Chapter 251
‘What is this?’
Lloyd’s eyes widened.
No, he tried to widen them, but failed.
Of course he did.
Because he was watching an ending spoiler.
Because only his consciousness had entered his future body at the point of the ending.
In other words, he could not move his future body as he pleased.
It was a first-person perspective, yet he was nothing more than a complete observer.
From that position, he stared at a scene from his future.
Where his gaze landed—
There was an old notebook.
But the cover of the notebook was unusual.
Written across it were the words, ‘Record of Lloyd Frontera.’
In other words, it was a diary.
‘I keep a diary?’
His mind tilted in confusion.
He had never been the type to keep a diary.
The only exceptions had been the diaries he wrote as elementary school homework, or the forced journal entries during his military service.
‘That’s still true now. I don’t keep a diary.’
How had his future self developed a habit like that?
How deeply rooted must that habit have become for him to be writing in his diary even at the moment of death?
‘Still, it isn’t bad.’
Lloyd chuckled softly.
At first, he had been startled because it was unexpected.
But on second thought, it wasn’t such a bad sight.
No, he rather liked it.
‘How leisurely and sweet must the life I’ve lived have been if I ended up keeping a diary?’
It meant he had been bored.
It meant he had been at ease.
It meant his life had been that peaceful and uneventful.
Otherwise, there was no way he would have picked up a habit like keeping a diary.
Thinking that, he naturally felt relieved.
But the very next moment—
A faint crack appeared in that relieved heart.
It began when his future self coughed.
“…Cough! Cough!”
Hack!
A violent fit of coughing burst out.
A few drops of dark red blood splattered across the diary.
His future self raised a trembling hand.
Then, with a sleeve that was badly frayed and soaked in sweat, he wiped the blood off the diary.
‘Huh? Wait.’
Lloyd’s heart sank.
‘Why is the sleeve like that?’
His gaze turned toward the sleeve wiping away the blood.
It was a worn-out shirt.
The sleeve must originally have been some bright color.
But when was the last time it had been washed and worn?
It was stained all over with black and yellow grime.
On top of that, it was badly frayed.
The buttons seemed to have fallen off long ago and were nowhere to be seen.
‘What? If I lived a peaceful life, why do my clothes look like that?’
Something was wrong.
His heart pounded, thump, thump.
He wanted to believe it wasn’t true.
But an unavoidable dread crept over him.
His gaze grew urgent.
‘Wait. Then what about my hand?’
Only then did he remember the two previous ending spoilers.
Each time he used an ending spoiler, he borrowed his future self’s sight and looked around.
Unless he stood before a mirror, he couldn’t properly see his own face.
So the simplest way to check how old his future self was—
Was to look at his hand.
‘My hand, my hand?’
His gaze dropped to the back of the hand exposed beneath the sleeve.
And then it froze.
‘There are… no wrinkles.’
It was smooth.
A little rough, but there were no wrinkles.
There were no age spots either, the kind an old person would likely have.
‘Then this isn’t death by old age. What kind of situation is this?’
Let’s keep watching.
Let’s confirm it first.
With an anxious heart, Lloyd watched.
Meanwhile, his future self, who had barely managed to suppress the coughing fit, picked up a pen.
With a trembling hand, he opened the diary.
And thanks to that, Lloyd was able to read the entries inside.
Rustle.
[This is the first time I’ve written a diary of my own free will. It’s sad. The Count had an accident. He was only out enjoying his usual horseback ride. It was a path he always rode. Who could have known the horse would get startled by a weasel and leap right there of all places? Who could have known that in that moment, the Count’s neck would strike a tree branch? The physician says we should wait and see for now, but this… I don’t know. I’m just sad.]
Rustle.
[The Count woke up after only a day. He said he can no longer feel anything below his neck. Even so, he forced a smile and tried to reassure everyone. He said he was fine. He said if he couldn’t feel anything, then it didn’t even hurt. He said lying down wasn’t inconvenient. He smiled so kindly. Those became the Count’s last words. Right now, outside, the Countess is crying silently. To be honest, I want to cry too. I should go outside first and comfort the Countess.]
