The entire world seemed to be trembling.
Terrifying impacts converged at the highest point of the sky, then vanished in the deepest reaches of nothingness.
The clouds... no, the entire firmament seemed to be torn apart beneath the collision of those two powerful forces. Savage black cracks filled every empty space, only to be filled again in the blink of an eye by sacred, blazing radiance.
The divine light belonging to the Goddess shone across the earth, gradually growing brighter, then brighter still, until it covered the entire sky, as if deliberately obstructing and concealing something.
Yet even so, within every thunderous roar produced by those collisions, Muen could still hear a strange whispering and murmuring.
That murmur pierced through the endless roaring and collision of power, clearly tempting him, making him raise his head and accept what came from the starry sky...
"Damn it..."
Muen bit the tip of his tongue. As pain stimulated his nerves, black flame swept out, temporarily isolating the Pollution and temptation growing heavier around him.
"The Holy Lord of Salvation... the Pope of the Church... and now even an Evil God has come. This game really is getting more and more exciting."
One could even say a little too exciting.
The heads of two top-tier factions, plus an Evil God gradually approaching.
This lineup was more than enough not only for a mere Kingdom capital, but even to destroy an entire nation.
The Witch of Repentance, that old woman who had chased him like a rabbit several times before, probably did not even have the qualifications to interfere in this battle.
Of course, neither did he.
"Hiss... This won’t do."
A stabbing pain came from his eyes, and Muen hurriedly lowered his head.
Although the aftershocks of the battle between the Holy Lord and the Pope had completely covered the sky, and the Church’s vast Holy Light itself clearly meant to seal something away, if he looked up for too long, then even without directly looking at that starry sky, Muen could still feel the corrosion of Pollution.
No wonder bards were a high-risk profession in every bizarre worldview. Every day it was either praising the moon or praising the stars, and every now and then they would drink a little wine and stare up at the starry sky all night. Who knew, maybe with one careless look, they would see something they should not have seen.
"But in this state, that old woman probably has no way to lock onto my aura. For now, I don’t have to be chased all over the place."
After lowering his head, Muen braced his hands on his knees and took several deep breaths.
His mind began aching again, but this was not because of corrosion. To be honest, after coming face-to-face with Evil Gods so many times, although he had not developed resistance, with the various powers mixed inside his body, unless an Evil God directly descended into this world, the chance of Polluting him was basically zero.
The reason for his exhaustion was still that old woman, the Witch of Repentance.
Just now, in order to escape from her hands, the moment the two top human powerhouses in the sky began their bombardment, Muen had directly pushed the alchemical core to its maximum again and activated time dilation.
This time, he had not made any other move. He had merely frozen the Witch of Repentance’s time, then run.
With it fully activated, Muen’s use of time had indeed improved to a certain extent.
Even so, freezing the Witch of Repentance’s time had merely gone from one second to two seconds.
One extra second.
But even that small improvement had consumed such enormous magic power in that instant that it had almost wrung him completely dry again.
"Wrung dry, wrung dry again. Why do I feel like I spend every day getting wrung dry... If that’s how it is, I’d still rather be wrung dry by a beautiful girl..."
Of course, that damned old woman was excluded.
Although her looks could indeed be described with the word "beautiful," what he liked were fresh and juicy older sisters, not old bones who had nearly lived long enough to become wind-dried cured meat.
But right now, the Witch of Repentance did not think that way.
Ever since he had gotten involved in this matter, Muen felt that setting aside every other problem, the biggest trouble had been getting chased by that damned old woman from beginning to end.
She chased him before, chased him after, and now, even after switching to another timeline, she still fucking chased him.
Chase, chase, chase, chase... Could it be that his charm had already grown so powerful that even a dignified Crowned could not free herself from it?
Even a perverted, clingy, lovesick stalker would not pursue someone this relentlessly!
"For now, I’ll let you enjoy yourself for a while. Once I can beat you one day, I’ll absolutely make you experience what it feels like to be wrung dry!"
In the purely physical sense!
After grinding his teeth and making a grand vow in his heart, Muen pushed himself upright.
Since he had no specific destination, after wandering around in circles, he still arrived at a place he was relatively familiar with.
The orphanage.
Muen looked around. Under the rampage of flames and some other calamity, this place had long since lost its former appearance and had completely turned into a shattered ruin.
The houses had collapsed, the ground had split open, and the traces of fire had dyed everything a shocking black.
Only at the very center of the open ground, although that crooked old tree had also died, it had not fallen. The single lonely swing left behind creaked as it swayed.
That deathly stillness and loneliness made Muen’s mood grow heavy again, but he could only move his feet and continue forward.
The scene before his eyes had already changed greatly, and to Muen, this place could be considered a kind of beginning, and also a kind of reflection.
Because the first time he had entered this timeline, the first time he had been hunted by the Witch of Repentance in this timeline, the first place he had escaped to had also been here.
