novelraw Chapter 249 : A Girl’s Love Should Be Protected by Herself
Chapter 249 : A Girl’s Love Should Be Protected by Herself
Chapter 249: A Girl’s Love Should Be Protected by Herself
When Ophelia once again calmed her emotions and returned to the corridor outside the ward, she noticed that the giant snow ferret was crouching on the window ledge, silently staring at her.
“Looks like you’ve already managed to see that boy, haven’t you?”
“I knew it. A mere fatal wound caused by Fantasia Collapse—if you think that alone could erase that boy’s soul, you’re still far, far from it.”
Dean Silver leapt lightly and landed on Ophelia’s shoulder.
“Also, in that world, it seems some rather interesting things happened.”
“Little Tina’s sister, do you know what you look like right now—”
“Actually, you really look like a little girl who had something precious stolen from her, but still forces herself to act as if she doesn’t care.”
Hearing this, Ophelia’s expression did not change. She still maintained that proper, lively, elegant smile, befitting a princess.
Only, in the air, pitch-black particles of liquid metal were quietly converging.
Soon, those wandering metallic particles condensed into a massive hand of mercury, gently grabbing Dean Silver.
“Dean Silver, have you ever heard this saying—‘Curiosity killed the cat.’”
“I’ve heard of it, but I’m a ferret, not a cat. What does the price of curiosity have to do with me… fine, fine, I won’t gossip anymore, is that good enough? Let go.”
Though in those ruby-like beast eyes burned a deep curiosity and thirst for knowledge, Dean Silver’s gossip radar had already gone off, sensing there might be a massive scoop here.
But faced with that mercury hand gripping the back of its neck, Dean Silver obediently chose to abandon further questioning.
“That’s why I say, little Ophelia, you’re not pure enough. You’re so skilled at seeing through the hearts of others… yet when it comes to your own spirit, you always choose to run away, unable to face your feelings as openly as your sister.”
The mercury hand loosened its grip, granting Dean Silver freedom once more. It quickly curled its fluffy tail into the subspace storage, fetched a dried fish, and stuffed it into its mouth.
This side of Ophelia reminded Dean Silver of a phrase Rast once mentioned to it—
“High offense, low defense.” Purely a glass cannon.
“No helping it. After all, I’m just such a complicated person.”
Ophelia gazed through the isolation window in the corridor, looking into the ward bathed in the warm afternoon sunlight.
“If I were able to be as pure as my sister, then the one sitting at his bedside, holding his hand tightly… would be me, wouldn’t it?”
After saying this, she fell silent, no longer speaking.
Both inside the ward and outside in the corridor, silence stretched on. Only the golden hours of time slowly faded away, measured by the ticking of the second hand on the alarm clock at the head of the bed.
As the sun outside gradually shifted westward, the once-clear sunlight was stained with the blood-red of dusk. The hour hand on the clock slowly approached six in the evening.
Inside the ward, Shiltina stood up, seemingly making her final farewell to the sleeping boy.
At that moment, Ophelia suddenly spoke softly.
“Dean Silver, do you know about the one beside Brother Rast, the person named ‘Emis’?”
“I know a little, but why do you suddenly bring that up?” Dean Silver asked, puzzled.
As the snow ferret who once accompanied Rast into the Historical Echoes, Dean Silver had personally witnessed Rast’s conversation with Grey the Fate Angel inside the Watchtower, the headquarters of the Shoreguards.
Thus, it knew very well what kind of weight that ‘Little Ai’ held in Rast’s heart.
“It’s nothing.”
Ophelia smiled faintly, pressing her hand lightly against her chest.
Silently, she felt the searing-hot emotions swelling within her chest.
That emotion was like magma—heavy, crimson, yet dazzlingly bright.
“In the end, I guess I still don’t want to concede.”
The life of Ophelia von Fresberg had always been like a mirror.
To meet the expectations of her parents, the elders of the royal family, and the outside world—she constantly changed herself, adapted, compromised, and strove to become the person they wanted her to be.
Such a life was undoubtedly wrong, hollow.
Beneath the flawless exterior of a refined princess, behind the shimmering mirror, the girl named Ophelia was, in truth, empty inside.
From birth until now, she had lived only by reflecting the light of others, never having anything that truly belonged to herself.
But today—
This Ophelia, at last, gave rise to her own desire… a yearning born not from others, but from her own heart.
For the first time, Ophelia had a wish of her own, something she looked forward to in her future life.
So, even if her rival was the elder sister she had always admired, even if it was the one who bore the Holy Grail of Death, it didn’t matter—
She refused to simply concede. For the sake of her first, true wish, she would give it her all.
Since that was the case, understanding her potential rivals was naturally necessary—after all, as the saying goes, know yourself and know your enemy, and you’ll never be defeated.
Her royal sister, as well as Akxia from Starfall University… Ophelia already had extremely close contact with them, knowing them thoroughly.
But the one called ‘Emis’—
Other than hearing that name once during a Nightworld broadcast, she knew absolutely nothing.
Yet, before leaving the Nightworld, before leaving Rast’s Mental Image World—
When that boy had mentioned her, the emotions carried within his words had been so heavy that even just hearing them made Ophelia’s heart sink.
She faintly sensed that this ‘Little Ai’ perhaps held a weight in Rast’s heart no less than her royal sister.
“Jiejiejie, Little Tina’s sister, looks like your fighting spirit has rekindled.”
