Adelia stared blankly out the window, watching the clouds pass by.
“I’m speechless.”
She was able to regress. Surprisingly, the condition for invoking the relic’s second power was death.
She would never forget the excruciating pain she experienced at the time. Of course, it was quite pleasant to see Lasette’s face distorted with astonishment in the midst of her body being crushed.
“Sigh…”
Adelia returned four years before the Sorne family excommunicated her. Everything was as she remembered it to be. Sorne was still the worst and a bad memory for her.
“It’s been three months since I returned.”
Three months. It was both a short and a long period of time. Adelia has, however, verified a particular fact.
“As expected.”
Adelia wasn’t a believer in fate. She didn’t want to believe it, to be more precise. She had refused to believe it was fate ever since she became involved with Vishna. But she wanted to believe in fate right now.
She wanted to think that she had a connection to them. She sincerely hoped that even though the timeline was off, they would still remember her.
‘What an absurd wish.’
Although she is aware that it won’t happen.
Bishop Berg was the first to help her realize that. As soon as she got back, Adelia went immediately to the Holy Land, where she met Bishop Berg.
‘Bishop Berg.’
‘Do you know me?’
When Adelia noticed him expressing his vigilance with a curious look, she realized she had truly returned in time.
When Bishop Berg looked at the stiff Adelia, he scowled as if he had met a strange person.
‘Please excuse me if you don’t have anything to say.’
Adelia was left with no choice but to stand and watch him pass her without a word. He had changed significantly from the time when he had blindly followed her.
To say she wasn’t shocked at all would be a lie, to be honest. Berg must be unfamiliar to Adelia, but Berg was already a person to her that she clearly remembered.
“Haha…”
Adelia’s mouth curled into a dejected smile.
‘Yes. I had anticipated this outcome and had decided to go ahead with it. Therefore, try not to be disappointed.’
Since that time, Adelia has unintentionally crossed paths with some of the people she had known before returning. Adelia always questions whether those occurrences are coincidences.
That’s because, up until a certain point in her previous life, she had never encountered them.
She hadn’t expected to run into the Knights of Hamilton.
Both Melinda Orca and Lensley Pierro, who Adelia met by chance in the Empire Capital, were unfamiliar of her. Adelia couldn’t bring herself to ask them again if they knew who she was. She thought she might regret returning to the past.
‘The fact that they don’t remember me means that Ivan….’
Adelia threw herself down on the plush hotel bed and gently shut her eyes. Her instincts warned her that dwelling on that would only make life more difficult for her.
Adelia collected herself with a small sigh and slowly opened her eyes.
The unfamiliar but calm-feeling hotel ceiling, as opposed to Sorne’s mansion, came into view.
She was no longer a member of the Sorne family. There was no reason to be in that unpleasant place. She didn’t want to be around those who mercilessly sold themselves to hell.
‘It’s just a distraction.’
Adelia slowly stood up and removed the relic from her neck. The relic had been converted into a small clock in the form of a pendant after being fused with all the other pieces. She initially assumed it to be a simple clock, but it actually had another purpose.
“Compass.”
It was also a compass that appeared to be a faulty product, with only one direction key.
The relic always pointed in the same direction. Adelia had a feeling that “Lasette,” the beginning of all tragedies, was at its end.
He wasn’t that far away.
Knowing Lasette’s location is helpful, but the problem is.
It was about how to punish him.
Adelia was able to confirm just before her return that her miracle did not work for him. He wielded a potent form of chaos power. She was at a loss about how to handle him.
‘Vishna… You should have given me advice on how to handle him if you were going to send me back in time.’
That way, I’ll know that my efforts were not in vain.
Adelia accused Vishna of acting irresponsibly by assigning her only impossibly difficult tasks and then vanishing. She mulled over Lasette’s punishment for hours on end.
