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"Believe me when I say that nothing good comes out of prying into this matter," Nikolai tried to warn him sincerely. "All I know is that this is bigger than both of us, and the consequences could be deadly."

Master Edward didn\'t say anything and simply stared at him before turning toward the ritual grounds. The man\'s intuition was sharper than a knife, and he could deduce that Nikolai was telling the truth about this.

"I refuse to listen," Master Edward said with a vile grin. "This is interesting, and I need to know the answer. I need to know what is going to happen and why it is going to be in this place."

"Then I have no choice but to fight you," Nikolai assumed position, even though it strained his body just to do so. The young man looked at him with approval before unsheathing his sword and standing by Nikolai\'s side.

"Then \'we\' have no choice but to fight you," the young man said with a grin, his mana gathering around the sword.

"You brats are getting on my nerves," Master Edward clenched his fist, but his grin didn\'t disappear. If so, then be it. Let me teach you how early it is for you two to stand against me."

Master Edward slashed his hand with his blood spear, allowing blood to poll on the ground. His palm bled more than ten men combined could bleed, but his complexion was still rosy.

"Coagulate, My Armor," per his command, the blood gathered around his body and began to turn into blood armor. The whole armor covered Master Edward\'s body, only his red hair flying upward.

"Be careful," the young man whispered. "This armor could withstand an attack from the King of Beasts himself," his voice didn\'t lack fear, but bravery is born from within that fear.

"You don\'t need to fight with me," Nikolai probed, as there is no need for this young man to go this far for him. He wanted to know the reason. "We don\'t know each other that well for you to fight this battle."

"I don\'t know you, but I know myself. I shan\'t waver in the face of adversity, not when I am with a friend," and true to his words, he didn\'t back down.

Nikolai wanted to dissect his mind to see what was inside. He was sure that he would find ideals rather than logic in his mind, not necessarily good ones.

"Suit yourself," Nikolai didn\'t want to give his back to a stranger, but his hands with tied against the monster in front of him.

The pair of blue eyes glowed from within the blood armor as the Blood Knight raised his spear, ready to fight. There was no crushing pressure nor heavenly strings. There was only one thing.

Bloodlust.

An invisible string connected the blood spear to his neck as if the two were destined to meet. Death was staring at him, and it came in the shape of the Blood Knight\'s blue eyes.

"Prepare yourselves," Edward\'s voice rang deeply, although the armor muffled it. The two youngsters tightened their fists around their weapons, ready to fight.

[Divergence: 50%]

"What?" Nikolai was confused before the Blood Knight dissolved into a pool of blood. Master Edward was nowhere to be seen, and it was enough to realize that he had no intention to fight them, only to fool them.

[A character with a high fate meter learned of the vision.]

[Unable to restore the timeline. The system will now terminate the current one.]

[Termination has begun...]

Nikolai watched the world crumble as the youngster beside him was confused by the series of events. However, his companion\'s mental status was unimportant compared to what would happen from this point on.

As the vision crumbled, Nikolai found himself in the darkness again. Three massive words appeared in front of him before one of them changed.

[Terminations left: ––] 

Then, the last word dissolved to be replaced by a different one. Just like the one before, Nikolai couldn\'t see what the word was. He could guess it was a number, but there was no way for him to read it.

[Terminations left: ­––]

Nikolai felt his consciousness fade as a familiar feeling overtook him as he was trying to understand what was going on. The only other time he felt this was when the Elven Princess killed him for the fate-changing artifact.

It was death.

***

"Welcome, Lyle," Saint Maria called him by the name he gave her before. Nikolai blinked his eyes, and his eyes adjusted to the light coming through the window.

"This is..."

"Something wrong?" Princess Maria was confused by his confusion, and the two confused people looked at each other with equal perplexity.

Nikolai closed his eyes and reopened them to make sure he wasn\'t dreaming. Instead, he was in the mansion\'s study with the princess, the same place she asked him to go to the ritual and find out what was about to happen.

"No, there is nothing wrong..." Nikolai tried to examine his body, and he saw that he was wearing the same black suit she had given him.

"I guess you have yet to fall into your role, and in this way, we are similar," Maria sighed with worry, but Nikolai felt as if this reaction was better than the awe he faced in the past time.

\'The past time,\' Nikolai took a deep breath. \'I was here before. I lived this one time before.\'

The termination of the timeline wasn\'t something new to him, it seems. Nikolai had gone through this experience once before. So, this was the proof that his past life wasn\'t him being crazy, but it happened.

The existence of the termination means that his system wasn\'t something that only existed in this lifetime but the one before. The system was the reason that he went back in time.

The system terminated the timeline where he lived, and it was his first life as well. This explained a lot of questions, but it didn\'t make him feel at ease.

How many terminations does he have left? How can he terminate the timeline, and who gets to decide if termination is necessary? The condition for the termination was, in no way, his death. After all, he didn\'t die in the vision.

The future deviated too much.

However, a terrifying question made Nikolai feel small in the room. It was a question that he wasn\'t sure he wanted to know its answer.

\'The future deviated from... what?\'

What was the future that needed to be maintained? Who or what was maintaining it? Why did Nikolai need to reach that future for him not to be terminated?

\'A character has been deleted.\'

Nikolai never paid attention to the Characters menu because it changed too much. He only used to know the fate meter of certain characters, at least those registered in the system.

However, why did the system use those specific words? Why didn\'t it simply say that a person in the database died? The same thing applied to \'termination\' as if the system wanted a specified ending.

Nikolai closed his mouth into a thin line, as a realization sat in his stomach:

Am I a prisoner of the system?

"Your face is pale," Saint Maria stood up from her desk, her face worried about him. Nikolai snapped out of his daze and found that his face was covered in sweat, his lips quivering.

"I just need to get some fresh air," Nikolai wiped away his sweat with his glove, and he looked at the droplets of salty water in his palm.

It was a long time since he felt genuine fear.

However, the termination this time gave him a chance to avoid a similar fate to the last time. He got to know that Lilith was visiting this city because of what happened with the water serpent.

Furthermore, Lilith knew Master Edward. The termination this time gave him a lot of information that he didn\'t even know that he needed.

"I understand," Saint Maria nodded with a smile. "How about we visit the garden?"

Nikolai was about to refuse when he noticed the letter on the table. When he was here before, Saint Maria had a worried expression because of this letter.

"Yes, let\'s do that," Nikolai nodded with a smile, and the princess nodded in joy. The letter disappeared from the desk before Maria toward him, allowing Nikolai to escort her out of the study.

The servants looked at them as the two walked together, Nikolai walking behind the princess. He ensured that they weren\'t too close but not too far for her to be upset.

Whispers ran as the retainer of the princess made his first debut. His story was that his father served Master Edward before in the army, and the Royal Family rewarded him the position of the princess\'s retainer because of his father\'s services.

\'I hated this position,\' Nikolai thought, \'but it might prove useful in the end.\'