Chapter 72
Chapter 72
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 72
Chapter Title: The Third
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Once again, my consciousness surfaced above the waters of sleep.
A splitting headache throbbed beyond the distant haze of my mind.
I saw memories.
Memories not my own, but someone else's.
The memories of Aurea, one of the five Transcendent Beings.
Clutching my head, I slowly rose to my feet.
My eyes locked onto the Empress rising in the same way, but my thoughts drifted elsewhere.
'That was me.'
The wretchedly dressed man from Aurea's memories.
Ian Baltazar.
Though he lacked one arm and bore more scars than those on my body,
it was undoubtedly myself.
Hard to comprehend, yet I knew it for certain.
Because the weapon that man held, seen through Aurea's eyes, was unmistakably the Rigid Body Armament Irena had gifted me.
Having reached that conclusion, questions still lingered for me.
Whether I could exist on a past timeline before Great Beasts had even appeared.
My thoughts continued.
Harboring the question of how, I revisited those memories once more to find the answer.
In Aurea's memories, I said that I had killed my lover, my comrades, my friends—all with my own hands.
'And called it a predestined tragedy, a fated end.'
There could be no such thing as a predestined tragedy.
Since I couldn't foresee the future.
So the only conclusion was...
The worst possibility I'd dreaded since the moment of my possession flashed through my mind.
'Monsterization. So Monsterization truly existed.'
If Monsterization was indeed that predestined tragedy.
Then my past self had slain every Transcendent Being to eradicate it and avert the fated end.
'I anticipated one cause, maybe two or more entangled... but...'
It was tangled.
Tangled far too tightly.
'From the very start... my guesses never held up.'
Who could ever imagine that I already existed in the past, hell-bent on killing all Transcendent Beings to wipe out Monsterization?
Anyone who could think that would be nothing but a delusional madman.
"...Still, I understand now."
Why Monsterization never existed.
Why the characters' appearances had shifted bit by bit.
I could accept it all as the butterfly effect wrought by my past self.
And it wasn't as if I had zero inkling why my past self could exist in primordial times.
Then the remaining question...
My gaze on the Empress sank low.
"In that case, who are you?"
The one who journeyed with me on some timeline long ago and fell by my hand.
Someone who had heard of the butterfly effect.
But Aurea was dead.
Slain by me on a timeline I myself didn't remember.
Which naturally led to this question.
"How did you know the term 'butterfly effect'? As if you were..."
Aurea herself.
The Empress laughed upon hearing the question.
One sharp intake of breath.
"Memories are unknowable things. Just debating which came first, which lies further in the past—it alone can shatter one's sense of self."
Without exhaling again, the Empress wiped all expression from her face.
A blank mask devoid of even a trace of emotion.
"I awoke once more. Bearing past memories, as the child of an incompetent Empress. At first, it was chaos... then, a touch of joy."
'Awoke once more with past memories...'
Was it because Aurea had been a Transcendent Being?
Or because the Empress bore the bloodline of Aurea, who had ruled the center since primordial days?
The answer came unasked.
The Empress's very appearance was proof.
A human subspecies derisively called a Transcendent hybrid.
The Empress, lingering on that word "joy," pressed on.
Soon, her next words left me stunned.
"Then I spotted a single Baltazar house. That person's lineage. A house that never existed in the past. And before long, I learned its head was running biological experiments."
"...!"
"Once I saw that, everything around it came into view. Tirann, Gernhardt, Silvia, and..."
The Empress trailed off deliberately.
'Watching me from the start.'
I could feel the threads connecting.
The reason Baldir Nordelheim had thrown me to the foremost line might have been...
'Because the Empress leaned on him.'
I had a vague guess for that too.
"In an age unimaginably distant from now, you existed. And here you stand today. Same name, same face, same scars."
The Empress turned, baring her back as she paced backward.
"Was the past you the origin, or are you now? Or was the past you the end, and you now the genesis?"
Was the me from that past timeline the first?
Or was I—the one existing in this moment—the first?
The butterfly effect gave way to paradox.
With me in both past and present, precedence was impossible to pin down.
If I'd dropped into the world unaltered from the original.
