Li Wu didn't deny it. He accepted her teasing.
"It's not about capturing anyone. It's about saving them," he said. "My Main Quest is to prevent your inevitable deaths. In every Act, a certain 'malice' from the world manipulates fate, forcing you all toward an unavoidable demise. Everything I've been doing is fighting that 'malice' so you can survive."
"If a target dies while the plot is ongoing, I'm forced to return to the previous Save Point. If I die, I also loop back. But there are exceptions... The checkpoint updates once the Main Quest's objective is broadly secured, usually right before a critical choice."
Kiana interrupted him. "So, right before the Third Eruption broke out, you made a 'choice' that caused your Save Point to update, rendering you unable to stop it. Is that it?"
"Yes. If I hadn't left Nagazora... if I had just stayed by Raiden Mei's side... this tragedy wouldn't have happened."
Li Wu answered without a second of hesitation. He bit his lip hard, his fists clenched so tightly that they trembled. He lowered his head, fully bracing himself for her condemnation.
Time trickled by. Dust motes drifted lazily in the air, floating from one corner of the room to the other. It was agonizingly slow, as if the entire world had been put on half-speed, making every floating speck painfully clear.
He waited for a long time, but Kiana's furious scolding never came.
Confused, Li Wu slowly raised his head. Kiana's face was completely expressionless as she flipped several pages deep into the notebook.
"Li Wu."
"Yeah."
"I will help you."
"What? But... the Third Eruption happened because of me—"
Just as Li Wu slipped back into his habitual self-flagellation, his expression twisting with surging agony, Kiana stepped forward.
Under the soft, warm orange glow of the lights, her snow-white hair seemed to shimmer, looking like a blanket of starlight resting on winter snow.
She pressed a slender finger against his lips, making a shushing gesture.
The movement was incredibly gentle, like a snowflake landing softly on his mouth. A gesture like that shouldn't have been enough to stop someone drowning in self-loathing, but Li Wu instantly quieted down.
"You didn't bring about this tragedy. It was a fact destined to happen."
"If you hadn't intervened, the story would have only met an even worse ending. So stop forcefully shouldering sins that don't belong to you."
"In this world, no one is inherently obligated to save anyone. And absolutely no one should be forced to bear crushing responsibilities without ever enjoying any of the rights."
"I am truly sorry for slapping you back then..."
Kiana slowly lowered her finger. Li Wu's expression gradually smoothed out. Though a lingering shadow remained between his brows, the suffocating, asphyxiating aura of his self-condemnation had dissipated.
"It's fine. I know you did it for my own good. If I really had murdered those people, I probably wouldn't be able to live as an honest person anymore..."
"And that is exactly why I must apologize to you."
Kiana took a deep breath.
The next second, to Li Wu's absolute shock, she dropped all her usual aloofness and bowed deeply and formally toward him.
"Don't—don't do that! There's really no need for this, I didn't take it to heart, really!" Li Wu panicked.
"Whether you took it to heart is your business. What I do is mine," Kiana replied with absolute uncompromising resolve.
"I've read through most of the notebook. I understand the reasons behind your past actions now. Because of that, this apology is necessary. I can't speak for anyone else, but I, Kiana Kaslana, needed to apologize to you."
"And now, I am going to criticize you."
Kiana's face suddenly turned icy.
Li Wu gulped, bracing himself for her strict judgment.
"You constantly shoulder obligations that aren't yours, yet you refuse to claim any rights for yourself. You always pin the blame on yourself, completely convinced that every misfortune is your fault. To be completely honest, Li Wu, I hate this about you. I absolutely despise it. Why do you always insist on putting yourself in the most agonizing position? Whenever a problem arises, why is your first instinct to assume it's because of your own inadequacy?"
"That is not how a normal person thinks. 'Return by Death' makes you feel like you have to push yourself to the absolute limit, but there is no such thing as a duty you are born to fulfill. Are you doing this because you truly believe you should, or are you just being held hostage and dragged forward by your own power?"
"When I was very young, I heard a line on TV: *With great power comes great responsibility.* At the time, I thought it made perfect sense. If I had the power to save the world, then naturally, I was obligated to fulfill that duty."
"But soon, I realized how wrong that was. There are countless powerful people in this world. They have the ability, yet not only do they refuse to change the world, they actively isolate themselves, using their power to extort more benefits from others and the world itself—regardless of whether the world becomes better or worse."
"I don't like them. And I don't like the heroes on TV either."
"So, I hate the fact that you think having 'Return by Death' makes you the most 'special' person in the world who has to bear it all."
"And I'm willing to bet you're going to lose this time too. Because you don't even remember what you were originally like before all this."
Kiana's words were eloquent, almost literary. Even her scolding felt deeply philosophical. As if she had figured something out, she began speaking more and more.
