He Became the Only Ally of the Abandoned Warrior

“Reinhold! You should be ashamed for waking up later than Lucy.”

“Haha, I have no excuse.”

Something felt off. From the looks of it, they were still part of the Hero’s party during their campaign against the Demon King. But why was Rabin here? And why was she so friendly with everyone?

“Alright, Rabin and Lucy, you’re on dish duty this morning, right?”

“Ugh, this is such a pain. Can’t you do it, Arsil?”

“I did the dishes last night.”

“But everyone went straight to bed after dinner last night!”

“Quiet! Follow the rules!”

“You follow the rules!”

“Come here! I’m going to pummel your stomach until you behave!”

Rabin and Arsil snarled at each other like old rivals. It was an oddly endearing sight, even in the midst of their bickering.

“Hey, Lucy, can you keep what I told you yesterday a secret?”

“Why?”

“Arsil doesn’t know what happened in the Sludge Alley. If she finds out, she might be so shocked that she leaves the frontlines. And those knights in black robes with Rina… they were definitely from the Empire. It’s better to uncover who they are first and then get revenge together with Arsil.”

“You really do care about her, even though you act like you’re at each other’s throats.”

“Haa… Can’t help it. We’re the only survivors left. Well, if you count that Rina woman, there’s four of us.”

“Who’s the other person?”

At that, Rabin’s expression softened.

“There’s someone… someone I really want to have.”

“Is it your lover?!”

“Not yet!”

Lucy chuckled, teasing Rabin as she blushed. By the time they finished the dishes, Lucy made a promise to Rabin.

“When we find out who destroyed the alley, let me know. I’ll help destroy both the Church and the Empire.”

“Lucy…”

“Your enemy is my enemy. I never liked those bastards anyway. Let’s take this chance to crush them all.”

Lucy patted Rabin’s shoulder with a confident smile, but in the process, she accidentally dropped the plates she was holding, sending them crashing to the ground.

“Oh no…”

“You broke them, so you clean up.”

“Your mess is my mess!”

“Show some shame!”

Aside from Rabin, everyone else was annoying, but since Lucy had no control over her body, she resigned herself to just waiting for this ridiculous play to end. However, time moved forward unrelentingly. As the days passed, the warmth of the Hero’s party began to thaw Lucy’s heart. Though facing Reinhold still filled her with revulsion, she found herself slowly softening towards the others.

She thought it would be okay… but that was a mistake.

“I did it! I put the Demon King’s horn in the holy coffin!”

“Great job, Arsil!”

Arsil, breathing heavily, smiled with satisfaction as Rabin cheered. After a fierce battle, they had defeated the Demon King. But Lucy felt her heart tighten with a painful sensation.

No… it can’t be…?

“When we get back, I should take care of that damned Empire leader first.”

No matter how much she hoped, nothing changed.

“Capture, rotate, move, crush.”

CRACK—

“Aaagh!”

Tigrea broke and tore at Lucy’s legs, and the pain shot through her. As Lucy screamed in agony, Arsil grabbed her arm and twisted it off.

“What are you doing?!”

Rabin tried to stop the other party members, but she couldn’t stand against their changed expressions. Naidrian’s arrow pierced Rabin’s body, and a shield-bearer’s tackle crushed one of her eyes. With all her remaining strength, Rabin hurled Lucy off the cliff.

“Rabin!”

“I’m sorry… This was the best I could do…”

Rabin whispered, a sorrowful smile on her face.

“If you ever meet a man with black hair and the surname Lin… tell him that I truly loved—”

But before she could finish, the shield-bearer’s sword pierced her abdomen.

“What are you doing?! We agreed to keep Rabin alive!”

This chapter is updat𝓮d by freēnovelkiss.com.

The last thing Lucy saw was Arsil grabbing the shield-bearer by the collar and shouting in anger.

Then it was over.

Lucy plunged into the river below the cliff and never resurfaced.

Thus, the first round came to an end.

“Aaagh!”

“Whoa! What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream or something?”

When Lucy awoke again, Arsil was beside her. Lucy frowned and tried to attack her, but once again, she had no control over her body.

“I’m definitely going to rebuild the Sludge Alley into a new academy! I want to make it a place that’s second to none!”

“She’s still talking about that.”

“Quiet, Rabin!”

A new journey began, though Lucy had already experienced it. This time, she spent a lot of time with Arsil. Rabin was still part of the Hero’s party.

CRACK—

“Aaagh!”

“Lucy!”

Once again, they defeated the Demon King. But this time, it wasn’t Arsil who cut off Lucy’s arm—it was Rabin.

“What are you doing, you idiots?!”

Arsil tried to defend Lucy by raising her Holy Power through her dragon-scale gloves, but it was in vain. The shield-bearer’s sword impaled Arsil as well.

“We… were supposed to go back…”

The light faded from Arsil’s eyes.

“Damn it…”

“Hey, you said we wouldn’t hurt Arsil!!”

This time, Rabin was the one who protested.

Unable to escape from the cliff, Lucy stared emptily at the edge of the shield descending toward her.

