Chapter 156
Chapter 156
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 156
Chapter Title: Me and Adel
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Attribute:「Infinity」Unique Skills:
Unique Traits:
Achievements:
Stats:
“...Ha.”
Radiantly shining white hair.
Golden eyes that pierced through everything.
Yes.
The guy right in front of me was—
Undoubtedly Adel.
And at the same time, undoubtedly me.
“Why?”
“...”
“Disappointed? That after all this buildup, what came out wasn’t ‘you’, but ‘Adel’?”
Of all things, it had to be that.
The ‘strongest me’ who had devoured the past, possibilities, and timelines alike.
Not some trial where you just watched the past and jotted down a few lines of reflection before calling it a day, but one where you had to defeat the strongest—and worst—version of myself.
In other words, the absolute worst.
Even a glance at the status window made it clear: it was rigged to say “don’t even try winning.”
All the stats were obscured by boxes, but every single rank was S.
I didn’t have a single S to my name—not even an A outside of Intelligence and Mental Power. Beating that was on par with taking down Veronica.
“But it’s weird...”
Swipe—
The ‘me’ in front of me rested a hand on his chin and muttered.
“How did you get here so fast?”
“...What the hell is that bullshit?”
“No, nothing.”
It felt alien.
The same voice as mine, the same speech patterns.
A sensation too hard to put into words scrambled my thoughts.
Like the reflection in the mirror had come alive and started talking to me.
“Hm. Your body looks fine this time? Last time, you were a total wreck.”
“...Last time?”
“Ah, you were passed out, so you wouldn’t know.”
Last time. Wreck. Passed out.
Those three keywords pointed to only one thing I could infer.
The moment we’d faced the field boss 「Requiem Persia」.
“No way... you’re the one who...”
“Yeah. I took care of it.”
I was at a loss for words for a moment...
But I snapped out of it and opened my mouth to speak again—
“Let me say this upfront: I’m not on your side or anything like that.”
He clasped his hands behind his back and paced.
Light bloomed where his feet touched the ground.
That light stretched into a path, projecting fragments of memory into the air.
“If you die, things get really messy for me.”
The projected memories played out.
The moment Klaus and I discovered 「Requiem Persia」 flashed by.
“Is this stupid? Or just arrogant?”
The ambush on 「Requiem Persia」 had been reasonably successful.
But...
“Yeah, fine, whatever—who could’ve guessed a damn beast would have a 【Fragment of Greed】 fused into it?”
The memory fragment warped into the next scene.
A single moment of hesitation.
The instant 【Devourer of Disasters】 triggered and the fragment’s memories flowed in—
The split-second pause that let the finishing chance slip away.
“Really can’t wrap my head around it.”
The memory advanced once more.
Thud—!!
In the footage, ‘me’ crashed into a tree, body going limp.
“Why do you keep acting like there’s always a ‘next time’?”
“...”
“There’s no next for us anymore. The moment we die, that’s it.”
“...No more?”
“There’s no save file to load.”
I couldn’t even grasp half of what he was saying.
Not the real meaning behind ‘no more,’ nor the phrasing ‘save file to load.’
“Alright, that’s enough talk.”
“...”
“You’ve got two options.”
Snap—
The floating memory fragments vanished.
“Fight me right here, or just bail.”
“...What am I supposed to do here?”
“That’s my line. Coming here at all was your mistake.”
“...”
“Pick one. Run or fight.”
An unwinnable fight.
Not even a 1% chance of victory.
Hell, did the concept of probability even apply?
And yet...
Those were my only choices.
Whoosh—!!
The inventory popped open.
Even in this trial space, it didn’t seem to care.
“Fight? When you’ve got zero shot at winning?”
He was right.
Cold as an unattainable truth.
But—
Standing before me was the ‘strongest version of me.’
Adel. Me. The culmination of every possibility.
Turning my back on that would be no different from abandoning my own potential.
“What the hell are you?”
“Wrong question. It’s not ‘what are you,’ it’s ‘what are we.’”
Flash—
【Leviathan】’s blade halted dead.
He caught it barehanded with a casual chop—like it was nothing.
Didn’t even look like he was trying.
The sheer overwhelming gap was chillingly obvious in that form.
“So I’ll show you personally.”
Rumble—
An abyss bloomed from beneath his feet.
Purple waves undulating between water and shadow.
“We are nothing at all.”
Rumble—
The same waves rose from my feet.
But my abyss was turbulent, while his was flawless.
“We belong to this world, but we shouldn’t.”
