Chapter 61: We Can’t Go Back

Back in the soundproofed VIP suite of the Sleeping Basilisk, the situation was reaching a critical mass.

Kaito was still standing in front of Lucy, not moving, entirely trapped in the loop of his own final memories on Earth.

Memories of his days with her, memories of when he had killed her, memories of the ring... everything returned like a truck, literally.

Although his body was not moving, his soul was reacting to the re-emerged trauma.

Thick, viscous waves of pitch-black mana were literally bleeding out of his skin. It rolled off his dark coat like heavy smoke, pooling on the carpet, rotting the plush fabric, freezing the air, and causing the room's walls to groan under the sheer supernatural pressure.

It was the raw, unfiltered power of Aldmax, untethered from Kaito's control, fueled by his absolute despair.

If that dark mana fully breached the walls of the inn, the entire military force of Oakhaven, the Archbishop, and every surviving S-Rank adventurer would pinpoint his exact location within seconds, and that would be one of the worst things that could happen.

They would breach the door, and a slaughter would ensue. Either they would execute him while he was unresponsive, or his defense mechanisms would trigger, and he would obliterate half the city in a blind, catatonic rage.

Lucy, still kneeling on the floor, watched the darkness expanding toward her.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she watched the scene with fear and sadness. But there was more.

Because of her Saintess class, she had a passive skill called [Prayers Echoes]. She could hear the whispers, the panic, and the terror of the citizens outside, other than the voices of everyone. She had also heard the bells tolling, and she knew exactly what was happening in the capital and the catastrophic danger Kaito was in.

She looked at the man she had destroyed.

She had begged for his forgiveness, but words were cheap. She had used words to 'manipulate' him in Tokyo and to play the part of the Saintess, so words wouldn't fix the broken server.

The only thing she could do in that moment was to protect him from everyone's attention.

Lucy stopped crying. She wiped the tears from her face, her blue eyes hardening with a fierce, absolute resolve that had nothing to do with the System's programming and everything to do with her own atonement. Kaito wasn't responding anymore after their discussion.

She stood up, and the dark, freezing mana of Aldmax swirled around her ankles, biting at her bare skin like frostbite.

She didn't summon an offensive Holy spell to purify the darkness. If she used purifying magic, it would act like a flare, alerting the Paladins to the clash of Light and Dark.

Instead, she closed her eyes, clasped her hands over her chest, and pushed her unique stealth skill, [Hide Magic / Holy Veil], far beyond its intended, safe limits.

"System," Lucy whispered, her voice strained. "Expand target parameter. Target: The Sinner."

[SYSTEM ERROR: Invalid Target! The Holy Veil cannot conceal an entity of Supreme Darkness! The magical friction will result in severe physical backlash!]

"I said, Override," Lucy commanded, gritting her teeth.

She didn't just use her ambient mana. She reached deep into her own life force, burning her vitality to fuel the spell.

A blinding, pure white light erupted from her body, but it didn't attack the darkness. Like a heavy, suffocating blanket, the Holy Light rushed forward, wrapping around the expanding waves of Kaito's pitch-black despair.

The pain was instantaneous and agonizing.

Trying to conceal the overwhelming aura of the Supreme Necromancer with her own body was like trying to swallow a live grenade to muffle the explosion. The friction between the absolute Light and the absolute Dark tore at her magical circuits.

Lucy gasped, her knees trembling violently. A thin stream of bright crimson blood trickled from her nose, dripping onto her pristine white cloak. The blood vessels in her eyes burst, turning the whites a terrifying shade of red. Her skin paled to a sickly, translucent white as her life force was aggressively drained to maintain the containment field.

But she didn't stop. She didn't let go, not even for a fraction of a second.

She gritted her teeth, forcing the Holy Veil wider, stretching it over the entire room, meticulously swallowing every single tendril of dark mana that leaked from Kaito’s catatonic form. She compressed the aura, forcing it back, sealing the room from the outside world.

Outside the inn, the dark clouds stopped expanding. The temperature slowly stopped dropping, and the immediate, localized apocalypse was halted, masked perfectly by the agonizing sacrifice of the Saintess.

Inside the room, the struggle was invisible but lethal.

