Boundless darkness enveloped Laurence’s consciousness.
A point of light gradually rippled through the darkness, like ink dropped into water, slowly outlining the clear contours of the past.
It was the base.
It was a crude outpost where he had once led a few team members to be stationed, only for the team to be scattered by a sudden attack from a cult organization.
The twilight light filtered through the cracks in the wooden window, illuminating the dust particles floating in the room, casting soft spots of light on the floor.
A faint scent of medicinal herbs mixed with the lingering smell of burnt wood hung in the air, drifting into Laurence’s nostrils.
He found himself sitting on a low stool by the fire pit, his body heavy and weary.
The sharp pain in his right shoulder and abdomen, and the recent life-and-death struggle with the “Disaster Source,” seemed like mere illusions from a distant memory, utterly unreal.
“Captain, your medicine. Drink it while it’s hot.”
A gentle female voice came from his side.
Laurence turned his head and saw that familiar face.
It was Aurelia, yet not the “Cataclysm” who looked down upon all beings from his final memory.
At this moment, she was wearing a simple grayish-white dress, with a clean white apron over it, stained with a few smudges of herbs.
Her long, black hair was loosely tied back, with a few stray strands hanging by her cheeks.
Her eyes were still crimson, but the red was clear and bright, reflecting the flickering firelight within, like two warm rubies.
She held a clay bowl in her hands, containing a dark brown medicinal brew, steaming with wisps of heat.
This is a dream.
Laurence clearly realized this.
But he couldn’t control the dream, nor could he look away.
He watched as Aurelia carried the medicine bowl and sat down on another low stool beside him, very close, close enough for him to smell the faint, pleasant fragrance on her, reminiscent of a sea of blooming flowers in spring.
“The temperature should be just right. I let it cool for a moment. If you find it bitter, I can add two pieces of sugar for you,” she said softly, handing the bowl over.
Her fingers were still so slender, the tips slightly rough from handling various chores and cooking, but very clean.
Laurence silently took the bowl, his fingertips inadvertently brushing against hers.
The warm touch felt terrifyingly real. He looked down at the thick medicinal brew in the bowl, not drinking immediately.
“Thinking about the base again?”
Aurelia’s voice was soft, filled with concern.
But she didn’t look at him.
Instead, she picked up a damaged long shirt and began threading a needle.
It was the clothing of a team member, torn at the shoulder by the claws of a Corrupted God’s Artifact, but he couldn’t bear to throw it away, so he asked Aurelia to repair it.
The Laurence in the dream didn’t answer, just stared at his own reflection in the bowl, his brow slightly furrowed.
After a moment, he spoke in a somewhat low voice, hoarse from fatigue.
“Sometimes… I feel that bearing these responsibilities is… exhausting.”
These were words he had never said to anyone.
Even in front of his closest Vice-Captain, he was always that resolute, strong, and unwavering Captain.
But in this twilight, in this crude yet warm temporary outpost, in front of this girl who always listened quietly, a trace of weariness leaked out.
Aurelia’s mending movements paused for a moment.
She didn’t respond immediately, just continued sewing through the fabric with a serious expression.
After a while, she said softly, “But you’ve never given up, Captain. Everyone… we all see it.”
A very ordinary sentence, without any fancy rhetoric, yet it inexplicably brought a rare sense of solace to the Laurence in the dream.
He raised the bowl and drank the bitter medicine in one gulp.
The warm liquid slid down his throat, bringing warmth while also easing the dryness.
“Applying your culinary skills to brewing medicine has even made the medicine taste much better,” he put down the bowl and commented.
The medicine used to be unbearably bitter, but ever since Aurelia tried to combine her herbal knowledge with her cooking skills, the medicine at the base, compared to commercial products outside, had less bitterness and more sweetness.
The tips of Aurelia’s ears turned slightly red, but she still kept her head down, focused on her needlework.
“I… just thought the medicine was too bitter, and everyone found it hard to drink. So I tried adjusting the formula a bit…”
Her voice grew smaller and smaller, as if she were a bit embarrassed.
The Laurence in the dream looked at the girl’s slightly flushed profile and her focused brows.
A corner of his heart seemed to be gently touched by the warm twilight light and her subtle shyness.
The atmosphere fell silent, with only the faint sound of needle and thread passing through fabric and the sound of their breathing reaching their ears.
The sky outside the window gradually darkened, making the firelight inside appear warmer and brighter.
Aurelia sewed the last stitch, bit off the thread, carefully folded the repaired clothing, and placed it aside.
She looked up at Laurence.
Her crimson eyes appeared particularly gentle in the firelight, even carrying a warmth akin to attachment.
“Captain,” she suddenly spoke, her voice still soft but carrying a seriousness that didn’t quite fit the cozy atmosphere. “May I ask you a few questions?”
Laurence looked at her and nodded.
