Last of Yours (7)
Something was wrong. Lethargy crept through every part that formed his true body. As if trapped in an unstoppable chain of causality, Sapaul’s world turned pitch black. The brightness itself resembled null space, yet the atmosphere was worlds apart. At least when wandering the void, one felt a certain comfort—never this kind of revulsion. This place was… deeply unpleasant.
The other Outer Gods who had been with him had all vanished. He had no idea where they went. He tried retracing his steps to the real space that had existed mere seconds ago, but only a repeating lattice of crystal greeted Sapaul. Mirrors. Mirrors. Mirrors. And more mirrors.
“……What the hell is this?”
Prisms covering every surface scattered his true body in countless reflections. Waves. Here, Sapaul existed not as solid matter but as a wave. And along the highly reflective mirrors, his form flickered left and right, the ceaseless back-and-forth motion threatening to steal his sanity.
“……!”
Indeed, it continued. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“I-I have to get out of here……”
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“The exit! Where’s the exit!”
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Sapaul screamed.
What you see here is called the Free Spectral Range, or FSR for short. The sharp peaks represent the residences of each Outer God. The height of each peak is proportional to that god’s rank.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
There are nine peaks, so nine Outer Gods are trapped here. You could also observe this shape using a classic measuring device like an oscilloscope. If you convert gravitational signals into electrical signals, you can even view their 4D positions via tomography.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Since Sapaul is the highest-ranking Outer God here, he should be at this peak. If we send an electromagnetic pulse this way, can we communicate?
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Knock knock. Is anyone home?
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Since this is a low-energy region where gravity and electromagnetism haven’t unified yet, that’s not possible. Reception might work, but two-way communication would be difficult.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Then let’s move this to the discussion section and write the paper.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Yay! Finally!
“Aaaaaaaaagh———!!”
He felt like he was going insane. His thoughts were being bleached away. The space was cramped. Dark. This place was completely deranged. The endless repetition of the same pattern was boring, suffocating, infuriating—and so utterly powerless that he felt lower than a worm.
Even if he tried to count time, he had no idea what moment it was. Even if he tried to gauge space, he had no idea where he was. No information reached him at all.
That’s why he had insisted on killing Idel von Rheinland first. He had said that level of sacrifice was nothing. Back then, at the Holy Spirit Institute, if just one more had cooperated, it wouldn’t have come to this—no, if those bastards hadn’t betrayed him, if only that had worked, they could have killed him. They wouldn’t have been trapped in the resonator. Why, why did it have to end up like this—
So one must follow the law of the jungle. The strong survive—that is absolute truth. Therefore, it is only natural that you obey my words, the strongest among you—and yet.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“……”
He realized his complaints were meaningless. His breathing grew ragged. He had no lungs, yet he couldn’t breathe. His heart trembled. He had no heart, yet cardiac arrest felt imminent. Even the voices of the other Outer Gods no longer reached him.
There was no doubt. He was trapped in the resonator.
To protect himself from the true annihilation the “End” would bring, he had gathered companions. Flocking together was the trait of the weak. Yet among them, Sapaul had been the strongest. He had believed he was the strongest. Now he painfully understood how wrong he was.
If steel was a weapon, then wisdom was also a weapon. If Sapaul possessed ten parts steel and one part wisdom, then Cartesia possessed one part steel and one hundred parts wisdom. He had been defeated by a hidden disparity in power.
Recalling the “smug smile” Cartesia had shown just before releasing her manifestation, Sapaul roared.
“Cartesia! Fine! You won! You made the better bet! So do something already and get me out of this idiotic space!”
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
“I’m losing my mind! How many times has this been now! Where’s Azrael? Where’s Tiphus? Kedel, Pacoton, Naiyura! Palcu! Sicamon! Orelwalt!”
He was slowly breaking down. The panicked self, the furious self, the screaming self. Yet he could receive no support, could confirm neither time nor space. An unknown chill ran down his spine at this unprecedented sense of powerlessness.
It was the same dreadful emotion that the girl he had tormented and the countless lesser creatures he had slaughtered had carried until their final moments.
The name of that emotion was—
Fear.
“Idel von Rheinland———!!”
A fleeting, insignificant fear.
“Just kill me already———!!”
It was a terror greater than death itself—the terror that even when a black hole’s lifespan ended, he still would not escape.
***
His head hurt, and even though the Constellations said they were fine, they never stopped crying. All sorts of screams felt like they were scraping across his entire body, yet there was a mountain of incidents he had to stop.
Why was he born with this kind of constitution? He was tired now. Just end it here. Please, kill him.
From now on, he would count exactly 600,000 seconds. Once he finished counting, he would definitely end it.
