The Extra's Rise
Chapter 625 - 625: Divine Beast (5)

'Why did this have to happen?'

'Why?'

'Why?'

'Why??'

The questions tore through my consciousness like shards of broken glass as Arthur's body collapsed onto the starlight marble, his mana circuits overloading from the contradiction I had created within him. Around us, chaos erupted as Alastor barked orders, Rachel screamed in panic, and Reika and Kali rushed toward his fallen form with desperate urgency.

'Why was my existence like this?'

'Why was I born like this?'

'Why wasn't I born as a pure qilin?'

'Why was I born special?'

'Why?'

I clung to Arthur's unconscious body, my small hands trembling as I felt the magical balance within him beginning to shatter. The Deepdark was overwhelming his Purelight, consuming him from the inside out like a poison I had unknowingly fed him for years. Every breath he struggled to take was my fault. Every convulsion that wracked his frame was because of what I was.

'An abomination like me should have never been born.'

The truth of it hit me with crushing finality as I watched the person I cared about most suffer because of my very existence. I was supposed to protect him, guide him, help him become stronger. Instead, I was destroying him simply by being what I was—something that shouldn't exist, something that violated the fundamental laws governing magical affinities.

'When was the last time I wept?'

The thought came unbidden as I felt moisture gathering in my golden eyes. Tears. I was actually crying, something I hadn't done since... since Julius. Since the moment his connection with me had severed and I hadn't even been able to witness his death with my own eyes, leaving me alone in a void of guilt and grief that had defined my existence for decades.

'And now I'm crying again.'

'Again.'

'Why am I so useless?'

The memories of Tiamat's words echoed mockingly in my mind. 'Special,' she had called me when I was born. The most powerful dragon in existence had sung my praises, declared me unique among all qilins, a creature destined for greatness beyond anything the world had seen.

'So why am I like this?'

'Why am I so pathetic?'

'Why do I only bring suffering to those I care about?'

Suddenly, pain exploded through my scalp as someone yanked my hair upward with merciless force. I found myself staring into cold sapphire eyes flecked with gold—eyes that looked like Rachel's but carried an ancient weight that made my breath catch in my throat.

'Isolde Creighton.'

I had met her before, briefly, when Arthur had visited the Creighton estate years ago. Even then, she had unsettled me in ways I couldn't explain—the way her gaze seemed to pierce through illusions I didn't even know I was maintaining, the subtle wrongness of her presence that made my instincts scream warnings I couldn't interpret.

But this... this was different. Where before she had been merely disconcerting, now she radiated an authority that made my very existence feel insignificant. The Queen of the Creighton family, the woman everyone whispered had gone insane from the burden of her Gift, stood before me with eyes that suggested the madness was just another layer of deception in a game far more complex than anyone understood.

And she was a seer. Someone whose sight could pierce veils I couldn't even perceive.

"A qilin is crying so pathetically while her contractor is dying," she said, her voice carrying no malice but somehow cutting deeper than the cruelest insult. Each word sank into my heart like a blade, precise and devastating in its accuracy.

'Right.'

'Pathetic.'

'That was my existence.'

"Do you want him to die?" she asked me, her tone conversational despite the gravity of the question.

'Did I want Arthur to die?'

"Of course not!" I screamed, the words tearing from my throat with desperate fury. "How could you even ask that?! He's everything to me!"

"Then why didn't you warn him?" she continued relentlessly, though I could see in her eyes that she already knew the answer—an answer that terrified me because it made no sense even to myself.

'Why didn't I warn him?'

The question should have been simple. I had access to future sight, though that failed when it came to Arthur. More than that, I had intimate knowledge of Arthur's magical development, his dual affinities, and the fundamental contradiction they represented. I should have realized the danger of attempting a Divine Beast bonding with such an unstable foundation.

I should have warned him about the incompatibility between Deepdark and Purelight affinities.

I should have explained why my granting him access to both was inherently dangerous.

I should have told him the truth about my own nature—why a qilin could possess affinities that qilins weren't supposed to have.

But when I reached into my memories, searching for the moments when these thoughts should have occurred to me...

Nothing.

Not just absence—active blockage, as if something had deliberately prevented me from making these connections until it was too late. Every time my mind had approached the contradiction, every instance when I might have questioned the wisdom of Arthur's dual development, the thoughts had simply... stopped. Redirected. Forgotten.

