Ludger could not bring himself to speak when he saw Rine in captivity.
The question of “why” would not leave his head.
If he thought about it in reverse, there were more than enough reasons for it.
Nirva was devious.
Considering the tendencies he had shown up until now, it was not strange at all that he had prepared such a method.
“Your expression has changed, unlike yourself. As I thought, this girl is deeply connected to you.”
“......”
“Oh dear. Please don’t glare at me like that. Even if I appear this way, am I not the ‘demon’ you people speak of? With such an important task before me, did you never once think I would use a hostage to threaten you if I had to?”
Nirva spoke without the slightest trace of shame.
If he could restrain the most threatening figure, Ludger, with just a single hostage, he would do so a hundred times, a thousand times over.
Yet, even though Ludger was slightly shaken, no true opening of the heart was revealed.
‘Hmm. So this is not enough, is it.’
Then he would have to shake him a little more.
“Amazing. To think a man who seems to have no blood or tears would be overflowing with sentiment like this. So this girl is that important in your life?”
“From now on.”
Ludger’s voice dropped like a blade.
“You’d better choose every single word you speak very carefully.”
From his blue eyes flowed a chill that seemed to freeze anything it touched.
Nirva felt his skin crawl.
“Unless you want to end painfully in my hands.”
“Hahaha. How amusing.”
Nirva laughed at him, but he did not take the warning lightly.
To his eyes, Ludger had not yet used his full power.
What Nirva had seen was a man capable of wielding divine strength.
He did not know why he was suppressing it, but if pushed, there was every chance he would release it.
‘And not the power of Lumenis, but of another god.’
According to the truth Nirva had read through dreams, Ludger was of noble blood from the Theocracy of Bretus.
But surprisingly, the divine power he felt from him was not of Lumenis, the radiant goddess, but of a forsaken god who had been expelled and fallen, like the Goddess of Dreams.
He did not know why it was so, but it was certain Ludger’s threats were not mere words.
‘Even when he fought, he never revealed it fully.’
Was it that he could not, or that he simply chose not to?
Nirva judged it to be the former.
To borrow divine power with a human body demanded a heavy price.
Ludger knew it, so he restrained it as much as possible.
‘If he decides on mutual destruction, it will be troublesome for me too.’
So Nirva had to provoke him only to the point before he exploded.
It was not difficult.
To worm his way into the opponent’s mind and shake it subtly—this was Nirva’s specialty.
And now, Ludger was showing his weakness.
“Was this girl so important? Enough to seal away her memories, and not only that, to keep her by your side and constantly help her?”
At first, when Nirva abducted Rine, he thought she was connected to Zero Order.
But when he pried into her dream while she slept, he learned something far more astonishing.
Her memories had been sealed, and far from Zero Order, she had far more ties to Ludger Cherish.
Nirva pieced together her dream to glimpse her sealed past.
It was sealed, not erased.
So to lift the seal and peek beyond was well within reach.
And thus he learned Rine’s past.
And how Ludger was tied to it.
“The girl who lost her memories trusted and followed you as her benefactor, but what a cruel reality it is. The man she revered was actually the enemy who killed her mother? And pitifully, she herself knows nothing of it.”
“......”
“Because you sealed her memories, she does not even know she had a mother. Nor that her mother died at your hands. Is this not the very definition of a hopeless tragedy?”
Sealing her memories to let her forget the pain?
To Nirva, it was nothing more than Ludger’s self-comfort.
From the moment Ludger killed Rine’s mother, their relationship was irreparably broken.
Warped, torn apart.
Ludger merely stitched it back together by force.
He had to know it was only a temporary patch.
All it would take was a light touch, a faint breeze, and this swaying tower of a relationship would collapse in an instant.
“At first, I thought you cared for her because she bore the Saintess’s power.”
Nirva, of course, had also read the power dwelling within Rine’s body.
He knew what she possessed.
“She is a possessor of the Judgment Eye. Since you are from the Holy Theocracy, I thought you took interest in her because of that.”
The Judgment Eye had been passed down from long ago in Bretus.
Eyes that could discern right from wrong, distinguish good from evil.
And when it reached its peak, it was said even the secrets of heaven could be glimpsed, even the future itself.
“In the past, after the Saintess Arkenis of the Lumenis Church, no possessor of the Judgment Eye ever appeared again. Strange, is it not?”
“What do you mean strange.”
“As one from there, you must know. The Theocracy always has a Saintess. But there can only be one possessor of the Judgment Eye in an era. If one is here now, then what of the current Saintess in the Holy Nation?”
A fake.
Though Nirva did not say it, his words implied it.
And Ludger knew it too.
The Saintess paraded by the Church was, in truth, a false one.
Not that she was dressed up with nothing behind it.
She truly had great divine power, enough that people said she wielded something similar to the Judgment Eye.
That was not a lie.
She truly had such strength.
But it was not something she awakened herself—it had been artificially created.
“As expected of the fanatics who believe in cruel Lumenis. To replace the vanished Saintess with imitations, to trick their faithful—it is nothing but mass fraud.”
And it was not only the Saintess.