Lucy dropped to one knee, panting heavily, her entire body shaking from the sheer, agonizing effort of holding the barrier together. She wiped the blood from her upper lip, leaving a crimson smear across her pale cheek.

She looked up at Kaito. He was still staring blankly, completely unaware of the fact that she was currently burning her own life away to keep the Church's executioners from finding him.

A sad, fiercely protective smile touched Lucy's bloodstained lips.

"You played the part of the bad guy, Kaito," Lucy whispered into the dark, silent room, her voice shaking with pain and absolute devotion. "I now understand. You were hiding yourself under the mask of someone who was forced to be evil, just to protect yourself from a world that hurt you. That's why all the stories about you were so... strange..."

She gripped the fabric of her cloak, pouring more of her bleeding soul into the Holy Veil, ensuring not a single drop of his grief escaped the room.

"But your walls are broken right now," she breathed, her vision swimming from the exertion. "So let me be your shield just for now."

The System remained silent while Higher Realms remained dark.

In the center of that maelstrom of conflicting magic, Kaito was deaf and blind to the physical world. His consciousness was entirely submerged in the black, suffocating waters of a memory he had been trying to bury beneath corporate spreadsheets and undead armies.

He was back in the rain.

He could feel the freezing droplets soaking through his cheap, worn-out work jacket. He could feel the exhaustion deep in his bones, the kind of bone-deep weariness that only comes from working fourteen-hour shifts for twenty-one days straight.

But in that memory, he didn't care about the exhaustion. Because in his right pocket, carefully wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it dry, was a small velvet box.

It was a ring, not gaudy or massive, but simple and elegant, with a thin platinum band. The diamond was small but flawless—perfectly cut to catch the light. Clearly, the kind of ring a princess deserved, not the girlfriend of a basement-dwelling electrician.

Kaito had finally done it, and he couldn't wait for the moment to see the reaction of the woman who was gonna be his wife. He wanted to tell her that he had finally fulfilled his promise to give them a better life.

He was going to give it to her. He was going to kneel in the cramped living room of their terrible apartment, ignoring the broken air conditioner, and he was going to tell her that the grinding poverty wasn't forever. He was going to promise her that he would build a life where she would never have to cry from loneliness again, with a new job he had just found.

And then, he had turned the corner near the station.

He had seen her.

He saw her long, brown hair, her beautiful face, smiling with that radiant, breathtaking smile. But she wasn't smiling at him. She was clinging to the arm of a man wearing an unbuttoned shirt, who smelled like apple pies.

The grip around his tool bag, the sharp, agonizing spike in his chest, and the realization that his entire world was a lie.

And then, the anger.

In the dark void of his mind, Kaito watched himself lunge. He remembers the feeling of grabbing Lucy's waist and Nick by the collar of his shirt as he felt the terrifying, blinding rage that had overridden every rational thought in his brain.

'If I can't have this life,' his broken mind had screamed, 'then none of us will. I'm done with living.'

He remembered the blinding headlights. The blare of the truck's horn. The sickening, catastrophic sound of metal crushing bone.

"I only asked you to wait..." Kaito's physical body muttered in the inn room, his voice a distorted, demonic double-layer of a broken human and a Supreme Lord of Death. "No matter what... I only asked you to wait... nothing more."

The dark mana surged, pushing violently against Lucy's Holy Veil.

"Kaito..." Lucy gasped, coughing up a small splatter of blood onto the carpet. Her arms were trembling so violently that they looked like they might snap. "Kaito, please..."

In his mind, the memory looped. Over and over.

The headlights, the crash, and the realization that he had just committed murder.

He had dragged the woman he loved into the void, killed her. He hadn't just been a victim of betrayal; he had become a monster long before he ever received the title of 'Legendary Necromancer' in Aethelgard.

He had taken her life over a ten-minute lie.

"I asked you to wait..." Kaito repeated, his voice cracking, the demonic resonance faltering.

"And I should have!" Lucy screamed, her voice cutting through the roaring in his ears as she did one last rush to contain Kaito's evil power.

Kaito’s physical eyes snapped into focus. The purple glow flared and then stabilized.

He blinked, the dark, suffocating waters of the memory rapidly receding, leaving him gasping for air in the dim light of the VIP suite.

The first thing he saw was white.

Then, he saw the red.

