The world around them kept changing, yet this hall piled high with books and the elven girl on the throne were like a corner forgotten by time, quietly existing as witnesses to the shifts of history and the changes of eras, while remaining exactly the same as when first seen.
The visiting Frieren… was also no different from before.
"Frieren, huh. I thought it was Ash," Serie, still sitting on the throne in a half-crouched posture, looked down at the familiar girl below and spoke with a hint of mockery.
"If I'm not mistaken, you should really hate me. So why did you come here alone? To be honest, I thought we'd never see each other again."
"Ash is probably already dead. Even if he's alive, he's probably passed away peacefully like Master."
"Dead, huh? I see," Hearing the news of two disciples' deaths at once made Serie pause for a moment, then she smiled.
"It's been half a century since you last came here, and there's been no news of him since then, right? Is that so? Dead?"
"Aren't you sad?", Frieren asked expressionlessly from below the steps.
"He was just a disciple I taught on a whim," Serie casually waved her hand, causing the letter Frieren was holding to float up into the air, and without even lifting her head, she asked in return, "What about you? They were the people closest to you, weren't they? Both of them are dead. Aren't you sad?"
"Sad? I… don't know," With a somewhat hollow reflection, Frieren lowered her head and murmured softly.
"Thinking about it now, whether it was Master or Ash, there's still so much I didn't understand about them. It's just… just… if I had agreed to go out with him that day, maybe… he wouldn't have suddenly disappeared."
"What's this, are you crying?"
"I don't know… it just feels a bit empty inside…. These fifty years, I've always… always… always been thinking about this…."
When she buried Flamme, she hadn't cried at all. She simply didn't understand why the people around her were crying. But now, Serie's words stirred up some indescribable feeling in her heart, and her eyes began to burn.
Yet just as tears were about to flow down her cheeks for the first time in her life, Serie, resting her chin on one hand while reading the letter on the throne, suddenly said, "Normally speaking, Ash should already be dead, but my intuition tells me he's still alive."
"Still… alive?"
"You know it, right? My intuition."
"Then you know where he is?"
"No idea. Intuition isn't divination."
"Don't you know all magic? Why don't you know divination?"
"I told you before. Those convenient spells are all monopolized by that goddess. Even if I knew them, they wouldn't work," Mentioning this made Serie visibly displeased.
Frieren, however, looked completely confused.
"That can be monopolized too?"
"Just think of it as a huge barrier enveloping the entire planet. That'll make it easier to understand."
"Just think of it as? What exactly is it?"
"How would I know? If I knew that, I'd be a god."
At some point, she had come to be called the mage closest to god.
And yet, when it came to the true realm of gods, she had remained stuck in place for thousands of years.
It was precisely because her power had stagnated that she spent enormous amounts of time studying all kinds of magic and techniques.
Among them were skills she herself considered extremely impractical, like hiding one's presence, as well as extremely convenient but non-combat spells, such as those that merely cleaned clothes or, at most, made them smell like flowers… strange legendary-level magic.
Whether Serie's words were true or not, there was no proof. But for Frieren, just this answer based on intuition was already enough.
Because Serie's intuition was almost no different from magic itself. It was highly reliable. Just knowing that Ash hadn't died eased much of the regret and remorse in her heart.
The heavy stone pressing on her chest finally fell away, allowing her, when she left the ruins, to at last sleep in without worry for the first time in half a century.
Still, she didn't know whether Ash had died of old age or something else.
After that, no matter how the years flowed by, whether a hundred years, two hundred, or even three hundred passed, she never again encountered that familiar figure.
'Perhaps, after Master, he too quietly returned to that distant and unknown homeland, and amid the laughter of his descendants, peacefully completed his life's journey.'
'That must be it.'
Holding onto that faint hope, along with an inescapable, gentle sadness and longing, Frieren could not help but pray so.
———
On the snowy plains where he had arrived.
Ash didn't know if his memory was off, but after returning to this time, he felt that the snowfield's appearance seemed to have changed quite a bit compared to before.
'Is it because the war is still ongoing?'
He couldn't be sure.
But when he was sent back, he already had a rough understanding of the situation, so he wasn't overly panicked. If anything, he felt somewhat reassured.
According to what Serie had said, he believed that before leaving, the goddess had set up something to prevent others from traveling through time. Such as enveloping the entire planet in an enormous barrier to stop people from altering history at will.
The system created by the Demon King in the mythological era had simulated a divine miracle, allowing him to temporarily break through that restriction. But now, he had been sent back anyway.
Still, the changes around him made him suspect that the time he had been sent back to might not be quite right.
[System detects increased strength of temporal lockdown. Further attempts to return to the past may trigger alerts and cause unpredictable risks. Please avoid risks.]
The rare system notification in front of him made him realize, before he even fully grasped the situation, that this cheating method had been patched and could no longer be used.
This left him feeling somewhat regretful, and also aware of another issue.
"So that means, Flamme is already dead now?"
Standing silently atop the vast snowfield, facing the familiar yet distant snowy scenery, thinking that he hadn't even had the chance to thank her, nor properly talk with her about anything beyond magic, a hard-to-describe sadness welled up in his heart.
"Life really is full of variables. Truly, most things don't go as one wishes. Though I'm not even human anymore," He murmured softly, the last words tinged with self-mockery.
And with a faint bitterness, like snowflakes swaying gently in the cold wind, his figure too melted into the boundless whiteness, disappearing from the snowfield.
———
In the town beneath the snowfield, a place Ash used to visit from time to time, one he had personally built, everything had now completely changed.
Nothing from the past could be found anymore. Even the familiar streets seemed to have undergone several renovations.
This made him fully realize that a very, very long time had probably passed since his departure.
Fortunately, he still managed to find a biography of Flamme in a bookstore.
