Mistaken for a Masked Munchkin

Future, Imagination.

It was only one exchange.

Pitch-black flashed, and the boy's scythe cut across the Nightmare.

Slice.

A memory was severed.

A piece of the memory that had tormented the woman all her life was cut away.

Brown hair scattered in every direction and rolled across the floor.

Ding!

[You have successfully cleared Regret 'Memory'.]

A blue screen floated up before my eyes.

I breathed out a short breath.

Thick vapor bloomed like a few sprigs of baby's breath.

At the tip of the scythe in my hand, the clean sound of cutting still lingered faintly.

"Whew..."

The memory no longer rewound.

When I turned around, I saw a girl staring blankly at me.

"......"

The mask I had put on her covered her face.

I could not see her expression, but I was sure she was stunned.

I smiled.

It was a very different sight from the Javert I knew.

Like the memory itself, the woman had grown younger, taking the form of a fourteen-year-old girl.

"Investigator."

"......"

Srrk.

Without thinking, I stroked her red hair.

It was a strangely fresh feeling.

To think Javert had once had such a small and cute period in her life.

As I tidied her hair, the girl soon came to her senses and opened her mouth.

"......Student Viktor?"

"Yes, Investigator."

"What in the world... is going on?"

Had her reason returned now that the trauma had stopped?

Past the mask, I could see green eyes.

I explained things to her as they were.

This place was Purgatory, and we were in the middle of Floor 90's trial.

"......So you are saying I suddenly fell from the solitary cell all the way here?"

"That's right. Straight down, without even grazing anything on the way."

"No... Does that make any sense?"

"You experienced it yourself, didn't you?"

"How on earth..."

"Unfortunately, the method and principles are trade secrets."

"......I suppose that secret was the means that let you enter and leave sealed Purgatory as if it were your own home."

Correct.

I added that and laughed.

The girl's gaze stayed complicated the whole time.

"You mean we have only just finished the first trial now...?"

"That's right. There are still two stages left."

"......"

"Investigator?"

"Why did you drag me to a place like this?"

"Well."

"Student Viktor, please answer me properly."

"Hmm... The truth is, there was something I wanted to show you, Investigator."

"Something you wanted to show me...?"

"Hehe, I'll explain it in time."

I lightly cut off the conversation.

Then I scooped the child-sized Javert into my arms.

"Up we go."

"Stu, Student Viktor...?"

Holding her felt quite different from holding Lua.

Should I say she felt like a slightly more mature girl?

Still, she was just as light, so I could lift her easily.

Javert flinched in panic, but during this trial, she could not shake me off.

She did not have the strength to resist.

The girl was still bound by the trauma.

Forget her original strength, she would struggle to bring out even one tenth of it right now.

"Let's move on to the next stage."

"No, wait..."

Nearby, a single door stood alone.

A wooden door, left perfectly intact by itself among the ruined buildings.

It was the passage onward.

I walked with the girl held in my arms.

Javert's gaze, however, kept flicking behind us.

"......"

"Hmm?"

Restless.

Anxiety showed through in a very unlike-her way.

And I knew what was on the girl's mind.

"Mrs. Droit is safe."

"......"

"She was your adoptive mother, Investigator."

"......I do not believe I ever told you that."

Heh.

I let that point slide with a smile.

Then I smoothly changed the subject.

"I checked earlier. Mrs. Droit only lost consciousness for a moment. She has no particularly serious external or internal injuries, so rest easy. On top of that, the pursuit team arriving soon will take proper measures."

"......"

"For now, let us move on to the next stage. After clearing the remaining trials, it will not be too late to visit this place again. In her current state, she is unconscious anyway, so staying here would only waste time."

"......Yes."

Javert fell silent, then soon nodded.

An old wooden door.

We took the doorknob and turned it.

Beyond the opening gap, a completely different scene waited for us.

"......"

"......"

A dark hallway.

