Casualties within the Special Service grew increasingly severe, but just then, an unexpected reinforcement appeared. Black-clad soldiers flooded onto the battlefield, rescuing people while simultaneously demonstrating astonishing strength as they swarmed to besiege the leader of the Holy Blessing Society.
This scene felt intimately familiar to both Mind Freya and the ‘Freya’ within the memory. She realized the newcomer's identity at once: General Jerome.
In this memory, Jerome had successfully completed his advancement ritual from Rank Five to Rank Six. Whatever his motive—perhaps lingering guilt toward this city, or purely a coincidence of passing through—he happened to be in Auxerre. When the commotion at the docks caught his attention, he arrived just in time to witness the Special Service locked in desperate combat.
Thus, he intervened without the slightest hesitation. In reality, a Rank Five Warrior had been enough to overpower the leader of the Holy Blessing Society, let alone Jerome, who was now a Rank Six General.
The scales of battle tipped in an instant, prompting the Holy Blessing Society’s leader to cry out in horror, “Damn it?! Where the hell did you crawl out from?”
Jerome offered no reply. He merely activated his ability in silence: 【My Battlefield】.
Before everyone’s eyes, the Holy Blessing Society’s leader, Jerome, and all those black soldiers vanished into thin air. 【My Battlefield】 was a spatial ability—to put it simply, possessing an effect much like a 【Reality Marble】 or a 【Domain Expansion】.
It dragged the enemy into the battlefield the General knew best. This was an isolated space; theoretically, as long as the General’s spirituality was not exhausted, the enemy could not leave and had to fight to the death.
At Rank Five, Jerome could maintain a maximum of one hundred soldiers at once. At Rank Six, however, that number multiplied tenfold, reaching a thousand men.
Upon a vast plain, the leader of the Holy Blessing Society took in the horde of fully armed soldiers encircling him, his expression turning thoroughly hideous. “Damn it... Damn it, damn it! I was so close!”
He had been mere moments from completing the ritual, but Jerome had pulled him straight into this battlefield. Since the altar itself remained in the real world, carrying on with the ritual was completely out of the question.
“I’ll kill you!” The leader quickly locked onto Jerome himself. Among the mass of soldiers, Jerome was the only one dressed in casual clothes—he even held half a piping-hot ‘minced meat scallion pancake’ in his hand, making him impossible to miss.
However, the leader soon paid a gruesome price for his tactic of capturing the ringleader first. One might recall that in reality, Jessica had attempted the exact same maneuver, only to be pummeled black and blue. Jerome’s close-combat prowess was not something to scoff at.
In the end, even when the Holy Blessing Society's leader lost control entirely and transformed into a monster within this space, he was still no match for Jerome, ultimately drowned alive beneath the relentless onslaught of soldiers.
Outside the battlefield, seeing their enemy vanish, ‘Freya’ pursed her lips. Her feelings toward Jerome were undoubtedly tangled and complicated; after all, this was the man who had triggered the Auxerre Fire, causing the deaths of Amy, Euphy, and countless innocent people.
Yet here he was, suddenly appearing to lend a hand when the city hung in mortal peril. It was no exaggeration to say that without Jerome, the Holy Blessing Society's scheme would have already succeeded, and Auxerre would have faced total annihilation.
Despite her conflicted emotions, ‘Freya’ wasted no time. She initiated rescue efforts immediately, naturally attending to Reina first. Reina was in dreadful condition; beyond her severe physical wounds, dense scales covered her skin, and one of her eyes had narrowed into a vertical slit.
She seemed to have used some ability to deliberately push herself into a state of partial loss of control in order to gain greater combat prowess.
Fortunately, Jerome had arrived in the nick of time. She hadn't completely lost control, meaning she could still be saved. After tending to Reina, ‘Freya’ walked over to Victor’s corpse and stood in silence for a long time. At last, she noticed a colorful die embedded in the dirt beside his hand.
This had been rolled by Victor when he activated his ability earlier. ‘Freya’ didn’t know which face had landed upward initially, but when Victor fell, his body had collapsed onto the die, pressing it partially into the soil. Right now, three sides were visible: four, five, and six.
‘Freya’ murmured, “So... you won your gamble, didn’t you? The good luck triggered—you just weren’t able to enjoy it yourself...”
The Holy Blessing Society incident drew to a bleak and somber close. Watching this unfold, Mind Freya fell silent, turning the memories over in her mind. A sudden hypothesis occurred to her: Could the ‘death crisis’ mentioned by the system actually refer not to her own mortal peril, but to fatal crises befalling the people around her?
Because of that absurd constant luck she possessed, she could survive each crisis simply by going with the flow and yielding to fate, even without doing anything at all. But the people around her enjoyed no such fortune.
Mind Freya muttered, “So what is this strange memory really about? And who is the other me... in this memory?”
Just as Mind Freya sought to watch further, the memory ceased, leaving nothing more to view. She wasn’t particularly surprised. Mind Freya promptly withdrew from the Heartscape, deactivating the ability.
In reality, Freya slowly sat up, still deep in thought. If the death crises truly targeted those around her, then six months from now, during the next death crisis, who would die because of her?
Reina?
Because their paths had diverged, she wasn’t actually close with this Reina, though she could certainly empathize with the version of herself in those memories.
Right at that moment, Euphy hurried over and called out, “Fufu! I did it!”
In her hand were two ordinary-looking silver rings—the admission passes to the 【Wheel of Destiny】. As for the detailed lore and rules of the Wheel of Destiny, Freya had provided the general framework while Euphy fleshed it out, finalizing everything in short order.
It was an extraordinary organization where members aided one another for mutual benefit under the guidance of 【Destiny】. Of course, the 【Destiny】 in question was not literal fate, but rather the organization's founder—a profoundly mysterious ‘extraordinary’.
As for their true identity? Keep guessing!
In truth, Freya hadn't even settled on that part herself.
All that remained was to swindle Victor and David into joining the organization tomorrow.
...
Rate on N.U.
