"W-What...?"
The despair in my voice was evident. I didn't understand. I couldn't comprehend. Why would I want to? Why should I?
The Saintess, barely holding onto her consciousness, grit her teeth.
"Get your shit together, trash! D-Damn it..."
She tried gathering more 'divinity' around her, but her body was now rejecting it. The Saintess was surely powerful, but her body still had a limitation.
Liliana was sweating heavily, looking more and more drained by the second.
Both were powerful, but they had their limits. No matter how harshly we trained, two months was just two months. It was nowhere near enough to withstand the power needed to hold back the world-ending tsunami storm the dragon brought with it for a long amount of time.
Everything was falling apart.
The lights of the magical girls disappeared one by one - and the streams of 'divinity' disappeared as well, as Liliana's fortifications were overwhelmed, and the survivors on the ground were blown away by the waves, winds, and storms. Our own guild members were undoubtedly gone as well.
Screams were all around us - panic, terror, fear...and then they were muffled, and then extinguished entirely.
For a moment, I saw Nozomi, smiling sadly. She barely turned her head to look in my direction, and mouthed two words that I wouldn't be able to understand.
"**** ****."
And then she, too, was overtaken by the monstrous waves. Even as they swallowed her, she kept that bright, mysterious smile.
I didn't even have the energy to mourn for her.
Water endlessly surged into the city around and behind us. In a single moment, all was lost.
We all had trained for a month, but what for, really? We had all hung on, expecting that taking out the dragon with an extreme amount of firepower would be enough.
Maybe it was just because I personally had hung onto the foolish things of 'trust' and 'hope', that we were now suffering this.
I had come through to live another life, and yet...it was basically useless.
"Damn it...!" The Saintess grit her teeth, staring down at the destruction rampaging below and around us. The water now rose up at a ridiculous height - even on Liliana's reinforced wooden platform, it was just barely below the bottom of the platform.
The entire ocean was invading the city.
It was all too late.
Liliana collapsed to her knees, staring out at the decimation that was wrought on the city below. Her hands weakly extended to her plants, and the guild members that had been erased, trembling.
Nothing responded to her call.
The flowers that adorned her hair and clothing seemed to wilt in the stormy darkness.
"Well, shit...guess we failed..." The Saintess sighed, running a hand through her hair. She tried to get up, and somehow managed to stumble to her feet, even as the winds threatened to blow her weakened body off of the platform.
She brought a cigarette to her lips, but there was obviously no way to light it. Not in this pouring rain.
"Usually that guy would've been here to light it up for me...shit..."
For the first time, her eyes, usually full of overconfidence, arrogance, hatred, or recently, some sort of simple mischief, looked dead. I couldn't see an ounce of life in them.
"Well, it was fun."
Her body glowed brighter than I had ever seen it before. An ethereal light surrounded her, surging through her clothing, attaching itself to the air around her. I looked at the Saintess, unsure of what to feel.
Since I hadn't gotten to say anything to Nozomi, I forced myself to say something to her.
"...sorry."
"Hah! Don't apologize. After all...ain't it supposed to be the responsibility of the strong to look after the weak? So don't feel bad about being...well..." The Saintess sighed, rubbing a hand through the silver hair that laid under the hood of her habit. "I'll see ya. It was fun."
With those words, uncharacteristic of herself, the Saintess leapt into the water.
"SAINTESS!"
Liliana was much less calm. Her hand extended out towards the falling Saintess, a branch desperately growing from her arms and racing towards her. But when it reached her, the blinding light surrounding the Saintess seemingly burned it away, vaporizing her wood.
She rejected Liliana's attempt to help her, and plunged into the water. There was a moment of silence, before a portion of the water bubbled, steamed, glowed, and then blew over in a display that left us stunned.
Then, as soon as it had happened, the water reclaimed the spot, and the flood resumed, like nothing had happened.
The Saintess had sacrificed her life, probably using up enough 'divinity' that it destroyed her body, for nothing.
Liliana and I were the only ones left now, sitting on top of that platform.
Everything we had worked for, every person we had met over the past two months was gone.
"No..." Liliana slumped against the edge, dangerously close to falling off. Something inside me came back to life, and I rushed to pull her away from the edge.
A shadow loomed in the water, now circling us.
