Chapter 184 — Volume 4, APPENDIX: ADVENT

—Footsteps peal through the cold, dark chamber.

Not a speck of light beams into the space, making the path a charge through dark or shadow.

But the footsteps sound without hesitation, travelling through the rancid chamber with a casual gait. With such ease that they may as well be traversing their own room.

“—”

Water drips. Insects squirm.

Mud and gravel crunches underfoot. This place inspires nothing but discomfort, but the silhouette gives not the slightest murmur of discontent.

Hordes of insects open a path as they flee the silhouette, their stronghold disturbed. Water flows over their feet, the gentle downward slope their guide as they walk on.

Eventually, the silhouette stops, their long hair flowing behind them as they look up.

As before, there is no light.

But their eyes shine with a gleam called conviction.

Dim lights dance as wind whips around the silhouette's feet.

Their long, pink hair and long-sleeved robe flutter in the breeze. At their feet, at the point from which the wind blows, a circle draws itself in the ground.

“So the starter algorithm still works.”

With that murmur, the silhouette atop the glowing circle—the girl—levitates.

She ascends as if riding on an invisible floor, rushing for the roof of the dark. That instant, as if ghosting through the bedrock, the girl launches to the outside.

The sunlight burns her eyes. The girl closes her eyelids.

It takes exactly ten seconds for her to open her eyes again. Sun rays piece through her eyelids and into her eyeballs. Prompted by rebellion toward that, and some amount of impatience, she keeps her eyes open wide.

—What she sees is the sun rising anew.

“...It's far less emotional than I expected.”

Faced with the daylight, the girl tilts her head.

Indeed, not a single ripple of emotion arises in her apathetic eyes. After all her time spent with a false sun, she had hoped that seeing the real thing again would move her, but the results are unpromising.

“Either way, I've safely left the barrier. Meaning that the thing safely defeated the TRIAL, frustratingly. I'll give my thanks for that and no more.”

If that hadn't happened, it would have been inordinately difficult to leave SANCTUARY. She would catch herself in her own scheme. When she thinks of the girl who dealt with that mess, she feels something akin to displeasure sprout in her heart.

“Well, it's no issue. I can't be too reckless in this body, and I might as well traipse about for a while to fill in the blanks.”

The girl flexes her hands open and closed, checking her body's condition.

Duplicates of a progenitor body-vessel, and a subsumed soul of the same nature. She has fit her soul to it and anchored in, but familiarizing to it will take time.

“He already gave me a name, after all. I think I'll call myself Omega.”

She smiles as she treads on the grass, slipping through gaps in the trees to exit the forest.

The journey is somewhat troubling for a young girl's legs, but it's no matter. The fatigue and pain prove that her soul and body are connected. She must enjoy her long-lost life in abundance.

“Beatrice has left the Forbidden Archive, Roswaal has lost his gospel. Though considering the man who pocketed the burnt remains, and Garfiel's persistent rage, the fires are still smouldering yet. How will he face what's to come? Perhaps I'll watch over him, from the sun and in the shade.”

Purposefully excluding the girl that irks her, she begins to walk.

There is a world where she's going. What never grows dull for her, abundant, endlessly sating her curiosity, a mountain of treasures for the dead Thirst for Knowledge Incarnate.

“If I'm like this, perhaps I'll understand someday.”

Along her path, the girl sights a ring of flowers, and smiles.

She plucks a flower petal, sniffs its scent, pops it in her mouth.

Even beautiful flowers shall wilt. Why must the flowers wither?

Are even the beautiful memories shared between people destined to wane?

“—Ahh, why must love fade?”

Muttering, her long pink hair swaying, the girl steps forth.

Again the WITCH is unleashed on the world.