Chapter 182: Pain, You Are My Only One

"Because, in the last video before Dad went offline, he told me..."

Under everyone's gaze, Su Fang swallowed softly and slowly spoke.

"Aside from that AI assistant he created using the Sacred Tree's power..."

"The senior management sent by the board of directors to assist him with the Utopia project..."

"There were never more than two of them."

In that instant, Phoenix and Amber stood frozen in place.

The Company's senior executives had always been only two from start to finish.

That meant...

From the very beginning, someone had been an extra.

And as for who that extra person was, the answer was already on the verge of being revealed—

The cherry-haired girl spoke softly: "Magical girls other than the Prophecy Maiden being refreshed to the Outer Realm at the start of each cycle means the beginning of the witchification process..."

"So that's how it was."

In that sigh, Amber seemed to have grasped the key to everything, the amber light in her eyes profound and deep. The thick grimoire turned pages on its own without wind, flipping rapidly with a rustling sound.

Accompanying a ripple of obscure magic power fluctuations, two bottles of potion shimmering with piercing radiance materialized before her.

She first handed one bottle to Phoenix, who seemed unable to accept reality yet, watching as she snapped back to her senses and hurriedly pecked open the bottle cap, then downed her own in a single gulp.

Under the girls' watchful eyes, a dazzling display of light and shadow suddenly burst open in the eyes of the woman and the bird.

That veil of secrecy masking their perception was violently torn apart, plunging them into the same confusion and agony the other girls had just experienced.

.........................

(Meanwhile.)

Above the throne, two figures stood motionless.

The silver angel's long sword had already pierced straight through the Abyss King's chest.

The blue-black armor seemed to offer no resistance at all.

The armor wreathed in black energy rapidly disintegrated and scattered, centered on the gaping hole in the chest.

The faceplate of the helmet shattered with a crack as well, revealing the person within.

Short blue hair, green eyes.

Su Jingyan's figure slowly dissipated on Airwen's sword, transforming into light and flying toward the Sacred Tree.

Leaving behind only a jet-black fragment.

But the strange thing was...

At the top of the tree, the endless black fog showed no sign of dissipating. Instead, it began to churn and seethe faintly.

As if cheering.

Cheering the fall of the false king who had usurped authority, and celebrating the imminent arrival of the true king about to be born.

Yet at this moment, the silver-haired girl paid no attention to her surroundings at all.

The impulse that had been violently colliding in her chest had risen to her throat, consuming nearly all of her mind and heart.

Something was about to break free from its cocoon.

Like a dream lasting three hundred years finally on the verge of awakening.

Or like she was about to fall into a long dream from which she would never wake.

Instinctively, she lowered her head and looked at the blade in her hand, like a silver phantom.

The sword's surface clearly reflected a face.

It was indeed her own face—flawless, features exquisitely refined, with a hint of heroic spirit between her brows.

Only, the other's pupils and hair were both black.

As if dyed in the color of despair.

That black-haired girl stared back at her expressionlessly from the reflection of the polished blade, looking at her as if at a phantom.

An unknowing, pitiable phantom that had always believed itself real.

She murmured, "How could this be... no..."

—So-called phantom sword. What did the word "phantom" actually refer to?

Its meaning was very simple.

False, unreal images. Nothing more.

In that instant.

Past memories, like sharp shards of glass, sliced and tumbled violently in her mind.

The false memories were torn apart, and the true truth finally surfaced in her consciousness.

When did it all begin?

The answer was...

Seven minutes before Phoenix and Amber entered this world.

A pitiable existence named Airwen was created by Him in this world, already reduced to a complete mess, implanted with fabricated memories, and then opened its eyes for the first time.

At this very moment...

In the previous cycle, in that forest thick with black fog, the cruel words she had spoken to that girl suddenly thundered in her ears.

"You never experienced those past moments you shared with them. They just chose to believe you were still the same person from the past, and you comfortably took over that place in their hearts."

"Your dreams are borrowed. Your identity is borrowed. Your Soul Gem is borrowed."

"You are nothing but the last obsession of her final remnants—the last soul fragment and corpse—stirred back to life mixed with foreign substances from nowhere..."

"Just a witch."

In this instant, every absurdity found its most ironic explanation.

Because those were all declarative sentences about her own existence.

Airwen let out a beast-like roar as she stumbled backward. The phantom sword she had held in her hand slipped from her fingers, and the Soul Gem at the hilt crashed onto the throne, radiating a profound, desperate, and utterly murky black.

The "witch" reflected on the blade still showed no expression, just staring at her.

As if in pity. As if in mockery.

"..."

Airwen finally understood one thing.

Why, in her own heart, that crimson magical girl had been so special, so uniquely important to her.

Because they were kindred spirits with the same dream.

Drifters chasing phantoms that didn't exist, unaware of their own delusion.

Three hundred years. Three thousand three hundred thirty-three cycles.

She had dreamed of severing the throat of that nightmare called the cycle, willing to give up everything, including emotions, for it.

Yet in truth, she was the root of all this tragedy.

Everything about her was a false phantom.

The magical girl named Airwen had never truly existed. From beginning to end, she was merely the endless Abyss within this Soul Gem—an exquisitely crafted, false wrapping created by that destined great existence so it could break out of its shell.

The meaning of her existence was to bear innate original sin, to have her hope utterly ground away in endless cycles and tragedy, and to fall into the Abyss. Nothing more.

And the so-called Utopia was, in essence, nothing but a...

"Witch's egg."

She suddenly burst into manic laughter: "Haha... hahahahahaha..."

With crisp shattering sounds, those silver wings dissolved into specks of light scattering in the air.

For some reason, the poem written alongside the third generation of magical girls broke through layers of memories and surged into her mind.

—Pain, you are my only one.

—Beyond you, I desire nothing else.

—Suffering, you have faithfully accompanied me, unchanged even now.

Even though she was in her transformation state, her eyes were no longer the bright silver they once were. Instead, they were the deepest, most profound black—representing despair and silence.

She stood on the throne, staring at the other self reflected in the sword, and suddenly grew eerily calm. She spoke softly.

"The deal is struck."

"My life. My existence. Everything about me... take it all."

"In exchange for ending their cycle of despair."

The next instant.

The black fog surged in like a waterfall, enveloping her, forming a pitch-black cocoon on the throne.

And what was about to be born from within that cocoon...

Was the deepest despair this world had ever known.