Chapter 481
Chapter 481
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 22
Chapter Title: Last Parade (12)
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When someone returns home after being away for a long time, what’s the first thing they should do?
Shout “Home— sweet home—!” and flop down?
Try out all those things they wanted to do once they got back, one by one?
Splash, shwaaash!
No.
The correct answer is cleaning. Wash away the accumulated dust, the tiny creatures that slipped in through who-knows-where, and the items that have somehow changed state.
Thud!
Rumble—
And that applied to Hyde, who had finally returned after a whopping 220 years.
“Damn it all.”
The place called the “consciousness space” for lack of a proper name was now unrecognizable from its former self.
Rumble—
In the distance, something resembling a modern skyscraper was collapsing under its own weight. Next to it, a sign reading [INN] creaked precariously atop a ruined wooden house, while in front of that, a splendid white horse galloped along, followed by a subway train.
Those were memories too. Just as the Professor had unknowingly recreated his worn-out sofa here, and Hyde had built bookshelves to organize his memories. The countless fragments he’d absorbed as a Warlord, and the data souls within them, had taken root in this space, piling up imperfect subconsciousness with their intense recollections.
“Our tenants really trashed the place.”
Naturally, to Hyde—who’d come back to his homeland after 220 years—it was a deeply frown-inducing sight.
Boom—!
Rumble!
Splash, splash!
As a result, Hyde—who’d been locked in a battle deciding the fate of an entire world just minutes ago—was now engrossed in housework.
“They say running away from home turns you into a dog.”
“I wonder why I wanted to be human so badly when I was little.”
Honestly, no matter how he thought about it, cleaning all this up seemed impossible. What good was smashing buildings and castles?
[Celine, Celine, Your Highness, aaahhh....]
[Ooooh.... To London, if only I could return to that London....]
Those guys over there, clumped together and squirming like sludge at the bottom of a river—they were like broken videotapes, to put it in perspective. Souls compressed and crystallized into “fragments,” as the name implied. Because of that, they were trapped in their most intense moment, endlessly imagining the longed-for instants within this dark, vast consciousness space.
[Ahh, my London. Regent Street, the bakery that made miracle sandwiches from its awful bread, if only I could go back there before it was destroyed, before the bombs fell....]
....Thud thud thud thud thud!
And so, they poured out their own London streets into the Professor’s consciousness.
Knowing full well they could never return, they repeated the act in consciousness spaces that crumbled after mere seconds.
The number of such personalities repeating this was nearly equivalent to the entirety of World 4, turning the once dark and vast consciousness space into a landfill of shattered, jumbled moments from modern times, the Middle Ages, and fantasy.
Clang, shwaaash!
Compared to them, Hyde’s cleaning tools were pathetically crude. Monstrous strength and a tail with bone spikes like a hoe. No matter how much he cleaned, it was all for naught.
Splash, splash!
“Damn it. It was so easy when I could just brush them away.”
Once, Hyde could manifest objects here with mere imagination, just like them. But now, things were different.
Fwoosh!
White flames flickering around his soul—aura.
If fragments were souls forcibly compressed and hardened, then an aura knight was one who voluntarily shaved and compressed their own soul.
“The density of the soul is different, you see. Knight.”
The purity and toughness of the soul. That was the sole focus he’d used to forge himself into an aura knight, and now it shone.
Rumble—
“Well, this should do it.”
While lost in such thoughts, the mutant’s strength dutifully cleared the surroundings.
Exactly ten meters in diameter. In the circular clearing where the black water surface was exposed thanks to his brute force, he placed the furniture he’d prepared in advance. A worn gray sofa and the massive bookshelf he’d once used to organize memories.
Of course, they differed somewhat from the originals. The worn gray sofa was nearly shredded from the debris of memories dumped on it, and the bookshelf.... was even more pathetic. As an individual personality not part of the Professor’s consciousness space, he couldn’t recreate it with imagination like before. Instead, he had to scavenge broken furniture from the rubble and piece it together crudely.
