The D-Rank Guild Master of the No. 1 Guild

Realizing this, Aria turned Taggiros back into a soul form and hid him. She extended her visa and stayed longer at the orphanage.

To the pregnant woman, Aria said that Taggiros—the father of her child—had left. The woman was devastated.

As she cried, Aria coaxed her with different words.

“Then come with me.”

At that moment, Taggiros realized that Aria’s words meant she intended to kill the woman, extract her soul, and erase all her memories.

But without Aria’s permission, he couldn’t meet the woman. He pleaded with Aria not to do this.

“You’re being selfish.”

Aria snapped.

“Would you rather she stay in this wretched neighborhood, risking harm from robbers, struggling to care for parentless children? It’s better for her to forget those bad memories. Living in the world I created would be a better life.”

Though Taggiros saw some sense in her words, he was terrified of the woman forgetting him and becoming someone else.

Aria looked at him with disdain.

“Do you think your love is so great? You’re just a man passing briefly through her life.”

He knelt, tears streaming, clinging to Aria.

“Please, let her choose. Tell her the truth about your intentions.”

Aria sighed deeply. Though she had spent a long time with Taggiros, she couldn’t comprehend his emotional sensitivity.

Finally, she explained everything to the woman. From the woman’s perspective, it must have sounded fantastical.

“If you come with me, you must abandon all your past memories. You will live a completely new life.”

The woman, though she trusted Aria, refused.

It wasn’t because she was attached to the orphanage or scared to follow Aria. It was a reason Aria could never understand.

“I don’t want to forget him. I’m sorry. Even if he leaves me, I want to remember him.”

Despite all the slander Aria had told her about Taggiros.

As her morning sickness subsided in a few weeks and her belly rapidly grew, the child’s growth rate was astonishingly fast, unlike a human’s.

Aria told the woman that something inexplicable by the laws of the real world was growing inside her. She instilled profound fear in her.

The emotionally vulnerable pregnant woman was swayed.

Aria gave her an amount of money she could never earn in a lifetime, trading the money for the baby.

And so, the woman lost her child.

* * *

Some time later, Taggiros witnessed Aria naming a stunningly beautiful man ‘Akata’ for the first time.

Though he had never seen the man before, Taggiros felt a strange sensation.

‘He resembles her.’

Gradually, Taggiros realized the truth about the child.

Aria manipulated the baby Akata, rapidly aging him into an adult, and then confined him in an isolated chamber in the real world.

She made Akata believe that he and the two of them were the only people in existence. Through Aria, he learned about humanity.

Aria repeatedly implanted horrific false memories of her being murdered in front of Akata, causing him to have seizures and faint.

Every time he fainted and woke up, he would forget the false memories, but the sensations remained. This made him cling to Aria even more obsessively without knowing why.

Akata wasn’t the only one subjected to memory manipulation.

Around that time, Aria also began altering Taggiros’s memories, reasoning that he knew too much.

Whenever Taggiros attempted to rescue Akata from the isolated chamber, his memories would be erased when he reverted to his soul form.

They surfaced and were erased repeatedly.

As the creator, Aria could do anything. No one could defy her.

“Akata is too big, too powerful. He’s difficult to manage.”

In the not yet fully realized virtual world, Aria weakened Akata by making him sick.

“Come here. It’s time for your shot.”

“The red shot hurts…”

While Akata’s body was being altered through blood transfusions from real humans, Taggiros’s misfortune continued to cycle.

Eventually, during a time when Aria was preoccupied with setting up the game company, Taggiros managed to meet Akata.

The boy, now frail and seemingly on the verge of breaking, was asleep, panting heavily.

His hair, once a light brownish-red, had been changed by Aria to a brilliant flame color for his character marketability.

However, his brown eyes were exactly like hers.

For the first time, Taggiros held the bewildered boy as he woke up and whispered in his ear.

“You have a special power. You possess a part of the real world. I believe you will be the one to end all of this. I may forget you again… but I will remember you, time and time again.”