One, two, three. Ten thousand, ten thousand one, ten thousand two. Five hundred ninety-nine thousand one, five hundred ninety-nine thousand two, five hundred ninety-nine thousand three. Five hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-one. Five hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-two, five hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-three……
Five million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. Six hundred thousand……
“……”
He opened his eyes busily. Strangely, his mind was quiet. The usual giggling noise was gone, and there was no sound of something scratching. It felt as if he had woken from a terrible nightmare.
“You’re awake?”
At the voice, he turned his head. A beautiful woman with blonde hair and amber eyes. She sipped coffee from a mug and smiled brightly. She looked to be in her mid-thirties at most, yet carried an air of experience far beyond that.
“Your name was Ire Haslen, right? How are you feeling now?”
“You are……”
“Ah, right, I forgot to introduce myself. Calis Stranoff, associate professor in the Department of Physics at Iryuel Academy.”
She added a meaningful follow-up—“I’m scheduled for tenure and promotion to full professor after this research, fufufufu”—but that wasn’t what Ire was concerned about.
Calis Stranoff. Professor Stranoff. In some regressions she had been neutral, in others she had caused minor trouble, and in yet others she had been a pawn of the Outer Gods.
Ire’s body stiffened. Was she an enemy or an ally? ……She cursed herself for reflexively thinking that way.
Ire let out a quiet sigh.
“How’s your body?”
She asked again.
“No, I… well……”
“Try moving your body. You know best how it feels.”
Ire nodded her head. She got up and walked around. She swung her arms and took a shooting stance. She even lifted one leg to test how long she could maintain balance.
She was fine.
“I’m… all right……”
“The doctor said there’s nothing wrong with your coordination or anything like that. I just asked to be sure.”
Grumble.
“Hungry?”
“……Yes.”
Come to think of it, she had rarely eaten a satisfying meal. Whenever she ate nutritious food, the Darwin-type Outer Gods would snatch it away. So Ire’s staple had been calorie bars.
“Let’s see. The cafeteria isn’t open right now, so delivery would be best. Is there anything in particular you want to eat?”
“……Then, chicken stew.”
The delivery arrived quickly. Ire glanced at Stranoff before picking up her spoon, scooping the stew, and blowing on it before eating.
“……”
“What’s wrong? Doesn’t it taste good?”
“No, it’s not that……”
It didn’t have the taste of the stew she had eaten at the northern Holy Spirit Institute.
“There was something I ate a long time ago. They boiled rice until it was soft and cooked it together……”
“You mean rice stew? People in the eastern regions eat that sometimes.”
Ire nodded and kept spooning diligently. For now, she just wanted to fill her stomach with anything.
She glanced at the TV and saw a stream of interesting news.
A 2-kilometer-radius crater formed in the Tova star system in the north. The Outer God Biological Research Institute that had stood there had evaporated. Nearby forests completely burned down. Reports of high-grade monster appearances and Outer God sightings. Hearings on suspicions of biological experiments surrounding the institute. Good news that limb-reconnection surgery for the Sagittarius sign among the twelve zodiac signs had succeeded. Circuit breakers triggered twelve times in a single day for stocks related to biology research institutes. And—
The story that Professor Stranoff’s research team had developed the world’s first quantum gravity resonator capable of trapping Outer Gods, and that the test run using it had yielded positive results.
— The “God of Patience and Indomitability” smiles upon you.
— You have received a 5000-coin donation.
Coins. A representative currency that the Outer Gods had always intercepted entirely, leaving Ire with nothing even when the Constellations sponsored her. This time, those coins sat properly in Ire’s status window. It was something she should have received from the very beginning.
“It’s late, so let’s rest well before moving. There’s someone we need to meet, after all.”
Ire sat on the bed Stranoff had prepared. The professor held out a handkerchief.
“Take it. You’ll need it, right?”
“……”
Right after Professor Stranoff left, Ire lay on the bed and curled up like a shrimp.
Ah. The Outer Gods had truly all disappeared. Now, the repetition of time would no longer exist. This would truly be her final journey.
One by one, salty drops fell onto the soft pillow. Whether for good or ill, the sobs would not stop. Her shoulders shook on their own.
There had been someone who promised that if she just endured for exactly 600,000 seconds, everything would become easier. In her sinking consciousness, there had been someone who carried her—someone who had been used as an intermediate host for the Outer Gods and was about to be discarded—and ran all the way to the academy lab.
Idel von Rheinland.
Or rather, someone wearing his skin.
A lifelong benefactor.
And debts must always be repaid.
***
The next day, when Ire arrived at the hospital with Professor Stranoff, what she saw was Idel lying on the bed with IV drips hanging all over him.
“……W-what on earth happened to this person?”
“Well……”
He hadn’t woken up for two days, apparently.
“He collapsed while writing his paper.”