Taming the Protagonist

Volume 3

Chapter 24 : Miserable World

Learning required time, understanding required time.

But Anselm, who had intentionally been guiding Marina, did not give her much time.

The girl with many matters on her shoulders ran around everywhere with Anselm; even with the little thing Anselm had bought her earlier, a necklace that could enhance stamina as support, her expression was still somewhat haggard.

Her workload was beyond what ordinary people could imagine—using the Queen Bee as a fulcrum to organize Strife Fortress’s network from scratch, constantly weighing and inferring Anselm’s intentions and making preparations in advance, analyzing the existing intelligence every day to consolidate the foundation, thinking about how to make achievements under Shadow Swamp’s suppression, having to consider her own future and accomplishments while absolutely not neglecting her duties… and now there had to be one more added: helping her headache-inducing younger sister manage the lower city, which was chaotic to an unknown extent.

And on top of that, Anselm also pressed onto her shoulders what made Marina feel the hardest to move forward with, even nearly suffocating.

Although compared to the methods of taming Hitana Lansmarlos and Mingfuluo, this kind of small matter could be called overly gentle, Marina was completely different from those two girls—from the very beginning, she had held absolute adoration and loyalty toward Anselm, and like the vast majority of people, she would never waver until death.

Therefore, it was beyond doubt that Anselm had expectations for her; he would not waste time on people without value.

If there had been no value, even if Marina had been Hitana Lansmarlos’s older sister, he would not have let this girl appear in his life so frequently.

“Salt Lake City… hmm.”

On the swaying carriage, Anselm looked out at the city at the end of the yellow-dust-colored land, and said softly:

“Ganlei, from Strife Fortress to Salt Lake City, about how long had we ridden in the carriage?”

Marina, who was recording something, immediately lifted her head. “Six and a half hours. This place was not far from Strife Fortress.”

“A small city,” Anselm muttered to himself.

“Its teleportation array had been shut down, no big shots came and went, but it also wasn’t too far from a major lord city like Strife Fortress. The material conditions were also decent. It was a suitable place for retirement.”

The young Hydra looked at the adventurer girl who seemed thoughtful, and smiled. “Do you think so, Ganlei?”

Marina, who put her notes onto her thighs and sat properly, thought for a moment, then shook her head:

“A third-tier transcendent could receive generous treatment anywhere in the Empire. Even if they did nothing, there would still be many nobles who came looking for them. If they wanted to retire… whether it was Eastern Port or the southern border, both were much better than the West Kingdom.”

“Then, why would this adventurer gentleman who bought the boy, and most adventurers who had long since stopped exploring, choose to settle in the West Kingdom?”

“This even needed asking?!”

Before Marina could answer, the adventurer in the same carriage lifted his hat and grinned. “Of course it’s freedom.”

“…Yes, freedom.”

This question was very simple, nothing complicated. After repeating those two words, Marina organized her wording a little:

“Noble forces could exert the least influence in the West Kingdom… Even if the ones ruling the four great territories were still grand dukes, adventurers still had a degree of freedom far beyond transcendent ones in the other regions of the Empire.”

Transcendent ones obtained countless privileges with transcendent power; West Kingdom’s adventurers were even more so.

Even after retiring from the front line, they absolutely could not give up that freedom.

Nobles and freedom…

Marina’s thoughts instantly caught onto a key point.

She looked at Anselm, just about to say something, when she was interrupted by the adventurer in the carriage again.

“I’m saying, bro… your tastes are pretty unique.”

The adventurer sitting beside Anselm laughed and bumped his shoulder. “You like this kind with not much meat? Such a mortal, can she take—”

A bloodline that spread out of thin air across his throat made him shut up.

“Apologize to my servant.” Anselm’s eyes were half-closed, his tone indifferent.

“Whoa whoa whoa… be careful, bro.”

Even being threatened like this, the adventurer still wasn’t angry, nor did he show any panic.

Instead, he raised both hands, very obedient.

“Just a joke… don’t take it seriously. I didn’t expect someone to take a mortal who couldn’t take any tossing at all as a servant.”

After saying that, he even pressed his palms together and begged Marina with utmost surrender: “This cute lady, can you have your master spare me this time?”

There was neither resentment when his life was threatened, nor reluctance to bow to a mortal.

Marina had seen too many people.

At a glance she could tell this adventurer did not care at all; it was like… like he had been playing around, and “apologized” to her.

