"We... we won...?"
Rowan sat down in disbelief as he read the system notification.
After five years of suffering, they finally won!
While he was still in shock, Orelia rushed in and jumped into his arms, her face beaming with tears and a smile as she yelled, "We WON! We finally won!!"
Her cry of joy pulled him back.
And then he started laughing, the disbelief finally giving way to something that felt like relief.
"We actually won!! We won, Orelia! Everyone!"
"Everyone...? Anyone?!"
He stood up and looked behind him. Only the scarred battlefield answered back, silent.
"No one made it, Rowan. I checked." Orelia confirmed it quietly.
With the core in her chest she was linked to the planet itself, every life on it flowing through her like breath. And there was none left to feel.
Just the two of them. The last two survivors of an entire world.
[Congratulations for fending off an invader!]
[Due to special integration you will receive extra rewards]
[You have gained an extra tier up, you are now Tier 1.5]
[Level cap unlocked to 150]
[You have leveled up to level 122!]
[You have gained 1x [World Fragment (SSS)]: Can be used to upgrade any skill to the next tier while retaining its current rank]
"Nice! You're finally alive! Good job to me!"
Seeing Rowan alive made her so happy it brought her to tears.
"Why are you crying?"
"B-Because I worked so hard~!!"
Orelia burst into tears and hugged him deeply, releasing all the pent-up frustration she had been carrying.
Rowan understood her suffering. She had been the number one hunter in the world before it all came crashing down. For a long stretch before he had grind up enough to stand alongside her, she had soloed entire demon armies just to buy the world a little more time.
No one in the world had worked and suffered as hard as she had.
She deserved to let it all out.
Sadly, with all the souls gone and everyone dead, there was no one left to sing her praise.
That duty fell to him.
"Thank you for everything. You did enough."
He gently caressed her hair as she sobbed in his arms.
The strongest human turned to a girl who cried and cried until her eyes turned red.
"You don't understand! WE finally won! US!!" She looked up at him with tear-swollen eyes.
"What do you mean?" Rowan was confused.
They won, yes, but why did his praise still not seem to satisfy her?
"It's us, Rowan. You and me. WE finally won. You might not know it, but I tried so SO hard!!"
Orelia took a deep breath and stepped back, clearing her throat to collect herself.
"Before we continue, I don't want to hide anything from you anymore, so...."
"So...?" Rowan had no idea where she was going with this.
Was this a love confession??
"This is my 1,571st time," Orelia said.
"What?" Rowan was stunned.
"This is my 1,571st time. Among them, I killed the Demon King 210 times. And from all of them, you never made it."
Her face was beaming, even more relieved than when Rowan had landed the finishing blow.
"Phew! I finally got it off my chest, been holding that one for SO long! Hehe~!" Orelia laughed, visibly lighter, the biggest weight she had ever carried finally lifted.
"What did you do?"
Rowan's face turned pale.
He walked up to her and grabbed her shoulders, and when he looked into her eyes he finally saw it.
Insanity settled all the way to the core.
A madness he had never once caught in all the years they had spent together.
"You know my class, don't you? Time Lord. I can manipulate and control time to a certain degree." Orelia cupped his face in her hands, her smile warm and slow, sweet as honey dissolving on the tongue.
"And with the power of the [World Core], I upgraded my [Rewind] to [Reset], turning back time all the way to when I first awakened."
"But that's like... 7 years ago?"
"You remember~! I'm so happy!" She hugged him tightly, possessively.
"7 years times 1,571... That would be almost 11,000 years..." Rowan's heart dropped.
He looked at Orelia, so cheerful in his arms, and felt the full weight of what she had actually done.
Not five years of suffering.
But 11,000 years of resets lived through one loop at a time.
"Still, it means you can go back again, right? Start over, then we can save everyone!" Rowan's voice filled with hope.
Even if it sounded selfish to ask her to suffer through it again, but if they succeeded the next time, the outcome would be better.
The ending would be better.
The good ending, where everyone made it out alive.
But somehow his suggestion made Orelia's expression sour, a pout pulling at her face like he had said something deeply irritating.
"This again? How many times do I have to... Wait." She paused, genuinely confused.
"This IS the first time we've made it to this point before we argue..."
She seemed to be arguing a debate she had already lost a hundred times before, only to realize mid-sentence that this time was different.
"Please, Orelia, just one more time. I'll help!" Rowan offered, meaning every word.
But to her, those words felt like an insult to everything she had already given.
"NO!!" She shoved him back.
"We tried that before. It didn't work. No more tries! Let's move on to the next stage."
"Come on, if we just..."
"I tried that, okay! You didn't make it!!"
Orelia cut him short.
"No matter what route I chose, even when I found you earliest or when I soloed everything myself, you never made it no matter how hard I tried!"
She had killed the Demon King many, many times, exploiting every loophole across hundreds of loops before finally learning how to guarantee a win.
"Like this time, do you know how many times you died in this exact same scenario? 50! Before I finally figured out to wait for everyone else to die so you would have enough SP to both survive the boss and one shot it."
