Starting Point (2)
Starting Point (2)
"The root of all evil, huh..."
I absorbed the memories in the final essence and stared down at the now completely empty glass case.
Five days. That was all it took.
In those five days, my body had changed to a startling degree.
I had put on weight. Gained muscle, too. Those two changes alone transformed a frame that had looked like nothing but a lanky pole into something genuinely imposing.
Breathing came easier now. No more coughing fits from a tight chest. No more wheezing.
The lethargy, unfortunately, hadn't gone anywhere.
A handsome face with a smooth jawline gazed back at me from the reflection in the glass case.
I was still wearing those stupid glasses, but the overall impression had shifted entirely from five days ago. Back then, I'd wanted nothing more than to rip them off. Now? They'd become such a natural fit that I could almost call them a fashion choice.
'Absurdity doesn't get more absurd than this.'
Five days of absorbing memories had taught me that this body sat at the very pinnacle of absurdity and favoritism.
"Hoo."
I shut the glass case, walked over to the desk, and settled into the chair.
The furniture bore the marks of age but held not a single speck of dust. I leaned back and took in the room.
Then I retraced the memories contained in that final essence.
【I cannot understand you.】
【You mean to break a taboo for the sake of a span of time that is nothing but a fleeting moment to us? Brother.】
【Very well. If that is your choice... though I still cannot understand you, brother. I respect you, and so I shall respect your choice.】
【But I will state this plainly.】
【A fleeting span of time. No matter what changes this wretched world may have undergone, my will shall not waver.】
【The day I open my eyes again—】
【All things shall return to nothing.】
A conversation with the one he called brother.
And that brother was the being who brought about the final curtain in every single ending.
The final boss known as 'Void.'
I was that final boss's brother.
I was 'Greed'—a hidden piece who had never once appeared in the game. That was me.
'Some of the memories have been erased.'
I had clearly answered Void's question. But the memory within the essence didn't contain what I'd said in response. The original owner had deliberately removed it.
"Not that it matters."
Sure, there might be something worth finding in the past. But I had a vague sense of why I—why he—had erased part of the conversation from the essence.
'Guess he got embarrassed.'
The day I swallowed the first essence, I came to understand exactly what it meant when they said one's personality would blur—and what that felt like.
Every time the original owner's memories seeped in, his personality would layer itself over my own.
You see people on the news sometimes—people who confuse games with reality and cause problems. If I had to compare, I'd say it was close to what they go through.
As I acquired the original owner's memories and his personality overlaid mine, I naturally came to grasp the principles behind his actions. How he'd behave in a given situation, and so on.
Which is why I concluded that the reason the conversation had been scrubbed from the memory essence wasn't anything complicated. He just didn't want anyone else to know. Pure embarrassment.
"What actually matters is something else."
The missing dialogue? Honestly, I couldn't care less. My honest feeling is that whatever the original owner had said in reply doesn't pique my curiosity in the slightest.
What really matters is something else entirely. The memories I acquired from the original owner—and the information and knowledge extracted from them. It's the gaps in that part. Those gaps are what's seriously getting under my skin right now.
Void and Greed.
Who created the two of them?
And for what purpose?
That portion had been carved out, clean as a knife wound.
It didn't stop there.
What path had allowed the game 'Academy Happy Growth Diary' to be distributed on the Earth where I lived? And what information and knowledge had been used to generate those countless cycles and endings?
All of that had been neatly wiped from my head.
"It grates on me, but..."
I had no way to find out right now. Dwelling on it would be nothing but a waste of time.
For the moment, I'd settle for the fact that I'd been granted the experience to handle this body freely, without having to invest effort and time. Using the memories I'd acquired, I ran through a brief assessment of the situation.
One. Void and Greed are brothers.
Two. Greed swallowed Void.
Three. Due to a restriction placed on his soul, Greed's soul began to collapse and slowly died.
Four. When Greed meets his end, the Void sleeping within Greed's body will open its eyes once more.
I'd agonized over the question of what path Void took to appear while watching all 999 endings, and I never managed to figure it out. Then again, the game itself only had lots of choices—it wasn't an open-world game. In a way, that outcome was only natural.
Now I knew the path Void took.
My own death.
Void slept inside my body. Along with his Authority.
I looked down at my hands, now filled out with flesh and muscle.
As I said earlier, when the soul collapses, the body naturally follows into death. Yet my body had become unrecognizably healthier in just five days—and it was still improving.
