Merging Raid Teams (6)

After seeing Hwayeon off, I sat on the sofa in the dark living room and watched her through Spatial Perception. She crossed the skybridge from the residential wing into Business Support Building 1, fell into conversation with Aunt Hyeryeong—the workaholic already out and about—and started entering this and that on a tablet.

Her husband's off in America. Probably why she seems to live at the company.

Just then Yeongeun shuffled out of the bedroom, rubbing her eyes. She spotted me sitting in the dark living room, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠came over, and sat—no, lay down—settling her head on my thigh before drifting off again.

"You could've just slept in the bed. Why'd you come out?"

I lifted a hand and stroked Yeongeun's soft hair. Like a cat with a full belly, she smiled at the corner of her mouth and burrowed in closer.

I tracked Hwayeon again. Over in the business support wing she was checking supplies alongside Department Head Kim Pyochung, a middle-aged man I'd never seen before, and people who looked to be Business Support staff.

As six in the morning drew near, the checks were finished. Supporters arrived one after another, and together they began hauling the luggage down to the underground garage. There was a mountain of it, but with seventy-three supporters and the Business Support staff all mobilized, the sorting was over quickly. Around then, ability users started gathering in the garage by ones and twos.

Five luxury coaches sat parked. They'd all ride those to the Ability ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠User Alliance Building and make their entry from there, by the look of it.

Ability users coming in from outside and people from the lower floors of the residential wing kept streaming in, until at 6:20 Hwayeon stood there with one woman just crossing into B-Class, Sophia, five team-leader-class ability users, and fifty team members.

The team leaders ranged from low to mid C-Class. The leader-level presences I'd occasionally sensed in the Time River Building were the mid-tier ones, and the two low-tier men were faces I'd never seen—probably Hwarang members. Beside them, a stern-looking woman in square horn-rimmed glasses, whom I'd heard in passing was a section chief on the support team, was handing out backpacks to the supporters.

Fifty-eight ability users between Time River and Hwarang, plus seventy-three supporters—more than usual—made a force of one hundred and thirty-one. The ability users seemed to be handling their own gear, loading everything from assorted backpacks to compact travel cases and equipment bags packed with armor and weapons onto the trailers.

Before long the departure prep was done. Hwayeon stepped up onto a three-tiered platform, swept her gaze over the assembled crowd, and spoke.

She paused, looking over the hundred and thirty-one and the Business Support staff standing around them, then went on.

Serious, resolute, her eyes burning bright—even I had to admit she looked beautiful, and steady enough to trust.

The hundred and thirty-one ability users, the dozens of Business Support staff who had come out to see them off, and the three department heads all broke into applause at once. Every eye glittered, fixed on Hwayeon. It was plain how completely she had them.

Winning people over with words that short and simple. She was something else. Yeongeun, asleep against my thigh, was the same way, but Hwayeon too seemed born with the makings of a queen.

...Could they really be anything else?

In that charged atmosphere the ability users split across the five buses and pulled out, seen off by the three department heads and the Business Support staff.

Around the time the second party, under Hwayeon's lead, cleared the Grand Bleu Building, Franc came drifting over to where I sat, her face still rumpled with sleep. I stroked her hair as she nestled into my arms and acted spoiled, and when I looked out the window the sun had already climbed, flooding the living room with light.

I patted Yeongeun's backside to wake her and told her to go wash up. Franc, as if she had come fully awake too, pressed a light kiss to my lips and slipped into the kitchen to start breakfast.

Yeongeun made do with a simple breakfast of toast, fried eggs, and bacon, then left for work a little past seven. Sending my women off one by one like this, I was starting to feel like a kept man.

Once Yeongeun was gone, I grabbed my bag and headed down to the thirty-ninth floor, where Mom greeted us with a bright smile.

"Son? Why don't you call Hwayeon over, too?"

"Hwayeon just left for the Phase World. You heard about it yesterday, didn't you?"

"Ah. Mom forgot."

...What was that food that was supposed to be good for forgetfulness, again?

My sister lit up the moment she saw me, came over, and scrubbed a hand through my hair, and I spent the rest of the morning jabbing her in the side with a finger for the privilege. When I got to school, the princess waved and greeted me.

"Good morning, Sir Seoha."

"Could you drop the Sir?"

"I will, if you call me Lydie."

"I'll pass."

Han Go-eun and her friends looked back and forth between me and the princess—who had grown oddly close somewhere along the way—then turned to each other and started whispering.

"Lydia's totally fallen for Seoha toooo~."

"What happened yesterday? I heard the two of them walked home together, all friendly!"

