Absolute Defense
“…”
“…”
We sat across from each other at a table for two. An awkward silence filled the room so completely that it seemed to press against my eardrums. I sipped my coffee without a word and stole a sidelong glance at the woman opposite me.
The woman who, only moments ago, had been kissing the back of my hand and offering prayers was now sitting neatly in her chair, blinking quietly. Her hair, a brilliant gold as though spun from melted metal, drifted softly around her shoulders. In her clear blue eyes, I could make out a strange tangle of emotions—tension, excitement, elation... the look of someone who had spent her entire life waiting for this very moment.
...What the hell am I supposed to do with this now?
I had saved her before she was swallowed by chaos, but I had never once given serious thought to what came after that. Even in the original story, she had been someone beyond redemption, and now that I had already twisted the future that had been set for her, even that excuse no longer applied.
The woman sitting before me was a monster who possessed the greatest concentration of divine power on the entire continent. I might have altered her fate, but I could not erase the past stained by betrayal in the Holy Order.
She hated humanity with a viciousness bordering on obsession.
Though she was human herself, she had despised human beings. The fact that her deepest desire had once been to burn the world to ash was proof enough of how profound that hatred ran.
What she thought of me remained uncertain. I had saved her, yes, but it was far too early to assume that alone had won her trust.
Still, I couldn’t let this heavy silence continue forever. I spoke carefully.
“Elfride Trivia. Right?”
I decided to start with her name. Better to verify things first, just in case.
“Yes, that is correct.”
She nodded readily.
“So what are you going to do now?”
“...Now?”
There was a faint note of confusion in her voice. She turned that look on me as if I had asked something so obvious it barely deserved an answer.
“You came into Blackmore to die, didn’t you? You must have thought that was the only way.”
“……”
“I mean—are you still planning to do that?”
“Certainly not. Since this life was given to me by God, I intend to cherish it properly from now on.”
God, my ass.
Your life wasn’t given to you by God. I’m the one who saved you.
You should be thanking me, got that? The words surged all the way up to my throat, but I swallowed them back down. There was no point ruining the moment.
“Do you have somewhere else to go?”
“If it would not be rude of me, I would like to remain at your side and serve you, Lord Luke.”
“Me? Why?”
She still couldn’t seem to tear her eyes away from me. The focus in those vivid blue irises was oddly blurred, as though she were staring not at my face but through it, into something beyond.
“I can see the shape of souls.”
...She could see the shape of souls? I had no idea. Even the original story had never mentioned anything like that, and she had never been much more than a villain in the first place, not the kind of character anyone explored in depth.
“And in this world, there is no one else with a soul like yours.”
Well, that made sense. I was the only one who had possessed this body; there was no reason my soul should be the same as those of the people who had been born into this world.
But then—
“A sublime soul reminiscent of holy light.”
“…?”
“The path of enlightened wisdom, the crown of creation, the radiance of unity, the one who gives form to faith.”
“...Kahbila?”
The words she recited were not unfamiliar. The gods of this world were known as forgotten beings, and among them was one called the “Great Moon”—Kahbila. What she had just said was a passage from scripture describing Kahbila.
“I saw it. Just before your consciousness blurred, I glimpsed the source of the power you wield. It was unquestionably the authority to govern time.”
...Well, that was because I had absorbed the Time Rune.
“A power granted only to Kahbila.”
That, too, was true. Runes were fragments containing the power of forgotten primordial language, divine authority capable of twisting causality itself, and the Time Rune was a shard that had been cut away from Kahbila’s own authority.
No way...
It had already been strange when she suddenly said she wanted to serve me. But now I understood.
In her eyes, I was Kahbila—or something very much like her.
And honestly, the reasoning wasn’t even that absurd. A soul unlike anyone else’s in this world, and the power I happened to wield being none other than Kahbila’s own authority over time...
“……”
This is insane.
How the hell was I supposed to explain this?
Should I just come right out and say I’d been possessed by another world’s soul?
But if I tried to explain that, I’d have to reveal the truth that this was a world inside a novel, and that was practically a poison pill of reality in itself. There was no way she would accept it, and even if she did, I couldn’t predict what would happen after that.
“...You asked whether I had anywhere to go.”
I blinked stupidly at her. My mind had gone completely blank, as if it had short-circuited.
“I cannot promise a clear answer. However...”
“...However?”
“I would like to follow you.”
Elfride smiled as she looked at me.
“Because that is the duty that is rightly mine.”
