Interlude

From between this world and the world already gone, there existed another small difference that escaped the Demon Lord's notice. Just like how Demon Lord didn't perish after Radiance, Alan Welker also survived the curse of death.

Initially, his consciousness felt like it was submerged in pitch black darkness. The only sensations he felt were the warmth around his chest and around his head. This was the Curse of Death. A curse that guaranteed that guaranteed its target's eternal oblivion. Normally, there was almost nothing that could save you from it.

And yet, Alan Welker still lived. Anchored by two sensations to the world of living.

Slowly, his consciousness began recovering. The darkness turned into a fog, and the fog slowly faded away. As his mind became clearer, he became aware of his surroundings. He could hear the sounds of battle and the voices of two beings who battled for their beliefs. They were none other than Zephyrus and the Demon Lord. Mysteriously, their voices alone reverberated clearly in his mind.

Pushed to the brink and cornered, even left completely alone, Zephyrus continued struggling. Just a few years ago, he was crushed, disheartened and deemed a failure. Once, he gave up on everything that he lived for and abandoned his fate in favor of powerless stagnation.

And yet, he returned to the battlefield. He listened to people around him. He looked at the world with his own two eyes. 

He sought out hope.

And hope he received. After this endless struggle, he was finally able to accept his past. And now, he was finally prepared to accept his burden.

Alan's vision slowly returned. As he watched Zephyrus's back as he pushed back the Demon Lord, he was reminded of a single thing. The boy in front of him had once lost everything that mattered to him. He lost even faith in his way of life. But that didn't stop him from finding hope again.

And as Alan Welker reached that thought, he came to a realization.

So this is what it means to be a Hero.

That was when he became determined to finally accept his past. He once thought that focusing on this big goal—focusing on killing the Demon Lord—was an expression of his resolve. But now, he realized that he was just ignoring what was right in front of him. And it was time to fix that mistake.

***

"This world is trapped in the cycle of endless repetitions. These twelve years of war have repeated time and time again. Frankly, I'm not even sure how many times it has happened at this point."

The Demon Lord's words pierced Alan's consciousness. But the reason for that was wholly unlike Zephyrus's. Instead, Alan felt that everything finally clicked in place.

Of course, you could easily interpret those words as Demon Lord's trickery. An attempt to break Zephyrus's will to fight. But if you chose to believe them, then everything was finally beginning to make sense.

The first thing that stood out to Alan was the inconsistency in the Demon Lord's words. He confessed to the truth as if he had restarted the world on many occasions. He even told Zephyrus that his efforts would amount to nothing because of that. But all of that seemed off to Alan.

In the first place, if the Demon Lord possessed such powers, then how did they even get to this point? Zephyrus was right to doubt that and he received a sensible and likely truthful answer. But the problem was, those powers fundamentally contradicted the nature of the Demon Lord.

His nature was to take on challenges from humans while leading oppressed to the destruction of the world. In other words, he sought to completely rebuild the world while simultaneously entertaining other possible answers. But the existence, and most importantly, the usage of this power, was against the entire philosophy of the Demon Lord. If he wanted to test challengers, than what was the point of resetting the world? Wasn't his defeat supposed to be an acceptable outcome? A proof that humanity possessed enough resolve to try for a different future?

That's why Alan didn't believe that these powers belonged to the Demon Lord. That, or the being was lying about his motivations. But Alan felt that the later aligned perfectly well with what he knew about the Demon Lord.

So who then possessed this power? Who was it that reset the world? None of the options made sense. After all, the Demon Lord admitted that he was defeated by Radiance in one of the previous loops. If the Demon Lord was defeated, then no one outside of the Demon Lord himself would have the motivation to reset in those circumstances.

But as Alan imagined the previous loops and played out all the possible results, he knew that there was at least one exception. Someone who could be motivated to start the world anew.

And so he confronted the truth.

***

"Argh..."

Grunting in pain, Alan forced his battered body to move.

"Alan!" Luciella shouted in panic. "You shouldn't move yet. You haven't recovered from your wounds..."

Genuine worry filled the priestess's voice. Alan felt that she was more emotional than ever. And she was also shook beyond belief. He hadn't seen her in that state in a long-long time.

"N-no time for... that..." Alan spat out in response. "If I don't do anything... then the Demon Lord will win..."

"No! You can't throw yourself into the battle. Not with those wounds!"

Luciella's body was shaking. Genuine fear filled her eyes.

"Don't worry..." he reassured her. "I'm not going to do... something as reckless as that... There's something else I need to do before that."