That book, extremely common in this era, clearly recorded Flamme's story, and even briefly mentioned that by her side there had been an elven disciple and a human junior disciple.
"So history really did change. But… seeing it now only adds meaningless sorrow."
In the illustrations, Flamme still appeared as she had in her youth. He glanced at it a couple more times, then sighed softly and casually put the book back.
Of course, there were no images of Frieren or himself inside. Because they hadn't participated in humanity's transformation at all.
From the latest edition of the book, he roughly understood that nearly a thousand years had passed since that time.
Such an immense span of time left him with little sense of reality, and even made him worry that Aura might already be dead.
Although demons and elves alike basically had no lifespan limit, demons had a Demon King who pushed wars forward.
Many demons didn't obey the Demon King, but hiding away was one thing. Those who couldn't hide and refused orders would be killed.
Even if they fled into forests, they might still be discovered by humans and wiped out.
As a result, demons who could live for several hundred years were extremely rare. And before Aura's magic fully matured, its effectiveness was limited, it was hard not to worry.
Even if she was a scheming little sister, she was still someone he had grown up gnawing on raw meat with. He couldn't help but worry.
"For now, all I can do is pray she managed to survive," Walking around the city and learning about the current state of magic, his feelings grew complicated.
Not to mention the magic of the mythological era under Serie, even compared to Flamme's magic from a thousand years ago, the magic of this era was still extremely backward. Techniques from a millennium ago had even become lost arts.
He had obtained the complete magic system he had always dreamed of, far more advanced than this era's. But the price was that even the only "family" by his side had disappeared.
Not just that. His first human friend, his adjutant Cassie, was even more uncertain. It was unknown whether her descendants even still existed.
Even Frieren and Serie, after so many years, might have been killed. After all, they were mages. A single moment of carelessness could mean death.
Hundreds of years could bring far too many variables.
———
On one of the few ancient streets that still looked familiar, the uneven stone pavement had been worn smooth by time. Low wooden houses lined both sides, and a few dim oil lamps swayed in the wind, casting mottled light.
The street wasn't as bustling as a modern city, but people still came and went. Vendors hawked their goods, knights rode past on tall horses, and pedestrians chatted or hurried along, each busy in their own way.
Yet amid this lively scene, Ash felt utterly out of place.
Alone, he walked along the ancient stone road, like a traveler from another world.
The surrounding noise and bustle felt more like distant, blurred background sounds to him.
A cool wind swept through the narrow street, lifting fallen leaves and dust, as if carrying away a bit of the warmth from his heart.
His gaze drifted among the passersby, yet he found no one he could speak to.
Those faces, whether busy or relaxed, were immersed in their own worlds, with no attention to spare for this lonely traveler.
Until, a young man with long bangs and a beard, looking oddly old-fashioned, suddenly blocked his path.
On the bustling street, the young man, with two longswords hanging at his waist, stared at him intently. After a long moment, he smiled as if recalling something.
"I almost forgot. This is actually our first real meeting, isn't it? Let me introduce myself. I'm Frank, the man who's about to become the strongest human. To be honest, I've been waiting for you a long time, Mr. Ash. Or rather, future Demon King."
Just from walking toward him, Ash could feel an intense sense of threat from the young man, Frank.
Even Frieren didn't compare. Serie was in a league of her own, so setting her aside, the only one who might have been able to fight him was Flamme when she was nearly fifty, back when Ash had left.
'So young, yet so powerful?'
He had just thought that when the man spoke those strange words with a smile, even directly revealing his identity.
'Is this… an attempt to slay demons and uphold justice? Here? In the middle of the street?'
Even knowing he likely wasn't a match, Ash didn't despair.
Because he wasn't purely a mage, and his magic was extremely effective in both group battles and one-on-one fights. If a fight really broke out, the other side would need to be prepared to sacrifice the entire street and drag everyone nearby into hell.
After all, even though he hadn't studied for that long even if he returned to the past, for a demon his growth was already astonishing.
Another important point was that normally, magical power accumulation relied on the passage of years. That was true for demons and elves, but humans were different.
Take the human in front of him. He was clearly a rare genius even among humans. If Aura were still alive and had trained for over four hundred years up to now, she probably still wouldn't be able to control Frank, who looked no older than thirty, with that special magic.
And Ash himself was the same.
The reason his appearance hadn't changed and no flaws had been found wasn't just because of Serie's cover. Another crucial reason was his rate of improvement.
In terms of magical power accumulation, he wasn't like demons or elves at all. He was more like a human, and a fairly talented one at that.
But clearly, his accumulation still wasn't enough.
At least when facing this young man who was even more gifted than Flamme, without resorting to dirty tricks, escaping the scene would be difficult. And even with them, success wasn't guaranteed.
If possible, he absolutely didn't like meaningless slaughter. Whether human or demon, he didn't want to kill without purpose.
And the other party didn't look insane enough to disregard the residents of the street either. In fact, for some reason, he felt no hostility at all.
Still, after the other side had openly stated his demon identity, how could he not raise his guard?
Under Ash's robe, his hand instinctively gathered magical power.
Compared to the storm raging in his heart, Frank appeared calm. Seeming to notice Ash's wariness, he smiled wryly and raised both hands to show he meant no harm.
"No matter how many times it is, you're always this cautious. But please believe me, I'm not your enemy."
"You're really bold, spouting nonsense like this right in the middle of the street."
"If I truly had hostile intent, I would've chosen a secluded place, or simply left this town," Frank countered, then gave up trying to persuade him that way and changed the subject.
"As I recall, this town was built by you over four hundred years ago, right? And you've just returned from the past nearly a thousand years ago."
"How do you know that? Mind reading? No… I wasn't thinking about that just now. So, how exactly do you know these things?"
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