Chapter 95

Chapter 95

Irene recalled the time she went into Edith’s lab after a long pause. It was when she made an excuse that she was holding the research on the relationship between favorability and fate because she didn’t know where to put it.

“It’s this way. It might be strange, a study on favorability, isn’t that right? I believe in fate.”

Edith replied, putting her research data down on the pile of Elios-related research materials.

At the time, Irene didn’t think it was a big deal, but now that she thought about it, there were a lot of points in her mind. Elios, an unknown ancient heritage that no one except Edith dared to dare to touch. And she, who studies Elios, and the favorability research that she had been hanging on to all her life…

…All of these things seemed to form some kind of intersection.

So, Irene made this hypothesis.

“Madam Edith, did you approach fate through Elios?”

Rodion and Elios…

That these might be some key to disrupting the game’s system. As Irene spat out her words, she added hastily.

“…I’m not sure. As I said before, it’s a hypothesis.”

There was a reason she wasn’t sure.

It was the part where Edith was always studying Rodion and Elios. So, if Rodion and Elios were truly the only keys to breaking the system, then why hasn’t she made this progress in her previous lives?

Irene rather hoped that Edith had found some kind of bug in this episode.

All games were bound to make mistakes, and if you played it over and over again, there was a chance it would happen at least once. It would have been better to hear that it was a situation where the system was noticed through a bug… that way, the time she spent here trying to get back to reality would feel a little less meaningless.

However, most of us know that this desire itself arises from facing reality.

“What you say, no, even your hypotheses are all right. It was through Elios that I learned about fate. This is really amazing. I didn’t expect anyone else to know what I know…”

Her words accurately pinpointed Irene’s concerns.

“I saw fate through Elios, and I was researching ways to change that fate. And the fact that fate is influenced by favorability, and that it all comes to an end at some point… I also found out that our time was repeated quite a lot. I couldn’t know in detail how the repeated time passed, but one thing is for sure.”

…That I know how to break this fate.

Edith’s whispers entered her mind.

Ah.

It seemed that she had made a noise without Irene even realizing it.

She wanted to cry for the first time in a long time. Still, she couldn’t tell if it was because she was happy or sad. Edith’s story was concise compared to its contents.

It started with this sentence.

“It was the first day I succeeded in approaching the essence of Elios.”

The day she finally approached the essence of Elios, the unknown ancient heritage handed down from the previous Lavrenti family.

At the time, Edith’s dissolution date was approaching.

The remodeling of Elios had already been completed a long time ago, but it was because she had a child with the previous head of Lavrenti under the judgment that a completely new entity would be needed to use Elios.

The previous head of Lavrenti, to put it mildly, was a gentleman with an outdated view of women, so he recommended not doing anything while she was pregnant, but Edith was stubborn. Nothing could dampen her curiosity about the unknown.

And more than anything.

‘Even though I succeeded in remodeling Elios, I couldn’t figure out what Elios was doing.’

This was a critical issue.

It was because Elios was a dangerous object with infinite possibilities. Since the predecessor wasn’t a researcher, he might think that the transformation was enough, but Edith didn’t think so. So, she focused on research to uncover the nature of Elios so that she could reach full term.

The method she chose was to build an observation device, a device that allowed her to see the essence of Elios.

At that time, Edith was only filled with thoughts on how to process Elios’ limitless potential and energy.

‘If there is really a power source in it, and if I can use it, the technology will develop several times over at once.’

Elios, a white object that seemed to glow on its own, seemed to have an overflowing energy in itself so many thought it contained a great power source.

Of course, Edith did, too.

With the feeling of taking the first steps in untrodden snow, she carefully put Elios into the observation device. And finally, when she dug into what was in it — the so-called essence, what she saw through the observatory wasn’t the kind of energy wave or anything like she had expected.

Rather, the information contained in it felt like it was being engraved in her brain just by touching it.

“Step back. Rodion hasn’t completely fallen asleep yet.”

What Elios showed was a certain scene.

A young man, like a hunted beast, bleeding and dying.

And, it wasn’t just one.

The young man died in great variety. However, the common thing was that he was always alone at the moment of death.

The moment she saw the scene, all the emotions she felt from the young man were planted in Edith—despair and sorrow, deep emptiness and heartbreak. Not only that, but also the yearning for affection and corresponding hatred… even the fear of death.

The young man’s will was an entreaty.

“I have to kill, but my body… doesn’t move as it pleases. Help me…”

The last words of help completely put him to sleep.

The young man was lonely even at the moment of his death, missed someone, and died with that much sadness.

Edith could feel those emotions intact.

Even after she moved away from the observatory, she couldn’t escape from those feelings for a long time and only cried. It was unusual for Edith, who usually hears the word ‘cold-blooded’ more often than greeting. However, no matter how much she looked back and how much she tried to control herself, things didn’t go her way.

The reason was simple.

Because the young man resembled her so much.

As soon as Edith saw the scene, she knew that this would be the result of her research. The study would be successful… but the child she gave birth to would die.

“Rodion.”

As she recalled the name of the child that had been called in her memory, Edith hugged the bloated stomach she had never hugged before and wept incessantly.

From a childhood wandering around the slums, she has loved only the unknown all her life and devoted herself to uncovering it. Until she had her own child, she was the cold-blooded Edith who only thought of him as part of her research. All her life, she had considered the very thought of being affectionate a luxury.

As if to ridicule her thoughts, fate struck like lightning.

“My baby…”

A dying voice mingled with sobs.

On that day, Edith fell in love with the child in her stomach. A child she created to use, and in the future, she would kill…

After that, Edith devoted herself and became even more immersed in her research.

‘I had to somehow create a future that would save Rodion.’

As a result, right after giving birth to her child and before her body fully recovered, she crawled out to her lab again. Because of that, her joints ached whenever the cold wind blew, but if she could save Rodion, that wasn’t a problem.

‘I’m not in the position to distinguish between water and fire*.’

[ T/N: An idiom which means ‘to push ahead with something regardless of any difficulty or danger.’ ]

For her, fate wasn’t the only problem.

She already had no intention of handing over Rodion as a simple experiment for Elios, or as a tool to satisfy Lavrenti’s greed.

‘I have to move fast to fool Lavrenti.’

Lavrenti, who was stepping into all kinds of dirty work, was obviously a good supporter and partner of hers, but it was clear that everything she had enjoyed would choke her as soon as she turned her into their enemy. So, Edith started researching a way to break fate by not allowing anyone to enter her lab.

Research has certainly made progress.

But.

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