He lifted his body and put himself into a sitting position. Even that simple movement caused his body to scream in pain. Then, Alan reached his hand towards his chest. He put it under his clothes and reached for the spot he remembered from before—the place where he felt intense warmth when he was unconscious. There, he found exactly what he was looking for, a hard and thin rectangular item that he was given prior to this mission. He grasped Luciella's talisman.

When he took it out in the open, it was shining brightly. It radiated warmth and its light was so intense that it was downright blinding up close. And then, Alan took a knife from his belt and cut through the cloth of the talisman.

"Wha!? What in the world are you doing?!" Luciella shouted as her eyes widened in shock.

But Alan ignored her words and flipped the now torn amulet. From the cut of the cloth, a single piece of metal came out. This was the source of the light—a golden fragment.

In other words, it was a piece of Aurelius's Golden Sword.

"Just like I thought..." Alan muttered as he confirmed his guess.

There remained an unanswered question. Just how in the world did Alan survive one of the deadliest dark spells head on? The answer was in his hands. It was the talisman made out of powerful sacred relic.

On their own, golden fragments didn't possess that much power. As Alan himself saw, his golden fragment was instantly overwhelmed when he tried to use it against the Curse of Death. But more than anything else, those fragments were powerful magical catalysts that once conducted the magic of the history's most powerful dragon as well as contained traces of the Blessing of the world's most powerful Heroes.

In other words, if you had enough time to utilize their power to the fullest, and engraved it with powerful holy arts, you could create something that could even fight against the Curse of Death.

But there was a single problem. Alan received this talisman long before Cardinal Oliver offered them to his party. In a way that was inevitable. There was no way that a powerful talisman like this could be created in only three weeks while travelling through the dark caverns. The best Alan's party managed with them was filling them with energy and then just enjoying their sharpness and conductive effects. If anything, a talisman like this would have taken months, quite possibly many months, in order to complete.

However, there was a single person who could have gotten the fragment long before this mission. And once Alan realized the identity of this person, everything immediately fell into place.

He then looked at the perpetrator of the endless loops and asked.

"Luciella, are you the one who resets this world?"

The priestess's shoulders trembled. As if her grave secret was exposed. But that secret wasn't her power. Rather, it was the sins that came with them.

After all, even after the Demon Lord perished, she had reset this world. The humanity had salvation at their fingertips, but she threw all of it away.

"Your prophecies..." Alan continued. "They never existed either, did they? You were only using them as an excuse to guide us however you wanted."

But what was her motivation? Why did she revert all of their hard work—the results of their long journey—into nothingness? At first, Alan couldn't understand it. He couldn't see what could have made her return. But then, he realized it was something very, very obvious.

She returned because Alan Welker was dead.

But of course. It made perfect sense. Let's say the previous world went almost exactly like this one. Alan's party reached the Demon Lord and then they fought against him. In the process, Alan was struck down by the Curse of Death, and Zephyrus defeated the Demon Lord with the power of his Blessings. Everything was the same except in that world, Alan didn't have the talisman.

And so, the young hero candidate died. Everyone's lives were lost in fighting. And then, the priestess committed a grave sin. She reset the world again. She put the lives of her friends—no, the life of Alan Welker over the salvation of this world.

She likely thought that she could do it all again. And that she did. She perfectly reenacted the entire loop with a few exceptions. During the attack on Luxia, she used the chaos in order to steal a fragment of the Golden Sword. Then, before the final battle, she crafted and gifted him with the talisman while keeping it a secret from everyone else. Alan still got hit with the curse and Zephyrus successfully reactivated his Blessing, but this time, Alan was alive. A perfect plan.

If there was anything to blame in her plan, it was that she missed that she wasn't the only one who retained her memories.

It was hard to blame her for that, really. As the Demon Lord said, he did nothing to interfere in their plans and let them challenge him head on. That's why almost every loop before this one was only affected by Luciella's actions.

Alan found it weird to begin with. Why did Demon Lord who claimed he let the challengers fight him head on used his knowledge of the future to win? Even if he knew what was going to happen, using that for victory seemed against his philosophy. But if the challengers were also utilizing future knowledge, then everything clicked into place. He was no longer abusing a one-sided power but rather confronting us on the same field. If we used future knowledge to get ahead, then he would do the same. It was as simple as that.

Everything finally fit into place. But there was one thing Alan still had to confront. It was the most important thing of them all. Because with the reveal of Luciella's actions, he realized something important. Something that he wished he understood much, much sooner. 