CRACK—

The second round ended.

Third Round

“I chose our bond over the fate of my race… I have no regrets….”

Naidrian held out the longest, but in the end, her bow broke, and she fell to Rabin’s dagger.

CRACK—

She died again.

Fourth Round

“Love… cough… I still don’t understand it… but I think I know what friendship is….”

Tigrea, who had been turned into a pincushion by Naidrian’s arrows, knelt and died. Reinhold approached, bringing death with him.

CRACK—

It kept happening.

Tens of times, then hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of times.

Lucy once thought she might be able to escape alive at least once, but after millions of tries, she gave up on that hope.

CRACK—

Death.

CRACK—

Death again.

The only thing that changed was who died with her.

In the cases where she grew close to Reinhold, no one helped her, and she was killed on the spot.

CRACK—

“How many more times do I have to die?!”

She wanted to scream in frustration, but her body still didn’t obey her. After dying, the journey would repeat.

Beaten down and broken, Lucy eventually lost her mind. Her body, like a puppet on strings, continued the journey with her companions. She no longer knew how many times it had been. She was sure it must have been over a billion. She was resigned to the fact that this journey would also end in death.

In the midst of her insanity, Lucy suddenly realized that her soul had detached from her body and was watching herself from above.

“Oh my, are you the Hero?”

It was Adora, one of the sorcerers, who addressed her. Despite meeting the Hero, the illusionist didn’t take a formal stance. Lucy could see that Adora, too, had become a broken shell after so many cycles.

“Adora… what are you doing…?”

“Can’t you see the spearmaster?”

“I don’t know… my head hurts….”

“Haha… I must be losing it too. I’m seeing things.”

The spearmaster and the dual-wielder appeared as well, all of them floating like ghosts.

“Why… isn’t the Demon King sending us out?”

“The Demon King said his death is the first condition for breaking this cycle. He asked us to take care of things after that, remember?”

“Not at all…”

Denarua also seemed fine on the outside, but her eyes were completely dead. Ignoring them, Lucy floated in the air, watching the journey unfold once again.

Soon, it would be time for the Demon King’s defeat.

“Hey, you there. Even if you’re a hallucination, would you listen to me?”

“……”

Lucy didn’t respond, but Adora started talking anyway. With a voice devoid of any vitality, she began to speak to Lucy as if pouring out her soul.

“Do you know why this is happening?”

“……”

“It’s because the Goddess is angry. Our Demon God played too many cruel tricks.”

Originally, the Goddess and the Demon God had agreed to cultivate their own species and give them minor assistance, competing to see who would ultimately rule the world. But the Demon God blinded the Goddess and kidnapped the First Hero she had appointed, torturing him until he was transformed into the Demon King.

“Goddess…!”

By the time the First Hero’s desperate screams reached the Goddess, it was already too late. The corruption was complete. The Goddess had lost the First Hero right before her eyes. The laws of causality punished the Demon God, but Angria didn’t care at all. The Goddess, swallowing her tears, appointed a Second Hero. But the Demon God approached the thief in the Hero’s party, promising to fulfill his vile desires if he turned all the female party members over to him.

When the thief hesitated, fearing the Hero’s retribution, the Demon God assured him that if the women surrendered to him and claimed to love him, the Hero would leave without a word. The Demon God’s scheme worked perfectly. The thief went a step further and even executed the Second Hero, a move that delighted the Demon God.

When the Goddess finally realized what had happened, she was enraged. She had hoped that the humans she loved would resolve the situation themselves. When the Great Purification Flood, as written in history, occurred, even the Demon God was terrified and hid behind the Demon King.

For the Third Hero, the Demon God inflated the egos of a fledgling party, who, not yet fully matured, foolishly charged into battle against the demon forces and died meaninglessly, leaving no name in history.

Finally, the Fourth Hero, Luciena Estelle, was betrayed by her comrades and died. Although she managed to defeat the Demon King, the Demon Generals, including Adora, emerged.

I will never forgive you.

The Goddess, who personally confronted the Demon God, had suppressed all her rage, leaving only these cold words before departing. Angria mocked her from behind, but the Goddess did not react.

“When we realized something was wrong, it was already too late.”

Even though the Demon King had died and they had stepped forward, the Demon Generals found themselves inexplicably back in the rear, waiting. When the Demon King died again and they tried to move forward, they were pulled back once more.

“The Goddess couldn’t contain her anger, so she turned the journey of the Fourth Hero into an endless cycle of save-and-load.”

The reason why the Demon Generals and the Demon King retained their memories was likely because they were not beings governed by the Goddess. She didn’t stop there. She created a saga, the Arrogant Saga, distributing it to other dimensions, and applied only the victorious outcomes from those stories. The saga became so popular that the number of successful outcomes quickly exceeded billions, but none of them could prevent Lucy’s death.

Only then did the Demon God realize the seriousness of the situation and tried to stop it, but the laws of causality, weakened by the tricks he had played before, severely limited his power. The Goddess’s situation was also deteriorating. The longer the cycles went on, the more rounds accumulated, the more the laws of causality weakened her authority, urging her to give up.

