Ophelia had come to a realization.
After stepping outside for the first time in a long while... The world had gone quiet.
The marketplaces that had once been crowded with commoners stood abandoned. Stalls had been overturned.
Rotten fruits and spoiled vegetables littered the streets as though everyone had fled in the middle of the day.
No matter how far she traveled, she found no trace of humanity.
Where had everyone gone?
Not a single person answered her calls. No matter how many villages she passed through, or how many cities she searched. There was no one.
It was as if humanity itself had gone extinct.
For an entire year, Ophelia wandered the world.
Urging her horse onward through empty roads and forgotten towns, she eventually made her way back to Nymaris.
Even her homeland had been abandoned. The grand palace stood untouched with the gates left open. Yet not a single soul remained within its walls.
Strangely enough... Being alone wasn't so bad.
In fact, it might have been the most peaceful period of her life since her parents died.
Here, there were no churches to control her, no one to start wars, or demand miracles from her, and no soldiers dying.
For the first time in years, the only person she had to care for was herself.
The silence was lonely, but it was also freeing.
So Ophelia adapted.
She explored unfamiliar places, learned how to survive on her own, and even continued wandering without any particular destination in mind.
Perhaps there had been survivors somewhere out there, perhaps not. But, at some point, she stopped searching.
That fragile peace lasted exactly one year.
Because she had encountered them again. The very beings who had once attempted to take her away. Where? She had no idea, but she was afraid that she was going to be locked up again.
But these were the same beings who had inadvertently given her the opportunity to escape the life she had desperately wanted to leave behind.
So oddly enough, she couldn't bring herself to hate them. If anything... A small part of her felt grateful.
Despite everything, Ophelia was a human, who was kind at heart.
As the Outsiders descended from the sky once more, Ophelia's attention drifted toward the strange symbols surrounding them.
The symbols moved far too quickly for any ordinary person to comprehend. Yet to her, they appeared perfectly clear.
Just as they had before, strange symbols surrounded them.
Ophelia stared at them quietly.
What exactly were they?
For some reason, she had the feeling that they were connected to both the Outsiders... and herself.
After all, the last time she had encountered these beings, she had somehow interfered with those symbols and caused them to fall from the sky.
She still didn't understand how she had done it.
Nor did she understand why she alone could perceive them.
The symbols moved endlessly around the Outsiders.
Shifting.
Rearranging.
Changing faster than any human eye should have been able to follow.... Yet to Ophelia, they appeared perfectly natural. Tentatively, she focused on one of them.
What would happen if she altered them? Would they lose their ability to fly again? The thought crossed her mind out of simple curiosity.
She had no intention of killing them.
At most, she merely wished to disable them long enough to understand what they were.
Just as she concentrated on that desire, the symbols changed and the Outsiders froze.
"What—?"
Panic spread across their faces. Then, gravity reclaimed them.
The beings plummeted from the sky.
Their terrified cries echoed throughout the empty world as they crashed violently into the earth below.
The impact shook the ground beneath Ophelia's feet then silence followed.
"..."
Ophelia blinked.
She hurried toward the crash site.
Blue blood stained the ground. One of the Outsiders lay motionless. It was... dead, right?
The others had survived, though they remained unconscious.
Ophelia stared at them in silence. A strange heaviness settled within her chest.
She hadn't intended for this to happen.
Then again... She hadn't expected them to be so fragile without whatever those symbols represented.
Suppressing the unease creeping into her thoughts, Ophelia crouched beside one of the unconscious Outsiders.
If they regained consciousness, this opportunity would disappear.
So before that happened, she decided to learn everything she could.
Strnagely enough, upon closer inspection, she just instinctively knew what some of them are.
Tilting her head in confusion, she followed the symbols and moved them through her thoughts.
And in just a short amount of time, before the Outsiders could even regain consciousness, Ophelia had grasped the fundamentals of how the System worked.
Using her newfound understanding, she altered the symbols surrounding them and forced them back into a deeper sleep.
Then she began to learn.
For an entire year, she devoted herself to studying everything she could.
She reshaped the terrain around her.
She transformed one material into another.
She created objects from seemingly nothing at all.
At one point, she even fashioned small golems that faithfully followed her around like companions.
Yet despite everything the System could accomplish, there remained one thing it refused to grant her.
The dead could not return.
No matter how tirelessly she researched.
No matter how desperately she searched through the countless combinations of symbols.
Without essence, resurrection was impossible.
And essence did not linger forever.
It had already been far too long since the people she loved had left this world. Her parents. Suri. Everyone she failed to save.
A thought suddenly crossed her mind.
What if she didn't bring them back? What if she simply returned to a time before they died?
Her fingers tightened.
Rewinding time.
Compared to resurrection, it was surprisingly... plausible.
If she succeeded, her parents would never have to remember those horrors.
Suri would still smile beside her, and she could warn them about the rebellion, protect them, and change everything.
The idea settled into her heart like a seed.
It was dangerous. Selfish, perhaps. But Ophelia found herself wanting something again, so she devoted herself to studying time.
She pursued every fragment of knowledge related to causality, temporal manipulation, and the laws governing existence itself.
But she soon noticed something strange.
