hadn't changed a thing — it was that princess and Ermes and the others who had actually made a difference.
She herself had been... on the sidelines from the very beginning. And she would remain there, forever outside the picture.
The scene before her eyes was more than enough to drive that home.
At the same time, whether she wanted it or not, it forced her to remember — her own essence, her own flaws.
She had tried. She had tried to do something.
No — she had wanted to do something.
Even if she couldn't push herself, she could do what little she could in her own way. She told herself she must not get in the way of those who were trying.
Thinking that, she had tried to resist — using whatever power she had gained, however fortuitously — against the High Priest who was manipulating Lucius and seeking to harm Ermes and the others.
And besides, if she could do something here — she felt she might be able to return to who she once was. To the self that had once charged straight toward something.
But it was no use.
Every half-hearted attempt at resistance was shut down. No matter how she struggled, it meant nothing before that man — worse, she was even used by him, ending up causing trouble for the very people she had wanted to help.
The future that mattered — she couldn't change a thing. Night after night, she was consumed by nightmares of despair.
The truth of it was — it hurt. It hurt so much. She hated it, hated it with all her being.
Night by night, she could feel her heart being whittled away. She hated having her own helplessness, her own sloth, shoved in her face.
And above all else—
And before she knew it — once again.
Somewhere along the way, that version of herself had surfaced. The callous her. The heartless her.
Telling herself it didn't matter anymore. Giving up. The version of herself she loathed most — the one who would abandon her brother, her friends, the person she loved, cast them all aside without a second thought. She could already sense, with awful clarity, that she would inevitably become that person. That was what scared her.
It hurts. I don't want this. I don't want to try anymore.
She shoved those true feelings down and desperately searched for anything she could do — and yet, not even the slightest resistance was permitted.
She understood the reason for that, too.
Because... she could feel it. When you shared, even roughly, the same power and faced each other on the same board, understanding was forced upon you whether you liked it or not.
In other words — the Archbishop, too, was one of those who "possessed" something.
It might be warped. He might have reached a realm that no ordinary person could comprehend.
But without a shred of doubt, that man's goal — "to build the Kingdom of God" — was a "wish" worthy of staking everything on. It was Johan's own wish.
That was what became strength. What made magic grow only stronger. Only a person of that caliber could stand in that place.
Which meant, in short, that this northern rebellion had long since become a battle fought on an entirely different plane.
A battle "upon which the fate of the world rested." A place where noble wishes clashed against one another.
On that kind of battlefield... from the very start, there had never been room for someone like her to intervene.
A wish like Ermes' — the pure, unrelenting desire to push magic to its absolute limit.
A wish like Katya's — the unwavering resolve to embody what it meant to be a noble, no matter the cost.
A wish like Sarah's — the stubborn determination to pursue an ideal that should have been impossible.
She had none of those things.
Someone like her... trying to do anything of the sort had been futile from the very beginning.
And she had been made to realize that, whether she wanted to or not.
The nightmare shifted.
"El, El! ...Why... why...!"
Ermes had died—
After
that... the sight.
Katia, who had been cradling his corpse and letting out the most wretched of wails, turned toward her.
"Why... why didn't you do more...!"
She didn't want to direct it at her, but she couldn't help herself. Without putting it into words—yet with eyes that strained to contain such fierce emotion—she still cast a gaze that sought to condemn her for her negligence.
—It was driven into her.
"...Ermes... sir."
Sara, in stark contrast, was quiet.
Yet her eyes brimmed with a despair so vast it defied all measure, and the thing she could no longer contain overflowed as tears... all while wearing that expression.
"..."
She was staring straight at her. With a faint smile, as though granting forgiveness... yet somehow, a face that was irrevocably broken.
—Her own sin, the consequence of her arrogance, was being seared into her.
"..."
Lilliana did not utter a single word.
Only with hollow eyes. With a face that made it plain she had lost everything.
She did nothing... no, she could no longer find any meaning in doing anything at all. Without even glancing at herself, she stood there rooted to the spot.
—She had met remarkable people and mistakenly believed she could become like them. Getting swept up, growing ever closer to them... and this was the fool's bitter end.
"......Sister, it's not your fault."
Her brother Lucius spoke, wearing a gloomy expression — the face of someone who had become aware he'd been brainwashed.
"The one at fault is me! I was the one manipulated by that man! Curse me...!"
He regretted from the bottom of his heart that she had pierced through his heart. With the greatest anguish of his lifetime... yet he directed not a shred of blame at Nina, only wishing for himself to be punished.
(Stop it—!)
She felt sick.
None of them openly condemned her. And that, more than anything, carried a painful reality that wore away at her heart.
She couldn't change anything, couldn't become anything. ...All she'd done was, unable to restrain herself, grow close to people — and drag them into an inescapable tragedy.
—That was the first sin she carried. The primordial curse she had been born with.
"See? I told you it was impossible."
(—!)
And then, at the very end.
The killing blow — the words she least wanted to hear — were delivered in the voice of her younger brother from her birth family.
"That's just the kind of person Big Sis is. She makes everyone close to her — everyone around her — totally miserable."
(No, stop. Don't say any more.)
She screamed her fiercest refusal deep inside her mind, but the words wouldn't stop.
Because the one speaking was none other than herself. Without a doubt, it was something she was already aware of. It was merely being given voice through her brother's mouth.
"You wanted to become someone amazing, to stay alongside amazing people? Ha ha, that's impossible. Just look — look at your own magic."
And her brother wore the same expression as that time — the same expression he'd worn when he'd cast that one word of despair upon her.
Mockingly, pityingly. As if delivering the final blow, he spoke.
"——
The heart
of someone
you love
you twist.
Someone who possesses such an ugly Bloodline Magic... tell me, how could you ever become anything remarkable?"