Marina did not speak, and her silence finally began to make this adventurer gentleman uneasy.

He dry-laughed twice and cautiously inched his butt away little by little.

When he had inched to the end of the carriage, his figure immediately disappeared.

Very tactful; seasoned adventurers were all like this.

But a seasoned adventurer, no matter what, should not do something so rash, so provocatively challenge an unfamiliar transcendent.

Which also meant that, in the eyes of seasoned adventurers, humiliating a mortal did not count as provocation.

No, this was not even a humiliation; it was merely a flippant remark that did not even qualify as a joke.

This was clearly a tacit consensus among adventurers, among transcendent ones, that needed no words.

The wheels rumbled forward. Marina gripped the notes in her hand tightly, as if clinging to the last shred of dignity.

“Do you want me to kill him?”

Anselm suddenly asked.

His words made Marina freeze.

This kind of question that sought her opinion made the girl’s heart swell with panic.

She had been about to refuse in flustered instinct, but when her eyes met Anselm’s deep sea-blue irises, she fell silent.

If she was going to refuse, it should not be because of the reason of not wanting to trouble Mr. Anselm.

This thought surfaced in her mind.

So the girl shook her head and said, “No need, Mr. Anselm. It wasn’t worth it.”

“Not worth it?” Anselm asked in return.

Marina said softly, “The talent of the mortal Ma Ganlei might be worth your guidance, but it wasn’t worth you killing a transcendent because of one careless remark; it wasn’t worth you committing such a brutal act.”

She was not belittling her own ability, but emphasizing the identity of “mortal.”

Anselm gave a slight nod and did not say more, only calmly gazing toward the ever-closer Salt Lake City.

Marina looked at his profile.

On that face that was completely different from his original appearance, there was a chilling solemnity and majesty that inspired respect, making one feel that Faust seemed to be exactly this image.

But in fact, Marina knew very clearly that when Anselm was alone with her, he showed gentle expressions less and less.

But Marina did not believe that this meant Anselm had grown distant from her, nor was that youth who had always been gentle to others deliberately putting on some majestic posture; rather, it was because only when alone with her… the person she yearned for would begin to think about those heavy things.

Marina felt honored by this, and also uneasy.

Another half hour passed, and the carriage finally arrived at Salt Lake City.

Anselm actually had many ways of passage.

Not to mention Strife itself provided multiple means of transportation, he could carry Marina and fly to Salt Lake City; there was no need for such a long time at all.

But Anselm had still deliberately taken a caravan carriage that charged no fare.

That adventurer on the road was the caravan’s guard.

The answer was obvious.

Although he had been applying pressure to Marina during this period, Anselm was not simply letting her struggle in the vortex of confusion; he still gave her chances to analyze the situation, and room to breathe.

The young Hydra glanced at Marina, who was holding that notebook tightly; the girl’s constantly taut nerves were fully visible on his side.

“According to Ms. Mingfuluo’s guidance…”

After entering the city, after Anselm and Marina boarded another carriage inside the city, they arrived before a rather luxurious villa within Salt Lake City.

“65 Heckle Street, the residence of the adventurer Hastings.”

Marina seemed not to notice Anselm’s gaze.

After confirming the destination, she nodded, then turned to look at Anselm. “Mr. Faust, it was here.”

—By the way, this time Mingfuluo did not follow Anselm, because she neither wanted to run errands for Anselm again, nor felt at ease letting Hitana Lansmarlos go alone to rescue the other slaves who needed rescuing, so she was, in a sense, temporarily taking Marina’s place for one day and staying by Hitana Lansmarlos’s side.

The girl, holding the strap of her satchel with both hands, said softly, “Should we greet first, or—”

“Adventurers don’t need to follow so many rules, Ganlei.”

Anselm walked straight forward; the iron gate blocking him automatically disintegrated, turning into powder and dust.

The adventurer Lord Faust discarded the order that Lord Hydra had always adhered to, and used that power the world could not defy at will.

The villa’s front door also silently split apart. When Anselm stepped into the house, the maid who was cleaning the living room—only wearing an apron—threw him an astonished look, then let out a scream as a matter of course.

—Of course, there was no need for this scream to bring out the owner of the house. Anselm only lightly tapped the hilt of the Pitch Black Blade at his waist, and the ceiling automatically cracked open.

