The dimensional gate—created by linking together all modern science and magic.
Wearing a white robe, Rine stepped through it.
The instant her foot crossed the threshold, her vision shifted, and a space unfolded before her like a universe filled with starlight—an imaginary void.
Rine shivered at the sight.
It provoked a primal human fear. The image of Ludger falling into that very abyss remained painfully vivid in her mind.
Rine steadied herself.
‘It’s fine. I ran simulations over and over, I kept researching, and I even prepared every possible safety device. It’s going to be fine.’
Repeating that to herself eased her heart a little.
She threw her body into the imaginary space. The pure-white robe wrapped around her body and shimmered softly.
The imaginary space was a realm where dimensional pressure pressed in constantly.
Because its magnitude and direction fluctuated at random, she needed to erect a new defensive magic array each time to resist the pressure.
Rine continued descending through the void.
Once she passed the gently flickering sea of starlight, plunging deeper toward the abyss, a pitch-black darkness swallowed everything.
Just looking at it made her skin crawl in instinctive terror.
What could possibly be lurking down there? She couldn’t imagine, and that made it worse.
To step into unobserved space—
that was what this meant.
A place where humans should never survive.
Especially after three years had passed.
But—
‘I still have to see it myself.’
She couldn’t believe anything until she saw it with her own eyes.
Her reason insisted Ludger had died. But her heart believed he must still be alive.
‘Because he left me that coded spell blueprint. There must have been a reason. My brother isn’t the kind of person who acts without purpose.’
The light encircling Rine’s body began to dim.
Even the sturdiest protective artifact struggled to withstand the force of dimensional pressure.
‘I can still endure it. I haven’t reached the danger threshold yet, and I brought plenty of spare mana stones.’
Summoning her courage, Rine pushed into the deeper layers of the imaginary space.
If Ludger had fallen, he had to be somewhere around here.
‘But... how far do I have to go down?’
At this rate, even the fixed coordinate she set would warp, and she might lose her way home.
If that happened, she would never find Ludger—and she would become a permanent wanderer of dimensions.
Rine bit her lip.
She wondered if she should turn back, even now—
but decided to go just a little farther.
‘Just a bit. Just a tiny bit more.’
Repeating it again and again, she kept descending.
How long had she been falling when suddenly, below the endless darkness, light flared—
a pure-white expanse revealed itself.
Rine’s foot touched solid ground.
“This is...”
A vast field of white sand.
Above her, the imaginary space spread out like a starry night sky.
It felt like standing in a white desert at midnight.
She saw nothing else. Only winding dunes as far as she could see.
Swallowing hard, Rine walked into the desert.
Over one dune, then down, then over another—she repeated this countless times.
Then she noticed something.
A structure—shaped from sand.
“......!”
Rine examined it. Human-made. Like a rudimentary statue.
It couldn’t have formed naturally.
Finally—
She turned her head quickly.
Beyond her sight, another structure stood.
As she approached, its shape grew clearer—still crude, like something molded hastily from clay. But she could tell—whoever made it had improved.
‘There’s another one!’
The next discovery was a statue—
similar, but now distinctly shaped like a human form.
Rine’s eyes trembled faintly.
She kept walking.
She kept going.
More white-sand sculptures passed by her. One shaped like a tree. One like a person. One resembling an animal.
All bore the unmistakable imprint of human hands.
“Haa... haa...”
Rine’s steps quickened.
She felt it—she was getting closer.
Her chest swelled with overwhelming anticipation. She sprinted across the sandy plain without rest.
Finally, panting heavily, she stopped.
Rine steadied her breath, hands on her knees.
She pushed aside her disheveled hair and looked straight ahead.
Her eyes trembled wildly.
Her clenched fists quivered, unable to hold back her emotions.
At the end of her gaze—
A massive slab stood.
Over ten meters wide, made from the same white sand—
a colossal canvas.
And on that canvas were countless painted figures.
People smiling. People she recognized from her memories.