Li Wu chose to remain silent.
He desperately tried to remember what he used to be like, but the harder he tried, the blurrier his original self became.
*Carefree?* Then why was he currently binding himself in a cocoon of his own making?
*Cynical and unbound?* Then why was his heart bleeding for the suffering of others?
The only thing he could say for sure was that he had fundamentally changed, driven forward by some desperate yearning that originally hadn't belonged to him.
Kiana continued:
"But this is also the trait I admire most about you. When faced with a problem, your subconscious reaction is to ask yourself what you did wrong, rather than blaming the heavens or other people."
"Especially in the very beginning, when you were facing enemies you had absolutely no chance of defeating... Li Wu, dying must have been incredibly agonizing. I'm sorry... I completely failed to understand what you were going through back then."
It wasn't a question. Kiana stated it as a definitive fact.
"You do not need to atone for anyone who died in the Great Eruption. It wasn't your fault. On the contrary, to delay this tragedy, you must have sacrificed so much in the shadows. No one saw it. No one knew. Everyone was just quietly living their own lives, while you were entirely alone, digesting all that suffocating negativity in the dead of night... You should be like everyone else. Even if you choose to save people, it should be because you *want* to, not because you feel you *have* to."
"According to your notebook, the Third Eruption should have happened long ago."
"Your arrival delayed this tragedy, giving the people of Nagazora over half a month of extra time to enjoy their lives. Absolutely no one has the right to criticize you for 'not doing enough'."
"Take Raiden Mei, for example. You could have easily abandoned her ages ago, leaving her to fend for herself, and efficiently cleared Act I. It was the night you wiped out the Blood Wolf Mercenary Group, wasn't it?" Kiana flipped back to the earlier pages of the notebook, locating the exact entry regarding the shifting of the Act I objectives:
**[Objective 1: Help Raiden Mei's human persona triumph over the Herrscher persona, and survive the Third Eruption.]**
**[Objective 2: Raiden Mei dies.]**
There was absolutely no question. Back then, as an ordinary human facing a squad of elite mercenaries who had crawled out of piles of corpses, it was theoretically impossible for Li Wu to protect Raiden Mei.
Yet Kiana had later confirmed the news: the Blood Wolf Mercenaries had been single-handedly annihilated by Li Wu.
In her dreams, she had also witnessed the countless, horrific ways Li Wu had died that night.
Li Wu had deliberately chosen the near-impossible Objective 1.
He had given all his gentle warmth to Raiden Mei, and kept all the agonizing suffering for himself.
Having said all this, Kiana closed the notebook. She looked at Li Wu, her expression gradually softening, becoming as quiet and serene as a silent breeze.
"So, what do you plan to do next?" she asked.
Li Wu answered immediately. "Return to the past. You read the details of Act IV. As long as I trigger 'Return by Death', I can go back five hundred years... I know it sounds absurd, but it's the truth. As long as I go back five hundred years, I can prevent the Third Eruption from the source."
"You mean, you plan to live from five hundred years ago all the way to the present?"
"No, the plot skips ahead. Once I clear Act IV, I'll immediately jump to Act II, which is roughly ten years ago."
Li Wu answered all of Kiana's questions honestly.
He had received the contingency plan from the System. If he wanted to alter an established tragedy, his only option was to go back to the past and rewrite it from the very source.
Kiana's reaction genuinely surprised him. She had accepted everything incredibly quickly, and was even drawing her own conclusions and guessing his intentions.
"And what about me?" Kiana rested her hand gently on the notebook, her gaze drifting.
Thinking he hadn't explained it clearly enough, Li Wu quickly elaborated. "When I go to the past, the timeline there runs parallel to the present. If the heroine of the story dies in reality, I'll still trigger a regression. That's why I need your help—to break the deadlock if I ever fall into an endless loop of death."
"I know that," Kiana interrupted. "I just want to ask one question—"
"Will I still be able to wait for you? I don't care how long it takes, but I need to know if I can actually wait until you return."
"You go to the past, and I stay in the present. Parallel timelines mean that if a 'plot jump' doesn't happen, we will forever be separated by an uncrossable expanse of time and space."
"I'm asking you, Li Wu. Just for this one question, you are not allowed to lie to me." Kiana pursed her lips. Under the orange light, her lips looked slightly pale, drained of color.
"Will you come back to the present?"
It was a question that had absolutely nothing to do with the grand plan to save the world.
Li Wu fell silent. He sank his consciousness inward, seeking the answer from the System.
Just as Kiana had pointed out, if there was no "plot jump," then even if he prevented all the tragedies, he would essentially just be creating an alternate, perfect timeline—just like in *Thus Spoke Apocalypse*.
He and the current world would forever be separated by an invisible, untouchable, insurmountable void of spacetime.
