“Have you been well all this time?”
He said the words like a greeting, but of course she could not possibly have been well.
One way or another, she had been forced to go on living after losing her son.
“I’ve been getting by.”
His mother, however, was not an ordinary person.
Seeing her speak so nonchalantly with a blank expression, Ludger gave a small nod.
“And you look like you haven’t been doing well at all.”
“......Why do you think so?”
“Because I can see your fate. I can tell that you went through every sort of hell just to make it this far.”
“If this were before, I wouldn’t have listened to you. I would have dismissed your words for being irrational, unscientific, and too abstract.”
Ludger spoke his thoughts to his mother calmly.
“But now I understand. Every word you ever told me was sincere advice. The same goes for this time. You knew I would come, and you waited for me.”
“So? What are you here to say after coming all the way back? You don’t belong here anymore. You’re someone who has nothing to do with me.”
Ludger steadied his breath, then bowed his head deeply to her.
“I’m sorry.”
“.......”
“This happened because I didn’t listen. Because I ignored the countless warnings you gave me. I do not regret that I died. But I know that the longing and sorrow I left behind for those who remained is something beyond what words can describe.”
The corners of the woman’s eyes trembled.
She was forcing herself to act strong, to act calm, but deep within her, the grief of a mother who had sent her child away that day still remained.
Even though she knew that child had returned in another form, wounds carved into the past do not heal easily.
“I came all the way here just to say this.”
Why Ludger had gathered the relics.
Why he had shattered the cage and struck down Lumenis, giving freedom to the world.
It had not been to save them, nor to punish Lumenis, nor from some noble sense of justice to set the world right.
It was only—
That the son who had plunged his mother into sorrow...
Wanted to convey an apology he could never properly express.
That was all.
The spark that had shaken the entire continent had come from a motive so selfish and so deeply personal.
And because of that, Suruna could not help but understand Ludger the moment he heard his true purpose.
Just as Ludger had understood him.
“I truly apologize.”
And now—
Ludger conveyed his honest heart to his mother clearly and directly.
To finally release the knots that had built up over the years.
The foolish son who had always hidden his sincerity behind sharp, cutting words...
Had finally repented and revealed his true heart.
It had taken—
Almost twenty-eight years.
“.......”
Even at his apology, she said nothing.
She knew very well how much hardship her son had endured.
She could feel, painfully so, the suffering he had carried.
That was why she could not speak carelessly.
What Ludger bore was not something a few comforting words could soothe.
But as a mother—
There was one thing she wanted to say.
“You’ve worked hard.”
“.......”
Just one sentence.
Yet that single sentence was enough to release the weight that had built inside Ludger over decades.
Not all of it, perhaps, but the simple affirmation that the path he had walked had not been wrong—
that alone saved him.
“So, are you coming back for good now?”
“Not yet. This time was only a trial run, so I have to return. But I’ve opened the path, so next time I’ll be able to come back faster.”
“I see.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t make you wait long.”
After bowing his head again, Ludger rose to his feet.
“The child outside—who is that?”
As expected of a gifted diviner, she immediately sensed Rine waiting outside.
“She’s one of my students. She has exceptional talent and ability.”
“Here I was thinking my son had brought home a daughter-in-law after all these years.”
Her tone was as blunt as Ludger’s, but it was clearly a joke.
Her own way of softening the mood so the parting would not feel so painful.
“Next time I come, I won’t be alone. There’s someone else I want to introduce to you. I think you’ll find that person quite interesting.”
Ludger slid open the wooden door and stepped out.
“Then, I’ll be going now.”
“Yes. Come see me again.”
She did not say “farewell.” Saying that would make it sound like a final parting.
Ludger knew that as well, so he simply nodded instead of adding anything more.
When he stepped outside, Rine—who had been anxiously waiting with her back pressed to the wall—hurried to him.
“W-What on earth happened?”
“Let’s walk first.”
Rine, who knew nothing of the situation, could only follow him.
Suddenly being brought to a nation whose culture and customs she could not even imagine was overwhelming in every way.
Ludger and Rine moved to a quiet park and sat on a bench.
It was the hour when even the children were away at kindergarten. The only things visible in the park were pigeons pecking at the ground in little clusters.
“You’ve probably figured it out already, but this is where I used to live. Before the man named Heathcliff von Bretus was ever born.”
“Is this... like a past life?”
“Yes. I lived here, died in an accident, and was reborn as Heathcliff. Because I was born with the kind of constitution beloved by the gods, all my past memories remained intact. It was nearly a curse, but thanks to it, I survived. A strange thing, isn’t it?”
Flutter.
All the pigeons suddenly took flight at once.
“When I was a child and fell into a well, I accidentally discovered a fragment of a relic. Looking back now, I don’t know if it was coincidence or destiny, but it certainly became the turning point that changed my life.”
Beyond a faint, blue space the size of a hand mirror—
There spread the landscape of twenty-first-century Korea that he remembered.
The young Ludger could not look away.
His homeland. A piece of his past.
It unfolded right before his eyes.
Close enough to reach out and touch.
“But... but more than twenty years passed since then. How...?”
“What shocked me most when I first saw that scene was that the world here had not changed at all, even though at least seven years should have passed since my death.”
“You mean... time flowed differently?”
“Yes. Ten years in our world equaled one year here. Meaning, not even three full years have passed in this world since the me from my past life died.”
