Chapter 237: It Gives Me the Chills
"So you've finally come out."
Another One stretched his legs, sank back into the chair, and sucked noisily at his cola.
"Seeing it in person is something new. A replica of me. Scientist—you've done what no one in the universe could manage."
"Should you not go and punish him?"
Anastasia swept a hand toward the scene beyond the screen.
"I gave up on Scientist. I never bothered to tell him, but when his time comes to die, he'll know exactly what he is. That alone is punishment enough."
"Scientist has gone too far. A replica of an executive is one thing. Your own replica is standing right there. Does it stir no anger in you at all?"
She would have wagered on it: had Magician or Minder laid eyes on a replica of themselves, they would never have left Scientist breathing. Asura or Warrior, on the other hand, would have been delighted at the chance to fight themselves.
"Set against what I've been through out in the universe, this is little more than a happening. It ends at interesting."
He had hurled planets, dropped black holes, detonated supernovae, and mustered nebulae. He had split simultaneity open with quantum mechanics, taken a sightseeing tour from the twelfth dimension down to the first, and watched the Night Parade of a Hundred Million Ghosts go marching—cosmic spirits in their host. A thousand myths and the enmities born of them. Collapse nested inside collapse. The severing of Principle. A million-year death match, one against one, with the knightly order that held the galaxy in its fist. The concentration of meaning, and the unification of thought. And that was hardly all of it.
"Thinking of what those Yithian bastards put me through—those philanthropists of the mind—I still bolt upright in my sleep. They irritated me so badly I had no choice but to drive them extinct. Mad for time and information. Bastards who tried to throw open the 'Boundary' so that when they died, everyone else would die with them. Lucky they failed. One wrong step, and I would have been made one with the Great Record inside."
"……Is that so?"
She had no idea what he was talking about. Best to just quietly play along.
Another One gulped the cola as if it were liquor. Speaking of old times after so long seemed to burn him from the inside.
"So, Anastasia. This is what I'm getting at. Even if you dragged in a me from a parallel world! Even if you dragged in my own child from the future! I'm confident I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest."
"Haa……. I understand perfectly. Then please have some Coke Zero."
Anastasia kept the muscles of her brow under strict discipline and poured cola into the empty glass. Ice caught the stream and chimed.
Another One downed it in a single shot, then tore savagely into the A+++ sirloin laid out beside him like a bar snack.
"Then why did you say Scientist had crossed the line? You seem entirely unbothered."
"Ah. That?"
Another One flicked his chin at the screen. At that very moment the replica was opening a book drawn from his coat, and the phantom thief—mask cast aside, hands clasped behind his back—stood watching.
"Because the replica didn't end as a replica."
"You mean a replica that is not a replica?"
"Exactly."
"Then……."
Anastasia set the answer down with a cold eye.
"You are saying Scientist produced something that is you, and yet is not you."
"As a bonus."
He had even brought out the thing that ought to have stayed buried in a corner of his room.
"Scientist never obtained my genetic information. Even if he had, he couldn't have analyzed it. And yet he succeeded in replicating me."
How?
"The path I walked. The countless histories of slaughter I carried out on this Earth."
Deaths that had ended myths. The original owners of the weapons he had boasted of to the phantom thief as his collection.
"Only two things remember that history."
One was the Tablet of Records. The other—
"That book, over there."
The only book that recorded even the places the Tablet of Records could not reach.
So long as life existed, it would not come away.
Death.
"Scientist drew my information out of the deaths I bestowed, and replicated me from it."
A remarkable scientist.
Anastasia lifted a brow, barely.
"I am a stranger to science, so I cannot claim to follow. Is such a thing possible?"
"Impossible. Cloning me from my genetic information would have been easier."
From nothing but a few shards of broken glass, Scientist had brought forth something nearly identical to the original. That could not be called science. It belonged to the realm of creation.
"Though if you had both, that would be another matter."
A shard of the original glass, and the mold. Possess both, and the impossible became possible.
"A moment ago you said he never obtained it."
"Scientist didn't. The book, though—the book had its chance."
Another One rubbed at his neck. The centipede that had burst from the vessels there, back then, had hurt a great deal.
"Well, the method of replication doesn't matter anymore. It isn't a trick that can be used twice, anyway."