Lucy was on her knees, just a few feet away from him. Her hands were clasped together, radiating a blinding, agonizingly intense holy light that was physically restraining the billowing clouds of his own dark mana.

Blood was streaming from her nose, her sclera were entirely red from burst capillaries, her lips were stained crimson, and her breathing was a ragged, wet wheeze.

She was literally burning her soul to ashes to keep his darkness contained, to keep the Paladins from finding him in his moment of absolute vulnerability.

And despite the unimaginable pain she was enduring, despite the fact that she was slowly dying on the floor in front of him... she was smiling.

It was a broken, sad, fiercely tender smile.

"Lucy!" Kaito shouted, the CEO persona shattering entirely, leaving only raw, human panic.

He violently inhaled, visualizing the dark mana, and yanked it back. With a sound like a reverse explosion, the suffocating aura of Aldmax retracted, slamming back into Kaito's core and locking itself away.

Without the dark mana to resist, Lucy's Holy Veil collapsed inward. The sheer magical backlash threw her backward. She hit the floor hard, her holy aura fizzling out into nothingness.

Kaito didn't hesitate. He dropped to his knees, scrambling across the plush carpet until he reached her. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, his hands hovering over her trembling, bloodstained form, terrified that his touch—the touch of a Necromancer—would only hurt her more.

But he couldn't stop himself. He gently grabbed her shoulders, pulling her upper body into his lap.

"Lucy... Lucy, hey, look at me," Kaito pleaded, his voice cracking, entirely stripped of its corporate baritone. "Stop using magic. Turn it off. You're going to kill yourself."

Lucy let out a weak, wet cough. She slowly opened her bloodshot eyes, looking up at his pale, terrified face.

"I had to..." she whispered, her voice barely a rasp. "I had to hide you. The church... they would have come for you. But hey... feeling your touch was worth all the pain- *cough*" she coughed some other blood on his robes.

Kaito stared at her, his heart hammering against his ribs. The anger, the bitter resentment that had fueled his entire existence in this world, evaporated into a profound, crushing sense of shame.

He looked at his own hands—the hands holding her. The same hands that had gripped her coat on that rainy street in Tokyo.

"I'm a monster," Kaito whispered, his voice trembling as tears finally broke through his stoic facade, tracing hot, stinging paths down his cheeks.

He bowed his head, his forehead resting lightly against her blood-soaked shoulder, and remained silent for some instants before talking.

"I..." he hesitated. "...I bought a ring, Lucy," he sobbed, the confession tearing out of his throat like barbed wire. "That day... I was coming home to ask you to marry me. I just needed you to wait a little longer. But when I saw you with him... I went blind. I didn't think. I just... I killed you. I dragged you under that truck."

He tightened his grip on her cloak, his shoulders shaking with the force of his weeping.

"You lied to me," Kaito cried, "but I took your life. No lie, no betrayal in the world justifies what I did to you. I murdered the only person I ever loved. I spent all this time hating you, hating him, building an empire out of spite... but the system was right. I'm the villain. I've always been the villain."

Lucy reached up with a weak, trembling hand. Her fingers, stained with her own blood, gently brushed through his dark hair. Her eyes were wet with unshed tears as she heard about the ring.

"Kaito... look at me," she whispered.

He slowly lifted his head, his purple eye dim and tear-filled, meeting her gaze.

Lucy smiled again, and this time, there was a profound, unearthly peace in her expression. Her eyes were literally saying, "I feel so happy right now..."

"I never hated you," Lucy said softly. "Not for a single second. When I woke up in this world, in the Cathedral, the System... it did something to my mind. It suppressed the memories of my death. It made me forget the crash, forget the pain, and it flooded my head with all these artificial feelings for the 'Chosen Hero'. The only thing I knew was that I had to kill Aldmax's reincarnation. Nothing more. I've been objectified every single moment, living like an influencer, being stripped of my dignity in exchange for... a cheap act about saving the world..."

She coughed again, her thumb gently wiping a tear from Kaito's cheek.

"But when you broke the spell, when I saw 'Kaitoyama' for the first time," she continued, "when I remembered what happened... I wasn't angry that you pulled me under. I swear to you, Kaito. I thought I deserved it for lying so much. And... my last thought was 'At least I'm not alone'."