I ignored Su Yu-ri and Kang So-ra as they squealed and spun up a morning-drama plot, pulled out my school tablet, and got ready for class.

Fifth period was P.E. Summer break was a month away, and the Phase World's forced summons were drawing near, so P.E. had been worked into the schedule every day and a conditioning regimen had kicked in. Today's session was a long-distance run.

Tests like this were training meant to raise the students' odds of surviving in the Phase World, so I didn't particularly need to take part. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my gym pants and was trudging along the edge of the track when Franc fell into step beside me.

"The second forced summoning should be upon us before long."

"Has it already been a hundred days since I went in...? I think I was one of the first called. Wonder how many days it'll last this time."

"Would that not be as the Phase World wills? And yet, somehow, those who enter do seem to grow younger and younger."

I asked back, watching the kids huff and puff as they ran past.

"How do you know that? Did you look into it?"

"Yes."

Franc answered simply, then took out her phone, tapped around, and held up a news article. Ad windows of every kind cluttered the screen, but I forced myself to ignore them and read.

I was still staring at the screen Franc held up when the P.E. teacher—Teacher Sweat, on account of the smell—came storming past, bellowing.

"You little brats! Quit slacking and run! You think half-assing it is gonna build the stamina that'll keep you alive?! And you, Jung Seoha, you punk! If you're gonna drag your feet and get in the way, just go sit on the bench!"

Teacher Sweat ran along behind the pack, whirling a bamboo sword meant only to intimidate, smacking the kids who were dogging it—heads for the boys, shoulders for the girls—to hurry them on. Then he caught sight of me ambling and roared, face like a burst blood vessel.

It was a bluff sword, so getting hit didn't actually hurt much. Maybe it was the psychology of the thing—every time it landed, the kids screamed like they were dying and picked up speed. I found it a little funny.

He knew perfectly well none of this meant anything to Physical Reinforcement users, but he clearly didn't care for the sight of me sauntering.

I flashed him a grin and broke into a run, holding it to about the pace of a sprinter at a championship for ordinary people, and no faster.

"We've got to cover 2.1 kilometers, and one lap of the field is 300 meters, so that's seven laps? We've done one already, right?"

"Yes."

"Then let's finish fast and rest."

"The princess and those three sidekicks are up ahead, running their hearts out. I shouldn't half-ass it, should I?"

I flicked it on and threaded through the kids circling the field. Three minutes, and the seven laps were done. Even students from the other classes stared, eyes gone wide.

"I finished the run, so I can rest now, right?"

"...Fine."

Teacher Sweat shot me a glance, grumbled, and went back to chasing the slackers, whacking them with the bluff sword. Somehow those swings looked personal.

I sat on a shaded bench and, since it had come to mind, switched on my Certifier and searched again for the Supergiant Turtle.

Most of the restricted files had opened once I reached C-Class, but there still wasn't a word about the Supergiant Turtle.

Hmm. If even Hwayeon and Yeongeun don't know, there's no way it'd be in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a database like this.

The vision I'd seen on entering C-Class came back to me, so I searched for what happened during a class ascension, too. Same as ever—nothing but cheeky accounts. Felt incredible. The thrill was better than sex. That sort of thing.

And here I am with that gloomy, wicked vision stuck in a corner of my head.

I fed in the keywords—swamp, old dead trees, four-legged crows, black castle—and a name jumped out. Alastor's Terrible Dark Castle.

Huh? Alaster? Alastor? I feel like I've heard that name somewhere...

Franc, who had been watching my search results from beside me, supplied an explanation, then asked as if curious.

"Alastor is an epithet of Zeus from Greek mythology. But why are you searching for that?"

"Huh? Uh, well... I had a dream, and I saw a black castle in it. So I just looked it up."

A hunch still told me I shouldn't explain, so I tried to blur past it.

"Is that so?"

She showed no particular curiosity, and turned her attention to the information on the Certifier.

Phase-grade... The Supergiant Turtle came back to me. There was no guarantee that turtle was Phase-grade, but when I heard Phase-grade, that turtle was the only thing I could picture. Anyway. Something like that might be in there...

Come to think of it, everyone's Phase World was supposed to be completely different, so why share information like this?

I had my answer soon enough.

So that was why I hadn't seen it the last time I was idly poking around.

Thinking it over for a moment, it seemed obvious. There were millions of ability users alive—there couldn't possibly be millions of stars. And mostly the same aberrants showed up, didn't they? One star, one planet, on different timelines. That, I could accept.

The discovery itself was quite old. According to the entry, it had begun by chance with two members of the same raid team.