The Priestess sisters who wore tiaras over their eyes—
They too were experimental subjects, prepared in the attempt to create a Saintess.
Not qualified enough to become Saintess, but their talent was too exceptional to be discarded, so they were given the office of Priestess.
They too had a similar, lesser form of the Judgment Eye, and lived on serving the Church as mid-ranking clergy.
“And so I thought you approached the girl for the same reason. Being the abandoned bloodline of the Holy Sovereign, you sought to exploit the trace of the Saintess for yourself.”
To Nirva, the connection between Ludger and Rine was strange beyond belief.
A discarded child of the Holy Sovereign.
Bearing even the power of a heretical god.
In contrast, Rine was the possessor of the long-lost Judgment Eye.
And a bearer of the incurable curse—Non-Attributed Mana.
The two of them had already met once, ten years ago.
That meeting was by chance, but it ended in tragedy.
“But seeing your behavior now, there seems to be no great cause at all. It is purely personal. Does the fact that she is the daughter of the woman you killed weigh so heavily on your mind? Did you want to comfort yourself with cheap pity?”
And now, with time passed, they met again in Seorn.
One remembered, the other sealed.
“What cruel play of fate this is. Even to me, who has seen countless dreams under the Goddess, it is too tragic.”
“......”
“So perhaps I should help a little. I will end her cruel fate here.”
Nirva’s tongue twisted cleverly, shaking Ludger’s spirit.
Ludger widened his eyes, about to leap at him, but Nirva raised his finger and wagged it side to side.
“Do not be foolish. I hold the girl’s lifeline in my hand.”
Sshhh.
Dream-sand wrapped around Rine’s neck as proof that his threat was not just words.
One wrong move, and her throat would be slit.
Ludger could only clench his fists.
“Can you endure this? The only reason I’m listening to your provocation is because Rine is taken hostage.”
“Indeed. The moment I kill her, every brake restraining you is gone. That is why I am not killing her yet, am I not?”
“Exactly. Which means you know this act itself has no meaning.”
“True. Other than buying time, there is nothing else to it.”
To Ludger’s surprise, Nirva accepted it easily.
As Ludger glared in suspicion, Nirva grinned.
“All I want is to shake your spirit a little.”
“You think you can shake me with mere words.”
“Did I not say? To end her cruel fate. And I did not mean in a physical sense.”
At that smile, Ludger felt a chill run down his spine.
Something irreversible had already happened.
So whispered his instincts.
He had to stop Nirva, whatever he was planning.
But.
He realized it too late.
“She has already heard everything.”
“...She heard it?”
Ludger’s trembling gaze turned to Rine.
The girl who had lain as if dead with dream-sand binding her—her eyes had opened at some unknown moment.
Unable to believe it, Ludger was struck speechless. Nirva jeered.
“From the very start of our conversation, I adjusted her so that only her mind was awake. Which means she has heard every word we spoke.”
Ludger no longer heard Nirva’s voice.
The world’s sounds and colors receded, and only Rine remained in his sight.
Awakened, she stared at him like one still lost in a dream.
Too shocked—beyond surprise—unable even to react.
Her lips, closed tight, slowly opened.
“Is that... really true...?”
“......”
“Was it really you, teacher, who sealed my memories...?”
“Rine, I...”
Crack.
On the firm spirit where not even a needle could slip through, fractures began to spread.
Nirva’s smile deepened.
The grin splitting nearly to his ears revealed his delight.
At last.
The opportunity had come.
“Much as I’d like to see the end of this collapse, the curtain must fall here.”
With that, Nirva snapped his fingers.
Rine’s eyelids fluttered shut and her body collapsed onto the dream-sand.
Ludger simply watched.
He could do nothing else.
Around him, fine grains of dream-dust swirled and clung to his body.
Before, they had not affected him at all.
But now, it was different.
Through the breach in his heart, Nirva’s authority seeped in.
Ludger’s eyes, fixed on Rine, slowly closed.
His consciousness sank into the depths.
Into a dream within a dream.
As he fell into that abyss, Nirva’s voice echoed after him.
“Good morning. Soon it will be good afternoon. So, good night—and pleasant dreams.”
* * *
“It is done.”
Nirva, seeing Ludger fully immersed in slumber, was certain.
This was ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) no feigned act to deceive him again.
This time, Ludger truly slept.
Nirva approached him and raised his hand.
Along his hand’s edge, dream-sand gathered into a sharp blade.
If he swung it and cut Ludger’s throat, it would all be over.
But he did not swing.
He lowered his hand.
“No need to poke a hornet’s nest.”
Now Ludger would never awaken.
He would dream within a dream, and then dream again within that dream—an infinite spiral of illusion.
That was enough.
If he touched Ludger here and provoked the divine power within him, it would become troublesome.
Nirva’s gaze shifted back to the sleeping Rine.
“A possessor of the Judgment Eye, and bearer of Non-Attributed Mana.”
This girl was born under a cruel fate indeed.
But compared to what awaited her, perhaps this was better.
If the Lumenis Church discovered her existence, far worse would happen.
“Better for her never to awaken again. That would be her salvation.”
Do not worry, child.
The Goddess will embrace you warmly.