Maybe Javert sensed something instinctively, because her shoulders shrank.

I patted her back to tell her it was fine, then stepped into the darkness with the girl in my arms.

Ding!

[Beginning Regret 'Imagination'.]

[The set trauma will be recreated.]

This place was the second Regret.

Future, Imagination.

Purgatory's guide broadcast brushed past my ears.

After that, the door we had come through closed, and my vision was swallowed by complete darkness.

"......Student Viktor. I believe you can put me down now."

"My, you grew tall quickly."

Javert had returned to her original form.

The weight in my arms was a little heavier now.

From the side, it was probably a fairly funny scene.

Javert was on the taller side even among women.

"Put me down."

"I don't want to."

"I asked you to put me down."

"I said I don't want to."

"I can walk by myself."

"I'm sure you can."

"If you know that, why do you keep refusing to put me down?"

"Just because. I like spending time standing like this with you, Investigator."

"......"

Javert made a complicated expression.

Had she been moved by words that exalted one's master?

I smiled at the green eyes meeting mine.

"Ahem."

I deliberately dragged things out, and only after nearly ten minutes had passed did I finally set the woman down.

Javert said nothing in particular and only straightened her disheveled clothes.

Like that, we walked side by side through the unlit hallway.

Before long, I heard Javert murmur.

It seemed the familiar outlines and structure of the building were slowly coming into view.

"This place is..."

"That's right. It is Grandia Academy's main building."

If Memory showed the past, Imagination showed the future.

To be exact, it showed the regrets one's future self would hold.

"......The future? You are saying it shows regrets I will come to have?"

"That's right. You could call it a kind of prophecy."

"You are saying such a thing is possible?"

"Amazing, isn't it? Purgatory is a truly mysterious place."

The dark hallway felt oddly eerie.

Something like the smell of blood lingered.

Academy fixtures were broken here and there too.

As if some kind of chaos had passed through before we arrived...

'Should I start talking?'

After all, I had come to this deep part of Purgatory for this moment alone.

I quietly turned the opening over in my mind.

Javert Droit.

In the not-too-distant future, the event she would come to regret.

A certain branching point that would eventually drive the woman to suicide.

"Investigator."

"Yes."

"You will die within the next year."

"......Yes?"

A sudden statement.

Javert turned toward me with a question mark practically floating over her head.

My voice, however, was utterly calm.

"What does that mean..."

"It means exactly what I said."

Javert would die within the next year.

It was that way in every route.

You had never survived even once.

You always met the calamity, and you always stabbed your own neck with a blade.

'Blue Night.'

The fifth of the Seven Calamities.

In the story, it was one of the incidents that became a major turning point.

"That is how it was in the future I saw."

The Cultist invasion.

Grandia Academy was attacked by sinister things.

In the middle of the academy, Apostles of the Evil God were dropped in swarms.

Faculty and students fought back with everything they had.

The place of learning became a battlefield in a single night.

"The future? The academy will be attacked...?"

"Professor, you get caught in one trap."

The Cultist executives.

Among them, as many as thirty offered themselves as sacrifices.

Through that ritual, a single curse was placed on Javert.

"A curse that distorted perception."

"......"

"During Blue Night, Investigator, you were sent straight to the scene. Together with several faculty members, you were put in charge of defending the main building. It was a brutal fight. The number of apostles that descended over the academy alone was nine. One wrong move, and it would have become a major incident with casualties reaching the thousands. But you defended the main building splendidly, Investigator. In a way truly worthy of being called the strongest."

"......"

"The problem came afterward."

After finishing her mission, Javert returned to the main building she had defended.

What waited for her inside, however, were not students.

They were chimeras, each mutated into a bizarre form.

They wore uniforms, perhaps because they had originally been academy cadets.

It seemed to be the work of an apostle that had infiltrated the building while manpower was concentrated outside.

