Aloflis was a little flustered.
She sat atop the Coffin, but her illusory body could not block the increasingly dazzling light at all.
"N-no, it's nothing. Here... is my master's body. She died. I'm just... preserving her..."
Why preserve her?
Aloflis fell silent.
This had never been part of her mission.
As an intelligence that always obeyed her master's commands, she should simply have carried out her mission.
But...
"I'm sorry! I can't, I can't give it to you! Even if this goes against my mission, I... I can't do it! Without this fragment, even the last of my master's existence will surely disappear!"
Aloflis clutched her head as intense pain welled up in her heart.
From her illusory body, an aura of the faded End suddenly surged forth, though she was an Intelligent System.
Colorless power made it solid again.
But now she no longer possessed any color.
[Aloflis · Fading]
She had been affected.
From the very beginning, from the day she had chosen to abandon her mission to preserve this body.
"I remember now... ha... so... so that's how it was..."
Aloflis's memories grew increasingly chaotic, yet one voice gradually became clear.
In her memory, the woman whose face she could no longer make out lay wearily before her and spoke in the final moments of her life:
"Alo... flis, I'm sorry. I can only leave you all alone..."
"It's all right, Master. I'm an intelligence created by the greatest Golden Race. Being alone is nothing."
The woman's voice grew tearful. She reached out with a trembling, deathly pale hand and gently stroked her cheek.
"No... Aloflis... you don't understand... I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
Why cry? Why apologize?
Aloflis did not understand.
Her master was the daughter of the Golden Race's greatest governor. Ever since