“That’s how it should be. A girl’s love should be protected by herself.”
Dean Silver perched on Ophelia’s shoulder, letting out an evil laugh, as if delighted to stir up trouble.
As a fantastical creature of the “Moon” Sequence that fed on human emotions and radiant souls, Dean Silver was not only the world’s greatest gossip reporter, but also one who fanned the flames and fueled the storm.
“When that brat Rast wakes up, he’ll definitely thank me for everything I’ve done for him now.”
…
The dim and lightless Mental Image World.
“Well then, I’ll head back for today, Rast.”
“I’ll come to visit you again next week.”
By his ear, Shiltina’s voice faded along with the sound of her footsteps, and the soft click of the door closing gradually grew faint, drifting away.
The warmth lingering at his fingertips quickly ebbed away, vanishing, leaving only coldness behind.
In the end, before Rast’s eyes remained only a world of suffocating darkness.
The entire world was silent, devoid of any extra color, only the blackness and void that devoured light.
This was what it felt like to be a body already perished, but with the soul still lingering—a vegetative state… trapped within a world like a black hole, a prisoner locked in a cage, facing monotonous, unchanging darkness day and night.
When Shiltina visited each week, that fleeting warmth transmitted through skin-to-skin contact was only a brief glimmer—
Like a prisoner without a candlestick, peering through a crack smashed open in the wall.
But this eternal silence was what Rast had confronted, day after day, in the two years of his slumber.
For ordinary people, such a world of pitch-black void, even a few days within, would be enough to shatter their spirit and collapse their will… after all, even in real prisons, being locked in a dark solitary cell for days was considered the harshest punishment, enough to drive one insane.
But to Rast, such silence meant little.
Once you had witnessed hell with your own eyes, and returned from it with your own two hands, there was nothing left that could make you tremble.
Rast extended his hand slightly, feeling the faint veil-like night that coiled around his fingers.
Though Shiltina and Ophelia had already left the ward, the fragment of the Epoch Stele they brought remained within.
By the power of the Epoch Stele, this ward had been transformed into a miniature entrance to the Nightworld.
Because the aura of the Nightworld was too faint, the threshold for entering was extremely high. Only those Night Travelers highly attuned to the Nightworld could step inside.
However, for Rast—who had lived countless years in the Nightworld, crossing an entire era, surviving from the end of the Sixth Era to the present Seventh Era—this posed no problem. He might very well be the Night Traveler most attuned to the Nightworld in the entire Western Continent.
So long as he wished, even though his body had yet to awaken, Rast’s soul could enter the Nightworld at any time through the fragment of the Epoch Stele.
“Since in the short term, my body still lacks that final step to complete revival—”
“Then, during this time, I’ll finish that matter first.”
Rast slowly closed his eyes.
The veil-like night surged, enveloping the figure of the black-haired boy.
He felt the pull of the Nightworld, just like the sensation he had experienced countless times before slumber, when entering the Historical Echoes as a Night Traveler.
If he yielded to this pull of the Nightworld, letting his spirit drift along its current—
Then Rast would, as in the past when entering the Historical Echoes, be matched by the rules of the Nightworld, entering a random era, a random world setting, into a Historical Echo befitting his current tier.
Only this time, Rast’s purpose in entering the Nightworld—
Was not as before… not to clear Historical Echoes and resolve the Twilight Calamity, nor for the simple rewards of the Nightworld’s missions.
Within Rast’s Mental Image World, a coordinate built from complex numbers symbolizing spatial dimensions rapidly rose up.
Then, from pure data, streams of information gradually took shape, transforming into a concrete location in space.
For an ordinary Night Traveler, upon entering the Nightworld, one could only follow its rules, drifting along with the current… which Historical Echo you entered depended entirely on the Nightworld’s matching.
But now, Rast—even though his body in the real world remained extinguished and unawakened—his soul, spirit, and mind had already truly reached the Legendary Realm, surpassing the ordinary Night Travelers.
Moreover, Rast had once lived in the Nightworld and Historical Echoes for countless years. Whether it was affinity to the Nightworld or familiarity with its rules, he knew them deeply.
Thus, Rast could even resist the pull of the Nightworld for a brief time, to actively adjust and select which Historical Echo he would enter.
The existence of the Nightworld was vast, unique.
Within a single tiny divergence of time might be hidden hundreds or thousands of folded Historical Echoes. To pinpoint one specific, exact Historical Echo among them was no different from finding a needle in a haystack.
But now, lines of complex equations were being generated in Rast’s spiritual sea, then vanishing.
Repeating, again and again.
With each cycle, possible deviations and margins of error were gradually eliminated.
And then—
Step by step, the final result of the coordinate calculation was guided toward the one true answer.
At last.
Within the thickening night, interwoven with brilliant starlight, only a single clear, distinct coordinate remained.
Rast no longer resisted the earlier pull from the Nightworld, but instead emptied himself completely, letting his spirit and soul be swallowed by the night, vanishing fully into the veil.
Two years earlier, in that illusory dream called Canaan, the girl and boy had hooked their pinkies together, making a promise: “You must, you must come save me.”
And now, the Nightworld Rast had pinpointed—
Was the very coordinate Emis had personally given him back then.
It was also where the Judgment Angel had sealed herself within the Nightworld.
That’s right.
At this very moment, that blonde girl with sky-blue eyes—
Was waiting quietly for Rast’s arrival, within the years of her self-imposed seal.