It felt oddly familiar to me.
The memories of the last life - my first life - came to me. This was exactly how it had ended.
At the end of a long road, where I had tried everything, only failure waited for me. Except, this time, I had dragged someone else into it.
I hugged Liliana close to my chest...I couldn't even hear her sobbing. I couldn't tell the difference between her tears, and the rain that kept on falling without mercy.
Instead of looking at the water, I looked at Liliana. Her blue eyes, which had come to always be glowing with life, happiness, and excitement, were dark. The flowers that adorned her were dead. Her long, curly hair was soaked straight.
She was a mess.
I'm sure I looked the same, but I didn't really care. For some reason, my thoughts were focused on her as the end came nearer.
"...at least...in the end...I'm here with you, Alan."
Even if I could tell apart her tears from the rain...I could feel my eyes burning. I was breaking down. Splitting apart. I wasn't sure if I could keep myself together.
In my last life, I didn't want to die. Now, I didn't want her to die. I didn't want the Saintess or Nozomi to die. Nor the guild members we had raised so carefully, or the other guild members from the alliance...
I had gone from not wanting to lose my life, to not wanting to lose the life I had finally gotten to live.
But I had brought them all here. To a pointless death.
"I'm so sorry, Liliana. I'm, I'm so-"
Imminent death of skill holder detected.
Conditions met.
Activating unique skill: Regression.
That voice filled my ears again. Even earlier than last time, cutting off whatever I could've said. Like it was mocking me.
I wasn't happy that I was heading to another Regression.
I didn't want to go back and abandon this. To abandon them. To abandon her.
"No...no, no, no, no-"
Liliana wasn't bothered by my frantic shouting. She couldn't hear what I had heard, after all. Instead, she looked into my eyes, gently pushing her palm onto my cheek. Her warmth instantly dispelled everything else.
I could feel the water now pooling around our ankles, impossibly high. Then it came up past our thighs, and our chest...
"Why are you apologizing, silly? Didn't I say it?"
Her voice was calm. Too calm. Even while she was being swallowed up by the water, she put on a brave face, hiding away all her pain, and fear, just to try and save me with her words one last time.
"I'll always be on your side."
That was the final thing she said, with a smile on her face. The last words she had chosen to leave this earth with.
And then, the water took us.
...
I woke up.
Around me, I could hear the hellishly familiar humming of machines.
I didn't want to open my eyes, but I couldn't run away from reality.
I was in the supermarket again. Wearing the same uniform. And when I checked my phone, it was December 25th, 5:30 PM.
I wasn't wet.
I wasn't crying.
I didn't have Liliana in my arms.
Weirdly enough, I didn't break. I didn't do much emoting at all. Instead, I cleared the Tutorial with frightening efficiency. For some reason, my body seemed to be in the exact same condition as I had left the last life in - my two months of hard training was still reflected in my physique, despite clearly regressing.
I didn't pay any of it attention. Instead, I immediately ran into the city, praying to see her. It was unreasonable, but I just needed to see her. I had to know.
Unseemly thoughts were going through my head.
'I never knew anybody in my first life...so I don't know how inter-personal relationships are affected. M-maybe she'll remember me somehow? Maybe...maybe the same way it preserves my body and my memories, my Regression can preserve her memories, too?'
They were unsightly thoughts - born out of nothing but pure desperation.
Then, standing there, gazing around wordlessly to her surroundings, I saw her again. Her curly blonde hair, her beautiful blue eyes, and the atmosphere that, at first, I had considered eerie.
I smiled. A horribly broken, disfigured smile.
"L-Liliana-!"
I reached out my hand towards her.
She immediately recoiled, looking at me with a mixture of fear, shock, and mistrust. I even saw suspicion in her eyes...
It was a look she had never given me, not even once before.
"I-I'm sorry, sir...do you know me? No, well...I'll be going."
Obviously frightened by my manic appearance, random usage of her name, and over-familiar attitude, she ran away. Watching her back disappear into the distance, I felt something inside of me break. I didn't even have the strength to try and say something else.
So...
This is what regression really is.
The Liliana I knew, the life I had led, everything I had done...
It all amounted to nothing, once I died.
"I'll always be on your side."
The hell that I had entered into...was much worse than anything the Flood Dragon could have done.