As Helen walked through the deserted corridor to the door of the alchemy workshop, her heartbeat and breathing quickened.
After that attack, she finally rembered everything.
It was not lost mory, but mory that had been... erased.
Who had tried to assassinate her, why she needed to kill her, what was the relationship between her and the assassin, and what had led to the current situation, Helen understood it all clearly.
It was a gamble in which she was a participant, a gamble she had been forced to forget.
Now, the ga had reached its final stage, the endga orchestrated and controlled by… Ansel.
The winner would have their desires fulfilled, while the loser would be left with nothing.
"Father..."
Helen murmured softly, placing her hand on the door. She closed her eyes and stood for a long ti, her mind replaying everything she had seen, heard, and experienced during this ti.
When she opened her eyes again, Helen, the genius sorceress, had made up her mind.
The heavy tal door slowly opened, revealing the familiar scene that greeted Helen's eyes. Ansel had once made so minor modifications to her puppet here, and she had occasionally used the place since then.
In the depths of the alchemy workshop, the petite woman who manipulated Nidhoggur with ease, as if directing her own limbs, also looked up towards the door.
Both won locked eyes at the exact sa mont.
The two of them, rely from an external viewpoint, were indistinguishable from any angle, not even the slightest variance could be discerned.
Both bore the sa detached, icy deanor, similarly delicate statures, and equally enchanting, mysterious purple irises... Only upon closer inspection could one discern that one was devoid of light, a self reborn from utter destruction; while the other shimred with a steely cold light, symbolizing an unbreakable resolve.
"Before we begin, I have a question for you."
Ravenna waved her hand, and the doors of the alchemy workshop closed automatically: "What exactly—"
"I am Helen."
Without needing Ravenna to finish her question, the petite woman with the tranquil gaze calmly responded:
"I am the Helen of father."
"... Because you are , I harbored the last vestige of hope towards you." The final trace of calm in Ravenna's eyes vanished completely, leaving only sheer indifference and... disdain.
"I never imagined you could fall so completely."
"The one surprised should be , not you."
Helen removed her bracelet, feeling the brand-new Nidhoggur perating the entire alchemy workshop, ready to tear her to shreds, no... into a mist of blood at Ravenna's re thought.
Yet, she showed no fear, stepping forward with a disdain matching that in Ravenna's eyes, she spoke: "You, brainwashed to this extent, are far more pitiable than I."
"You clearly... witnessed everything I went through."
The entity known as Helen expressed such profound hatred and malevolence:
"Yet you still wallow in that fictitious, absurd life!"
Her most beloved grandfather even refused to believe she would adhere to that ideal, mad enough to curse her life deeply into her bones, an inescapable bondage.
She, who had never set foot in the human world, held beliefs and ideals without any foundation, not derived from reality but from a design that had been piecing her together for twenty-one years in the workshop.
The most ludicrous part was that even the workshop that pieced together her life had abandoned its original purpose, and she, the product of that purpose, was also unable to fulfill it.
The entity, Ravenna Ziegler, was utterly aningless.
And the only one who could give her aning, the only one who could offer redemption, the only one who could recognize her, understand her, guide her, help her... was Ansel.
Only... "Father"!
Helen's deep resentnt and anguish briefly plunged Ravenna into silence.
She gazed at those lifeless, lusterless eyes and responded calmly:
"If our roles were reversed... indeed, I could only have ended up in the sa plight as you."
"Then why you—"
"But if you were ."
In just an instant, Ravenna's calm voice turned as chilling as ice, as hard as iron, and from those purple irises, sparks flew as if from a furnace at full blaze, capable of lting even the most extre suffering into torrents of molten iron.
Such fury, utterly unyielding.
"You too would stand here, despising yourself, broken by that devil!"
"Listen well... the following words, I will not repeat to you again."
*
"I will not repeat myself, Venna."
Amidst the storm, Ansel having seemingly vented all his tyrannical emotions, smiled and said, "We... are no longer friends."
Ravenna's gaze pierced through the veil of rain, fixating intently on his face:
"So it is... This, then, is your grandest deception, Ansel. I am utterly vanquished… Ansel"
Her skin, pallid and bloodless under the rain, could not mask her fragility, no matter how icy and furious her tone.
"I do not share that sentint, Venna."
Ansel half-closed his eyes, feeling the cold touch of rain sliding off his skin, and murmured softly:
"I afforded you such a significant opportunity, I laid bare everything to you—this was my tribute to our once cherished friendship. Until the very end, I was sincere, and henceforth... there is no need for deceit, is there?"
"Should I be grateful?" Ravenna tugged at the corners of her mouth, "Grateful for your honesty and grace?"
"No, no... Such superfluities are unnecessary."
Ansel, still with his eyes half-closed, smiled gently: "All I ask is that you wager with one last ti, to conclude our relationship with the utmost dignity and respect."
"And to be toyed with once more by you? Do you truly take for a fool—"
"Ravenna Ziegler."
The young Hydral opened his eyes, his voice laden with the terrifying depth of abyssal creatures, resonating with an authoritative and wrathful timbre.
Those sea-blue eyes were utterly unrecognizable, exuding a lofty… detachnt.
"Why do you presu you have the right to refuse?"
"..."
"Do you think you achieved all this, that the Tower of Babel stands as it does, because of what?"
He tapped his scepter lightly on the ground, yet it thundered in Ravenna's ears like a tempest.
"Is it because of the firearms? Because of Evora's gaze and favor?"
The youthful devil's lips curled slightly, his smile beguiling yet filled with such cruel venom.
"No, let tell you, it's because of... ."
"Because I was by your side."
He strolled joyfully in the torrential rain, the crisp sound of his boots on the rooftop lodious, yet to Ravenna, it sounded like the tolling of hell's bells.
"Because our relationship was ambiguously defined, because you might beco my pact head... because in their eyes, you possess a value far surpassing everything you currently hold, a value worth courting."
"But what if, I were to leave you? No, no... not just simply leave, but... abandon you ruthlessly, forsake you, even... destroy you?"
Ansel snapped his fingers with a grin: "Rember, I told you to publish all the firearms, all the weapons, all the special designs under your own na, not mine?"
"If I were to proclaim to the world upon my departure that I was the creator of it all, not you, then tell , dear Venna..."
The young viper, facing his best friend, spewed the venom that had been brewing since their first encounter.
Watching Ravenna's face lose all color, he burst into uproarious laughter:
"Guess what will happen then... to the now worthless you, to the now worthless Tower of Babel?"
"From the start..."
The petite, helpless, fragile scholar trembled in the storm, her slender fra shivering: "So, from the very start... you never truly trusted ."
"I did trust you, countless tis!"
The young snake, having just venomously spat out his words, bared his fangs and roared furiously, but then returned to his previously composed and graceful deanor.
"But that is all in the past." He shrugged nonchalantly, "I am glad my precautions were effective."
"So... you must wager with ."
The devil, in a tone both affable and commanding, decreed his malevolent order:
"Wager your... future."
*
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