"Shall we go on a picnic tomorrow, Aider?"
When was this?
Aider, exhausted from playing the fake prince, was completely drained and sitting on the sofa. Ariel, who had brought refreshments and sat in front of him, asked this.
Aider, with wide eyes, asked,
"A picnic?"
"Yes. There's a hill in the outskirts where I often played with my brother when I was young. There's a big zelkova tree, and in summer, flowers bloom..."
Ariel smiled awkwardly.
"Because you're working hard for me and the Imperial Family. There's no schedule for tomorrow... Hmm, you can refuse if you don't want to or are tired."
"No, no! I don't mind at all!"
Aider hurriedly waved his hands and smiled clumsily.
"Thank you for the invitation, princess. I'll look forward to it tomorrow!"
However, the next day, the two couldn't go on the picnic.
Because it suddenly rained.
So instead of going on a picnic, they sat side by side in a pavilion in the King's Castle courtyard...
And watched the falling rain together.
The memory of that ordinary, not-so-special day remained deeply in their hearts.
Why was that?
***
"Ha! Cough, cough, cough!"
At the moment the Lake Kingdom was sinking. By the lakeside.
Aider, who was under the first curse - the curse of immortality.
Due to the princess's expulsion order, he was ejected out of the Lake Kingdom, avoiding the second and third curses placed on the Lake Kingdom.
He had to watch as the entire Lake Kingdom sank, with no one but himself escaping.
"..."
Aider, a mere human, was overwhelmed in the face of a world's destruction.
The vast kingdom disappeared under the lake like bubbles. Aider could do nothing but stare blankly at this sight.
After the entire kingdom sank and the shaking and noise that shook the heavens and earth subsided.
Finally, a thought came to Aider's mind.
'What should I do now?'
Upon reflection, there was nothing he needed to do for the Lake Kingdom.
He was just a slave driven by the Lake Kingdom, not even a citizen. He was dragged in to impersonate the prince because he looked like him, having done dirty and rough work all his life.
He had no family, no friends. No connections or ties.
He could just leave everything behind and go.
At that moment.
Clink.
Something made a sound in Aider's pocket. He curiously put his hand in his pocket and took it out.
It was a plaque made of black wood.
'This is...?'
It was Princess Ariel's plaque.
Her name and identity were engraved on it, and as befits a royal plaque, it was luxuriously made from the blackwood Everblack.
'When...'
It seemed Ariel had given it to Aider at the moment she issued the expulsion order.
Why?
Why did the princess pull him out of the Lake Kingdom and give him the most precious thing she had at that moment?
- Aider.
Suddenly, Ariel's smiling face flashed before his eyes.
The person who gave him a name.
And the first to treat him as a 'person'.
- Shall we go on a picnic tomorrow?
"..."
He knew.
That warmth was not entirely directed at him.
The princess had projected the image of her amicable brother from her childhood onto him.
Royalty and slave, citizen and non-citizen...
There was a distance between her and himself wider than the sky and the earth.
But, even so.
'I want to save her.'
Even if the whole world perished, only you.
'Only you, I want to save...'
After carefully putting the plaque given by the princess into his bosom.
Aider staggered and stood up.
"I don't know what I need to do..."
Renewing his resolve on his delicate face,
"I will try anything, princess."
Aider quietly looked down at the surface of the lake, gradually turning black and turbid.
"So... please wait a little longer."
Thus.
To save the perished kingdom, the fake prince began a long journey.
***
"...After that, well, it's just a repetition of a boring story."
Aider concluded the story and looked at me.
"At first, I just grabbed a sword and fought. I thought that if I killed the three sages who cursed the kingdom... the Demon King and his allies, the situation would be resolved."
"So, did you succeed in killing them?"
I asked, surprised, while listening to the story and eating popcorn (though it seemed a bit impolite since the story was quite long).
Then Aider nodded.
"Yes. I defeated two of them. I managed to drive them out after a really long and dreadful fight, each establishing their own bases at the ends of the continent. Both were beings on a higher level, so it was really tough to take them down."
"Wow."
To be honest, Aider, this guy, looks feeble and pale, not the type you'd expect to fight on the front lines. Maybe he used to be something else back in the day?
"If you have eternal life and unyielding will, anyone can accomplish this much."
"No, usually, people's wills break..."
Don't explain it like it's some kind of student cooking recipe.
"Did you see the two broken statues among the three in the Lake Kingdom? Those statues were erected by the Demon King, and since I defeated the other two sages, the left and right statues were destroyed..."
"So the left and right statues were broken. I see."
Aider let out a faint sigh.
"In that way, I lifted the second and third curses. But there were almost no people left who could escape from the Lake Kingdom, and it had already sunk, so there was no power left to pull it back to the surface."
"..."
"Moreover, I couldn't defeat the most important one, the Demon King."
So, to put it plainly.
This is probably the 'first playthrough' for Aider.
"Endlessly, time passed, and eventually, monsters spewed out from the Lake Kingdom, saturated with malice. After the world perished..."
Even though it must have been a heart-wrenching story for him.
Aider calmly explained his old story.
"When all lives perished and I became the last human on earth, I received two proposals simultaneously."
"Two proposals?"
"First, the Goddess offered me the position of a racial deity."
I remembered what Aider had told me a long time ago.
When one becomes the last survivor of a race, they can ascend to the position of a racial deity.
