(Ryuta POV)
Hitogami—also known as the Human God.
Throughout history, countless events can be traced back to his influence—an unseen hand guiding chosen "apostles" into conflicts and decisions that always seem to tilt the board in his favor. His so-called Future Sight is powerful, yes. But it's not infallible. Even he can't see everything.
Orsted, cursed to wander this world through an endless 200-year loop, has a singular mission—kill Hitogami. A burden passed down by his father, the original Dragon God. But he carries more than just the weight of purpose. He bears the curse of universal hatred, and worse—painfully slow regeneration. It's cruel, really. The one man destined to challenge a god... hated by the very living beings he comes across numerous times.
That same curse, however, is the very thing that makes him invisible to Hitogami's gaze.
And yet even that advantage isn't enough.
There's Laplace—last of the original Five Dragon Generals. Once an ally in the plan to defeat Hitogami. But now? A fractured soul. His Demon half, severed and amnesiac, holds one of the keys needed even to reach Hitogami in the Void World.
So Orsted plans. Relentlessly. Ruthlessly. Every loop begins with a carefully calibrated strategy—defeat Laplace, reach the Void World, while conserving mana.
Every step, every move, rehearsed with surgical precision.
He knows every technique, every spell. Every pawn. Every player. Everything, down to the best choice of leaders for the optimal course of history.
Yet still… it isn't enough.
He made it to the Void World once. But he lost. He didn't have enough mana left to win.
False god or not, Hitogami still stands as a god. Not because he's stronger—but because Orsted wasn't ready and was out of time before his loop restarted.
But there's one thing Hitogami can't handle—anomalies, such as Nanahoshi and me.
Things changed after the Metastasis Event. Orsted's grand design began to wobble. Some pieces moved too early, others too late, and some even died.
One of those aberrations? A monster-repellent Magic Tool, developed by an upstart country clawing its way out of the civil wars in the Strife Zone. Its purpose was noble on the surface—push back the monster threats that made expansion impossible.
The design was clever, I'll admit. Functioned like a mana-powered radio network—one central hub, like the crystal of a Laybrinth, but with the reversed effects. Dozens of towers were placed at high-density mana zones in the Lower Jaw mountains, relaying signals that deterred monsters from entering the area.
Too clever.
Had I not intercepted their expansion, they would've reached the mountains north of the Strife Zone, causing even more mayhem than they already did.
Tracking them wasn't hard. I wrung the location out of the maintenance crews like squeezing water from a sponge. No resistance worth remembering.
When I arrived at their central station, it was… underwhelming.
No warriors. No mages. Just artisans. Talented Magic Tool crafters bundled together like engineers at a corporate retreat. Their guards? Intermediate rank, at best.
The real danger wasn't the people. It was what they built.
The base looked like a magical data center. Towering stacks of engraved tiles, all interconnected by radiant threads of mana. The outer towers pulsed with faint light, and at the center, a single structure—taller, denser, humming with layered enchantments. A barrier surrounded it, as if to say, this one matters.
I approached it.
It stood about a meter tall. A column of tightly pressed Magic Circles, but unlike the rest, this one wasn't made of stone or crystal. It was something else—cool to the touch, faintly metallic, dense with power. Everything else, all the relay towers, fed into this.
I pulled off my glove and placed my right hand against the column.
The mana vibrated beneath my palm—not flowing, but resonating. The entire structure was one massive conductor, amplifying the repelling frequency and sending it outward. This was the heart. The rest? Peripheral noise.
I clenched my fingers around the base and ripped it free.
The lights dimmed. The air stilled. The threads of mana dissipated, like a spider's web getting carried away by the winds.
But before I could store the device away, I heard it—a wet cough from behind me.
I turned.
One of them was still alive. A middle-aged man, slumped against a charred pillar. His robes were burned through, one side of his face blackened by fire. He was barely holding on.
I walked over. His eyes fluttered open, glassy and dim. Recognition flickered behind the pain. Then contempt.
"...Sorry," I said, crouching beside him. "Didn't realize you were still breathing. That's on me."
He tried to spit at me—but his lips only parted to let a string of blood dribble down his chin.