‘……’
What is this?
Lloyd stared at the diary in disbelief.
Meanwhile, the pages kept turning one after another.
[The Countess has lost her voice. She doesn’t say a single word. She doesn’t smile either. She no longer tends the flower garden. I was worried the neglected flowers might wither and die, so I took up the trowel myself. I hope the freesias bloom beautifully this year. So that the Countess’s sorrow may ease.]
Rustle.
[The freesias bloomed beautifully. But the Countess can no longer see them. It was only after hearing maid Emily scream that morning that I realized something was wrong. No one knew that the dining room, where everyone once laughed together, would become the Countess’s final resting place. Everything had been normal until just last night. Did the Countess miss the Count who left first? I should call Julian, who is in the capital. The mansion, once so warm, now feels too vast and empty.]
Rustle.
[No reply has come from Julian. He must be rushing here rather than sending a letter, just like when the Count passed away. I sent Ggoming, so he should arrive soon. I hope so.]
Rustle.
[A reply arrived. Not from Julian, but a letter of terrible news written by Miss Scheherazade. She wrote that she should never have left the house empty. That she should never have left Julian alone. That she never imagined robbers would break in during that time. No, that if she had returned just a little earlier, she could have found Julian and moved him before it was too late. A letter filled with grief and self-blame arrived in trembling handwriting. I am dazed. I can’t believe it. So Julian, left alone at home, was stabbed by a robber’s knife? It feels like a lie. No, I wish it were a lie.]
Rustle.
[I don’t know how I spent the past month. To be honest, I’m still dazed. But I force myself to pick up the pen, thinking I should at least leave a record. During that time, I held the Countess’s funeral and came to the capital. I also held Julian’s funeral. Do sadness and grief grow numb when they come one after another? I don’t know. Right now I just feel strange. The consecutive deaths of the Count, the Countess, and Julian. Am I strange for thinking it eerily resembles the situations in Iron Blooded Knight? It’s ominous. I’m uneasy.]
‘This is insane. What is this?’
Lloyd clenched his teeth inwardly.
His gaze became even more frantic.
The diary pages kept turning slowly.
He desperately tried not to miss a single line.
[The ominous feeling does not seem to be mistaken. A message came from the royal palace. I had an audience with Her Majesty the Queen. But it was strange. The Queen’s left arm moved unnaturally. After those around us were dismissed, I cautiously asked. Could it be that there is something wrong with Your Majesty’s left arm? The Queen smiled bitterly. It was as good as an answer. The moment I saw that, I remembered. Iron Blooded Knight. The attempted assassination of the Queen that occurred in it. The arm that was severed back then was the left one.]
Rustle.
[I returned to the estate after a long time. While I was in the capital, I had to comfort Miss Scheherazade again and again. Perhaps, if my ominous prediction is correct, I had a feeling something would surely happen to Miss Scheherazade as well. Please, let no misfortune befall her. Please let my premonition be wrong.]
Rustle.
[My heart dropped. Shailo and Mitrof. The moneylenders who once held our family in debt. I heard today that the two of them were murdered. During a trivial dispute, their throats were stabbed, they say. The moment I heard that news, my heart sank. The Count and Countess, Julian, and the two moneylenders. Aren’t they all people who originally met their deaths in the early part of Iron Blooded Knight?]
Rustle.
[I’ve lived on edge for several months. Fortunately, there have been no major incidents or accidents so far. But my heart feels empty. I’m uneasy. These days, I keep thinking about alcohol. I shouldn’t be like this.]
Rustle.
[A war has broken out in the south. Not a great war, but a local conflict, they say. Well, it is probably not something I need to worry about. I should send a letter to Miss Scheherazade. Asking whether she would like to come stay here.]
Rustle.
[No reply has come from Miss Scheherazade. Something feels wrong. No, I’m uneasy.]
Rustle.
