Chapter 174: I pray to the whole world! But the only one responding is my past self.

■■...Pe■■...! My name is... Petra!

Like sunlight breaking through mist, radiant light poured into her heart, and Petra's consciousness abruptly woke from a haze of chaos.

The instant she woke, she checked her surroundings first thing — the same act she'd repeated more than any other across the four hundred years since ■■■ had gone.

Confirming, each time she woke, that she still stood guard there — the valley where Emilia had sealed herself in ice.

Why she guarded this place, she could no longer recall. For whose sake she guarded it — that too, she'd forgotten.

Once, to gain power, she had forced herself to wield a melancholy factor that was never meant for her.

She — Petra — had offered up every possibility of her own future to Od Lagna, the root of the world.

And so her name, along with every trace of her existence, was erased from the world — and alongside it, her memories of a certain someone kept slipping away, bit by bit.

She didn't want to forget, so she clung desperately to every memory she had of that person.

The world was fair, in its way — so long as she kept striving to remember, the memories of that person in her mind would linger one second longer.

But the world was cruel too. No matter how much more time she craved, there was none to be had.

To keep hold of that person, she had to keep remembering, without a single moment's pause.

Not one minute, not one second could she let herself relax — or she would forget instantly.

Forget that person's name. Forget that person's face. Forget every moment they had ever spent together.

And this task, nearly impossible as it was — she had kept at it for four hundred years.

Which was, in other words — a mere twelve billion, six hundred twenty-two million, seven hundred eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred seconds. That's all!

She'd believed she could keep this up forever. But... in the end, she'd failed after all.

Because even now, she still had to call him 'that person' — she no longer remembered what he was called, or who he even was.

Four hundred years... every single second of four hundred years spent thinking of that person — in the end, it had worn her down. There had been no avoiding it.

Should she feel glad? Four hundred years of mental torment, ending at last, without a sound.

But how could that be?

In truth, she wept — because a hole had opened inside her, one she might never manage to fill again for the rest of her life.

Her head grew heavy and dim... Was she about to fall asleep?

But she'd sacrificed even the possibility of letting herself relax, of living out peaceful days!

And yet, to Petra's own surprise — she seemed to have genuinely drifted off to sleep, hazy as it was.

The proof was this: she had a beautiful dream.

In the dream, she found herself back in Earlham Village, and somehow, inexplicably, she was reading Subaru's Book of the Dead.

That's right — not "that person," not "someone" — but Subaru! Subaru, Subaru, Subaru! No matter how many times she said it, she never tired of it — and that was exactly why Petra was certain this was a beautiful dream.

Because in this dream, thanks to the memories she'd gained from reading the Book of the Dead, she broke through some kind of restriction and managed to recall Subaru — and every moment she'd ever spent with him!

Still, it was a dream after all, and plenty of things happened that she couldn't make sense of.

A tall woman in white who commanded the wind moved to attack Subaru without any warning at all.

Without thinking, she reached to wield the melancholy authority she'd practiced countless times over four hundred years — [Compression] — to strike back.

Things like deleting time, nullifying attacks, nullifying damage, compressing pain into a mental assault, freely relocating the battlefield, severing an enemy's causal threads — blessing included...

A concept-tier authority like this could rightly be called invincible.

But when she actually tried to use it, she found the melancholy factor inside her simply wasn't answering her call.

It felt exactly as if she had never paid that price at all — never sacrificed her future possibilities to force her way into accepting the melancholy factor.

No — not "as if." It was true, without question.

And then it struck her — because she remembered: Natsuki Subaru himself was proof enough of that!

But none of that mattered now.

Even within a dream, she felt no temptation to cling to having all her future possibilities intact again — she chose, without hesitation, to save Subaru once more!

"Gods above, Buddha, Lord Od Lagna, I swear..."

With practiced ease, Petra offered up the sacrifice once more, trading it for the right to wield the melancholy factor again.

In the end, she went so far as to invoke a relocation, sending that troublesome white-haired woman somewhere far away from Subaru.

"Subaru, I hope you're safe — even if this is only a dream... Right now, are you dreaming too, just like me?"

Wondering that, Petra's consciousness sank into darkness.

But the very next moment, when she woke again—

she found the scene around her had changed, yet the moment in time was still the one just before she and Subaru were to meet.

She lay now on her own mother's back, following the villagers of Earlham fleeing ahead of her, on and on.

So, did that mean... she still hadn't woken up?

Was this what Subaru had once called a dream within a dream — a lucid dream?

Puzzled, Petra rubbed at her light brown hair, then lowered her eyes to look at her own hands.

But... it was strange. Truly strange!

If everything that had happened before — the sacrifice of her future possibilities, saving Subaru — had all taken place within a dream one layer up—

then... why could she still use the melancholy factor now? And without having to pay any future possibilities for it at all?

Was it because... the payment had already been made, one dream-layer above?

At the thought, an odd look crossed Petra's face.

Before, she had borrowed against her future. But now, somehow, she'd borrowed against her past instead — slipping the cost right through the cracks!

What an utterly bizarre thing to experience.

But here was the question — if that were true—

then why, the instant she'd woken, had she felt some terrible force trying to erase her memory of that dream one layer above?

Too bad for it — whoever wielded that force, it hadn't succeeded.

Because she — Petra — had once stood her ground for over four hundred years, more than twelve billion seconds, against the world's own curse of memory-erasure!

She'd finally managed to remember Subaru... and now something wanted to make her forget him all over again?

As if she'd let that happen!

Fierce resolve blazed in Petra's eyes — the first time in over four hundred years of numbing torment that she'd felt this fired up.

So, with no room left for hesitation, Petra drove her melancholy authority to its fullest to resist this rival authority of memory-erasure.

The next instant, as Petra unleashed everything she had, her body began to change.

Her body, once that of an eleven- or twelve-year-old, visibly matured within mere seconds into that of a woman in her twenties.

Her short brown hair unfurled and lengthened, spilling down past her shoulders.

Her coarse hempen clothes shifted on their own into a gown woven from Mana, dressed in every color imaginable.

Her round, childish cheeks lost their softness and settled into a young woman's face — gentle, yet unyielding.

Yet the four hundred years of mental torment had left their mark — a trace of weariness and emptiness that lingered on her face, impossible to shake.

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