Chapter 1
Again.
Another child had died.
“…….”
Dantellion lowered his head as he adjusted the daughter whose body was growing cold in his arms.
Guardian of the Goddess.
Apostle of Holy Light.
The most noble holy knight in the world, and the strongest holy knight in the Empire.
Dantellion Klein was the man to whom all these titles belonged.
His immense holy power was proof of the god’s love, and his lofty, unyielding faith was nothing short of a source of pride for all humanity.
And yet, now—
“Why……?”
The holy knight who had been more devout than anyone else was kneeling there in a state more fallen than any demon.
His eyes were filled with despair, as though cursing God itself, and his holy power was thoroughly corrupted.
“Why is it twelve this time……?”
His lifeless eyes blankly stroked the child’s cheek.
Why couldn’t you even live to sixteen in this life?
Haniel. My daughter. My child. My treasure.
“……Again.”
He clenched his teeth.
“Daddy will try again, sweetheart.”
This time, I’ll definitely find a cure for you.
Fwoooooosh—
White light rose like smoke from his body.
Soon, an enormous regression magic circle appeared.
As though punishing the holy knight for committing a taboo, a violent storm raged outside the window, accompanied by thunder and lightning.
BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!
“Dante Klein! Stop this immediately! Aren’t you going to stop? Damn it!”
“Your Grace, Grand Duke Vertus! Put away your sword!”
He could hear someone shouting from outside the door, but his ears had long since stopped functioning.
Black blood poured from his mouth. The pain tearing through his entire body felt like a punishment in itself.
Yet he did not stop.
There was something in this world more precious than his wretched life or his pitiful faith.
If realizing that was his sin, then so be it.
“I’ll see you again soon, my little princess…….”
This time, Daddy will come to see you sooner.
Amid the agony that felt as though his entire heart were being ripped apart, Dantellion smiled faintly.
And so, his ninety-eighth life came to an end.
Dantellion slowly opened his eyes as he stood atop a hill.
The surroundings were filled with noise.
“Bread! Bread! It’s mine!”
This was the slums, District Z.
Down below, he could see the isolated residents of the slums.
They were reaching their hands beyond the cordon, desperately trying to catch the loaves of bread being thrown toward them.
It was utter chaos.
A scene of pandemonium.
Dantellion stood there for a moment, enduring the pounding headache that was surging through him.
Why am I here?
“Breeeead…….”
At the same time, a tiny figure appeared in his blurred vision in the distance.
“P-Please give me some bread toooo……!”
The little girl was being jostled back and forth between the adults as she waved her tiny hands.
But for a child who barely reached an adult’s waist, catching bread thrown through the air was no easy task.
She bounced up and down for a long while.
Then, by chance, she spotted a loaf that had fallen onto the ground.
The moment he saw her running away with the bread covered in dirt and filthy water clutched precious to her chest—
“……!”
Dantellion snapped back to his senses as though struck by lightning.
Haniel!
“Ugh.”
It had begun again.
His ninety-ninth life.
The memories of his previous life came crashing over him all at once, almost violently.
Choking on the pain, he clenched his trembling jaw.
Even staggering was a luxury he could not afford right now.
He sprinted down the hill like a madman.
I should have regained consciousness sooner!
Unfortunately, the point at which he returned was always this moment, and with each regression, it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to recover his senses.
He forced open the entrance to District Z, which was under strict access control, and frantically searched through its maze-like alleys.
And finally.
At the end of a dark, filthy alley—
“Hic…….”
He found his six-year-old daughter curled up on the ground, crying all alone.
She looked even more miserable than before.
The bread she had been clutching so dearly was gone.
“Hani’s bread…… hic, it was Hani’s bread……. I only ate the smell so far…….”
Dantellion knew exactly what had happened.
The neighborhood children must have taken every last piece of bread she had picked up.
“Sweetheart.”
He slowly approached, doing his best not to let his expression twist.
He wanted nothing more than to rush over and hold her in his arms, but he couldn’t frighten her.
“Hic, sniff……?”
At the unfamiliar presence, Haniel raised her head.
“You were here.”
“Sniff…… W-Who are you……?”
Dantellion lowered himself and tried his best to smile kindly.