It was as if it were some kind of fate.
However, before, in order to avoid the Witch of Repentance’s senses, he could only hide inside the houses that were still burning. Now that everything had been burned to nothing, he could instead stand in the open outside and see more, farther.
Only, the view he saw now was not so beautiful.
"Looks like it wasn’t just fire that caused all this."
Muen bent down and picked up a long saber from the ruins and dust.
The long saber had also been scorched black by fire. Its edge had curled, and even part of it had snapped off, practically turning it into a piece of scrap iron. But after Muen gently wiped away the burn marks from the hilt, he still saw a familiar crest.
The crest of the Kingdom’s royal family.
"The royal knights of the Kingdom’s Saint Haze Palace. Were they part of this disaster too? And not as protectors, but as perpetrators?"
Muen narrowed his eyes slightly.
When he came here last time, he had already felt some doubt. As an orphanage under the Church, although there could not possibly be anyone especially powerful here, those nuns and caretakers should still have been able to use some simple magic and Holy Light techniques.
Yet why had women like that all been burned to death inside a sealed classroom?
This was not some building that was difficult to escape from. At the start of the fire’s spread, they could very well have used magic to delay the flames while covering the children’s escape.
Now it seemed that, sure enough, they had not merely been burned to death. Instead, certain people outside had... blocked them in the flames, forcing them to be burned alive.
That was a death even more painful and despairing than dying because escape was impossible.
Muen could not close his eyes, because the moment he did, he felt as if he could hear the children crying, as if he could see those faces that had already left an impression on him gradually being devoured by tongues of flame.
"In other words, at the final moment, these Kingdom royal knights were also obeying the Salvation Society’s command? But... why?"
Muen took a deep breath.
The Kingdom’s upper ranks being controlled was understandable, because that king had been controlled.
But these royal knights, these soldiers, were made up of individual people.
Even if the loyalty they had trained from childhood made it difficult for them to disobey orders, as they watched this city be completely swallowed by flames, as they watched the residents they had once protected die miserably one after another in the fire, did they truly have no thoughts at all?
Unless... they had been controlled by the Salvation Society?
"No matter what the answer is, the so-called 'third phase' the Witch of Repentance mentioned is still blank to me. Everything they did was undoubtedly to buy time for them to destroy this city and achieve the objective they wanted. But as for the method of execution, that is still unknown."
As Muen thought, he crossed the ruins and arrived at an even more familiar place.
"Rise."
Muen’s foot trembled lightly.
Under the control of powerful force, the layered rubble of collapsed houses was shaken upward one after another by Muen. Very soon, the things buried underneath appeared before Muen again.
Just like what he had seen last time.
Dozens of young children, embracing one another, had been burned to death in the corner of the classroom.
"...I’m sorry. I came too late."
Muen crouched down and brushed his hand over these pitiful children one by one.
Because of long-term malnutrition, they had already been smaller than ordinary children. After being burned by the flames, their blackened remains curled there like infants.
Muen’s gaze swept over them and found a familiar figure. Pero was even smaller than Muen had imagined, and even half his body had been burned into charred remains.
But in his other hand, he was still tightly clutching something. Muen gently opened it. As expected, a small remaining corner of a banknote was clenched tightly in his palm.
"Ah. So that’s how it is..."
Muen suddenly smiled bitterly.
The moment he saw those banknotes, he suddenly realized something.
He could have noticed the truth about Saint Blancfazesiya a little earlier.
The breakthrough point had been these banknotes clenched tightly in Pero’s hand.
The reason was simple.
In Muen’s previous deduction, that is, the deduction of the True and False Royal Capital, within that True Royal Capital, there would not have been a kind person who gave Pero a large-value banknote.
Because Muen did not belong to this city. He had not been copied. There was only one of him.
So, in truth, when he first saw those banknotes, he should have realized it. Realized that this was not a matter of true and false, but of the continuation and division of time.
The large banknotes in dead Pero’s hand were the ones he had given.
Unfortunately, the shock of the royal capital falling into destruction, coupled with the urgency of being hunted by the Witch of Repentance, had made him overlook such a tiny detail. As a result, after he later saw the scene of Archbishop Ision being "killed" by his own daughter, he had completely leaned in an entirely wrong direction.
"I’m afraid that scene also had some hidden truth I don’t know about, and it was deliberately shown to me."
Otherwise, if he thought carefully, when the archbishop was already at the point of death, the Salvation Society really had no need to leave behind a perfectly intact cathedral.
And amid a field of ruins, an undamaged cathedral was practically the perfect bait to lure people into investigating.
As long as one intended to search for the truth, one would inevitably take the bait.
As for after taking the bait... everything afterward, regarding a certain person’s betrayal and the way it followed the current to make him that sinner, had come so naturally.
