A Transmigrator’s Privilege-Chapter 215

“......”

Tesilid didn’t answer.

He had intended not to show any reaction that could serve as a clue, but he failed.

That was the kind of response that didn’t suit the Tesilid of Cycle 17.

Lead, who remembered Cycle 17 better than Tesilid did, made a firm judgment.

“Ha, you were still pretending in front of Ayleth Rodeline up until now.”

“......”

Her name was mentioned. Even Tesilid couldn’t help but show some unease, as though his weakness had been exposed.

Lead’s red eyes, which captured every detail, took on a cold, otherworldly light.

“Interesting. Which cycle is it?”

After a brief pause, Tesilid’s lips, which had been tightly sealed, moved.

“You’d be surprised if I told you.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“......”

The last time they had faced each other was in Anaxia's dungeon.

At that time, Lead had shown a self-loathing mercy to save the foolishness of Tesilid in Cycle 17.

In the end, they were fundamentally the same person.

Tesilid from Cycle 117 wasn’t any different from the Tesilid of Cycle 100. He, too, had mercy for the past.

“Tell me. Which cycle is it?”

“......”

After a brief moment of contemplation, Tesilid decided. He would reveal the secret.

For a moment, his sea-colored eyes, which had been lowered to the floor, locked onto Lead.

Facing the past directly, he spoke.

“You will fail again. At the end of this timeline, all that waits for you is destruction.”

“......”

An icy silence hung in the air.

The atmosphere grew heavier, as if the very air was being pressed down. A subtle anger seemed to suffocate the space.

“...Destruction, you say?”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar word. For Lead, it was the second time hearing such a prophecy.

The word stirred a turbulent, chaotic thought in his mind, but outwardly, he remained as calm as a lake at night.

After a long pause, Lead broke the silence and asked. His voice was calm and measured, but the question was carefully chosen.

“Did Ayleth Rodeline also cough up blood in front of you?”

He sought to test the truth of Tesilid’s words. And the result was...

“What do you mean by that?”

Tesilid responded honestly to the name Ayleth, without hesitation.

He looked as if he truly didn’t understand the meaning of the question.

In that moment, Lead too was faintly shaken. His red eyes widened slightly in surprise.

“You don’t know the price Ayleth Rodeline has to pay when she reveals the truth, do you?”

“......”

Lead got his answer from Tesilid’s genuinely surprised expression.

‘Ayleth Rodeline has never revealed the truth in front of him.’

This meant the source of the recent prophecy wasn’t Ayleth, but Tesilid himself.

“...Ha.”

Lead had confirmed enough. Further interrogation was unnecessary.

The agitation in Lead’s eyes quickly faded.

“Aah, I see.”

In fact, it wasn’t all that surprising.

He had already sensed the strange sense of discomfort when they had met before, and now he had confirmed it.

“You’re right about my future.”

The acknowledgment was calm.

Lead himself had torn through dimensions and was interfering with the timeline. There was no reason why another existence couldn’t intervene in his world.

Then, in a sudden motion, a sharp sound sliced through the air, and Lead’s body instantly moved to Tesilid’s face.

Tesilid didn’t avoid it and stood his ground. Lead grabbed his collar, closing the distance between them.

“Tell me everything you know.”

“......”

“Unlike you, who failed miserably, I will succeed without a doubt.”

Tesilid’s eyes, staring at Lead, grew clouded. It was as if they had been vacant for millennia.

If he was curious, there was no reason he couldn’t answer.

“You are deemed an enemy of the world and will be hunted down. And in the process, your identity as a regressor will be revealed.”

“Even if that’s known now, what difference does it make?”

“It makes a difference. Because the fact that a regressor can’t be punished with death was discovered.”

“......”

Lead’s red eyes flickered for a moment. But Tesilid didn’t see it, as his focus had blurred.

The real retrospection began now.

“You’ll become a body that can neither live nor die... and be trapped in a pit of atonement, a hell. But the crime of destroying the world cannot be replaced by a mere prison sentence equal to one’s lifespan. So...”

His gaze sank completely.

“To extend your sentence, you’ll be forced to prolong your life.”

Whether he wanted to or not, he would be made to drink the waters of eternal life. In a state worse than cattle, enslaved.

“Because of the side effects, you’ll spend your days teetering on the brink of madness.”

In the darkness, unseen and unheard, for all that time, he would suffer from insomnia, nightmares, hallucinations, and madness. That was when the darkness became his weakness.

“Because of an artifact, even when you die, you will be forced to regress to the point where you were trapped in the pit again.”

The save points forced a reset on his timeline.

His decayed mind and transplanted body became a preserved mass, incapable of moving a finger.

“...Only after experiencing 17 lifetimes of punishment did I finally achieve liberation.”

From Cycle 100 to Cycle 116, those 17 lifetimes felt far more distant than the 100 he had lived before.

Tesilid confessed with deep emotion.

“I am your future in Cycle 117.”

“......”

Heavy silence filled the space.

Even after all the stories had ended, Lead remained motionless for a long time.