And my desperate bid for survival there ended in all my comrades' deaths.
Unable to accept it, I returned to the past by some means.
And slew every Transcendent Being to trigger the butterfly effect.
Was the me who fell into the pristine original world first?
Or the me who fell into the world reshaped by the butterfly effect?
The endlessly coiling doubts all converged on one inescapable question.
The Empress, who had been walking with deliberate footfalls, halted abruptly.
"I said I wouldn't dwell on it anymore... but I can't let it go."
The Empress shifted her gaze.
The questions we flung at each other intertwined.
"That's my question. Who are you? Same name, same face, same grand cause. You who existed then and stand here now—who are you?"
The Empress, inscrutable as Aurea or some other third party.
Myself, uncertain if I was the butterfly's originator or just another outsider.
The queries we hurled became answers, sinking into our chests in place of doubts.
It took no great stretch of time to realize further questions were pointless.
I readjusted my grip on the Rigid Body Armament and glared at the Empress.
"I don't care anymore. Get out of my way. I'm going to save Ruella now."
The Empress's lips quirked in a sour smirk.
"Good. That tells me exactly who you are."
As she extended his hand to her left, a swirl of light gathered in his grasp.
The elongated gleam stretching in opposite extremes from her hand soon formed a colossal spear.
A banner fluttered beside the spearhead.
"You're not the man I knew. Same face, same name... but not you."
Eyes shut, she repeated it to himself over and over.
"Right. You're not that man."
Her self-indoctrination complete, the Empress opened her eyes.
"No reason to hold back, then."
She raised the spear-bearing arm high and smashed it down with all his might.
Craaaaaack!!
Spiderweb cracks spidered out from where the spear shaft cratered the floor.
Golden winds billowed.
Through her scattering black hair, the Empress's golden eyes gleamed with demonic fervor.
"The subjugation battle begins."
In that instant, the temporary shelter's ceiling vaporized.
A figure plummeted from the sky laid bare by the sundered roof.
Clad in full-body armor, shrouded in black Aura like coiling shadows—
The moment I registered it, I reflexively slashed the Rigid Body Armament upward.
Gernhardt vaulted through space itself, driving his twin daggers down.
Dozens of exchanges in a single breath.
The Rigid Body Armament's swings and the pair of daggers danced, bounding in and out of each other's guard like acrobats.
"Hup!!"
With Gernhardt's grunt, Aura detonated at point-blank range.
'Give flesh to take bone.'
The Empress had dubbed this a subjugation battle.
Then the countless powerhouses I'd passed on the way here existed to kill me.
When the chance arose, I had to seize it decisively.
All the more for an Aura wielder like Walter Gernhardt.
Instead, I plunged straight into the blast.
Aura Energy shielded my face as I unleashed a Wave.
A blue streak sliced across the retreating Gernhardt.
The instant I swung my sword diagonally through the rising black shadows.
Claaaang!!
A short spear jammed dead-center into my blade.
Close enough to hear strands of hair whisper past.
A woman who landed before me whispered.
"No ill will."
Faster than sound.
Dozens of superhumans surged from every conceivable angle, beyond mere compass points.
"Sorry."
"I know it's a rotten thing to do to the hero who ended the Northern Frontline, but..."
"Her Majesty's orders...!!"
Hearing that, I let out a sardonic chuckle.
"Yeah."
No hard feelings either way.
"Oh no...!"
I released the Rigid Body Armament and splayed my hands like a net, snatching the short spear.
I hadn't wielded one in ages, but it was no issue.
After all.
"A thrust... ends it...!!"
My target was singular.
Countless Waves in my vision converged to a point, their hues intertwining into one path.
A straight line laid bare before my eyes.
A one-way ticket straight to Gernhardt.
The instant it registered, my arm was already in motion.
The blow that slew Ereveon and toppled the mountain range recreated—
—Slash!!
An arm cleaved clean off.
Blood spraying wild.
A familiar silhouette flickered through the gap.
"...Captain."
Flustered by the familiar voice, if only for a heartbeat.
Dozens of weapons plunged into the tumbling, off-balance body.