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{3rd Pov}
In the midst of the swirling chaos of distorted space-time, Subaru was the first to succumb to unconsciousness—his body rendered limp as it was flung through the violently churning dimensions. Alongside him, all five of his contracted spirits fell into the same state of sudden shutdown, as though some invisible switch had flicked inside them.
And the reason?
It was simple, yet terrifying in scale.
Subaru's body was equipped with a multitude of supersensory abilities—an array of heightened perceptions that included, but were not limited to, advanced Psychic Sense, Aura Detection, and amplified superhuman senses such as sight, hearing, smell, and touch. These senses were constantly active, even when he wasn't consciously focusing on them. They acted as an endless stream of data flowing into his brain at all times—unfiltered and raw.
And then, in an instant, that flood became a tidal wave.
As Subaru's body plunged into the vortex of the wormhole—a portal that was not bound by conventional physics but rather twisted by temporal layers and spatial folds—his hyper-attuned senses were hit with an incomprehensible overload.
Information from countless alternate timelines, space coordinates, timeframes, causal paradoxes, and universal constants assaulted his mind simultaneously.
It was like trying to comprehend the entirety of reality within a single heartbeat.
The human brain, even one as modified and enhanced as Subaru's, wasn't built to withstand that.
To prevent itself from imploding under the sheer pressure of that data influx, his brain forcibly triggered an emergency failsafe—shutting down all higher functions and throwing Subaru into a deep state of unconsciousness.
And it wasn't just him.
His five contracted spirits, all deeply connected to him through shared mana threads and spiritual linkages, were drawn into the same cascade.
Gloria, being a Great spirit who possessed heightened perception herself, was the second to go down—her mental faculties overwhelmed just as Subaru's were.
The others followed quickly after. Their connection to Subaru, both magical and emotional, made them vulnerable to the same shock.
Only Beatrice remained barely awake, her small form trembling in Subaru's spirit space as she struggled to stay conscious.
Her equilibrium was off. Her thoughts were slow.
Meanwhile, Reina—Subaru's closest companion and the one clinging tightly to him—was experiencing a breakdown of her own. Her Divine Protections and her connection to the Od Laguna had completely vanished the moment they crossed the dimensional boundary.
And as if that weren't enough, the World Travel Magic they had triggered had siphoned a colossal amount of mana from her.
Her reserves were drained dry, leaving her in a critical, mana-deprived state. Weakened to the point of helplessness, she lost her grip on Subaru's body.
'No… not like this… not now!' she thought, frantically trying to hold on.
But her fingers slipped.
And in that terrible moment of powerlessness, her body was ripped away by the swirling storm of time and space—vanishing into an unknown timeline, at an untraceable point in both time and location.
She was gone.
Subaru, however, was not.
Instead, his unconscious body was ejected violently from the wormhole, appearing approximately a thousand meters above ground level, suspended high above the skies of a burning world.
The air screamed as he plummeted downwards, his limbs limp and lifeless, buffeted by the raging winds of gravity's pull. The landscape beneath him grew rapidly in clarity.
It was a city.
No, not just any city.
It was the Capital of Lugunica.
But not their Lugunica.
This version of the capital was in chaos—engulfed in hellfire and ruin, buildings collapsed, and smoke blackened the skies. Screams echoed through the streets, and the stench of ash and blood polluted the air.
It was a city in torment.
A city burning.
Burning because of Subaru.
Not this Subaru, but another.
The Subaru who belonged to this timeline.
A version of him that had taken a different path—a darker one. A Subaru who embraced pride over humility, ruthlessness over compassion. The man known in this world as Pride Subaru.
The impact was brutal.
Subaru's body crashed through the blazing rooftop of a burning house. The tiles shattered like glass beneath his weight.
The second floor gave no resistance. He smashed through it, then through the first, and finally collided with the ground floor like a meteor.
The force of impact left a crater in the cracked stone floor, debris flying in every direction.
His limbs were twisted unnaturally. His skin was torn and bruised. Bones were fractured—some even broken completely. Blood leaked from gashes along his arms and legs.
But then, something extraordinary happened.
Even in unconsciousness, Subaru's body began to regenerate.
At first, it was subtle—the blood stopped flowing, the cuts sealed shut.
Then it became rapid.
Bruises faded. Fractured bones audibly cracked back into place. Torn flesh knit together with unnatural speed.
Within mere seconds, the brutal injuries sustained during the fall began vanishing, one after another.
Beatrice, having barely regained control over her own balance, staggered out of the wormhole's fading light and immediately stumbled toward Subaru's crater. She clutched her head, blinking away the dizziness that still lingered in her vision.
"Subaru!" she cried out, rushing to his side.
Her small hands moved over his battered form, panic creeping into her expression. She reached out to check his pulse—his arm was bent at an impossible angle, twisted horribly out of place.
And yet… it began straightening.
Right before her eyes.
The bent bones cracked back into alignment. The muscles realigned. The wounds sealed.
Beatrice's eyes widened.
Even for someone like her, this level of healing was absurd. It wasn't just regeneration—it was restoration at a level that defied all logical scales of magic.
Subaru's healing factor, enhanced far beyond any known magic, operated at a speed and potency that was unnatural.
He didn't just heal.
He reconstructed.
The process was over in less than a minute.
Subaru's body, once broken and mangled, now lay still—intact, unmarred, like he had never fallen at all.
Subaru's healing abilities were not just 1,024 times faster but also 1,024 times more potent.
Combined with the passive regenerative enhancements granted by his Ki and Aura, Subaru's body possessed a terrifyingly high-speed healing capability.
Even catastrophic damage—such as the loss of major organs or limbs—could be reversed within mere minutes.
