At that indifferent remark, my heart dropped into my stomach.
What the prince meant when he said he had “felt” something.
In this situation, there was only one thing it could possibly refer to.
Time reversal.
Did that mean the Second Prince, too, was aware that time was rewinding?
But how?
The space left behind by my fallen heart was slowly filling with confusion.
Why on earth could that man perceive the sensation of time reversing?
Was it because of the imperial blood flowing through his veins?
No. I had never heard that the imperial bloodline had anything to do with time.
Then...
My heart, which had seemed to fall away, began pounding violently.
It beat so fiercely that I thought it might burst at any moment.
There was only one reason I could sense that time was being reversed.
If so...
If that man felt the same sensation I did...
Then there was only one possible conclusion.
"The sensation of time reversing. I was certain you would notice it, my lady."
"...What grounds do you have for such certainty, Your Highness?"
"You regressed as well, did you not? Just like me."
His calm remark drove a stake straight through my chest.
I barely managed to settle my racing heart.
Then I simply looked at him as though nothing were wrong.
The man standing before me had regressed too, just like I had.
That much I understood.
But...
Why?
Why was that man so certain that I had regressed?
I had not thought I was the only regressor.
But I had never imagined one of them would be the prince.
Could it be that Ian’s lament that day...
Had all been his sincere feelings spilling out because he, too, had regressed?
I had thought it did not sound like something that could come from the mouth of a prince who acted like a wastrel.
I had assumed he was just spouting the same obvious bullshit I had read in a novel.
Enough.
Whether he had regressed or not...
That was not what mattered right now.
"Have you been drinking again, Your Highness? I thought alcohol was prohibited on academy grounds."
I deliberately treated him like a madman and snapped at him sharply.
I could not yield first.
Not to that man standing before me, of all people.
This was not some grand matter of the prince knowing the future he had regressed from.
I simply hated the thought of having the initiative taken from me by that bastard who used to be a wastrel.
Yet the prince did not show the slightest agitation. If anything, he merely gave a short laugh, as though he found it absurd.
"If I had been drinking, I would at least be sleeping peacefully."
"But the outdoors is hardly conducive to sleep..."
"My lady, you know better than anyone that this is not the time to drag things out."
Tch.
At the prince’s pointed words, I clicked my tongue inwardly.
It was even more irritating because he was not wrong.
He was right.
Finding the cause of this time reversal immediately was a hundred times more important than wasting time arguing here.
Even as we stood here bickering...
"It just rewound again, my lady."
"I know without you having to say it out loud, Your Highness."
Time had rewound once more.
I let out a sigh.
In any case, nothing would change if we kept arguing like this.
If I could not resolve this phenomenon, I would be trapped in this present forever.
The prince before me—that bastard—would be no different.
That must be why he had gone so far as to reveal his identity to me.
If he could not overcome this situation, the prince would be trapped in the present forever, just as I would.
...No.
I absolutely refused that.
There was nothing I would refuse more than being trapped in eternity with that man, of all people.
I would rather die than repeat eternity with that human being.
"Whether you regressed or not is irrelevant, my lady. The only thing that matters is whether you will break this loop or not."
That pissed me off.
Heat suddenly rushed to my head.
Seeing that expression on his face, as though he knew everything, made my stomach turn.
Still...
As foul as it felt, did I have no choice but to cooperate with him?
Whether he knew what I was feeling or not.
Or perhaps he did know and simply wanted to say that it was none of his business.
"First, we should go to the place most likely to hold the cause of this reversal, my lady."
That was all he said as he passed by me.
His arrogant attitude—that I would naturally follow him if he just walked off like this—was incredibly irritating.
"You are acting as though I will follow you, Your Highness."
"Were you not going to?"
A vein bulged in my forehead at his shameless reply.
"If you had refused to follow, I intended to take you by force."
Ha.
I almost let out a hollow laugh.
Who did he think he was, saying he would drag someone along by force?
...Ah. A prince.
"Because I need your power to overcome this situation."
"Because... I regressed?"
"No. I need your power to defeat Scaramuccia. I had originally intended to bring Dante."
Scaramuccia.
The being currently rampaging through the academy.
Before my regression, I had been in the dormitory and never seen his face.
But I had heard that he had left countless people injured, taken something from the academy, and then calmly disappeared.
But what did that have to do with me?
"Time reversing means someone has regressed. And that... means someone has been continually dying here for some time now."
"..."
"Unless someone is committing suicide inside the academy, there can only be one reason someone is being murdered in real time right now."
"I know. This must be happening because Scaramuccia keeps killing him."
Right.
But what did that have to do with me fighting him?
"You cannot defeat him without magic."
