Chapter 485
Chapter 485
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Translator: Vine
Chapter: 485
Chapter Title: Last Parade (16)
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BGM Recommendation: Goodbye to a World (Porter Robinson)
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Ding- Ding- Ding- Ding-
[Player ‘Professor’ control authority approved from computation module [T1] to [Lz947]]
[Player ‘Professor’ control authority approved from background unit [Permafrost] to [Tropical Rainforest]]
[....Approved]
[....Approved]
[....Approved]
[....Approved]
.
.
.
.
The victory fanfare that had begun with the final gunshot was still ringing out endlessly.
It was over.
The realization that we had finally reached the end filled my chest.
“That’s Ottoman.”
“That’s Notum. Laxasha.”
“Lucilla. Borca. Aldrich. Yggdrasil.”
“Astrad, Catreia. Naelda.... Ah, Bolteus.”
Tap, tap, tap, tap.
And with every star I counted in the deep blue night sky, every time a sparkling glass filled for them, the sense of accomplishment swelling in my chest overflowed—reminding me, instead, of the empty spaces left behind.
One star, one glass each.
Before long, the summit of the half-tilted spire was brimming with glasses abandoned by their owners.
“Still, cramped as it is, I saved a seat just big enough for you.”
Clink.
The precarious empty spot amid that raucous drinking party was reserved for the one who couldn’t claim a place even amid the halos of light in the sky above.
Gulp, gulp.
Kuhhh-!
“If our president back home saw this, he’d lose his mind—booze so strong it’d make his eyes spin, relic-grade smokes you could roll cash with instead of tobacco, all free. Hell, I’d love to plant myself here forever. Right? Basically omnipotent and all. What else should I whip up? Apartment? Airplane? That brewery exclusive to the Teldrat royal family, famous for its ale?”
The question I tossed out with a solitary cackle circled the vacant seat before scattering.
[Professor, that guy’s probably rambling some nonsense about sticking around or whatever.]
[I don’t even need to watch—it’s like a damn video. Ugh, a total sucker forged in the toughest trials. A sucker’s soul hardened like diamond!]
In its place, a voice echoed somewhere deep in my chest to answer him.
“....You little punk. Now you’re talking back like we’re separate?”
Inheriting memories was a grueling ordeal.
Much like fresh snow piling softly over the earth after the first fall, his memories had layered thickly atop mine.
They were like dandelion seeds, waiting for the wind to carry them.
Gulp, gulp.
Kuhh-
[Booze.... Dragon’s Breath? Liquor that doesn’t even exist in reality. Hmm....]
[Cough, hack! Ugh! Blech! W-what the hell kind of memory is this? Ugh, should’ve left it alone!]
The moment my senses—or my thoughts—overlapped with them, Hyde’s memories erupted unbidden.
Hyde peering into the instant I first took a drink after entering 3World.
Hyde, curiosity overwhelming him after a harsh jolt, diving into that same memory over and over.
[....Gotta sit down with that guy someday and share a proper drink.]
Before I knew it, Hyde—a bigger lush than me now—tilting back his glass alone.
The memories bursting forth in the wake of my thoughts answered my mutterings in place of the empty seat before me.
[Once it’s all done.... He’ll just dawdle around like an idiot, mumbling crap like ‘Don’t wanna leave, life’s pretty good here~’. After all that bitching about escaping this hellhole of a game.]
“....Nah, man. It really is nice here. I need a break too.”
[Bet he’s just camped out, thinking he owes me one, drowning himself in booze? What kind of inner debt-collector clings that hard? Sometimes you can just take a gift and move on, but no—he’s gotta pay back every damn thing he gets.]
“You lived that way too.”
[What, prenatal education via Hammurabi’s Code?]
“Pfft!”
One stray thought, and dozens of Hyde’s memories detonated, making it feel as if the guy himself sat across from me.
“....Fine, you’re right on all counts. The system’s dead, every data soul’s at rest. No reason to linger even a second longer in this godforsaken game. I wanna log out right this instant....”
Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp-
Thud!
“But knowing it’s truly ‘the end’ the second I step out... how do I make my feet move?”
Ever since the memories returned, my mind cleared, and I glimpsed the four remnants left in my head.
Even as I prepped the extra stage, even as I mocked the ensnared system.
Even as I jammed a bullet into the system’s forehead—its brow furrowed in desperate yearning for life after my provocations—it echoed endlessly.
How could I bring him back?
Hyde, now fully decomposed and woven tracelessly into my own memories—how could I reverse it?
“I got nothing. This time, truly no clue what to do....”
“But hey, it’s just ‘impossible’ after nine hours of agonizing.”
He was right—the weight of what I’d received pinned my feet in place.
“Who knows? Maybe after a couple centuries nursing drinks like this, a solution pops up.”
Like you said, I’m the type who can’t endure leaving a debt unpaid.
The instant I leave this place, even the slimmest possibility I might’ve overlooked vanishes forever.
Hyde, isn’t asking me to just bail like this too cruel, too one-sided?
[....Return what we receive. That’s our way.]
Hyde’s voice in those memories replied with yet another recollection.
In the wreckage of my inner world, his gaze—fixed on the haphazardly strung-up memories dangling from an old sofa—felt like it met my own.
[....If I don’t lay this bare, he’ll spend his life self-flagellating, convinced he sacrificed for my sake. A bit fatalistic, sure.... But hey, born that way—what can he do about it?]
Hyde wrapped up his self-justification there in the memory.
“You foolish bastard. Hand over your memories wholesale, then wonder how you’d hide a damn thing....”
