Chapter 116

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Episode 26 - Epilogue of Fallen Maiden[2]

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The scenes before us changed one after another.

Luminus’s life sometimes shifted from her adolescence back to her childhood.

Her younger self beside her mother, her father, or the maids of the great mansion where she lived.

Her friends, her best friends, every person appeared as the scenes continued changing one after another.

For both of us, time seemed to pass slowly, but in reality, only about twenty minutes had passed since we entered the Epilogue.

Then, as the teenage Luminus appeared once again and slowly grew older, a scene completely different from all the ones we had witnessed appeared before us.

The mansion where Luminus had lived had been reduced to ruins at some point.

There were bodies everywhere, and shortly afterward, knights carrying the Kingdom’s banner arrived.

The knights searched every corner and eventually found someone in the basement.

A teenage Luminus, extremely emaciated and covered in wounds, with an empty and exhausted expression, as well as swollen eyes.

She looked as though she had gone through unimaginable torment.

The knights tried to speak to her, but Luminus simply remained silent.

And at some point, she began to cry while screaming the names of every person who had lived in the mansion.

The scene accelerated through time, showing Luminus crying for entire days and nights, locked inside a room within the Kingdom army’s facilities.

I watched the negative emotions overflowing endlessly as the days passed.

Her expression had hardened, and she had stopped crying.

At some point, her face became colder as she wrote the same word over and over again in a diary.

"Revenge."

Charlotte murmured while watching the scene, pressing her lips together.

Meanwhile, I remained silent without showing much expression on my face.

Yes, I had grown close to and attached to Luminus.

But Charlotte had been far closer to her than I ever was.

I felt slightly uneasy, although I had managed to control my emotions after what happened with Isabella.

Then, the scene changed once more.

Showing Luminus with a cold and icy expression as she trained day and night without stopping until she collapsed alongside the other Kingdom knights.

Months passed, and Luminus became stronger, beginning her first missions within the army.

She faced dozens of villains, dismantled and massacred religious cults, small clans, and gatherings of criminals.

She reeked of blood, and every day her expression grew colder.

From what I could tell, she was around sixteen years old, four years before the Prologue.

So I assumed that her current self had softened somewhat during those four years.

And so, the scenes changed; months passed, and then years.

Luminus left the army after several arguments with the higher-ups.

They kept forcing her to accept increasingly dangerous missions that were not even related to villains.

She had realized that they were only using her for selfish purposes, taking advantage of her determination for revenge.

Of course, the Kingdom did not let her leave peacefully.

They sent assassins after her and accused her of being a traitor and a blasphemer.

Luminus did not care and killed every person they sent to assassinate her.

Soon, her injuries accumulated day after day, and eventually she arrived at a Teleportation Matrix.

She had collapsed there, used mana, and was then teleported away.

The following scenes took place on the Floating Continent.

Luminus recovering while exploring her new surroundings.

She explored for months until she found several cities inhabited by humans.

She continued massacring every villain she encountered until she finally arrived at the Tree of Dreams and Wishes, located at the center of the Continent.

Apparently, she seemed to have found certain information.

The scenes changed and showed Luminus completing missions and overcoming trials until the Tree of Dreams and Wishes granted her the Essence of the Divine, allowing her to advance to the Five Stars.

Then the scenes accelerated, and soon Luminus arrived at a village I could easily recognize.

The village’s development was more or less the same, probably because all of that development had originally occurred in Luminus’s life.

Not as a result of our intervention.

In any case, the scenes continued.

The years passed, and Luminus’s expression kept changing more and more.

She rescued families whenever they were endangered because of villains or any other threat.

She discovered secret bases of the Church of the Black Dawn and destroyed them, killing everyone present while saving the captives.

She continued doing the same, and her strength increased rapidly.

Shortly afterward, she left the Floating Continent and returned to the Sacred Continent.

She went directly to the Kingdom and attacked it without hesitation, clearly seeking revenge for the way they had treated her and for how they had tried to use her for selfish purposes.

An entire Kingdom disappeared overnight.

Luminus was, obviously, hunted across the entire Continent.

She continued fulfilling her purpose, saving every family she could and rescuing children.

Within a few months, all the people of the Sacred Continent worshipped her as a heroine.

