I touched the area around my neck that had been pierced by the golden spear just moments ago.
It was fine.
The neck where something huge and imposing had been lodged was filled with smooth new flesh, as though asking when it had ever had a hole in it.
That golden spear had been stuck in my neck just a moment ago, hadn’t it?
It had been so horribly vivid that I kept stroking that spot on my neck without realizing it.
The hole had closed up, and the blood that had gushed out like a fountain was gone.
But that cold sensation had lingered so deeply it gave me chills.
I couldn’t stop touching my neck.
As I rubbed it, I spoke to Kafka.
"What number is this?"
"Four."
Apparently, I had died four times now.
The first time, I held my own against him, but my neck was cut by the golden spear and I died.
The second time, I succeeded in getting my sword to touch his body, but the gimmick changed. In the moment of panic, my face was pierced and I died.
The third time, the gimmick changed again, so I held out while hoping any mage at all would come—but my neck was pierced, and I died.
This was already my fourth retry.
I had retried and fought three more times, but not once had I managed to hold out until Angelica arrived.
I didn’t even know whether it was truly possible to win.
If not for the retries, I would have been dead long ago.
To think I could use retries—something only possible in a game—here.
It took a ticket to enter Dreamland.
But at Dawnstar Academia, there was a system where, if you lost or left a battle midway through, it refunded the ticket you had spent to enter.
With the added comment that I should prepare myself and try again later.
To think I was using that infinite retry system in reality.
They said the Magic Knight was the one who had planted this here, didn’t they?
I had no idea what the hell that guy had created.
He had handed out the power to turn back time as if it were some gift—a thing only a god ought to be able to do.
Of course, it was not resurrection but a restart, so it did not mean I could whittle down Scaramuccia’s health.
Still, I had been able to familiarize myself with his movements to some extent.
So, the first thing I had learned after dying four times was this.
First, when I retried, the fight with Scaramuccia was erased as though it had never happened.
After all, the sword I had broken during the third retry had returned to normal, completely intact.
Not only that, once I reset, the [Stars of Knights] and [Prydwen’s Ability] I had used returned as though unused. Even the skill I had copied from Scaramuccia was erased completely with a single retry.
However, the gauge for [Oath of Chivalry] did not reset. Judging by that, it seemed that voyeurs like Kafka, who had contracted with me, were unaffected by retries.
So all I could do with a retry was become accustomed to his movements.
That was it.
Still, it was better than nothing.
I could clearly see myself steadily improving against a Sword Master.
Even if I could not win, I was surviving longer and longer.
I decided to take the good with the bad.
Second.
This bastard was obsessively targeting Haede.
Even while fighting me, the moment an opening appeared, he would suddenly turn his spear toward Haede.
If I told Haede to flee with Iris, this bastard ignored every one of my attacks, chased after her, and made sure to drive the golden spear into her chest.
So I could not simply tell her to run away.
Rather, when his attention was focused on Haede, I could enthusiastically pound away at his openings. So during the third retry, I did not bother telling her to run.
The problem was that I still had to stop him from getting close to Haede somehow.
In the end, I could not deal proper damage because I had to block his path. Whichever way I looked at it, that made it all pointless.
But why the hell was this bastard targeting Haede?
He had never targeted the Iris Fan Club sprawled out over there even once.
It was not as if he did not kill me, but he targeted Haede with particular intensity, almost as though he were saying I came second.
In the game, Haede was a supporting character, but her role was practically that of an extra, which made it even harder to understand.
She was Iris’s friend, so she did not appear infrequently in the story, but she was not exceptionally talented, had no connection to any villains, and was not the hidden mastermind.
There was no reason for Scaramuccia of the Dawn Troupe to target her this obsessively, yet I had no idea why he kept doing it.
A personal grudge? But he did not look particularly angry.
And Haede was not the sort of person to earn a personal grudge. Nor was it likely to be a grudge against her family, since unlike Iris, she was not from a particularly high-ranking house. It was ambiguous.
Even Insight Eye had nothing to say.
Why on earth was he after her?