Kaito shook his head vehemently. "No one deserves that. I stole your future."

"And I broke your heart," Lucy replied, her voice firm despite her physical weakness. "We destroyed each other, Kaito. We were both weak. We were both stupid. We let the world grind us down until there was nothing left but pain and bad choices."

She shifted slightly, enduring the agonizing magical backlash pulsing through her veins, and looked deeply into his eyes.

"But we are here now," Lucy whispered, her eyes shining with desperate hope. "We have a second chance. Kaito... please. Can we try again? Can we go back to how we were? Before the poverty, before Nick, before all of this? I want to come home to you."

The silence in the room stretched out, heavy and expectant.

Kaito looked down at the beautiful, broken girl in his arms, feeling the warmth of her body and smelling the faint scent of myrrh and blood.

The temptation to say yes was a physical ache in his chest. It would be so easy to pull her into a kiss, to let the LitRPG narrative take over, to embrace the 'forgiveness' trope and ride off into the sunset.

He could take her back to Fort Blackstone. He could build a life with her. He could finally be happy and leave everything behind, like a new man.

But Kaito wasn't a generic anime protagonist. He was a man who had been shattered into a million pieces, and he knew that love, no matter how profound, couldn't magically glue those pieces back together.

Kaito gently, carefully shifted his weight, helping Lucy sit up against the base of the desk. He didn't pull away completely, but he created a small, necessary distance between them.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, taking a deep, shuddering breath. The tears stopped, but the profound sadness remained.

"We can't go back, Lucy," Kaito said. His voice was no longer the trembling rasp of a broken boy, nor the cold, booming baritone of a CEO. It was quiet, steady, and incredibly gentle.

Lucy's breath hitched. "Kaito..."

"The boy who bought that ring died under that truck," Kaito continued, looking down at his gloved hands. "And the girl I was going to give it to died with him. We aren't those people anymore. I am a man who commands legions of the dead, who manipulates economies, who holds people's souls in contracts. And you are a Saintess who just burned her own life force to hide a monster."

He looked up at her, his expression a portrait of weary maturity.

"Saying something like 'I forgive you' wouldn't feel right in this moment," Kaito said, and the words carried an undeniable, absolute truth. The heavy, suffocating weight of his hatred finally lifted from his shoulders. "I can forgive you for the lie, I can forgive you for Nick... And I hope, someday, you can truly forgive me for taking your life..."

Lucy let out a quiet sob, covering her mouth with her hands.

"...but forgiveness isn't a time machine," Kaito said softly. "I can't just pretend that everything here didn't happen. I can't erase the fact that my first instinct was to die again and then to humiliate this entire world. And I can't erase the fact that when things got hard on Earth, you couldn't talk to me. Love isn't enough to fix a broken foundation, Lucy. We don't trust each other anymore. Not really."

"I can earn it back," Lucy pleaded desperately, trying to reach his face with her hand. "I swear I can."

But the electrician stopped her, silently saying, 'Don't force yourself.'

"I know you want to," Kaito smiled a sad, genuine smile. "But right now, if we tried to force it... We would only poison each other again. We are still bleeding. We need to heal. And we need to do it separately."

Lucy looked at him, the harsh, undeniable truth of his words sinking in. He wasn't rejecting her out of spite or punishing her. He was protecting them both from making the same catastrophic mistakes.

"So... what happens now?" Lucy whispered, her hands falling to her lap. "Do we just... walk away?"

Kaito slowly stood up and adjusted his dark coat, brushing a few specks of dust off the lapel. He didn't summon his holographic interface or pull out a glowing magical contract or an NDA.

He looked down at her, not as an executive looking at an asset, but as an equal.

"The CEO of Ravenloft Holdings does not make deals with the Church of Light," Kaito said, his tone carrying a hint of his professional demeanor, but softened by a genuine, underlying warmth. "But... I think Kaito can make a promise to Lucy."

Lucy looked up, her bloodshot eyes widening slightly.

"The Archbishop is corrupt," Kaito stated flatly. "The System is using Nick as a puppet, and they are both actively trying to destroy the only home I have left in this world, only because the narrative said so. I am going to tear their institutions to the ground."

He extended his right hand toward her.

