Konrad floated suspended in time; it happened way too often these days.
He felt weightless, detached, as if watching the future of someone's past.
"Don't think too hard, sweetie," Lily materialised by his side. "You're in Ronald's memories."
"Whose?!" Konrad snapped, earning a groan.
"Can't believe you actually don't know his name," Gabrielle complained.
By the time she appeared in her fluffy dress, a much more menacing presence had taken shape, too. And only when he addressed the owner of this memory did Konrad realise—
"Ronald von Kasserlane," a voice boomed. "Do you remember me?"
The whole scene was both foreign and familiar.
A grey-ish void stretching into infinity, with a man suspended in it.
He recognised the king—having talked to him seconds ago—but the other was too blurry.
"You're the Green Mage," the ruler of Kasserlane said, his hand reaching for his sword.
"Okay, I had no idea his name was Ronald," Konrad admitted, straining his eyes. "Why's everything so blurry, though? Is that the actual Green Mage?"
"Curb your expectations," Gabrielle said, eyes squeezed shut.
Lily only chuckled.
"She's reconstructing a feverish memory we caught one glimpse of. Don't expect IMAX quality."
"And I'll fast-forward the boring parts," the angel announced. "It'll be easier to focus on the rest."
"Wait, but this seems pretty important, too," Konrad protested too late.
Right when the Green Mage leaned closer to the king and—his guess was—taunted him, the world sped up. It also lost its sound, and Konrad could do nothing about it.
"The world's politics are irrelevant," Gabrielle explained.
"It's a classic 'Everyone thought I was crazy. Now I'll show you' monologue,' the demoness yawned, too. "You're not meow-sing anything."
Konrad still complained.
"I'm pretty sure it'd be useful to know what motivates the final boss."
"Greed for power and control," Lily laughed—which sounded a lot like him. "No, not quite the same, but believe me, it's boring stuff. What comes after is the interesting part."
Before he'd ask, the scenery changed.
The void had given space to visions of futures, many overlapping, seen through the king's eyes.
A confusing mess, until Gabby slowed down the 'replay' again, focusing more on the details.
"This first one has already happened," she muttered.
And Konrad's jaw almost hit the floor.
"That's the Halaima Pass," he said. "When I took out all the telepaths at once."
"You did?" Lily chuckled as the scene unfolded.
Maple was about to dive at the last company, but changed her course in the final moment.
Konrad must've stopped her—and mere seconds later, a portal opened.
"On this timeline, you hesitated, and the telepaths warned Meow Midori," Lily explained.
The rest went as he'd expect.
The Demon Lord appeared cloaked in darkness, collapsing half the mountain on Konrad.
Knowing how exhausted he was back then, it already surprised him that he survived that.
But he did, fighting a desperate duel until he ran out of mana.
Maple rushed in to help, but it was too little, too late. The sorcerer sealed them both away.
"See, you made the right choice," Lily said, patting his head. "Not even I could stop that surprise attack. The rest's boring. He ran over the garrison and conquered the kingdom. Next."
Gabrielle's eyelids twitched—she still kept her eyes closed in concentration.
"Don't tell me what to do," she moaned, but fast-forwarded the vision until the future anyway.
Actually, she had them speedrun most of them.
In some, Konrad made terrible strategic blunders, his forces annihilated by the nomads.
In others, Maou Midori had to intervene and defeat him in pitched magic duels.
He had no idea he was even capable of fighting that well, but he still lost many times; the outcome was more or less the same. But then, in some cases, he actually won.
He either scattered the nomads, and the Green Mage had to retreat, or fought him to a draw.
Even if this only happened half the time, this gave him a huge confidence boost.
People celebrated him as the White Mage, the saviour of the kingdom, until—
Whether in a year or a decade, Maou Midori always returned.
He'd gather a new army or come alone, but stronger.
And in the oddest future, Konrad defeated him, and—
The world immediately ended.
No war, no epic magic duels, no cataclysmic events.
The planet itself ceased to exist from one moment to the next.
Before Konrad could ask what happened, the greyness and the Green Mage returned.
"Hats off to your champion, Your Grace," he taunted Ronald. "He had the strength to defeat me about half the time. There was much I could learn from him. In fact, I already did."
The next vision wasn't of the future, but of a world all too familiar to Konrad.
They could have been images of his past life, in the bustling, modern cities of Earth.
But they weren't. They were from a present—or a future—after his death.
"If anything, I became much stronger after he defeated me," the mage hollered.
He showed death and destruction, wars and suffering he had caused in the other world.
And not in one world alone. In dozens. Hundreds.
The very thing the angels warned him about.
"He succeeded?" Konrad muttered in disbelief. "He found a way to my world even after I won?"
"More like because you won," Lily chirped. "Guy's a sore loser."
"And he already knows of these futures," Gabrielle added. "He's prepared for every possible outcome. There's nothing we can do about it now. This is why I hate time travellers."
"Hey," the demoness protested, but as the scenery changed one last time, she didn't continue.
"Your only choice to save your people," Maou Midori scoffed. "Is to surrender."
Konrad saw the same events that happened mere moments ago in his camp.
The king arrived, calling him for a private conversation.
The scene was razor-sharp, playing out exactly as it did in real life.
Its aftermath was much vaguer. The nomadic hordes arrived, and Kasserlane laid down its arms. The king became a puppet of Maou Midori. Tens of thousands became slaves.
But they survived.
The neighbouring kingdoms fell like dominoes, conquered one after the other.
But the world didn't end.
Maou never fought him and couldn't leave this plane of existence.
Terrifying as it was, this was the exact outcome the angels wanted, and he knew it.
"Let me guess," Konrad gritted out. "One world's suffering is acceptable if that means he won't be a threat to the heavens anymore."
Gabrielle opened her eyes, and the vision fell apart.
He found himself back in his tent, his two wives on either side.
"I thought you'd be our best option to stop him," the angel noted, avoiding his gaze. "Turns out, you're the worst. And yes, I'd rather sacrifice this world to save a thousand others."
That's what he expected.
"Well, too bad I got reincarnated here, and thanks to your brother, this is the only place where I can live," Konrad said. "I won't let this moron plunge this world into darkness."
Whether he liked it or not, this was his fight now.
But when the angel finally looked him in the eyes, her gaze was cold, unflinching.
"Yeah, sorry. I can't have that."
And before he could blink, he found himself in yet another void—alone in the dark this time.
And he was falling.