“Ha…”

【Why…】

【Why, at this critical moment…】

【Why did I get my memories back at this critical moment?】

“I understand… Shabai.”

“Let’s hurry to the next level.”

Turing shook her head, trying to shake the jumbled thoughts out of it.

She didn’t say much to Merka.

She turned, took Merka’s hand, and headed straight down the road.

“I remember the way to the next level… It’s not far from here.”

“We’ll be there after another three or four hundred meters.”

Merka tugged at Turing’s hand, but she didn’t budge.

He instinctively realized that Turing was putting on a brave face again.

It was so much like what had happened all those years ago…

He suddenly realized that the inexplicable, Oedipus-like air Turing had been giving off was gone.

The Turing he’d known had returned to his side.

“Wait, Turing.”

“Are you okay?”

“If you really can’t go on… we can rest for a while…”

Merka’s suggestion didn’t make Turing turn around. It only made her walk faster.

She pressed one hand to her forehead and frowned in pain.

An endless stream of memories was still flooding into her mind…

She had never seen her entire life laid out before her with such clarity.

“We don’t have time to rest now…”

Turing let out a breath of white mist and said casually.

The breath Turing exhaled froze almost instantly in the air, turning into snowflakes that drifted down.

Turing was in agony.

Countless memories flooded Turing’s mind, as if they were twisting the nerves inside her skull into knots.

In those memories, she found far too many answers she’d longed for but never gotten.

In truth, her mother—that Oedipus—hadn’t always spared her from beatings.

On the contrary, thorny canes, a rough chopping board, even poison and shackles—these were Oedipus’s most basic ways of punishing Turing.

But to keep Turing from reaching the breaking point and fighting back, Oedipus would usually erase those memories, leaving behind only the terror so that Turing would never dare defy her again.

Because of these castles in the air built from pain.

Day after day, Turing grew more irritable and harder to get along with…

Until, without even realizing it, she deeply hurt those who had been willing to open their arms and offer her warmth.

That included Diana, the Shepherd, Mammon, Samael… and countless Kyopa soldiers who had once bled and wept for her.

“Ha… ha… heh heh heh.”

Whether it was a bitter laugh or a cold one, Turing suddenly let out a couple of dry chuckles.

An indescribable pain danced through her mind.

She gently let go of Merka’s hand. One hand pressed to her forehead, the other against the wall, she could barely bear the pain.

“I… I… could it be…”

“Could it actually be me?”

“Could I be the one most like my mother…?”

“I’m just like my mother!”

“I endured the same agonizing childhood in the laboratory, but in the end, I turned my blade on the weak and passed all that pain on to those who trusted me, those who offered me warmth!”

“Hahaha, I ruined everything.”

“I’m the one who ruined everything!”

“Hss—”

Just as Turing was roasting herself over the bonfire of regret, unable to pull herself free, a sudden sting shot through her fingertip and jolted her awake.

She gave a small cry and turned to look. The hand she’d braced against the wall had already frozen solid.