Why, and how.
Was Seraphia standing right in front of me?
The thought carried on, but I couldn't reach the end of it.
The surging madness overran my mind in an instant.
My mind was dyed crimson, and my whole field of view flared red hot.
Memories of days past flickered through my head.
Comrades of the allied forces who died horribly at my sister's hands.
Seraphia, mercilessly slaughtering people who wailed for their lives.
The vicious witch who took the Hero Ian's left arm, right up to the moment of her death.
Those brutal memories and emotions surfaced all at once and spoke to me.
—Kill that bitch.
I gave my body over to the explosively surging madness.
In an instant my body shot forward.
The soldiers around us had no time to do anything.
In a flash I had seized Seraphia by the nape of her neck.
"Hakh!"
Seraphia coughed out a short breath.
When I clamped my grip tight, her breathing was choked off.
Her feet lifted from the ground and thrashed.
In the eyes she turned toward me, a plea to be spared took shape.
...She was far too frail.
I couldn't see the Monarch of Frost who had mercilessly slaughtered the allied forces' comrades and its people.
The Seraphia thrashing with her neck caught in my hand was not the Monarch of Frost.
Nor was she the vicious witch who took the Hero's left arm right up to the moment of her death.
A small, weak, altogether delicate woman.
That was the only kind of woman caught in my hand.
So, there was no time but now.
"Khuh...!"
I have to kill her now.
I have to kill her now, before Seraphia becomes the Monarch of Frost.
Just as I was about to wring the neck I had seized, at that very moment.
—If you... go back...
Out of nowhere, Ian's voice reached me.
I couldn't tell whether it was a hallucination thrown up by a mind overrun with madness.
Only, it was the last thing Ian left me before he died.
The voice of Ian dying, leaning weakly against me with his heart gone.
—Your sister... don't... hate her... too much...
Ian's regret reached my ears like a phantom sound.
***
The look in Adrian's eyes, glaring as though he meant to kill.
That look was by no means the look one gives a younger sister.
Anything like family affection was even further from it.
In Adrian's eyes there was nothing but a savage fury directed at Seraphia.
'Brother...'
She had known for a long time.
That Adrian hated her enough to kill her.
Seraphia had been adopted into House White Wolf five years ago.
And it was around that time that Adrian began sinking into gambling and pleasure.
That Seraphia's very existence had ruined Adrian.
Thinking it was all her fault, she studied and strove for the house all the harder.
To be of even a little help to the house, to Adrian, she worked and worked, day and night.
But those efforts of hers only drove a dagger deeper into Adrian's chest.
Not long ago, when the head of the house passed away and his will was opened.
The head of the house left everything of the family not to Adrian but to Seraphia.
But Seraphia had no intention of following what the will said.
The household staff refused and pleaded with her, but Seraphia's mind was firm.
The master of this house is Adrian.
Yet before the misunderstanding could be cleared up, Adrian left the house.
And now.
"Because of you...!!"
Adrian shouted at Seraphia.
She could feel the savage fury of a man who believed she had taken everything from him.
The face before her looked like a man facing not his sister but a vengeful demon.
CRRK!
The force closing around her neck grew stronger and stronger.
The soldiers couldn't approach carelessly for fear of provoking Adrian.
Her vision blurred by degrees. Her mind slowly went dark.
Seraphia couldn't put up any resistance at all.
Just as the scent of death reached her, it happened.
Slack.
The strength in Adrian's tightening grip weakened.
Her lifted feet touched the ground, and then Seraphia's body collapsed limply to the floor.
Only then did her blocked windpipe open, and a fit of coughing burst out.
"Khek...! Cough! Kh-khek...!"
"My Lord!"
The soldiers hurried over and put themselves in front of Seraphia.
Giving off a fierce air, SHING! SHING-SHING!
They drew their weapons, each of them, and leveled them at Adrian.
The soldiers looked ready to fight Adrian if it came to it.
Seraphia hurriedly steadied her breathing and cried out.
"S-stop...! Cough! Stop it...!"
"But, My Lord—"
"I said stop!"
At Seraphia's cry the soldiers flinched.
But they did not lower the weapons they had drawn.
