A Place Nothing Could Ever Replace
"...Lily, you said?"
"Yes... so please, I beg you, stop this..."
At first, I thought it was nothing more than a shared name.
A servant of the Celestial Tribe, infiltrating Desertum—the empire of Pharaoh—in pursuit of something. I'd intended to wring whatever information I could out of the thing bound within the sword and hand it over to Pharaoh, but this was a name I absolutely could not let pass.
"Why?"
"...How should I know? I'm the one who's ended up in this wretched form, after all."
"......"
"Rather, khh—I'm the one who wants to ask. Why are you here?"
Crunch!
"Grrkh...!"
"Don't lie to me. Speak plainly, or I'll kill you."
"It's the truth! That woman's name is Lily Elbrit!"
"Any other distinguishing features? Empty everything you know."
So I listened as the being called Caums, sealed inside the sword, poured out story after story.
His homeland was a place called the Primordial Island. He'd committed every evil imaginable there, until Lily Elbrit came for him, and after a ferocious battle he was sealed inside the blade. But his consciousness had remained fully intact within that prison, which meant he had witnessed Lily in all her many guises.
Lily striding about with a spear, Hetsling at her side. Lily swinging a hammer to purge monsters. Lily—rare enough to see—teaching something to the handful of human powerhouses. Lily laughing brightly as she pulled pranks.
And then—
"...A camera?"
"...Krek. Was that thing called a camera? She was always staring at something in empty air and speaking to it—conversing with beings that existed in the void. Speaking with entities of another world, most likely."
"......"
"I don't understand it precisely myself. The otherworlders are Immortals to begin with—even where they came from is anyone's guess..."
A great deal of time had passed since I arrived in this world, and yet I still remembered the culture of Earth.
People who simply lived ordinary lives—enjoying their days instead of fighting desperately, dying, and clawing their way back to life. Among them were the ones called celebrities, who captured their own images on camera and broadcast stories and amusing antics to bring entertainment to their viewers.
'But why?'
Why would the future me be doing that?
It made no sense. I had lived as a saintess once, but never for fame or attention. It was to save people—and to find my way back to Earth. Even after I set the title aside, I kept doing relief work quietly, hidden from the world. And the me who existed before I became Lily had never done any such thing either.
And yet the future Lily was laughing and chattering like a clown without a single care.
'When the me right now is suffering like this.'
"......"
It was fake.
It had to be fake.
She was a servant of the Celestial Tribe, yes—but I'd heard that among the Demon Tribe there were those who imitated the celestials, toying with humans and running their experiments. That had to be what this was. Some elaborate mockery, meant to break me. A deception. A cruel game played at my expense.
Yes. That was it. That was the only answer.
'It has to be.'
"Caums."
"...Wh-what is it now."
"From this moment on, you will tell me about the world you come from. Do not leave out a single thing."
It was time to strip the false deception bare.
"...So you're going back."
"Yes."
Two years before Desertum's fall.
Like a warrior steeling himself for war, Pharaoh stood clad in armor, and I nodded to him.
Since that day, I had remained in Desertum, interrogating Caums countless times over. And it hadn't simply been two years.
This world held spaces where time flowed at a vastly different rate—and one of the spaces I had pried loose from that one was exactly such a place. I suspected far more than two years had actually passed.
Through those long stretches, he convulsed and thrashed in raw terror, over and over, but in the end I succeeded in extracting every last scrap of knowledge he possessed.
And Caums's words had been true.
"...Possessed by a game, and now this. A game, again."
It was funny. Utterly funny.
Caums's place of origin—more precisely, thousands of years in this world's future—was as one of the NPCs of Devil of Angel.
Devil of Angel was a virtual reality game: a world of countless adventures and dungeons that anyone could enjoy without the agony of true death. And Lily played that game while running an internet broadcast.
Even now, showered with the interest and encouragement of countless people.
'......Ha.'
Of course, none of that information was something an NPC like Caums was permitted to know. I'd obtained it only because he confessed the truth, and because I extracted the memories of what he had witnessed with his own two eyes.
Not that Caums's mind hadn't taken considerable losses in the process.
"...If this resolves your curiosity, then take it..."
Caums had decided that being shown once was better than being asked a hundred times. Not that I wouldn't have forced the viewing regardless.
Either way, I had seen the truth—and with it, the hidden side that no NPC was ever meant to see.
Was it because I now inhabited Lily as well? Or because I carried some other system entirely?