Two ability users—A and B, for convenience. Their raid team had been exploring A's Phase World, running subjugations and raids all over and leaving traces behind. Then they declared the conquest of A's world complete and started exploring B's, and the further they went, the stronger the raiders' sense of déjà vu became.

Similar terrain and familiar traces kept turning up mid-exploration. The team found it strange enough to open a real investigation, and before long a shocking fact surfaced: the traces were confirmed to be the very ones left by their exploration and raids in A's Phase World.

During a raid in A's world they had given up on recovering a broken tent, smashed it to bits, and buried it. In B's Phase World, the remains of a tent that looked as if a long time had passed came spilling back out. That proved it. So they sealed a clock rated to last a hundred years inside a container, buried it in A's Phase World, then went to B's and dug the container up. The clock said forty-two years had passed.

At that point, the entry said, scientists had foamed at the mouth and sprayed spit arguing over time paradoxes. What they were getting at was this. Leave a few people in A's Phase World, return to reality, then enter the Phase World through B—what happens to the people left behind? And if you brought those people back to reality?

Good call. If a time paradox like that actually held, there was no telling what would become of the world.

Afterward, as time went on, the whole thing slid into a so-what shrug, and public interest drifted away. Even so, there were still groups researching the contradictions in how time flowed between Phase Worlds.

Honestly, I was curious too. Take two Phase Worlds, past and future, with almost no time gap between them. Two teams in the same place, raiding the same aberrant at the same moment. If the team in the past killed the aberrant first, what happened to the one in the future? That kind of thing.

"Say there's a group of aberrants in one region, and you kill the progenitor of that group in the past. What happens to the aberrant group that already exists in the future? I'm curious about that, too."

Before I knew it, the kids who had gathered around me caught that and started debating, faces bright with interest.

The most plausible claim to come out of it was that spacetime had a self-repairing nature. Kill the progenitor of a group the way I'd described, and every branch that had spread from that progenitor would vanish, while some other similar being took its place.

Then the girl said to be the smartest in the school stepped in with a different hypothesis. Fate was already fixed. If you acted in the past and harmed some being, you weren't causing something that had never happened—you were causing something that had always happened.

Another bright boy offered the exact opposite. Do something like that, and time would stay the same, but space would split off elsewhere. The so-called parallel-world theory.

By then my underpowered CPU was starting to run hot.

"Come to think of it, didn't Ms. So Yoojin say something like this back in our second year?"

"Huh? I think I heard that too. An altered timeline, or something? She said that theory was famous."

"But what Seoha's telling us means there's a hard fact behind it, right? It's not a theory."

"He's saying only C-Class can see that stuff, so maybe the rest just never got out? Like, the theory's already been shown to be true, but the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠media never tells you what came afterrr~ something like that?"

The kids started murmuring among themselves again, and my head couldn't take another second of it.

Ding-dong, ding-dong.

And class was over. Perfect.

"Let's head back."

I shut off the Certifier and stood from the bench. The kids drifted toward the classroom in twos and threes, still hashing out the contradictions of time travel. It had gotten its hooks in them.

Did being smart make your thoughts that far out of the ordinary, too?

I let out a long sigh and headed for the classroom with Han Go-eun and the rest, and the princess—face a little flushed, still sweating—came up beside me.

"That was a fascinating discussion. So once you're C-Class, you can see things like that!"

"Well..."

"But why were you looking into that in the first place?"

She must have gotten here late and missed the kids debating and whispering.

"I had a dream, and a region showed up in it. I was looking into that, and the talk went off to Samcheonpo."

"Sancheongpeo?"

"Sam. Cheon. Po! It's a Korean saying. It means you were going along just fine and suddenly veered off down some nonsense road."

Though I'd heard you weren't supposed to say that in front of people from Samcheonpo... Eh, whatever.

"Is that so? I'm curious which region you saw."

"Alastor's Terrible Dark Castle."

"Ah! You mean that terrible dark castle."

"A spine-chilling dark castle? The Certifier has it down as a black castle."

The princess's face, bright a moment ago with recognition, darkened just as fast. A small shiver ran through her. Clearly not a good memory.

"To be precise, it was a dreadful, wicked castle. There was footage of it in the royal archives. I happened to see it when I was little, and I remember being too frightened to sleep for days."

...Suddenly I wanted to know what was on that footage.

She read my expression, smiled faintly, and spoke.

"If Sir Seoha were to visit, the royal family would be glad to show you that recording."

"And the price would be letting them examine Franc, wouldn't it? I'll pass."

"Eeing."