[News of Miss Scheherazade has arrived. It is notice of her death in battle. Only after receiving it was I able to learn the full story. As soon as the war in the south broke out, she volunteered, they say. Was it to vent the resentment of losing Julian? She recklessly charged at the head of the assault force, they say. She became isolated deep in enemy territory and fought desperately, they say. That was the last anyone saw of her, they say. Now… I don’t know. The people whose fates changed because I fought so hard here. The people who escaped death because of that. They are leaving one by one.]
‘This is insane.’
Lloyd trembled with rage.
The diary kept turning.
And he continued to witness the terrible news his future self had received.
Sultan died after a fall during an event.
Arosh suffered a serious injury while hunting and was left in a vegetative state.
The young lady who ruled Namaran Viscounty also met with an accident.
Her carriage slipped on the steep road at the city entrance, crushed her, and killed her instantly.
‘What is this? This isn’t even just a twist of fate.’
It was absurd.
But for all of that to have really happened—
It was unbelievable, absurd, and chilling.
Because he could see the pattern shared by all those incidents.
‘They were all characters who originally died or suffered terrible accidents in Iron Blooded Knight. But they were also people who survived because their fates were changed by me coming here.’
And yet every one of them, without exception, had suffered accidents and deaths eerily similar in form to those in the original story.
‘Then what about me?’
Suddenly, Lloyd Frontera’s final end in Iron Blooded Knight came back to him.
He drank heavily again and again until he contracted a terrible illness.
Then he died vomiting blood in the back room of a tavern.
‘Don’t tell me.’
Before he knew it, the diary had turned to the final page.
Staring at that blank page, Lloyd tensed up.
Meanwhile, his future self finally moved the pen.
With a hand trembling so badly it was pitiful.
With handwriting distorted beyond recognition.
Slowly, laboriously, he filled the last blank page.
[I don’t know anymore. How did things end up like this? Should I not have touched alcohol? No, I couldn’t protect anyone. I was too miserable, you know. I just… want to rest now. I don’t even care about the sweet life anymore. Two lives? That part was true, though. Even so, even though I wrote that just a few days ago, I still ended up like this. It’s just hard. I’m tired and exhausted. Fate, I think maybe, in the end, it can’t be defied. What is all this. I really……]
And at that very moment—
“…Cough! Gah! Hack! Gahk!”
His body, which had been barely moving the pen, convulsed violently.
He coughed in agony, as if vomiting out his very soul.
Then something burst out of him all at once.
Splat!
‘…!’
It was blood.
Dark red blood gushed out in an amount enough to fill a bowl.
It completely drenched the diary he had been writing in.
Crash!
He toppled over with the chair.
At last, the room came fully into view.
A familiar place.
The second floor of the estate tavern.
An old back room.
“Lloyd-nim!”
Someone rushed in too late.
Silver hair, vivid even through the blurring vision.
“Ja…vier.”
A hand hurriedly reaching out to check on him.
That was the end.
……Whoosh!
His vision, his world, went dark.
For an instant, his whole body felt as though it were floating in midair.
And then Lloyd opened his eyes.
“……”
Rustle.
The curtain, which had hung motionless in the air, fluttered in the night breeze.
At that sight, Lloyd’s entire body twitched.
Only after he looked toward the window did he realize it.
‘I’m back.’
The ending spoiler was over.
Before he knew it, he had returned to the mansion bedroom, back to the present.
But even then, his racing heart refused to settle.
‘What was it that I just saw?’
He couldn’t believe it.
But he had to.
Because the ending spoiler had never lied to him before.
The locust swarm brought on by the Monster Domino Phenomenon.
The cholera outbreak among the refugees who had gathered.
Both had been prevented because of the ending spoiler.
So this time as well—
It could not be false.
Lloyd’s vision darkened.
‘That definitely wasn’t just a string of unfortunate coincidences.’
Seated on the edge of the bed, he struggled to steady his breathing.
At the same time, he carefully sorted through the chain of events he had just glimpsed in that future diary.