Using what might’ve been a log house pillar for the axis, propping up splinters that could’ve been someone’s front door, hammering in hearth tools in place of nails, bundling and connecting bunches of wires that resembled power strips....
“....This should hold?”
The resulting bookshelf, ten meters wide and tall.
.
.
.
.
Prod—
Creeeak—!
Groan, screeech!
“Uh, umm....”
He’d only lightly prodded it with a finger to test, but the entire bookshelf shook violently, the fishing rod mobile hanging from the top swayed wildly. No matter how you looked at it, storing memories here would leave you with dissociative identity disorder as a chronic condition.
“Eh, whatever. I’m telling you, I did my part?”
Truth be told, as long as the memories were conveyed somehow, there was no need to cling to these old forms.
“....I deserve some reward too. It’s been 220 years, after all.”
Still, this was what he wanted.
The space with the black water surface exposed. The worn gray sofa at its center, and the massive bookshelf in front.
Hyde savored the feel of the sagging leather against his body as he reached toward the bookshelf on the verge of collapse.
Modest, but it was finally his “last.”
Swish—
The mutant’s sturdy body. From his fingertips, lights like tiny fireflies flew toward the crooked bookshelf, toward the clumsy mobile.
“A relay of memories. I’m the final runner.”
For so long, through repeated lives to reach this moment, his memories—and the Professor’s memories, shared down to the depths of consciousness and subconscious—flowed into the newly created memory repository.
“....Wasn’t the plan from the start, though.”
“Body, mind, soul. After a couple centuries, they all change one way or another.”
In the past, sharing memories with the Professor had been as easy as breathing. They shared the same soul, after all—two consciousnesses.
But now? What about now?
“....This sofa’s too uncomfortable to use anymore.”
The worn gray sofa that once felt like skin now forced him into an awkward perch, thanks to his mutant tail and spine.
The little being who once yearned to become human had reached the pinnacle of selfhood: a master knight. His mind was crystallized to the point it couldn’t be split even by will.
His flesh had shed human form. And if flesh follows the soul’s shape, the soul in turn is influenced by the flesh.
“If I don’t grind it down nice and smooth to hand over, it means we can’t peek or share like the old days anymore.”
Thanks to the aura knight’s wholly independent soul, he’d preserved his consciousness even after being absorbed by the “Warlord.” But likewise, that indivisible soul.... prevented him from sharing memories with the Professor. Unlike before, they were completely separate consciousnesses now.
The Professor’s memories had been scattered and clung to by various corrupted data souls. If things stayed this way, even if the fragment in the server room returned, it’d be an empty shell no different from the Warlord.
He had to fill in the guy’s memories somehow. Here, in the Professor’s subconscious.
Shwaa—
So, he fades. After 200 years of hardship, in an unseen place, without a word of thanks. If there was no way to share the memories stored in him, then handing over the whole package would do. Though the existence called “Hyde” would vanish, it would at least be conveyed.
“This is the last time I’ll say this, Professor.”
His soliloquy would be contained in those memories and delivered to the Professor. The moment the guy read it, it would become their final conversation.
He wanted to talk endlessly, enough to fill 220 years.... But the guy might fall asleep listening, and time wasn’t that abundant anyway.
“I guarantee you, by the time you read this memory, you’ll be raging like mad.”
He’d wanted to extract just the Professor’s memories to give, but the aura knight’s unsplittable soul would deliver all his own memories piled on top.
He’d rage. The guy cherished his own like nothing else. Just accepting his hardship-filled 200-year life story would make him wracked with guilt, and the next memory would show him vanishing after passing on the recollections from within the guy’s mind.
He could picture it without seeing. The guy would scream, unleashing the choicest curses he knew. “Why! Why, Hyde, why go that far, you stupid, idiotic, wack-wack-wack-wack—!!”
“Yeah. Why did I? I pondered that long and hard. Intense as it was, our time together was 2 years, and I lived over 2 centuries without you. Aldrich asked at first too. Won’t you stop here? Quit that hellish ‘preparation’ and return to your life? He said you were too pitiful to watch.”
