Apolo abruptly opened his eyes and observed the wooden planks on the ceiling of the room. To his surprise, his vision wasn't blurred by the green light as it had been in previous instances when he had seen the green flash. More importantly, he realized that these wooden planks were identical to the ones he could see on the ceiling of the mansion. And indeed, the thoughts racing through his head at this moment were not mere delusions, for the sensation of warm water enveloping his body reminded Apolo that he had finally awakened from the endless dream he had been experiencing.

Right now, the young nobleman lay naked in a bathtub that was still filling up, like all the other bathtubs in the bathroom. It seemed Apolo had spent a considerable amount of time inside this dream, as all the bathtubs were overflowing with water. While the bathroom floor was flooded, and the water constantly seeped through the gaps between the wooden planks on the floor, the room was still filled with steam produced by the hot water flowing from the taps in the bathtubs. However, one could still vaguely make out the location of the other bathtubs and the door of the room.

Struggling against the dizziness, Apolo scanned the entire bathroom until he finally spotted the wooden door. Upon seeing the way to salvation, the young man remembered that he needed to get out of this bathtub to heal if he wanted to make it out of this ordeal alive. Unfortunately, as he tried to get out of the bathtub, Apolo realized that his body wasn't responding normally: he lacked the strength to get up!

While Apolo's body didn't show any abrupt changes due to the blue plague infecting him, the silent and swiftly spreading disease had now spread throughout his limbs, and the young nobleman could only move at the speed of a paralyzed tortoise. He tried to get out of the bathtub by pushing himself up on its edge, but no matter how much effort he exerted, his body didn't seem to respond, and his muscles only tensed up without lifting him. His entire body felt rusted, and the few signals his brain sent to his limbs were incomplete, putting the young man in a life-or-death battle.

Realizing that there was no way he could reach the trees in the mansion's courtyard in this condition, Apolo proceeded to implement Plan B:

—Zoe, come find me, Zoe!—Apolo shouted, but his voice came out weaker than a whisper due to his weakened state. Nevertheless, the green gururi should be able to hear him regardless of the distance, as everything was happening by magic.

Seconds passed, and Apolo desperately noticed that Zoe had not appeared anywhere, and he was surrounded only by the thick fog produced by the steam.

—Zoe, by my ancestors: can't you see that your master is dying?!...—Apolo exclaimed with all his might, but his words did little more than cause great discomfort in his throat, leading to an energetic fit of coughing.

*Cough*...*Cough*... After involuntarily coughing for a few seconds, the young nobleman stared with wide eyes as his hand was stained with his own blood. However, the butler of this mansion was nowhere to be found to rescue him.

—Damn it...*cough*... *cough*...—Apolo cursed, looking around desperately between coughs, realizing the enormous problem he was facing. Zoe wasn't coming to rescue him, and unfortunately, the young nobleman understood the reason for this—The idiot gururi can't recognize me while I'm naked. How the hell can she be so stupid?, How could she be so foolish when we've been... *cough*... *cough*... together for months... *cough*... *cough*... Your stupidity is going to kill me, you useless fetus!

But Apolo knew that his curses were in vain: Zoe wouldn't recognize him as her master unless he grabbed his toga and put it on. However, the major problem was that the young nobleman had left his clothes lying in the middle of the room before getting into the bathtub. Without the strength to get out of the bathtub, it was impossible for him to reach the toga and change to seek help. Nevertheless, he had to try: Apolo had no other option!

The young man placed his hands back on the bathtub and tried to lift his body, but his arm muscles continued to betray him and did not respond as he requested. Frustrated, he gripped the bathtub's edges tightly until they broke. Realizing that achieving things normally was impossible for him, Apolo desperately tried to keep holding onto the edges of the bathtub to break them as he had done before. Fortunately, this time he succeeded, and within a few minutes, he had broken the bathtub's edge enough for his body to fall to the bathroom floor.

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The boy attempted to crawl using his hands, but it didn't work as he had hoped, and his instructions only caused his fingers to roughen as they scraped across the wooden floorboards. Even though everything indicated that his ancestors had abandoned him and destiny was playing a cruel trick on him at the worst possible moment, Apolo managed to use his chin to drag himself across the floor. Apparently, by sheer luck, the muscles in his head were still responding normally for the time being.

Crawling like a worm, relying on his chin for support, the dying young man reached the black toga placed in the middle of the bathroom floor. Upon arrival, the noble youth tried to insert his hands inside the toga, but the task proved impossible, and instead of bringing him the longed-for salvation, it only brought him misfortune. In the process of trying to put on the garment, the dying man ended up tearing the toga in half.

*Cough*...*Cough*...*Cough*... As he saw his salvation being torn in half by his own useless arms, the young noble cried out in desperation until his eyes turned red from frustration, while coughing uncontrollably, staining the wet bathroom floor with blood.

There was nothing that could be done anymore, and in the mind of the dying man, there was no Plan C. Apolo was condemned to die miserably on the bathroom floor, just a few meters away from his salvation. But despite the imminent tragic fate, there was no sadness reflected in Apolo's eyes. Instead, there was deep frustration caused by the knowledge that the wizard who had been playing with his life since he was a child would finally get her way and end his life.

The only joy in the young noble's heart at this cruel moment was knowing that at least Helena would also be dragged into death with him. She would never wake up again and could never take control of his body. In the end, she, the one responsible for everything, had ended up being just as much a loser as the young man rolling in tears on the floor at this moment.

Fortunately, fate was cruel to those who had been cruel. Apolo did not enjoy a quick death and had enough time to get tired of crying and coughing on the floor. Enough time to accept the inevitable and stare at the bathroom ceiling with a blank mind, watching his life pass before his eyes. But unfortunately, the life that the dying man was looking at only made more tears flow from his reddened eyes, for it had truly been a bad life: a terrible life!.

His entire life revolved around an obsession that, to make matters worse, ended in the worst possible outcome. The initial great happiness of knowing that he had never killed Helena turned into the frustration of realizing how he had never been able to kill Helena, and the great sadness of feeling like the lie he had wasted years denying in vain had turned into a reality that turned out to be unfortunately false. Apolito had lived his entire life in pursuit of uncovering a truth that had never existed. And at the end of it all, that all-powerful time, that cruel god he had praised endlessly, had only bestowed upon him the torment of dwelling on this matter to the point of exhaustion.

Every second Apolo stared at the bathroom ceiling right now felt like an eternity. The resigned young man only wanted the merciless god to stop torturing him and finally give him the rest he deserved. Apolo no longer wanted more twists and turns, no more strange dreams, and above all, he didn't want to get his hopes up about the possibility of changing his life only to see everything go to hell because of the whims of fate.

It was the misfortune of the unfortunate or perhaps the deserving and sad end of a young man with a bad heart. It was a few minutes or perhaps hours, but the truth was that Apolo's luck had run out, and unfortunately, he managed to wake up from that bizarre dream when it was already too late to change the tragic event that was about to happen to him. Sadly, time had capriciously left him without time when he needed it most and paradoxically gave him all the time in the world when it was useless.

These were the last musings of the dying Apolo, until life arrived and, with a sudden splash of cold water, shattered his mind once again:

*Clink*... A simple sound, faint yet louder than a thousand explosions, had just reached Apolo's ears, causing the dying man to stare wildly in a particular direction of the bathroom with wide-open eyes. As his delirious brain finished processing, a single word merrily marched from his forehead to his nape, making his entire head vibrate. The word in question was none other than: Miracle! And indeed, a miracle had occurred, for the bathroom door had swung open.