How a Villain Defies Destiny Chapter 69

I’m stunned by this unexpected criticism and don’t know what to say, but Endymion unexpectedly speaks first.

 

“Well, I suppose the repetitiveness of life has blurred that line, but you’d better be careful in front of others.”

 

Oh, to be misunderstood.

 

I was like, “Oh, thanks for the advice.”

 

To hide my expression, I quickly bowed my head and thanked him.

 

Fortunately, he seemed to believe me without question.

 

‘Phew, I guess I made it through.’ 

 

Breathing a sigh of relief, I changed the subject, reminding myself to be more careful next time.

 

“Anything else the Crown Prince would like to discuss?”

 

“Just call me by my first name.”

 

“What?”

 

“Because I’m not here in my capacity as Crown Prince.”

 

“I see.”

 

In truth, I was comfortable calling him Endymion, too, so I took him up on his offer.

 

‘I’ll have to try that with Yves later.’

 

As I mentally thanked Endymion for the exquisite illusion and the perfect excuse, he broached the subject after a brief pause.

 

“You spoke of it before… as if you had traveled back in time and relived the same life over and over again, and the fact that you were clearly certain of it just now makes it even more so.”

 

Just when I thought I was being grateful for his presumptuousness, he asked me a question.

 

I was like, ‘This guy is terrible. He really is horrible.’

 

Of course, it was nice that he didn’t give away my secret. He was the kind of guy who would bore people to death.

 

A stone bridge should be pounded before it gets across, but Endymion has gone too far.

 

“Don’t give me that look, because you can’t cure a man of his doubts.”

 

“I’m sorry, but I can’t help but show emotion on my face, so please forgive me.”

 

“Whatever, you’re not saying a word.”

 

He clicked his tongue lightly in disbelief as I shrugged, then continued.

 

“Anyway, I’m not like you.”

 

The next words out of his mouth were shocking.

 

“After I met Selene, I had a dream every day. Dreams that are very similar to reality, but also subtly different.”

 

The dreams, he explained, always began with the moment he met Selene.

 

At a royal banquet, Selene, who has just been awakened as a saint, and Yves, her guardian, are both present.

 

‘It’s like Endymion’s first scene in the game. Endymion’s first encounter with her there, he says, was that he always knew he had to approach her to break his curse.’

 

“But after that, it was different.”

 

Some things never changed, like the attack on Dilbat, but for the most part, Selene’s actions changed things.

 

She could marry Yves, become the wife of Riqueia or Adhad, or travel to another kingdom.

 

‘Similar to the original story.’

 

He knew the epilogue, not just the happy ending, but all sorts of normal and bad endings.

 

“But then there was the problem.”

 

“The problem?”

 

“The dreams don’t end. I’ve been having them lately. They never end the same way. The flow is the same, but the end is always different.”

 

Listening intently, I asked a question to clarify his situation.

 

“When your dreams are long, do they sometimes carry over into the next day?”

 

“No. I’ve never had a continuation. They vary in length, and sometimes I wonder if this is the end, but the dream always starts with me meeting Selene.”

 

That’s weird. That’s because the game has a limited number of endings.

 

‘Seventeen, if you count the reverse harem, the hidden character route, and the completely pointless failed saint awakening ending.’

 

Furthermore, there was no ‘game over’ in ‘Saint Please!’.

 

Even if you failed to beat a mini-game, or made an odd choice, the story flow would change accordingly, but there was never a case where the game ended without reaching any ending, and you had to start over.

 

So, if Endymion had played through the dream sequence to a particular ending, it would have taken him 17 days to see all of them.

 

Puzzled, I asked him to elaborate.

 

“Can you give me an example of a dream where you thought it was the same thing, but it ended differently?”

 

“…I dreamed that Selene and Riqueia became lovers. I had already seen the ending where they got married once, so I thought it would be the same in the middle, but as they were traveling together to the kingdom of Larsa, there was a carriage accident, and Selene died.”