His body wasn't just resilient—it was borderline immortal by natural standards.
Seeing this regenerative process in motion, Beatrice finally allowed herself to exhale in relief.
Yet, despite knowing that Subaru's body would heal on its own, she refused to simply rely on that alone.
With determined eyes and unwavering hands, she began casting the strongest healing spells she could muster—a gentle light enveloped Subaru's body.
Threads of mana wrapped around his form, accelerating the process even further.
"Zero! Wake up, I suppose!" Beatrice called out with urgency in her voice, her tiny hands shaking Subaru's shoulder. But despite her efforts, there was no response. His body was intact, but his mind—his consciousness—was locked away.
His brain had essentially gone into lockdown, shutting itself down to prevent irreversible damage from the sensory overload he had experienced inside the wormhole. The data was simply too much. And it wasn't just Subaru. The other five spirits—his contracted companions—were in the same state. Each one lay motionless, their forms dormant, as if suspended in time.
Beatrice, however, remained awake.
Not because she was stronger, but because she was different.
She was an artificial spirit.
Unlike her natural-born spirit counterparts, Beatrice's sensory perception wasn't as finely tuned. She didn't possess the ultra-sensitive senses that allowed natural spirits to perceive the layers of reality beyond mortal comprehension. And that difference—something she once considered a flaw—was what spared her from unconsciousness.
A blessing in disguise.
Beatrice sat there quietly, watching Subaru's chest rise and fall, her mind racing with memories. Everything that had led them to this moment began to piece itself together. She had not directly participated in Echidna's mad research, but Subaru had shared with her much of what the Witch of Greed had been pursuing.
World-travel magic. A concept long thought to be fantasy even among the most elite mages.
Subaru had been patient when explaining it to her, walking her through the layers of theory and conjecture. He had told her about Parallel Worlds and Alternate Worlds. Beatrice, being highly intelligent herself, had absorbed this knowledge with curiosity and caution.
Parallel worlds—according to Subaru—referred to realities that ran adjacent to their own, often overlapping in structure and form. These included alternate dimensions, subtle branches of reality, and most intriguingly, timelines.
Subaru explained in detail how timelines were essentially parallel versions of their own world. Some would differ in minor, seemingly insignificant ways. Others could diverge so drastically that they were practically unrecognizable. But they all stemmed from the same root—divergent outcomes, different decisions, alternate consequences.
Then there were Alternate Worlds—places that existed entirely outside the fabric of their own reality. Standalone universes governed by different rules, untouched by the flow of their world's causality. Subaru himself hailed from such a place, far beyond the Great Waterfall. His own world—Earth—was one such alternate world.
And though his greatest desire had always been to return there, he had promised them—her—that he wouldn't abandon them in doing so. He dreamed of creating a door, a crossing point, a stable link that would allow travel between worlds. A way for everyone he loved to coexist across both realities.
Shaking the thought from her head, she floated upward, deciding that she had to assess their surroundings. The crater in the destroyed house gave her a path out. Rising through the gap in the roof that Subaru had crashed through, she emerged into the open air—and immediately froze.
The sky above was thick with smoke, painted in orange and crimson hues.
Lugunica—the Capital—was engulfed in flames.
Buildings were ablaze. Debris littered the streets. Distant screams echoed through the inferno. The kingdom's heart had become a battlefield.
Beatrice's breath hitched. Her wide eyes scanned the horizon.
'No doubt… this is Lugunica… but it's burning. It's burning to the ground. Why? What happened here?'
She flew even higher, searching for familiar landmarks to orient herself. Eventually, she spotted a few structures that remained unchanged—the Royal Castle's spires, the central plaza, the bridge near the guilds. Despite the destruction, these familiar shapes offered a strange comfort.
'So it's not a different place entirely… that rules out this being another world altogether. Mama's magic—what she was developing with Subaru—wasn't complete and was only designed specifically for time and space traversal. Not world-hopping. That was a different, more complex magic altogether.'
Beatrice furrowed her brows, floating still amidst the burning winds.
'That means we're either in the past… or the future.'
But even that conclusion wasn't foolproof. There was still one more possibility.
'Or maybe… maybe this is a parallel timeline. A branch reality. A twisted version of our own world. But then again… Mama never said anything about the magic being capable of timeline shifts. Or… was she about to? She was unusually excited before we cast the spell… maybe this was the very feature she was about to reveal before everything spiraled out of control.'
Her mind pieced together the puzzle quickly.
'Subaru is unconscious. The Capital is in flames. This is either a vision of the future… or a nightmare spawned from another version of our world.'
Trying not to dwell on it too deeply, she focused instead on the most immediate concern: Subaru. She had to protect him. And she had to find a place safe enough to let him recover without interference.
As for Reina—Beatrice bit her lip.
'I'll think about her later… Subaru comes first. His wellbeing is the most important right now.'
She flew back down to the house, re-entered through the broken roof, and carefully floated down to Subaru's side. With a grunt, she grabbed his body using levitation magic and gently lifted him off the ground.
She turned toward the outside, floating toward the shattered doorway when—
A voice cut through the haze.
Cold. Calculating. Accusatory.
"I see… So you're here after all."
Beatrice froze in place.
A tall figure emerged from the smoke—a man with a blade in one hand and suspicion in his eyes. His gaze was locked not on her, but on Subaru's unconscious body.
"Was that body a puppet?" he asked, narrowing his eyes. "As expected of a Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult."
Beatrice's blood ran cold.
'They think Subaru is… a Sin Archbishop? But why? What version of him lives here?'
Her hold on Subaru tightened.
The nightmare had only just begun.
To be continued...
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