"Dux Gladiorum, have you considered my offer?"
Cerydra did not pay any attention to the already dead White Blade, instead fixing her gaze upon Hysilens.
"Imperator, you said that you could free me from my status as a chess piece and allow me to stay in this world permanently..."
Hysilens's voice carried a trace of nearly imperceptible trembling.
"Yes, I do have that power."
Cerydra calmly gave her an affirmative answer.
She had already asked the system how to let Hysilens break free from the chessboard and stop being a piece restricted by it. The system's reply to her was:
[By paying the price of never being able to pull Hysilens through Gacha again, you can free her from the restrictions of a chess piece.]
To be honest, this price surprised her. Not because it was too high, but because to her, it was essentially a negligible cost. She had originally thought she would have to sacrifice a gold-tier reward to achieve it.
"Please, Great Imperator, let me live no longer as a chess piece; allow me to remain in this world for longer."
As she spoke, Hysilens looked directly at Cerydra, then reversed her twin swords, pointing the blades downward as she offered them to Cerydra.
"To this end, I swear upon my life to become the blade in your hand, slaying your foes until I breath my last."
Cerydra's eyes widened slightly in disbelief; this was the first time she had shown a lapse in composure in front of others. In her impression, it was impossible for Hysilens to agree to this request—did she not have a more important mission to fulfill?
Why...
No, something was definitely wrong!
Cerydra forcibly cut off her messy thoughts and quickly regained her calm, her sharp gaze re-examining Hysilens's eyes. Then, from the depths of those azure pupils, she saw sorrow, she saw determination, and she saw... a sliver of deeply buried longing.
Cerydra took a deep breath to suppress the turmoil in her heart, her voice becoming steady once more:
"Dux Gladiorum, what is the reason that prompted you to make this decision? In my understanding, you are by no means one who would easily forsake your loyalty."
"Because... I have nowhere else to go," Hysilens pursed her lips and said softly. "That is my reason."
"Nowhere else to go..."
Cerydra chewed on those four words, and the sense of wrongness in her heart instantly magnified. Hysilens's next sentence immediately revealed all the answers:
"I betrayed my loyalty. I watched with my own eyes as you were pierced through the chest by the blade of that black-robed swordsman... Your golden blood burned my cheeks, yet I... could do nothing about it..."
Bitterness and heavy sorrow saturated every syllable.
"The only thing I could do was fight with all my might to wound the black-robed swordsman, and then... I also fell beneath his sword."
The Hysilens in front of her was not the Hysilens from the version 3.5 plot at all! She was the Hysilens who had been killed by White Er in a certain cycle!
Cerydra realized instantly why her eyes held such sorrow and why she had agreed to the request so decisively.
"When I opened my eyes again, I was in the middle of a deep sea." At this point, Hysilens gently closed her eyes as if sinking into that memory. "There was only the sea there... a boundless deep sea."
"Deadly silent, without the breath of any living creature..."
After speaking, she reopened her eyes, her gaze falling back on the weapons in her hands as her fingertips tightened slightly.
"After staying in that lonely deep sea for a period of time, I do not know what happened, but a living soul entered that region."
Cerydra watched Hysilens in silence, waiting for her to continue the narrative.
"I was full of expectation, longing for communication... However, an instinctual and irresistible urge... forced me to... eliminate him."
"But at that moment, I understood everything."
Hysilens raised her head, her gaze burning as she stared at Cerydra:
"I finally understood... that everything I experienced before was nothing more than an endless cycle."
"But for some reason, I came to that boundless sea."
"Then that vessel you prepared for me."
"And I... became a chess piece in your hand."
At this point, Hysilens fell silent for a moment, then continued softly:
"But that is no longer important."
"What matters is..."
"That I know one thing: you are still alive."
Having finished, she once again offered the twin swords to Cerydra, her voice calm yet carrying the desperation of someone staking everything on a single throw:
"Imperator, I can no longer endure the loneliness of that deep sea by myself. Although I do not know which cycle of Imperator you are... it remains a fact that you are still the Imperator 'I' once served. That is enough."