 

“What? Selene died?”

 

“Yes. And sometimes she chose to die of her own volition. She would take poison or jump from a window, right in front of me.”

 

“…”

 

As Endymion listed off examples in a calm voice, I was stunned.

 

None of the episodes in the original play were life-threatening enough for her to die, much less make such an extreme choice. It was completely unexpected.

 

On the other hand, Selene’s current state of mind, which seems to have a screw missing, started to make sense.

 

‘Well, in real life, unlike in the game, the options wouldn’t have appeared.’

 

It must have been a constant regression to find the right answer.

 

‘Maybe the seventeen endings are the perfect ending, the one Selene reached after countless iterations of the same time…’

 

Perhaps she knew that dying would cause her to regress, and when things went in a direction she didn’t want, she chose to die and start over.

 

As I was thinking about how Selene’s life must have been in a very hard mode, Endymion’s story continued.

 

“The first time I had the dream, I dismissed it as a mere coincidence, and when I had another dream about her the next day, I wondered if I was under some sort of spell.”

It was the speculation of a terminally ill patient.

Having given him the benefit of the doubt, I probed further, interrogatively.

“Does it happen every day in a row?”

“No. Two or three times a week. Sometimes they happen consecutively, sometimes a few days apart, and they usually end with Selene dying.”

 

“…”

 

It’s been almost half a year since Selene awakened as a saint and met Endymion.

 

If she’s had two or three regressions a week in the interim, Selene’s regression count is somewhere between 60 and 70+.

 

‘And if there’s a happy ending, she’s married and has a child, so that’s four or five years of reliving it endlessly.’

 

Honestly, I didn’t think I could do it.

 

Of course, there would be instances where certain issues would cause me to regress after less than a year, such as when my freshly possessed self missed Viscountess Oannes’ party and regressed.

 

Still, she must have lived far beyond her current physical age.

 

While I was lost in thought, contemplating Selene’s tragic fate, he continued.

 

“The emotions I felt in my dreams were so vivid that for a while I couldn’t clearly distinguish between dreams and reality.”

 

So in the early days of meeting Selene, Endymion was unstable. He was overwhelmed with emotions he’d never felt in his life all at once.

 

“By the time you were put on trial, I didn’t even know if my feelings for Selene were real or fabricated, influenced by dreams, and all I knew was that I wanted to keep her by my side.”

 

“Ah…”

 

Finally, the questions were answered.

 

Questions like why there was a difference between the Endymion of then and the Endymion of now, and the vague answers he’d given me all this time.

 

‘Perhaps that explains why he said we never lived the same life.’

 

Because technically, he’s never regressed.

 

I asked him when he changed his mind from dismissing the dream as just a dream, even during the trial.

 

“So when did you start to believe that the dream was real?” I asked.

 

“I guess you could say the moment my doubts were completely gone was… when you listened to me tell you about my dreams and didn’t mind.”

 

In other words, now.

 

‘It’s almost starting to feel like a wonder.’

 

He called it the end of a terrible illness of doubt, but on the flip side, it meant that he was ready to step down as Crown Prince for Selene without certainty.

 

“I admire your determination to change the status quo, even when you’re not sure, and then taking action.”

 

Endymion nodded in agreement as he voiced the admiration in his head.

 

“Believing in a dream… I know I sound crazy, but I’ve thought about it hundreds, maybe thousands of times.”

 

We could only vaguely imagine the depth of his internal conflict.

 

Endymion had always been a staunch realist.

 

Normally, he wouldn’t have given much meaning to a dream that did not affect his reality.

 

Dreams are meant to fade away when you wake up. But the emotions he felt in the dream were so vivid, and his pain and regret so palpable, that he took a serious look at himself.

 

What if Selene, now unrelated to him, had married another man, as she had in his dream?

 

He pondered these questions endlessly, and the result was the choice he now made, he declared, without a hint of regret or hesitation.