‘The day the Count suffered that terrible accident while horseback riding. Judging by what I saw, it was about three years from now.’
That was where it all began.
At first, he had thought it was just a coincidence.
He had thought it was nothing more than an unfortunate accident.
But after reading that future diary, he knew it wasn’t.
‘It can’t be a coincidence. It’s too cruel to be one. Because only the people who were supposed to die in Iron Blooded Knight, but didn’t because of me, were targeted so precisely and killed.’
And the forms their deaths took were eerily similar to those in the original story.
Even in the case of Queen Alicia, who did not die but instead suffered unexplained paralysis in her arm, it was the same.
‘In the original, her arm was severed. Here, instead of being cut off, it becomes paralyzed.’
Then even if the arm remained attached, it was no different from having lost it.
Especially for the Queen, who was a Sword Master, that was even more true.
And what about himself?
‘After going through all of that, I sank into depression and turned to alcohol. Then illness took root. And in the end, I wound up… as a wreck in a tavern back room.’
Vomiting out a bowlful of blood before dying.
In the end, he met a death much like Lloyd Frontera’s in the original story.
‘Wow. What kind of insane nonsense is this?’
Disgust welled up inside him.
Was this fate twisting itself back into shape?
Or proof that fate could not be defied in the end?
If so, then perhaps this really was an unsolvable problem.
‘No. It can’t be.’
Lloyd shook his head.
Whether it was fate twisting back.
Or the reality that fate could not be defied.
He had to at least try something first.
Because giving up before even trying was too unfair.
‘Of course! After all the work I’ve put in until now!’
He had finally, bit by bit, painstakingly stacked up all his honey jars.
He ought to have been able to spend the rest of his life rolling around with them in his arms.
But to go through all this instead?
He refused.
If that kind of ending was supposed to be the conclusion of this story—
Then he wanted to grab the bastard writing it by the collar and slam him to the ground.
That was why—
‘There has to be a cause behind that disastrous future. Fate or not, there has to be some way to change it or stop it.’
He thought.
The simplest method?
There had to be some way to prevent the Count’s horseback riding accident, the incident that started it all.
But soon, he shook his head.
‘No. No matter how I look at it, that doesn’t feel like some simple unfortunate accident. So that won’t be enough. Even if I prevent that accident, the Count will probably suffer some other accident instead. And then similar misfortunes will just continue one after another anyway.’
If those accidents were the price of defying fate—
If fate itself was exerting force to drag events here back toward the original story—
Then simply stopping the first accident would never be enough.
‘Of course, it could really just be an accident. But what if it isn’t? What if I stay complacent, make no preparations, and then end up facing a truly hopeless situation? Then it’s over. I can’t just sit here and do nothing. First, I have to assume the worst and find the root cause.’
Lloyd came to that conclusion.
Then the answer was simple.
He had to find the cause.
‘There’s not much time.’
Lloyd sprang to his feet.
In the middle of the night, he stepped out into the corridor of the mansion.
And at the same time, a vague intuition slowly took shape inside him.
If the journey until now had been about overcoming the family’s crisis—
Then from here on, it seemed that a journey to confront the fate he had changed was about to begin.
Even so, he was not intimidated.
‘Well, I have to.’
There was no avoiding it anyway.
Like the murderous pile of assignments professors used to throw out without mercy.
Like those days when he had to earn a living while doing those assignments.
If it couldn’t be avoided—
If it had to be done—
‘First, let’s cut down on sleep.’
He chose the simplest, most classic coping method he had relied on during the hardest days of his past.
If you have assignments to finish but no time?
While having to work part-time, what if there isn’t enough time?
There’s only one answer.
Reduce sleep.
By staying up all night, you create time that wasn’t there.
That’s how it started.
Just like the desperate days of the past.
Lloyd began staying up all night in the mansion’s study.
Of course, he didn’t forget to grumble in the process.
‘Ugh! If only there was internet here!’
The miserable end he glimpsed through the ending spoiler.
The grueling search for materials to find a clue to change that fate continued.