How Could I Ever Return? (Revised)

"S-stop that—"

Thud!

"Enough! Do you take this body for a joke?!"

Thud!

The emperor's flesh, and the authority to command it in full. Unlike his wretched past, he had gained tremendous power — and even the wings he had craved for so long. No matter how strong his opponent, it should not have gone like this... not like this...

"Stop hitting me so absurdly! Fight me in earnest, I say!!"

"I am being earnest."

This woman kept driving him back with surges of divinity, only to rap him on the head with her hammer, over ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and over. She looked for all the world as if she were playfully teasing a child. The problem was that even those little raps were heavy enough that he could barely block them.

Crrk.

"Come forth, my Paladins!"

Drawing on a technique learned from the emperor's stolen knowledge, he raised sand soldiers from the ground. The authority had been severed from the flesh, but a fragment of its power still lingered in the body — and layered on top of that, his own divinity. Ten reasonably imposing sand soldiers clad themselves in armor and encircled his enemy.

A woman with blue hair and blue eyes, the very image of what he had once been. She rested her white hammer against her shoulder and surveyed the soldiers.

"Sand soldiers, hm. Not quite how Pharaoh used to summon them."

"Ha! Of course not! These are modeled after the elite knights of that blasted bloodline!"

"Bloodline? What bloodline would that be?"

"None of your concern."

Tch.

He leveled the golden sword at her. The blade had cracked all over from the ferocity of the battle, but it hardly mattered. By the knowledge within him, this was not a sword meant for swinging anyway.

The moment he pointed it, the sand paladins rattled to life and charged at her.

"With your deaths, I shall reclaim my rightful and glorious seat!"

"...Yeah, I can pretty much guess."

Swish. The instant the hammer slid down from her shoulder, every last soldier was wiped away in a single strike.

An overwhelming shockwave crashed over him, hurling his body backward.

"...!"

While he clenched his fist once more to gather ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠his strength, the hammer was already falling toward his skull.

"Huh?"

"He was asleep?"

"He was. The moment you vanished, he fell straight into slumber. I would judge that his consciousness was put out deliberately."

The unconscious body of Pharaoh had been claimed by the Caums lurking within. Against the Forgotten Emperor, a celestian, Caums was far inferior in both rank and capability, so as long as that being remained awake, the body could not be taken. Only in a moment like this — when neither mind nor flesh could be commanded — was it possible.

"Is that truly so?"

"It is."

Caums nodded Pharaoh's head for him. Somehow, even this felt strange in its own way.

"What about everything else?"

"...Nothing. All I did was slip into this body the moment its eyes opened."

"Hmm..."

I stared at Pharaoh. I stared for quite a long while, but his expression never changed.

"I see."

"Indeed. And what do you intend to do now?"

"The ideal solution would be to keep the body stored somewhere on its own — but with two residents already living in it, I doubt that's possible."

The Forgotten Emperor was one of the two bosses of the ruins dungeon. A being who had endured for thousands of years — and killing or erasing him in the present circumstances was out of the question. It wasn't a matter of lacking power. However exalted a celestian might be, he was still lower-tier, a celestian who hadn't even awakened a unique authority, and could be disposed of with ease.

The problem lay elsewhere...

Barely a short skirmish had shaved away nearly fifteen percent of it. If an expenditure this trivial cost fifteen percent, then burning through every remaining point still wouldn't be enough to end him.

"Since killing him is impossible, I'll simply have to mold him into a more manageable shape. One that will remain perfectly intact even after thousands of years."

"......"

"I see. Killing him is impossible."

"Exactly."

Caums nodded. Watching him rise to his feet, I looked around at our surroundings.

As though bearing witness to the massacre of that day, Serek's private quarters had been left in shambles. The walls and furniture that had once radiated warmth were pocked with craters everywhere, and Pharaoh's gifts had been smashed beyond all recognition.

"Then why didn't you stop it?"

"...Pardon?"

"There was more than enough time. He claimed the body the instant it woke, so before the celestian arrived, you could have ordered it to flee with the body in hand."

Becoming the Forgotten Emperor was a story that began the moment a celestian laid hands on that flesh. For Lily — who had long since prepared another inheritor, one capable of traversing space and seizing the body — the celestian taking it was never a choice she would have allowed. She loathed celestians, and on top of that, deliberately forging an emperor she couldn't even kill and multiplying the sources of danger ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠defied all reason.

