22. Two Regressors
22. Two Regressors
"Wait. Hold on."
"Speak."
"What the hell is this about?"
Chloe couldn't comprehend the situation at all—before she could even feel flustered or offended.
They had been cooperating just moments ago, hadn't they? Reluctantly, perhaps, but cooperating. They'd reached an agreement to investigate the mysterious space Kassandra had created.
So why was there suddenly a worn-down blade—what she assumed to be the Dark Sword—pressed against her throat?
And Rus Spero looked completely, utterly serious.
'Be careful. If that thing shifts into the Dark Sword, you'll die on the spot.'
'...Running away?'
'If that bitch were still 6th Rank, we could have bought some time with [Jade Shackles]. But now that she's 7th Rank, it's different. At this range, you'd be cut down before you could even cast a spell.'
'You sound like you know from experience.'
'Of course I do. My neck aches every time I see that sword.'
Chloe had first heard the name "Dark Sword" from Adult Chloe, and only later, after doing her own digging, had she discovered it was something out of old fairy tales. That she hadn't known was hardly surprising—Chloe's origins were so humble that even a book of fairy tales had been a luxury.
But she already knew that this artifact, which supposedly granted any wish and could only exist in fairy tales, was genuine. She even knew that her future self had died by that sword.
Outwardly, it looked like a battered, blunted old blade with missing teeth.
Perhaps driven by Rus Spero's emotions, a deeply ominous energy was slowly seeping out of it.
Right now, the best course of action was to play along quietly, no matter how irritating it was.
"What is it you want me to say?"
"That thing you said earlier."
"...Strike while the iron's hot?"
"Where did you hear that? How do you know what it means?"
"Well, I—"
Chloe stopped short, about to answer that she'd heard it from Adam.
Now that she thought about it, those words had been heard by the one calling herself the Goddess—Adult Chloe—not by Chloe herself. If she said she'd heard it from Adam, and that insane regressor bitch decided to verify it by going straight to him to ask...
Naturally, Adam would say he'd never said such a thing to Chloe, and this inexplicable outburst would repeat itself all over again.
Given that Rus Spero had once disguised herself as a mysterious stranger to threaten her, she might well don another disguise and target Chloe again. She'd assume her true identity hadn't been exposed, after all.
'But there's no other answer. That bitch must have connected it to Adam too.'
'Wait, you were on the run with Adam for a long time, right? And you still heard that for the first time? Isn't there some other meaning behind it?'
'...He said some other strange things, but that one was new to me. Even I, who was always at Adam's side, was hearing it for the first time. If a regressor knows it and reacts this sensitively... don't tell me.'
'Don't tell me what?'
'Was it... after I died? After he went into that cave?'
There wasn't even time to press Adult Chloe on what she seemed to have just realized in her muttering.
The unnatural silence made Rus Spero's eyes glint with menace.
"I'll count to three. Spill everything."
"'Spill' what, exactly?"
"Now that I think about it, something was a little odd. Adam was supposed to get tangled up with you first, but instead he got tangled with Beatrice. And your growth has been unusually steep."
"What are you trying to say?"
"An absurd notion. But if it happens to be true, it's not something I can let slide."
'That bitch actually uses her head, huh.'
'What are you talking about, all of a sudden!?'
'No, maybe being dead-last for all those years meant she caught on late? Anyway, she's a regressor. Of course she'd be suspicious if the past she lived through is different this time.'
Drip.
Caught between Adult Chloe's oddly nonchalant musings and Rus's steadily intensifying killing intent, Chloe broke out in a cold sweat.
Why the hell were these two lunatics both making this about her? One was her own future self, which was infuriating. The other was a regressor—a 7th Rank one at that—which was even more infuriating.
'If you're just going to mutter nonsense, fine. I'll take care of this myself!'
'...I'm not trying to push this onto you. Ultimately, the reason she's suspicious is because you met me and things changed.'
'Then what do you want me to do!?'
'Like this. The timing's actually perfect.'
'Huh?'
'In the end, I'm just a residual thought left in the Dark Sword. That's what let me regress, incomplete as it is. So...'
If she made contact with the Dark Sword again, it might be possible to influence it.
Chloe couldn't hear the rest of the explanation. Before she could retort that that was bullshit—before Rus, her patience finally exhausted, could fully release the Dark Sword's power—Adult Chloe, a mental body and a peak 7th Rank mage, seized the Dark Sword.
Being a mental body, she suffered no wounds and drew no blood.