"You cannot defeat him without magic?"
"More precisely, you need both swordsmanship and magic at the same time."
I had no idea what he was talking about.
Which was understandable, considering our opponent was a Sword Master.
I understood that we had to fight somehow in order to escape the loop.
But ordinarily, defeating a single Sword Master was close to impossible, no matter whether they were assaulted by magic, swords, or every possible attack imaginable.
That was the sort of existence a Sword Master was: one that transcended common sense.
Then why was the prince pointing to me as though I could resolve this crisis?
"What power do I possibly have, Your Highness?"
"The reason your power is absolutely necessary, my lady, is because of the ‘demon eyes’ Scaramuccia possesses."
Demon eyes?
#
So this was what the prince told me.
Scaramuccia possessed two demon eyes.
When his left eye was open, magic did not affect him. When his right eye was open, physical strikes themselves did not affect him.
But if both magic and aura were present, the situation changed completely.
When he was immune to magic, you struck him with a sword; when he was immune to physical attacks, you hit him with magic.
That must have been the strategy the prince had in mind when he extended his hand to me.
Yet one question remained.
How on earth did the prince know that?
Though he had been called a wastrel, that had been a carefully maintained facade. Had he investigated things separately?
With nothing but questions remaining, the prince and I eventually arrived at the library—the place where the explosions continued to sound, and which we believed held the cause of the time reversal.
The library looked utterly wrecked from the outside.
The exterior walls were riddled with bizarre holes, enough to make it seem as though the building might collapse at any moment. From within came an unceasing barrage of harsh metal-on-metal shrieks.
At the same time, enormous waves of mana poured outside, kicking up clouds of pungent dust amid the shelves that lay in ruin.
Through the dust, I could see shadows clashing, and sparks bursting forth with metallic clangs every time they collided.
When the two shadows exchanged another blow, the mana shockwave momentarily swept the dust aside, revealing the figures at the heart of the battle.
The shadow standing with a sword in hand was Ian.
And the other shadow confronting him... was a masked, one-armed man gripping an enormous golden spear. He looked exactly like the figure I had seen in an article in my previous life, so that had to be Scaramuccia.
But something was strange.
Watching Ian hold his own against Scaramuccia, I felt something off about him.
Wasn’t Scaramuccia a Sword Master?
Then why was Ian not being overwhelmed?
It was not a perfectly even match—Ian was gradually being pushed back.
But even I, someone utterly ignorant of swordsmanship, knew it defied common sense for anyone to trade blows equally with a Sword Master.
And...
The prince beside me was standing there with his mouth hanging open too.
The prince was so stunned that he could not close his mouth; a fly could have crawled in and made itself at home without him noticing.
He seemed thoroughly shocked.
But now was not the time to admire Ian’s prowess.
Ian’s expression was not good.
I understood why when I saw the face of the man before him.
It was because his right eye was closed.
According to the prince, that state blocked every physical attack.
Which meant Ian, as he was now, could not inflict any harm on that man.
The moment that realization struck, I tried to gather mana and cast a spell.
But I could not gather mana.
Squelch—!!!
The one-armed man’s golden spear had pierced through Ian’s neck.
Ian’s sudden death.
Before a death so empty and abrupt, I could not even make a sound.
He died like this?
As I watched blood spray from his neck like a fountain, a look of disbelief crossed my face.
Don’t be ridiculous. Ian—you arrogant bastard—there was no way you could die so pointlessly.
Rejecting reality, I gritted my teeth and drew in all the mana in my body as though wringing it out.
You cannot die here.
After barging into my world without permission.
After making me join your club without permission, after making me expect so much...!
After making me expect so much, why were you leaving all by yourself?
But...
I knew Ian had not left of his own accord.
I knew why Ian had died.
I bit down on my lip.
Because I felt I would not be able to endure otherwise.
My vision was blurring, and a terrible possibility was carving my heart to pieces.
...No.
He had not run away. I killed him.
If I had fired a spell the instant I saw him.
If I had only been one beat faster.
Then Ian might not have died.
So you will not be in the ending I reach this time.
How stupid.
So stupid.
Just as I was about to create an enormous spear, intending to die like that fool...
Time froze at the instant the spear embedded itself in Ian’s neck, and began rewinding once more.
No way.
Could the cause of this time reversal be...
As time rewound and rewound again...
Until it had completely returned as though nothing had happened.
Between the golden spear approaching Haede...
"...Died again, huh."
Ian, who had been dead only moments ago, was alive and moving, wearing an expression as though he had a headache.
It seemed that the person trapped in eternity with me was not the prince.
It was Ian—the one over there wielding a sword against the Sword Master.
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