A golden ladybug appeared in midair at some unknown moment.
It hovered quietly at the edge of the eye of the storm, watching the curled-up shell on the ground with the icy gaze one reserved for the dead.
At this moment, Dago's consciousness had already fallen to the edge of a perilous chaos.
The immense, tangled memories of four full "reincarnations," spanning several centuries—love and hatred, partings and deaths, spell deductions—were like a ball of yarn maliciously torn apart and then brutally kneaded back together.
They clogged his mind in a chaotic mess, making it impossible for him to tell which lifetime contained the real "Dago."
Curled on the ground like a fetus, he maintained that posture for a long... long time.
Golden Fire continued to burn tirelessly, while gray smoke rose without end.
Time had lost all meaning here.
Had it been several months? Or more than half a year?
Until one moment.
"Crack..."
The ink-black murkiness in Dago's eyes finally fractured like ice, and with great difficulty, a trace of human clarity returned.
"Alazan..."
he murmured hoarsely.
The golden ladybug flapped its wings and slowly flew toward his forehead, which was covered in cold sweat.
Alazan's voice was no longer cold. Instead, it rang out softly with an unmistakable complexity and shock:
"You reckless madman... are you still going to continue?"
Dago braced his trembling hands against the cold floor, like an ascetic who had trekked through the desert for half his life.
Slowly, slowly, he propped up his body, which was on the verge of falling apart, and leaned against the hard bookshelf.
His aura was extremely unstable now, like a muddy pool frantically churned with a stick, violently surging up and down as though it might collapse completely the next second.
"Can I... still... continue?"
Dago's