"One hundred years..."
As Ageha whispered those words, her face was a mask of hollow pessimism.
No matter where she looked, only a void of darkness stretched out before her. There was nothing else.
She was expected to spend a hundred years in this space.
A hellish boredom that would inevitably erode her sanity.
Ageha knew that all too well.
After all, this was her second time being sealed.
"With that kind of attitude, you're going to have a rough time ahead."
Startled by the voice, she turned to see a person standing there.
The figure was the spitting image of her, as if she were looking into a mirror.
Upon closer inspection, however, the details differed. It was evident in the sharpness of her gaze and her expressions. Most tellingly, she wore a red ribbon tied in her hair.
"Black Ageha..."
Ageha remembered that Kiska had called this entity by that name.
"Well, I suppose 'reaping what you sow' covers it nicely," Black Ageha said, her lips curling into an eerie, mocking grin.
At that moment, something in the back of Ageha’s mind snapped.
Thinking back, it was because Black Ageha had used <Reset> at that time—just after they had defeated the Dungeon Boss with Kiska—that she had been sent back to a point before the century had passed and ended up sealed all over again.
This creature standing before her was responsible for everything.
"Don't you dare give me that! This is all your fault!"
Before she knew it, Ageha was screaming.
Her tone was a far cry from her usual self.
Everything was Black Ageha’s fault, and Ageha wanted to demand how she had the nerve to say she had brought this on herself.
"Now, don't go playing dumb."
Despite being faced with such blatant murderous intent, Black Ageha didn't flinch; she simply kept that smirk on her face.
"Isn't it a bit much to shift the blame like that? After all, I'm nothing more than your puppet."
Hearing those words, Ageha remembered. That was right.
She had forgotten for a long time.
The true nature of Black Ageha.
Or rather, it would be more accurate to say she had been pretending to forget.
"You explained it to Kiska as a split personality, didn't you? Just another one of your favorite lies. Tell me, how many of them do you need to tell before you're satisfied?"
"I just... I didn't want Kiska to hate me."
"Heh, well, fair enough. I can't say I don't feel the same way. At any rate, it seems you've finally remembered what I really am—"
Black Ageha was not so grand a being that her identity required a dramatic reveal.
The truth was that Black Ageha was nothing more than an Imaginary Friend created by Ageha.
To stave off the madness born of the boredom during her long imprisonment, she had created someone to talk to. That was Black Ageha.
Therefore, Black Ageha was merely Ageha's puppet, moving and speaking only as Ageha dictated.
"When the blood rushed to your head, you killed Kiska countless times. But then, in a moment of lucidity, you realized that if you kept it up, he would despise you. So you came up with a brilliant little plan. You'd claim to have a split personality and use it as an excuse, saying your other self was the one doing all the terrible things."
"But Kiska never once blamed me."
"Exactly. We went to all that trouble to prepare an alibi, and we never even got the chance to use it."
Yes, in the end, Kiska had never once held Ageha's actions against her.
Even though she had done so many things that deserved his loathing.
"But using <Reset> on the very moment he saved you... that was a bit overkill. Now you're paying a price that's hardly worth the gain."
"You're right about that..."
Why had she used <Reset> at that moment, anyway?
Ageha looked back on it.
It was because she couldn't face Kiska. She had felt she had no choice but to pretend she had lost her memory, and as they grew closer, she had become consumed by anxiety.
She was terrified that Kiska's affection wasn't truly for her.
She feared that he didn't care about her at all, or that he loved someone else.
In a fit of self-destructive despair, Ageha had tried to take her own life.
She hadn't been satisfied with mere suicide, though; she had intended to take the entire world down with her.
And so, the world should have been consumed by darkness. Yet, for some reason, Kiska had arrived a hundred years in the past.
How had he managed to get there?
He had mentioned an entity called the Observer, but Ageha knew of no such being. She wondered if it was something akin to a God, but she couldn't find an answer.
Regardless, Ageha was alive.
Ultimately, her grand plan for suicide had failed.
"I'm always being saved by Kiska, aren't I?" she murmured, her hand tracing the ring on her finger.
The only reason her suicide had failed was because Kiska had fought so hard for her.
"I want to see him soon."
As she spoke, she felt her longing for him grow more intense with every passing second.
◆
"Hey, how much time has passed since the Seal took hold?"
It felt as though an eternity had slipped by in this world of darkness.
"Unfortunately, I don't have an internal clock. I haven't the slightest idea," Black Ageha replied.
"Has it been about two years?"
"I doubt even half a year has passed."
"Ugh, it's so slow..."
Ageha let out a weary sigh.
As long as Black Ageha was there to talk to, she could maintain her sanity, but without her, she would have long since lost her mind.
Still, compared to her first time being sealed, her heart felt somewhat lighter.
◆
"I'm bored..."
The words tumbled out as a faint whisper.
She no longer knew how much time had passed.
"Aren't you going to explore the Dungeon today?" Black Ageha asked.
Ageha looked over. While she felt gaunt and exhausted, Black Ageha was smiling with a composed air. It was infuriating.
"What's the point? There's nothing there even if I explore it," Ageha grumbled sulkily.
As a side effect of being sealed for so long, Ageha had become capable of projecting a Clone of herself outside the Seal—into the Dungeon itself.
Because she could move the Clone exactly as if it were her own body, it served as a decent distraction.
However, moving the Clone came with numerous restrictions.
For instance, the Clone could not travel far from where her True Form was located. This meant that she couldn't leave the Dungeon, and even within it, her range of motion was strictly limited.
Furthermore, maintaining the Clone consumed a massive amount of energy, so she couldn't keep it active for very long.
"Why don't you try giving Skills to the adventurers who reach the depths like you used to?"
