"..."
"Everything is over..."
Watching the still-spinning surface of the "inland lake" before him, watching the debris floating atop the churning waves and the countless corpses appearing and disappearing, Reinhard stood on the North Gate Bridge and waited silently for a while. When he realized that none of the people he hoped for had surfaced, and that the enemy he had just knocked into the water showed no sign of emerging either, he sighed helplessly.
"H-How could this happen..."
At that moment, a little girl with blond hair and red eyes rushed over from the crowd behind the bridge.
"Reinhard, where are they?"
"Everyone..."
"Where are Crusch, Emilia, Anastasia, Priscilla, and the others?"
"How are they now?!"
Felut stared wide-eyed in disbelief at the enormous inland lake before her. Its waves still churned slowly around the whirlpool in the distant center, and its waters had completely submerged the entire city. Her legs gave out, and she collapsed onto the wet bridge.
"..."
Reinhard said nothing.
He knew that the city hall stood in the center of the city, over a hundred meters above the current water level. Under the terrifying impact of that water, under such dreadful force and pressure, anyone who could not quickly return to the surface would suffocate and die in a very short time!
Unless those people possessed the "Divine Protection of the Lake" like he did, allowing them to breathe underwater and walk across the water's surface. Otherwise, their fate had already been decided.
"Everyone..."
"No... It shouldn't be like this..."
Her nose stinging, Felut remembered how she had recently been together with her companions, discussing matters in the Water Garment Pavilion. When she imagined that they might have become cold corpses drifting and sinking with the waves, and thought of the bleak sight of