Seto clutched the sword skewering his stomach, frowning as if he truly couldn’t comprehend what he had just heard. Finally, he asked, “Y-you have m-more than one life?”

Having multiple lives sounded like ridiculous nonsense. Nevertheless, what Dale had shown wasn’t regeneration. He had been blown apart into pieces no bigger than the last joint of a finger, yet had returned completely unharmed. Even if he drank an ocean’s worth of holy elixirs from the Holy Empire, such a feat would be impossible.

This was resurrection. It was not the miracle where someone on the brink of death was revived, but rather, it was more like a corpse that had been long dead had crawled out of its grave perfectly intact, as if it had never died at all.

Shocked, Seto muttered, “How? How the hell— AAAARGH!”

Before he could finish, however, Ashen Flames roared up and engulfed him.

“I won the game, so I get to ask the questions, don’t I?” Dale said.

“Guhh! You bastard, you, gah!”

Dale stepped up to Seto, grabbed him by the throat, and lifted him off the ground. The demon Archbishop choked and writhed in Dale’s grip, his small frame dangling helplessly in the air.

Dale stared at him. “You said earlier you had information about the Church of Eternity, right?”

“Guhhk!”

“Don’t even think about moving. Unless you want to burn to ashes.”

The flames wrapped around Seto’s body again. His face went pale as he bit his trembling lips. “You? Are you really a cadet? No, are you even human?”

“I’m a cadet, yes. And I’m human, too.”

I am certainly more human than someone who drags in innocent people just to blow them up for entertainment, Dale thought.

“The Church of Eternity, who are they?” Dale asked.

“Heh. I don’t know who they are exactly.”

“Really?”

The Ashen Flames coiling around him flared violently.

“But I do know Mephisto’s been secretly working with them,” Seto added.

“Keep talking.”

Good, I got his attention, Seto thought.

He said, “I don’t know what Mephisto wants from those mystery freaks, but I do know where they’re gathering right now.”

“Where?”

Seto grinned weakly. “The Imperial Palace.”

***

Only one place on this vast continent could be called the Imperial Palace: the Imperial Palace of the Empire.

The Empire was one of the three nations ruling the continent and by far the strongest among them. And the one who ruled the Empire was its emperor and the current first-ranked hero—the Empress, Camellia Padsha.

The moment I recalled Empress Camellia’s name, a memory from my previous life flashed through my mind. It was about an incident that had plunged the once-peaceful continent straight into the jaws of war: the Assassination of Empress Camellia.

She was the hero ranked first in the entire continent and the woman hailed as the Avatar of the Seven Gods thanks to her overwhelming Blessing. Yet one day, she was found dead, discovered without any signs of resistance or struggle.

Speculation had spread like wildfire. Some said she killed herself, some said that she was poisoned, and others said the Demon God’s avatar did it. The theories never ended, but the culprit was never found.

The Empire lost its leader overnight, and chaos consumed it. This incident also shattered the stability between the three nations. It led to the Empire–Republic War. The Empire needed a place to unleash its grief and fury, and the Republic wanted to seize the chaos to pursue its ambition of devouring the Empire. Hundreds and thousands of heroes died on the battlefield.

If I went by my previous life, the assassination would not happen until five years later. However, after the recent attack by the Archbishop of Beasts, I could no longer trust the timeline of my previous life. The future was already twisted beyond prediction.

“Why would those guys be heading to the Imperial Palace?” I asked Seto.

“No idea. I really don’t.”

I flared up the Ashen Flames again. “Really? Is that so?”

“NO! I swear, I really don’t know!”

Seto kicked and thrashed desperately, his face ghostly pale. Judging from that frantic fear, I didn’t think he was lying.

It looked like that was all I would get out of him. The real name of the Beast Skin Group was the Church of Eternity, and they were heading to the Imperial Palace with Mephisto. The mystery only deepened, but this was still a good haul. At least, I now had a direction to search, instead of aimlessly scouring Valhalla City all day.

Anyway, I looked down at Seto trembling violently within the flames. Was the Archbishop of Madness always this pathetic? Sure, everyone feared death. But for someone with the title “Madness,” this was an awfully pitiful display.

Seto’s voice shook like a leaf. “So, y-you’ve asked everything you wanted, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

As I prepared to tighten the Ashen Flames, the man who had been quivering in terror just moments ago suddenly twisted his lips into a huge grin. “But hey, aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Forgetting?”

Seto cackled as he looked straight at me. “The bombs, idiot. Did you forget about the bombs? Even if I die, I have to see them go off! That’s the one thing I can’t miss!”