Along with the successive sounds of bricks and stones shattering and heavy objects crashing down, a man still covered with a blanket just dropped straight onto the floorboards, a blank look on his half-awake face.

“Haola Hastings, the fifteen-year-old boy you bought from Varied Snake in Strife Fortress last time, hand him to me.”

Without asking for identity, Lord Faust went straight to the point, looking down at the adventurer who was gradually coming back to his senses.

—Of course, in reality he could even skip this sentence and directly bring that fifteen-year-old boy who had been sold over back, but doing so clearly went against one of Anselm’s original purposes for taking this commission…

“…Wait.” Mr. Hastings rubbed his forehead. “Friend, who are you? Someone from Varied Snake?”

This time, Anselm did not speak, and before his silence even lasted two seconds, Marina proactively took over and spoke:

“Mr. Faust took a commission at [Executioner] to find the commissioner’s missing son. After several days of verification, we could confirm that the boy Varied Snake sold to you was the target of the commission, so please… so, you had to hand that boy to Mr. Faust.”

The girl’s tone was unhurried, her logic very clear, but Hastings became even more confused as he listened.

“Commission… [Executioner]… Faust?”

The man who seemed to have just been sleeping a moment ago sized Anselm up for a long time, then burst out laughing. “You said you’re Faust? Seriously? Hahahaha bro, my morning grumpiness is about to get wiped out by you.”

As he said this, he unhurriedly put on the clothes that had also fallen to the side, looking as if he was not angry at all that a madman claiming to be Faust had broken into his home, and even chiseled through the ceiling and disturbed his afternoon nap.

—But of course that was impossible. The reason he was acting so harmonious and friendly now was purely because he had smelled danger, and thus put on this flattering appearance.

…Just like a Hyena.

Why was every adventurer like this?

Even if he truly had no ability to resist before Mr. Anselm, but… could he put on that humble, ingratiatingly friendly look so naturally, with no psychological barrier at all?

Did they… not have such things as a strong person’s sense of shame and dignity?

And Anselm remained silent, or rather, he was waiting for Marina to answer.

So after a brief silence, Marina stared coldly at the adventurer who was laughing loudly.

“If you didn’t want to lose your chance to wake up from now on, then take back what you just said, and apologize to Mr. Faust.”

“…Huh?”

Only then, only then, did the adventurer Hastings’s gaze fall on Marina, as if he had had no idea who had been speaking just now.

“You were, his… uh?”

The suspicious Hastings seemed unable to say the two words “servant.” He sized Marina up for a while, then said with a baffled expression, “A little pet?”

The adventurer did not show any contempt or arrogance.

Like the adventurer in the carriage, he asked this with pure puzzlement, without any malice.

How could a mortal have the qualification to cut into the conversation between powerful transcendent ones like this? This was not normal.

“I will not repeat myself.” Marina looked at Hastings expressionlessly. “For your rudeness just now, apologize to Mr. Faust.”

“Oh… uh, fine.”

The man shrugged.

“If you really are that legendary lord, then I really should be grateful that you’re letting me keep this dog's life of mine.”

Adventurers, who always had to step into unknown Maze Realm gates and descend upon all kinds of strange and fantastical places, mostly had long since tempered extraordinary acceptance.

This Mr. Hastings did not even show shock that Anselm would make such a big fuss just for a commission—or rather, he hid it well.

“Back to the point, you want my little baby, right.”

A smile surfaced on the man’s face, and this chilling term made a very bad premonition rise in Marina’s heart.

“About that… I did buy him properly from Varied Snake—of course, if Lord Faust insisted on having him, it wasn’t impossible to just take him, it was just that…”

He smiled as he rubbed his hands. “A big shot like you wouldn’t care about this little bit of money, right? After all, taking this kind of commission from the start definitely wasn’t for money.”

“There was no such thing as legality in slave trade.”

Marina still spoke in Anselm’s place.

She stared at Hastings, enunciating each word: “Right now, you’d better hand him over immediately.”

“……”

Hastings fell silent.

It was not because he was unwilling, but because he once again shifted his gaze onto Marina, his eyes full of incomprehension.

This confusion made him fall silent.

“So…”

Only at this moment did he suddenly realize:

“So you weren’t Lord Faust’s pet or something, you were his servant!”

In that instant, some string in Marina’s heart completely snapped.