"If anything, what deserves closer attention is the scorp—"

"I have no idea why that should concern you of all people. Weren't you the one who hated me?"

"......"

"...It is pure curiosity. I did what I was meant to do — am I not even permitted to ask this much?"

"Hmm... fair enough. I suppose I was a little weapon-insensitive."

"W-weapon-insensitive?"

Caums was, at heart, the crux of this whole affair, so leaving him in the dark about it was simply too cruel. I admit it. I had been too thoughtless.

"I've given it a great deal of thought. Even for someone who has lived past seventeen hundred years — could anyone truly endure several thousand more?"

The Forgotten Emperor had obtained Pharaoh's body here, and then, after some affair with Scorpio, ended up sealed away within the ruins. Whether he had been trapped or had simply slept through it all, no one could say for certain — but every circumstance pointed to imprisonment.

"Of course he could hold out, in a sense. But leaving anyone alone like that for so long a time... it seems unbearably cruel to me."

"...Did you not once declare that he would endure it as a matter of course?"

"That was for a decade or so. Surely you're not asking him to last millennia?"

He was no celestian, and I wasn't the kind to do something that wicked.

"...How gracious of you."

"Isn't it, though?"

Caums nodded, reluctantly.

My skull rang.

─......

A phenomenon from seven years ago — no, quite possibly from even longer ago than that.

"The reason I had you dwell within Pharaoh's body was to prepare for every eventuality. The second visitation might have coincided with the very moment the body was stolen — or perhaps this space itself would no longer exist, leaving you impossible to find."

─...Wrong.

All of it had begun with that preposterous woman from thousands of years in the past.

"And yet none of that came to pass. Thank you for your efforts, Caums."

It sounded plausible enough. Caums had, after all, been nothing more than insurance against variables, and now that the objective had been achieved, there was no reason left for him to endure thousands of years.

But this conversation was missing one premise.

'Worrying over something I wouldn't even remember, am I?'

Caums swallowed a groan. He had said, clearly enough, that he held no memory of the gap between the two times — meaning that enduring thousands of years was no hardship whatsoever. And yet Lily was speaking as though it went without saying that he could not endure them. Worse, she had offered thanks for your efforts to Caums, who had done nothing but blink before his body was snatched away.

He had watched Lily on Primordial Island, and here as well — and she was not the sort to say such a thing over something so trivial. Lily and Caums were bitter foes; she had taken Akron and Lise's side and driven him to ruin. All the more so if she were a different Lily...

─...I had no intention of concealing even this much and deceiving you. After all, I, too, am 'Lily Elbrit.'

'Lily Elbrit.'

Seven years ago, the Lily of the future had left him here and disappeared. She had confidently promised that her own countermeasures would see him through — countermeasures, indeed. The instant she vanished she had been caught, and fallen straight into the hands of the Lily of the past — that utterly absurd human. And in the long process of her information being pried loose, countless things had happened.

'.....'

It was laughable for one who had toyed with the whole of Primordial Island to say this, but if the Lily before his eyes was a crazy bitch, the Lily of the past was a demon incarnate. A being twisted somewhere deep beyond repair. The Lily of the future had been almost sane by comparison.

─Cast aside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠such pointless thoughts and keep your composure. If you presume to act up before your former master, you had best be prepared for the consequences.

'...I already said I wouldn't. Enough of that.'

─How reassuring. I did wonder whether some scrap of loyalty might yet remain.

'......'

The Lily inside his skull let out a faint, distant voice. Nothing like the one who had once wrung him this way and that for information.

'Seven years.'

Across that long span, the Lily of the past had passed through countless processes of 'understanding.' Understanding her own circumstances. Understanding the circumstances of a far-distant future. And further still — understanding that she was an otherworlder, and comprehending 'the System,' the power that aided otherworlders. When she finally realized this place was fake, she murmured, 'A game...?' — and everyone had thought her mind had completely broken.

Despite possessing a body that could not die, she had felt the terror of death all the same.

─Do not worry yourself too much. She is not so cruel as to kill people out of mere anger.

'...How very comforting.'

─......Lily. The Lily who returned.

She had understood everything. But this one thing alone, she could never understand.

How.

Just how, in the world—

─...How did she go back?

How on earth had she ever brought an end to the war between those two races?