Aisel let out a hollow laugh as she looked at her broken sword.
Escaping from ordinary wolves would already have been difficult. If they were wolf-type Monsters instead, there was no chance she could outrun them.
The ending had practically been decided the moment they discovered her.
The corpse back there had been little more than a concise preview of the fate awaiting her.
Aisel closed her eyes.
After forcing every last breath out of herself, her lungs heaved as though they were about to burst.
Her body had unquestionably reached its limit.
‘Still.’
She had endured for a remarkably long time, so long that making it this far almost felt like sheer luck.
But that ended here.
She had reached a dead end, surrounded on every side.
Beyond the hill lay flat ground again, but the Demon Wolves did not seem inclined to let her reach it.
Leaning against a tree, Aisel raised her broken sword.
“Haah, seriously. Damn it.”
She did not actually have enough strength left to swing it.
The trembling tip of the sword made that obvious.
But while her stamina was gone, her fighting spirit was not.
Whichever one of them bit into her throat first—
She would take that bastard with her.
The Monsters bared their vicious fangs at Aisel.
Their Gray manes rippled as their sharp claws scraped against the ground.
As they tensed, ready to spring at any moment—
GRAAAH!
Just as Aisel tightened her grip on the broken sword and summoned the last of her resolve, someone carved the lunging Monster into pieces.
Aisel stared with wide eyes, unable to believe what she was seeing.
Her expression gradually twisted until, eventually, it became something she would never have wanted anyone else to see.
All because she was desperately trying not to cry.
“…Professor.”
“I’m late.”
The Demon Wolves growled at Aiden after seeing their packmate dismembered.
Aiden stood with his back to the snarling Demon Wolves because he was looking at Aisel.
It seemed as though they could seize the back of his neck with a single leap.
He looked that defenseless.
That easy.
The Demon Wolves gathered their courage and charged.
Aisel almost shouted a warning before falling silent.
She had not forgotten who the man standing before her was.
By the time Aiden finally spared the wolves a glance, all that fell to the ground was a shapeless mass of pulverized flesh and fluid.
SPLAT.
The countless feathers he had demonstrated during his second lecture.
That elegant, beautiful Aura capable of endless transformations.
Once applied to an actual battle, those same transformations mercilessly sliced his enemies apart.
Aiden swept the wolves away in an instant with nothing more than a casual gesture, as though brushing dust from his clothes.
He did not even need a sword.
Truly, just one gesture.
And afterward, there was nothing left but Red liquid raining down.
It was so effortless that all the suffering Aisel had endured until now seemed almost ridiculous.
But she did not resent him for it.
Because she knew that overwhelming slash would never be turned against her.
Instead, watching him mercilessly cut down the wolves filled Aisel with relief.
“What is this? You really are late.”
Aisel’s eyes reddened.
As though the reality of her survival had only now sunk in, an uncontrollable sob escaped her lips.
Aiden slowly approached.
He was calm and unhurried, as always.
That leisurely air about him, almost like a carefree idler with not a worry in the world, remained unchanged.
If there was one difference, it was that his usual composure always contained an edge of cold rationality.
Now, even that edge had softened.
Aisel looked at Aiden.
There were so many things she wanted to ask.
Why he had told her not to go back at the café terrace.
Why he had left the situation alone if he had known something.
Why he had arrived so late.
Things like that.
But more than any of those questions, the self-reproach in his eyes drew her attention.
“Yes. I’m late. Far too late.”
Slowly, Aiden placed his hand on top of Aisel’s head.
His hand gently slid down her face and stroked her cheek.
She did not know what meaning the gesture held.
All she knew was that the warmth in his touch kept pressing painfully against her heart.
“I’m sorry.”
After carefully running his hand over her face as though making certain she was truly unharmed, he withdrew it.
For some reason, Aisel found herself reluctant to let the touch disappear, and her lips pushed forward slightly.
“I have a lot I want to ask you.”
“I thought you might.”
“But……”
There were many questions she wanted answered.
That much was certain.
But before any of them, the relief of having survived finally overwhelmed her.
Unable to support herself any longer, she clung to Aiden and sobbed against his chest.
Then a thought suddenly struck her.
“What about the other students?”
“I rescued them.”