But the effect was dramatic.
WOOOOONG!!!
"What the—!?"
"...!!!"
Of course, not even a peak 7th Rank mage could wrest away the Dark Sword's ownership or send it on a rampage. She had tried countless times before. The Dark Sword was not something that could be destroyed or eliminated by a "mere" 7th or even 8th Rank.
As a conceptual object, it was on a 9th Rank level compared to ordinary artifacts. That being the case, Adult Chloe's action had nothing to do with interfering with the Dark Sword itself.
'I was curious anyway. This works out.'
The reason Adult Chloe had been able to regress, however imperfectly, was the "residual thought" absorbed by the Dark Sword.
Strictly speaking, a residual thought was not the Dark Sword itself but a byproduct. More like a bloodstain that had dried and caked on because no one bothered to wipe it off.
That was why Adult Chloe could interfere with it. It was not difficult, even, to locate precisely one among the hundreds or thousands of residual thoughts clinging to the Dark Sword.
The residual thought of Adam Caines.
'What was the conclusion... of that bitch and Adam after I died in front of that cave and they went inside?'
It was time to confirm it with her own eyes.
Sifting through the stains of residual thought, she finally found one that was familiar—and, to Adult Chloe, the most precious of all.
'...?'
For a moment, the strange impression that this "stain" was only half remaining caught her off guard, but she fixed her attention on the thought. The spell to use was already decided.
Chloe's own mana was nowhere near enough—so much so that she had to whittle away at her mental body, itself composed of mana, to manifest the magic.
[Last Words of the Dead]
"That spell is—"
Rus Spero's eyes flew wide at the utterly unbelievable magic.
And then, a flash of light swallowed everything.
*
"Ngh... my head..."
Chloe, having briefly lost consciousness, clutched her head and opened her eyes. Before the throbbing headache could fully register, she was already cursing internally.
'Hey, you crazy bitch! What the hell did you just do!?'
The words were meant for the future self, the adult self who had been living inside her head these past few months.
But the voice that should have answered as if it were only natural never came.
"...Huh?"
A sarcastic retort, an arrogant remark, even a shocked exclamation.
Nothing. Just as no one can answer the voice inside your own head.
It was perfectly normal, but because she had been in constant internal dialogue with Adult Chloe for months, this natural silence stretched on impossibly long.
Belatedly grasping reality, Chloe rose to her feet, eyes trembling.
"What... is this place?"
The absence of Adult Chloe's voice was one thing, but something else unsettled Chloe even more.
The surroundings were completely different. This was not that unnaturally stark-white space.
"A forest?"
The middle of an eerily still forest. A bizarre place where no insect sounds, no birdsong, not even wind could be heard.
That was where Chloe stood. She immediately suspected an illusion created by magic, but at Chloe's level, she could detect nothing wrong.
'...If my future self were here, she'd have figured it out.'
During the festival, and in the events that followed...
Realizing she had unconsciously come to rely quite heavily on her future self, Chloe scowled. Was she not falling into the same trap as back when she'd first started learning magic?
After muttering a small curse, Chloe composed herself and surveyed her surroundings.
'It seems to be evening. The size of the forest... it's far larger than what my detection magic can cover. And yet, there's no sign of life at all?'
A forest should be teeming with beasts, birds, and insects. That was precisely why life-detection magic was rarely used in forests—it would pick up hundreds of life signs and be effectively useless.
But the life-detection spell she cast experimentally registered absolutely nothing. There was not a single living thing in the area.
Not even—
'The trees... are dead.'
Even the faint signatures of plant life that should have been detectable were completely absent. Upon closer inspection, the trees looked intact on the outside, but inside they were hollow and dead.
What in the world was this forest? Could such an uncanny place truly exist on the continent?
An ordinary person might have succumbed to panic, but Chloe was a 5th Rank mage. She had no intention of waiting for rescue or wandering lost through the woods.
A far simpler method was available.
[Flight]
Fwoosh!
If the dead trees blocked her view, she simply had to rise above them.
Chloe ascended into the air with [Flight] magic, climbing until she had a vantage point overlooking the entire forest. The spell's poor mana efficiency meant she couldn't maintain it for long, but it was more than enough to get her bearings or search for her future self and Rus Spero.
And so, scanning the expanse of dead trees from the sky, Chloe—
"...What is that."
—could not help but be overwhelmed by the "something" that dominated her field of vision.
It was a tree of utterly colossal proportions.
