The Protagonist's Party is Too Diligent

We won! Story over!

...If only things could wrap up as neatly as a few summarized lines in a novel. But life wasn’t that simple or easy—if it were, the world wouldn’t be such a complicated mess.

Thinking about it now, maybe the goddess hated that complexity. Perhaps that was why she had tried to impose her own sense of order, to create a world that was simple and beautiful in her eyes. Now that I was caught in the middle of an unbelievably convoluted situation, that thought felt more plausible than ever.

First things first—we had to clean up the aftermath of the battle.

Of everyone still conscious, Sophia was the only one from the Holy Nation left standing.

But even she had no way of proving her connection to the Holy Nation at the moment. Her official citizenship was registered under Belvur, after all. She had been a spy planted by the Holy Nation, but the problem was... all of her superiors had just left to join the goddess.

...Or had they?

Had they really managed to leave? Or had I shattered that path before they could reach their so-called divinity?

Well, that was a question only the dead could answer. No use thinking about it now.

The Pope was dead. Naturally, most of the Holy Nation’s knights who had been protecting him were dead as well. And those who had survived weren’t even conscious. They were all sprawled out in front of the cathedral.

What a pathetic end.

Even with a traitor among them, for the entire Holy Nation’s leadership to collapse this easily... Ah, well. I supposed it made sense if I considered that this outcome had also been carefully orchestrated by the goddess. After all, for things to play out the way she had planned, the Emperor needed to bring the goddess’s Relic to this very place.

The strength of the Holy Nation’s knights had come from the goddess. Their numbers, their power—all of it had been regulated by her. If she had controlled them from the beginning, then it wasn’t so strange that they had crumbled the moment she withdrew her power.

And in the end, the thing the Emperor had brought here had been an empty space—one that the goddess herself had filled. The ‘fake Alice,’ the entity the Emperor had believed was sent by his future self, had actually been a creation of the goddess.

No future Emperor had ever existed. That entire narrative had been fabricated—another elaborate deception crafted by the goddess to manipulate him.

A human’s will couldn’t last for hundreds of years. No matter how strong-minded someone was, their body still aged. And after their death, any ideology they left behind would inevitably be distorted, reshaped by the mouths of those who carried it forward. Just as the Emperor, Fangryphon’s descendant, had no interest in continuing Fangryphon’s legacy.

But the goddess was different.

She had no such limitations. She could scheme for centuries, for millennia, executing her plans with unwavering patience.

A being that existed for eternity likely perceived time itself in a way far beyond human comprehension.

Even now, she was probably constructing a new plan.

Or worse—she had already set it in motion.

If she truly wanted to succeed this time, she should pick someone a little more dignified as her next pawn.

Then again, it’d probably be harder to find a hardcore gamer without some sort of personality quirks.

Maybe she thought she was choosing a socially isolated, easy-to-manipulate loner. But honestly, what did she expect to accomplish by picking someone like me—someone with barely any friends?

...Does the goddess not have any friends?

Maybe that was why she had failed to realize just how much an introverted nerd would cling to the people they managed to befriend.

*

“...So... you’re saying this isn’t actually me?”

Alice asked again, her expression serious.

We couldn’t dismantle the machine itself. Other than the last remaining piece of the Relic, all the other components were too intricately intertwined for us to even begin extracting them.

The only thing we had managed to pull out was the fake Alice inside.

The space where the Relic had been embedded was barely large enough for a person to fit. In fact, it was so cramped that it was hard to believe the legendary, broad-shouldered Fangryphon could have ever fit inside.

Well, even the legends described Fangryphon as deformed. Not just physically, but as a being who, despite being abandoned, had managed to lead the gryphons through sheer charisma and intelligence.

A being who had ultimately refused to accept the goddess’s order and had chosen to stand against her in his own way.

In a way, that might’ve been the reason the Emperor never even considered stepping inside himself.

“The goddess’s power doesn’t work that way,” I explained.

Like winding a clockwork mechanism from the outside, her power reset the world to its original state. The positions of the stars, every single grain of sand—everything was restored exactly as it had been.

She wasn’t rewinding time itself, so things like time travel were impossible.

...And apparently, completely erasing people’s memories was impossible too.

I could feel the weight of people’s stares. Especially from those who had been entangled with me in more ways than one.

Maybe... memories that the goddess had suppressed were now flooding back into their minds.

...Even Alice, who was standing right next to me, was looking at me just a little differently than usual.

Alright. For now, I was going to pretend not to notice.

I’d act like nothing had changed—long enough for them to start dismissing it as nothing more than a vague sense of déjà vu.

“Since there’s no way to send something from the future, the only way to interfere with this world was to create something different. That’s why this one was never truly you.”

“...”

Alice shot me a glare when I called her princess, but for once, she didn’t bother arguing about it.

“But she tried to kill me. She held back when it came to you.”

“She had to act that way. Otherwise, the ones who needed to notice her wouldn’t have.”

The ones who needed to be deceived—Alice, the Emperor, and me.

And we had all fallen for it.

“...So what you’re saying is, she was just an entity clumsily mimicking my experiences and memories?”

“That’s the most reasonable conclusion.”

Alice fell silent at my words.

For a long moment, she just stared down at the other her lying on the ground.

I had laid my coat on the floor before placing her down. It didn’t feel right to just leave her sprawled on the cold, hard stone. Besides, my exoskeleton suit had been reduced to tattered rags after the fight—I needed to take it off anyway.

The fake Alice was in bad shape.

What had ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) they said? That the Relic’s component had been inside her stomach?

Her intestines had spilled out, completely drained of blood. The sight was so surreal, so unnatural, that it didn’t even feel real.

Among the exposed flesh, tiny, intricate clockwork gears were embedded within. It was the kind of grotesque sight that could have made anyone sick to their stomach.

She had not died peacefully.

But strangely, there was something almost serene about her expression.

Unlike the moment when she had locked eyes with me in those final seconds—now, there was an eerie tranquility to her face.

So much so that I almost mistook it for the faintest hint of a smile.

“From the moment she was created, she was nothing more than a pawn.”

She had been designed to disrupt my ability, to make her seem like a loyalist to the Emperor. But at the same time, she had been made to rebel against him just enough to convince Alice that she was herself.

And yet, no matter where she appeared, her actions had always served the Emperor’s interests.

I’d admit it—I had been fooled too.

Alice seemed to be realizing this as well. And despite everything, she looked... sad.

Even though this thing had tried to kill her.

“If it hadn’t been her... then it would have been me, wouldn’t it?”

“...”

Even if Claire had existed in that world, the goddess’s plan would have failed the moment I entered the equation.

Alice’s blood was too diluted to properly wield the Relic. And I... I had no Fangryphon blood in me at all.

The Relic piece embedded in the fake Alice had been a tool for the goddess to reclaim her power, to create the perfect conditions to unleash her influence. All she had needed was for me to return the goddess’s stolen power.

That had been her plan.

So, without fake Alice, the goddess’s plan would have collapsed entirely.

But the goddess would have simply waited.

She had all the time in the world. If one plan failed, she could retreat and try again later.

The Emperor, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to wait.

The Emperor had only one lifetime.

And in that scenario, the only person left to enter the machine... would have been Alice herself.

“...I’m not saying I’m grateful. After all, she did try to kill me. But still...”

Alice lowered herself onto one knee beside her fallen counterpart, her expression conflicted.

“...Still, for some reason, I can’t help but relate to her.”

“...”

I said nothing to that.