After I died, my personal maid rebelled.

As time went by, and the bits and pieces of her teenage life converged into a river called growth, Elena could no longer smile.

The boy died, in the dead of night, at the foot of a remote mountain.

That day was a rare half-day of rest for the boy.

He packed his things and went home as usual, passing walls covered with time-related slogans.

From a magical perspective, this is an extremely dangerous setup. Time, time is calculated everywhere, then the mind is guided to a certain point in time...

Elena remained silent. The timeline could influence and distort reality, and for a boy whose sense of reality was already shattered, this distortion would be particularly intense.

Sure enough, the boy's blank stares became longer and longer. He realized this and began to learn a method, such as constantly touching real objects to focus his attention.

Oswald also had this habit; he would often fidget with something while thinking, sometimes a cigar, sometimes a coin.

But soon, the boy, who was learning from a glowing panel, was drawn to a pop-up message.

[The game you're following has been updated, with new content added...]

The update interface opened almost instantly. The boy had few hobbies and not many friends, but he would show a rare smile when playing games.

Although he always complained that the game's plot was outrageous.

While waiting for the game to update, the boy opened a book. Perhaps because he was relaxed, he didn't notice the footsteps behind him this time.

Elene, who had been with Oswald for several years, blushed slightly and was unaware that this was the beginning of Oswald's arrival in her world.

"I bought you a computer, is this what you're going to use it for?"

The woman's words were soft and cold, and the boy almost immediately froze on the spot, his fingers turning the page stiff as if frozen.

"You said you had something to do today... Why are you so quiet at home?"

The boy quickly closed the game interface, gripped the book tightly in his hand, lowered his head, and dared not meet the gaze of the tense face behind him.

"How will I know if you're really studying if I don't say it like this!"

"You're still trying to lie to me! You're lying to me again! Is this what you call studying?! How could you lie to me like that!"

The woman suddenly screamed hysterically, as if she had suffered a great injustice, her eyes bloodshot and terrifying.

"I... I was just playing for a while during my break," the boy explained, his face pale.

"Rest? Rest?! I'm both a father and a mother, working myself to the bone every day, without ever thinking about resting! Everything I eat and use is prioritized for you, and this is how you repay me?!"

Several slaps landed on the boy's face, and the angry roars repeatedly flooded his brain.

"Why don't you just die!"

"You worthless, good-for-nothing!"

"I raised you to this size, over a hundred pounds! I should have strangled you, you bastard, back then!"

Elena took a deep breath. The boy's mother's emotional state was even more unstable than the spellcasting of a third-rate magician. No one knew when or where this powder keg would explode.

In the past, the boy chose to silently endure it, but as he grew up, met more and more people, and learned more and more knowledge, he also realized that his family was unhealthy.

This illness did not come from her deceased father, but from a great mother.

Just as the boy wrote in his diary: All the hatred is real, all the fear is real, and most terrifyingly, all the love is real.

As if his fate had been manipulated, the boy chose to rebel this time.

He caught the slap that was about to land on him and calmly questioned, "Even if I'm wrong for playing games, I can accept being hit or scolded."

"Can't we just stick to the facts? Stop bringing up how many years you've raised me and how terrible I am. I'm your own son! Am I really as awful as you make me out to be?"

But his mother's attention was completely drawn to the boy's strong hands, and she didn't hear a word he said.

This was the first time she had encountered resistance, and the first time she had discovered that her child was strong enough to fight back against an adult.

A strong sense of unease and fear arose within her. In order to dispel this unease, she decisively abandoned dialogue and instead chose to suppress the situation with the most forceful means.

The boy's nightmare began.

Those uncles and elders who usually didn't care about him at all, under the guise of caring about his education, all made a show of themselves.

And like an announcer, her mother, while being comforted, tearfully recounted the boy's crimes.

"I was raised for your Tian family's sake, what good have I ever had in my life!"

"His wings haven't even hardened yet, and he dares to fight me! When I'm old, he'll probably still beat me to death!"

"All I do is tell him to study hard, and he yells at me and scolds me, as if nothing I do is right."