Ten years changes mountains and rivers; 200 years evaporates ranges and splits continents.
No new bonds in 200 years? None he cherished and wanted to protect? And yet, why push everything aside to come here?
“I couldn’t figure it out no matter what, but suddenly the answer popped up.”
Fwoosh!
White flames rose around Hyde’s vanishing body.
The white aura, like the first he’d ignited in World 3’s Empire. Its meaning: unyielding.
“This can’t be shared. So at the end, when we fused, I used aura, while you—who pushed every possibility to the limit as mage, warrior, shard knight under the system’s tender care—couldn’t.”
“Unyielding belonged to me from the start. Not you, Professor.”
The first clue: the “aura”—a human’s very will—belonged to Hyde himself, a mere splintered consciousness fragment.
“And as you know, GG is a simulation of reality, so even utterly different worlds overlap a lot. The outside flipped by nuclear war, World 4 wrecked by leyline distortion; if post-apocalypse city-states like ‘Dome’ survived outside, here an Empire maintained its foundation after leyline distortion.”
Even the magic device for leyline distortion was named ‘A-TOMB,’ and Gynax’s changed imperial flag was the Dome’s flag flipped. Worlds branching in completely different directions still overlapped at some point.
“And if mutated viruses exist outside, GG has mutant factors.”
Once, the Professor had seen a mutant factor and thought, ‘Like a variant virus in form only.’
“So. If variant viruses dig into the host’s most twisted memories—traumas—to take root, then its mirror, the mutant factor, where did this ‘consciousness lifeform Hyde’ take root?”
In the same place: humanity’s weakest, most wounded memories. And the Professor had a glaringly obvious wound.
“Surviving. That your closest ones died for you—that was your trauma.”
“That guilt turned to self-loathing. Uncontrollable self-loathing ultimately carved one human instinct from you.”
The most primal instinct all creatures possess, from higher animals like humans to microbes like rotifers.
“Narcissism. The instinct to prioritize oneself above all. Your guilt loathed your surviving self, so it ripped out the ‘love for oneself’ every animal has.”
That was the true inner self Hyde had glimpsed in the Professor. For any creature, the top priority in judgment is ‘oneself,’ but PTSD had torn it away, lodging it behind reason and conscience—a malformed personality.
Like wasteland survivors, he was a type of madman. A soul compressed and crystallized by shocking events and overwhelming stress.
Thus tough, and thus he survived the harsh post-apocalyptic world.
“Jagged goodness,” born by shaving away self-love. That’s how Hyde defined the Professor. So he couldn’t bear seeing someone sacrifice before himself.
“And so, no matter what, I couldn’t turn away from you.”
....That detached trauma. The mutant factor rooted in ‘narcissism’ grew into ‘Hyde.’
“So you threw yourself to save the world.”
“And so I throw away my world to save you.”
Once one, split by intense shock, honed to razor edges facing opposite directions.
“I’m the one who cherishes you more than any being in the world.”
Thus, unyielding.
Hoo.
Words long held in solitude slipped out with a sigh.
The bookshelf half-filled already? His mind went blank. What else was he supposed to say?
Why so devoted? He’d explained. If he didn’t spill it, the guy would blame himself forever for the sacrifice. A bit fatalistic, but.... He was born that way—what could he do? He’d have to accept it.
Hm. And.
“....It was luxurious.”
Practically a father figure, so at least a thanks in the will.
“What personality gets to enjoy such luxury? Surrounded by someone’s most intense, beautiful moments, reliving them over and over.”
Those of someone as intense as you.
The disassembled soul became memories, filling the bookshelf, the sky, the darkness.
The brightest memories settled one by one into the mobile made from broken fishing rods. Gazing up from the worn sofa, they resembled a small galaxy blooming in the dark vast sky. The black mirror-like water surface reflected it, spreading another night sky beneath Hyde’s feet.
“Yeah. This is what I wanted to see again.”
Like he was at the center of a tiny universe lying on that worn sofa, that moment he’d found so beautiful.
Returning to the moment he’d only imagined in his head for 200 years. That was all the reward Hyde desired.