But his mind was certainly not silent. Just as Tesilid’s red eyes pierced through the stillness...

“Ha.”

Lead finally reacted. A faint sneer mocked his own future.

“Such a glorious failure. So, have you repented?”

“......Well.”

Tesilid couldn’t answer.

Before Ayleth saved him from the pit, he couldn’t remember what thoughts he had held. He couldn’t recall clearly.

If you are reading this translation anywhere other than Novelight.net or SilkRoadTL, it has been stolen.

“You have the eyes of a true failure.”

Lead released the grip on Tesilid’s collar and gazed into his vacant, sea-colored eyes.

“Ayleth Rodeline knows you as Cycle 17. How could a worn-out soul like this be considered Cycle 17?”

“It seems that when I was you, the cycle I reached beyond time was Cycle 17. She seems to know all my past up to Cycle 100.”

“That means...”

Lead had gained an important certainty.

“You mean Ayleth Rodeline didn’t exist in your Cycle 100?”

“Yes.”

She exists uniquely in this timeline, unlike in any other cycles.

Tesilid continued, as if reflecting on his past.

“In my Cycle 100, I definitely killed Cycle 17 with my own hands. But now, I’m wearing that body and standing here. It’s probably some kind of anomaly caused by the artifact that adjusts the regression point. Originally, it was supposed to be used 30 times, not 16.”

“What a coincidence.”

Lead sighed deeply. But he wasn’t speaking about the appearance of an interloper.

“You and I, both of us, Cycle 17...”

What he focused on was that the original owner of this timeline was in Cycle 17.

“Is it coincidence... or is it because Cycle 17 was the one I most wanted to kill... myself?”

A short, bitter laugh escaped from Lead, his dry chuckles reverberating in the air.

Tesilid didn’t laugh, but his state of mind wasn’t much different from Lead’s.

Since, up until Cycle 99, they had shared the same experiences and memories.

‘Cycle 17...’

In Cycle 17, the protagonist in Ayleth's knowledge was brutally killed by the final villain.

But the final villain was also the protagonist, and that protagonist was in Cycle 100.

In fact, the 17th cycle that appeared in Ayleth’s story wasn’t a regular Cycle 17, but a preview of the 100th cycle protagonist.

It was a cycle created by the protagonist who reincarnated as the final villain and interfered with past timelines.

In other words, the 17th cycle in the Seguhwe world was ‘overwritten’ by Lead’s birth.

What was recorded in Seguhwe wasn’t the original Cycle 17 but a modified 17-2 cycle.

So what about the “original” Cycle 17 that existed before Lead was born?

What was Cycle 17-1, which isn’t recorded in Seguhwe?

Originally, Cycle 17 was insignificant.

It was merely a transition between Cycle 16 and Cycle 18.

But this was a world very different from Seguhwe.

Ayleth Rodeline, who had intervened during the tutorial period, had planted causality into every cycle’s protagonist.

Because of that, Cycle 17-1 had become a timeline remembered uniquely by both the 100th and 117th protagonists.

The reason was...

‘Because I was looking for Ayleth Rodeline during that cycle.’

Having lived through 16 deaths, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} Tesilid’s mind in Cycle 17 had become severely worn out.

Without Lead’s intervention, he had believed that the whole world hated him and wanted him dead.

His mind, unable to hold steady, desperately needed something to rely on.

Then, someone who had claimed to be on his side had filled his mind.

So he deviated from his path.

Abandoning all his duties and leaving the church, he searched for Ayleth Rodeline.

He knew that as soon as his regression started, her existence would be erased.

But he held onto the hope that someone, somewhere, might still remember her, or that her traces might remain.

Of course, it was in vain.

He searched all across the continent, but Ayleth Rodeline had disappeared, as if she had never existed.

All the time he had spent in that timeline was wasted and hopeless.

“In Cycle 17, she was nowhere to be found...”

“......”

A mixture of resentment and ridicule twisted the face of the dark-haired, handsome man. Tesilid thought of it as his own reflection in a mirror.

At some point, Lead, having gathered his thoughts, returned with a cold expression. He asked mockingly.

“So, are you pretending to be Cycle 17 so Ayleth Rodeline can play the savior? With some pathetic hope that pity will turn into affection?”

“...That’s what I was doing.”

In response to Lead’s mockery, Tesilid from Cycle 117 only gave a faint, wry smile.

It seemed that Lead had let his guard down.

“That’s what you were doing? Past tense. So, is it different now?”

“It seems like that hope might have worked.”

“......”

Lead was caught off guard by the counterattack.

Perhaps due to his momentary lapse in attention, it had struck deeper than expected. Tesilid’s words from Cycle 117 deeply provoked him.

In that instant, a sharp light flickered in Lead’s red eyes.

Boom!

Dozens of black aura blades plunged into the spot where Tesilid had been standing.

As Tesilid stepped back, evading the attack, Lead spoke.

“I just had an interesting thought.”

“......”

“What if I take your place?”

A privilege for the possessor.