"I can't control him anymore. Just one thing: if you don't raise this son properly, your entire Tian family will never have peace!"

Anyone can guess what will happen to a child who has no father and receives the mother's permission to be violent.

The uncles and elders who had always treated him like he didn't exist actually showed him real concern this time.

After a full-blown brawl, the woman seemed quite satisfied to have finally extinguished the flames of her child's rebellion.

Her unease vanished, leaving behind only a scarred body and a broken soul.

Elena's eyes reddened as she watched her Duke curled up in a ball in the dark room, silently enduring the pain in his body.

He didn't shed a single tear from beginning to end. He was so clever that he could even deduce the logic behind the woman's behavior. But it was precisely because he understood this that he was even more aware of his own powerlessness.

The life-changing exam is just around the corner. He needs to be patient and optimistic; he still has a bright future ahead of him.

Even though he bit down on his tears and blood and swallowed them, this lonely eighteen-year-old boy still inevitably fell into a breakdown.

He would only confide his grievances to one person.

Late at night, the boy, whose wounds had just scabbed over, slowly left the room. Under Elena's watchful gaze, he walked out of the house, gently closed the door, went downstairs, and mounted that strange thing.

Under a sky full of stars, he left the city and headed alone into the deep mountains.

Saying goodbye to the tombstone, penniless, he decided to abandon everything and venture into the wider world... Years later, the boy became a man, and his path to adulthood was no easier than Elena's.

He remained lonely and as calm as a block of ice, but society extended a helping hand to him. After experiencing ups and downs, he found a stable job and began to live a decent life.

That very night, on the rugged mountain road on his way back to visit his grandfather, he encountered the dump truck that was destined to be his.

Eleanor was in a daze; Oswald's life had come to such an abrupt end.

The man's face was calm when he died, without the slightest sign of pain or contortion.

Those dead eyes were just as numb and empty as they had been in life, like a lonely soul that couldn't find itself.

Elena knelt beside the body, loosely holding the man's hand—a ritual from her hometown to bid farewell to a loved one.

From a rational perspective, the man is already dead; he and Oswald are simply two individuals from the same soul.

If Oswald didn't have the memories of men, then Oswald would just be Oswald.

As the dump truck vanished into the void, a transcendent power enveloped the corpse. A flash of starlight, and a wisp of soul flew into the night sky, disappearing without a trace in the blink of an eye.

[Hello, host, would you like to go to another world?]

……

Awakening as if from a dream, Elena returned to reality. She still held the Star of Prayer high, her silent gaze fixed on the bloody battlefield.

"Wait, the great being, Oswald, he hasn't returned yet," Elinie cried out in her heart, her anxiety growing.

[As an ordinary person, you cannot use the Wishing Star, Elena]

The cold, mechanical words seemed to carry a hint of helplessness and difficulty, and then continued.

[But your efforts have paid off; even this system didn't expect you to achieve this.]

[As a reward, this system will be temporarily bound to you, allowing you to retain your past memories.]

Keep going... protect our only player in this increasingly dangerous world.

A sudden burst of light erupted from a corner of the battlefield!

That's the area where the Royal Knights are located?

Before Elena could think any further, the scroll of time froze at that moment.

Time is never a long river; it has no past and no future.

All it has is this one second.

And this precise second encompasses the entire history of the universe. So now, it's not time that's ticking, it's not time that's reversing!

It's the world! The world is regressing; it's locking itself into its past and future!

As the galaxy swirled, Elena saw silhouettes of all living beings, sweeping past her like a storm. Looking up again, on a higher scale, the immense power of the stars was revealed in its entirety.

The sky fell into a long night, and then lit up for a moment just as the stars finished converging their power.

Elena took that step unconsciously, and the world returned to stability. Stepping onto the floor of the Duke's mansion, there was no longer any mountain of corpses or sea of ​​blood beneath her feet, only the soft clatter of her little leather shoes.

She's back.

She wasn't hallucinating either; she definitely heard Oswald's angry voice.

"Tear all of these things down! Go and summon the Knights Commander and the Secretary General."