Arthur felt his body coming back to life. His blurry vision fluctuated between clarity and darkness. It was an unnerving experience and he felt a painful and eerie chill run up his spine.
Despite experiencing these sensations all at once, Arthur was strangely calm. He was barely grasping onto life but he could clearly hear the sound of people shouting over one another over him.
"He's losing too much mana - he's not going to make it!"
"Shut up!" snapped a stern-sounding voice. Arthur felt a warm weight placed upon his chest. "I'm not letting the boss die! All of you! Focus!" the stern voice bellowed.
"I told them again and again not to attempt the quickening but Arthur and Artesia - they just wouldn't listen!"
The constant buzzing and beeping of the machines irritated Arthur. He was awake. He was here. But why was he being ignored?
Arthur looked over his body - and that's when he realized: he was standing over his body and he was seemingly just floating over himself. He was having an out-of-body experience.
He knew he should be afraid but at the moment, he felt at peace. Every sensation that he felt upon waking up now felt like a cruel joke.
Arthur tried to touch the still-worrying source of the stern voice from earlier but it wasn't possible. After all, he didn't possess physical limbs.
He stared at the healer who was in full gear running around and directing the rest of their subordinates and decided to simply watch over them.
"Artesia is...no, at least Arthur. We have to save Arthur! Without him...without him..." The stern-sounding voice desperately said to seemingly nothing.
Arthur almost chuckled at the inevitability of it all. He knew what was waiting for him and all he could think of was coming home to her.
Unlike the Demon Queen's chambers where he died, the world around him was more sleek and functional. There were unknown machines placed around the room and a bunch of them were hooked up to his body.
The room was chilled as if to keep these machines cool and to counteract that, Arthur's body was covered in an expensive-looking bodysuit while lying inside a pool of black liquid housed in a futuristic-looking coffin.
'This is a strange yet familiar sight to me but why can't I....argh!" a flash of pain interrupted Arthur's train of thought and a myriad of memories came flooding back in.
He remembered everything he went through. From accepting the mission to save the small world inside the unknown dimension, from the countless lives he lived through within that world and the woman he shared everything with - Alagarassi.
It was a mission of the highest difficulty level but no one expected anything to be different - after all, Arthur was the strongest battle god who has saved countless worlds and Alagarassi - no, Artesia, was the woman who supported him from the shadows.
The mission was going well until Alagarassi put herself through the sword during their first life - and this cycle repeated countless times through different means - 11,500,021 times to be exact. It was normal for Arthur and Artesia to lose themselves - their identities - and they simply came to think of themselves as actual citizens of that world.
In the end, Arthur succeeded in his journey but he knew that he paid a great price - but what was it? He knew it was something important but he just can't bring himself to remember.
As Arthur racked his head, he felt a huge force suddenly pulling him in back to his body. He looked at the healers all around him and determined that they had somehow managed to bring him back to life - all that mattered now was...
"Doctor! You did it! It's working!"
"Shut up! Focus! Keep pumping mana into his body! Just do it!" snapped the stern-sounding voice but a tinge of happiness betrayed her focus.
"He's opening his eyes!"
A bright light greeted Arthur and he knew he had come back to the world of the living.
"A...A.."
"Arthur! Save your strength. You just..." the stern-sounding healer tried to put Arthur back to sleep but his next words hit them like a haymaker.
"Ar...Artes...ia..." His normally raspy voice now seemed barely a growl still clung to the woman whose presence never left his heart.
A flash of disappointment hung over the face of the healer but was quickly replaced with relief.
The stern-sounding healer grabbed Arthur's hands and held it to their substantial chest. She was a woman after all.
"It's me Arthur. Sylvia. I was so worried about -"
A huge magical storm erupted around Arthur's body and a sense of dread filled the room, quickly extinguishing any relief or happiness that remained.
The machines started to malfunction and the building began to quake - a testament to the amount of strength that Arthur was exerting out of hysteria.
Arthur slowly spat out his words one by one. "Where. is. she...?" each word uttered was one healer falling to the ground or going insane due to the density of Arthur's hatred.
With desolation in her heart, Sylvia had no choice but to reply honestly. "You killed her Arthur."
Sylvia pointed towards the similar coffin situated at the other end of the room. Arthur half-ran and half-stumbled towards the coffin and inside was an unmoving woman with a peaceful smile on her face.
It was a beautiful face that must have been full of liveliness and dignity even when she was laughing but right now, her body was torn to shreds, as if it imploded and it was clear that she suffered for a long time.
Arthur powerlessly sunk to his knees and felt his irregular heartbeat. It was irregular because it felt like it was beating as if it was two hearts melded into one.
Arthur knew that Artesia and Alagarassi was his salvation but he now felt like he had wanted to die.
"Artesia...what have I done?"
Arthur placed his hand on Artesia's peaceful face and knew that he had committed an unforgivable sin - a sin so great that no amount of penance would be enough to absolve him from suffering.
Penance Prologue - The End