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Turning my head around to what she was fussing about, my gaze landed on an utterly unexpected sight.

"...?"

Sophie, pushed to the ground, was staring at her hand.

Or at least, what \'used\' to be her hand, as everything from her right wrist onwards had been cleanly severed from her body.

"..."

"A-... A-a-a-a-a--"

Now, her right hand lay on the cold, ossified grass below, leaking steaming blood into the hardened soil as it confronted the chilly air generated by the ice.

The whole atmosphere had frozen over, not just the park.

Why... How did this happen?

I was puzzled for a brief moment before I realised.

Facing off against Avon Laura\'s inhuman level of strength, someone who had experienced perhaps countless battles in the past couple of decades in her venture of protecting the world from dangerous individuals as denoted by the Wardens.

Even if she had a powerful Supernatural Ability, it\'s not like she had spent even a year training it yet.

Being a complete virgin to real conflict, there was no way Sophie would be able to put up a reasonable fight.

Thinking about it now, maybe she was fortunate enough to be able to drive away the other two individuals that had come to help.

The problem is, so long as Avon Laura continued to keep up and apply the pressure, Sophie wasn\'t even being given a chance to react, let alone retaliate.

Being struck by that incomprehensibly heavy blade over and over again.

Being knocked back, step by step.

Eventually, she had been pushed to a cliff\'s edge... And then over it.

It never occurred to me that such a thing would actually happen.

Did I underestimate Avon Laura after witnessing her continuous pitiful showing over the past couple of incidents, or was I simply overestimating Sophie\'s capabilities?

But, I truly believed she would be able to handle whatever hurdle came her way...

"..."

...And perhaps, that was the issue.

"N-n-n-o, but h-how...? This w-wasn\'t supposed to happen, so why...?!"

Casting a sideways glance at Araceli, who muttered nonsense under her breath with widened eyes, I looked back to the image of a helpless Sophie on the ground and slowly opened my mouth.

"...Selina."

"A-a-a-ah, wh-what do we d-do...? S-S-Sophie..."

Busy wailing with lines of tears streaming down her face, she evidently didn\'t even notice. Reinforcing my voice with a little more strength, I called her with a cold tone that couldn\'t be ignored.

"Selina."

"! Ye-yes..."

"What are you doing just standing here and whining?"

"...P-pardon...?"

An instant passed after she replied with that.

"Aaaaaggghhh...!?"

Belatedly, it seems that Sophie\'s mind was beginning to fully process the state of her body as she howled through tightly gritted teeth, causing Selina to flinch beside me.

Sighing internally, I turned my face to her directly.

"Do you not remember the reason I brought you here?"

"S-So...phie..."

"Go. Now."

"Eek...!?"

Placing my hand on her shoulder, I roughly pulled her away from me and pushed her towards Sophie\'s direction.

She was terribly slow to move, but her stiff feet soon loosened and she began to approach.

Meanwhile, Avon Laura stood there with a sad expression on her face and open eyes as she stared solemnly at an anguished Sophie, seemingly having returned from her inner mind.

Honestly, we were lucky that they were so heavily avoidant of killing innocent people.

I was somewhat surprised by the fact Avon Laura would unhesitatingly chop someone\'s hand off when they hadn\'t really done anything yet, but I suppose she was only doing what she felt she had to do to end the fight as soon as possible.

Although, I couldn\'t really call it a fight since it was more along the lines of one-sided bullying.

"Sophie...!"

The moment the gap between the girls lessened, Selina hastened her pace. Quickly arriving, she immediately fell to her knees at the groaning Sophie\'s side and gently held her tensed arm.

I used the Measurement of Truth to examine her mental state.

Sophie\'s body was hot, but she felt cold. Steeped in sweat, the entirety of her being was simply trying its hardest to endure the acute, excruciating pain, and she held on despite her mind beginning to feel faint.

By recalling fragments of memories about her mother, her pain almost seemed to lessen.

\'What she felt was far worse than something like this, so what the hell am I having such a hard time for?\'

That type of thing.

I watched as Selina tightly squeezed her eyes shut before trepidatiously picking up Sophie\'s cleaved hand from the floor so as to not throw up in the midst of it all, and then softly connecting inner flesh-to-flesh with a squelch.

Activating the Measurement of Life, a warm glow erupted from her hands as the healing began, making her appear similar to a compassionate priestess or benevolent saintess from fiction, praying to her god for a patient or loved one to be cured.

In any case, it took far longer than it should have, but here we go.

Turning my head, I looked at Araceli, who remained standing there incredulously as if the current situation was simply mind-boggling.