Right, I knew something felt off.

“You pretended to be scared for that, didn’t you?” I replied.

Seto flashed a bright grin. “Of course! Do you know how worried I was that you’d kill me before it happened?”

He stomped hard. The moment he moved, the Ashen Flames coiled around him roared to life, viciously burning his flesh.

Seto shouted, “Aaaagh! Hot! Hot! Hot! I said it’s HOTTTTT!”

Even as his body charred and sizzled, he hopped around and burst into manic laughter. “AHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

What on earth could he possibly find so amusing?

With an innocent smile, Seto turned to me. “To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in you.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yeah! I really thought you were a real hero!”

Seto shaped his fingers like a gun and aimed them at his own head. “Remember that game we played before? You pulled the trigger on yourself five whole times! All to protect your teammates!”

He clasped his hands together as if recalling that moment vividly, then continued, “I thought to myself, Ah, I’ve finally met a real hero. Someone who doesn’t care about his own life. Someone willing to sacrifice everything, right up to the moment he dies, for the sake of others.”

He continued, “But the reason you were able to pull that trigger wasn’t that you are a true hero. You could do it because you had the ability to come back to life and because dying simply wasn’t final for you. You’re just another one of those common, dime-a-dozen fakes.”

To him, I seemed someone with multiple lives to spare and someone who pretended to be noble, but in the end was just another impostor, busy protecting himself when things turned ugly.

Seto glanced toward the central plaza, where the festival was reaching its peak. “And here’s the proof.”

Cadets had gathered in anticipation of the fireworks, huddled together with happy smiles.

His lips twisted up into a grin so wide it looked like it might split his face. “You didn’t go to save them. You pointed your sword at me instead. Dale, you come back to life even if you die, right? But here’s the thing. Even if your life isn’t limited to one, does that apply to everyone else?”

He spread both arms wide and beamed. “Alright! Time for the fireworks!!!”

With a shriek of mad laughter, he waited eagerly. A massive explosion should have erupted in the central plaza, but it didn’t.

Seto’s head darted left and right, panic creeping into his expression. “Huh? W-what? Why didn’t it go off?”

Watching him flail, I let out a small, amused breath. At that moment, an alert chimed from my Hero Watch. It was a call from Professor Baldwin.

“Dale. All bombs planted in the central plaza have been located and removed,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll head your way to assist immediately.”

“No, it’s fine. Things here are almost wrapped up anyway.”

After ending the call, I walked leisurely toward the frozen, slack-jawed Seto.

Seto blinked repeatedly, unable to process what was happening. “How? The Blessing of Insight shouldn’t have been able to track the bombs’ locations.”

“That’s right.”

That would indeed be the case if this were a normal situation.

“What did you do?”

“Did you know this? The Blessing of Insight becomes stronger when you ingest someone’s bodily fluids.”

“Bodily fluids?”

I pointed at the blood flowing through Seto’s body. “Yeah. Like their blood.”

“W-wait! When could the Spider have drunk my blood?”

“Don’t you remember? The sword I threw that sliced open your side earlier.”

Seto’s eyes flew wide as he jerked his head around. Early in the fight, my sword had cut his side as it flew past him, and that sword had never returned.

I explained, “I didn’t try to save the people in the central plaza because there was never any need to save them in the first place.”

“You...”

“And what was that? I could pull the trigger because I revived after dying?” I scoffed lightly and grabbed Seto’s head with one hand. “Have you ever actually died and come back?”

He could not muster a reply.

“Of course you haven’t.” I began channeling mana into the hand gripping his skull. “Want to experience it?”

“What are you...”

“There’s a mental-type spell that allows someone to share their memories.”

Of course, it couldn’t forcibly extract another person’s memories. The only memories that could be shared were the caster’s own, and even then, only fragmented pieces. But that was more than enough right now.

Seto tried to retreat. “W-wait!”

Before he could step away, unfamiliar memories flooded into his mind—the memory of my head being severed, my limbs being crushed, my eyes being plucked out while I was still alive, my jaw being torn off, my body splitting from crown to groin, my organs spilling from a torn flank, my bones shattering, my flesh ripping, and my blood gushing.

Seto was in excruciating pain. “Uh, Ah.”

And then, the memory of reviving over, and over, and over, and over again.

The Archbishop of Madness clutched his head and convulsed, trembling violently. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”

I watched him writhe with his eyes rolled back, then curved my lips into a slow grin. “So? If it were you, could you pull the trigger?”