....Rustle.
If anything, the tiny memory fragment he slyly pocketed while fading was part of his reward.
‘As a data soul that got absorbed anyway, I deserve to take one memory like the other fragments.... right?’
Lost in thought, his consciousness blurred, and light filled the surroundings.
“....Time’s.... up.”
Slowly, surely, he dissipates. Leaving even a speck of ‘Hyde’ would mean ‘Professor’ is that much incomplete. His ‘narcissism’ wouldn’t allow it. Just as the Professor reached out without abandoning even one lost soul.
Far away, in a machine clump called the server room, the Professor’s shattered personality resided.
“Get ready.... final runner....”
Even as he faded, Hyde’s face held only a happy smile.
The plan prepared over 200 years—the prelude to that one moment’s reversal—was finally rising.
“Go.... and finish.... it....”
At the end of the 200-year memory relay, the Professor received the baton called ‘me.’
“Don’t miss.... I made it visible.... even staked the flag....”
In his blurring vision, the finish line appeared like an illusion. World 4, vanished empty—there stood the silver sword piercing the system’s heart. Lionel.
A signal of the destination, a stake pinning the enemy. Accumulating 700 years of worship data, and equal enmity from the Empire’s foes—a massive, meaningless, brute-force compressed data chunk that even machine intelligence would take ages to unpack.
Probably bewildered now, unable to move in the empty World 4.
‘Deceive and seize. That’s our way.’
‘....Right, shell?’
Head-on fights were never our style from the start. Neither the Professor nor I ever faced fair odds; victory’s formula was always a strike from an unexpected angle.
That was the Professor’s way. Mine, learned from him.
I don’t want to vanish. Just one word to that damned system: ‘You got fooled!’ to reveal what I’ve done all this time.
Yeah. One last request. I did that much for you.
Hyde mustered his fading mind, carefully choosing words.
For the system, declaring victory while coldly regarding his severed neck.
『Congrats on clearing World 4, dumbass.』
You can’t win in World 4. It’s the world’s most meticulous AI, and a god wielding the creator’s power.
『So go ahead, enjoy yourself to the fullest.』
Thus, on a board where defeat is certain, it’s not about winning. It’s preparation for what’s next.
『An after-party for the victor.』
The world’s end. The single moment of opportunity when the board called World 4 collapses.
Beyond the ending, toward the final final moment.
And so, the soul that endured 220 years finally reached its destination, scattering into light. Refreshingly, without a shred of regret.
‘....Hyde, over and out.’
It vanished.
****
And at that exact moment.
Ding-!
Ding-! Ding-! Ding-! Ding-! Ding-! Ding-!
“....Why.”
The void with nothing. Her and the hollow Warlord shell, and the sword piercing her heart.
Ding-!
[Congratulations! Player ‘World’ clears World 4!]
An alert she, the System, shouldn’t hear; text that shouldn’t appear.
To her, the System—who’d moved her core data to World 4 at player level to wield immense influence within like a dragon.
Boom-!
An ornate, antique grand door appeared.
Cheers of crowds from beyond. Faint music.
And.
Creak, groan—screech!
‘Congrats↗ on↘ clear—ing♪ Congrats↗ on↘ clear—ing♪’
Amid it, a suppressed, eerie song—like lips gnashing—leaked out with metal-tearing noise.
“It won’t.... vanish?”
Impossible. Her terminal ‘World’ had secured all data souls and admin rights in World 4. Once out, she could wield developer privileges; even in empty World 4, she could create or destroy worlds at will. Why.
Screeech—
The ornate door swung open toward her in confusion.
Crack!
A beast-like hand seized her, dragging her without resistance.
Beyond the stage.
“Welcome.”
A small world beyond the ending.
“To the Extra Stage.... We hope you enjoy your stay.”
Crunch!
“....In place of the one knight absent from this gathering.”
Into the festival where all data souls comprising this game gathered, after everything ended.
“....Congrats on clearing World 4, dumbass.”
All of them, gladly awaiting her.
To the very last.
****