Anastasia sighed. Once again she was left to carry both sides of the conversation alone, and she simply went along.
"Then, should that replica survive, what do you intend to do?"
"Hm."
Another One smiled a smile that might have meant something, or nothing at all.
"Too soon to judge. Just watch."
Whether I could surpass death.
To think catching the Devil's Tree early would come back around like this.
I didn't regret slicing it up for sashimi back on Jeju. Still, if someone had told my past self that catching the thing now meant facing a replica of Another One, I suspect I would have hesitated.
Scientist, you insane bastard. How did you even do this?
If it could be done, why not in the original—why did it have to be me…….
"You seem burdened with thought."
The replica drew a book from his coat. For an instant I failed to keep my expression in hand, once I understood what it was.
"The Book of Death?"
Why do you have that?
"You recognize it? No. Of course you would."
The replica seemed to have settled the matter for himself, and flung the book open with a rustle.
Hundreds of millions of deaths poured out. Death came flooding in through the barrier of Life. The landscape, bright beneath the full moon, darkened.
"I cannot make sense of it. Why is something that belongs in the domain of death in your possession?"
"Ask the scientist beside me. I was born all of twenty minutes ago."
I looked at Scientist, and he flinched.
Unwashed, matted hair, clothes gray with dust. Eyes sharp as a snake's, cheeks drawn hollow—he looked sickly. Worn down by the aura of death, his face might as well have been a corpse's.
"……It was while I was researching death, under His orders. By chance, that book appeared in the domain of death I had sealed away."
"Three lines. Summarize."
It was about to run long, so I cut him off.
"………."
Scientist glared at me, fierce.
"The book appeared of its own accord. I replicated Him with the information it provided. The book never left. It has remained with the replica to this day."
That was the summary?
"I don't follow."
"You fucking bastard. Go to hell."
Scientist poured out every curse he knew. They were, of course, low-grade insults that would never land on a born Korean.
"Has your curiosity been satisfied?"
"No. It's only overflowing."
With the bookworm's cursing for background noise, I studied the Book of Death.
"I can't understand the Book of Death cooperating in your creation. Being held in your hand ought to be hateful to it. Revolting."
"This book had its own intent, and its own design. It did not aid in my making on a mere impulse."
The replica shook the book from side to side.
"But is reality not always otherwise? The book took reality far too lightly. Now it is a tool that moves in my hand, at my will."
"Hm……."
In other words.
"It meant to use you as a host."
"One could see it so."
"How foolish."
It was absurd.
The Book of Death is a tool that governs death. It has a self, yes. But its essence could never escape being a tool. Even Forever had ended as a tool, and this thing presumed it could strike out on its own? Had it chosen its host with care, perhaps. Of all beings, it chose Another One.
It had dug its own grave.
The replica shut the book with a clean snap.
"This is as far as it goes."
"Are you quite finished?"
"More or less."
I could hear the voice, but I could not see where the replica was. The boundary of death had been laid all around us. That was why.
"Ought I to thank you for waiting?"
"Waiting while someone transforms is simple courtesy. For a phantom thief, an essential virtue."
"What virtues a phantom thief keeps, I would not know. But such ease may not serve you."
A sting pricked my chest.
A long iron rod had already come back out of me, my heart fixed on its end.
"I made a promise. That I would dispose of you."
A horn roared, long and brute, and the world crashed in.
"I have given my word. I shall kill you with all my strength."
A clattering collapse. Then a heavy, final thud.
"So be so good as to die."
"Certainly. Replica or not, the combination of Another One and the Book of Death is rather dangerous."
The Book of Death would try to kill me with everything it had, spending every death recorded within it. The replica would try as well, by means other than the book.
"It gives me the chills."
The same as when I first met Another One. A time to stake my life. A time I would have to break through alone.
A blast.
"You truly do not die."
"A phantom thief doesn't die of something like this."
"Is that so. Then, phantom thief."
"My first sworn enemy."
"I am called Death One. What is your name?"
"For now, address me as Phantom Thief Do."
My true name is three characters.
"You aren't qualified to hear the other two."
"Hoh."
"Then the remaining two—"
"I shall read them in the book."
A low, vast rumble. At the sound of air being shoved aside, I looked up.
The very thing that had ended the dinosaurs was on its way.