‘As expected, the only way I can defeat him is by employing a fairly large army. No matter how powerful he may be, he might die someday if a large number of people attacked him unless he is immortal. Naturally, that would require a much larger army than I could envision. But how can I immediately gather a large army? I’m just a marquis’ daughter who is hated by her family; I’m not a saint.’
Furthermore, she is a wicked woman who torments Hestine, who was mentioned as a strong candidate for saint.
She exhaled a sigh.
It was then.
One side of the luxurious hotel room began to rumble. Adelia instinctively took a step back at the horrifying sight for some reason.
‘No, I shouldn’t do this. I need to get out of here right now.’
Adelia’s judgment was quick. Within seconds of sensing the strangeness, Adelia turned around and tried to leave the room.
However, the thick darkness devoured her faster. It happened in the blink of an eye. Adelia was drawn into the darkness as it was.
“It’s damp.”
She felt suffocated. It was as if she was submerged in dense liquid.
Where on earth is this location? In this area, where she could not see a single inch ahead, Adelia sensed a familiar energy.
This is chaos. Yes, it’s the same energy she felt from Lasette.
“Lasette, no way!”
Adelia tried to flee the room as soon as she realized it. Adelia scrambled to increase her divine strength. The supreme gods who brought order to chaos were Vishna and the other supreme gods. If that were the case, wouldn’t Vishna’s divine power be somewhat capable of battling chaos?
A sleepy voice suddenly rang in Adelia’s ear.
“Could you please take back that unpleasant energy? Poor kid.”
Adelia looked at the woman whose hair and eyes seemed to contain the Milky Way in the night sky. She turned her head in confusion at the strange and mysterious voice.
“You are…”
“This is the first time I’ve met you in this way.”
The woman greeted her with sleepy eyes and a sleepy smile, as though she had just awoken.
“First of all, let me just say how happy I am to see you. I’ve been keeping an eye on you the whole time from the other side of that vast chasm.”
From her she felt the same power of chaos as Lasette but it was stronger than that, as if chaos herself had been present.
Adelia asked in a very rigid voice.
“What are you?”
The woman’s eyes curved slightly as if she had waited for her to ask.
“My name is Patelis; those noble and supreme gods consider me to be chaos in the world and refer to me as the queen of chaos who spreads poison. Well, actually, I don’t care; they can call me whatever they want; I like both.”
Adelia’s eyes trembled wildly.
‘What just happened? Perhaps I’m dreaming. Yes. Because I’m mentally worn out, I must be having a strange dream.’
This is not a dream, of course.
Patelis, the woman who introduced herself as the queen and the start of chaos, grinned as she realized Adelia’s thoughts.
Standing in front of her made her feel as if she were standing in front of Yohan Kervan, the sage of the ivory tower.
“I’m sure you were sealed.”
“Oh, that’s true.”
Patelis did not deny. Fearful of her power, the cowardly gods sealed her in a deep pit.
“Vishna did something stupid. She turned back the several times, ignoring causality. Power has its limits after all. Thanks to that, my seal has weakened. Aren’t the gods more incompetent than you think?
Look at it now. How can she throw a poor human child like you into such a twisted timeline alone? Aren’t they really too much?”
Patelis showed her resentment towards the supreme gods, as if she could not understand them. Adelia felt a sense of incongruity when she saw Patelis like that.
‘Isn’t it weird? They were gods who sealed her for decades. But it’s too……’
“You’re so calm.”
Patelis, staring at Adelia with sleepy eyes, muttered in a drowsy voice.
“It may be strange. But the time I went through was so long that humans couldn’t understand it. I’m just exhausted.”
Patelis’ voice was full of emptiness. The face of a weary person.
“You must be at a loss how to end this cycle. So I’d like to make a suggestion.”
Patelis whispered seductively in a subtle voice. Adelia asked, squinting her eyes.
“Can I take that as a sign that you agree with killing Lasette, who is trying to change the world to revive you?”
At that moment, Patelis’ eyes lit up. It was pity. No….
“Of course. What he does is something I don’t want him to do.”