Just like on the Floating Continent.

The Empire withdrew the warrant for Luminus’s capture, as if they had been forced to do so by public pressure.

In any case, Luminus left the Continent a few months later, and I more or less knew where she was headed.

The scenes accelerated, and soon she arrived at the Mountains of the End.

Initially, she spent about two months searching for the main headquarters of the Church of the Black Dawn.

There was a long storm, and when it stopped, she went to massacre the headquarters.

It was not very different from Chapter One, except this time she was completely alone.

Then the scenes continued changing once again.

She continued eradicating every base of the Church of the Black Dawn that she found.

Until, at some point, she arrived at a laboratory, killed everyone present, and found a girl locked inside some kind of tube or capsule.

That was the moment when Luminus found Isabella for the first time.

***

Barely forty minutes had passed since we entered the Epilogue.

We had approximately one hour left before we had to leave the Memory Gate.

Even so, neither of us spoke. We simply let the scenes continue narrating Luminus’s life.

After finding Isabella, a year passed quickly.

Then they arrived at the Village of Happiness Valley, and Luminus built a cabin using some kind of Magical Item.

Now I understood why the interior space was larger than the exterior.

In any case, the months passed, and then two years quickly went by.

Throughout all that time, Luminus never stopped, and she finally found the main headquarters of the Church of the Black Dawn, where its leader was located.

She did not attack immediately.

Instead, she killed every villain she found nearby or anyone who came out of the headquarters.

Then the following months flew by quickly, and the day of the festival arrived.

Everything else happened almost the same way.

The only difference was that, here, both Isabella and the entire town were erased.

Luminus killed the leader of the Church of the Black Dawn and destroyed its main headquarters in a fit of fury and despair.

What followed was different from what I had witnessed.

My emotions became intense again, but this time I suppressed them using my Trait.

The wound in Luminus’s chest never disappeared.

Her expression gradually became empty, bitter, and disappointed in herself.

She accomplished everything she wanted, but she also lost everything she had.

During the fifteen years she spent seeking revenge, she made friends, they died, she made new friends, and they died as well.

At some point, she ended up distancing herself and withdrawing from everyone.

After completing her revenge, the years continued to pass.

Because of the wound in her chest, Luminus could not even sleep. She felt intense pain, and from time to time, blood would flow from her nose and mouth.

However, she never stopped training. She seemed to have made the decision to continue until the very end.

She continued saving families because that purpose would last for her entire life.

That was why she never stopped training, so that no boy or girl would ever have to go through something like what she had experienced.

Slowly, her fame became more and more evident. Every villain felt fear whenever they heard her name.

But at the same time, some nations and empires felt threatened and sent Awakened to kill her.

But, of course, a 10-Star could only die at the hands of someone of the same level.

However, even when a 10-Star Awakened came to kill her, that person ended up dying miserably.

Luminus continued doing the only thing she had left to do.

Then, at some point, she reached 11 Stars, and every person in the world felt her presence.

Then the years continued to pass, and we appeared in the final scene.

’This is...’

I recognized the tree where Luminus was resting her back.

Beside her was a gravestone with a name on it, and not far from it, there were more gravestones.

The names of her family, Kyle’s name, the names of her closest friends, and the names of every person she had ever known.

Including the name of her disciple.

The current Luminus looked a little over forty years old.

Probably more than twenty-five years had passed since the last time she had looked at her family’s faces.

Luminus was barely breathing. Her eyes were half-closed as she maintained an ironic smile, as though she were remembering every person now buried around her.

In the scene, the days passed quickly, and she did not move. She simply continued staring at the black sky.

Until, eventually, she made a gesture with her hand, and the portal in the sky shattered, splitting in half with no end in sight.

The light of the sunset struck her face.

The twilight sky was what she was watching.

"Even if they are not here right now, at least I will see the sky one last time, whether they are alive or dead."

"In the end, I will go with all of you."

"I fulfilled everything I had to fulfill."

"I did the best I could."

"I think... they are waiting for me, right?"

Her eyes slowly closed as she looked at the twilight sky one last time.

She had stopped breathing. Her eyes closed completely as she rested her head against Kyle’s gravestone.

This was the story of the Fallen Maiden.

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End of the Fallen Maiden Arc.