At once, Aisel seized him and tugged.
Aiden moved with the sudden pull.
Perhaps she did not even realize how much strength she was using, because his collar crumpled beneath her grip.
“Ellin. What happened to Ellin? A few of them got past me. I managed to hold out until you came, but that girl……”
Aiden gently covered Aisel’s hand with his own and nodded.
“Ellin is fine too. For now, worry only about yourself.”
“Ah… Ah, I see. Ellin is… all right too……”
“If you’re tired, rest for a while. Don’t worry.”
Aisel slowly sank to the ground as though all the strength had left her body.
Aiden took off his coat and draped it over her before turning away.
Her body was covered in scratches and cuts, and her clothes were thoroughly stained with dirt.
Aisel was a complete mess.
That only showed how dangerous and difficult it had been.
The way her face had turned pale as she cried out in fear for Ellin made her look like a wounded animal.
It was because I had arrived too late.
Haah…….
‘Ellin will be fine.’
While searching for Aisel, I had found Ellin first.
The reason I had not immediately intervened was because Ellin had already made contact with the Guardian of Spirit Mountain.
‘I don’t know what will happen if an uninvited guest interferes.’
I merely eliminated the wolves following Ellin from a distance and immediately headed toward Aisel.
By now, Ellin had probably completed the contract.
She had a rather headlong personality, but judging by her nature, she would probably head toward the clearing to save the other students.
Her belief that Aisel had successfully escaped and made it back to the clearing would probably factor into that decision as well.
Even if Ellin regained her composure and tried to find Aisel, she would not be able to locate her in a forest this large without some kind of medium.
‘Though if things followed the original story, they would all be dead by now…….’
The leader of the Demon Wolves.
That bastard moved first and slaughtered the students before Ellin could reach the clearing.
What remained afterward was Ellin, burning with vengeance fueled by despair, and her confrontation with the leader.
Through that battle, Ellin completed her Awakening.
That was the original story.
But I intended to interfere with it.
At the very least, I would take that burden upon myself so that Ellin would not have to fall so deeply into despair that vengeance became her fuel.
Even if doing so meant twisting the original story.
“Is that my sin?”
The sin of being unable to stand by and watch.
And perhaps the responsibility I would have to bear all the way to the ending.
***
I slowly revisited the question she had asked me at the café terrace.
The Gray-haired girl with an utterly bewildered expression appeared in my mind.
Aisel had looked at me with doubtful eyes.
At me, of all people.
“Why?”
She had remained caught on that same question from the café terrace.
No answer emerged, no matter how deeply I agonized over it, as though I intended to dissect every word down to its etymological roots.
That was why my worries had only deepened with each passing day.
Why?
Why, she asked.
Obviously, if you went, you would get hurt… No, even if it was not necessarily that, I could have said I had a bad feeling about it.
Instinct?
Or what else should I have told her?
Whatever the case, I should have given her some reason not to go…….
I squeezed my eyes shut.
That day, I had been unable to say anything.
“Idiot.”
Yes, I was an idiot.
Absurdly so.
“Is this needless meddling, Kim Seong-ha?”
I asked myself as though I were speaking to a third party.
It was only a monologue, so naturally, no answer came.
There was no one to tell me what was right or wrong.
And so my anguish could only deepen with each passing day.
Yes.
This hesitation was unavoidable.
I knew how the original story ended.
A collapse so complete that destruction was the only fitting word for it.
Countless nations annihilated.
People endlessly raiding and fighting over even the smallest scraps of food.
An Asura Realm.
Even if All Evil descended during the Final Phase and the protagonists defeated him, the moment humanity declared a fight to the death and concentrated every available force at the front, what would happen to security behind the lines was obvious.
For the player, defeating the Final Boss and watching the Ending Credits was the end of it.
Reality did not work that way.
All available food had been requisitioned for the war, and every able-bodied man conscripted.
With no food left to survive the winter, someone had to die.
For everyone else to make it through the season, someone had to be sacrificed.
And if you refused to accept that, you could become a bandit and raid somewhere else.
There was no law or morality left in such a place.
It was, quite literally, the collapse of humanity itself.
A world where nothing remained except the struggle to survive.
“Haah…….”
The breath circulating through my lungs felt heavy.