And before them stood someone drawing.
The jet-black hair she remembered had grown far longer—past his waist, brushing the ground.
But aside from that, nothing else had changed.
The man’s brush stopped.
His head slowly turned, and sapphire-blue eyes met Rine’s.
That ocean-like blue—
the same shade she had seen so many times in her memories.
Rine forced her trembling lips upward into a smile.
If she didn’t, she felt she would cry immediately.
“I... I’m here.”
“Ah.”
The man slowly opened his mouth.
As if unused to speaking after so long, even making a sound felt foreign to him.
But soon, words slipped from his lips in a clear, structured tone.
“Rine, is it.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve changed.”
Ludger’s words carried many meanings.
Rine had become an adult.
She was taller, her hair longer, her entire presence more mature.
But that wasn’t all ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ he meant.
“You’ve learned to control your mana freely.”
Rine answered in a trembling voice.
“Yes. All thanks to you, Brother.”
“That can’t be. You achieved that because you worked for it. I didn’t do anything.”
“But I only came this far because you left me that magic formula.”
What Ludger entrusted to her was the culmination of his life’s work—
a spell to cross dimensions through imaginary space.
To travel beyond the third dimension, into the void, and into another world.
To achieve that, he built a tesseract, created the Klein Bottle formation, developed coordinate-designation magic.
He invented a spell to leap through space using shadows, and finally created the Crystal Corridor.
Yet so many parts remained incomplete.
At the last moment, Ludger concluded the final completion would not be done by him.
So he entrusted everything to Rine and sent her back to their original world.
Even at the cost of sacrificing himself.
“I have so many questions. How did you survive? Everyone was certain you died. I didn’t believe it, but I couldn’t shake the fear.”
“I see.”
Ludger recalled the moment three years ago.
“At first, I thought I had died. But I received help.”
“Help? From who?”
“God.”
Ludger lifted his head.
“No—gods. After finishing their vengeance on Lumenis, they wrung out what little power they had left to protect me.”
Ludger survived the fall into the depths of the imaginary space because of the gods' intervention.
Their protection allowed him to endure the crushing dimensional pressure.
He no longer needed food.
Yet his body showed no signs of starvation. Proof of divine power.
“But merely being alive was all I could do. There’s nothing here. Nothing at all in this imaginary space. So I began creating things. Gathering sand, making what I could. If I did nothing, I couldn’t endure it.”
He sculpted. He drew. He wrote.
He couldn’t dismiss the possibility that he might not survive forever.
When the gods' power faded, that would be the end.
So he decided to leave traces of himself.
For someone—someday, maybe far in the future—
to find.
The picture he was painting now was the same.
He retraced his memories and painted the faces and figures of everyone he had met and shared bonds with.
Just painting them felt empty, so he added gentle smiles to their faces.
He painted, and painted again.
Until only one person remained.
His own face.
But Ludger could not bring himself to draw his own face.
He wondered whether he even belonged among the people smiling so happily on the canvas.
More than that, he simply could not imagine himself smiling like they did.
Because of that doubt and unease lodged deep in his heart, Ludger stalled at the very last step of completing the picture.
How long had he remained like that?
At last, someone arrived—
the student he once taught, the girl he sent away three years ago.
Rine had reached this place.
Grown far more than in his memories.
“It seems you went through quite a lot to get here.”
“Yes. More than words can describe. Do you know how hard it was? I never could’ve done it alone.”
“Alone?”
“Everyone helped me. Senior Erendir, Empress Aileen—oh, she’s not the princess anymore. Chancellor Elisa, Teacher Selina, Sedina, Julia, and all my other friends. And help from many countries too. Especially the support fund from the Yuta Kingdom was huge. Even the Divine Tower spared no aid. They even sent mages who use linguistic magic several times to assist.”
Rine excitedly recounted the people she’d met.
Every one of them existed in Ludger’s memories.
They had each, in small or large ways, helped Rine.
And because of them, she had made it all the way here.