By nature, one thought summons dozens more in any person—and Hyde was no exception.
『Why. Why did he go so far to help you?』
His true feelings, desperately buried beneath layers of other thoughts.
‘Born that way.’
‘Spawned from your split-off self-love, so I had no choice.’
Beneath the excuse Hyde had left for me, his real heart reared its head.
『....Because that’s our way.』
“....You damn fool of a 200-year-old blockhead who never changes....”
Over Hyde’s head in the memory, his true heart whispered like a shadow.
[As a data soul, I deserve to take one memory like the rest.... right?]
As he faded away, Hyde plucked a small, shabby memory from the brilliantly shining ones around him and cradled it close.
=========
“Hyde! My name’s Hyde!”
=========
It was from long ago—the moment a tiny, wicked persona born from the mutation factor rifled through my memories as its host to forge its own name.
『Hyde. My favorite. Jekyll and Hyde. The ‘hide’ that means to conceal. Or.... the one I hid from you, but,』
=========
“Hyde! That’s my name! Whaddya think, shell? Pretty good, huh!”
=========
『....Truth is, it was Hyde as in ‘hide’—like skin.』
“You absolute moron, you idiot....”
Since it had seeped into my memories, nothing could be concealed. The purest truth filled my hollow chest.
『Skin. Me, who called my host—you—the ‘shell’, naming myself ‘skin’. Such a blatant ambition. God, I was so young back then.』
Hyde in the memory gazed at his younger self from long ago and gave an awkward smile.
『Dissociative identity disorder. Or schizophrenia. It’s when the mind splits off a self-destructive part to protect itself. Like a lizard shedding its tail—snip off the problem piece.』
『My essence was Professor’s self-love, carved out by his own hand. In other words, a state so steeped in self-loathing it would’ve driven him to death over and over if left unchecked.』
『When I first spawned, I genuinely wanted you gone. I was hostile, craved control of the body, dreamed of the day you vanished and Hyde took over.』
That’s why Hyde—laden with the ambition to shove aside the shell that was me and claim the skin for himself.
『....And the naive me back then never dreamed it, but of course, you knew every wicked intent harbored inside. Sharing memories means just that.』
=========
“Hyde! My name’s Hyde!”
=========
Hyde kept replaying that moment, over and over.
=========
“Hyde. Eh, not bad at all.”
=========
The instant I—having peered into his heart—affirmed it without a second thought.
『You really had zero ulterior motive. Like any ordinary person seeing a cat shivering in the cold and just wanting to hold it close, you faced the tumor-like growth in your psyche, empathized, thought, ‘Must be suffocating. Hope that guy gets a body of his own someday.’』
『You affirmed my existence.... Wished the best for me.』
A thought Professor had harbored as naturally as breathing, having lived his whole life as a good man.... It imprinted on the newborn persona like a hatchling recognizing its parent.
『That moment defined me.』
The hatred we’d shared since my birth began to melt away from that day forward.
The moniker “shell” evolved into “Professor,” “bro,” “hey,” “you,” and the like.
Sometimes, he was even called “father.”
That’s what I was to Hyde.
As he faded, Hyde’s expression brimmed with utter happiness and pride.
『That moment, sweeping away the self-loathing piled and hardened inside.... Ironically, it was your own self—the one forged by your enduring life.』
『That’s how you granted Hyde his current existence. Every instant I live and think as myself was born from that single affirmation.』
『So, give and take. Return what’s received. Our way.』
“Damn it, damn it....”
『You gave me an entire life. I’m just repaying it with mine.』
Hyde in the memory faded away, clutching a recollection trivial to me but radiant beyond measure to him.
『So, no debts between us, father.』
『My life, the 200 years I endured—they were all shaped by that one moment you gave me.』
“Kuhk, ugh, kuh....!”
『So quit agonizing over a debt that doesn’t exist and get the hell out. Of my world.』
His memory raced toward its end.
『Hm, but if I send this thought straight-up, he’ll just mope pathetically on his own. Better if he thinks it was ‘self-love spawn, no choice but to help.’』
“....Pfft, heh, kuh.... Pfahahahaha!”
Unsure whether to laugh or cry, my breath exploded carrying both at once.
I slapped my knee, roared with laughter. Hurled the bottle aside, spewed curses into the empty air.
One by one, two by two, the falling raindrops filled the ownerless glasses to overflowing.
“Ahh. Should’ve taught you how to lie before we parted ways.”
What self-love? What ‘think of it this way’?
Just like in that cherished memory you held dear, you laid your heart bare once more.
“Hyde.”
Hyde.
My friend, brother, family, rival.
My longest, deepest understander.
“....I’m going.”
In place of all the words lodged in my throat, I raised high the glass brimming with rainwater.
Ding- Ding- Ding-
“Thank you. For every moment of your life.”
[Admin authority A/W/S/A-1/S-1 transfer complete]
[Final sequence___Completer benefits [No.1] to [No.7]___ Remaining unlocked, excluding the three types transferred to the reserve completer]
And toward the alert sounds drawing to their close, I issued the command.
“....Log out.”
-Ding!
[Temporary developer ‘Professor’ now disconnecting.]
Still heavy-laden, I pressed forward.
Flash-!
The electronic world’s sole administrator vanished.
Rumble rumble rumble-!
The extra stage, its purpose fulfilled, oxidized into data fragments.
Swish- Swish- Swish-
The glass held aloft plummeted, smashing home.
Into the ownerless glass that had awaited this moment for so very long.
Clang-!
-To.
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