In any case.
Booooom—!!
It began once again.
I used sword energy to keep the vibration of the golden spear from damaging my sword.
I closed in on him as much as possible and tried to drive Carnwennan into him.
I abandoned the conventional sword-and-shield style and used a dual-wielding style focused solely on dealing damage.
I had to pour on as much damage as possible before the gimmick changed even a little.
And I had to conserve Prydwen’s Ability as much as possible.
Since I could only use it once, it had to be saved for the most decisive moment.
Blancart was effectively unusable as well.
If I carelessly tried to play at being a knight on horseback, that golden spear would surely skewer me.
Was this really right?
That bastard was rampaging around on horseback, so my mobility could not help but lag far behind his.
And with him thrusting the golden spear from such a high position, even landing an effective hit was ridiculously difficult.
Then there was that fucking gimmick that prevented me from dealing damage, his skill at swinging around a massive lance from horseback even with an arm cut off—
—and that fucking weapon that ignored defense and casually ground down a sword’s durability.
The only thing I had that could even remotely compete was my stats.
At best, I could gang up on him?
I ran through a thousand possibilities again and again with [Insight of One Who Has Seen the End], but nothing came of it.
After trying around twenty more times, I got only one result.
So, because mana was precious, I stopped using it after my third death.
I decided the proper answer was simply to charge in headfirst.
Once again, he targeted Haede.
I crammed mana into my legs and reinforced my leg strength.
I stepped in front of Haede and barely deflected the trembling golden spear by crossing Carnwennan and my sword.
There was surprise in his eyes.
That was right. This made four times.
I had seen him look startled at his own attack being blocked.
I had experienced his martial prowess five times, but for him, this must be the first.
Behind me, Kafka used [Mad Orlando] with the sword Prince Charles had been holding.
But Scaramuccia had regained his senses by then and casually struck Kafka away as though she were nothing.
Kafka coughed up blood when she crashed into the wall.
But I did not miss the chance she had created and threw myself forward.
He had swung his lance widely, so I thought it would be difficult for him to assume an attacking stance again.
But my opponent was a Sword Master.
As though such limitations meant nothing to him, he lightly swung the golden spear and effortlessly blocked my attack.
All I could do was cross and brace my two swords, locking down his golden spear.
The golden spear trembled at tremendous speed, and with his sword energy added to it, my swords’ durability began to wear down rapidly.
But there was no helping it.
The moment I let go of this spear, I would be the one split apart.
I gritted my teeth and fiercely unleashed sword energy.
At that moment.
A streak of golden light cut across Scaramuccia, leaving a single wound.
It was only for an instant.
But his body wavered.
I did not miss the chance and used [Mad Orlando].
I loaded turbulent emotion into both swords and sent a storm flying toward him.
The surroundings were shredded apart, and the library began to be swept up in the frenzied storm.
Scaramuccia defended belatedly, but.
Seeing the countless red slashes carved across every part of his body, this attack appeared to have landed as a rather lethal blow.
I kicked him away, sending Scaramuccia violently reeling back.
I opened the distance and checked my body.
But what was that golden light from before?
"You held out remarkably well."
A man came trudging out through the dust.
Second Prince Kyle.
Kyle had been the source of that golden flash.
As though declaring that the golden attack had been his, Kyle’s body radiated a golden aura.
"You continue to surprise me, Sir Ian. To think you had been holding your own against a Sword Master."
There was no pretense in him.
His eyes held nothing but pure admiration.
As he spoke, Kyle came to stand beside me, radiating golden sword energy.
But Angelica had not arrived first. This man had?
Why?
I thought Angelica would come first.
Why had this man come before her?
And he had never shown up even once during the previous three retries.
Could it be?
Were regressors unaffected by the time of a retry, too?
"It seems you are the cause of this world’s time being rewound again and again."
So I was right.
The prince’s calm words drove the point home.
"This is the fifth time."
I decided not to hide it.
There was no point in concealing it when it would not help us fight.
Right now, we were so short-handed that every pair of hands counted.