Just as Black Ageha suggested, Ageha had once granted the Skill: Save & Reset to those who reached the depths of the Kataroff Dungeon.
This Transfer of Skills was another ability she had gained through the long years of her imprisonment.
Her goal had been the hope that an adventurer wielding that skill might survive and eventually find a way to rescue her.
"There's no point. I already know that everyone except Kiska will just end up dying."
During her previous imprisonment, she had granted <Save & Reset> to countless people. But none of them could endure the mental toll of repeated deaths, and they eventually chose to accept their end. The skill didn't activate automatically; if the user gave up, the time loop would not trigger.
Thus, everyone she had gifted it to had died after a few loops.
"But it'll kill time, won't it?"
I suppose so, Ageha thought, nodding at Black Ageha's reasoning.
In her current state, her entertainment was limited.
It might not be so bad to watch how the humans who received <Save & Reset> struggled, much like watching a sport.
◆
Ageha pondered just how much time had passed since the Seal began.
She wanted to believe it had been five years, but it would be too depressing if the reality was less than that, so she tried not to get her hopes up.
"So dull..."
To pass the time, she used her Clone to wander the Dungeon and hand out <Save & Reset>, but encountering anyone at all was an exceptionally rare occurrence.
Even when she finally met someone and granted them the skill, watching their life unfold wasn't particularly fun. Was it because she knew they were destined to die anyway?
When she had done this during her first imprisonment, her emotions had been different.
Back then, it was so rare for anyone to reach the Dungeon Depths that her heart would hammer against her ribs every time someone appeared. She would grant them <Save & Reset> with desperate hope.
Then, she would wait with a prayer in her heart for them to return.
And yet, they would always die along the way, and every single time, Ageha would fall into despair.
Repeating that cycle had slowly withered her heart.
But this time, her mind remained undisturbed.
She knew, without even having to think about it, that it was because she knew Kiska would eventually come for her.
Even so, the melancholy was inescapable.
Occasionally, her Clone would cross paths with Vampire Eudite and it would escalate into a battle to the death, but she doubted that even qualified as a distraction.
Once, Vampire Eudite had even found the location where Ageha was sealed and tried to break the barrier.
She had likely intended to destroy it simply because it was in her way, and then kill Ageha as an afterthought.
But the Seal was incredibly durable, and the vampire had given up almost immediately.
Come to think of it, Kiska was able to undo Ageha's Seal so easily. I wonder why? Ageha pondered this for the first time.
She had already confirmed that the barrier wouldn't budge even if she tried to break it physically with her Clone. Of course, that was partly because she couldn't channel much power through a Clone in the first place.
And so, she decided to investigate the matter to kill some time.
After all, time was the one thing she had in abundance.
◆
An unfathomable amount of time had passed since her imprisonment began.
"Well? Did you find out anything?"
Ageha looked up to see Black Ageha standing there. She only appeared when Ageha was feeling particularly lonely.
"The Barrier’s strength is becoming more brittle as time passes."
"Meaning that by the time a hundred years have passed, anyone will be able to break it?"
Ageha considered Black Ageha's words as she thought.
Was the weakening of the barrier accidental? Or was it intentional? And if it was the latter, for what purpose?
"Perhaps even if Kiska didn't come, the Barrier would have eventually collapsed on its own, letting you out."
"Maybe," Ageha nodded.
Even if the barrier really was designed to fail after a certain amount of time, since she had no way of knowing how many years that would take, it didn't change her gratitude toward Kiska.
Without him, she might have remained sealed for another ten or even a hundred years.
"By the way, can't you break it from the inside with your Clone?"
"No. Whenever I try to use my own power against it, it gets repelled for some reason."
"I see."
She truly didn't understand the mechanics of this barrier.
The Tyrant King had been the one to create it, but she really wondered who he was. He felt like an existence far removed from the laws of this world.
"Maybe the Tyrant King's goal wasn't actually to seal me away."
"What do you mean?"
She had assumed he had sealed her simply to neutralize her since he couldn't kill her.
"This is just a guess, but maybe he sealed me so that I would survive until the world a hundred years in the future."
Normally, a human would be long dead after a hundred years. However, inside the Seal, one did not age.
"What would be the point of that?"
"I don't know."
Ultimately, no matter how much she thought about it, there was no way to find an answer.
◆
"Hey... how long has it been...?" she whispered.
"Who knows? If you strip it from an adventurer who comes along, wouldn't you find out?" Black Ageha replied dismissively.
Ageha thought she had a point, but she barely had the energy to act on it.
Still, she was dying to know how much time had passed.
I'll give it a try, she thought, and she waited intently for an adventurer to appear.
Since the Kataroff Dungeon was an S-Rank Dungeon, few came to challenge it.
However, people still arrived on rare occasions because Kataroff Village would exile its sinners to the depths.
Kiska had said he was one of those people.
Perhaps because she was thinking of him, her longing to see him grew sharper.
With that thought in mind, she waited for someone to reach the Dungeon Depths.
Because they came so rarely, she waited for days on end.
Finally, a man arrived, only for her to watch as he was mauled to death by a monster.
Using her Clone, she searched through the man's belongings.
Was there anything that could tell her the date?
"Oh... a diary."
The cover was sun-bleached and the writing was faded.
A diary would surely have dates written in it. If she could find that, she would know how many years had passed.
She felt as though an immense amount of time had elapsed since she was sealed.
Her guess was that it had been at least ten years as she opened the pages, found a date, and began to calculate.
"Wait... It's only been one year..."
Specifically, one year and a half-month.
Her guess had been catastrophically wrong.
"Ah..."
Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks.
The shock of realizing that far less time had passed than she had imagined was overwhelming.
At that moment, something inside Ageha finally shattered.