Hoping that these words, which he might forget again, would somehow be imprinted on both of them.

“Once the game begins, the viewers will watch everything in detail, and even Aria won’t be able to manipulate memories from that point. Let’s meet again inside the game.”

My… dear child.

* * *

Five years passed.

Since the woman lost both her beloved and her child.

She had moved out of the slum and settled in the city, but she occasionally visited the slum during the day, reminiscing about the orphanage.

To some, it might be a place they wanted to erase from their lives, but to the kind-hearted woman, even those memories held value.

The entrance to the orphanage wasn’t safe from robbers, but she often stood there, aimlessly gazing at the sky.

It wasn’t that she was waiting for someone with any expectation; she was simply reminiscing.

She only cherished the memory of the day she had walked down that alley with a certain man.

“….”

The weather was unusually nice. A strange ache throbbed in her heart, and she felt restless.

Suddenly, she noticed a figure standing at the end of the alley.

Their eyes met in the silence.

The person, wearing a black hood, stepped forward and removed the sunglasses and hood.

The woman’s eyes widened and didn’t shrink for a long time.

While she had matured slightly over the years, he hadn’t changed at all, except for his hair color.

Yes, he was the same beautiful man with clear eyes.

The man who had once become one with her.

“Do you remember me?”

His first words, spoken cautiously, brought tears to the woman’s eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m too late. I’ve always thought about you.”

A miracle had occurred. The woman’s wish had come true.

Taggiros wore a mischievous, incomprehensibly broad smile. He embraced her tightly as she ran towards him, never intending to let go again.

“You don’t have to leave anymore. I’ll stay by your side, if you’ll have me.”

He whispered sweet words as he comforted the woman, who cried like a child.

“Gis, Gis…”

The name he had asked her to call him by, on the night they had lain together, flowed from her lips.

He shivered with a gentle tremor, barely holding back his tears. He wanted to appear a bit dependable to her, at least at that moment.

Looking up at Taggiros, the woman’s tear-streaked face seemed to be in a dream.

“Gis, what about the child Aria took? Please tell me he grew up safe and sound. Do you know anything?”

“I know. I watched over him.”

During his time away, Taggiros had learned English while reminiscing about her, and now he spoke it quite smoothly.

“Aria is dead… and the child is living happily with their people.”

Wanting to have a proper conversation, Taggiros led the woman into a cozy room inside the orphanage. The headmaster, fortunately, remembered him and allowed him entry.

As soon as they were alone, the woman clung to his neck like a girl, bombarding him with questions.

“What does the child look like? What’s his personality like? Does his resemble you, Gis?”

“His eyes are exactly like yours. That’s how I always remembered the child. His personality… well, neither like mine nor yours. If anything, they seem most influenced by Rudel.”

The woman wondered who Rudel was.

However, Taggiros couldn’t bring himself to explain that the child already had a partner, a colleague, and a family in Rudel. So he just said Rudel was a friend.

“How tall is he? Is he healthy?”

“They were sick at one point, but they’re very healthy now.”

…And taller than me, Taggiros didn’t add. He deftly dodged that part of the question.

“He must be at the age of running around at five years old. I want to see him soon. Will he remember his unworthy mother? If he is living with good people now, I would be happy just to watch from a distance…”

“He has grown well.”

…So well that they are now only two years younger than you.

He sweated nervously behind his smile. The more she asked about the child, the more he found it impossible to tell her the whole truth.

The events of the past five years were far beyond her understanding.

‘Perhaps I’ll explain gradually.’

He decided to put his worries aside. Right now, there were more important things to focus on.

After sharing many stories, the woman showed Taggiros the house she had recently acquired.

The house she had set up alone in the city seemed entirely designed for two people, as if hoping to live with someone.

He was overwhelmed with emotion and couldn’t speak for a while.

“I’ve been waiting.”

More than the words from her mouth, the long-standing yearning in her eyes conveyed her message. Taggiros felt a mix of guilt and joy.

The first victim, and the oldest one, had finally found happiness.