The reason was simple.
The collapse of the soul had stopped.
In place of the original owner's soul—the one that had been Greed—this body now housed my soul. What became of the original owner's soul, I have no idea. That wasn't included in the essence.
In any case, unless someone murders me, there's no immediate risk of Void awakening again. That alone brought me an immense sense of relief.
In the game, without a single deviation, Void always awakened in the same year, on the same date, at the same hour.
The time limit, quite literally, had vanished.
'That doesn't mean I can afford to take it easy, though...'
It would take a considerable amount of time for this body to regain its prime condition. Of course, I should have no trouble moving around in my current state. Handling mana is also perfectly manageable as I am now. Against ordinary Awakened, at least.
The reason the girl called Wolf was always doomed to meet ruin across all 999 endings.
It was because that girl awakens the power of God Slaying.
Fangs that can kill gods.
That is why she is called Wolf.
Because she awakens that power, her fate is to have her life threatened by beings known as gods—even if Void never appears at all.
To protect the girl from the gods, I would have to use my Authority as well.
I possess two Authorities.
Greed, which steals everything.
Void, which returns everything to nothing.
Even the gods cannot evade these two Authorities. The problem is that my soul's caliber falls short of the requirements to wield them.
Not that I can't use them at all.
Void sleeps within my body.
Meaning, if I borrow the caliber of the sleeping Void, I can manifest the Authority right now if I have to.
Once or twice, I could get away with it. But if the frequency increases, Void will open his eyes inside me even if I don't die.
'I do have a plan.'
The best outcome would be for the gods never to notice the girl's existence, but that seems unlikely.
I opened the drawer.
Inside were a ring, a single ring—along with a modern smartphone. I'd learned of their existence through the memories in the first essence.
I tapped the smartphone screen lightly.
The dark display lit up, revealing the date and time. The year surfaced alongside them.
February 3, 2022.
The girl would enroll at Arena Academy in 2030.
Right now, she would be twelve years old.
The girl's backstory never changed across all 999 endings. So twelve years old—that should be accurate.
Her past isn't described in detail. She was born, abandoned, and raised in a state-run orphanage. As tends to happen, put something out of sight of oversight and corruption inevitably follows.
Dozens of children vanish from orphanages across the country every year. The reason is nothing special.
The administrators identify children who show signs of becoming Awakened and put them up for auction in underground auction houses. All for money.
The children sold there are bought by small-to-mid-sized guilds, or by alchemists, or by Awakened who specialize in magic-type abilities.
When a mid-sized guild makes a purchase, the orphanage administrator prepares all the legal paperwork on the spot so there's no problem with the law.
When they're sold off to an alchemist or a mage instead, they have no family register on file. I don't need to spell out what they get used for.
The girl follows that exact same path into a mid-sized guild, and that's where she awakens the God-Slaying power.
'Then she gets transferred to the Temple of Benevolence, where they manage and monitor her under the title of Provisional Holy Knight Commander...'
Unfortunately, I have no information on the guild itself. But I do know that her transfer to the Temple of Benevolence happened exactly one year before she entered the academy.
Whether she's still in the orphanage or has already been sold off to a mid-sized guild, I have no way of knowing. What I can be sure of is that either way, she's far from free and far from happy.
I pocketed the smartphone and picked up the remaining ring from the drawer.
It wasn't a ring set with any special gemstone.
It was black, with fine engravings of something that glittered like stars.
I slipped the ring—a ring that seemed to hold a universe within it—onto the index finger of my left hand. It wrapped around my finger as if custom-made, without the slightest discomfort.
【A pleasant-looking middle-aged man approaches with a warm smile. Yet none of the students pay any mind to that smile. Their gazes are fixed not on his face, but on the ring adorning his thick finger. A ring that conjures the illusion of blazing like the sun. The Ring of the Sun—the symbol of the Chairman of Arena Academy.】
I looked again at the ring on my index finger.
A Black Ring, densely set with something that sparkled like stars.
"Guess I won't need to worry about money."
I shut the drawer and rose from my seat.
I left the study through the door that led not to the bedroom but to the hallway.
'My death became the cornerstone of your ruin.'
I draped the black coat hanging by the front door over my shoulders.
"This time will be different."
So she could live a slightly better life.
I stepped out the door to meet a being with the ability to find a girl who was somewhere out there.