Chapter 91
Chapter 91
Episode 91
Her shield and armor had long been crushed.
One of her arms was bent at an unnatural angle, and her legs were buried in the ground.
Her blue hair was already stained red with blood, and her body staggered, looking as if it could collapse at any moment.
“I can still endure.”
But even so.
She never once backed down from the menacing attacks of the Gigantes.
She was holding on, enduring that very moment.
Her gaze was like a magnificent ember, one that could endure this moment for them and create an opportunity for them to burn brightly.
She stood her ground, not taking a single step back, so that the one who could reverse this situation might return.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
It hurt.
Had I done something foolish?
No, I had agonized over that decision again and again.
If regret still remained after such a choice, it simply meant that I would have been fated to have regrets no matter which option I chose.
[Corrosion Rate: 40%]
In the end, I failed. As if to mock me, I had fallen prey to a twist of fate.
Ultimately, I had the power to twist the outcome, but I had failed to do so.
[Corrosion Rate: 41%]
In the midst of the agonizing pain, I was able to judge my current state with relative objectivity, thanks to the [Corrosion Rate].
To put it simply.
[Corrosion Rate: 42%]
I was dying.
There was no mercy in the attack from Gigantes Dusk. The bastard had thrown his entire body into it, as if determined not to leave me alive.
Even though I had been wearing the [Starry Sky Robey], it was difficult to withstand.
In truth, it was only natural.
Most of my enemies until now had either held back their power or been in a weakened state; the number of times I had won because I was genuinely skilled could be counted on one hand.
In the end, it meant there were very few enemies I could defeat in a fair and square, head-on fight like this.
[Corrosion Rate: 43%]
I wondered what happened to Eleanor.
According to the original story, she would have used the opening created by my collapse to defeat the Gigantes.
But she was nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, we were a little far from the place where the fight had happened in the original story.
Perhaps she might not be able to make it here.
[Corrosion Rate: 44%]
No, was it me I should have been worried about, not her?
Whether it was the world or whatever else, it was only meaningful if I was alive.
[Corrosion Rate: 45%]
The agonizing pain grew more and more intense.
On the other hand, whether it was due to the [Corrosion Rate] or because I was nearing death, my mind grew clearer.
I could see the state of my own body with relative objectivity.
My ribs… no, it felt as if every bone in my body had been shattered.
I felt agonizing pain whenever I moved. In fact, since moving was impossible in this state, it would be more accurate to say it was with every breath I took.
Yes, with every breath, I was feeling pain.
The pain from the unmitigated attack was truly excruciating, enough to kill me.
So this was how I would meet death once again…
[Corrosion Rate: 46%]
Huh? Had I died before? I was sure I had just been dazed before coming to this other world.
But in that case, wasn't it a contradiction to say I was meeting death "once again"?
[Corrosion Rate: 47%]
I suppose I might have mixed with Oz too much.
I might have started accepting what Oz experienced as my own experiences.
[Corrosion Rate: 48%]
But in this painful, difficult situation… yes, even if I were to live on, there would only be more hardships ahead, and yet, despite all that…
[Corrosion Rate: 49%]
I did not want to die.
It wasn't so much that I was afraid of death, but that I hated the idea of a future without me in it.
Even though I was just this tiny, insignificant person, I worried about the kids living their daily lives without me.
It was truly an absurd notion.
Wasn't I acting as if I was something special? Even if one person like me was gone, it shouldn't have been a problem.
I was nothing more than a comic relief character. I was just a foolish loser who couldn't escape fate no matter how much I writhed and struggled.
I was continuing to lose, just like this.
I, once again, died.
As I no longer felt even pain and my consciousness completely sank away…
[Corrosion Rate: 50%]
『Restart?』
-No, not yet.
It felt like I heard such a voice.
I once came across it in some media I can't remember—maybe it was a book, maybe a movie.
I think it said that when people die, they go to a library where their entire life is written down and look back on it.
“Uh…”
Right, when I came to my senses, I was in a library.
No, was this not a library?
For a library, it was a room that felt somewhat lived-in.
To put it nicely, it was a study; to put it plainly, it was just someone's room.
First, I tried pulling out a book that was shelved nearby.
If my life was written in here, shouldn't I try to read it?
“What is this?”
But the book I pulled out was strange, starting with its title.
The book, made up of numbers, English letters, and special characters, felt familiar to a degree that was hard to describe.
But I couldn't read it.
It wasn't that I was bad at English; there was a different kind of problem.
“I feel like I've seen this somewhere before?”
