Chapter 1042: Returning to the Original Trajectory
"You must have vaguely sensed it too, right?"
The humanoid silhouette looked at the two before it with profound mockery.
"This island will eventually reach its final act! It's not anyone's interference—it's the will of the island itself!"
Eiji fell silent.
Yes.
He had realized this long ago.
After becoming able to hear the island's lamentations, he had vaguely understood.
This world consisted only of Britain, so Britain's will was the will of this Lostbelt.
And Britain was yearning for self-destruction.
This meant the world itself no longer wished to live.
Forcibly prolonging its life would inevitably provoke fierce resistance from the island itself!
Tonelico's actions were essentially prolonging Britain's life!
And having the human Uther establish a kingdom was the closest attempt to successfully extending its lifespan!
Of course, the island of Britain would not allow such a thing to happen, which was why it had dispatched this Illusory Calamity to eliminate Uther by any means necessary!
"The essence of the Calamity is... the island's will to self-destruct?"
Even Eiji felt a sense of powerlessness at this moment.
No wonder the Calamity never ceased, no matter how many years passed.
The minor calamities occurring every century and the great calamities every millennium were fundamentally manifestations of the island's desire to destroy itself!
When a person wants to commit suicide, there is no way to stop them.
This fairy country was doomed to fail.
Not only because it was a Lostbelt, but also because the island itself was seeking death!
"Not entirely."
The humanoid silhouette added flippantly.
"There are other wills within the great chasm. Haven't you witnessed them with your own eyes?"
That's right.
The cursed god in the great chasm was also a source of the Calamity.
Thinking about it, Britain's ailments were astonishingly numerous, as if every organ in a person's body was afflicted with cancer. No wonder it ceaselessly emitted lamentations.
"Pfft!"
Tonelico raised her staff and plunged it into the humanoid silhouette's chest.
She had understood.
And because she understood, everything became meaningless.
She decisively killed this Calamity.
"Ugh... How ruthless."
The humanoid silhouette groaned, its glow flickering as it gradually vanished like sea foam.
"If you've realized that everything is futile, then that's for the best. I don't want to do any more unnecessary work."
"But if, despite understanding everything, you still insist on forcibly prolonging this world's life... Hmph, then we will inevitably meet again someday..."
Before its words faded, the Illusory Calamity completely vanished.
For a moment.
Silence spread between the two.
Tonelico lifted her head, gazing up at the sky.
Letting tears well up only in her eyes.
Eiji lowered his head, unable to find a single word to comfort Tonelico.
Uther was dead.
Unless it was through magic, there was no saving him.
Never before had Eiji regretted so deeply not bringing Aoko with him.
Everything would return to its original trajectory.
His arrival had changed almost nothing.
No.
Was this really acceptable?
At the very least, something had to change!
Eiji reached out his hand.
A pitch-black mist surged from the periphery of Londinium, enveloping the dream domain spanning over ten kilometers in radius, which abruptly began to rotate at this moment!
In the blink of an eye, everything seemed to plunge into a dream.
All things shifted from reality toward the realm of dreams, as if time were flowing backward.
"As long as I process this reality into a dream, at least Londinium can be preserved!"
Eiji exerted all his strength to activate the authority of dreams.
Thanks to having deployed the dream domain during the assembly, everything that occurred within it afterward could be processed by Eiji as a dream!
In this way, the humans and fairies who had perished would all be revived.
The chaos that swept through the entire city would be dismissed as a dream, laughed off by everyone!
But Uther could not be brought back.
Because he had already died long before Eiji deployed the dream domain.
Moreover, the refuge was surrounded by Caster's barrier. To evade the world's gaze, that barrier blocked all interference from both inside and out. From the very beginning, Eiji could not use the power of dreams to protect Uther.
"Don't bother."
But at that moment, Caster grabbed his arm.
"Londinium cannot be saved. You and I both knew this fact from the very beginning, didn't we?"
The surreal scenery around them gradually stilled.
Eiji halted his actions.
Yes.
From the very beginning, they had known that this kingdom was destined to collapse.
Because there were simply too many ways to bring down such a vast nation!
No matter how they tried to defend against it, it was absolutely impossible to outmaneuver the island itself.
Thus, Caster had already abandoned her ideals from the start.
She had long realized that relying on such lukewarm methods would never achieve her aspirations.
But the island's goal was to make the human-formed kingdom collapse.
In that case, Uther did not necessarily have to die.
If the kingdom collapsed but Uther survived by changing his identity, even if the island discovered it later, it would not take any action against him.
This was Caster's true objective.
At the very least, she wanted Uther to live, to live until his natural death!
The earlier plan of "having Uther pretend to be his own brother and inherit the kingdom anew" was nothing but a lie told to Uther. Both of them had known from the start that Uther had no chance of succession.
As long as they could save Uther, that would be the best outcome.
However.
No one expected the island to be so ruthless!
It would not even allow Caster to fulfill this small wish—to let Uther live!
Uther was already dead.
He could not be revived.
No one could save him.
In that case, what was the point of restoring Londinium now?
Unless Eiji never left Londinium from this moment on, the city would inevitably be destroyed in the annals of history.
But that was not feasible.
Because if that happened, what awaited Eiji would no longer be a correction of history, but its erasure!
He would be erased from everyone's memories and records, until no one remembered him at all!
The immense contradiction might even tear Eiji apart into the most fundamental spiritual particles in the most direct manner!
Caster had completely given up.
She no longer placed her hopes in others.
She was no longer the savior.
Eiji clenched his fists.
Instinctively, he did not want to give up.
But in the end, he halted the dream transformation.
The sounds of battle cries flooded back into his ears, blood and screams intertwined, and flames slowly consumed Londinium.
Eiji's mind was a whirlwind of thoughts.
"Sorry."
Countless emotions converged into a single apology.
Even though he had come.
He hadn't been able to change Cernunnos's fate.
He'd spouted grand words like "I don't want to see your face twisted in despair and collapse," yet in the end, he had accomplished nothing.
Everything became empty promises, mere beautiful words with no substance!
"You don't need to apologize. You've been supporting me wholeheartedly from the very beginning. Anyone else might apologize to me, but you are the one who shouldn't."
Cernunnos's smiling face grew hollow, as if she might vanish from Eiji's sight at any moment.
"The fault lies with me."
"I was too naive."
"Whether it's the fairies or the humans, they don't need peace. Even this island itself requires no reverence."
"—What they need, in every case, is nothing but ruthless domination!"