Chapter 208 : Chapter 208
Chapter 208
The path to Baphomet was thick with monsters.
Not ordinary monsters — grotesquely warped, misshapen creatures.
Bodies of things like Orcs and Goblins, half-melted and fused together.
They crawled like slimes, endlessly scattering a membrane-like substance on the ground.
From the sticky fluid stuck to the earth, more bizarre creatures sprang up.
With each division, the monsters grew more numerous and further from their originals.
Pan's sword cut through all of that corruption.
'Beautiful.'
Everyone's swords were swords, but Pan's was especially beautiful.
Each trajectory carried both practicality and an aesthetic intention.
How could the most beautiful, the most perfect sword be forged?
Pan's talent, meeting ten years and merciless real combat, had blossomed to this degree.
"Let us go."
At Rozalin's words, the people around us drew weapons and surged forward.
Every single one of them. Not one stepped back.
From a high vantage point, the people and the monsters would have looked much alike.
The humans' bodies streamed with eerie light — green, indigo, and black all blended together.
Some had bulging veins through which dark energy flowed.
They followed Pan.
I stood on the hill and watched the scene, dazed.
"Quite the spectacle, is it not, Teacher?"
A familiar voice.
I turned, and there sat a Rozalin I knew, wearing an expression I did not — chin resting on her hand.
She sat with her knees drawn up, facing the wind, watching the people dying below the hill.
"Rozalin."
"......Ah. There were times like this too."
Rozalin's gaze was fixed ahead, on her own self fighting beside Pan.
The one-armed Rozalin swung her blade like a whip, then like a bludgeon.
The speed of the weapon created flow; a diagonal stance held balance.
It was the very swordsmanship I had seen the first time.
"She is really weak."
Rozalin let out a small laugh.
The future — or past — Rozalin was being overwhelmed by the monsters.
Mistakes that the present Rozalin would never make kept piling up.
But other people were here in that time.
"General!"
"Save her! Even if we die, the General must survive — she is the future!"
Soldiers with dead eyes and not a whole limb among them scrambled to save Rozalin.
They looked nothing like the people who, just two days earlier, had clawed at each other over a single Fantasy.
I had thought every trace of conscience was gone.
"And he is truly strong."
Rozalin's gaze followed Pan.
Each swing of Pan's sword grew more beautiful.
As though each stroke brought him one step closer to truth.
And at last, his sword reached Baphomet's scythe.
ZIIIIIIING—!
A vibrational hum mixed with thousands of tremors per second exploded.
The air shuddered once, ringing the world.
The sound of the apocalypse, thick with unbearable Demonic Energy.
CLANG!
ZIIIIING—!
Baphomet swung its scythe with its tentacle-like arm.
Each sweep of the massive scythe — easily tens of meters long — upended the earth and killed dozens.
Pan bore it alone.
No — in places, Pan was even pushing back.
With a hup, Pan inhaled and his sword rose from low to high in a clean arc.
A flash of light shot up to the sky.
A fine hairline crack appeared on one of Baphomet's arms, and the scythe dimmed slightly.
— GROOAAAHHH!
— KRAAASH!
The surrounding monsters, seemingly affected, shrieked in agony.
But Baphomet was no pushover.
A deep blood-red radiance gathered on its horns.
With a flash, a beam of light split the world in two.
Everything in the beam's path was reduced to ruin; the earth was carved deep.
A trajectory as powerful as the World Eater's passage.
Only one person survived where that beam had struck.
Pan.
"About ten of us survived, you know? That was purely luck. If we had been hit, someone else would have been the one who regressed."
Rozalin said with a self-deprecating smile.
Hard to deny.
Could I block that attack right now?
I pictured myself standing before the beam.
'Once?'
Multiple hits would be impossible, but one — if I was prepared to lose part of my body — was feasible.
Pan blocked such attacks multiple times and kept moving forward.
He was not unscathed.
Black smoke poured from his body, and severe wounds covered him everywhere.
But Pan did not stop.
"Here. Right now, Teacher."
Baphomet fired another beam.
And immediately, the great scythe followed.
Pan's eyes tracked the trajectory.
A very brief moment.
A second divided into hundredths.
In that time, a cascade of expressions passed across Pan's face.
Then at some point, his expression froze.
And the world, too, froze.
"That is the end."
Rozalin stretched and stood as if refreshed.
"The next sword stroke?"
"Mmm. There was one. It was a good sword, but...... how to put it. My memory could not hold it."
"Memory?"
"Oh, maybe you did not know, since it is your first time. This is a world inside my past memories. So, reconstructed from my recollections?"
So this really was the world Rozalin had experienced before regression.
From the monsters visible down there to Baphomet — the final boss of the entire crisis.
A future that I, that we, would face if we took even one wrong step.
"What an absurd monster."
"It appeared about a year after the World Eater was killed. And we."
"Killed the World Eater."
"......The world is truly difficult."
