“What is a guard doing here?”

I asked her bluntly.

“What I always do! I’m checking time anomalies!”

The girl in front of me was a time guard. Time guards, unlike their names, don’t travel through time. They jump from place to place to investigate where anomalies occur.

“You are trapped in here?”

“...”

She was silent and let her gaze wander to the side.

“How long have you been trapped in this world?”

“Hmm... I don’t know... I only know that I’ve been through twelve cycles in this world. Each cycle took a little over a day and a half, but in an anomaly, time can flow differently.”

Something puzzled me.

“And why are you trapped here? Can’t you easily leave.”

She looked a bit depressed.

“In this world, my magic is limited, limited to the point I can’t teleport out of here…”

I could understand her well. After all, I had to experience it in Emilia’s world too.

“You want to know how we get out of here?”

She nodded.

“There is exactly one person in this world who is different from everyone else. A person who may have a few memories from former cycles or behave differently each cycle. Do you know of anyone?”

“...”

She was lost in thought. It took quite a while until she came out of her thoughts.

“No, nobody... But I know how we can find her!”

I frowned.

“And how will that work?”

“I can’t use powerful magic, but I can still find time particles!”

“Then let’s go!”

I was about to storm out the door, but she grabbed my hand and held me tight.

“It will ring immediately.”

“What do you mean by it will ri-! Ah! A cycle comes to its end?”

She nodded.

“Is there a way not to be torn apart?”

“We are mistakes in the time loop, so it should be possible if we hold each other.”

She pointed with her free hand on her other side, where she was holding me.

“567 ... 566 ... 564 ...”

She started to count. She looked blankly into the void, and I didn’t know what to do for the remaining minutes, so I sat on the floor and waited for her countdown to reach zero.

“5… 4… 3… 2… 1… 0! Hold on tight!”

* Tick * * tick * * tack *

The bell rang in my head again, and I took her hand even tighter in reflex. Everything around me disappeared.

 

===

 

“Yikes?”

The next moment I sat on the roof of one of the trains and could feel how the people in the train were crowded together beneath.

“Absent-minded?”

The time guard looked over at me, irritated.

“Timeguard, what’s your name?”

“My name is Siva, Tyche, goddess of luck.”

“You know who I am?”

She nodded.

“I wasn’t sure at first since I heard you were corrupted, but... you are.”

“Well, something like that, but that doesn’t matter now. And have you already sensed something?”

She nodded and pointed to the train below us.

The train slowed down and stopped in front of the building.

“So you maggots! Get out of the train and be checked in turn!”

The previous soldier had opened the train and was shouting at the prisoners inside.

“Wait, I can already feel particles of time. If she is among the prisoners, I will recognize her. So we keep ourselves covered and wait for the right moment.”

I nodded in agreement.

Groups after groups got out of the train. Siva became active as a group of 5 people came out of the train, consisting of two older men, an older woman, and a mother with a child.

“There she is.”

Siva pointed at the mother and child.

“Who? The mother or daughter?”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know. She holds her child close to her, so the particles are spread over both. What should we do?”

“We save them naturally.”

“Both?”

“Both! If I ask a few questions, I’m sure I’ll find out who it is.”

Siva nodded.

“I hope you are right.”

“I hope that too.”

I whispered.

The guard approached the mother and her child.

“Ready?”

“Yes!”

“Let’s go!”

The guard grabbed the mother and yanked her away from her child. He was busy with both hands, which made it easy for us to outwit the guards. Siva took care of the guard who dealt with the mother and child, and I pounced on the other two guards in the background.

This is for the last cycle!

My fist landed on the soldier’s face and knocked him to the ground with a bleeding nose.

“Wah!”

* PENG * * PENG *

The other guard started firing at me with his weapon, but I avoided the attack and kicked the gun out of his hand with a high kick.

The weapon flew high in the air and landed directly in my arms.

I would like to know how these weapons work, but I can find it out another time.

I pushed the thin end of the weapon right into his face. I used so much power that it went through his eye and skull into his head.

* PENG *

A shot went off, and I saw a projectile fly out the back of his skull. I threw the lifeless body to the ground and turned around.

“Come on! Let’s run. I don’t want to fight unnecessarily long.”

Siva’s voice reached me from the side. She had already freed them both. The soldier she was taking care of was laying on the ground without arms, and Siva had his weapon in her hand. His weapon was short and handy and operated with one hand.

“Come over!”

She beckoned me over to them.

“Wh-what’s going on here?”

The mother, concerned, hugged her child and asked in a hesitant voice.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to explain it now, come with us.”

Siva blocked the question and pointed to the wall on the other side of the train.

“We can answer later, but first, there is an entrance to a rarely used tunnel in the wall. There is also a hidden room, which we can use to hide!”

I nodded.

“Come follow her.”

Siva was leading, and I stayed at the rear to check for coming enemies.

 

===

 

“Here!”

A secret door was hidden in one wall of the tunnel. We all went in, and Siva closed the door behind us.

“W-who are you? And why are you helping us?”

The mother asked us nervously.

“Because one of you is responsible for all of this.”

Siva replied directly and without giving me a chance to explain it in more detail.

“Siva! Sorry, she put it in a little extreme way.”

The mother and her child looked even more frightened than before.

“Let’s start over again. This is Siva, and my name is Tyche. What are your names?”

“I-I am Vivien, and this is my five-year-old daughter, Elise.”

“H-h-hel-lo.”

Vivien hesitated to answer my question, and her daughter Elise added a low and weak hello.

“I’ll explain what Siva meant before. All of this is not real, this world is just an illusion. And one of you two is the creator of this illusion... Please don’t worry. Everything that happens here is not real.”

I prefer not to mention that both passed away a long time ago.

“You say that all the years of war were merely a dream? And it didn’t happen?”

I shook my head.

“Unfortunately, no. Probably everything went as it is now, and it’s just an illusion of the past. You have to understand that we, Siva and I, have entered this illusion from the outside. We came here to end it.”

“Let’s say it’s true what you say, what if Elise and I refuse?”

Elise immediately turned to her mother and pulled on her clothes.

“Mom... not.”

She looked sadly at her daughter.

“I know.”

She gently stroked her head with her hand.

“Say? How do you plan to end this illusion?”