The firelight reflected on his profile, his features seeming much softer than usual.
The Aurelia before him didn’t ask immediately.
Instead, she looked at him quietly for a moment.
Those clear crimson eyes seemed able to peer into the deepest recesses of his heart, seeing everything.
Then, she spoke softly, her tone steady, each word clear, yet stirring violent waves in Laurence’s heart.
“Captain, you said all those all-nighters I pulled at the base, standing watch for injured teammates… do you think that was all an act?”
Laurence’s hand holding the empty bowl instantly tightened.
These were the very words she had just screamed at him in a hoarse voice!
No, they were words the real her had said!
Yet Aurelia seemed unaware of his subtle change, still continuing to ask in that reminiscent tone, though her gaze gradually took on a hint of hazy sorrow.
“All the hard work I put in for everyone, voluntarily taking on those dirty, tiring jobs no one else wanted, the days and nights at the base… were those all fake too?”
She tilted her head slightly.
The firelight danced on her fair profile.
“Was that also a meticulously rehearsed performance to deceive people?”
Each word felt tangible, hammering into Laurence’s heart.
The cozy atmosphere in the dream began to turn subtle.
The firelight seemed to dim a little, and the twilight filtering through the window was tinged with boundless darkness.
“And…”
Aurelia turned her head to look at him again.
Her eyes reflected his already rigid face.
Her tone carried a childlike innocence and confusion.
“Captain, when you were seriously ill and couldn’t get up before, it was me who took care of you without leaving your side for almost half a month, right?”
She even leaned forward slightly, getting closer to Laurence.
Her warm breath almost brushed his cheek.
Her gaze was as pure as a student seeking an answer to a question.
“Risking discovery by the Church, desperately trying to save you, doing those thankless tasks… what was it all for?”
Her gaze locked onto him.
The firelight danced in those clear eyes, yet it also illuminated a kind of bottomless sorrow.
“Captain, please tell me, using your upright creed of justice…”
“What does everything I did amount to, in your eyes?”
“You never even asked me why I used that power on the wound from the Corrupted God’s Artifact on my leg that night.”
“You never even considered, if I really wanted to keep hiding, why would I expose myself at such a time, for such an insignificant wound?”
Her voice gradually grew distant, and her figure began to blur somewhat in the firelight.
But those crimson eyes, filled with sorrow and disappointment, grew clearer and clearer, more and more heavily branded into the depths of Laurence’s pupils.
“Have you ever… really understood me, Captain?”
“Or perhaps, what you see in your eyes has always only been what you believe? Those… illusory, yet for you, truly existing… memories?”
As the last word fell, the twilight in the dream, the warm firelight, the fragrance of herbs, the residual warmth of the clay bowl in his hand… everything began to distort.
Like a painting soaked in water, the colors blurred into a mess.
Only Aurelia’s face, and those eyes that seemed to bear endless sorrow and questions, remained crystal clear, perfectly reflecting his own crazed, paranoid appearance in her gaze.
“Ugh—!”
Laurence abruptly sat up from the plank bed.
The movement pulled at his wounds, the sharp pain making him grunt, and a layer of cold sweat instantly broke out on his forehead.
He gasped heavily, his heart pounding wildly in his chest.
Before him was a ceiling with the uniquely holy style of a church.
The air was filled with the scent of disinfectant and faint holy water.
Beneath him was a solid wooden bed board with several layers of padding.
The thin blanket covering him carried the smell of sun-dried fabric.
Twilight City Church Branch, Emergency Room.
The cold sense of suffocation and the lingering echoes of the dream made Laurence struggle back to reality.
The pain in his body was real and specific.
A dull ache came from the fixed dislocation in his right shoulder.
His fractured left arm was bound in a splint.
Every heartbeat tugged at the blunt pain in his abdomen from the heavy blow.
With each breath, the sluggish pain in his chest and abdomen reminded him of how brutal the recent fight had been.
As a warrior who had just reached Silver Rank, he actually lost… in a fight to the death… to that weak and frail Aurelia?
The physical pain at this moment was completely overshadowed by the mental shock.
The final pair of sorrowful crimson eyes in the dream, which seemed able to see through all falsehood, and that soft yet soul-piercing question, remained terrifyingly clear.
They overlapped and merged with the face of the real Aurelia screaming in despair, repeatedly tearing at his sanity in his mind.
“What you see in your eyes has always only been what you believe? Those… illusory, yet for you, truly existing… memories?”
“What do I gain?! Just so you have a chance to discover me, and then come kill me with your sword like this?!”
“Why, why won’t you believe me?! Even just once?!”
A soft sigh and a hoarse shout turned into a dual soul interrogation, tightly choking his breath.
Cold sweat not only soaked his clothes, constantly sliding down his spine, but also stirred countless ripples in the sea of his thoughts at this moment, constantly turning into waves of memory crashing against the edges of his consciousness.