As though he already knew, Kyle merely nodded.
Then, just as he opened his mouth to say something.
The dust scattered in the wind, and a golden spear shot out from its center.
Once again, was he not targeting Haede?
There was no time to listen to the prince.
I reinforced my leg strength with mana once more, launched my body like a bullet, and blocked his attack by crossing my two swords.
Perhaps he was wounded in his pride after being blocked twice—or perhaps he was just startled.
"How strange. I thought the first time was an accident, but you have blocked it twice. Are you really a Sword User?"
Scaramuccia spoke.
I could only snicker at his reaction.
"That’s already the fourth time you’ve said that."
This was the fourth time I had heard those words from him.
It might be his first time saying them.
But after four retries, I had heard it about five times already. I was sick of it.
Still, if there was one thing I could say for certain made this retry distinctly different from the previous ones—
Now.
Booooom—!!
I had someone who would fight alongside me.
But.
The prince’s golden sword energy could advance no further.
"Unfortunately, time is up."
Scaramuccia spoke with a mocking smile.
I clicked my tongue.
That was because the current Scaramuccia had opened the Eye of Reversal.
He had become a being who escaped all magic, clad in intangible armor that deflected every blade and spear.
That was why even the prince’s golden sword energy could not pierce his body and was blocked by the intangible armor.
Fuck.
"Well, it doesn’t matter."
As the prince calmly responded to the sneering Scaramuccia—
—a terrifying wave of mana began to wash over my entire body from far away.
"I intended to deal with them later, but was there a mage among you?"
Scaramuccia spoke calmly.
With mana of this magnitude, it could only be Dante or Isabella.
But I was certain the owner of this mana was Isabella.
Even after four retries, Dante had never appeared. And the only person I could assume would sense the reversal of time, like the prince, was Isabella, another regressor.
In any case, the prince had moved out of range, and I used [Mad Orlando] once more to drive it in properly.
I had no intention of dealing damage anyway.
I only used the frenzied storm to bind Scaramuccia and halt his movements.
Before Isabella’s lightning struck us, I raised Prydwen.
My vision flashed, and lightning crashed down upon us.
It contained so much mana that the library shook once.
Yet the library did not collapse.
I had no idea how sturdily it had been built.
As the dust settled, Scaramuccia slowly emerged.
He had taken such a massive blast of lightning, but aside from being scorched, he did not appear to have suffered any serious injury.
We were fucked.
Apparently, one mage alone was not enough to deal damage.
As I pulled back toward the prince, Isabella walked out beside us.
"I poured that much mana into it… Is this what a Sword Master is like after all?"
Isabella bit her lip as she looked at Scaramuccia.
I sighed as I watched him.
It was not as though she had dealt no damage at all, but Isabella’s attack—the one capable of landing an effective hit—did not seem to have worked very well.
Still.
"Let’s try once more."
I readjusted my grip on my sword.
It was true that she had dealt a certain amount of damage.
And it seemed the prince felt the same.
"Still, learning that your magic works on him was a significant gain, my lady."
He merely raised his sword while freely radiating golden aura.
"The wastrel prince is holding a sword and facing down a monster. The entire world will be turned upside down, Your Highness."
Mocking him as she spoke, Isabella began charging another spell.
"Everyone already knows I have reformed, my lady. Do you not read the papers?"
The prince only smiled as he returned Isabella’s jab.
"And when the people of the Empire are in danger—"
He wrapped his sword in golden sword energy once more.
"—if a prince does not set an example, who will trust and follow the imperial family?"
But.
"That does not sound like something that should come from Your Highness’s mouth."
"I agree."
It seemed like he had been trying to say something cool.
But hearing such words come from the mouth of a prince who had spent all this time acting like a wastrel, even if it was a facade, felt incredibly strange.
Still, the prince acted as though it were nothing.
"Ha ha. Is it not an utterly common cliché? A notorious wastrel finds his motivation, reforms, and becomes strong…"
He laughed.
"That is why this is only natural. Reform is the most natural thing that only a wastrel can do."
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