Going back to the past to change everything would be utterly meaningless to *this* specific world, because it wouldn't affect it in the slightest.
The dead would still be dead. The living would still remember those they lost, forever drowning in grief and regret.
Li Wu paused. He looked up at Kiana and asked tentatively, "And what if I can't? Will you... stop me?"
He wasn't sure if it was just an illusion, but Li Wu felt the lights in the room dim slightly. The stunningly beautiful face before him suddenly grew rigid.
Kiana remained silent for a very long time before slowly shaking her head.
"No."
"No matter what choice you make, I will follow my own heart and fulfill the unresolved oath between us."
The moment Kiana finished speaking, Li Wu received his answer from the System: Because Act V was deeply intertwined with the current timeline, after completing Act IV and Act II, he would be directly pulled back to the present.
All the alterations he made in the past would forcibly overwrite the current spacetime.
In short: *Worldline Convergence.*
However, there was one strict prerequisite for the convergence to succeed.
He could absolutely not cross paths with his "post-transmigration" self in that timeline.
For the current Li Wu, that was incredibly simple. As long as he willed it, his newly-transmigrated self wouldn't even be able to sense his existence.
"Don't worry, I will come back. I promise you: when the moon rises to the height of the treetops, I will return to this world and appear right before you. This is a secret that belongs only to the two of us," Li Wu said, placing his right fist over his heart.
"Are you treating me like the final boss of some RPG?"
The corners of Kiana's lips curved upward slightly, almost imperceptibly, before she quickly suppressed the smile and shot Li Wu a vicious glare.
When she started teasing, she didn't even spare herself, comparing herself to a final boss.
However, Li Wu's clumsy attempt at humor did significantly soften her expression.
Kiana swiftly turned around, clutching the notebook tightly to her chest. Her voice turned crisp and clear, like a crystal palace covered in frost—cold, yet undeniably majestic.
"I will remember that."
"When the moon rises to the height of the treetops... if you still haven't come, I will absolutely not wait a second longer."
She turned back around, a dark blue syringe gripped tightly in her hand.
Before Li Wu could even ask, Kiana plunged the needle into his vein and pressed down on the plunger, injecting the entire contents of the vial into his bloodstream.
Throughout the entire process, Li Wu could have easily resisted. But out of sheer trust in Kiana, he didn't move a muscle, simply watching her quietly.
Only after the injection was complete did he ask curiously, "What was that?"
"Poison."
"...Alright then. Honestly, that beats blowing my own brains out with a gun. But why do you just carry poison around with you?"
Assuming it was a highly lethal dose, Li Wu figured he didn't have much time left, so he hurried to ask.
Kiana didn't answer. Instead, she quickly walked behind the front counter, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out a handgun.
Unless he was shot point-blank in the brainstem, an S-rank physique was incredibly difficult to kill.
"Hold on, why do you have a gun stashed in a bookstore?!"
"Wait, did I do something to piss you off? You're poisoning me *and* executing me via firing squad?!"
*Hey, the aloof honor student persona is completely crumbling!* Li Wu couldn't help but marvel internally. *What kind of straight-A student casually pulls out lethal injections and firearms?!*
But gradually, Li Wu realized something was wrong.
His body didn't feel any pain whatsoever. Instead, he felt a sweeping numbness. He began to lose control of his limbs, and his consciousness grew hazy.
*Shouldn't poison be melting my internal organs and giving me an agonizing death right now?*
"I lied to you."
"It's an anesthetic. Even I didn't expect I'd actually need to use it here."
Kiana clicked off the gun's safety and pressed the muzzle directly against the forehead of the paralyzed Li Wu, who had slumped against the floor.
"Ordinary methods can't kill you easily, and the methods that *can* will only make you suffer. Even if you've grown used to the pain... I want you to actively avoid things that hurt you for the rest of your life."
In the dimly lit bookstore, his golden pupils grew dimmer and dimmer, while her azure eyes shone with unprecedented brilliance.
They locked eyes, perfectly reflecting each other in their gazes.
One dimming, one shining.
Li Wu had waited a very, very long time for someone who could genuinely empathize with his pain—and he found Kiana.
And Kiana had waited even longer for the person she had finally, miraculously reunited with.
"You have already fulfilled your promise. Now, it's my turn to honor the oath between us."
"Let's make a new promise," Kiana said, her face completely expressionless, her voice as cold and pure as snow. "The promise will be called—"
"'Endless Klingsor's Summer'."
"For many years to come, I will strictly abide by our promise. I will protect the heroines in the story, ensuring you never fall into an endless loop of death."
"And you—"
Kiana paused. Her voice chimed like a silver bell—soft, tranquil, and light.