"I-I... I didn't know," I stammered, the admission feeling like another betrayal of everything Arthur meant to me. "My mind... my memories... every time I tried to think about warning him about the dangers, about the incompatibility, about what I really am... the thoughts just disappeared."

'Someone had been manipulating my consciousness.'

'Someone had deliberately prevented me from protecting Arthur.'

'But who? And why?'

"My memories of understanding the contradiction were blocked," I continued, my voice growing stronger with horrified realization. "My thoughts about my special nature, about why qilins shouldn't be able to grant dual affinities—someone made sure I couldn't connect those dots until it was too late."

"Tiamat is making me clean up her mess again," Isolde sighed with obvious exasperation. "What a hassle."

'Tiamat?'

The name sent ice through my veins as implications I hadn't considered began forming. The dragon who had praised my birth, who had called me special—had she somehow orchestrated this? Had my entire existence been shaped by forces beyond my understanding?

Only then did I notice what should have been impossible: the complete absence of sound around us. Alastor's shouted orders had stopped mid-syllable. Rachel's scream hung frozen in the air. Reika and Kali were motionless, suspended in the act of rushing toward Arthur's fallen form.

'Time was paused.'

My breath hitched as the implications hit me. I might be sealed and weakened, but I was still fundamentally a low Radiant-rank entity in terms of power. Isolde shouldn't be strong enough to achieve something this sophisticated, especially not with such casual ease. Even Alastor, despite his reputation as one of the world's most powerful mages, was only low Radiant-rank himself.

'How is she doing this?'

'What the hell is going on?'

'What is she really?'

Desperate for answers, I activated my future sight—the innate gift that allowed qilins to perceive the threads of fate and possibility that governed existence.

Nothing.

My eyes, which should have been blazing with prophetic vision, remained frustratingly dim. In the presence of this woman, my most fundamental ability simply... didn't work. It was as if she existed outside the normal flow of causality, immune to the very forces that allowed me to see potential futures.

'A qilin who couldn't even read fate.'

'What was my existence at this point?'

"Stupid girl," Isolde said, her tone carrying the weary patience of someone explaining obvious truths to a particularly slow child. "You are the most important piece in this game. So behave like it already. Julius doesn't want to see you like this."

'Julius.'

The name hit me like a physical blow, bringing with it a rush of grief and longing that threatened to overwhelm my already fractured composure. How dare she speak his name? How dare she invoke the memory of the only person who had ever truly understood me, who had accepted what I was without trying to change or use me?

"How dare you say his name," I snarled, my small form trembling with rage that felt inadequate against the enormity of my pain.

"This is why I wanted to die," Isolde sighed, tilting her head with the air of someone carrying burdens too heavy for any mortal mind. "Dealing with so much... it's annoying, you know. The responsibility, the knowledge, the necessity of watching good people suffer for the sake of larger patterns."

Her eyes shifted, and suddenly I was staring into depths that defied comprehension. Brilliant geometric patterns swirled in her irises—not the simple enhancement of magical sight, but something that seemed to exist across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Looking into those eyes was like staring into the fundamental structure of reality itself.

"Say, weak qilin," Isolde said, her voice carrying new weight as she studied my tear-stained face with calculating intensity, "do you wish to save Arthur?"

The question hung in the frozen air between us, laden with implications that made my soul shiver. But there was no hesitation in my response, no doubt about what I was willing to sacrifice.

"Yes," I said, my voice carrying absolute conviction despite its trembling. "I'll do anything. I'll sacrifice everything—my power, my memories, my very existence—if it means saving him. I don't care what it costs me. I don't care if I cease to exist entirely. Arthur matters more than anything else."

Isolde studied me for a long moment, her impossible eyes weighing my words against criteria I couldn't fathom. Finally, she nodded with something that might have been approval.

"Good," she said simply. "That's exactly what I needed to hear."

She leaned closer, her voice dropping to a whisper that seemed to bypass my ears entirely and speak directly to my consciousness. What she told me next made my golden eyes widen in shock, terror, and desperate hope all at once.

The instructions were clear, terrible, and absolutely necessary.

And they would change everything.

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