Orelia tried to explain. If the boss didn't die in a single attack it would counter and kill a SP-drained Rowan instantly.
She had no choice if she wanted to keep him alive.
In this loop she had shared her power with him, leaving herself without enough to kill the Demon King alone. But if she hadn't, he would have died midway through.
"You WHAT?!!" The blood rushed to Rowan's face. "You purposely let everyone DIE?!!"
"To save you, to save us! Why are you angry at me? We finally reached the ending together!"
Orelia was genuinely confused. She had expected him to be a little upset, but not like this.
She had done everything to help him.
"Was there really no other way? What about the other 210 times you won?!"
Rowan didn't want to believe it.
She was the person he had looked up to from the very beginning, the one he had pushed himself to his limits just to catch up to, to lighten her burden as humanity's last line of defense.
To find out she was the one who had condemned everyone to death just so he alone could survive.
His life was not worth a billion innocent people!
"It was either you die or everyone else. Don't you understand?"
"Why does it have to be me?! Why can't everyone just make it?" Rowan couldn't accept it.
If she had tried that many times, there had to be a point where humanity fought back on its own.
He wasn't even second in the hunter rankings.
There were people far stronger than him before all of this started.
"Because of your class, Rowan. Only you can buy enough time for people to start fighting back, but the result is always you dying. No matter how many times I tried, you never made it."
Her answer stopped him cold.
His class. Soul Reaper. The only class that could convert death into quality rather than quantity.
Every other dark magic user, every necromancer, could only trade corpses for numbers.
But numbers meant nothing to the Demon King. He had just lived through the proof of that.
"And because I love YOU!" Her confession carried complete sincerity.
"I don't care about them! I only ever wanted you!"
Her voice and expression were void of empathy. Only obsession and love filled her heart.
She truly did not care about human life in the slightest. The only thing she cared about was him.
But as much as he felt the weight of that, he couldn't let it end like this.
"I'm sorry, Orelia."
[You have used [World Fragment (SSS)]]
[Skill selected: Soul Eater (SSS): Directly attacks the target's soul, damage dealt to the body is proportional to skill rank]
[Upgraded to: Soul Devourer (Tier 2, SSS): Directly attacks the target's soul, damage dealt to the body is proportional to skill rank. On hit, automatically attempts to consume the target's soul immediately. Effect varies based on the strength of the target. Can be cast at range.]
"If you won't do it, then I'll do it for you."
[Soul Devourer]
A giant scythe appeared from above, not expanding from him but descending like a hanging guillotine swung down from the heavens. It dragged Orelia's soul out of her body like a hook pulling meat, then devoured it clean.
Her body never had a chance to react.
She had no answer for a skill she had never once seen used in 1,571 loops.
And worst of all, after falling in love with him across a thousand lifetimes, it had never once occurred to her that he would be the one to kill her.
"I'm not going to let the world die just because you wanted it to."
Even though he was angry about her methods, her sacrifice was real.
"I'm going to save it and save you."
The list of skills he could steal from her made him shiver. She really was the most powerful person who had ever lived.
[Time Alter (SSS): Diverts yourself into x number of copies, after 20 seconds you must choose one as your primary timeline.]
[Time Dilation (SSS): Diverges the flow of time around yourself or a target.]
[Time Stop (SSS): Anchors a target in frozen time.]
And so many more, each one more OP than the last.
But after going through all of them, he finally found the one he was looking for.
[You have gained skill: Reset (Tier 2, EX): Turns back time to an anchored point. (Anchor point found: 21/4/2027)]
Rowan gained the skill from killing her, but instead of panic or despair, her soul laughed and smiled.
"Ah, this is so like you~!" Her voice carried no anger or remorse.
Only love and warmth.
[Higher level entity detected: Skill effect reduced]
"This is why I love you so much, Rowan~ You always care so much, too much for your own good. You always push for the right thing, no matter what."
[Debuff effectiveness reduced]
Orelia's soul slowly pushed itself free from the scythe's edge, drifting toward him.
"Guess that's something that needs to change."
Her mortal body had perished, but the soul of a regressor who had ruled the world hundreds of times over was not so easily contained.
"I know all your weaknesses, Rowan. So, I'm going to fix them. Starting with the worst one, you always hesitated to harm others."
[Reset]
Before he could react, Orelia activated her skill first.
An hourglass drifted out of her World Core and began turning backward. He felt the pull immediately, his actions reversing, dragging him back second by second, then minute by minute.
"No!" Rowan fought against the current of time but couldn't.
Orelia moved freely through it, drifting up to him, and pressed a gentle kiss to his lips.
When he looked into her eyes, there was nothing there but madness.
"I'm going to change you. You're going to be perfect, and we will finally get to move on. Together."
Her body slowly dissolved into a sea of time as the battlefield around them wound itself back toward its ending.
[Reset]
[Error: Only one timeline can exist. Skill failed.]
Rowan tried to use the stolen skill, but it didn't take.
"No, NO!!!"
He fought to stop her, but she only smiled back and raised her hand in a small, gentle wave.
"See you soon, my dear husband~"
And the world restarted.