"That is an order! Lower those weapons at once!"
At Seraphia's command the soldiers finally, reluctantly, lowered their weapons.
Adrian had been quietly watching that whole scene.
The sight of Adrian, unmoved even by the force of dozens of soldiers.
Somehow... he felt like a different person from the Adrian Seraphia had known.
"I'll ask one thing."
Then Adrian's voice came.
"Why did you come looking for me?"
Adrian's question — why she had come after a man who had left the house.
Seraphia lowered her eyes slightly and answered.
"Isn't it... obvious."
"Obvious? What is obvious about it?"
"......Of course I'd be worried about you."
"Worried?"
For a moment, doubt surfaced on Adrian's face, which had been indifferent throughout.
Seraphia bit her lower lip and said it.
"We're...... family."
Adrian's eyebrow twitched.
The eyes looking down at Seraphia.
Inside them, a look of pure loathing was spread wide.
It was as though they were saying this.
—I do not think of you as my sister.
Adrian showed nothing but that cold gaze, then slowly turned and walked away.
***
If it's true that I've gone back to the past, then it seems that in the past I never met Seraphia because I was busy running from the Ice Troll.
This time, thanks to bringing the Ice Troll down, I was able to meet her.
Either way, it wasn't important now.
What matters right now is one thing.
I failed to kill Seraphia.
It wasn't because of some absurd pity along the lines of she's still my sister.
Nor was it complacency over her not having become the Monarch of Frost yet.
It certainly wasn't because I was afraid of the soldiers around us.
To put it more bluntly, it wasn't because of what Ian said either.
Not because of Ian's pointless remark about not hating Seraphia too much.
So it isn't that I did not kill her.
It's that I could not kill her.
And ironically, that was because of what Ian said.
—Back then, was there really no way other than killing your sister? Did she have to die? That's what I regret most.
More precisely, because of Ian's regret.
Ian regretted killing Seraphia to an extreme degree.
He regretted it more than being shot down after confessing to the Saintess.
"Of all the things to leave me with."
I never heard the reason why.
But it gave me hesitation enough when it came to wringing Seraphia's neck.
If he regretted it more than being shot down by the Saintess, there must have been a reason to match.
"He wasn't actually into Seraphia, was he?"
Surely not, I thought, and yet I couldn't be entirely certain.
Because the Ian I knew was fully capable of it.
The impossible love of a Hero and a witch, then.
There's no romance more wrenching than that.
At any rate, my failure to kill Seraphia was because of Ian's regret.
But that wasn't the whole of it either.
I should rightly have wrung Seraphia's neck.
Ian's regret clearly gave me pause. But I was in the grip of Predation's madness.
Once I'm seized by madness, reason does not exist for me.
Which is why, had it been the me of fifteen years ago......
I would certainly have wrung Seraphia's neck.
◆Player's Will [EX] resists the encroaching madness!
A message surfaced out of nowhere just as I was about to wring Seraphia's neck.
At the same moment my mind snapped clear.
Slowly but surely my reason returned, and the madness that had overrun me vanished.
"Player's Will, is it..."
The moment I muttered it, my vision flashed and a translucent message surfaced.
=="Possessed Skills"==
◆Solo Level Up [EX]
: The Player can accumulate experience to raise their level. Each time the level rises, the Player gains 1 stat point.
◆Player's Will [EX]
: The Player gains immunity to all effects that exceed the Player's mental fortitude (curses, illusions, brainwashing, hypnosis, suggestion, and so on).
◆Predation [S+]
: Devour a living creature's heart to absorb that creature's abilities and convert them into skills. However, mental fortitude is consumed.
◆Regeneration [C+]
: Consume nutrients accumulated in the body to restore damaged tissue. The type and quantity of nutrients consumed vary according to the damaged body part and the degree of damage.
<Absorbing additional genetic factors will strengthen this ability.>
This was showing me the abilities I currently possessed.
I still don't know what mechanism these translucent messages operate on.
But one thing is certain: 'Predation [S+]' is my ability. And Regeneration [C+] is the ability I gained by devouring the Ice Troll with Predation [S+].
