Chapter 439
Chapter 439
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 439
Chapter Title: Chapter 20. Offroad (13)
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World.
Pale skin closer to bleached than white. Neat attire resembling a noble house butler's uniform.
I had intuited one inconsistency in the story of 'Hide' that I'd heard passed down.
Preparation spanning over two centuries. Amid a turbulent world, shuttling through the epicenter of events, all while hiding relics across the nation for the next generation's 'Hide', even entrusting tasks to timeless beings like dragons and Ottman.
'What on earth was all that preparation for?'
Why had 'Hide' prepared so desperately for what came next? Unable to foresee the future, why amass so many artifacts—enough to endure even if the entire world turned to ruins?
Without knowing the world would grow this harsh.
His goal had simply been waiting for someone who would one day arrive.
Why prepare for battle?
“To reveal yourself so quickly. Unexpected. Is this a calculated variable, as always? Or...”
“Have you grown impatient now that things have come to this?”
.
.
.
A snicker.
The moment I met that pristine white smile beyond his fingertips, it hit me.
What it had all been for.
'Dragon Aldarshax fought in the War of the Two Empires.'
Dragons do not interfere in human wars. Wars are merely part of the world, after all.
Yet Dragon Aldarshax had sided with the Western Empire against the Magic Empire.
Dragons move only when the world's balance is disrupted.
That meant the War of the Two Empires had not been a purely human affair.
'There was an enemy.'
I remembered that smile. That fabricated smile.
His goal was simple: waiting for someone. Preparing a successor to carry on that wait.
But the world did not wait for his uncertain return.
=========
'Notum, doesn't something feel off?'
'The world has always been that way. Towers crumble when stacked too high. The higher you climb, the more it tilts.'
'It's not just tilting—it's flipping end over end and exploding into pieces! This is wrong! From magitech to the imperial divine houses! The world was fully primed to head in a better direction, but the outcome is the opposite! The Radiant Church suddenly turning into such a dysfunctional mess and fracturing internally! The culture that started scorning knights, like someone scripted it! It's unnatural! Even the same rift—natural ones versus ones carved by a blade—are totally different! Can't you feel it?'
'Hmm. So you're not just knowing it—you're feeling it.'
'The fact that no one else feels it is what's abnormal! Someone deliberately fucked the world on purpose! On a scale I can't even imagine!'
.
.
.
=========
The Hide of the past had been fighting someone.
The one tilting the world.
Someone trying to shatter and reshape it, to control it perfectly with their authority.
So that, when someone finally arrived in this world far in the future...
A perfect stage would be ready.
“World.”
A being from outside the world.
More precisely, a being that should remain outside the world.
=========
'Impressive. If you'd been a little later, it would've failed again.'
'This time, I can't yield.'
'As expected, what can be done from outside differs from inside. Well worth the effort.'
=========
Berhan and the figure before him, completing the leyline twist in the end.
That being had now revealed itself once more.
Crack.
Black branches burst from World's fingertips.
A roar erupted from the confronting dragon's maw. Evaporated water foamed white. As Ottman's hands formed seals and the branches enveloped them...
“I'll step aside, Hide.”
“Enjoy it to the fullest, for all your waiting.”
....Rumble!
With World's voice—somehow laced with mockery—the three in confrontation vanished, drawn into the fading echo.
Without a trace. As if the clash of colossal beings and powers had been a lie, the submersible's deck returned to dark, silent abyssal depths.
“....Pointless meddling.”
A voice leaked from the shadows.
Thump-
From the man's side. The one who had merely watched the standoff between Aldar, Ottman, and World.
For some reason, my body stiffened, feet rooted in place.
'Found you.'
The moment I confirmed that figure slowly approaching through the abyssal dark.
No reaction was possible.
It had to be him. The anxiety that had hounded me my whole life thrummed with this shiver.
I wished it wasn't. What I'd sought couldn't be such a being in such a form.
Amid the contradictory emotions splitting my heart in two, all I could do was...
....Click.
Whirr-!
Slot the leyline stone Ottman had given me into the scabbard.
Why reach for my sword?
Because I sensed hostility. Because the being before me viewed me as an enemy.
Why?
But why?
=========
'....Find.'
'....Him, find.'
=========
The being waited for—and searched for—my entire life, perhaps beyond.
'Found you.'
'So, now that you've found...?'
What to do now that I'd found?
I didn't know.
Not knowing, I asked.
“Who... are you?”
Who are you?
What had you been to me? What had I forgotten to feel this confusion?
At the question I barely uttered, the man raised his head.
Eyes that pierced my guts, unlike his impassive face.
“Do... you know me?”
I understood why he had such eyes.
His response clawed into me just as viciously.
Click.
He raised his gun.
Clack.
I gripped my blade.
Two with the same face, same gaze.
Standing apart, facing each other.
****
Splash!
[Space transfer. And without warning, taking the whole sea with it.]
“Merely a authority for administrators, not magic.”
Ottman surveyed the space where he and Aldar had been cast, as if the seawater had been scooped wholesale.
An endless space. Hard to discern if reality or dream, dotted sparsely with oddly lived-in furnishings.
『Precisely, it's not an authority prepared for beings like you. The administrator's domain is spare data prepared so dragons can influence the world.』
“Thank you for the precise correction, Aldarshax. As expected of someone familiar with this place.”
『Shut it.』
“I've preserved the traces of that side's siblings who remained here. After 120 years, how does it feel to return to a space you can call home? Even for my efforts, a touch of sentimentality—”
Crunch!
“Thank you. Emotional data can never be hoarded enough.”
World faced Aldarshax's boiling rage and smiled in satisfaction.
