Chapter 46: The Unchangeable Fate
"It's not that complicated..." Nicola's face turned red as she tried to deny it. But seeing me disbelieving, she could only shrug and pretend not to care as she explained.
"Fine, there was a bit more story. When we first tried to rescue Michelle, we faced many problems. Even with help from the floating city and the angels, it was really hard to break through the defenses set up by those 'Spring' followers. In the end, we had to resort to some special methods..."
These special methods involved using time reversal to find weak spots in the enemy's headquarters at Lyenatibaines. This city, which existed in the same location as the holy city of Jethrobaines but in another world, had become the power center of the Ancient God Religion's Lumina Sanctum. They say Michelle was taken there after being kidnapped.
The trickiest part was that even though "Spring" hadn't truly arrived yet, all of Lyenatibaines was already under special protection. Looking for a secret prisoner in enemy territory was never going to be easy. Even someone as powerful as Galadra could only roughly guess that the target was somewhere underground in the city center through her space-viewing abilities.
"The only way was for me to sneak deep into Lyenatibaines, find exactly where Michelle was being held, and then plan the rescue operation for our main forces!"
Though she made it sound easy, I knew how difficult Nicola's mission must have been.
Indeed, she was chosen for this task precisely because Wind Angel could reverse time almost unlimited times, allowing her to find the right path through countless tries - but only with Adrian the Fate Breaker by her side.
"...I lost count of how many times we had to go back. Though it seemed like just a few hours passed that night, Adrian and I might have spent several years in Lyenatibaines! That's when I started to understand what you went through at the 'Dona' Strategic Research Institute."
I almost didn't recognize what she meant by the 'Dona' Strategic Research Institute at first, but then remembered it was where Adrian and I had accidentally entered the time-looping testing space.
The rest of the story was predictable - even the strongest enemies couldn't stand against the time-reversing power backed by a Fate Breaker. They finally found where Michelle was being held and successfully rescued her. Michelle would later be crucial in reviving Feliciara.
This was an unprecedented achievement in that world. Everyone praised them as the perfect pair, saying their combination was practically invincible, even against "Spring."
As for whether Nicola and Adrian developed any feelings for each other during their long time together, she didn't say.
Then came a crucial turning point right after the rescue! The formation to revive Feliciara needed to be guarded. Since Nicora's angel clan in the other world had suffered heavy losses, Nicola decided to have Adrian pilot the floating city to guard the revival formation, using Lantine Oasis's remaining Divine Punishment reserves.
But flush from their big victory, she overlooked something - she never expected that after their impressive mission, "Spring," watching from another space, had noticed their time-reversal trick of repeatedly entering and leaving Lyenatibaines.
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A plan specifically targeting them was put into action when Adrian returned alone to the new Parristol.
Following their supreme god's guidance, the Ancient God Religion followers gathered several high-level mages to attack the slowly moving new Parristol with forbidden spells. They sacrificed several advanced mages, destroying the entire sky city with lightning speed, deliberately giving up this ancient relic that was almost in their grasp!
Of course, their real target was Adrian, the controller of Lantine Oasis. Killing this isolated Fate Breaker was their quickest way to break Nicola's time abilities!
But when Nicola learned this terrible news, more than ten minutes had already passed since they separated. This was clearly calculated, far beyond the time limit she could reverse.
"Spring" obviously knew this well - without the Fate Breaker's interference, she alone couldn't change any established facts by reversing time! But Nicola, like me now, had some hope at first. After all, the incident wasn't too far from where she was. Though she couldn't go back to when she last saw Adrian, she thought she could still go back a few minutes before Adrian's death to stop the enemy's attack.
But this time, the merciless convergence of world lines made her taste despair countless times - no matter how hard she tried, even if she killed every Ancient God Religion follower she could see, strange accidents kept happening. Sometimes enemy reinforcements would suddenly appear from unknown directions; sometimes a stray fireball spell would hit Lantine Oasis's core area, causing the whole city to explode; when she asked Galadra to teleport her directly into the floating city, the teleport would mysteriously fail and send her to other parts of the continent; there were even more ridiculous incidents like the floating city being struck by over ten bolts of lightning. It was as if the whole world couldn't tolerate Adrian's existence anymore. Nicola never even got a chance to approach Lantine Oasis - every attempt ended in failure, and the ten-minute limit on time reversal meant she couldn't seek more help.
That's when she truly understood what her future self had meant when she traveled back in time.
"Everything happening here is already destined. Only observers can give us other possibilities! My observer has completely gone in another world, and in this world, Adrian is destined to be yours. I won't compete with you for him, nor will I make extra demands like before! I keep pursuing the ending of another world... just to try to resolve a regret in my heart. What I'm doing now is still trying to protect this world we worked so hard to preserve... and you, just like another me did in her world!"
Though this didn't happen in this world, I could see Nicola had been through much more than I first imagined. As she finished speaking, her eyes seemed to shine strangely. She gently touched my cheek, then flew away without looking back.
"Nicora is the main character in the other world! You're not necessarily that here, so be more careful!" I couldn't help calling out to warn her. This time, I finally didn't mind her leaving the team on her own. And maybe it wasn't just my imagination, but for a moment I seemed to sense something strange about Nicola, like she reminded me of Liana whom I'd only met in dreams.
...
"So what should we do next?"
When I returned to Adrian's side, seeing I was alone, he immediately understood that Nicola had gone off on her own again.
"Of course we're going back to Norvale, but before that, we need to meet up with Cyrae in the imperial capital!"
Though I couldn't talk about what happened between Nicola and the other world's Adrian, I had already decided what to do next. After all, my relationship with Adrian was heading toward a direct confession to Edenmere, which I was actually quite looking forward to in a way.
Leaving this place was simple now. I carried Adrian and flew straight out of the cave toward the imperial capital. Soon we found many rebel force around the entrance of the royal villa - they had indeed found this place.
When we reached Kyndrill again, the fighting had basically stopped, and that incredibly strong city barrier had vanished without a trace. After all, former Emperor Reider had been confirmed missing again, and the remaining garrison troops, now leaderless, naturally couldn't put up any resistance.