The characters were broken and corrupted, but I could see what the future Lily saw.
What I could not do was touch it.
The me of the past was a system that could only watch—never reach.
Turning away from the shattered window, I looked up. Pharaoh still sat upon his throne, posture unbroken.
"This world is garbage, isn't it?"
"...Hm. It has always been so, here. You'll understand once you've lived three thousand years."
"I'd rather not live that long."
"Your future self did, I hear."
"Who knows. How long she lived before clearing the main quest."
I had told Pharaoh everything, too. He was entangled in this affair—and above all, the very reason the future Lily had come to this place was Pharaoh himself. To reclaim the body of the 'Pharaoh' whom I had captured and sealed away.
"Ending a war between two races is never easy, is it? There are higher beings watching from that sky, and beyond that dimension sit the Eight Seats and the Six Demon Kings."
How long would it take to kill them all? Even to stop their war without spilling their blood, one would need power at least equal to theirs.
'Just how long?'
"Not an easy road."
"...Which is exactly why it's so funny."
That kind of being—the one who completed an absurd quest commanding her to end the war of two races, and then returned to Earth—why was she so weak? Why so ridiculous?
Shouldn't she have transcended further still, become something greater than all of them?
It made no sense. It must not make sense.
"......."
As our time drew to a close, a question suddenly surfaced.
No—I had asked it dozens of times before.
"...I told you the truth. So why won't you leave?"
I knew Pharaoh's future. Before long, the demons would burn his empire to ash; he would rescue Serek by the barest margin and abandon this place. Afterward, driven mad by the loss of everything, he would assail the kingdoms, be subdued by me, and end up sealed away.
Leaving was the right choice. So long as a certain future existed here—rather than the half-baked scraps I'd carried in—he had to walk away.
"Staying in this place means nothing—"
"The empire is what matters most to me, Lily Elbrit."
"......"
"Leave? And go where, exactly? Abandon the empire that holds my history and everything I am?"
"...Won't you at least save Serek?"
I had lingered here a long while and heard many things in the process. Pharaoh cherished Serek deeply. Rumor had it that it was mere affection, or fondness between colleagues—but the truth ran deeper than that. He cherished her as a person, and as a human being.
He laughed.
"You're laboring under a misunderstanding."
"Pardon?"
"What do you take this place for? The empire of Emperor Pharaoh? The seat where the Great Sun resides?"
Swooosh.
The golden mask resting upon the golden throne rose and settled over his face.
"Wrong."
Two suns kindled behind the mask's slits.
"This is the one and only empire that she and I built across countless ages. A place that could not be traded for anything in existence."
"......"
"Even if evil itself comes, I will not leave. Even if it costs me my life."
"You did run, though. Without dying."
"......"
"Scrambled into a stone statue in a panic and fled, didn't you? Raising all manner of havoc, raiding the very kingdoms you once traded with—"
"Enough."
Whoosh!
The sandstorm raged into motion.
Pharaoh had not spent these two years idling. Since learning the truth, he had trained himself without end and prepared with meticulous care. I was certain he had grown far stronger than the original Pharaoh of this era ever was.
The eyes that held the sun narrowed.
"Do not speak to me of things I have not yet lived."
"You'll be living them soon enough."
"You think I cannot win?"
"Yes."
A higher demon was beyond him. Pharaoh might have changed if he were truly given thousands more years to live—but time was not on his side.
"...I see. No, I suppose I cannot win. Perhaps, just as you say, I'll writhe about ugily like an insect, parasite myself into a statue, and flee."
The future, fixed and predetermined. Nothing changed; nothing would change. Everything had already been decided.
And yet Pharaoh would defend his empire all the same.
Even facing that cruel truth. Even if the past repeated itself a hundred times over. He would hold his empire, transfer his body, save Serek, and slip away.
That was simply the fate he had been born to.
"...What a foolish man you are."
"Then why are you like this, Lily Elbrit?"
Knowing it could not be changed—why, forsaking everything she had done until now, casting even her revenge aside, did she cling to this place? If nothing would change, letting matters run their course was a path in itself.
"...Because I can't accept it."
Shing.
'The Great Lily Elbrit.'
The Eight Seats and the Six Demon Kings. Fourteen gods who twisted heaven and earth and kneaded the very laws of the world in their palms.
The one who had brought that war of theirs to a halt was none other than the future Lily Elbrit. Her.
No matter how I turned it over, I could not understand.
"That a me who was 'merely' that much... ended everything."