“I might be able to live perfectly well even in that kind of world.”
But there would be countless people precious to me whom I would have to abandon for that to happen.
There would also be countless prices to pay simply to reach that point.
Deep in the night, with darkness settled outside and every light in the office turned off, I asked myself again with a bitter laugh.
“Is this needless meddling?”
This?
This too?
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that once you abandoned one thing, abandoning the next became easier.
Only the first was difficult.
And for me, that first one was Aisel.
But… if I chose to save one person instead—
“Then I’ll have to save all of them.”
That would be the karmic consequence of twisting the original story.
And the responsibility I would have to bear.
If I intended to leave the paved road leading toward an already completed ending, then I had to shoulder at least that much.
This was a story whose beginning, development, climax, and conclusion had already been completed.
If I changed it, every Game Mechanic would fall out of alignment and become tangled.
The foreshadowing would become twisted.
The protagonist who was supposed to grow in a particular direction would change.
I would have to straighten out the work as it became distorted under the name of the Butterfly Effect.
Me.
The only person who knew the original story.
I buried my face between my knees.
“Are you prepared for that?”
Prepared to gamble with my own survival, along with the lives of those whose survival had been guaranteed in the original story, as chips on a single table?
Still, no answer came.
I hated that silence, so I quietly held my breath.
“It was meaningless.”
Even though the answer had already been decided the moment I saw Aisel cornered.
I raised my head and looked at the clear sky.
A vast blue expanse utterly unlike the darkened office.
I closed my eyes and let myself feel everything that blue sky seemed to signify.
“All of that worrying was pointless.”
If I was confident that I could do it better, then I simply had to do it.
Because I was the director of this game.
I looked at Aisel leaning against the trunk of a tree.
Her faint breathing.
The nasal catch in her voice from holding back tears.
And beneath it all, even the strange exhilaration that made my breath catch.
Every emotion churned murkily inside a vessel called self-contempt.
The helplessness of being unable to resist what was forced upon me.
The precariousness of resigning myself to something unreasonable.
‘I won’t let you fall into despair like that.’
I drew a single strand of Aura from my body.
It began as a solitary thread.
Then countless lines were gradually layered over it.
They formed a shape, creating ever finer and denser transformations, until a single feather emerged from that endless interplay of threads.
First came the level of wrapping Aura around a sword.
Then came the level beyond that, wrapping Aura around the body itself.
Beyond even that lay an expansion of consciousness that regarded something outside the body as part of oneself.
‘If Aura is an emblem that most directly reveals the person who wields it…….’
Then this feather was the culmination of everything the Swordsman named Aiden had achieved throughout his life.
The feather gently drifted toward the Demon Wolf about to attack Aisel.
The wolf’s attention was caught when a feather that had not existed a moment earlier suddenly floated into view.
And the instant it witnessed the phenomenon produced by what had once been a feather—
SHHK.
The feather scattered as it touched the Demon Wolf, unraveling into strands.
Countless threads that had once overlapped to form the feather’s shape.
They unfurled one by one and spread outward, becoming microscopic blades too fine for the eye to see as they tore through its body.
SHRAAAK.
After slicing apart the lunging Demon Wolf, I revealed myself.
“…Pro-Professor.”
Her expression looked ready to collapse into tears at any moment.
Half of her still seemed unable to believe that what she was seeing was real.
I was standing right here.
Why the disbelief?
It was not as though I were a ghost.
I met Aisel’s eyes as if telling her to believe what she was seeing.
Calmly.
Utterly composed.
There was no need for many words.
Aiden had never been a character who spoke much.
“I’m late.”
I watched Aisel slowly crumble with relief, then eliminated the Demon Wolves charging from behind me.
“What is this? You really are late.”
“Yes. I’m late. Far too late.”
I placed my hand on the head of the teary-eyed Aisel and slowly stroked her hair.
Slowly.
Gently.
Neither too quickly nor too slowly.
As though comforting her without aggravating the wounds in her heart.
While Aisel buried herself against my chest, I looked up at the sky.
‘If this is what changing the original story gives me, isn’t it worth it?’
At the very least, gathering up the things the original story had abandoned, one by one, had to be every bit as worthwhile as simply following the story as written.