CH 179

Blanchielle died after endless torment. They had forced her to change into human form and to give birth to a child. They knew that they wouldn’t be able to receive the powers of dragons by just eating the heart, and had tried to create a ‘mixed blood’ body that could contain all of that power.

The humans forced Blanchielle to have a child that she didn’t want and aggressively paraded around their superiority as they stomped on hers.

Blanchielle had begged me, as I hid in the Augran Mountain, weak and dying, for me to save her, to get her out. My body may have died, but I was still awake–I was able to hear her voice. But I was unable to do anything.

I just cried out. I cried, and cried, and cried out. I writhed in agony, unable to do anything.

[Kill me! Noirelle, please, kill me! Kill me! If you can hear me, kill me…..]

Blanchielle begged me through our minds. Her words had changed from what she said in the beginning–maybe everything was too much, but she cried as she asked for death.

Blanchielle’s powers were related to healing, so it was impossible for her to die by her own hands. That was why she needed my powers.

I hoarded every bit of power that I could. Then, I closed Blanchielle’s miserable, painful eyes myself.

My family, Blanchielle, who had been with me as soon as I had hatched. And that was how I killed my life partner with my own hands.

And then….. Then I went to the Blanche Estate.

The Blanche Dukedom.

A family, formed by the child of the human that had hurt her.

Yulinelle Blanche had long since passed, and the only one remaining was Swanhaden Blanche. I wanted to erase every single piece of her suffering from this world.

So I ripped apart the current Blanche Duke, Swanhaden Blanche, into pieces.

But he didn’t die at once. Maybe it was because he was mixed-blood with a dragon. He immediately recovered, so I killed him again and again and again.

I ripped him, stabbed him, tore him to shred…. In the end, I poured in as much black magic as I could and made him die as painfully as I could make it. Swanhaden, who had never been normal to begin with, continued to smile even as he died.

That made me even more angry, so I made sure to punish ‘him’ as much as I could. I hated leaving the remnants of Blanchielle on some human.

And then, once I had killed everyone, the only thing remaining in this world was the blood soaking the earth. The empire’s flag was torn to shreds and was so bloody that it barely fluttered in the air.

“O Mighty Dragon! Please, relent your fury! I have something to say to you!”

I was on the top of the mountain, watching as the world burned down, when some pink-haired girl boldly climbed the mountain and yelled to me.

There was no use for me to listen to her story–all humans disgusted me. So I killed her without even a bit of hesitation. Then, I stared, empty-eyed, at the world that was devoid of any life except my own.

From the left to the right. The world was covered in blood. I quite liked the look of human bodies littering the floor.

I couldn’t imagine what Blanchielle would say to me if she saw the state of this world. She had always been kind and positive when it came to humans, so she probably wouldn’t have liked my choice to massacre the human race.

She might get angry at me, so angry that she might peel off my skin. I wanted to see her again. I smiled. It was all useless, though. She was already gone.

I was staring at the beautiful sight of the new world around me when I suddenly felt a strong surge of magic near the DuBois estate.

I felt like something was off, so I stretched my wings and flew towards the area.

The DuBois’ time circle, the one I had thought was broken, was slowly turning counterclockwise and emitting light.

The outward layer of the magic circle, the round edges, began to turn while the swirly formulae and letters began to rearrange themselves.

It was a time pattern. The conditions for the activation of the circle had been met somehow.

If a circle began to activate, even I wasn’t able to stop it. I just stared at the activating circle with dead eyes. The world began to rumble. An earthquake erupted from the ground and things began to shatter. The splintering sounds almost sounded like a crying animal.

The world grew dark once more. I felt my consciousness snapping before I fell on the spot.

“Wh, what is this?”

I felt like I was being sucked away somewhere, and I was suddenly surrounded by dirt.

When I woke up again, I was back on the Augran Mountain. I tried to use my powers, but they were blocked again–my magic was gone, and my heart was gone too.

It took a long while for me to admit that I was back in the beginning. When I was able to cool my head slightly, I was suddenly surrounded by an excess of monster cores.

I had returned to around the time when my revenge was coming to a close. After I regained my powers through the monster cores, I decided to ruin the empire once more and throw the entire world into chaos.

So that was what I did. I had succeeded once before–how hard could it be to do it again? The plan went smoothly, and the world was going to be devoid of life once more.

“O mighty dragon, Noirelle. Please! I beg for mercy! You must despise us, who had destroyed peace and harmony and brought chaos, but please, forgive us for our foolishness just this once!”

The pink-haired girl came up again and yelled at me. Again. What the hell. What’s she doing here again?

I killed the girl again.

I started from the beginning and killed the emperor, killed the DuBois marquis, killed the head of the Lunaasha guild, killed the Blanche duke. I had no idea why the time circle had activated back then, but I made a mess of everything again so it was all good.

I was staring at the satisfying scene in front of me when the DuBois time circle activated again and I went back to the time before I completed my revenge.

I went again.

“Why?!”

Why was it? Why was I going back again?