"Wait until I become a true ally of justice. Wait until I can face injustice with genuine righteous fury; until I can face tragic destinies with calm acceptance; until I love life as fiercely as those around me. Wait until my footsteps are light enough to carry the heaviest of burdens."
"Then, on a summer day with warm sunlight and a gentle breeze, you will appear. You will return to my side, fulfill our promise of reunion, and we will spend the next summer together. And the one after that. And every summer for the rest of our lives."
Before Li Wu could even formulate a response, she pulled the trigger.
*BANG.*
The crisp gunshot shattered the silence. A blinding spark bloomed in the dead, silent bookstore—like a fleeting bubble, a phantom illusion, gone in an instant.
Her azure eyes, which had always been as indifferent as snow, rippled with emotion for the very first time as she witnessed Li Wu's violent death. It wasn't a large ripple, but deep in her heart, a torrential storm was raging.
Kiana tilted her head back and closed her eyes, letting the heavy silence swallow her and the notebook in her hands.
"Wait until I become a true ally of justice. Wait until I can face injustice with genuine righteous fury; until I can face tragic destinies with calm acceptance; until I love life as fiercely as those around me. Wait until my footsteps are light enough to carry the heaviest of burdens."
"Then, on a summer day with warm sunlight and a gentle breeze, you will appear. You will return to my side, fulfill our promise of reunion, and we will spend the next summer together. And the one after that. And every summer for the rest of our lives."
Kiana recited the promise word for word once more, without looking back at Li Wu's corpse.
The anesthetic was to ensure Li Wu could return to the past completely pain-free. And the burden of killing him couldn't be left to the children.
Even if she had told him about the anesthetic, Li Wu—who was so accustomed to taking all the pain himself—likely wouldn't have used it.
After all, once the anesthesia kicked in, he would lose the ability to pull the trigger himself, meaning he would still have to ask for her help.
Rather than burdening Li Wu with the guilt of "forcing a classmate to murder him," it was better to wrap her actions in a lie from the very start. Once he had no choice left, she unveiled the truth and gifted him a painless death.
"Thinking about it... it seems I did the exact same thing Raiden Mei did," Kiana muttered to herself. She shook her head, forcing the looping images of her dreams out of her mind.
She went to the storage room and brought the three children out.
The three kids were a family—or more accurately, peers from the same clan.
When Kiana had rushed to Nene Books, she had found them hiding inside a private car.
Brown hair, heterochromia—their features were highly distinct.
They weren't Kaslanas, they weren't Schariacs, and they definitely weren't native to the Far East.
Fixing displaced spacetime wasn't something that could be done overnight. For Li Wu to clear Act IV, it might take a very, very long time.
Kiana left the bookstore and searched the surrounding area for an intact, functional restaurant.
Even though the kitchen barely had any decent ingredients left, her exceptional culinary skills still managed to produce a delicious meal.
She packed the food and brought it back to the bookstore. While the children ate, she sat behind the counter, opened the notebook, and began reading the remaining entries.
She read incredibly fast, and soon reached the very last page.
The Final Act was completely blank. But prior to that, every future development had been meticulously recorded. The only thing to note was that at the bottom of every page, Li Wu had written a tiny disclaimer: *Plot and characters have been massively altered. Does not match recorded content. For reference only.*
"It doesn't match... but the events that occurred prior to this weren't drastically different from Act I in the notebook. At least... not in terms of the results."
"Is the world's unprovoked 'malice' really *just* malice?"
Kiana pondered this seemingly meaningless question.
Li Wu firmly believed it was, but Kiana didn't think it was that simple. If it were just one or two incidents, it would be understandable. But every single arrangement felt as if it were deliberately boxing Li Wu in, forcing him to walk down a specific, predetermined path.
She had once read a quote in a book: *'A person's character is their fate.'*
Under the premise of limited options, a person placed in a specific scenario will always make a specific choice.
With Li Wu's current strength, as long as he didn't want to die, it was almost impossible for anyone to kill him.
Or rather, very, very early on, Li Wu could have simply chosen to abandon Raiden Mei and live a life of extravagant luxury.
Yet every time he made a choice—even when it seemed like he had options—the outcome was surprisingly identical:
It forced him to embed himself deeper and deeper into the plot, rather than walking away.
"I hope I'm just overthinking this," Kiana whispered. She turned to look at the spot where Li Wu's body had vanished.
A familiar farewell, a familiar promise.
It felt like nothing had changed, yet simultaneously, like everything had changed.
"Pfft."
Kiana smiled, faint dimples showing on her cheeks.
"I think I finally understand why you said those things. Thank you for saving me back then. Only because of that am I alive today, able to help you escape your endless loop of death."
"We will meet again."
--- The Curtain Falls on Act I ---
--- End Of Volume II: The original story ---