But he couldn’t stop the fist hidden behind his back from trembling violently, the knuckles having turned white.
“Uncle…… is someone who came looking for his lost daughter.”
“Hic…… Yes?”
“You have a pretty star-shaped mark on the back of your neck, don’t you? That’s proof that you’re Uncle’s daughter. Have you ever seen it?”
He cleared his throat.
He spoke the lines he had repeated dozens of times.
This time, I definitely will.
Daddy will save you.
The ninety-ninth time.
His first meeting with his daughter.
Haniel suffered from an incurable disease.
Its name was Mucoreosis.
It was a disease in which a person was born with a body incapable of containing either holy power or magic, causing their heart to suddenly stop one day without warning.
There was no known cause, no cure, and no recorded case of successful treatment.
It was a disease more akin to a curse.
The truth was, Haniel had originally been a tool to him.
He needed an heir to inherit his holy power, and it was out of that sense of duty that he had created a child.
After all, as was customary among first-class holy knights, producing a child with powerful holy power was also considered a way of serving God.
So he found a noblewoman whose interests aligned with his own and married her.
After giving birth to the child, the woman who had been his wife took the money and new identity stipulated in their contract and left for a distant foreign country.
There had been no problem up to that point.
There was only one thing he had never anticipated……
“Isn’t she…… awfully small?”
“Kyaa!”
He had never dreamed that such a tiny child would shake his entire world.
He had been bewildered.
It felt as though he had been thrown headfirst into an entirely new world, one completely different from everything he had known before.
But before he could even begin to explore those feelings……
Sadly, the baby was involved in an accident.
It happened on the way to the temple to receive a blessing for her first birthday.
Her guards and maid were killed instantly, while the child was said to have fallen over a sheer cliff.
Dantellion returned from a month-long monster extermination campaign and received the news in a daze.
“……I see.”
He searched the entire ravine for the child’s body.
But he could not find it.
He was somewhat bewildered, but Dantellion had never been a man of particularly strong emotions.
He quickly pulled himself together and returned to his daily life.
He had been so busy that he had only seen the child three or four times throughout the entire year, to begin with.
He simply thought……
That tiny baby must have been in so much pain.
Why didn’t God watch over her?
Was my prayer insufficient?
Those thoughts would occasionally cross his mind as he stared blankly into space.
Then, several years later, he received miraculous news.
A child bearing the crest of the House of Klein was alive in District Z.
He rushed there as though possessed.
And there—
When he found Haniel crying all alone.
When he saw that tiny, fragile back that was still so small.
This time……
Dantellion was overwhelmed by a feeling that words could never adequately describe.
This time, I will protect you.
Only then did he realize.
The truth was, he had missed and loved his daughter more than anyone.
She was the child he had reclaimed.
His precious daughter, who had somehow become his entire world.
And he was supposed to lose such a child again…… simply because of an illness?
He could not accept it.
He shuddered beneath the guilt of having left his precious daughter to live in the slums, only for her to eventually contract a terrible disease and die.
So he committed a taboo.
The absolute taboo of humanity: regression.
Dantellion had always valued discipline and restraint above his own desires, yet this time, he did not hesitate.
He searched through the forbidden books of the temple until he found the Book of Regression, then poured his holy power into it and turned back time.
But Haniel died in his second life as well.
Dantellion could no longer stop.
From that point onward, his clock began turning back endlessly.
He did not care if monster venom burned away his skin, if his limbs were mangled, or if he lost both his sight and hearing.
Whenever he heard that there was a miraculous elixir somewhere, he would go running.
He would take up his sword, destroy everything in his path, be broken himself, and, with his body reduced to a ragged wreck, obtain the medicine and crawl all the way back to give it to his child.
But the child died.
She died with the same face every time.
No medicine or treatment worked.
Eventually, he became bitter.
Why?
Why does only my daughter have to die?
Does God truly exist? And if He does, why is He so indifferent to our suffering?
And so, as the cycles continued for dozens of lives, he felt something inside himself slowly breaking.
It was probably his faith—the faith that had once been stronger than anyone else’s.
And now, he had reached his ninety-ninth life.