She had not done it alone.
It had only been possible because everyone helped.
“How much time has passed outside?”
“Three years. Three years since you disappeared and the Holy War ended.”
Rine bowed her head to Ludger.
“I’m sorry. I should have come to save you sooner.”
She felt unbearably sad imagining Ludger living for three whole years alone in such a desolate void.
A person might go mad after only a week. But a month? Or a year? Let alone three years.
Rine’s heart ached.
If she had been just a little more capable—
slept a little less—
pushed a little harder—
Those thoughts tormented her endlessly.
Ludger, seeing her expression, shook his head.
“Do not blame yourself. I know you did everything you could. You must not have wasted a single day of those three years. The fact that you reached me is proof.”
“Brother...”
“Three years. So three years have passed. My students must all have graduated by now.”
“Yes, that’s right. Everyone you taught is walking their own path now.”
“I see.”
Ludger turned his head and quietly gazed at the painting before him.
“Three years.”
He moved his hand.
A smile appeared on the painted face that represented him on the slab.
That was the moment Rine reached him—
and also the moment he finally finished the painting.
“Well. Faster than I expected.”
* * *
Rine held out the crystal sphere she had prepared.
It was modeled after the crystal escape device Ludger once gave her.
In fact, its performance might even surpass the original.
“We’re going to use this to return to the coordinates I marked.”
Ludger accepted the crystal sphere.
The method was simple—he only had to channel mana into it.
He was about to do so when he glanced down at the long hair dragging at his feet.
He had left it untouched out of laziness, but now there was no need for it.
Snip.
Ludger cut his hair up to about the middle of his back.
Then he gathered the remainder and tied it neatly behind him.
“Let’s go.”
The crystal sphere enveloped both their bodies.
Their forms slowly ascended.
Beyond the layers of the imaginary space, the distant dimensional gate appeared like a tiny blue dot.
“We made it!”
“It seems so.”
Rine pulled Ludger by the hand with a bright smile as they passed through the dimensional gate.
Light flashed, and their surroundings shifted.
They took in the transformed scenery.
A vast cavern. Machines everywhere. Plants growing beneath the dimensional gate.
They could feel the eyes on them.
Researchers and mages who had worked on the dimensional gate stared at Ludger in disbelief.
“I didn’t think we’d truly succeed.”
“Our efforts have finally borne fruit.”
“But that man is definitely...”
Three years had passed, yet there were still people who recognized Ludger.
He had been one of the most famous individuals on the continent—of course they would.
Ludger felt the reality of his return in the reactions of the living people around him.
Then—
The main doors of the cavern-like laboratory swung open, and armored knights marched in.
While everyone stared in confusion, the knights surrounded Ludger.
“W-wait! What is this—!”
Rine panicked and tried to speak, but Ludger lifted a hand to stop her.
“It’s fine.”
“But—”
“Do not worry.”
With Ludger speaking so firmly, Rine had no choice but to step aside and pass between the knights.
Beyond them, Aileen—the First Princess no longer, now Empress Aileen—approached Ludger.
“Demon King Heathcliff von Bretus. I place you under arrest.”
With a cold voice, Aileen snapped handcuffs onto Ludger’s wrists herself.
Ludger gazed quietly at the cuffs.
Arrest.
Considering he had been the one to start the Holy War three years ago, this was almost gentle treatment.
He looked around.
He recognized faces.
Students he once taught—now grown into adults with their own lives.
The sight made him smile.
“Hahahaha!”
Unable to contain the rising joy, Ludger burst into laughter.
Everyone stared, eyes wide in shock.
He laughed.
That Ludger—
laughing aloud like an innocent boy.
A man who normally only smirked, scoffed, or wore a cold smile.
Those who knew him realized, for the first time, that he could smile so brightly.
Even Aileen was left speechless, staring blankly at him.
Once his laughter subsided, Ludger wiped the moisture at the corner of his eye and said lightly:
“Very well. Shall we go?”