Wind blew.
Rozalin's hair fluttered, frail.
I looked at the Rozalin ahead, frozen in the stopped world.
Drenched in blood, barely prying one eye open, screaming like a cornered animal.
That sight was wretched and miserable.
I looked at the present Rozalin.
Fresher, softer, more alive.
But now I could see.
On the present Rozalin's face lingered shadows of the remorse, terror, and despair that had been so deeply etched before regression.
Fragile-looking, yet barely, barely holding on.
"It will be all right."
It would have been better if I could have seen Pan's completed sword today.
But even without the finished product, I had seen the journey toward completion.
At my current level, just processing that sword was more than I could handle.
And the swords of the other people here had unconsciously taught me much as well.
Their skill was forged purely through real combat.
Meaning — if I reverse-engineered their swords, I could predict the form and mechanisms of the demons and monsters yet to come.
"Because I was wrong."
"You, Teacher?"
Rozalin looked up at me.
A surprised expression.
"What were you wrong about? You saw the Spear God here. He could not lay a finger on you. He could not even understand what you said and just threw a fit."
I shook my head.
It was not about other people.
"You."
"Huh?"
I recalled the moment Rozalin had first returned from her regression.
Seeing her swordsmanship then, I had said:
'You got weaker in a matter of minutes.'
That she was weak.
I was wrong.
Here, in this world, Rozalin was swinging her sword with everything she had.
Before demons, before monsters.
Rozalin's sword had its own upright will and form.
If the fighting had continued for even another year — half a year, even.
Rozalin might have awakened Aura on her own.
"You, and all of you, are remarkable people."
I slowly raised my hand and placed it on Rozalin's head.
She was not wearing her signature Guard Captain hat — just an ordinary head.
"You worked so hard."
Rozalin's expression wavered.
The expressions of the past slowly faded, and gradually, the Rozalin I knew emerged.
A small hehe slipped from her lips.
"I knew it. I like it best when I am learning from you, Teacher."
"Hm?"
"Well then! Shall we head out?"
"You seem to know this space well."
"Of course. I have been here several times."
"Several...... times?"
"Every time you collapsed, I came in."
......?
I counted how many times I had collapsed.
About three? Two?
And each time I woke, Rozalin had been right beside me.
So Rozalin had also entered my mental world and seen things.
My past was......
The past was......
Uh.
"Minion of evil! Take this — hyah!"
Rozalin mimed holding something round and bringing it down on the back of someone's head.
Her face was full of mischief.
The world was growing dark.
Just as Rozalin said, it seemed this memory was ending.
At the center of it, I.
Wanted to die.
'Would it not be better to just let Baphomet kill me right here?'
***
Rozalin came to and woke up.
She felt refreshed, as though she had fallen into a deep sleep and had the most wonderful rest.
"Huh, where is Teacher?"
But the person she had assumed would be at her side was not there.
Berlith, standing nearby, smiled with her eyes curled into crescents.
"O-ho-ho-ho? He ran off with his face bright red~ What did you do in the dream~? Hm? Had fun, did we~?"
Rozalin scratched her chin and thought, I suppose so.
Honestly, the very end of the dream was hazy.
She thought she had dreamed of the time before regression.
It had been the same when she had peeked at Teacher's memories.
She had glimpsed his past, and while the broad impressions remained, the details had evaporated.
But red-faced enough to flee?
Then had she said something at the end of the dream?
No — not just said. Had she physically acted it out?
'That is a little unfair.'
Not even in reality but in a dream, spouting things she could not even remember.
That was not her style.
'I need to go find him.'
Rozalin kicked off the blankets and stood.
Then she realized.
"Huh?"
It was not just refreshed.
Something about her body was...... different.
Her senses were sharper; she could hear sounds from farther away than usual and felt she could track the movements of people outside the building.
"My sword!"
Rozalin shrieked and looked around.
Her sword was leaning against a corner of the infirmary wall.
She dashed over, grabbed it, and set her Sword Intent.
And then.
"Ah."
Rozalin's eyes went wide.
Her Sword Intent had subtly changed.
The old Rozalin had been a sharp sword.
A sword that fought more fiercely than anyone to annihilate demons.
That was why she had tried to cut down everything that threatened Teacher.
'That was not it.'
But in this dream, she had faintly understood.
She had thought she had completely discarded her past self, but she had only discarded half.
She was living not in the past but in the present.
Teacher had said even her past self had been meaningful — but still, she preferred who she was now.
Ironically, the moment Cassian affirmed her past Rozalin.
Rozalin could finally let go of her past self completely.
That version of me back then was good enough, and yes, I did my best.
She could smile and let her go.
'I was a shield.'
Not Cassian's sword.
Cassian's shield.
Aura slowly formed along Rozalin's blade.
An Aura born from a will stronger and sturdier than any other's.
From the eyes of Akarind Academy's second Sword Master, a tiny teardrop rolled down.