Inside the Stellaron Hunters' ship, Kafka elegantly lifted her teacup, her languid gaze resting on the relayed text.
"The group owner's world…" she murmured, "sounds extremely similar to the Amphoreus mentioned in Elio's script."
Her voice was low.
"And that 'chosen savior' named Bai'e could endure thirty million loops without breaking only because he was essentially a program—designed without real emotion. But how did the group owner withstand countless failures and restarts?"
Kafka's expression grew complicated. She let out a quiet sigh.
"Feels like this story's ending… won't be a happy one."
Back in Suibian Temple, in Ling's bedroom, she'd been completely flattened by the sheer amount of terrifying information packed into just a few sentences.
After a long silence, she mumbled:
"Uh… so, Boss, you succeeded in the end?"
Eisen looked at her and slowly shook his head.
"No. I failed."
His gaze drifted slightly out of focus, as if he were looking back through memories.
"In a fully closed world with no external variables, everything is already destined. I tried every method I could think of—exhausted my intelligence and strength, changed key nodes, reversed major events, tested different paths of power… but in the end, without exception, I failed every time. The world still slid along its fixed trajectory into the abyss of destruction."
His eyes refocused on Ling's face.
"Everything about it… is exactly the same as your situation right now."
"Wait—!"
Ling jumped like a cat that'd had its tail stepped on. She sprang up and crossed both arms in front of her chest in a huge X. The cup in her hand swayed, splashing more water.
"Stop! Stop-stop-stop! Why are you dragging me into this all of a sudden?! What do you mean 'exactly the same'?! What's wrong with me? I'm fine! I'm doing great!"
Her words came out rapid-fire, her pitch shooting up.
Eisen's gaze stayed calm. He looked her straight in the eyes and asked:
"Haven't you already guessed?"
Ling's heartbeat skipped.
"Deep in your soul are clear marks left by repeated scouring of time and space—an exhaustion that comes from endless repetition. Ling… like I once was, you're going through an infinite loop."
Ling was struck dumb. Her whole body went rigid as she blurted a reflexive denial:
"But I don't have any memories of the future—"
Halfway through the sentence, she froze.
Did she… really have none?
Fragments rose from the depths of her mind.
When she'd taken the risk of connecting through Iaes to directly read the memory card containing Fairy's data, she had seen something—something profoundly abnormal.
Through a viewpoint like an old black-and-white film, she and her brother Wise stood facing each other on the skybridge at Scott Outpost, with Hollow Zero looming behind them.
Then the Hollow suddenly expanded—instantly devouring everything in sight.
And in the void that followed, a voice echoed… it seemed to be her own.
A whisper left her lips—
"Rewind."
That… was that the future?
A scene from the endpoint of one of her countless loops?
Seeing Ling go vacant and dazed, Eisen thought the truth had simply hit too hard. His tone softened as he continued laying out his hypothesis.
"This is the biggest difference between us."
"I suspect the power you use to return to the past and restart the loop is either not strong enough—or you can't fully control it."
"So every time you successfully return to the past, as the price of the reset… you completely lose all memories of the future."
He looked directly into her eyes and sketched the shape of despair with clinical clarity:
"When you lose all memories of the future, even if tiny differences in thought create small deviations in action, your overall direction, the key events you encounter, and the major choices you make… will still be irresistibly pulled, again and again, toward nearly the same trajectory as your previous loops."
"And then, when you reach a certain point—either after you've accumulated enough power, or some mechanism triggers—you'll once again return to the past… beginning a new cycle that has already repeated countless times."
"AAAH—!"
Ling grabbed her head, fingers digging into her hair as she ruffled and clawed at it in frustration. Her neat hairstyle instantly collapsed into a mess.
"This is way too tragic for me!!"
Her wail was full of grievance and rage.
After recalling what she'd seen while connected to Fairy, some part of her had already accepted Eisen's conclusion about the loop.
Once she vented hard, the pressure in her chest eased a little. She sniffed, wiped at the redness in the corner of her eyes with the back of her hand, and drew in a deep breath—forcing herself to calm down.
This was different from the group owner's hopeless closed loop back then!
Now she had the chat group—an enormous external variable!
This loop would be broken by her.
She lifted her head. Her eyes were still red, but a fighting light was back in them.
"So… this is what the 'Ominous Premonition' kept warning me about? Because I'm trapped in this damned loop?"
"Oh, no. Not that," Eisen answered immediately.
"Huh?!"
Ling's brain short-circuited. The motivation she'd just reignited went out like a candle. A huge question mark practically appeared over her head.
If it wasn't the loop, then what the hell was it?!
Eisen didn't tease her. He went straight for the throat:
"I found a severe discordance in your past. Something has forcibly distorted and overwritten your real history. From the residual traces… it happened not long ago."
"Tampering… with the past?"
Ling repeated the words in a whisper, as if dropping into an ice bath.
In a flash, the neglected details snapped together:
Senior Sister Ye Shunguang had confidently insisted they'd met as children at Chenghuiping!
But Ling remembered clearly—she'd never set foot in Chenghuiping before.
And that dream—far too vivid.
In it, she was a clueless little girl, just like Ye.
But in reality, during that time period, she should already have been a young woman.
The ages didn't match at all.
Ling took a deep breath, shoved down the churning emotions, and began telling Eisen what had been happening recently:
To find their missing teacher and clear the teacher's name, she and her brother Wise had been secretly investigating for years under the identity of "Phaethon."
The threads all pointed toward a single conclusion: a mysterious organization called the Eulogist Society was deeply tied to the fall of the Old Capital and the teacher's bizarre disappearance.
However, their secret identity was ultimately exposed.
The mayor of New Eridu, wielding immense power, came to them with an offer that was almost impossible to refuse—
In exchange for key intelligence about their teacher, they would act against the Eulogist Society.
As Ling's story unfolded, the group members watching through the text relay completely exploded into chaos.
Join here to read ahead.
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TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter35)
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I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter35)
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