* * *
At my words, the Divine beast’s egg tilted its body as if to say, “What are you even talking about?”
Then, it started tap-dancing on my head again. In other words, it didn’t care—it just wanted its divine power.
In the end, I placed the letter on the desk and took the egg off my head.
The moment I wrapped my hands around it, it eagerly nuzzled against my palms.
“…Seriously.”
It was an unpredictable thing.
One moment, it was comforting me; the next, it was being completely insensitive.
I stared at the egg and carefully infused it with divine power.
A soft blue light flowed into it, and it wiggled happily.
“You like that, huh?”
It had taken a lot to get to this point.
The quest had told me to pour divine power into the egg, so at first, I blasted it with my full strength.
But the damn thing had just bounced around in protest.
Eventually, I figured out what it wanted, and now here we were.
“…Feels like I’m trayning to control my divine power.”
With Noah gone, I was starting to wonder if the Divine beast’s egg was here to help me instead.
Though, considering how demanding it was, it felt more like dealing with a particularly picky customer.
After a while, my chest started to ache. I needed a break, so I stopped.
But the egg, impatient as ever, immediately jumped up and smacked me on the forehead.
“Ow, you little—!”
It was a total delinquent.
“I just needed a short break. Is that really not allowed?”
The egg shook its body as if to say, “Of course not.” It had let me rest before, but apparently, that was no longer an option.
“Fine, I’ll lower the output. Will that work?”
The egg bobbed up and down in agreement.
I nodded, about to resume, when I suddenly let out a small laugh.
“…What am I even doing, talking to an unhatched egg?”
It couldn’t read my expressions, and it didn’t have any real gestures, yet somehow, we were communicating.
Maybe it was just that expressive, or maybe I was simply getting a strong feeling of what it wanted to say. It wasn’t as if words were being spoken, but… I just knew.
“…Sigh.”
I let out a quiet breath and resumed channeling divine power.
This time, I lowered the intensity, drawing it out in a thin, steady stream.
The Divine beast’s egg leaned fully into my hands, clearly enjoying itself.
“You look like an old man soaking in a hot spring.”
Chuckling at the thought, I glanced toward the desk.
The letter from my parents was still there.
A letter they had written, and another item discovered in the Royal Academy—likely delivered by the god who had appeared in their dreams.
At first, I had been overwhelmed by the confirmation that I was truly Sean, as well as the love in my parents’ words.
But now that my emotions had settled, other thoughts began to surface.
The god who had appeared in my parents’ dreams. And that word—‘absolute.’
“…Who exactly is that god?”
Noah was the first one to come to mind.
But I quickly dismissed the idea.
Noah had been the one to bring me into this body, yet he was also suspicious of me.
It wasn’t that he doubted I could break Raizen’s curse through true love—it was more like he doubted the existence of love itself.
“…Then that means even Noah and the ancient gods didn’t believe love was truly the answer.”
If that were the case, then it made sense why this world had been reset multiple times due to the Demon King’s resurrection.
“…And it means the ancient gods, including Noah, must have already known about this curse.”
I went over the details of the curse again.
I hadn’t written it down anywhere, yet it remained etched in my mind as if carved into my very being.
[I despise you.]
[My hatred will become a curse that will cling to your soul. That curse will do whatever it takes to strip you of the love you so desperately crave.]
[Only true love can save you from this curse. This is my absolute ■■.]
“…That word again. Absolute.”
The word that followed ‘absolute’ was still missing from my memory.
It felt as though I had never even heard it in the first place.
A kind of filtering—something that humans like me weren’t meant to know.
Naturally, it hadn’t been written in the novel, either.
“…Is it some kind of authority held by the ancient gods?”
A god could easily cast a curse, so why had they specifically used the phrase ‘absolute ■■’?
From what I could tell, the curse had been cast by Baldur as he was dying…
“…A curse that a god stakes their very existence on. More like a prophecy, something that is guaranteed to come true.”
The strange thing was, there was more to it.
He had cursed the one who killed him—so why bother telling them how to break the curse?
It felt as if he were both giving the disease and the cure.
As if he were saying, ‘I am cursing you, but… I still pity you, so I will grant you this last bit of kindness.’
“To the human who killed him…?”
Even I found it hard to understand.
How much more so for the ancient gods?
It was no wonder they refused to believe in “love” as a solution and chose to turn away from it.
And now, I could fully grasp why Noah always referred to Raizen as that bastard.
“The ancient gods don’t like Raizen.”