Two years had already passed since he reunited with his daughter for the ninety-ninth time.
My holy power…… It’s even more corrupted.
Dantellion strode quickly down the corridor, an argent helmet clutched in his hand.
Even if I drink purification potions, there’s definitely less holy power I’ll be able to use in this life.
He knew that his holy power was becoming corrupted as the price for breaking the taboo, but he could not stop.
By now, he could not even determine the extent of its corruption.
I’m still…… all right. I can endure it.
He stared blankly into the air.
Still, this cycle isn’t bad.
For some reason, he had a good feeling about it.
Haniel had been unusually healthy in this life.
Of course, he wasn’t letting his guard down.
She could suddenly die at twelve, just as she had in the previous cycle.
“Sir Dante! There you are! They say the Dragon Legion has attacked the North again. Grand Duke Vertus is confronting them…… Wait, are you heading out?”
“Yes. I’ll go to the North.”
“What? The army hasn’t even been fully assembled yet! It’s dangerous to go alone!”
“I need to carve out the dragons’ cores while they’re still alive. I didn’t manage to obtain many last time.”
“……What does that even mean? S-Sir Dante!”
This time, I’ll succeed.
“Daddy!”
Just as he stepped outside the building, a tiny child came running toward him from somewhere.
His stern expression instantly softened.
“Haniel? What are you doing here……? My little princess, shouldn’t you still be asleep at this hour?”
The child clung to his waist and smiled brightly, her face as clear as the dawn.
Silver hair exactly like his.
Adorable pink eyes.
“Daddy, happy birthday!”
The little girl held out a piece of paper neatly decorated with ribbons.
“Here! A present!”
Ah. Has it already come around again?
Dantellion bent down and accepted his daughter’s drawing.
This time……
A round, lumpy brown mass.
It’s a drawing of horse dung.
I thought she had been playing with the pony a lot lately, but……
“Tada! Hani and Daddy turned into potatoes!”
“I knew they had to be potatoes. No wonder they looked so delicious. Thank you, my little princess.”
“Heeheehee!”
When he lightly lifted her into his arms, Haniel rubbed her chubby cheek against him.
She was warm.
He held the child carefully and strode toward the bedroom.
His heart was somewhat hurried, but he noticed that Haniel was wearing thin slippers, which bothered him.
As they turned into the corridor, the child whispered secretly.
“Daddy, you know…… I have something to tell you.”
“What is it? Is there something you want?”
“Um, it’s not that…….”
There had once been a time when he had wondered:
Maybe in this life, I’ll love this child a little less?
But……
“Thank you for running to find Hani that day.”
“…….”
“I feel happy every single day these days! Like, like I’m super happy, as if I ate ten cream buns all at once!”
How foolish that expectation had been.
His love only deepened with every cycle, and he had become completely bound by its infinity.
“Daddy, I love you. I like Daddy more than bread now!”
How could he possibly bury this child in a cold coffin?
Sweetheart, please don’t die.
Please don’t leave Daddy behind.
Daddy doesn’t even know yet what beautiful flowers you’ll bloom into, or what sturdy grain you’ll bear.
Couldn’t you show me your tomorrow just once?
“Yeah. Daddy loves you too, my little princess.”
So this time, definitely.
No matter what he had to pay as the price.
Daddy will save you.
The black, corrupted holy power pierced into his heart.
And several years later—
Dantellion Klein lost his child once again.
Even after obtaining every core from the Dragon Legion, it was all for nothing.
The elixir crafted by a master from the West, the heart of a deep-sea beast from the South, the Golden Root of the Eastern Plains……
Every miraculous substance in the world proved useless.
“…….”
Haniel was only ten years old in this cycle.
Tears of blood streamed from his one bloodshot eye.
The cheek pressed against his was no longer warm.
“……Again.”
He wrapped one arm around the child’s cold body.
A torrent of black blood surged back up his throat.
“Daddy will try again, my little princess…….”
Shrrrrrrrr……
Once again.
Time in the world turned backward.
And I, Haniel—
“This…… What……?”
I, who had watched all of this from within the arms of God—
[ Do you see now? This is the sin of Dantellion Klein. ]
“W-What the heeeck is all of thiiiiis—?!”
