Translator: Alpha0210
Pale's voice bored into Residue's ears as he sat in silence.
"Five times, three times, and once, was it? At least this much I remember clearly."
"What are you talking about?"
"The number of times we almost died."
"...Then why not just say nine times? Why split it up like that?"
At that, Pale heaved a sigh, as if exasperated.
"Good grief. Because it was a different bunch trying to kill us each time, that's why."
"......"
"In order, it was the Black Thorn Demon King, the Lightning God, and Agolet."
The Demon King and the Lightning God he could accept, but Agolet too?
"Why? Why would they try to kill me?"
"It wasn't just you, Residue. They tried to kill me too."
"Be that as it may. The one who wanted me dead most of all wouldn't have been them; it would have been you."
"That was true. But on the Island, our goals meshed perfectly, Residue."
"Meshed?"
"You didn't want Lukas to die either, Residue."
"......"
Pale said with a grin.
"Neither did I. So we fended off their attacks together. Joined forces. And in the end, we somehow managed to drive back the Second Destruction too."
...He had a feeling that a great many things were packed into that word, 'somehow'. The rift between him and Pale ran far too deep for a mere alignment of interests to make them comrades. And Destruction was hardly a pushover of an enemy, either.
"This island you speak of, what sort of place was it? Was it, in fact, 'The Outside'?"
"Who knows? Honestly, I still don't know much about it myself. So I asked you, Residue, and this was your answer at the time."
–The boundary between inside and outside. The place where those who come out into 'The Outside' first arrive; the one world where beings who must never meet, and never could meet, are able to encounter one another. An island that is but the smallest fraction of that vast world.
"......"
He had spouted that kind of head-in-the-clouds drivel? Had he really taken a blow to the head, just as the Blue Knight said?
He had no memory of it whatsoever, but this might be slightly better than the other vague matters. The words had come from his own mouth, after all, so analyzing how he'd come to say them was easier than the rest.
The circumstances under which Residue would spout such uncharacteristic nonsense... there were probably about two.
The first was that he hadn't wanted to give the other party a straight answer, so he'd deliberately mixed in about half nonsense.
Reason enough. Because the other party was the Blue Knight. She was claiming now that she and the Residue of the past had been allies, but how could he know whether that was true? The Blue Knight might be lying... or perhaps 'the Residue of that time' had been putting on an act with some hidden agenda. In other words, the possibility that the alliance had been a sham from the very start.
The second was the case where what Residue had known back then was little different from what Pale knew.
That is, if he'd been talking as though he knew while not properly grasping it himself, then that vague manner of speaking made perfect sense.
"...An island, hm. Hardly seems a fitting stage for a decisive battle against Destruction. What sort of island was it? How large, and what shape?"
"Not that big. Uh... sixty kilometers? Something like that, I think they said."
Sixty square kilometers?
About the size of a small island.
Barely enough room for a single small city, or a handful of villages.
"We started out scattered along the outskirts of the Island, and that's where we met Lukas. Then we set off for 'The Center'."
"The Center?"
"Yes. Guiding Lukas there was our objective."
"......"
"On the way there, there were forests, villages, a lake. And plenty of enemies. Not just Destruction; there were monsters you couldn't reason with at all, and others who looked perfectly normal but turned hostile toward us. Because of that, the 'Second Destruction' was effectively pushed to the back burner."
"You said you defeated it."
"Here's how that happened. I told you our goal was to reach the Island's 'Center', right? At that Center was the 'Passage', and if you use it, you can go anywhere."
"Anywhere, you say?"
"Yes."
Pale nodded.
"But the Passage wasn't something just anyone could use. And I think there were some conditions too, but I only half listened, so I don't really remember."
"......"
"Anyway, if Destruction had won, it could have taken the Passage inward, to the Unified World, but in the end it failed. Because we won. We'll never cross paths with it again, so that's as good as driving it back, wouldn't you say?"
She wasn't wrong, but Residue felt a strange hollowness.
Had the Second Destruction really been toppled that easily? No. If it was true, the process itself surely hadn't been smooth– but with no memory of any of it, he couldn't shake the feeling of having won it all for free.
When bringing down the First Destruction had cost the Unified World so much damage......
"Getting to the Passage at the Center took maybe forty days? Around that, I think."
On that island, she'd said, a single day ran four days long, meaning the journey had actually spanned a full 160 days.
Considering the Island's size, that was hard to believe.
An island of a mere sixty square kilometers was a distance Residue could cross in an instant if he simply chose to. Pale and the others would be much the same.
Which meant the environment that made up the Island was harsher than imagined, and not a single one of the enemies lurking there could be taken lightly.
"In any case, we ended up the final victors. Since we reached the Center and were able to use the Passage."
"Yes."
"Then where is this place?"
"That, you would know, Residue."
"What?"
"Because you're the one who set the destination at the Passage."
"......"
Pale continued.
"Though before the destination was set, at the very end, you and Lukas had some long conversation. I couldn't hear it properly, but it kind of seemed like you were arguing."
"Arguing?"
"I'm not certain. But it got really loud. Like both your voices were raised, you know? You probably went and said something ridiculous again, didn't you?"
"...It was that loud, and you still couldn't eavesdrop on what was said?"