"I'm not offering you a corporate contract, Lucy. No NDAs. No magical bindings," Kaito said, his purple eye holding hers. "I'm offering you my trust. One last time. I need to know what they are planning. I need an ally on the inside. I'll still come here as Kaitoyama to take missions from the guild, so we can exchange any kind of information there."

Lucy stared at his extended hand.

It wasn't a romantic reunion or a fairy-tale ending. It was a dangerous, high-stakes proposition.

He was asking her to commit high treason against the holiest institution in the world by asking her to become a spy.

But as she looked into his eyes, she saw the fragile, nascent spark of something incredibly precious. He was giving her a chance to prove herself, a chance to protect him, not with frantic apologies, but with action.

Lucy wiped the remaining blood from her chin. She placed her small, pale hand into his gloved one.

"You have my word, Kaito," Lucy said, her voice steady and resolute. "I will be your eyes and ears. I will tear their secrets apart from the inside. They will not touch you. I promise."

Kaito squeezed her hand gently, a genuine, tired smile touching his lips. "Thank you."

Lucy's gaze softened by a lot, and another warm smile appeared on her face. "In the end... we managed to talk. Heh... how ironic. It took us a new life to finally be honest with ourselves-" Lucy spoke, but she couldn't finish her sentence.

Suddenly, the quiet intimacy of the room was violently, explosively shattered.

The air in the center of the VIP suite tore open with a deafening RIIIIP. A massive, swirling portal of chaotic, dark purple void energy manifested directly between the bed and the desk.

The temperature in the room plummeted once again, but this time, the mana wasn't Kaito's. It was the synchronized, furious aura of Ravenloft Holdings' highest executives.

Stepping through the portal first was Cassandra.

The Iron Banshee looked absolutely terrifying. Her tailored business suit flared with crimson-blue hellfire. Her glasses were glowing with lethal, contractual magic, and in her hands, she held a massive, spectral scythe forged entirely from voided NDAs and non-compete clauses.

Right behind her stepped Ugo. The Skeletal Archivist had abandoned his usual polite demeanor. His massive red pupil was blazing with apocalyptic fury. Dozens of heavy, leather-bound ledgers floated around him, pages turning rapidly, glowing with destructive necromantic spells.

"MY LIEGE!" Cassandra barked, her crimson eyes sweeping the room, instantly locking onto the bloodstained Saintess sitting on the floor. "We detected a catastrophic breach in your psychological firewall! Threat identified! Engaging a hostile holy entity! ELIMINATE!"

"Archiving target for immediate deletion!" Ugo roared, his skeletal hands raising as dark energy began to coalesce in his palms.

In the adjacent bedroom, the sound of the portal ripping open woke the sleeping harem.

"W-What's going on?!" Valeria yelled, bursting through the connecting door, her greatsword already summoned and resting on her shoulder, her hair a messy bird's nest.

"Nya! Enemies?!" Nya hissed, her claws extending as she dropped into a predatory crouch.

Seraphina stumbled in behind them, clutching a pillow to her chest, blinking sleepily. "Te-hee... is it time for the performance review?"

The room was seconds away from turning into a bloodbath. Cassandra raised her scythe, preparing to decapitate the Immaculate Saintess for daring to emotionally compromise the CEO.

"Stand down."

It wasn't a shout. It wasn't a booming command amplified by dark magic.

It was a quiet, exhausted, entirely human voice.

Cassandra froze, her scythe inches from Lucy's neck. Ugo halted his spellcasting, the dark energy dissipating into smoke. Valeria, Nya, and Seraphina stopped in their tracks, staring at their Boss.

Kaito stood between his executives and the Saintess. He didn't look like a Dark Lord. He looked like a man who had just carried a mountain on his back and finally put it down. His shoulders were slumped, his eyes were heavy with fatigue, but the oppressive, terrifying weight of his trauma was gone.

"Stand down, Cassandra. Ugo, put the books away," Kaito ordered gently, running a hand through his messy hair. "There is no threat here. The situation has been... resolved."

Cassandra blinked, the hellfire fading from her suit. She pushed her glasses up her nose, analyzing his aura. She saw the exhaustion, but she also saw something she hadn't seen since the day she signed her contract with him: stability.