No—could she even call it a tree? The other dead trees might have partially obscured it, but failing to notice its presence at all was absurd given its sheer size.
Yet nothing about it matched the word "tree." There were no leaves, no life—only skeletal branches, all of it a uniform ash-gray, as though it had been consumed by fire.
Even so, the immensity of its size projected an overwhelming presence.
And as it happened, she—Chloe Pisti—had a strong feeling she knew what it was.
'The... World Tree.'
It was something her master, the Elf Archmage, had spoken of. Something that had always appeared in the elven history books he had given her.
The forebear and mother of all elves. Once nothing more than a mystically potent tree, but over an endless span of eons, it had ascended to 9th Rank and birthed the elven race.
It was a tree that countless ancient religions had revered as a god, or else condemned as heresy.
But why was the Burned World Tree visible here? If that was the case, then it meant...
'This is the Elven Forest?'
She had heard it from the Elf Archmage. The forest where the World Tree stood normally hid itself, making it impossible for monsters or other races to enter. One could see the World Tree from a vast distance, but could never draw closer.
Even the Archmage, an indisputable eccentric among elves, had sung praises of that forest's beauty and richness.
Yet what she saw now was nothing but dead and rotted trees, and the World Tree, burned black.
'...The last spell my future self used was definitely [Last Words of the Dead].'
She had heard of that spell. More precisely, it was a spell that occupied the very top of the forbidden-magic registry—merely being known to have learned it was enough to earn the united scorn of mages everywhere.
A spell that raised the spirit of the dead to hear their final moments before death. On its own, it posed no threat. The problem was that [Last Words of the Dead] was the foundational prerequisite for learning necromancy.
Alongside summoning magic, which called monsters to commit terrorist attacks, it was a branch of magic that had sown chaos and death across the continent and had thus been forbidden.
Setting aside why her future self had learned it...
'But that magic only raises a dead person's spirit. It doesn't have the function to teleport someone or alter the environment like this.'
No matter how brilliant a mage her future self was, the spell itself simply didn't work that way. Which meant there was a high probability that even her future self had not expected this outcome.
Why had it happened, then? The reason was easier to guess than she'd thought.
'That white room earlier—she said it was layered with high-level spatial magic.'
A room that clearly exceeded Kassandra's Rank to create. Could the spatial magic in that room have triggered some kind of anomaly? Perhaps the Dark Sword was the cause.
But that alone didn't explain everything.
'Still, since [Last Words of the Dead] was used, this place itself must be connected to that spell.'
And Adult Chloe had aimed that spell at the residual thoughts within the Dark Sword—specifically, at Adam's residual thought.
...There was no need to dwell on why Adam's residual thought was inside the Dark Sword. He, too, must have died by that sword, at Rus Spero's hands.
She made a conscious effort not to feel anger or any similar emotion at that fact. First, she had to understand the current situation.
And that was when the question struck her.
'But what does Adam's death have to do with the World Tree?'
The World Tree and the elves had long since been burned and annihilated by 8th Rank monsters. Her own master, the Elf Archmage, was the sole survivor.
That had all happened before not just Chloe, but even Adam, had been born. And yet [Last Words of the Dead] was leading her here.
It could mean only one thing.
"The place where Adam died..."
...was right here.
The instant that thought crystallized—
KWA-BOOOOOM!!!
"...!?"
In the far distance, near the burned World Tree beyond the reach of her detection magic, a thunderous roar erupted alongside a towering dust cloud.
Chloe frantically layered defensive magic around herself and flew toward the source, finally spotting the two people she'd been searching for.
But.
"This... this isn't possible."
"...I was thinking the same thing. Dead-last."
"Damned witch."
"To stay at Adam's side, I had to become a witch. Unlike you, who was never at his side because everyone was too busy singing your praises as a hero."
"..."
The atmosphere between the two was on an entirely different plane from the hostility that had existed between Rus and Chloe.
They were the same Rus Spero. And, strictly speaking, the same Chloe Pisti.
And yet, the air between them was so grim, so murderous, it felt as if each genuinely wished for the other's death.
"You two... what are you doing right now?"
"..."
"..."
Even with Chloe urgently stepping between them, nothing changed.
It was only now that Chloe understood with desperate clarity. The "escape" Adult Chloe had spoken of, Rus Spero killing her future self—the "future" that Adult Chloe had never fully told her about.
There had been events there that she, as she was now, could never have dared to imagine.
A complete regressor, and an incomplete regressor.
At long last, the two of them had come face to face.