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Before his corruption, Reed thought that if he worked hard enough, endured long enough, that he would be able to meet Ailette again; it was just a matter of time. Ailette herself had promised it.
The thing was, he might have forgotten that promise. After failing to find her in Loop Seventeen, he set his mind to saving the world, figuring that there was nothing he could do to expedite their meeting. He got so caught up in learning about different dungeons and vanquishing demons that, at times, he almost forgot about her entirely.
Then, five years into his fortieth Loop, something different happened: he became an aura master. During a dungeon subjugation, he delivered the finishing blow to the boss with an aura blade materialized out of thin air, striking awe into his fellow knights.
Upon their return to the Vatican a week later, he walked to the same dorm he’d been staying in for the past three hundred-odd years. He greeted Hestio and Ephael, still making an effort to remain friends with them despite the difficulty—how his proximity to them seemed to increase their chances of death, how hard it was to pretend he hadn’t changed from the Tesilid he was before his regressions began. With every passing Loop, he waged an internal war on whether to be formal or not, because they hated his polite, deferential tone, but he could use their short conversations to increase his divine powers, and they were bound to forget by next Loop anyway. That Loop was one of the last ones where he spoke with them casually.
And they gave him some unexpected news.
“Hey, Tesilid, just getting back now?” Ephael gave him a hearty smack on the shoulder. “Guess that means you haven’t heard about the new saintess yet.”
The bag fell from his suddenly limp fingers. He stared back at his friend, unable to even form words.
At the sudden noise, Hestio turned around from the book he was reading. Glancing at the two, he came to his own conclusions. “Come on, knucklehead, what are you hitting him so hard for? The guy’s probably tired.”
“You weren’t even watching! How would you know how hard I hit him?”
“Don’t need to watch to have ears.” He flicked his eyes toward Tesilid. “How was the subjugation? Tough boss?”
Tesilid finally found his words. “A new saintess? As in, someone with saint-level divine power?”
“That's right.” Ephael jostled him playfully. “Why? You worried someone else is gonna take your place as God’s favorite?”
“No, not at all.” He felt his heart pounding, spiking every cell with oxygen until he felt more alive than he had in decades. “Is the saintess here? I should greet her. It’s only right.”
He was out the door before they even had a chance to respond.
Is it because I became an aura master? He couldn’t think of any other explanation. Ailette had never appeared in his Loops before. She had stopped existing entirely. But if she was here now—
Then he walked into the central courtyard and saw, not Ailette, but a raven-haired woman named Muriel. His hopes had been raised for less than a minute, but the crushing disappointment from that sight weighed on him for days and days. He barely managed to be civil when she walked up to him and introduced herself, asking quite out of nowhere whether she could call him by his name.
He agreed, just wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible. What did it even matter, anyway?
Still, hope had sunk its teeth into him, and now he had a hundred different questions. Muriel and Ailette had some similarities, after all: both Tier 8 saintesses, both favored by God, and neither in his earlier Loops. Perhaps through Muriel, he could find an answer to when Ailette would reappear.
However, conversation with the raven-haired saintess led nowhere. She didn’t have Ailette’s insight or her frank semi-omniscience, and her kindness felt shallow and detached compared to the warmth he'd once experienced. He didn’t dare ask, even in a roundabout way, about his returns, but what he did probe seemed to suggest that she had no awareness of another saint, or knowledge of a recent Divine Advent.
He still didn’t have any answers. But when Muriel appeared in his next Loop as well, five years after it began, that told him enough. Becoming an aura master—a status very few ever managed to achieve—triggered something in the world. Someone who’d never existed before suddenly existed.
Ever since then, every time when he’d almost forgotten about Ailette, he’d manage to achieve something for the first time—subjugating a particularly difficult dungeon, overcoming Cavalencia’s “rhythm game,” defeating a demon lord—and she’d pop into his head. Maybe this time… will this be enough?
But it never was.
Well… that’s not entirely true, is it? he mused. After all, he did meet her again after passing a milestone—becoming corrupted, and going back in time. She was the first person to greet him, the light of Divine Advent shining like a beacon in the dark.
Maybe that was one of the reasons why his decision to destroy the world felt so right. After all, it wasn’t until he decided to end the Loops by his own hands that the world finally let him see Ailette again. Wasn’t it basically begging to be destroyed? It was a mercy, really. Any goodness or joy experienced on this wretched soil was forgotten by the end of each Loop. Everyone who endured suffering, who was killed or saved, didn’t even remember. It had no meaning. And what was life without meaning?
Yes. It was simple. This world was doomed. It was always meant to be devoured, the second that God abandoned it.
Ending it was truly the only way to save it. To save them all. Including him.
And Ailette being there was the proof.