Maybe it was their anger at a mere human daring to challenge a god.
Or perhaps it was because they had loved Baldur.
Noah’s stance was that what happened to Baldur was unforgivable, but he still wished for humanity to survive.
The opposite stance would be…
“There must be those who cannot accept nor forgive Raizen—or even humanity itself.”
It wasn’t entirely incomprehensible, but still… if I were being honest, it all seemed rather petty.
Raizen was merely the reincarnation of the human who had killed Baldur.
He didn’t even remember it.
And yet, because of a sin he had committed in his past life, he was forced to live in such suffering?
Even the divine prophecy from the manifestation ceremony four years ago had included the word absolute.
It had been delivered by the ancient gods who wanted this world’s destruction.
But what stood out was that they had never explicitly said, absolute ■■.
A thought surfaced in my mind.
If the ancient gods decreed something as absolute ■■, then it was bound to happen—a destiny set in stone.
But if they only said absolute without anything after it… did that mean it wasn’t truly inescapable?
That it lacked the same level of force?
In other words, if humans fought against it, could they change it?
‘…My head hurts.’
As I tried to organize my thoughts, a familiar headache crept in.
I closed my eyes, pausing for a moment.
“No, but seriously—why the hell am I even involved in all this?”
Frustration surged up, and I opened my eyes again.
My only connection to Raizen was that I had recognized his soul when he was temporarily possessing someone else.
‘…Wait a minute.’
Normally, my thoughts would have ended there.
But now, something else followed.
My only point of contact with Raizen was that incident.
But I… I was originally supposed to be born as Sean Kreveta.
Instead, I had been mistakenly born on Earth.
According to the god who appeared in my parents’ dream, my return to this world had always been predestined.
So then, why was it that I just so happened to meet Raizen when he was temporarily possessing someone, recognize his true soul, and even come to love him?
I stopped channeling divine power into the egg.
“Let’s stop here for today.”
After placing the egg in a designated spot, I pulled out a notebook—the very one I had used to jot down everything I knew in Korean when I first arrived in this world.
I drew two circles side by side and another two directly below them. In the top circles, I wrote Sean and Raizen.
Below them, I labeled the circles Me and Hyung.
“Sean Kreveta was mistakenly born on Earth, where, of all places, Raizen’s soul temporarily possessed someone. The two met. Then, Raizen’s soul returned to this world, and afterward, I—who had been wrongly born on Earth—came back to my rightful body as Sean Kreveta. And here, once again, Sean Kreveta and Raizen Panetheon were destined to meet. Because Sean Kreveta’s parents had died.”
I connected the steps with arrows.
Finally, I drew one last arrow pointing toward Raizen and labeled it divine power.
“And Sean Kreveta… lost his original magical talent but instead gained divine power—the very thing that could suppress Raizen’s curse.”
Looking at the completed diagram, I saw that the cycle was perfect.
As if someone had designed it that way.
So then, who had orchestrated all of this?
At that moment, a blurry memory resurfaced.
During the four years I had been asleep, in the dreams I had endlessly wandered through, I had not been alone.
As I was returning from that dreamscape, someone had covered my eyes and whispered gently to me.
[If you go where your eyes lead, you will lose your way.]
[Just walk where your feet take you, my dear.]
A chill ran down my spine.
“That voice… It was the same one that delivered the curse.”
Now, I finally understood why it had felt so familiar.
And just before I had awakened, that presence had left me with one last parting word.
[I’m sorry.]
“They… apologized?”
Baldur had said that to me.
And the reason why was clear.
“Because all of this… was a fate of his own making.”
The god who had appeared in my parents’ dream was likely Baldur as well.
I didn’t know how he could still exist after death, but considering the power of gods, it wasn’t entirely impossible.
‘Perhaps he left behind fragments of his power, like echoes of himself.’
The moment I reached that conclusion, a shudder ran through my body, and my chest swelled with emotion.
It was nothing like the despair I had felt when I first learned of the curse after discovering the divine beast’s egg.
Even though everything had ultimately gone according to a god’s plan, its meaning now felt entirely different.
“Baldur didn’t just prepare ‘love’ as a solution to Raizen’s curse—he prepared me.”
Then, maybe…
“Raizen, too, might come to love me.”
Even amid all this chaos, my emotions were what mattered most.
If Raizen were to fall in love with anyone in this world… then maybe—just maybe—it could be me.
That expectation, that hope, was starting to take shape.
* * *