"Neither of you is careless enough for that, right?"
So they had exchanged some secret conversation while guarding against Pale's eavesdropping, was that it?
At present, nothing at all came to mind.
Residue pressed hard against his temples.
"Oh. I did hear one thing."
Pale said, as if it had suddenly come back to her.
"They said that if you went there, you could change everything."
*
He kept talking with Pale after that, but there was nothing more worth gleaning. Her account rambled badly, without so much as a shred of consideration for the listener. In other words, she was a woman astonishingly untalented at explaining or teaching anything.
Listening any further might only tangle the threads in his head worse, so he paused the conversation with Pale for the time being.
At that, Pale dusted off her backside and rose.
"Well then, I'll be going nooow."
"Where to? Don't you prefer staying close to Lukas?"
"I do, but something feels off. I think I'd better look around this area a bit more."
What exactly felt off, and just how far the area she meant to look around extended.
Pale vanished beyond the night streets without any further explanation.
Now Residue was left alone in the quiet playground. Perched on a shabby ride that looked as if it had been molded from clay, he muttered.
"...Change everything?"
The words Pale had left behind.
A world four thousand years in the past.
Connect the two, and the conclusion that emerged was so simple it nearly drew a scoff.
That this place might not be a world staged by Destruction, but the genuine past.
And not only that– the influence exerted here might carry over, exactly as it was, into the future.
Under that assumption, things that hadn't made sense gained plausibility.
Residue shook his head.
Only now was the situation slowly becoming clear.
First, the missing memories were far more extensive than he'd thought.
This place truly was some moment in the past.
And last, the most important thing.
The possibility that the influence Residue exerted at this point in time could bring about change in the future...... Ordinarily, that was impossible.
From a broad enough perspective, even time could be called a coordinate. Most universes could not defy this law, which was precisely why the Void Record, holding a complete account of past, present, and future, could exist. Since the Unified World, that law might have changed or vanished entirely, but in any case.
In most cases a Time Paradox would occur, but there were exceptions.
Namely, when the gap between universes was stark.
Every so often, a well-crafted story would be born as a Small Universe. Not through the intervention of some transcendent being, of course. It was a phenomenon that occasionally occurred when the thoughts of ordinary humans, who lacked any such power themselves, gathered together; and in such cases, the beings of the higher universe, the parent, so to speak, could interfere with the lower universe. Changing the past included, naturally.
Because that universe was a 'story' with a fixed 'beginning' and 'end'.
But this was an entirely different case.
This was no mere Small Universe born from a story.
The present world had become an unprecedented Super-massive Universe; was it even possible to bring change to a world that immense?
For that to be possible, he had no choice but to accept that 'The Outside' was a world vastly larger than the Unified World...... Though whether such a place should even be called by so small a word as 'world' was questionable in itself.
'......'
Residue shook his head.
Whatever The Outside truly was, it didn't matter in the slightest to the Residue of right now.
He'd been squandering his thoughts on pointless tangents.
"Whew......"
As he exhaled slowly, his breath came out white.
Damn it all. What was with the temperature swings here? The desert before dawn was as cold as a day of falling snow. In fact, the sandy desert beneath the pale moonlight could, depending on how one looked at it, pass for a snowfield at night.
...Lukas and Residue meeting at this point in time was already, in itself, something that had never happened before.
Then had the future already changed? Was it changing even now?
Why had 'the Residue who lost his memories' come here through the 'Passage'?
"...Obvious, isn't it."
Because depending on how he acted here, the situation could be turned around. This was a world where that possibility existed.
The reason the Black Thorn Demon King, the Lightning God, and Agolet had tried to kill Lukas on 'The Island', and probably still meant to now, was simple.
Lukas was none other than the Fifth Destruction and the Commander of every Destruction– in other words, kill him, and Destruction itself might become as if it had never been...... A thread-thin chance, but a chance worth betting on.
...But would things really resolve so simply?
Lukas was Destruction's Commander, yet at the same time he served to divide that Destruction into pieces small enough for the Unified World to stand against. Which made him both destroyer and savior.
Kill Lukas at this point, and even the fact that Destruction had been split into fragments might vanish. Then Destruction, undivided, would crash into the Unified World in one solid mass, and the world might be destroyed on the spot.
It was a possibility anyone could reach with a moment's thought; the Blue Knight was one thing, but he couldn't believe the Lightning God, the Demon King, or Agolet would fail to see it.
It hadn't even been that long since they'd been told about Lukas at the King's Castle, had it?
Which meant they were trying to kill Lukas knowing all this, and he couldn't for the life of him fathom what lay behind it.
Above all... he didn't know what he himself had been thinking before losing his memories.
From what he'd heard, the authority to choose where the 'Passage' would lead had rested with Residue.
Was Residue's goal to kill Lukas as well?
Then why had he allied with the Blue Knight?
"Ah. Damned if I know."
He flopped down onto the sand. Heedless of the grains slipping into his hair and clothes, he stretched out his limbs and gazed up at the sky.
For the first time in a long while, his mind was a restless jumble.
Only then did he realize why that nagging discomfort had clung to him ever since he opened his eyes.
It was the first time since that city where the rain had poured down, since he'd established his own identity there.
The first time he'd felt like he didn't know what to do.
*****
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