"Are you... certain, My Liege?" Cassandra asked, her demonic features softening slightly. "Your mana signature flatlined. We believed you were under cognitive assault."

"I was," Kaito admitted, offering a weak smile. "But I had some help rebooting the system."

He glanced down at Lucy, who was still sitting on the floor, looking up at him with wide, awestruck eyes. She had never seen him command his subordinates like this. Not with fear, but with absolute, quiet respect.

"We are done here for today," Kaito announced, turning back to the portal. He looked at the chaos of his newly acquired party members, then at his loyal executives.

A profound sense of weariness washed over him, but it was a good kind of tired. The kind of tired you feel after finishing a brutal job and knowing you can finally go home.

"Open the portal to Fort Blackstone, Ugo," Kaito said softly. "Let's go home. I need to look at Larry."

Ugo’s massive red eye blinked. The hostility vanished, replaced by the diligent obedience of a loyal HR Director. "At once, CEO."

The Archivist adjusted the portal's coordinates, and the swirling void shifted to reveal the familiar, polished stone corridors of the fortress.

"Alright, ladies, pack it up," Kaito sighed, gesturing to Valeria, Nya, and Seraphina. "The window shopping is over. We have a corporate orientation in the morning."

"Wait, we don't get to sleep in the fancy beds?!" Valeria complained, but she obediently dismissed her sword and walked toward the portal.

"Nya! I want a tuna bonus!" the cat girl chirped, skipping through the void.

Seraphina giggled, following them through. "Te-hee, I can't wait to see my new office..."

Cassandra and Ugo stepped back, waiting for their CEO to pass.

Kaito walked toward the portal and stopped just at the threshold.

He didn't turn around, but he paused, speaking softly so only the girl sitting on the floor behind him could hear.

"Don't blow your cover, Saintess. I expect your first intelligence report by the end of the week."

Lucy smiled, fresh tears welling in her eyes, but this time, they weren't tears of despair.

"You'll have it, Boss," she whispered.

Kaito stepped through the portal. Cassandra and Ugo followed, and with a sharp snap, the void closed, leaving the VIP suite completely empty.

The moment the portal vanished, the air in the room normalized.

Up in the corner of Lucy's vision, the familiar, annoying pink LitRPG interface flickered back to life.

[SYSTEM REBOOT SUCCESSFUL.]

[HIGHER REALMS CHAT: RECONNECTED.]

[Admin Note: What the hell just happened? Did we miss a cutscene?]

Lucy ignored the prompts. She sat alone on the floor of the expensive inn, surrounded by the faint scent of ozone and dark-roast coffee.

She raised her hands, casting a gentle, low-level healing spell on herself. The warm, golden light washed over her skin, mending the burst blood vessels in her eyes and stopping the bleeding from her nose. The physical pain faded, but the emotional weight of the last hour settled deeply into her bones.

She had lost him. The innocent, easy love they had shared in Tokyo was dead and buried. He had made that perfectly clear.

But as she sat there in the quiet room, Lucy didn't feel despair. She felt a burning, unyielding spark of purpose ignite within her soul.

He hadn't forgiven her completely, and he hadn't taken her back, but he had given her his trust. He had given her a chance to stand by his side, not as a fragile girlfriend who needed protecting, but as an equal partner in a war against the gods themselves.

Lucy slowly stood up. She pulled the hood of her pristine white cloak back over her head, concealing her face once more. She wiped the last trace of blood from her cheek.

She looked at the empty space where the portal had been.

"I know you can't hear me right now," Lucy whispered to the empty room, her voice steady, ringing with an absolute, unbreakable vow.

She clenched her fists, her holy aura flaring with a quiet, terrifying intensity that had nothing to do with the Goddess of Light, and everything to do with a woman fighting for the man she loved.

"I just wanted to build a family with you, Kaito. I just wanted us to be happy," Lucy said, the tears falling freely now, mingling with the last remnants of her healing magic. "You have always been the love of my life. And I swear to you... I will prove that I regret every single mistake I made. I will tear this Church apart for you. I will protect your empire. And one day... I will earn the right to stand by your side again."

She took a deep breath, the title of the Immaculate Saintess feeling like a weapon in her hands rather than a cage.

"I love you."

With her vow sealed in the silence of the room, Lucy turned and walked out the door, ready to begin her new job.