Even after examining the front and back of the book, there was nothing I could figure out.
So I opened it to see for myself what kind of content was inside.
“Ah…!”
Written in the main text of the book, just like the title, were combinations of special characters, numbers, and English letters.
But this time, I could understand.
The contents written in the book. It was…
define U.R Character(Oz Quabadis, Alignment=C,G)
“Code…?”
To be precise, it seemed to be game code. Perhaps what was written in this book was all the information for Broken Sky.
I didn't have any knowledge in that area, so I couldn't read most of it, but…
“Is this a character list?”
I could at least recognize that a character's name was written there.
Oz Quabadis.
My current name.
Was U.R perhaps Ultra Rare?
It was a rarity that didn't exist in Broken Sky, so it was hard to say for sure. I wasn't sure what the rest of it said.
“Whether to call it coincidence or fate, you pulled out the book about yourself first.”
“…”
At that moment, a familiar voice came from somewhere. It was the voice I had heard every day when I looked in the mirror and practiced my lines.
It sounded unfamiliar, probably because I was hearing it in a different form, but there was no mistaking it.
I immediately moved my feet toward the direction the voice came from.
As I moved past the bookshelves and toward the source of the voice, I saw a room that was, cruelly enough, all too familiar.
“This is my room…”
A space decorated with a bed, a computer, and other simple household items.
It was familiar yet foreign, but it was definitely the space I used to live in.
And at the edge of that space, in front of the desk with the computer, I saw someone sitting with a book open.
It was obvious who it was without even looking.
“Oz.”
“Yes. Is this the first time we've met like this?”
“Ha…”
There were so many things I wanted to ask.
There must have been all sorts of things I needed to ask this guy.
But seeing him not even turn around despite my arrival, a certain phrase escaped my lips without me realizing it.
“Are you satisfied now?”
I had failed.
Yes, in the end, I had failed completely.
“Did you dislike it that much, the fact that I said I would go a different way than you?”
And the reason wasn't that I saved the child. There was a more fundamental problem.
“If you didn't want to cooperate, you shouldn't have used me in the first place.”
The [Corrosion Rate] value, which had dropped remarkably during this main story.
Normally, it would rise even if I begged it not to, but this time, when I went against his will, it had plummeted.
If the [Corrosion Rate] had simply been an issue of my synchronization with Oz, I wouldn't have even cared.
In fact, I would have welcomed it with open arms.
But the [Corrosion Rate] affects my mental fortitude.
Being "stained" by Oz, paradoxically, meant that my thinking became more flexible and systematic.
“Or you shouldn't have given me such a useless, shitty skill in the first place!”
This was the main point. Forget the [Corrosion Rate] or whatever the hell else, this was the biggest problem. What on earth had he been thinking?
“Hey.”
Even though I was shouting like this, Oz didn't turn around.
He just kept turning the pages of the book, one by one.
“Say something…!”
It was at the moment I approached him and turned his chair around.
“…”
The face of Oz, which I was seeing directly for the first time, not through a mirror.
“You…”
His expression was steeped in exhaustion. The traces of it were heavy around his eyes, and the fingertips that had been turning the pages were stained with blood.
And more than anything.
“Yes… an answer, you say.”
He looked exhausted. Yes, he looked as if he had transcended all worldly affairs.
Unlike the version of him I knew, Oz spoke with a gentle smile.
“Why don't you sit down first? I can't talk for long… but it won't be a short conversation either.”
At his words, I sat down.
However, since there was no chair, it was on the bare floor. I could have sat on the bed, but it felt like someone else's, which I found repulsive, and above all, I hated the very idea of having a face-to-face conversation with him.
So, just as Oz had done to me, I turned my back to him and sat down.
“Alright, first, shall we talk about the skill?”
“Yeah. Did you create it?”
“In a sense, you could say I did.”
“Are you speaking in riddles?”
I absolutely despise that way of talking. Just be direct, please.
“Hmm… well, I did create the basic framework. I don't remember who did the rest.”
“Then does that mean there was someone else? Like the game developers, um… no, anyway, were they guys without mana?”
“Not anymore.”
Did that mean they were in the past? If so, it was a shame, because I would have liked to have seen that bastard's face.
“It started… yes.”
Oz began to lead the conversation in a calm tone.
“There was no way for me to completely transfer my knowledge to you. So I intended for you to experience various kinds of magic through that method, but…”
“But?”
“You were just too unlucky.”
“Then you should have at least made the probabilities equal…”
“Surprisingly, the probabilities are the same.”