"Letting you suffer wasn't my goal," I muttered. "But you made your choice when you pushed your problem onto other countries."
He tried to speak. A curse, probably. Maybe a plea. But all that came out was another gurgle.
I stood up.
The rest were already dead. Their expressions frozen in shock or fear. Some never even saw me coming, but still couldn't stop me from ending their lives.
As I made for the stairs, the man behind me summoned his last breath to yell after me.
"Coward!" he rasped, barely audible. "You didn't even finish me…!"
I didn't turn.
"Your superiors were idiots," I said flatly, placing a hand on the stone wall by the exit. "Should've known better than to build all this underground."
With a whisper of Earth Magic, I loosened the structure's foundation—subtle, controlled. Then I collapsed it.
The walls groaned. The ceiling cracked. Stone and steel screamed as the weight of the mountain turned inward. Dust surged forward, and then…
Silence.
The heart of their operation, the lives they wasted building it—now buried deep beneath tons of rock.
Where no one would ever find them.
***
As I emerged from the teleportation chamber into the building's stone-walled corridor, I immediately let out a low grumble at the sight that greeted me—rows of doors, each marked with a different destination from across the world.
A network of portals, all tied to this one building.
But there was more than just teleportation chambers.
The entire structure was protected by a powerful concealment barrier—one nearly identical to the one used by Holy Dragon Emperor Slizard to cloak his Teleportation Ruins. In theory, it remained invisible to the outside world… until I stepped into it the first time and accidentally activated some mechanism that deactivated the barrier permanently—no idea what purpose that even served.
Ironically, I might've found this place sooner—it wasn't all that far from Sharia, just hidden.
The building was massive. Easily four times the size of the Maniacal Dragon King's mansion. Yet it had fewer windows and fewer exits. It was clearly built with security in mind, like a secret operation... which it kind of does?
Outside, there was a wide-open field—likely a training ground. Snow can't cover it, and it always stays dry even during rain.
I could install some safety tools here and there, in addition to the existing lighting, overhead lamps like those from my old world, but given the current resident, that task doesn't need to be rushed.
"Hmph. So he's actually here?"
From the outside, the building didn't look lived in. But I knew better. Orsted had claimed one of the better-furnished rooms as his new base of operations, where he would do his usual note scriptions.
I'd once considered building him a quiet rest house near Sharia in the past, but traveling with him and Nanahoshi during the beginning of my new start in life made one thing clear—he never truly rests. Even when I stayed on watch, in his sleep, he was always on alert. A product of hundreds of loops of two centuries of solitude, war, and betrayal, I suppose.
I made my way up the central stairwell, heading for the first floor. Heavy, echoing steps. Still a little blood on my boots. By the time I stood in front of the old wooden door that led to Orsted's office, the silence had started to feel heavier.
I raised a fist and knocked.
A second passed. Then a quiet voice from inside, deep and vaguely exasperated.
"...Why are you knocking? Just come in."
I exhaled slowly.
"It's called courtesy," I replied. "You know, basic etiquette to knock on the door of your superior's office?"
A faint but long sigh came from the other side.
"Fine. Enter."
I pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The room was spacious but sparse. A tall bookshelf sat against the far wall, filled with records and scrolls—everything arranged by type, region, threat level. A map of the world, marked with pins and notes, was spread over one side of the desk.
Orsted sat behind the desk, hands interlocked before his face as his arms rested on the edge of the desk. His golden eyes locked onto me the moment I stepped in, piercing and unblinking.
I walked forward, stopping a meter from the desk and giving a standard bow. His gaze didn't waver.
"Well?" he asked, voice calm but expectant. "What did you acquire?"
I got straight to the point.
"The Magic Tool operations that drove the Red Dagons from the Lower Jaw to the Upper Jaw have been shut down. Permanently."
He raised an eyebrow. I continued.
"They were using stacked Magic Circles to send out signals to towers set up on the mountain. A central unit controlled the signal, driving monsters away from the region where the towers were set up. I took the core. The rest of the lair collapsed. Literally."
"And the people?"
"Dead," I said flatly. "I burned most of them. One survivor died when I brought the place down on him and his friends."
"I take it you went to the warlord as well?" Orsted asked, leaning back against his chair.