"What\'s wrong with you all of a sudden? Were you startled that your prediction was wrong? I asked you to protect her, didn\'t I? But you declined."

"..."

"What was it you mentioned? Something along the lines of \'there won\'t be a need for it\'?"

I couldn\'t understand what was going through her mind, and the Measurement of Truth wouldn\'t help me in that either.

But, I was beginning to understand something about the individual \'Araceli Arévalo\'.

There was a possibility that she had either foreseen or directly come from the future like Avon Laura or Azaki Kiryuuin, but there was something subtly different about what she knew compared to what they knew.

Perhaps she came from an alternate timeline? Whatever the case, it was something I am determined to figure out.

They might have witnessed a future I have not, and they might possess knowledge I do not.

Nonetheless, that does not make them my equal.

There are obvious flaws present in their abilities; gaps of knowledge in their brains; and faults in their plans.

If they have come from the future, they must be aware.

\'The future\' is a malleable thing.

They might have come to the past with hopes to change the future, but they should realise something critical.

Knowledge of the future is only valuable when the future is certain.

If something happens in the past, or in this case the present, to change the future, then the future immediately becomes uncertain from then on.

What use is knowledge of future events if those future events are altered by actions of the past?

Araceli uttered, "...Was it... Because of my interference...?"

The proof is right in front of me.

So, it doesn\'t matter if they know what happens in the future or not.

What advantage will that possibly gain them when they can\'t even predict what is going to happen?

If they are not sure of what comes next, their "future knowledge" is reduced to nothing more than a psychological hindrance.

I don\'t know about Araceli, but it is clear what Kiryuuin returned from the future to prevent.

In both his timeline and the current one, I will win.

That is an inevitability I will not allow to change.

"Araceli Arévalo."

I spoke out; hearing my voice call to her, she turned to me. Able to sense the tension within her without even glancing at her face, I continued.

"I\'ve realised quite a lot of interesting things today. But, do you know what I noticed that was particularly intriguing?"

"O-oh, really? And, w-what might that be...?"

"Well. For starters, did you know that a certain Azaki Kiryuuin is actually a time traveller? Although, that wasn\'t too surprising. I mean, his alias is the \'Concept of Time\', after all. No, what was especially fascinating was something else."

"..."

"From your words earlier, it seemed like you also knew the future. Am I correct?"

"A-ah, well... I-I don\'t know..."

"Right. I\'m sure you don\'t. Anyway, I did some thinking and came to the conclusion that you, too, must be from the future in some capacity. Do you know how I did so?"

"N-no... Are you sure you\'re not overthinking it...?"

"Oh, I am quite positive. Let me take Avon Laura as an example; she can see the future to some extent due to possessing a powerful Measurement of Destiny. I assume you are aware of that, and I originally found out about that thanks to my own Measurement of Truth."

"R-right..."

"However, you, Araceli, are different. When I ask about you, I am denied an answer. Although I was able to discover your Measurement of Protection, much information about you is classified."

"..."

"You know, it\'s rather peculiar. How were you able to know the future despite not possessing a Measurement with that kind of ability? I asked if you possessed multiple Measurements or perhaps a Supernatural Ability, but that didn\'t appear to be the case either."

Despite my calm tone, she stared at me with a seemingly terrified gaze.

"There was another thing, too, that I thought was strange."

She resembled a frightened rabbit; much different from how she presented herself earlier.

"―That is, why did Azaki Kiryuuin not seem to know who you were until today?"

"...!"

Her eyes widened at my words and shook, but I continued my "monologue" with a widening smirk.

"He came from the future, but he had no clue who you were until today? Tell me, how does that make sense? He knows a hell of a lot about me for some reason, but hasn\'t the slightest of who you are?"

After all, if he knew that she was going to be here to protect me from being captured, then he wouldn\'t have let her come here in the first place.

"So then, what is it? Are you from a second future? Please. Explain to me how all of this makes sense."

"Uh...!"

Seeing her fail to answer me even still, I dropped my smile entirely and cast my gaze coldly down on her.

"Tell me. Isn\'t it odd? Araceli."

"...!"

Just as I was about to put a hand on her shoulder to apply some more pressure, a cry from the depths of hell abruptly resounded.

"Gyaaaaaggghhhh...!!!?"

Everyone\'s attention was immediately seized.

Turning to look in the direction of the scream, an inexplicable scene was reflected in our eyes.

"...!?"

Right in front of us, there it was...

"K-... A..."

"W-w-wait, no... I-I-I didn\'t mean..."

―Tarou, with half his body missing, was on the ground before his trembling twin brother.