“What…?”
“The probabilities are the same.”
You don't have to say it again. I heard you loud and clear.
Then… then did that mean I really had such crappy luck?
No, that couldn't be.
That was impossible.
Don't make me laugh. How could that be?!
It must have been rigged!!!
“Do you want me to tell you the exact probability?”
“…No, it’s fine.”
I felt like I would just become more miserable if I heard it, so I wanted to refuse.
I could feel a subtle trembling from the back of the chair my head was leaning against.
This bastard was laughing.
“Stop laughing…”
“Ah, sorry.”
Even while he answered, he didn't stop chuckling.
I wanted to hit him, but for some reason, he already looked like he was in a lot of pain, so I couldn't.
“And um… the Corrosion Rate, was it?”
“Yeah.”
Rustle.
Even while talking to me, he didn't stop turning the pages of the book.
It was an action that suggested he had to confirm something important, as if he had to commit everything to memory.
“Before we get into the story… shall I correct your perception a little?”
“My perception? About the Corrosion Rate?”
“Yes. You thought it rose the more seriously you treated this world, didn't you?”
“…I did.”
The [Corrosion Rate] had actually risen at those times. Every time I became sincere with people, the [Corrosion Rate] rose, and conversely, it fell whenever I treated this world as a game.
“The Corrosion Rate,”
Oz said with a bitter expression.
“moves according to how sincere you can be with yourself.”
“…”
“I have never interfered with you. If you thought the Corrosion Rate dropped before this incident, that’s…”
“…Does that mean I was dissatisfied with myself?”
“That's right.”
“…”
I felt a little… suffocated.
It meant that the things I thought were right, the things I thought were different from Oz, were all actions that went against my own will.
I had been cornered to the point where I was lying to myself.
And I had projected that onto Oz. I thought he was being difficult with me because I had ignored his will.
But the one who thought I wasn't being righteous was none other than myself.
What a joke.
“Aren't there many other things you want to ask? I'm willing to answer them now.”
“There are. A ton. There hasn't been a single moment from beginning to end where I didn't have questions.”
“Oh? Then what are you curious about?”
“…I'm not going to ask.”
“Why?”
It all seemed irrelevant now.
Because I had been defeated and was dying. And even if I hadn't died and things had been resolved well, it would still be the same.
“It’s no fun if you get spoilers.”
“Is that so? It seems you had fun.”
“I did have fun… The game was fun, and living was fun too. So I don't want to hear it. It kills the excitement to get spoiled in a game, so how much more boring would it be to get spoiled in life?”
“That's true too.”
Oz quietly agreed.
After a brief moment of silence passed like that.
This time, it was my turn to ask Oz a question.
“What about you? Is there anything you want to ask me? Or are you going to say you already know everything because you've been watching me?”
“Something I want to ask. Yes, there is. In fact, I was waiting for you to say that.”
Oz stood up from the chair. The pages of the book he had been turning also stopped.
He stood directly in front of me, and with a gentle smile, he asked.
“What did you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Living as Oz, how did you want to live?”
Was he asking for a review of my life? If so, fine.
“First, I wanted to survive, and I wanted to prevent the foretold destruction.”
“That is your goal and my goal.”
“…Then did I want to ascend to the seat of a god and get Arietta back?”
“That is my goal.”
Oz quietly shook his head, then patted me on the shoulder and said.
“I am asking what you wanted to do while living as you.”
“…”
“What kind of life did you want to live? If you exclude all the objectives we've discussed, what did you want to do?”
What I wanted to do.
What I did after becoming Oz. Unrelated to the main story, unrelated to the path Oz had walked, the path that I alone had walked and was intending to walk.
“Since I became rich anyway, I wanted to eat a ton of expensive food.”
“Yes.”
I had been poor.
I remembered being poor. That's why I had held a fantasy about even a simple dish like steak.
“…And get a pretty girlfriend.”
“Yes.”
I had not been popular. I remembered it that way. That’s why, when I gained Oz’s appearance, I was secretly happy.
“And I wanted to be a guide for someone.”
This goal belonged to me and me alone.
Deciding to inherit Prudence Lore's flame was something I had decided.
Yes, come to think of it, that was how it was. I had this purpose tucked away in a corner of my heart from the beginning, so I had no choice but to move to save the child.
Something I didn't want to admit. An answer I was too embarrassed to say myself.
Yes, to put it simply, I…
“I wanted to be a good person.”
All of those things were choices made by the current me, not by Oz.
It was a goal that only I had ever held.