"Indeed, I did. I was able to confirm that the warlord was an apostle. Hitogami's orders to him were more than just the monster repellent construct. He received a list of people whom he had sent to the King Dragon Kingdom about two and a half years ago, in return for the core heart of the construct, which he found on the Demon continent."
"Hm..." Orsted hummed to himself as he looked to the side, his gaze going past the air itself as if he searched his mind for a reasonable theory.
"If my memory serves me right, then the current ruler of the King Dragon Kingdom will likely seize the opportunity to invade Asura, especially with the added cavalry. I can imagine that Hitogami told him about the massacre of the nobles to sweeten the idea."
"You mean something like this happened in one of your previous loops?"
"It did when I failed to make the current king of Asura ascend to the throne. I can only imagine that the list of people was individuals whose fates are weak but still have untapped potential in combat. This could only be an indication that there are people in Asura who pose too much of a threat to be left as it is."
"Are there any that play an important part in your plans?"
"There are three," Orsted said without hesitation. "Second Princess Ariel Anemoi Asura—fated to hold the kingdom together when the Laplace War reignites. Then there's Norn Greyrat… and her destined lover, Ruijerd Superdia."
I stiffened.
"…Sorry—did you just say Ruijerd? As in the Ruijerd? The man who should've gone down in history as the fourth hero who helped slay Laplace four hundred years ago?"
"You already know he's alive," Orsted said plainly. "And in this loop, he arrived on the Central continent much earlier than he should have."
I clenched my jaw.
During my mission to the Bihiril region, I'd been sent to check on the Superd village—hidden deep within a shadowed forest in the Bihiril Kingdom.
I'd seen the state they were in. The plague was real. A slow, creeping sickness that devoured the strength of their people.
If it weren't for the invisible wolves that the Superds can detect with their third eye, they would have already been chased out.
I already knew the truth behind their infamous rampage during the war—that it had been manipulated, twisted into something monstrous. But seeing what remained of them in person… it was something else entirely—a quiet, hopeless suffering.
When I asked Orsted about it, he told me he'd tried everything—medicines, Detoxification Magic, even ancient purification rituals. Nothing worked.
One of the elders I spoke with—his voice raspy with age—had begged me, if I ever came across a man named Ruijerd, to turn him away. To make sure he never returned to the village while the plague still lingered.
Many others echoed this sentiment, stating that if they died, Ruijerd, their beacon of hope, was the one worthy of carrying the pride and glory that the Superd tribe once was.
"Should we bring him back to the Demon Continent?" I asked.
Orsted shook his head slightly. "You are not strong enough for that."
His tone was firm—not cold, but absolute. The way it always was when he was stating something carved in the bedrock of countless loops. He didn't say it to discourage me. He said it because it was the truth.
However, I'm not sure if he has a good picture of me after I told him about my little... moment of madness with Atofe. Let's just hope I won't be ordered to subdue someone like a World Power or something.
But still, I'm honestly not insulted in the slightest. It was Ruijerd himself who gave Perugius and his comrades the deciding blow to win the war. And that speaks for itself.
Orsted's gaze remained fixed on me, unmoving.
"For now," he said, "our main concern is the Upper Jaw. The Red Dragons need to be culled. If we can thin their numbers significantly, the Asura Kingdom will have one less threat to worry about."
I nodded.
It made sense—reducing pressure on Asura would buy us time. The same cannot be said about nature since the majority of Red Dragons live further south.
"So, once the war starts… are we aiding Asura directly or in the background?"
Orsted's expression didn't shift, but his voice dropped in weight.
"If we can help it, the war should not begin at all. It's in both kingdoms' interest to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Our goal is to delay, deflect, or destabilize the conflict—anything short of outright intervention."
He reached beneath his desk and pulled out a rolled-up scroll, bound with a red silk ribbon and marked with ancient glyphs. Holding it out, he met my eyes.
"This contains incantations for Emperor-class Attack Magic," he said. "You're to learn them. Memorize everything. Then think of a way to both reduce the Red Dragon population and make the border between the two kingdoms impassable—at least until this situation is under control."
I accepted the scroll with both hands, giving him a short bow. "Thanks… but I think I already have a better idea about the Red Dragons."