Rumble—
Our waves encroached upward, devouring the void space.
“That ‘contradiction’ is what we are.”
The waves surged toward each other.
My wave at him, his at me—
The outcome was painfully clear.
“In the end, we’re just cheap knockoffs of ‘that one.’”
My abyss was swallowed whole.
Could water defeat water?
Could a droplet lost in the ocean hold its shape...?
His waves were that overwhelming.
“Just victims swept along by the tides of fate.”
My breath caught in my throat.
It was frigid.
I couldn’t tell if it was from my own crumbling or the sensation of being swept away in his waves.
“How much regret? How much cursing?”
Swipe.
I tuned my mana.
Forcibly scraping together the ambient mana, squeezing it into the guise of magic spell by spell.
Like forcing shapeless water into form, wrapping it in a shell of miracle.
《Abyss / Intermediate Magic》 「Encroaching Torrent」
⟨ Activated ⟩
Purple currents rippled unstably.
An erratic flow on the verge of writhing agony.
“How many dreams? How much yearning?”
Swipe.
He raised his hand.
Crackle—
Mana surged.
Magic circles assembled themselves in his wake, lines of extreme precision trailing his gesture.
《Abyss / Intermediate Magic》 「Encroaching Torrent」
⟨ Activated ⟩
“Even recalling the feeling of happiness over and over in this looping world doesn’t fill the void.”
“Ha... sounds like that past was a real shitshow.”
“As if it was just shitty.”
The moment the two torrents collided, they seemed to balance for an instant—but
Crackle...
My flow cracked first.
“I must’ve felt happiness once too. But that’s how you lose the past.”
“...”
“Not by forgetting over vast ages, but by shitty reality overwriting it.”
The clashing torrents sank into the waves, leaving only one flow behind.
His.
The waves I’d conjured had long vanished, and his abyss had turned the entire void into an ocean.
“...”
And there I stood, stranded atop that sea.
“But why are you still standing? Is it because this is all new to you?”
“Must be because you’re the idiot.”
An overwhelming disparity in power.
I couldn’t even take a single step toward him.
“...Yeah, probably. That’s how we’re built. How we’re set.”
Built.
Set.
I couldn’t even fake understanding this nonsense monologue.
Real conversation required back-and-forth, but he was just spouting conclusions only he understood.
“Explain it so I get it. No more of your solo gibberish.”
“You already know the answer.”
“...”
“You’re just turning a blind eye to it.”
I knew the answer.
But... somewhere deep in my subconscious, I was ignoring it.
“Why can’t you see your past from before entering this world?”
Before entering this world.
Before becoming ‘Adel.’
Before being bound by this world’s laws—back when I was just a player, just a human—
That version of me.
“Why can’t you remember the name you had before ‘Adel’?”
I couldn’t remember.
Couldn’t recall it.
Had there even been a name before ‘Adel’?
If there was, then why?
Why had I never once thought of it?
“Why are the memories of that game ‘Calamity Lives at the Academy’ so crystal clear?”
Why were those game memories sharper than reality itself?
“That’s how you and I were made—and I and you have looped back through that world hundreds of times.”
“...A regressor.”
“...Yeah. ‘Regressor’ is such a laughable term.”
He laughed.
But it was a hollow laugh, impossible to read.
Just an empty shell rattling.
“It’s not I who regresses—it’s the ‘world’... so why call it a regressor?”
“...”
“I’ve pondered that question endlessly, but never reached a conclusion.”
Snap—
The abysses binding us faded away.
“Here’s a question for you.”
His golden eyes pierced straight through me.
He gazed at me.
My own voice turned on my heart.
“What are you?”
He asked me.
“You, standing here right now—”
Two figures in the heart of nothingness.
The same face.
The same eyes.
But our shadows were utterly different shapes.
“What name do you exist under?”
‘Me’ and ‘Adel.’
Both were ‘me,’ yet neither was truly me.
The contradiction gnawed at my mind.
“If you don’t figure that out, there won’t be a ‘next.’”
Click.
He snapped his fingers.
“‘I’ will become ‘you,’ and ‘you’ will just fade away.”
Suddenly, my consciousness floated upward.
I was clearly still standing in this space, yet my body was dragged higher, my vision receding farther and farther.
The space collapsed.
Boundaries dissolved.
All color drained away.
“Struggle as hard as you can.”
And finally.
Through the cracks in the crumbling world, one last line from him slipped through.
“Like I did. Like you’re doing right now.”