(——— Ah.)
The moment she heard it.
The scenario she'd feared. Something inside her flipped — a switch, lethally and irrevocably toggled.
And so she whispers.
(...It's fine now, isn't it.)
I don't want this. I can't do it anymore.
Going through all of this — enduring all of this pain — for what?
I don't want to try. I don't want to aim for anything.
From the very start, I was never like those people. If it's going to end up like this... there's no reason I have to cling to it, is there?
Growing cold. Fading away.
Motivation, willpower — everything drains out of her, and all the weakness she'd been suppressing until now comes flooding to the surface.
I don't want this.
I don't want to do this anymore. I'm so tired.
I have no will to do anything. Why do I have to feel this way?
──Enough. I just want it to be easy.
"Then,
I'll
make
it happen."
"
In that instant, a voice echoed—as if responding to her cry of despair.
At the same time, something tore through the weakened walls of her heart—and she knew something foul was flowing in.
◆
"Bloodline Magic—'The
Endless Dark Star'
"
And, at that very moment.
At the bedside of Nina—who was tormented by nightmares—stood Archbishop Johan.
Fully prepared, he activated his own Bloodline Magic.
Bloodline Magic, 'The
Endless Dark Star'
'."
The effect was brainwashing. The activation condition: the caster's magic power, imbued with magic, had to erode the target by a certain amount.
And the constraint—drastic modifications to thought patterns or personality were impossible.
Yes. This magic on its own, just as Ermes and the others had predicted—was nothing more than an ordinary thought-manipulation spell.
Resistance
was also relatively easy to overcome. In truth, when viewed in its entirety, it could be called a rather weak type of Bloodline Magic.
But—let me state one fact here.
After all,
,
even without magic,
you can still
brainwash
someone.
.
The organization Johan belonged to was a church—an organization whose purpose was to spread its teachings—and as such, it possessed extensive know-how regarding "such methods." As its number two, he held a far deeper mastery of them than anyone else.
There were countless methods of physical brainwashing, but the steps they shared numbered two.
First—thoroughly exhaust the target's mind.
Second—on top of that, inscribe the words the target wants to hear.
He had extensive experience forcing... the "word of God" upon others in just this manner.
And then, one day, he realized something.
—What if he combined this with his own magic?
The effect was devastating.
Ordinary brainwashing became possible with far less effort than before.
Moreover, when both parties' methods were carried out without cutting corners, it became possible to perform massive thought rewrites on targets at a level impossible through magic alone, against opponents unreachable by magic.
That was the trump card of Archbishop Johan, who possessed no direct combat ability. Together with precognition, it formed a pair of aces—the very trump cards that had propelled Johan to this position.
──Therefore, this time.
Nina, an irregular who had come to possess the same precognitive ability as himself. A trivial girl, yes, but someone who could stand on the same board—
—contract—
—and even though he had her bound by one, she was never an opponent he could afford to let his guard down around.
To eliminate that worry, the plan to brainwash her had been progressing in parallel with everything else.
Because she happened to be another thought-manipulation magic user, he had taken his time and been thorough. First, with the—
—contract—
—he had imposed on her, he limited the interference prohibition to direct interference only, then exploited her complacency born of common knowledge about thought-manipulation magic to create a loophole that would allow the brainwashing to slip through.
Furthermore, by having the entire Northern Alliance treat her coldly, leaving her isolated without allies and subjected to visions of the worst possible future night after night, he had slowly but surely worn down her spirit.
Of course, his precognition had indicated the goal could have been accomplished without all that—but given who he was up against, there was no such thing as being too careful. Johan understood well that such preparations had saved his life many times before.
And this time, too, they paid off.
An enormous irregular in the form of Liliana—an entirely unexpected existence who had shattered his precognition. Because of this, his original plan of having Lucius kill Ermes had collapsed, and in his most recent vision he had seen a new kind of hell for the first time: at the decisive battle, unable to stop Ermes' charge no matter how he struggled, leading to certain defeat.
And so, here, caution made the difference.
He would now release the pieces he had been steadily advancing into position and brainwash Nina. Once that was done, the—
—contract—
—would no longer serve any purpose at all. All he had to do was get her to agree to its dissolution.
And then—have Nina kill Ermes.
That was the new
The Future
This was the perfect move to ensure Ermes's destruction — one that struck at the enemy's weak point without letting Nina, who shared the same precognitive abilities, detect it.
And so, this time.
He activated the Magical tool he had prepared as the final push to shatter Nina's already-exhausted psyche — one that would show the target a single nightmare.
A limited effect of only one use, but it all depended on how it was employed. And just as he'd intended, Nina's heart had been perfectly broken — he could now confirm that his magic was steadily eating away at her mind.
All that remained was for the magic — his willpower infused into it — to rewrite Nina's thoughts as he saw fit. Now, Johan's victory was assured.
Nina was Ermes's natural enemy. If she caught him off guard in a one-on-one encounter, even he would have no recourse.
And besides, the Archbishop thought with a thin smile.
Johan did not believe in goodwill. He believed it was malice that moved the world, and whenever he saw that vague thing connecting people together, he couldn't rest until he had utterly destroyed it.
Therefore — those people who had created it in Harvest territory this time.
If Ermes, the central figure among those people, were to meet an end as deeply ironic as being killed by Nina, who had believed until the very end that they were her allies.
Ah, that would surely be a most entertaining show.
As he imagined that moment and deepened his smile, heading off to the many other preparations for the decisive battle — behind Johan,
the Bloodline Magic Johan had unleashed completely trampled over Nina's weakened psyche, not permitting even the slightest resistance—
—and at last, reached the deepest recesses of her heart. That warm place.
Sorry for the heavy developments continuing...!
Next time, things will start moving. Stay tuned!