Orsted gave the faintest nod. "Take the initiative, then. But don't delay. Prepare yourself and act as soon as possible."
"Understood."
With that, I turned and left his office, the heavy wooden door closing behind me with a quiet *thunk*. I headed back down the stairs, my boots echoing through the stone corridors as I made my way to the basement. There, etched into the floor in glowing blue lines, was the teleportation circle I'd keyed to my mansion in Sharia.
With a pulse of mana, the circle enveloped me in light—and in a blink, I was back.
***
The air was warmer here. Familiar. Stone walls. Wood beams. And the feeling of cold air hitting even the nostrils.
"*Sigh*... Looks like I'll be busy again for a while…"
On the bright side, taking care of the Red Dragons corresponds with what the higher-ups of Sharia asked me to do.
Turns out, the latest shipment destined to reach Asura got attacked by a swarm of those fire-breathing lizards right before they would have reached the border.
I guess thanks to the Upper Jaw getting a little overcrowded, food sources are scarce.
'Huh. I wonder if that was intended by Hitogami or just a coincidental bonus. But given his Future Sight, it might just be intended.'
I ascended the stairs with the intent to bathe and prepare my gear—but halfway up, I froze.
A signature—small, unfamiliar, but definitely present in the living room.
'Please don't be an intruder coming here to see the ghost that used to wander around.'
I shifted silently, staying low and using the top of the stairs as a vantage point. Peering from the corner, I readied a spell just in case—
But stopped myself.
Sitting alone on the floor in the middle of the room… was a little girl.
Messy orange hair. Worn, ragged cloth barely passing for clothing. Thin arms curled around her knees as she stared at the empty fireplace with wide, vacant eyes.
I lowered my guard, but not my caution.
Slowly, I called out. "Hey."
She flinched. Her entire body tensed, and she looked up at me, eyes wide with terror.
"Whoa, hey—it's okay." I raised both hands in a calming gesture and spoke softly. "I'm not going to hurt you."
But she didn't respond. Just stared at me, frozen like a cornered animal. No recognition in her eyes—just fear and confusion.
She didn't understand me.
Wait a minute. Orange hair? Could she perhaps be—
I switched languages just to see my theory. "Do you understand this? Beast God Tongue?"
The reaction was subtle, but she blinked—just once. The tension in her shoulders slackened a bit.
So, she is a Dwarf. At the very least, I can communicate with her.
I slowly approached, step by step, then crouched a few paces away. "Where did you come from?"
She didn't answer.
Instead, she reached into the folds of her tattered clothes and pulled out a crumpled envelope, holding it out to me with her trembling, tiny hands.
My brow furrowed. Wax sealed the flap, marked with a single kanji character. It was the one standing for 'Mask'.
'Oh no.'
I took the letter and tore it open, reading the contents written in Japanese.
---
To my dear friend Ryuta,
I acquired this child for you at a slave market. I am gifting her to you—not as a servant, but as a test subject. You are to conduct long-term experiments to determine the optimal age for chantless casting while simultaneously learning methods to teach it more efficiently.
She will also be trained to use her Earth Magic to sculpt figurines for Zanoba. Consider this a two-in-one investment.
I used your funds for the purchase, of course. Just like the mansion. And the renovations. Compared to all that, the girl was practically a bargain, but please don't treat her as one.
Best of luck.
P.S. She's around the age where human children start kindergarten, so no funny business. I'm keeping an eye on you. Haha! Get it? Cause I'm looking through your eyes?
— the masked man
---
My temple twitched as I looked at the letter with boiling rage before letting out my frustration verbally.
"THAT SON OF A—!"
The girl shrieked in terror and scrambled backward, hitting the wall.
"Ah—no, no, no—! Wait!" I waved my hands frantically. "I wasn't yelling at you! I was yelling at the idiot who—!"
She curled into herself, eyes shimmering.
I groaned and slumped on the ground. "Great. Just great."
First the Red Dragons. Then the upcoming war. Now I've got a toddler in rags dumped in my house like a research sample.
'One day... I swear I'll launch a [Stone Canon] through that smug-hatted skull of his.'
///