All these days, as Anselm’s “servant,” as a mortal servant, all the puzzled, baffled, strange looks she had borne were like a curse with delayed onset, exploding at this moment.

“I was… Mr. Faust’s servant.”

Marina’s nails dug into her palm; her voice trembled from emotions out of control. “Was there a problem?”

“Uh… huh? Um, there was no problem?”

Hastings seemed to hear the change in Marina’s emotions.

He seemed worried this would make Anselm dissatisfied, and immediately stated his stance: “I didn’t look down on you because you’re a mortal, miss! How should I put it… ah right! You were clearly a mortal and could still be chosen as a servant by Mr. Faust—didn’t that prove you were amazing!”

He laughed loudly.

“You would definitely have great achievements in the future, cute miss. Being valued by Mr. Faust, the future wouldn’t it just be…”

Marina could not hear Hastings’s words.

In her ears, there was only a buzzing noise.

Enough…

Why was it all this attitude?

Not disdain, not contempt, but curiosity, an amused attitude?

Why… Why were all of you wearing the expression of “Look, his helper is actually a dog that can talk”?

Transcendent ones did not despise mortals. Not at all.

During this period, Marina saw it more clearly than anyone—they actually did not despise mortals at all.

They simply did not care, that was all.

The adventurer on the carriage who had been threatened by Anselm did not care about apologizing to a mortal, and would not feel even the slightest shame.

Just like his earliest insult to Marina had not been out of malice at all—mortals were no longer things of the same world as them; what qualification did they have to make them inexplicably generate malice and want to insult them?

Who would suddenly think up the idea to “insult” a dog, an ant or a toy?

They simply did not care, that was all.

Marina recalled Queen Bee Yapo’s attitude when she met her the first time.

She recalled how she had laughed out loud after hearing Marina’s threat, exactly like this Mr. Hastings.

The Queen Bee laughed out loud because of Marina’s threat; she had no anger at all of “this mortal dared threaten me,” but was full of the joy and delight of “this mortal was threatening me.”

Why had she never had this kind of experience before?

Why, in the past, had she never suffered this kind of disregard that was even more rage-inducing than contempt?

This identity of Faust’s attendant—perhaps it did not compare to being Hydra’s follower, but did adventurers not fear Faust?

Taking ten thousand steps back, even if they did not believe Mr. Anselm was truly Faust, the power he had displayed still wasn’t enough to make adventurers… even with me included, maintain that awe?

Transcendent ones and mortals… the girl had already perceived that Anselm was intentionally guiding her thinking about the social relationship between these two.

For a clever mortal, this was immense torment and suffering.

While she searched for answers step by step, she also saw more clearly, little by little, her insignificance, no different from dust.

—Even following Anselm, a lowliness that still could not be erased.

In Chishuang Territory, in the Imperial Capital, in Hydra’s Domain, this lowliness of hers had been covered by Hydra’s supreme radiance, and no one would treat Marina with this kind of “not caring.”

But at this moment… Even with the identity of Faust’s servant as reinforcement, almost all adventurers had never placed her, this mortal, in their eyes.

Hastings was still chattering: “Speaking of which, I used to think about getting a mortal servant too, but because taking care of them was too troublesome… you knew, right? The servant wasn’t some maid attendant. Cooking, cleaning up, and that was the end. How could a mortal hold up—”

“Enough!”

Marina, who had never shown any loss of composure before Anselm, shouted uncontrollably for the first time: “Enough!”

Her lowliness and insignificance were exposed under the sun.

Her weakness and powerlessness had nowhere to hide under the fierce light.

But these, in fact, were not the fundamental reason Marina lost control like this.

The reason was that she had already faintly, faintly touched the truth of that question from back then?

—Why were there so many mortals gathered under the rule of adventurers, under the rule of transcendent ones?

Hastings was frightened by her appearance and did not know what to say for a while.

Marina staggered back two steps and bumped into Anselm’s chest.

The young Hydra lowered his head and gazed at the girl’s dazed, collapsing expression, and said softly:

“Ganlei.”

“Were you confused, or could you not accept the answer you had touched?”

“I…”

Marina’s lips trembled; her voice was hoarse.

That question’s answer… What exactly was it?

Clearly, adventurers, transcendent ones, did not care about mortals at all—so why did mortals flock to these people’s rule, why did the commoners of Strife Fortress’s lower city still live in that kind of place?

The answer… could not be simpler.

The Emperor had built a complete Empire.