Her smile was so gentle it was almost enough to make it seem as though she would gladly tear out her own heart and hand it to me.
And so time passed, until the final day at the headquarters finally arrived. Before heading back to the office, I sat down on the wide training ground and reviewed my current condition.
So I’ve crossed the first wall, huh.
The essence of authority was the ability to twist causality within legal limits. The form that authority took when embodied by the laws of the world was what we called a rune.
The authority obtained through runes passed through four stages. First came Embodiment, when the rune’s power sank into the flesh. Next was Awakening, when the rune’s five stars were engraved upon the soul. Then came Sublimation, when one reached the origin of the world. And finally, Unity, when the user became one with the rune itself.
Each stage allowed a different degree of power. By absorbing the chaos that had been lodged inside Elfride’s body, I had reached the second stage, Awakening. In practical terms, that was no different from breaking through a wall.
It was, without exaggeration, the kind of stroke of fortune that people would call a miraculous encounter.
I flexed and unflexed my right hand, checking my condition, then tossed the three fountain pens I had prepared into the air.
Accelerate.
The instant the familiar activation word leapt from my mouth, the pressure of time formed at my fingertips and brushed past the three fountain pens suspended in midair.
Reverse.
With a low hum, all three fountain pens froze in the air.
I reached out and gave one of the frozen pens a gentle shove to the side, and it slid obediently across the air as though it were resting on an invisible shelf. Since I had only slowed the flow of time, it was still susceptible to outside force.
Tap—!
I snapped my fingers once.
Reverse.
The same activation word layered over itself.
This time, I cautiously reached toward the same pen and tried to push it again. But no matter how much pressure I applied, the pen frozen in midair showed no sign of moving at all.
It was as though it had been nailed to the air itself.
“It really works.”
Stacking activation words. It was one of the new authorities I had gained after Awakening the rune’s five stars.
Of all those new abilities, the most useful by far was the stacking of Reverse. It didn’t merely slow the flow of time as usual. The moment the word Reverse was layered twice, the target was forcibly detached from the flow of time for a limited period and entered an absolute state of invulnerability, one in which no movement and no outside pressure could affect it.
Like those cheap invincibility cheats people always talked about in games. It was practically the same as achieving absolute damage immunity.
There was a drawback, of course: the user couldn’t move while the ability was active. But compared to the effect, that was a trivial penalty.
“Adina.”
I called out to Adina, who had been hiding off to one side of the training ground and watching the whole thing in secret.
“Attack me.”
“…?”
She blinked in bewilderment at the sudden request.
“You want me to attack you? Why?”
“I’ve got a little test I want to try.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“Not at all. There’s no danger here, so there’s no need to worry.”
“...Hah.”
She let out a disbelieving snort.
“Fine.”
As Adina drew up her mana, the pressure around us rose sharply. The force she released was anything but subtle; apparently, I had managed to scratch her pride.
The mana that had been spreading outward converged in an instant into a single point, then formed a ring.
The snow-white ring of mana pulsed with a rhythmic contraction and expansion, emitting a characteristic flash of light.
A moment later, a piercing crack split the air, and dozens of condensed white strands of mana burst forth like an explosion, slicing across the sky.
The shockwave that moved at supersonic speed raked across the surroundings, while at its heart the mana continued compressing toward a single point.
...
I lifted my head and stared at the fissure in the air from which the mana was spilling.
From that crack, sparks burst outward, gathering themselves into a strike that was about to slam straight into the ground.
One hit from that would have sent me straight to the grave.
But then—
Accelerate.
I formed the pressure of time. The pressure took on the shape of a sphere and wrapped itself around me.
Reverse.
The flow of air slowed to a crawl.
Reverse.
The activation word stacked over itself again.
Space and time split apart, and the inside of the pressure and the world beyond it were cut off from one another as completely as if they belonged to different realms.
And then—
Kwaaaang—!!
A massive bolt of lightning tore through the sky and crashed down.
It obliterated everything around it with overwhelming force.
And I, who had been struck by that attack, remained completely unharmed.
Not even the slightest scratch had been inflicted on me.
It was exactly the result I had expected, since the original story had described the stacking of Reverse as an absolute defense.
Though...
I can’t keep it up for very long.
The problem was the enormous amount of Mental Image it consumed. It was also a little disappointing that I couldn’t move while defending.
Even so, that alone was enough—
“!!!”
—to draw an expression of utter shock out of Adina.