"Yes."
Roselle tilted his head back, as if gazing straight through the mausoleum ceiling into the sky beyond. "One of the outer gods scheming to invade Earth. No — the strongest of all the outer gods."
He let out a quiet sigh. "Beibei, do you have any idea how utterly hopeless I felt, the moment I learned the truth about the apocalypse?"
"Sequence 0 — a true god, standing at the very peak of this world — is, in front of those outer gods, no more than the difference between a small child and a grown adult. If not for the barrier in the sky... heh."
Bernadette stood frozen.
"So remember this — the moment that barrier falls, run. Immediately. Understand, Beibei? Those outer gods aren't after destroying Earth, or the people living on it — they're after the Source Quality here."
"...And what about you, Dad?"
Roselle smiled. "By the time it actually comes to that, I'll likely already have become the outer god's puppet, my own consciousness long gone."
Bernadette's body trembled faintly. Something occurred to her. "Could the Nation of Disorder help you?"
"The Nation of Disorder... won't help either."
Roselle shook his head. "Unless I can simultaneously absorb the Arbitrator Pathway and whatever remaining pathway is left, ascending beyond godhood itself — only then would there be even the faintest chance."
Within the Lord of Mysteries' worldview, the Child of Chaos was, in essence, the "youngest son" of creation — by rights, its standing should match that of its eldest sister, the Mother Goddess of Depravity. But in reality, the gap between them spanned nearly an entire tier.
One was a Pillar. The other was nothing at all, by comparison.
"Wait."
Just then, Roselle suddenly asked, "Why did you bring up the Nation of Disorder at all?"
"Because..."
Before Bernadette could answer, Roselle pushed himself upright, shouting, "You've seen the Nation of Disorder, haven't you? You've met Vincent — haven't you?!"
"!!!"
Something jolted through Bernadette's chest: Sure enough — Dad really does know about the Nation of Disorder. He even knows about Vincent. Could this be another one of Vincent's own arrangements, engineered from the future, back in the past?
"Yes."
She gave a small nod. "Just a few months ago, this Vincent you're talking about—"
Bernadette quickly recounted everything, then followed up with her real question: "But three days ago, once Vincent returned to his own world, he never swapped back again. It's as if the connection between the two worlds has simply severed."
"Dad — do you know what actually happened?"
"Hahahahahaha."
Roselle answered with a burst of wild laughter, sinking back into his chair as he laughed, his whole body shaking with it. "Hahahaha, it worked. It actually worked!"
"It worked!"
"It worked!"
"It worked!"
"Hahahahaha!"
Bernadette asked urgently, "What worked?"
Roselle kept laughing, and it took nearly half a minute before he finally reined it in, looking at his daughter, and said, deliberate, word by word: "The soul-swap between you and Vincent — that was my doing. My intervention."
"What?"
Bernadette was stunned. She and Vincent had assumed all along that this had been engineered by future-Vincent himself — and now her own father was telling her he'd been behind it?!
"Why?"
"For you. For me. And for this world, too."
That answer caught Bernadette even more off guard than the last — but this time, she didn't press further, waiting patiently for her father to explain.
"Vincent..."
Roselle had regained his composure somewhat, murmuring, "Everything he's done, he's done purely for himself. In his heart, there is only himself. To achieve his goals, he's capable of caring about nothing else at all."
"Even if this whole world — the entire universe — were destroyed, it wouldn't cost him a moment's concern."
"???"
What is Dad even talking about? How did we suddenly jump to the destruction of the universe?
And is this... is this really the same Vincent I know?
"And I happened to catch a glimpse of his scheme, so I quietly used the power of 'Distortion' to intervene — swapping out the person he'd originally intended to exchange souls with, replacing them with you instead, binding the two of you together, inseparable."
"That way, he could no longer act purely for his own sake alone... and at worst — at the very worst — at least you'd survive."
Bernadette's mind reeled, chaotic. She asked, hesitant, "Dad, what exactly does Vincent want?"
"He wants..."
Roselle got a few words out before suddenly stopping, his tone turning distant. "I... I've forgotten."
A few seconds later, realization struck him. "That must be because I deliberately erased those memories myself — to keep them from falling into the wrong hands."
"But all you need to know is this — I succeeded!"
"..."
Bernadette was quiet for a moment, setting aside the flood of questions in her mind for now. "But Vincent's already returned to his own world. My connection to him — even our swap itself — seems to have been severed."
"You still hold the 'Broker's' ability, don't you? Which means the two of you remain deeply, inextricably connected. You're still one of the Nation of Disorder's rightful holders."
"Even if the two of you eventually have a falling-out, go your separate ways — you'll still be able to carry off a portion of the Nation of Disorder's authority with you! He can never fully separate himself from you."
"And that alone is enough."
In that moment, "divorce splits the Source Quality fifty-fifty" became, quite literally, reality.
Bernadette couldn't shake the feeling that her father's tone, just now, carried a note of teasing amusement. She thought it over, then asked, "Why would the Goddess of the Evernight help conceal your corruption?"
Though her father had only said "someone helped conceal it," the only being in this world capable of something like that was, as far as she could tell, the Goddess of the Evernight.
"I don't know."
Roselle shook his head. "I've had almost no real contact with her at all. Maybe... maybe it's simply out of fellow-countryman sentiment?"
At that, he gave a light laugh. "Yes — that Goddess of the Evernight, and your dear old Dad, come from the very same place."
Bernadette said, flat, "I know."
"You certainly can't believe that — you know?"
Roselle froze completely.
"I also know that Vincent had a daughter with the Goddess of the Evernight. She..."
"Wait, wait a moment!"
Roselle pressed one hand to his forehead, the other raised. "Wait, just — give me a moment to process this!"
He was silent for a full minute, then said, in a tone of pure disbelief, "You're telling me Vincent and the Goddess of the Evernight had something going on? And had a daughter together?!"
Bernadette was a little surprised. "You didn't know, Dad?"
Roselle looked baffled. "Was I supposed to know this?"
Then he threw his hands up, exclaiming, "How could I possibly know something this... absurd?!"
Roselle rubbed his temples. "I've genuinely never even met the real Vincent... I only ever encountered him through the Source Fortress..."
"Oh. Oh, I see. That's it. That's it exactly."
He seemed to land on something. "So that's why the Goddess of the Evernight helped me... her thinking probably lined up with mine, without either of us realizing it."
"But — the two of them actually have a daughter..."
"The Goddess of the Evernight — she must know a great many things I don't! She must be holding onto secrets I have no knowledge of at all."
Roselle's voice grew more agitated. "You... go ask her. You have to go ask her."
As he spoke, Roselle's emotional state began growing more and more unstable. Two cracks suddenly split open across his face, as if a pair of asymmetric new eyes were forming.
Except those "eyes" had no pupils at all — nothing but a solid wash of crimson.
Then another crack split open beneath those two "eyes," filled with the same pure, blood-red light, replacing what remained of Roselle's original features, leaving him looking bizarre, horrifying.
Roselle suddenly thrust out his right hand, pushing Bernadette straight out of the mausoleum from a distance, his voice a strained, agonized snarl: "I'm about to lose control! Leave!"
"Dad."
"Get out of here!!!"
To be continued…
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