Each year that passed, more of those beings descended upon the world. At first, there had only been a handful.
Then more started coming until at least half a dozen started descending as though someone, somewhere, had eagerly wanted to capture her.
Still, armed with her growing understanding of the System, dealing with the Outsiders became less difficult with each passing year.
They relied heavily on their mastery over the System.
Unfortunately for them, Ophelia had begun to understand it as well.
Whenever new Outsiders descended upon the world, she would quietly interfere with the symbols surrounding them.
A slight adjustment.
A subtle alteration.
And they would fall into a deep slumber before they could even comprehend what had happened.
The remaining Outsiders would simply assume their comrades had yet to report back.
None of them suspected that the very human they sought had been studying the foundation of their powers all this time.
Eventually, after dedicating herself to the subject for nearly another year, Ophelia finally grasped the principles behind temporal manipulation.
Time reversal.
Even now, she could hardly believe it.
"...It should work."
The small golems she had created gathered around her, hopping excitedly as though cheering her on.
A faint smile appeared on Ophelia's face.
Then she reached out toward the countless symbols drifting through the air.
Her hair and eyes began to glow.
The symbols surrounding her accelerated, overlapping and intertwining in ways they had never done before.
Reality itself trembled and the world began to unravel. Mountains had started to shift backwards, rivers flowed in reverse, fallen leaves returning to the branches and becoming smaller and smaller turning from a tree into a sapling.
And time...turned back.
When Ophelia opened her eyes once more, she found herself standing in the familiar halls of Nymaris.
The palace servants bustled through the corridors.
The distant laughter of nobles echoed throughout the castle.
Everything she had once lost had returned.
She had succeeded.
This was before the rebellion, the wars, the deaths of her parents.
Even her body had grown younger from the reversal.
Ophelia's breath caught in her throat.
Then, slowly, she clenched her fists.
"...This time will be different."
She had been given another chance.
And she refused to waste it.
Using the knowledge she had gained from the future, Ophelia quietly strengthened the royal family from the shadows.
She distributed power where it was needed.
Eliminated vulnerabilities before they could be exploited, ensured loyal individuals occupied important positions.
By the time discontent began to spread among the nobility, it was already too late.
No one possessed enough influence to oppose the crown. The rebellion that had caused her family to die came to pass.
It was peaceful for a while after that.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Ophelia allowed herself to believe that perhaps she had succeeded.
Her parents were alive, Nymaris flourished, and the rebellion never came.
Surely... This was enough.
But peace had never lasted long in Ophelia's life.
The Outsiders remained beyond the boundaries of their world. They were simply watching... waiting. Yet unlike the first timeline, they were not the ones who brought ruin this time.
A new disaster emerged instead.
...Dungeons.
Rifts connecting countless planets and dimensions began appearing throughout the world.
The influence of the system had spread like an infection, granting powers to those it reached.
Yet power without understanding was often more dangerous than powerlessness itself.
The people of this world had no knowledge of the System. People died faster than they could adapt.
In the end, What brought the world to ruin in this second chance was the very System Ophelia had relied upon.
At first, Ophelia used her knowledge to close the dungeons in order to save as many people as possible.
And she succeeded.
Entire villages that should have fallen survived because she intervened. Cities that were destined to be reduced to ruins remained standing. Families that should have been torn apart were given the chance to remain together.
However, it wasn't long before she noticed something strange.
The more she interfered, the more dungeons began appearing throughout the world.
At first, she convinced herself it was merely a coincidence.
But then the dungeons started opening more frequently.
The monsters that emerged from them grew stronger.
The destruction they brought became far more devastating than before.
It was as if the world itself was rejecting her attempts to alter its course.
Eventually, the inevitable happened once again.
Her parents died.
The people she cherished disappeared one by one.
Until, once more, there was nothing left.
"...Why?" Ophelia whispered into the empty silence.
Hadn't she already suffered enough?
Hadn't she earned the right to save the people she loved?
Yet no matter what she changed, death always found them.
Still unwilling to accept that outcome, she rewinded time again. This time, she prepared humanity in advance.
She strengthened kingdoms before the dungeons appeared. She shared knowledge that should not have existed yet and ensured that capable individuals were placed in positions where they could protect others.
For a while, it seemed as though her efforts had finally paid off. Then the price of interfering revealed itself.
The dungeons began appearing even earlier than before. The monsters that emerged from them became stronger.
The world adapted to her interference, escalating each disaster to match the changes she had made.
Humanity simply couldn't keep up.
After countless repetitions, Ophelia finally stopped.
"...Maybe," she murmured quietly. "Maybe I should just let it end."
Silence answered her.
Lowering her gaze, she stared at her trembling hands.
How many times had she brought people back?
How many times had she forced them to relive lives they had never chosen to repeat?
She had convinced herself that what she was doing was an act of salvation.
But what if it wasn't?
What if she had merely been prolonging their suffering?
"...What if they wanted to rest?"
Her voice cracked as the question escaped her lips.
If heaven truly existed, perhaps the people she loved had already found peace.
And every time she rewinded the world, she had been dragging them away from it.
The realization left her feeling hollow.
『 Under The Oak Tree is now watching you! 』