Gazing at Hero Ismayil's complex expression—blended with sorrow, unwillingness to accept it, and relief—Iver guessed what he was thinking.
"No. There is no chosen savior."
Iver sighed and gently shook his head.
He did indeed possess the power to change all this now, but it had come neither from his parents' inheritance nor from his family legacy, nor even from a monarch's or god's blessing... It was an advantage he had accumulated for himself through immense pain and sacrifice, relying on "himself" through cycle after cycle.
The only external force he had relied on here was probably Amber's initial self-sacrifice. It was precisely because Amber had sacrificed herself that all these possibilities had come afterward.
It was like how, in a roguelike game, every death granted out-of-game growth. After accumulating enough of that growth and entering the game again, one could hardly call the resulting stats unfair—they had been built up through time and effort, through a mountain of corpses piled up from death after death.
What kind of suffering had the former Ring Angel endured?
He had once been lost as well, searching for a way to save the world from a hopeless future. He had nearly walked all the way along the Nine Great Paths before finally finding the correct direction.
—Then, to allow the world to reach the right place, he discarded himself along with it.
If the "savior" was a sounding rocket, then he was its booster. To let the rocket rise higher, he chose to burn himself away and fall into the void.
"I understand you completely, Ismayil."
Iver said slowly, "But it isn't only the 'legendary savior' who can save the world. Rather, those who save the world can be called saviors. Don't put too much faith in prophecies, just as you shouldn't blindly