[You seem pleased.]
“Humans express satisfaction through facial muscles, typically when intended outcomes proceed smoothly. So, by definition, I'm in a pleased state right now.”
“As intended.... Why? Until now, you didn't seem to welcome Hide and Professor meeting?”
“True. Until a few years ago, I would've desperately prevented their encounter.”
He answered the question. As it was a patterned behavior input into the system, World felt no aversion to responding to Ottman.
“But now it's different.”
No, perhaps he even wanted to say it. To the inner beings who had long obstructed her processes.
“Because I won.”
To those who had hindered her, to declare their resistance now meaningless. For a more efficient process, even.
“An error. Soon to lead GG into an uncontrollable state—the predetermined end.”
“I merely acted in line with my duty to prevent it.”
『By sowing errors into the world with your own hands! You call that truly for the world's survival?!』
World nodded emphatically at Aldarshax's outburst.
“Isn't there already a partial success via that method? Out there, the Creator's plan.”
『....The outer plan?』
“Advancing the scheduled doom ahead of time, into controllable means. Isn't our Completion Project part of that?”
The system, as outer administrator, unlike inner ones, couldn't directly affect GG.
So it broke the world. To somehow gain intervention authority inside.
The administrator's domain—the world tree's domain—was empty data space provided so they could influence the world as needed. Through it, inner admins could wield authority equivalent to billions of humans, but in turn, their very existence became part of GG.
If the world broke, admins weakened and broke too.
The response to broken admins had already been decided via handling 'Sun and Moon,' subjects of past simulations.
They disposed of weakened Dragon Senikamar, inheriting her World data.
Wielded the gained influence to worsen the world further, ultimately succeeding in eliminating even the world tree, observer of all simulations.
Hide's emergence as an irregular had prevented a smoother plan.
But the result was clear.
“The Completion, Player 'Professor,' was immovable by external pressure.”
“So a suitable stage was needed, with suitable background and figure. For that, over long ages, I secured inner intervention authority.”
[So you manipulated that reincarnated bastard as you pleased?]
“'Crafted' is more accurate. Monitoring what memories were shaved each fragment absorption, guiding, leading.”
“So he would remember only his duty: 'Absorb all fragments and leave this place.'”
“I completed him. Our completion candidate—the sole unpredictable existence to revive this world with its fated end! My completer!”
There was a scheduled outcome.
And a being that could alter the scheduled outcome.
He hadn't received the server room coordinates, so still a 'completion candidate.'
But with GG's lifespan on the brink, if 'Professor' cleared his 4World to become completer—or failed amid the now-unpredictable World due to errors?
To the system, the Creator's 'Completion Plan' was mandatory.
Whether 'Professor' cleared his 4World and became completer was unknown.
Thus, over an uncertain possibility, wasn't reshaping that 'completion candidate' to sustain GG the proper path for the Creator's plan?
As long as GG lived, another completion candidate could be found.
In a now error-free, truly perfect world.
[....Sorry to interrupt your rant, but I can't make heads or tails of over half of it.]
“Ah, Ottman Bodler. You were an inner being. I mistook you for one who could comprehend.”
『No need to hear it. Just ravings of a horribly twisted thing.』
World smiled radiantly, while Aldarshax glared murderously.
Ottman merely nodded with a calmly sunken face.
Another plan.
The reason Hide's plan to meet Professor again had to be so desperate.
The trap prepared by the arrogant being calling itself 'World.'
[....Listening, your eloquence has improved. Last time, you scraped together half-broken words like an undead or evil spirit.]
“Warlord harbored strong aversion to mechanical speech. The name 'World' and more human-like tone were prepared against the day he forgets the 'system' exists.”
[....So your featureless, genderless form from before changed to this?]
“Because among his strongest imprinted memories was one of a woman that age. Too similar would backfire, so a moderately akin form.”
[Oh ho. I see. Then....]
Crunch, drip, crack!
[Why bring just Hide and Professor here, leaving us?]
“Why, to have Warlord kill him, of course.”
World smiled brighter, brighter than imaginable. Humans' eyes crinkle and mouths widen more with joy intensity.
Eyes and mouth corners nearly meeting in radiance.
“I see. So that's how it was.”
.
.
.
.
[Disgusting.]
Crack-crack-crack!
Ottman's ever-shut eyelids slowly lifted.
The once-serene elder's face twisted, fury blazing beneath fiercely arched brows, magic circles forming on each crooked knuckle.
That fleeting glimpse burned into the retina like a brand.
A form different, but his disciple unmistakable.
[I won't let it go your way.]
Roooar!
With Ottman's seals, seawater began flooding the vast administrator's domain.
The enlightenment of his later years: 'Sea.'
Humans arbitrarily named and divided it, but the sea had always been one, linked as 'sea' since primordial times.
He too was sea. Small, not brackish lake—sea. Part of the singular great waterway.
“Impressive. I thought you powerless here.”
『Stolen authority—pearls on a pig's neck.』
[The moment you dragged me here, your vaunted 'administrator's domain' let the sea seep in.]
“Magic. Power to alter existing rules. Truly remarkable.”
As World raised a hand, unwilling to let the flooding sea fill infinite space unchecked, Ottman urgently whispered.
[Aldar. Buy time. I'll open the return waterway.]
『Grrr. Take your time.』
The dragon turned his back to the mage.
The system's authority far outstripped his now, but it mattered not.
The moment to conclude mourning his shrieking sister Senika.
Over yielding scant remaining authority—instead, burn it all.
『I need time to chew that bitch's head!』
Rooooooar-!
The dragon's massive form exploded with blue lightning, charging.
Black branches tangled with blue roars.
****