However, 'Solo Level Up [EX]' and 'Player's Will [EX]' were not abilities I possessed.
In my days as the allied forces' Predator I absorbed a great many abilities, but I have no memory of absorbing anything like those.
Which means there is only one answer.
"Ian."
Those are Ian's abilities.
I ate Ian's heart.
I couldn't be certain whether Solo Level Up [EX] was Ian's ability. But I could be certain that 'Player's Will [EX]' was.
"Don't tell me the reason Ian could face the Monarch of the Abyss was..."
The six Monarchs who serve the Emperor.
Among those six, the Monarch of the Abyss was called [An Unknowable Terror Beyond Explanation] within the allied forces.
As the name says, it could not be explained.
And so it could not be answered either.
Neither the Saintess's miracles nor the Archmage's magic.
Neither the Spirit Wielder's spirits nor the Blacksmith's arms and armour.
Not one of them was of any use before the [An Unknowable Terror Beyond Explanation] the Monarch of the Abyss displayed.
But Ian alone was different.
Ian did not yield even to the [An Unknowable Terror Beyond Explanation] the Monarch of the Abyss displayed.
Ian alone could stand against the Monarch of the Abyss, and in the end Ian succeeded in annihilating it.
That was why I could be certain.
"It's Ian's ability."
Player's Will [EX] is Ian's ability.
In the same way, Solo Level Up [EX] is Ian's ability too.
And I absorbed those abilities of Ian's through Predation.
I did not know Ian's abilities.
But Ian knew my ability of Predation.
Ian knew that by devouring a living creature's heart I could gain that creature's abilities.
Therefore the last words Ian left me.
—If you... go back...
It means Ian knew that I would go back to the past.
Which is to say.
"Among Ian's abilities, there was one that returns you to the past?"
That's the conclusion I arrive at.
***
The allied forces' hero, the Archmage, used to say this on finding a phenomenon that could not be believed.
—Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever possibility remains, however unbelievable it may be, must be the truth.
It was a genuinely mage-like thing to say.
And you could call it a remark that runs precisely through my current situation.
"A regression to the past, of all things."
What kind of nonsense is this, I think.
But every circumstance points to this being the truth.
That my body grew young, let's say that could happen somehow.
A secret experiment of the Emperor's.
Something like that, at any rate.
"So the Monarch of Frost is alive."
But Seraphia is alive.
Not even the Emperor's supernatural power can bring back the dead. There was such a thing as the undead, but that was a concept far removed from resurrection.
If resurrection were possible to begin with, he'd have started by bringing back the other Monarchs annihilated at Ian's hands.
And if he were going to bring her back, he'd bring her back as the 'Monarch of Frost' — what would be the point of bringing her back as 'Seraphia'?
So there is no further argument.
I have clearly gone back to the past.
Denying that I've gone back to the past is a wholly meaningless exercise.
From here on, I have to change the direction of my thinking.
"Did only I come back?"
Was I truly the only one who returned to the past?
After all, returning to the past is not my ability.
It's Ian's ability.
Which means there's a fair possibility that Ian came back as well.
Just as my thoughts reached that point, it happened.
◆A main quest has arrived.
"A main quest?"
Along with the question, messages poured down before my eyes.
====
You, who opened your eyes out of nowhere on the northern Snowy Mountain!
Contrary to expectations that you would fall into a panic — oh my?
You were extremely composed!
You calmly drove off the Ice Troll, and calmly saw through your current situation!
And as a result, ta-daaa!
You come to realise that you have gone back to the past!
Well done! Very, very well done!
You are the absolute champion of champions!
But do not get cocky!
The fundamental questions have not been resolved yet!
If a regression to the past was among Ian's abilities, was this truly the only time?
Might Ian's regressions to the past have happened countless times?
Why on earth did Ian hand you his own heart?
No — was handing you his heart truly a first, this one time?
Your head is already pounding and pounding!
Nothing but questions! Utterly lost in the fog!
Fortunately, there is a being who knows the whole of this truth!
Now then, a man of your outstanding insight already knows what he must do, doesn't he?
That you must find the Hero, wherever on the continent he may be!
====
◆Beginning main quest [Find the Hero!].