It had a sufficiently complete system, sufficiently strict rules, sufficiently distinct… classes.

Under the influence of such a system, rules, and classes, this secular order overrode the transcendent, because the existence that prescribed all of this was the deity itself that overrode everything.

Within this framework, secular order and projection became absolute, and secular contradictions and entanglements created injustice in the eyes of the world.

When nobles oppressed commoners, would someone deliberately emphasize the nobles’ transcendent identity? No, they would not.

That contradiction pointed straight at the nobles’ identity, yet no one would set the endpoint on the nobles’ transcendent identity.

Then when transcendent ones oppressed mortals… was this some unforgivable thing?

Of course not, because if transcendent ones did this, what could mortals say?

That transcendent ones stood above the ordinary was only natural.

When nobles oppressed commoners, commoners likewise could do nothing, but these two… had a fundamental difference.

That was the consensus of this world, of this human realm.

When transcendent ones were slotted into this framework of nobles, their identities, their respective duties, and their eventual actions—if there was mismatch—then it was destroying the established order and rules, and it became wrong.

But if both sides’ identities existed only between unfettered transcendent ones and mortals who looked up at the sky, then everything a transcendent one did was correct.

The Empire was a purgatory, a purgatory created to anchor the Emperor's humanity, to adjust the Emperor's mood, a purgatory that Marina hated, could not accept.

Marina still remembered that day, the day Anselm brought her transformation.

After that day, she constantly learned and refined herself, constantly tempered herself.

She read many, many books, her horizons and knowledge increasing at an unbelievable speed.

And among them, the greatest credit belonged to the books Anselm had compiled himself, those carefully selected pieces of knowledge from another world.

For Anselm—perhaps also for herself—Marina had thought countless times about how to deal with the Empire’s sick, crazed system, how to let commoners live better—she had also, like her younger sister, held the simplest wish.

This was an incomparably difficult road.

Marina had been learning along the many books Anselm recorded, and until now she had only gnawed through less than one tenth.

But now… she discovered she was wrong, absurdly wrong.

If she dismantled the Empire’s system and changed the current rules, could the Empire become better?

No, it would not.

Those harsh policies that tore countless families apart, the nobles’ authority that made countless commoners suffer eternal pain, the rotten rules that made this Empire forever have oppression, oppression that could not be eradicated—actually protected commoners.

Because even the most rotten rules were better than having no rules at all.

When all rules collapsed, there would be only two kinds of people left in this world.

No—one kind of person, and one kind of… plaything.

And conversely… no matter how rules were changed, as long as the difference between transcendent and mortal still existed, the core would never change.

Because no rules could constrain the transcendent to be beneath mortals.

Replacing that higher-level contempt with class oppression instead was, rather… a better choice.

Oppression, instead, was a better choice?

Marina was dazed.

She could not hear Hastings, nor could she hear Anselm’s voice; she only vaguely sensed that she was being pulled along.

No matter how corrupt and vile nobles and rulers were, they always had constraints and responsibilities brought by 【identity】, but adventurers, transcendent ones—what about them?

Did they have any obligations they must fulfill toward mortals?

No, they had always done as they pleased.

Adventurers did not care. Adventurers were not the Emperor.

Adventurers… were only a pack of Hyenas.

Hyenas that chased dynastic relics, chased the remnants of Maze Realms, chased instinct and pleasure.

They chose, like the Emperor, to draw that pleasure, yet they had no way to, like the Emperor, also dominate all transcendent ones within it and establish a vast Empire with detailed, strict rules.

They were only… draining the pond to catch fish for amusement.

Mortals’ suffering, mortals’ gratitude, mortals’ support… whatever things could make them feel pleasure, they would do, and when that passion faded, how mortals lived, what the future would become, no one cared.

Perhaps on some day they suddenly remembered they still had such a group of people under them, and on a whim continued to bestow grace, or took joy in their suffering.

That was a terror one level higher than oppression. If oppression still maintained, at the lowest level, a slight dignity of being “human,” then this kind of manipulation and play that seemed to crush all meaning, value, dignity of mortals… was a greater hell.

And what was more despairing was…

“Little baby, I’m really sorry, you have to go.”

“…What? W-why? Why, Lord Hastings!”

The panicked, anxious cries briefly pulled Marina back to reality.

She hazily saw a slender figure in a beautiful dress… a girl? With tear-filled eyes, she clung to the adventurer’s arm, pleading bitterly.