Yet even after billions of cycles, the Goddess had not stopped, repeating the save-and-load over and over again. The minds of the Demon King and the Demon Generals had long since shattered.

“As long as the Goddess exists, we can never escape this endless hell.”

Adora’s hollow laughter and vacant eyes mirrored Lucy’s own state.

“She’s strange… There’s something incredibly dark in her heart… but she doesn’t become a demon…”

“Is she a porter? That sounds like a class I’ve never heard of…”

“Come to think of it, the dual-wielder was really focused on watching that porter, wasn’t she?”

“She feels… different.”

“I don’t get it… Whoa! Did she just grab the Demon King’s horn with her bare hands?!”

“That’s surprising… actually, it’s a lot more than surprising…”

“Oh, she put it in the coffin. Illusionist~, the climax is coming~.”

The spearmaster, her eyes hollow, called out to Adora. The illusionist led Lucy to the opposite side of the cliff, into the empty air.

“This is the best spot to watch. Though it’s all so futile….”

Lucy followed her silently, knowing that nothing would change anyway.

“There’s no thief in this journey, is there?”

“Are you still obsessed with such details, dual-wielder? Expectations like that only make this harder for us.”

“…Hmph.”

“Look, this time there’s no one even close to being an ally. No one is stepping in to help.”

As Adora pointed out, there was no one to stop them this time. The Hero’s limbs were easily severed. Watching herself scream, Lucy felt nothing. Ah, so this round will end like this too.

Reinhold raised his shield to strike her down. Lucy wished that in the next cycle, her soul would be separated from her body again. Not having to feel everything directly made things a little easier. This was the only comfort left for a Hero whose mind had been ground down over billions of cycles.

“Why is this dragging on…?”

The spearmaster muttered in annoyance. As the other party members demanded that Reinhold check the contract details, just as he was about to speak—

“Vise: Shrink Technique.”

A miracle happened.

“Naidrian, shoot!”

Before the archer could even draw her arrow, someone moved with the speed of light, picked up the Hero’s dismembered body, and leaped toward the cliff.

It was the porter.

“Ah…!”

Time slowed down. Both the Demon Generals and Lucy stared in shock as the porter flew through the air towards them. Everything moved in slow motion, and Lucy saw the twisted faces of the party members at the cliff’s edge.

Reinhold’s face, grotesquely distorted, bore no trace of the handsome features that had once swayed her heart.

CRACK—

The porter’s mask began to crack under the pressure of the wind. Eventually, his face was revealed.

It was ordinary. Black hair, black eyebrows, a nose neither high nor low, lips tinged a dark blue.

But his eyes were ablaze with fierce determination.

“Oh…! What a beautiful soul…!”

The dual-wielder exclaimed in admiration.

“I’m so jealous! I envy the Hero! If only we had someone to save us like that…!”

The spearmaster burned with jealousy.

“I was sure this timeline had reset… Porter, who are you?!”

Adora was in shock.

But all the Demon Generals could do was sigh deeply at Lin’s next action.

As he cradled Lucy in his arms, he looked down at her with genuine concern. The Demon Generals lamented that his gaze was not directed at them.

“Who is this man…?”

Adora muttered in a daze, as Lucy’s nose began to tingle.

Her chin trembled, and tears welled up.

So that’s what his face looked like when he saved me.

He cared about me more than anyone else.

“Lin…”

“You’re speaking…?!”

“Lin!!!!!”

She called out to him, but he couldn’t hear her.

She reached out, but she couldn’t touch him.

“He wasn’t just a hallucination! Who sent you here?!”

“Liiiin!!!!!!!!!”

My only ally,

My greatest comrade,

My Lin,

Only you could have saved me…!

“So the porter’s name is Lin…? Regardless, we need to capture you…!”

Oh dear! Looks like I’ve been discovered!

“Chasm!”

So, how does it feel to learn the truth? Oh, wait a moment. I’ll ask you that once you’re back!

“You traitor!”

Before Adora could cast her spell, the Chasm snapped her fingers. The surroundings instantly darkened, and Lucy collapsed onto her bed, still in the same outstretched position as before.

“Huff… Huff…!”

She was back in her room in the royal palace. The faint light of dawn streamed through the window, casting a blue hue over her. Lucy curled up in a corner, trying to escape the light.

So, now you understand, don’t you?

The Chasm whispered its obsession.

You must never let him go.

The Chasm fueled her greed.

Lin is your only savior. He’s a man of a completely different caliber from those other scum!

The Chasm instilled a twisted affection.

Your only ally, your greatest comrade, where is your Lin? He’s not with you right now, is he?

Lucy looked up at the Chasm.

Keep that desperate, burning desire close to your heart. Show it only to him.

The Chasm stared back at her.

You need to be forgiven, don’t you? You need to be loved by Lin, don’t you?

Until the morning sun rose, Lucy listened to the Chasm’s wicked words, nurturing her growing obsession with Lin.