DKFTI 120

A moment of silence passed between the three of them. Lilianthes, lost in thought, quietly observed Sibel’s face.

She had hoped he would transcend all this chaos, but Sibel’s condition wasn’t quite like that. He seemed shaken by everything. He seemed to even feel fear.

“Does it change anything that I’m what Leviathan desires?”

“Change anything?”

“Something like an influence on this world…”

“If you’ve found your memories, you should know. Leviathan didn’t do that for any result or ideal.”

That meant there was no way to understand him.

“Do you think he ever once wished for paradise? I don’t think so. He was born from darkness to begin with. He’s a different being from the current demons. The demons now are so diluted that they’re no different from humans.”

“A being born from darkness…”

“But there’s something even I can’t understand.”

“What is it?”

A chill briefly settled over Lilianthes’ beautiful face.

“Then why did he regain his power?”

“Power?”

“He had thrown off his shackles when he was reincarnated. But he went out of his way to regain his power and become a rejected being to this land.”

Did he have some task that required him to take that power back into his hand? It was an ominous sign. If it were strength just to obtain Sibel, he already had more than enough. Was it excessive preparation, or did he have some reason that he had to return to the old form completely?

“I can’t predict whether your old tree will become a shelter that protects you, or a thorn that pricks you. Is there any guarantee that such a desperate feeling will remain unwavering in the face of time?”

Judging from what he had done, it didn’t seem like the latter. But Leviathan’s excessive actions did spark the imagination.

“His hatred toward humans is quite strong too.”

“Why does he hate humans that much?”

“Why do you think?”

Lilianthes’s gaze was fixed straight on Sibel.

“He doesn’t want to lose you.”

If his god hadn’t pitied those lowly creatures, if he had loved the things of this land a little less, or if that had been impossible, if he had destroyed them from the start…

When Lilianthes retraced that time with Leviathan’s gaze and the sense tainted with darkness, she reached a conclusion.

“Ah.”

Now he understood.

“There was a simple answer.”

The corner of Lilianthes’s mouth rose slightly.

“The end of the human era. That’s what he wants now.”

“The end…?”

“The goal he’s been preparing for is clear. He’ll want you to regain divine power and return to what you were then. He must have prepared everything for that. But even if things go as he wants, what happens after?”

At Lilianthes’s question, Sibel imagined it and traced through his memories. Perhaps…

“In the end, the same conclusion will come again.”

Sibel was startled. He had been thinking the same.

“So the best solution is to erase all beings with finite life who might cause extinction while giving them paradise, even deciding on your own annihilation.”

After she finished speaking, Lilianthes laughed heartily as if she felt relieved. She giggled, then her eyes widened when she met Aizen’s.

“Could he have even planned for the Apostle to lose divine power? If so… that’s a little creepy.”

Lilianthes shuddered. Leviathan was terrifying, but she was also thrilled because it seemed like she could understand him a little.

“So in conclusion, what Leviathan wants is the god of the past.”

Sibel calmly navigated the situation. What he desired, what had to be done for that, all of it led to a single end. Leviathan’s desire wasn’t for his current self. He sought to revive the ghost of the past.

“That unfathomable Leviathan turned out to be the greatest dreamer in the world.”

Lilianthes’s laughter did not subside.

“I once thought he might be the being closest to god in this land… it’s funny that he turned out to be the complete opposite.”

Sibel couldn’t understand why Lilianthes seemed so amused. Well, if anyone could laugh in this situation, that was already a blessing.

“Well, maybe he really is granting your wish. You wanted meaningless wars on this land to disappear, after all.”

When Sibel tilted his head, wondering what she meant, Lilianthes continued.

“In the end, fighting can only happen when there are beings who possess the emotion called desire. If he intends to wipe them all out completely, that’s also one form of resolution.”

That was a very violent way to solve it.

But since this was the present Leviathan, it really seemed he might do anything. Lilianthes’s words didn’t sound like a joke.

Sibel was troubled.

“The center of all his actions is Silvaren.”

“You talk like he’s someone else. Are you trying to separate yourself on purpose?”

Lilianthes enjoyed drawing these kinds of reactions from Sibel, just as much as she did from Leviathan.

“I have to disrupt the plan he’s trying to complete.”

“Why? He says it’s for you, so why bother?”

At her words, Sibel spoke with a determined look in his eyes.

“Like you said, if I think about who I was, isn’t the answer already clear without me having to say it?”

“Ah… so you’re using that memory at times like this? You’re quite the fox.”

“I don’t want the living beings of this land to die. And besides, I have no intention of returning to a ghost of the past.”

“Hm.”

Lilianthes didn’t quite sympathize with that part.

“You’d gain immense power though. You’d become a true god, not an incomplete being like a demon.”

“If I had wanted to stay eternal as a god, I wouldn’t have let him kill me.”

Ironically, in the memory that came to him, Silvaren could have stopped Leviathan. But he didn’t act. It was as if he had accepted it as the natural order.

Silvaren had already known that paradise could not and should not exist.

“I don’t want to lose who I am now. So I can’t return to the being Leviathan wants.”

“What do you plan to do then?”

At Lilianthes’s question, Sibel answered in a calm voice.

“I’ll erase these memories.”

Lilianthes looked slightly surprised at Sibel’s reply. It was an unexpected answer.

“Memories? Silvaren’s memories?”

“Yes.”

The solution that came to mind after all this talk was this very method. A way to remove any chance of returning to Silvaren and maintain the present self.

Even if Leviathan realized he wouldn’t get the result he wanted, he wouldn’t go as far as destroying all the living beings of this land.

The certainty Sibel felt about Leviathan’s behavior didn’t come from Silvaren’s memories. It came from recalling how Leviathan had been in this short life, facing him as Sibel.

He didn’t blindly trust him, but he at least believed that Leviathan still held on to a fragment of reason.

“Do you know how to erase those memories?”

At Sibel’s question, Lilianthes tapped her cheek with her finger and thought. She suddenly wondered why she was helping Sibel so actively in the first place. It had been that way from the beginning.

At first, she thought it was because his existence would add some new amusement to her dull life, but now she realized it was simple goodwill. A strange feeling indeed.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered most now was her desire to hinder Leviathan’s plans.

“To get what you want, you’ll have to go somewhere unpleasant.”

“Where?”

“The Holy Kingdom.”

At Lilianthes’s words, Aizen reacted faster. The weight of that word, Holy Kingdom, felt heavier to him than to anyone else.

“There are many sacred relics kept there. Among them, there should be a holy water that can erase memories, which you need now.”

“Hmm…”

That sounded rather difficult.

Sibel thought it was ironic that, of all places, it had to be there.

“But maybe it won’t be too hard.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a guide.”

Lilianthes’s gaze turned to Aizen.

“Ah.”

There really was a reliable guide.

“Why are you looking at me again? I can barely even follow what you two are saying.”

Aizen spoke, and Lilianthes burst into laughter again, clearly pleased. It seemed she laughed every time Aizen opened his mouth.

“The moment has come when we need the hero’s help.”

At Sibel’s words, Aizen leaned back in his chair with a crooked posture. He had gathered a lot of information from the flow of their conversation, and based on that, he was lost in his own thoughts. Maybe that was why this request felt unpleasant. Especially since all of this was because of that lunatic Leviathan.

Aizen dragged out the silence as if he were hesitating, but in the end, his shoulders slumped.

“It’s really cruel to ask when you know I can’t refuse.”

A pitiful body without the right to refuse.

It was a strange order of things, accepting first and asking later, but there was no way around it.

Aizen started lining up in his head all the questions he would bombard Sibel with once they were alone.