“Don’t you want me anymore? Was there something about me you didn’t like? Don’t abandon me… don’t abandon me, okay, Lord Hastings!”

“Hey, wasn’t it because your dad was looking for you?”

“I… my father?”

“Yeah. Go with this Lord Faust.” Hastings shrugged. “Although I’d really hate to part with you… haha, just joking, Mr. Faust. How could I possibly hate to part with you? You just take him away.”

“No!” That “girl” screamed, saying something inconceivable. “I don’t want to go!”

That was not some girl; it was Anselm’s target, the missing boy who had been sold by Varied Snake into Hastings’s hands.

He wore women’s clothing and had become this adventurer’s forbidden plaything and toy.

In Marina’s eyes, the figure of this boy was reflected.

He had clearly been abducted.

He had clearly suffered so much.

His father was willing to take out all his savings for him, even if it was fine to see the corpse.

Now he was only a slave… no, not even a slave, only a plaything.

Yet he… did not want to give up this identity as a plaything.

“You… hadn’t thought about it?”

When this youth was pleading with Hastings, Marina spoke in a drifting, weak voice that seemed like she would die at any moment. “You hadn’t thought that sooner or later, no… very soon, he would get tired of you?”

“Those words were already obvious enough. He didn’t care about you at all.”

These words made the youth freeze, but he still clung tightly to Hastings’s arm, not saying a word.

He had thought about this question—Marina could read that from the youth’s hesitant, shrinking gaze.

But at this moment he still chose to stay here, and the answer… was obvious.

—Just like the answer to that question Marina did not want to accept, the answer that made her shiver.

“I don’t want to… don’t want to go back.”

He did not want to go back.

“Didn’t want to go…”

Did not want to go back to the dirty, fetid lower city.

Even if the price was becoming an adventurer’s plaything, even if he would soon be abandoned.

The commoners living in the West Kingdom also did not want to accept the nobles’ oppressive rule, and did not want to feel that class pressure that made people unable to breathe.

They would rather accept the rule of adventurers who had no method, who did not follow rules, because they did not care about mortals, precisely because… they did not care about mortals.

Thus there would be grace that came for no price, for no reason—like snacks a master casually tossed to a pet.

This kind of capriciousness was something nobles in a class environment mostly would not do.

They too would treat commoners as playthings, but that was built upon disdain and contempt.

Not like independent adventurers, transcendent ones… completely not taking them as a kind of living being that had any relation to themselves.

Even if it might be miserable, might suffer because of this disorder, so what?

【For transcendent lords to be willing to help us was already mercy!】

The commoners living in the West Kingdom had fled the class oppression that came from the Empire.

Yet they willingly viewed themselves as countless times more lowly than the oppressed, as playthings that transcendent ones could dominate and slaughter at will.

And felt…

“If Father…” the youth said timidly, “If Father knew I was living very well at Lord Hastings’s place, he… he definitely wouldn’t force me to go back. Adventurer lord, you… could you tell him that, okay?”

Marina closed her eyes.

On her bloodless face surfaced a miserable, mocking smile.

And felt, it was only natural.

Without needing others to oppress, without needing external force to threaten, they spontaneously believed… that transcendent ones completely stood above ordinary people as the truth of the world.

—Unconditional self-degradation and… enslavement.

They might feel that their life was much better than the people of the Empire’s other regions, right?

This was… what you wanted me to see, Mr. Anselm?

Marina finally understood why Anselm had shown disappointment toward her back then, why when he was alone with her, he would think so seriously in silence.

He was wiser and more far-sighted than anyone, and also more than anyone wanted to change the Empire.

And when he used this wisdom to realize his desire, in the process of dismantling the Empire’s essence little by little, he discovered the essence of this world—

When he discovered that transcendent ones eternally stood above, absolutely above mortals, that even a purgatory like the Empire was more “human” than ruleless desolation—

When he discovered that even if he truly could completely reform the Empire’s entire system, overturn all rules and start over, he still could not solve that problem—

How despairing… must he have been?

“…Mr. Faust.”

Marina looked at the target that the legendary Faust had finally found after putting in real effort over these few days, looked at how he was pitiful and absolutely did not want to go back, and murmured in a daze:

“Could you tell me, was I dreaming?”

“Tell me that after the dream ended, this world wasn’t so tragic and crazed.”