A faint voice escaped the Regressor as she barely managed to rise.

“I... tried... not to kill you, too. I thought... there might be another way.”

By any measure, she was battered beyond recognition, in no condition to fight. And yet, drop by drop, her flowing blood returned to her. She drew it back with blood manipulation. At the same time, wind wrapped around her body and brushed away the dust. For a moment, she looked clean again.

Of course, that was only on the surface. Inside, her body had sustained considerable damage from the Earth Dragon’s direct hit. Merely standing on two feet would have been difficult.

But the Regressor had a gift for turning pain and despair into fury.

“I... just wanted to do well. Because no one but me can do this. Because if I don’t change, nothing changes... I thought that if I meant well, if I truly tried, everything would get better.”

Early in her regressions, when she could see things steadily improving over the previous runs, the Regressor had believed.

She believed she could appear wherever trouble arose, resolve every conflict, and create a peaceful, beautiful everyday life. That if she repeated it over and over, things would gradually improve.

There had been a time when she believed that.

But.

“Then why! Why, why! Whyyyy!”

A future she could not change. Hearts she could not move. Firm convictions and self-righteousness, or simply stubbornness.

Corrupt organizations, wicked individuals—and the few good people among them were the first to die when crisis struck.

Those she had trusted to help all concealed agendas of their own, leaving the Regressor alone to play the fool among them.

Even those who had truly helped her shook their heads in the next run, rendering their promises meaningless.

“Why won’t anyone help me?!”

The Regressor raised her head, brimming with anguish and fury. A seven-colored rainbow flickered in her eyes.

The Red Eye that saw temperature.

The Vermilion Eye that looked down from above.

The Golden Eyes that saw the invisible.

The Green Eyes that saw through things.

The Blue Eyes that saw depth.

The Indigo Eye that saw far.

The Violet Eye that saw power.

The Seven-Colored Eyes: mystic eyes of which even one could shake the world. All seven colors shone at once.

They neither blended nor appeared in alternation. Each of the seven lights existed separately, yet all flickered simultaneously.

Halos rose within the Regressor’s eyes, twinkling like stars in the night sky. What streamed from their corners—tears, or clusters of light?

Seven-Colored Eyes, All Eyes Open.

Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye.

An authority achievable only by uniting the seven mystic eyes beheld what lay beyond reason.

“If you want to die that badly, then die once first! I’ll worry about whether I can save you afterward!!!”

Seven mystic eyes that saw what could not be seen. Their combined will, the Wheel-Turning Heavenly Eye, saw possibilities.

Once called the Eye of Fate, it was an eye that gauged its wielder’s own potential.

Its ambiguity and uncertainty, along with those who had met their ruin obsessing over fate, had caused it to be gradually shunned and eventually torn into separate parts. But for the Regressor, it was different.

For her, the fruits of those possibilities already existed—as many as the number of times she had regressed.

She looked at herself.

She drew upon the possibilities of the human named Shei.

This was neither prophecy nor foresight.

It was power she had acquired in a previous run. By reading and observing the potential she would fulfill in that run, she reproduced that strength, however briefly.

The price was her lifespan.

But that was something the Regressor had in abundance.

“Heavenly Sword Art, Dragon’s Ascent!”

A storm raged behind the Regressor. Energy spreading in every direction swirled violently. Kicking off the ground in a single bound, she soared into the air and unleashed an enormous, wind-wreathed slash.

“You have jumped again. Have you no ability to learn...?”

Catch her with Spatial Dust, then tear into her with the Earth Dragon. The Earth Sage clenched her fist and twisted it.

CREAAAK.

The Earth Dragon’s concrete body twisted with an ominous sound, like a pillar bearing too much weight.

“Yaaaaah!”

“Earth Dragon.”

Metal was not the only material that could become a spring. So long as it did not break, concrete could serve as one, too.

Driven by the Earth Sage’s power, the Earth Dragon met that requirement.

The rising dragon of earth writhed upward and appeared before the Regressor’s nose in an instant.

At that very instant, it split neatly in half.

At the point where one divided into two, the Regressor advanced, cleaving the Earth Dragon lengthwise. Wreathed in a storm, she swung Sky Cherry Blossom straight at the defenseless Earth Sage.

Had she unleashed it on the surface, the blow looked powerful enough to split even the distant clouds.

SLASH.

A great cut opened across the Earth Sage’s body.

Blood overflowed from a wound she could not close—a fatal gash running from her shoulder to the opposite side of her waist.

Yet even after landing the blow, the Regressor did not let down her guard. She immediately took a defensive stance and gritted her teeth.

The Earth Sage’s kick crashed into that guard, sending her flying like a ball.

Immediately afterward:

SNAP.

