The pulling force was strong, sudden, and brief. Before he could muster a fight over a dazed state he was in, he was already trapped and lose sight of the surroundings to the darkness. The darkness persisted only for about a tenth of a second before it was being replaced with the feeling of watching the world through a blurry glass. His point of view was not restrained to the visual perspective of a normal human anymore, and though everything was indistinct, he had no blind spot in his sight anymore.

The world outside his current container descended into chaos with the bystander hurrying to the exit but colliding with each other in their panic. Most people were prioritizing themselves over the other, shoving each other over the right to use the exit. The soldier that was not involved with holding down his currently separated body tried to control the flow of the masses, but they were overwhelmed by the panicking people.

And while the thick light pillar descended and clashed with the rolling fog of inky darkness, the sage stood up slowly with great effort. She dazedly looked at her surroundings and blanched when she found out that her book was nowhere near her. She gazed at the crowd with a grimace of apprehension before taking a deep breath and steeling herself to do something.

She lifted her outstretched right hand above her head and made a long string of gestures using the left hand in front of her torso. The palm of her right hand shone with a rippling wave of blue light, and whenever the light passed through the crowd, they became slower and more lethargic. When the light died off she dove into the crowd and force herself through into the direction where the book fell.

He wasn’t idle while watching the commotion. He flexed his consciousness, inspecting the thing that trapped him inside, and he found it was quite a strong vessel. It was nothing compared to the seal he was previously in, and it was not quite as tricky. It was quite easy to breach from the inside, but he held himself from the thought of escaping.

There was no use escaping to go back to his body when it looked like something else – that he wasn’t sure he could force out in the current situation – was inhabiting it. so he stopped and turned to inspect the one holding his container.

The vessel he was in was being carried by a nondescript young male of Iverle kingdom descent, and he held it inconspicuously like it was not something important. It was impressive how the young man’s hold on the vessel made the vessel into something insignificant and overlooked when it’s shape was enough to make it suspicious. He was sure that along with the ability to pull and entrap him inside, this container was also the thing that loosened the seal that was previously holding him.

He was interested in knowing how the young man pulled off his sabotage attempt over something important – he estimated that his seal was something important, judging from the difficulty in breaching it and his previous status as the hero – without being caught. But then he remembered that it seemed that his sealing place was being turned into a tourist attraction.

It looked like his carrier was not in a hurry to get out, so he turned his gaze to the saint that had reached the place where her book had fallen. He sneered inwardly over her frantic attempt to placate the book so she could use it again. He knew he had struck at the perfect time and using the correct method using his foreknowledge of the book’s complicated rule of usage. There were ten or so methods to hinder the holder of the book, but he had chosen the method that would erase the bond between it and the sage.

From the cursory look that he had of the room he was sealed in, he could tell that those people intended to keep his body and the abomination sealed to prevent the world from heading into the worst direction. If those people actually had the knowledge he had, they would have known that there was actually no use in sealing him along with the carcass of the abomination.

The book might have been of use if it was used against the unchanged cycle of the past, but he had altered it bit by bit before the final fight against the abomination. Sealing him and the abomination together inside would only end up delaying the inevitable for a couple of centuries, and the people of the future would have been ill-prepared for the cascade of disaster when they finally found out that the final measure was actually just short-term solution.

Now that he broke the seal and obstructing the sage from fixing it, the inevitable would happen in a decade at the longest. It would have been such a shame if the end happened a long time in the future, but now with his interference, it would surely happen in those guys' lifetime. After all, the Sage still looked like how she was before, so there was a chance that the other was still alive. He would be able to see their expression when they found out that their choice of stopping him was the wrong one.

The bystander had dispersed, and the young man holding his vessel was walking out following the last of them. He had thought that he would carry the container like before, but when the young man neared the exit of the room he put the container inside his bag. The wide view receded into darkness when his vessel was being put away, but he still had a chance to send a final sneer at the sage’s direction.

...

When the young man pulled his vessel from his bag, he found out that there was something off him. He inspected him for a second before he stretched a tendril of his consciousness over the container to interact with something that he felt familiar with. The form of his carrier rippled for a bit before shrinking into the form of a surprised pre-adolescent girl with the facial trait that reminded him of someone he once knew. Someone he trusted and valued as much as himself, but only reciprocated with betrayal in the end.

“what’s your relationship to the saint?”

The little girl was still stunned in surprise before answering in a barely heard muttering“...I am her daughter”

The face of the little girl overlapped with the saint, and various memory that he experienced with her surfaced in his mind. The last memory he remembered made a sudden surge of rage arose inside of him and he suddenly reared back to prepare a strike with all his wrath. The girl flinched in fear, drawing back her head and reflexively closed her eyes but kept his container in her hold. He intended to strike her down, released all his anger on her, but when he finally struck, it was not on her.

She was not her. Even when she had her blood, she is not responsible for what she did to him long ago.

The loud sound of his strike impacting and destroying the stone floor made her fall onto her butt, letting out a small whimper from her tightly pressed lips. She sat still with her face turned away and her eyes closed. She still hadn’t let go of the container, holding it as far as she could away from her body.

He turned his attention away from her, gazing at the horizon and clouds in the sky.