Since Aider was immortal and lived forever, he reached that end and became the racial deity.
"And then the Demon King proposed a deal."
Aider smiled bitterly.
"Since we couldn't save the ones we wanted to save, he proposed we 'do this end-of-the-world game one more time'."
"..."
"As the proxy of the entire perished world, I agreed. The world 'reset' to the moment after the Lake Kingdom sank."
Since the Demon King's two allies were beings of higher dimensions, their defeated state was maintained even after the reset.
In other words, from the second playthrough, only the Demon King needed to be defeated.
However...
"I didn't succeed."
Aider, with his usual carefree demeanor, waved his hands.
"No matter what I tried, I couldn't defeat the Demon King or save the Lake Kingdom. I just kept repeating countless futile fights for hundreds of years."
"..."
"Then my soul reached its limit, and feeling the limits of fighting directly, I started looking for a proxy player..."
Aider glanced at me.
"You know the rest."
"I see..."
"Since I had a piece of blackwood from Everblack, I revived the Everblack Empire, a nation capable of fending off the monster invasion... And then I discovered you, with your regression potential, and after countless infinite battles together, here we are."
Aider, smiling brightly, picked up the cold teacup.
"It was a long story."
It was a long story.
But Aider's actual battle must have been infinitely longer than this story.
Aider, who summarized and brushed over the immense pain, loneliness, and agony, looked at me intently.
"Honestly, what significance does the long tale of past failures have? Now, we just need to succeed in the final battle."
"...You're right, Aider."
I grinned.
"No matter how many times we were beaten up before, if we win with a final awesome move at the end, it's all good. Right?"
Even if we lose 9999 times, who cares? If we win once at the end, we live feeling like we've won all our lives!
"Hehe. You are absolutely right."
We chuckled as we looked at each other.
I patted Aider's shoulder.
"By the way, after staying silent for so long, it turns out it was a love story. You romantic fool."
Aider, embarrassed, scratched the back of his head.
"To be precise, it's unrequited love."
"Oh~ but you admit it's a romantic feeling. I was ready to tease you if you tried to deny it."
"If it were me when I was young, I would have denied it. How could a slave dare to love a princess, I would have denied having such feelings."
Aider lowered his old eyes behind his glasses.
"But I have grown old, my lord. Older than anyone in this world."
"..."
"I now know well that the naive feelings I had back then were indeed love."
"The feelings back then?"
I asked cautiously.
"Then what about now?"
"...I don't know."
Aider fiddled with the empty teacup.
"I am curious too. The first emotion when I decided to save her was definitely love. But now..."
After mumbling as if trying to articulate something, he finally gave up and laughed weakly.
"What is this feeling of mine? Why did I want to save her for such a long time?"
"..."
"Well, the reason no longer matters. I just want to see it. The true ending we will reach."
A brief silence ensued.
Thud.
Placing down the teacup and intertwining his fingers, Aider took a deep breath.
"So, I've talked enough about old stories... Shall we talk about what's to come?"
He changed the subject.
Perhaps to the main topic we were supposed to discuss here.
"The path to the Lake Kingdom has been blocked, but now it is open."
"Yes. So I was just about to send a free exploration team."
The next stage is 45.
It's a boss stage. We need to scout who the opponent is.
"Let me tell you first."
But Aider talked about something else.
"Once you enter the Lake Kingdom dungeon, you can encounter the final boss in the deepest part."
"...?!"
"In the 'game', it was the same, wasn't it? You could encounter it from this point."
I swallowed dryly.
"The final boss..."
"'The Sleepless Lake Princess'."
Aider nodded.
"Yes. Nameless."
"...!"
"The reason the path to the Lake Kingdom has been blocked so far is clear, isn't it?"
Aider calmly recited the cruel truth.
"It was the process of her transformation into a monster. The entire Lake Kingdom was covered in darkness. And the mutation is already complete."
The person he had unrequited love for.
The person he had fought for eons to save.
In this final round, she had already lost her humanity and become a monster. He told this story so calmly.
"She has become the embodiment of all the nightmares of the Lake Kingdom's people and now, she is the strongest being among any monster in this world."
"..."
"And when Stage 50 begins, she will leave the Lake Kingdom and head to the human world."
Aider, with cold eyes, was now staring directly at me.
"In the 'game', to prevent the monster invasion and achieve victory, you had to kill her before Stage 50 started."
"...!"
"In other words."
With a voice as cold as his eyes.
Aider uttered the victory condition from the game.
"To 'win', from now until the start of Stage 50, we must kill Nameless, who has transformed into a monster."
"..."
"Of course."
Immediately, Aider smiled brightly.
"This is not the ending I desire. And it's not the method you have in mind either, is it?"
That's right.
I had my own strategy to save Nameless and spectacularly overturn this round.
And Aider said he was leaving this place to prepare for 'something' now.
"The final move I will prepare from now on, combined with the strategy you have in mind."
Aider, who smiled slyly like a villain, made a gesture.
"Shall we pull off something spectacular together?"
"..."
"The grandest finale of the 'end-of-the-world game' that will astonish the entire universe."
Oh man...
Who in the world could refuse that?
I smirked and reached out my hand.
"Alright! Let's do it, accomplice!"
Aider also took my hand.
We shook hands firmly and laughed wickedly.
"The grandest finale to wrap up our grueling joint venture...!"