I found this strange, but my rage wasn’t dissipating, so I killed. Again, and again, and again, I killed. And then, when I faced the decrepit world in front of me, the pink haired girl came onto the mountain once again and begged for my forgiveness. And then, I went back in time once again.

The DuBois magic circle shifted counterclockwise and emitted a bright life. Then, when I woke up again, I was back on the mountain.

This happened again and again and again. I thought to myself that this cycle had to end, and that I would get out of this godforsaken loop somehow. I kept destroying the world again, and killed again…. But when I woke up again, I was always back in the beginning.

I couldn’t even count how many times I had destroyed the empire. Maybe it had been a few hundred times. The pink-haired girl, the one who came up on the mountain in the hundreds of times I had brought this empire to destruction, came up again.

Despite her proud-looking, puffed up chest, her shoulders were shaking in fright.

“O mighty dragon! I stand humbly before you as a representative of humans and lower my head! We humans have been foolish enough to destroy the balance between peace and regularity and have brought chaos unto ourselves! But please. Please. Please. Please, look at us with pity and forgive us.”

Again?! She came up again. Again! Again! I clicked my tongue in frustration at the time loop and at the girl. It was a rare day when the words that the girl spoke actually piqued my interest.

My anger towards the empire had flagged slightly after so much time had passed. I had given them the pain and agony that I had felt–multiplied. I was angered at the thought of my current situation and the loss of Blanchielle, but I must’ve been calm enough to listen to the girl’s words.

I stopped shooting my magic towards the empire and walked towards the girl. The girl, who felt me approaching her, lowered her forehead until it rested on the ground as her body shook in fright.

The girl kept yelling apologies at me. I didn’t understand it. Why was this random girl risking her life to come up here and prostrate herself before my feet?

I grabbed the girl’s chin and held it up to take a look.; Her eyes were clenched shut as her voice shook. Her round green eyes opened–they were glinting in fright but still had a sharpness behind it all.

When I glared down at her with her head in my grasp, her delicate face began to scrunch up as she began to shed tears.

“T, the. Please. Forgive….. Hic…….”

I placed my finger onto the crying girl’s forehead and read through her thoughts.

[Human ambition is….. Quite diverse.]

Whenever any humans showed bravery, they always had some kind of greed or ambition behind it. This girl, this girl who never failed to appear, was the same. Her mind and heart was filled with ambition.

She was just the same as the emperor. He had wanted to accomplish his ambitions through himself.

But these two were inherently different. If the emperor’s ambitions were based on his selfishness, this girl’s ambitions were all towards others. Maybe that was why–the girl’s methods in attaining her goals were careful, kind, and thoughtful.

The girl whose name was Hestia tried to change my mind to accomplish her goals, and she had tried to understand and accept me.

That was why she had found me, time and again, and prostrated in front of me. I was able to learn from her after reading her thoughts. That if selfish, greedy people existed in the world, the opposite–people who were so kind that they were dumb–existed as well.

Hestia had never hurt me. To be honest, none of the people living in the world right now had hurt me at all. But I had vented my anger to those living right now. And I kept getting apologies from someone who had nothing to do with this mess.

I had already gotten sick of revenge after having achieved it hundreds of times, so I decided to give up.

The DuBois circle began to activate once again. I stared at the shaking world in front of me and decided to try and figure out what the condition was for the activation.

As soon as I collected enough power to stand up, I headed over to the DuBois estate to check the circle. When I dug through the circle, I found that the activation condition was the destruction of the empire.

It seemed like Daniel DuBois, who cared a considerable amount for his family, had figured out my plans and had drawn out the circle. So that I could change my mind. So that his precious children wouldn’t die unseemly deaths because of me. So that their world could be peaceful. How selfish.

The conditions for destruction was quite detailed. First, the royal family had to be safe, the DuBois family had to stay alive, and the human population couldn’t be reduced to less than 30% . There were a lot of detailed conditions in it as well. In the end, it all boiled down to this: nobody could die because of me.

“I’m screwed…..”

Why did my timeline have to begin towards the end of my revenge….. All of the ‘conditions’ that I had planned before I fell asleep were leading the humans towards destruction.

While I had been researching the DuBois circle, I stumpbled upon where Blanchielle’s soul had gone to.

Her reincarnated self had become a magician who had been busy researching me. She had faced a similar life as the one she had as a dragon and died the same way. The current DuBois marquis and her had been friends, so I was able to find her quickly.

Thinking back, the reason why the DuBois marquis didn’t accept the title of duke, even with his huge role in killing me, had been because he had realized the mistake he had made and had rebuked the emperor. That was why they had helped Blanchielle a few times before, too. Even though they hadn’t been much help.

I found Blanchielle’s soul. I was now entirely focused on preventing my plan from coming to fruition.

If everything was normal, I would’ve been sweeping through the human population, but I just stared at the DuBois circle from their estate. Someone walked towards me. I wondered who it was–it was Cory DuBois, staring at me with empty eyes. The DuBois who had lost his entire family and was now alone.

“…..who are you?”

Cory DuBois, someone who I should’ve killed much, much earlier, walked towards me and began to speak.

T/N: ……..CARADIL?????????????????