After all, she traded his life for Demon Lord's death.

Alan grabbed her shaking shoulders reassuringly. With tears in his eyes, he apologized. Before he could judge her sins he had to confront his.

"Emily, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I was so blind."

He apologized before the girl who had once abandoned her name in the service of the Goddess. For the sins she made all lay on his shoulders. Once, they were separated after the destruction of their village. Then, they reunited as a hero candidate and a saintess. But by that point, they were no longer the same.

"Back then, twelve years ago I thought you were broken. I thought I would never be able to bring you back. But I was the one who was broken."

She was his excuse. He could no longer bear to look at reality. He couldn't even comfort and soothe the girl he was meant to protect. Instead, he threw himself headfirst into his quest for revenge. He told himself it was for her sake, but in reality, it was nothing but his escape.

He hugged her and continued apologizing.

"I'm sorry that I was so obsessed with the Demon Lord. I'm sorry that I neglected to talk with you. Maybe if I did, we could have a peaceful future, away from war and strife. This self-destructive burden was meant to be only mine, but I ended up dragging you along with me. I'm sorry."

Slowly, as Alan's words reached the core of her being she cried. Tears streamed down her face, and her emotions overflowed. It was like a dam opened.

"...You should be sorry," she said quietly, like she was a petulant child. "You... left me alone for so long... and then you became estranged like you were talking to a stranger..."

All of the pent up frustration began pouring out. Years of pain and suffering. Years of constant repetitions that she had to bear all on her own.

"...I thought... I thought I was the one at fault. I thought because you promised me to defeat the Demon Lord, you were training like you were obsessed, risking your life left and right. Once, I even asked you to stop—but you goddamn idiot said that I didn't need to worry about you and that you will see it through to the end!"

She punched him in the shoulder. As she did, she continued complaining to him. Alan merely stood there and let her unleash all of her emotions.

Eventually, she quieted down. And once she did, Alan steeled himself. There was one last truth he had to confront.

"Emily... Thank you for taking on this burden... But you need to return it."

Emily froze. An expression of terror covered her face. Slowly, she started shaking her head.

"...N-no... No! No! No! No!"

As she screamed she continued shaking her head faster as if unable to accept his words.

This was the last truth. The last question that remained unanswered.

How did Emily get her powers? How was she able to revert the time itself? It was an ability so powerful that one couldn't imagine it being anything than a Goddess's Blessing. And quite frankly, that it was—nothing else but a Goddess's Blessing.

But Emily didn't have a Goddess's Blessing. If she did, the Church would have claimed her to be a hero candidate long time ago. So who did the Blessing belong to? If you thought about it, there was only a single person who fit the bill. Someone who inexplicable had a Blessing with the seal's circuit included and yet lacked any special powers to speak of.

Frankly, deep inside, Alan felt that something was wrong all along. For the longest time, he had been seeing strange dreams. One could call them fragments of the lost worlds. He saw them, but he chose to look away, deriding them as inconsequential delusions.

But they were no delusions. They were the truth. They were unmistakably his past. And once he realized that, even without his full memories, he realized what had happened.

Throughout his many attempts, he continued on the path of the hero candidate with reckless, self-abandon. But eventually, he realized the truth. The hopeless of this world, the true nature of cultists—and most importantly, he realized his own weakness. 

When he murdered a twelve-year-old boy, a child much similar to Marcus, he realized that his side was no less evil than the demons. In fact, they were worse than that. And once he understood that, something inside of Alan broke.

It didn't happen instantly. Slowly, over many loops his determination crumbled, And there, somewhere along the way, he could bear his burden no more. And so he pushed it onto the girl who cared for him more than anyone else. 

He gave up on his Blessing. And that was his greatest sin.

Emily continued rejecting him.

"No... No you cant'... I will not let you come back to that... I will not let you remember that!"

"Emily, please."

He uttered and caught her hands in his. They were shaking. But slowly, their tremble stopped. Seeing that he continued.

"If I don't accept this burden, then I don't think I can ever put my past behind. Only if I confront myself head-on can I move forward."

For a while, Emily didn't reply. She just stared at the ground. Between her ragged breaths, occasional sobs came out.

Finally, she moved her head slightly. It was a slight, subtle motion, but Alan could clearly tell that it was a nod. She agreed to return his powers to him, knowing that the only fate that awaited him was death. For such was the fate of hero candidates.

And then he retrieved his Blessing.