The Earth Sage’s right earring split. Its fracture looked exactly like the wound across her body. As the crumbling earring fell to the ground, her wound closed tight as if it had been sewn shut.

“Funeral in Advance...! This is so annoying! Why do you get to just come back to life even when you’re at death’s door?!”

The Regressor snapped irritably.

It was neither healing nor restoration. The wound had merely been postponed. By making a clay voodoo doll, temporarily transferring the impact to it, and ‘acting’ as though her body was unharmed, she could continue fighting. That was Funeral in Advance.

That was all very well in theory, but having an opponent revive with it in the middle of a long fight felt monstrously unfair.

Of course, the Earth Sage found the situation even more absurd.

“... How strange. Prophecy cannot alter reality, and seeing something cannot improve your skill unless you practice it. Yet just now, it seemed your very level of skill changed...”

The instant the kick struck, the Regressor had leaped forward to throw off the point of impact. At the same time, she had already extended her arm to brace against the leg and soften the blow. Those fluid movements and the flow of her energy were different again from before.

Her energy arts, her physical abilities—everything was overwhelmingly superior to what it had been. The Earth Sage could feel it.

“However, like clothing a size too large, it leaves gaps through which streams of disordered energy escape. I know not what it is, but borrowed power cannot last long.”

“Borrowed, my ass! This is my own skill! Even without this, give me just three more years and I can beat you... as long as you don’t have Earth’s Ripple!”

Her rapidly draining energy weighed heavily on her body. Still, the Regressor burned with fury as she shouted.

“Surrender! This is the last time I’ll ask—!”

“I should be asking you that. You look precarious. Do you still intend to fight?”

“Don’t make me laugh! Without Funeral in Advance, you’d already have died once!”

“Then you shall have to kill me twice more.”

JINGLE.

The clay doll hanging from the Earth Sage’s left ear swayed. An extra life.

And the final life was her own.

They exchanged a brief look, confirming each other’s resolve.

The Regressor raised her sword again, and the Earth Sage wrapped herself in concrete. Now it was a race against time. Whether the Regressor could defeat the Earth Sage before her time ran out would determine the victor.

As the Regressor looked up at the Earth Sage with those glittering eyes, she suddenly spotted a human figure moving atop the mountain of corpses beyond her.

She nearly fell over in disbelief.

Her eyes went wide.

‘That’s... What are you doing up there?!’

When the undying one drove a fist through a corpse’s belly, it did not fall. Instead, it stared blankly down at the right arm that had burrowed through its body.

A weak voice escaped the impaled corpse’s mouth.

Earth.

Earth?

Another corpse responded to its voice. The murmuring passed from corpse to corpse, until at last they all began muttering the single word ‘earth’ in unison.

Then their heads creaked around. Their eyes turned, too. And they began charging madly at the undying one.

“Whoa! Callis, stay back!”

Before the wave of corpses swallowed him, the undying one hoisted Callis up and hurled her far away. Thrown without warning, she broke her fall and tumbled across the ground.

Then the wave of corpses swept him away.

“Rash!”

Callis’s scream was buried beneath the corpses’ chanting.

Bury. Must bury.

Must honor the departed.

Frenzied murmurs. Cries with nothing left in them but a mission. Corpses in loose, baggy clothing lunged like thirsty beasts.

Callis ground her teeth. Their numbers had already exceeded anything she could handle. Cursing her own powerlessness, she knelt before Tyr.

“Progenitor! Please! Save Rash!”

“... Very well. Wait a moment.”

Just as Tyr was filling the air with hovering droplets of blood, the undying one’s booming voice rang out from among the corpses.

“Wait! Something is strange!”

The corpses swarmed like ants. An ordinary person would already have been torn to shreds, yet the undying one sounded perfectly fine.

“They bear less hostility than I expected! Perhaps they aren’t trying to attack us...!”

Then the undying one’s body rose out of the mass of corpses. Holding him above their heads as though bearing a coffin, they walked toward the mountain of corpses.

From atop them, he shouted.

“Haha! I feel just like a king!”

Then came a crash. The blood droplets Tyr flicked swept through everything beneath him at once. It was an attack that covered an area rather than a line. The corpses shattered, and with his support gone, the undying one landed below with a thud.

As he rubbed his backside, Tyr murmured.

“That is no reason to leave them be. In any case, vengeful spirits are merely echoes of the dying screams people uttered in their final moments. Destroying them sooner rather than later is a mercy. Is that not so, Hugh...?”

When Tyr turned her head as she spoke, a corpse wearing my coat stood where I had been.

She tilted her head, then belatedly grasped the situation and went pale. An instant later, she recoiled in horror.

“Hugh?!”

While a startled Tyr looked frantically around for me, I was riding atop a corpse possessed by a vengeful spirit, making my way up the mountain of corpses.