"It was a gruesome sight. Countless students had turned into horrific monsters. Investigator, you froze in place. The two faculty members who returned with you reacted the same way. Until just a few days earlier, those students had been sitting in lecture halls, asking all sorts of questions and taking notes, and now they had become that..."

The two faculty members could not bring themselves to attack the students.

They only tried to back away, step by step, and leave.

It seemed the situation had sickened them.

"The two of them said you should all leave the main building for now and postpone deciding what to do with the mutated students until later. They also suspected there was no way all the students had been taken down in such a short time. But you did not allow that retreat, Investigator. In a situation like that, you had to follow the designated manual."

"......"

Chimeras could not be returned to their original form.

Their foundation had been twisted, and they could no longer be called living beings.

There was no reason to keep them alive.

Immediate execution was the way to reduce the danger.

That was what Javert's manual said.

"You charged in, Investigator."

"......"

"And you slaughtered the chimeras throughout the main building."

"......"

Had she roughly guessed that conclusion?

The woman's complexion had paled slightly.

I continued.

"Around the time the cleanup was more than halfway done... In other words, when you had killed over a hundred chimeras, Investigator, the curse came undone. The curse that had contaminated your perception was lifted."

Then hell unfolded.

Javert stood on the corpses of students.

"They were all students."

"......"

"Students."

"......"

"It was because your perception had been contaminated. Perfectly normal students had looked as though they had mutated into chimeras. Investigator, you had personally torn apart and killed one hundred perfectly fine disciples. You sank down on the spot. The other faculty members, whose curses had also been lifted, reacted the same way. The two of them lost their minds and screamed at you, Investigator. They blamed you, shrieking as if placing all responsibility on you. They said you should have retreated like they told you to. They said that if you had hesitated for even ten minutes before acting, at the very least, the students would not have died. And you, Investigator, thought exactly the same as their accusations."

An irreversible tragedy.

Something that was no one's fault.

Yet guilt could only seize Javert by the throat.

"I should have hesitated a little longer. I should have pulled back for a moment. I should have only incapacitated them. I should not have followed the principles... You were tormented by those thoughts, Investigator. A terrible sense of sin choked you, and your obsession with principles became a tangled mess. You had lived your entire life following principles, but at the end, that very obsession ruined everything."

"......"

"You committed suicide a few days later, Investigator."

"......"

Javert Droit.

That was as much as I knew about the woman's story.

Her green eyes had gone blank, and they trembled as they stared at me.

"......That is."

"Does it sound like a lie?"

Clap.

I lightly clapped my hands.

Right after, blurry scenes poured into the air.

Ding!

[You have already cleared phenomenon 'Regret (SS-)'!]

[You obtain an authority usable within Purgatory.]

[You can now exert influence on another person's trauma, such as memory sharing, scene modification, partial manipulation, and so on.]

Memory sharing.

I showed the woman several scenes.

I conveyed the memories I had just mentioned.

With a bit of editing mixed in, I shared them as if they were the future I had directly looked into.

Hundreds of screens unfolded.

Countless routes, stories that progressed a little differently each time.

But the ending Javert Droit reached was always the same.

-I thought principles were everything.

-......Now, I don't know anything anymore.

I'm sorry.

Messages formed like that, then cut off, over and over.

Maybe it was because of the flood of memories.

Javert staggered as if she was about to retch.

In her final moments, the woman always regretted how she had clung to principles.

"What... in the world is this..."

"Investigator."

Javert seemed choked up.

A tangle of questions must have clogged her throat.

Purgatory, the future, Blue Night... countless words lay scattered.

The memories that had flowed into her head were far too vivid.

"......You."

Silence.

Questions and confusion churned like nausea.

Only after several minutes passed did Javert part her lips.

"How do you have all these memories...?"

The words were about me.

Our gazes crossed in the darkness.

"I."

I opened my mouth to answer her.

There was something else I had to confess.

Something about me.

In order to save the woman.

"I know the future of this world."

I decided to be a little more sincere.

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