Laurence gritted his teeth so hard that a faint taste of blood almost seeped from his gums, barely suppressing a low roar in his throat that was either a groan of pain or a cry of collapse.
Those brilliant golden eyes contracted due to intense emotional turmoil, staring fixedly at the geometric patterns of church style on the ceiling, as if trying to brand those lines into his mind to cover up the lingering crimson eyes.
Those doubts firmly locked in the deepest part of his heart by “the Hero’s Duty,” “Absolute Justice,” and “Past Life Memories.”
Those vivid details about Aurelia herself.
Her cheeks flushed red by the steam while brewing medicine, the slight pursing of her lips while mending clothes, the barely noticeable tremor in her hand when handing over warm water, the fleeting look of relief in her eyes upon hearing a teammate was out of danger…
Now, together with that dream—warm to the point of heartbreak, yet ultimately turning into the sharpest interrogation—they erupted like a long-accumulated volcano, breaking through the fragile layer of rock called conviction, burning cracks into his solid and laughable cognitive fortress.
What if there was even the slightest possibility that what she said was true?
What if that care and effort weren’t entirely a meticulously designed disguise by the “Disaster Source”?
What if that “exposure” from the leg injury truly stemmed from some kind of interference she couldn’t control, originating from something within her, rather than a long-planned accident?
What if the truth and duty he had always believed in, and used as his reason to wield his sword, had been mixed from the very beginning with his own fear based on fragmented memories and preconceptions?
And… a fatal bias and evasion born from an unwillingness to admit, a feeling of being betrayed… an emotion?
The chill brought by this thought was deeper than the wound in his abdomen, more painful than his broken arm.
What it shook wasn’t just Laurence’s judgment, but the very foundation supporting all his actions since his Rebirth.
It was the “Absolute Justice” he used to arm his heart when facing the “Disaster Source,” which he considered unquestionable.
Even… it was that hazy emotion in the hidden corner of his heart towards that girl who always smiled quietly, an emotion ultimately overshadowed by the anger of “betrayal.”
“No… impossible…” he whispered hoarsely, abruptly closing his eyes, as if that could drive away those sorrowful eyes and sharp questions from his mind.
But it was useless.
The images and sounds instead surfaced more clearly.
And that final question echoed over and over again in the depths of his soul—
“Have you ever… really understood me, Captain?”
Understood?
He had found her in the ruins of a long-abandoned slum.
That crude shack she had relied on for survival in the first half of her life held many old, yellowed books closely related to various basic knowledge.
He knew she had excellent culinary skills, was efficient in logistics, and possessed sufficiently rich theoretical knowledge of medicine and herbs.
He knew her personality was gentle, even somewhat timid.
She always quietly completed her assigned tasks, never spoke much, and never complained.
He knew she seemed to cherish life in the team very much, maintaining that gentle, considerate, and meticulous attitude towards everyone.
Other than that… what else?
What was her past truly like?
What thoughts lay beneath those crimson eyes?
What was she thinking when she occasionally gazed into the distance lost in thought?
What kind of feelings did she have for him… for those companions she once lived with day and night?
He had never asked.
He had never truly thought to ask.
He just took her presence for granted, enjoyed how the base became orderly because of her, and even occasionally had the illusion of a home.
When he recalled his Predecessor Life, his extreme paranoia due to his dereliction of duty as the Brave and his fear of the Disaster Source destroying the world caused him to bury all his feelings for her deep in his heart.
Then, on that night, when evidence presented itself in the most abrupt way, the slight doubts and wavering in his heart were quickly covered and crushed by the fear from his past life, and the duty inherent in his Braveblood.
“Don’t be ridiculous… She is! The Disaster Source, what has it done to me?!”
He shook his head forcefully, trying to shake those sorrowful eyes and sharp questions out of his mind.
The wounds sent a sharp pain through him because of this violent movement, which instead cleared his chaotic thoughts for a moment.
That’s right, it’s confusion, it’s an attack, it’s a mental attack from “it”!
He must not be deceived!
That warmth, that effort, those emotions that had vaguely sprouted in his heart but were firmly suppressed by reason—they were all just meticulously disguised illusions by the “Disaster Source” to lurk, to corrupt, to ultimately achieve its goal of destruction!
The final scene from his past life, those crimson eyes looking down upon all beings without a trace of emotional fluctuation, that was its true face!
How could he, because of a nightmare, a few words of sophistry, question his mission, question the warning bought with the lives of the entire world in his past life?!
The pain in his body was still clear.
He needed to recover quickly, needed more powerful strength, needed absolute clarity to complete his unfinished mission, to thoroughly kill that damned monster disguised as a human!
However, just as he suppressed the doubts and wavering in his heart, the door to the room was gently pushed open.