“That’s impossible...”
“In different dimensions, time can flow differently. Still, because a faint passage has formed between the two worlds through me, the misaligned timelines will eventually synchronize. It won’t take long for the two flows to match.”
Rine could not say anything.
Thinking about all Ludger had done, his true wish now seemed absurdly modest.
“Isn’t it ridiculous? The great Demon King who shook the entire continent did all of this just to see his mother.”
“No. It’s not ridiculous at all.”
Rine shook her head firmly.
“It’s going to see your family. If I were in your position, I would have made the same ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) choice.”
“...Is that so.”
Ludger let out a faint laugh and rose from the bench, reaching his hand toward the empty air.
“It’s time to go back.”
“Already?”
“I’d like to look around a little more too, but sadly the passage won’t last long. The Crystal Corridor doesn’t have a long duration. If we stay, it’ll collapse and we’ll be lost forever.”
“If the coordinates anchoring us to our original world disappear, then we’ll be trapped in an imaginary space between both worlds, won’t we?”
“You learn one thing and understand two. Exactly. Imaginary space is a realm humanity cannot comprehend. You and I can pass through it because we wield spatial power, but no one else could have even attempted it.”
Ziiiiing—
Space split open in response to Ludger’s mana, forming a blue gate in midair.
“Let’s go back.”
To the place where we belong.
Ludger and Rine stepped once more into the Crystal Corridor formed inside imaginary space.
When they came here, the Corridor’s walls had shown a person’s past the more they walked.
This time, the Corridor inscribed the person’s life chronologically from beginning to end.
Rine saw herself.
Her childhood. The pure days she spent with her mother.
Meeting Heathcliff, meeting Freuden, meeting her uncle.
Living like that until she lost her memories and mistook her disguised uncle for her master, learning magic under him.
Finally entering Seorn, which she had longed for so dearly, and meeting Ludger Cherish for the first time there.
And so many things after that.
Until now, the two of them walked silently through the glass-like corridor.
“Um.”
“What is it.”
“What... what will happen to us when we return?”
“Well. Even if the holy war is over, I will still be remembered forever as the Demon King. I might even be taken to an international tribunal as a war criminal.”
“D-Do you think so?”
“Rine. What do you want to do?”
“I... I don’t know. Before, I would’ve said I wanted to become some kind of magic researcher, but I’ve changed too much since then.”
Rine brushed the corner of her eye with her pale, slender hand.
“The Judgment Scroll and my spatial-attribute mana... It feels hateful, and too much for me, all at once. Maybe figuring out how to use this power should be my first goal.”
“If you know the path you need to walk, that alone is enough. What remains is perseverance. I think you can do it.”
“Hehe. Really?”
At that moment—
Rumble.
The Crystal Corridor shook violently, and shards of crystal began to fall from the ceiling.
Barely keeping her balance, Rine looked around in panic.
“W-What’s happening?! Do earthquakes happen even in imaginary space?!”
“No. This isn’t a normal earthquake. Look.”
Ludger pointed above the ceiling.
Beyond the broken crystal fragments, in the imaginary space beyond, a massive giant was glaring at them with murderous intent.
“Lumenis!”
Lumenis, whose heart had been pierced and who was slowly dying, had struck the Corridor with his enormous arm.
“What a wretched creature. Even as he dies, he wants to drag us down with him? For a so-called god, how disgraceful.”
“T-This isn’t the time for commentary!”
“Indeed.”
Ludger and Rine started running.
Seeing them flee, Lumenis let out a roar filled with fury.
It was a scream without sound. Yet the entire imaginary space boomed with it.
He was dying, but he was still the chief deity of a world.
Just the hatred in that silent scream was enough to shake the space and accelerate the Corridor’s collapse.
Rumble...!
Crash!
The Corridor shook, cracks splitting down its walls, fragments of ceiling crashing down in massive chunks.
Ludger and Rine had no choice but to keep running through the shaking Corridor without falling.
“I can see the exit!”
Uooooooh!!
Lumenis raised his left arm and slammed it into the Corridor with all his remaining strength.
Crack!!
Part of the Corridor collapsed, crumbling away into the imaginary space beyond.
Lumenis’s left arm also disintegrated into dust, unable to withstand the force.
Forcing his dying body had only hastened his death.
But Lumenis did not stop.
As if determined to at least drag Ludger down with him, he lifted his remaining right arm.
At the broken end of the Corridor, Ludger and Rine could only watch.
Then—
Shrrrk!
Huge tentacle-like appendages shot out from the imaginary space and wrapped around Lumenis’s right arm.
Not just one—mechanical arms grabbed his torso, and arms made of transparent glass seized his legs.
“T-Those are...”
“The forgotten gods—those whom Lumenis imprisoned.”
Ludger instantly knew whose arms they were.
He recognized the presence of those who had always whispered to him.
“So this is karma.”
Shraaack!
As the many arms holding Lumenis tightened, his body was torn apart piece by piece.
In the past, their owners would never have dared stand against Lumenis, but now that he was weakened, the situation had changed.
As he was torn apart and dragged down into the same abyss as the gods he had betrayed, Lumenis still glared at Ludger with burning eyes.
“This hateful karma ends here. Fall into the depths.”
Ludger declared coldly toward Lumenis.
