Super Righteous Player-Chapter 1177 - 223 Benjamin and Evelyn

Annan still remembers that nightmare.

The one called "Reflection," which belonged to Benjamin’s girlfriend, Eve Miller.

He also remembers... that what made Benjamin yearn to become Transcendent, to become a wizard of the Black Tower, was Evelyn.

As a child, Evelyn had long drifting hair, a fine and delicate face, with an extremely supple body. She was a born dancer, destined to be the darling of Yawen.

Even back then, she had fallen in love with Benjamin.

And then one day, after an accident, a fire disfigured Evelyn.

Her face was riddled with burn scars, her once fair and smooth skin became scarred with contracture. She even lost all her hair.

As a girl who cherished beauty, a talented dancer who saw dance as her only career path, this despair that struck out of nowhere had nearly destroyed her entire life.

If it wasn’t for Benjamin being by her side, Evelyn might have ended her own life long ago.

At the same time, it was precisely Benjamin’s love, which saw beyond appearance and came from the heart, that made Evelyn unable to leave him.

Back then, she obsessively watched the dance of the "Dancer Under the Moon," the Pale Princess—a sinister spectral dance that would cause a grave illness to any ordinary person with merely a glance.

But it was also due to the love in Evelyn’s heart that she caught the attention of the Pale Princess and was granted the privilege of becoming a Half-Dead.

However, Evelyn did not know the price a mortal had to pay to become a Half-Dead.

The essence of this transformation ceremony is to offer one’s beautiful life and love as a sacrifice to the Pale Princess, in exchange for corresponding mystical knowledge and power. For Evelyn, Benjamin was her everything; she lived entirely for him.

She immediately received the highest standard of Transcendent power as a gift.

And it was only at that moment did Evelyn realize something.

That is, if she continued with the ceremony and offered her life to the Pale Princess, transforming into a Half-Dead, she would forever abandon her love for Benjamin.

Evelyn believed this was undoubtedly a betrayal of Benjamin.

When she was disfigured and lost her future, even her own family became distant and began to fear and despise her... Only Benjamin did not abandon her.

So, she could not abandon Benjamin under any circumstances.

But if she outright refused the ceremony, having witnessed the Pale Princess’s spectral dance would lead her to death.

——To advance meant losing love, forever leaving Benjamin in spirit; to retreat meant losing life, forever leaving Benjamin in body.

It was a dilemma.

But with her exceptional talent and Wisdom.

In this choice between two options, Evelyn forcefully created a third way—

She wanted to choose neither.

She killed herself from the future—and in the throes of death, relying on her imminent transformation into a Half-Dead and its features, she persisted until she had weaved her entire nightmare.

In the end, she used the temporal paradox she wove to seal her soul within her nightmare. Constantly replaying the story of "the future me killed me."

Because time constantly passes, the future will eventually become the present. And in a farther future, a newer Evelyn will emerge.

As a consequence... as long as this nightmare is not cleansed, she will not die completely. Just like the Pardoner in that nightmare of the gallery years ago.

Conversely, each time someone cleanses the nightmare, she would die once and feel the pain of her soul being cleansed and torn apart.

Evelyn believed that Benjamin from the future would definitely come back to save her.

Because the riddle she set up can only be thoroughly cleansed by someone with the power of time.

The way to cleanse this nightmare is to sort out the infinitely overlapping cycles of time, find the first thread, and figure out "how exactly did she kill herself from the future." Therefore, it’s almost impossible to completely unravel this nightmare.

Even Annan does not know how Evelyn did it.

And because she’s trapped in a time paradox, the Pale Princess, whose powers fully involve time, cannot affect her at all. Her soul and newly acquired powers will not be taken by the Pale Princess.

Only by obtaining ritual abilities, Divine Arts, or elements related to time, can one find the girl hidden at the bottom of the timeline by layers of paradoxes... and rescue her once again.

And according to the news from Salvatore.

Annan gradually restored the entire event.

"The future you... will find me."

In the chapel of the Pale Princess, Evelyn, who had already become transparent like a ghost, said this to Benjamin.

But Benjamin, who was not yet a Transcendent at that time, could not understand the meaning of Evelyn’s words at all.

After that, she turned into points of light and scattered, not even leaving behind a corpse.

This was a sign that she was about to be transformed into a semi-deceased girl.

It was also the evidence that made Benjamin believe she had not truly died.

But Benjamin waited in the same place for three days and nights.

He was so hungry that he was dizzy and could barely walk, yet Evelyn did not return.

He could only assume that Evelyn’s ritual had failed – the Pale Princess was not willing to accept her soul. Or her soul had taken up permanent residence in the tide of paleness, never to return to the human world.

Thus, heartbroken, Benjamin left the place.

After that, Benjamin would light the green flame lantern and return here each year. To see if he could wait for Evelyn.

He delved into the art of the green fire, spreading it to thousands of households... for it was the green fire they lit in that solemn chapel that remained as Benjamin’s last memory of them both.

In his youth, Benjamin could be described as a man of outstanding talent.

Before he was thirty, he had reached the silver rank.

He had several inventions that benefited the public, enjoying considerable prestige among the masses. Tower Master Hugo even considered him a candidate for the Tower’s Child, and he had a handsome face and good family background to boot.

Under normal circumstances, he would probably have been married with children by now.

But perhaps it was coincidence or maybe... because the bond between them remained unfulfilled. One year, while paying respects to Evelyn, Benjamin was accidentally pulled into Evelyn’s nightmare.

When he woke up, he was in tears.

He clearly realized—Evelyn was still waiting for his rescue.

He finally recalled those words and, relying on his Transcendental knowledge accumulated over the years, he guessed its meaning:

Her ritual had not failed.

Evelyn had become as the chants in the prayers sang.

She became "the dancer who pursues unrequited love, imprisoned within the shell of life, wandering in pursuit of beauty and freedom."

To become a semi-deceased girl, she had to give up her "lover"—the semi-deceased girls are only allowed to fall in love with the Pale Princess. Or rather, all followers, Angel Envoys, and devotees of the Pale Princess are her lovers.

The price they pay to become lovers of the Pale Princess, she will repay threefold.

The heft of this "love" is enough to elevate one to the heavens.

But Evelyn resisted this temptation.

She did not abandon herself... she was wandering like a ghost in this eternally limbo land precisely to keep that love alive!

In order to rescue Evelyn, Benjamin contacted Michelangelo, who was then known as the Eye of Lag.

He was the wizard who had delved deepest into the ways of time in this world, and the only known gold-ranked Transcendent with "time" as his element.

After hearing Benjamin’s story, Michelangelo suddenly had an idea.

If Evelyn could keep adding the future self to this era through time paradoxes, achieving the effect of "refusing death"...

Then could he manipulate the time paradoxes to achieve an effect of "dying once, resurrecting twice," thereby realizing a "double life?"