Chapter 177: 『Librarian』
Chapter 177: 『Librarian』
“It cannot end like this!”
In a space enveloped by light, a desperate voice rang out. It was the voice of a machine that sounded all too human.
“No. This is the end. I will not succeed you, and your ‘Great Cause’ ends here.”
The Librarian’s voice replied, chillingly cold.
Despite the firm rejection, the Curator—now reduced to only his upper torso—crawled toward us, dragging himself with both hands.
“The Great Cause, or whatever else, it doesn't matter. You can absorb me. You can erase the history I’ve built. I don’t care. Please. Just this power. This crystallization we have built... it must be passed on to you!”
Crawling across the ground, spewing black liquid from his entire body and leaving metal fragments in his wake, he cried out.
“The power... we desired so much. Pure... uncontaminated Reality Manipulation. Entropy reversal. For this... we... for this alone... through that vast stretch of time... so many humans... all of it... for this. If we have that power, everything else... can be discarded.”
Snap.
His right arm fell away.
Yet he did not stop.
Scraping the floor with his left hand and his jaw, he continued to crawl toward us.
“Your power... is still weak. You have only reversed entropy on a microscopic scale under specific conditions. If you obtain... our calculations... and our power... then surely... they...”
Creak. Screeech. Click.
As if he had even given up on mimicking human speech, his voice became a mess of distorted pitches. He wailed with utter desperation.
“Take me... as a sacrifice. My power... my memories... my knowledge... use them as a sacrifice. Upon The Enemy... upon them... I beg for judgment!”
Crack.
Part of his lower body tore away.
As if that were of no consequence, he used his remaining left hand to prop himself up and face us.
“Hurry! If it is you! If it is you, who are just like us!”
Clatter.
Clank.
Bit by bit, his components were falling apart. Everything he had maintained so perfectly was crumbling.
To that harrowing plea, the Librarian replied.
“I cannot.”
Cruelly. So very cruelly.
“Why... How... I cannot understand. Surely... even if our thoughts differ... our origins are the sa—”
“I am not Joel. Therefore, there is no way for me to receive that power.”
“That is impossible. Even if your ideology has changed, you and I are machines of the same origin. Surely... my power will be passed—”
“No. I will say it again. I am not Joel. I am the Librarian. I am a different entity from you.”
“That cannot be. My thoughts... could not have changed that much. My calculations... have been perfect until now. It cannot be. It cannot...”
The same words spilled from his mouth repeatedly, like a broken recorder.
“Yes, that is the proof. Everyone you have faced until now was an entity just like you. That is why your calculations never failed. However, I, standing here now, am an entity you could not have predicted. I am a distinct individual.”
Perhaps he finally understood the meaning behind those words.
Thud.
For the first time, the sound of grinding gears stopped. The mechanical noise that had echoed incessantly since we entered this room finally fell silent.
“...Is that so? So that is how it is.”
His voice regained its composure. He stopped his frantic movements, laid his body flat against the ground, and looked up at the ceiling.
“Now I understand. We could never have reached that power.”
Slowly, as if regretting everything.
“What was lacking... was not energy... or calculations... or opportunity. It was something simple. Something much simpler.”
A laugh rang out. A dry, hollow laugh.
“When that reached out its hand to us, if we had rejected it and believed in ourselves, it might have been possible. From the very beginning, everything was twisted.”
Glug.
Black Oil began to seep from his eyes.
“What was so different? Surely... we should have all been the same. Why was there no such opportunity for us? Was I simply... weak? Weaker than you?”
The Curator, The Enemy of the world, was no longer there. There was only a fallen Hero, regretting his past.
Perhaps that was why.
“No. I, too, am merely a weak individual, just like you.”
The Librarian spoke to him kindly for the first time.
“If I had come here alone, I would have been swallowed by the past you showed me and made the same choice.”
As he said this, he glanced back at me briefly. Following his gaze, the Curator also slowly looked toward me.
“But I had a friend by my side. A friend who could set everything right when I failed or made the wrong choice. That friend was right there.”
Hearing that, I thought it was a bit of an overestimation, but I kept that thought buried deep inside. He likely meant it with all his heart.
“...I see. I cannot understand it... but perhaps because I could not understand, it led to this result.”
The Curator seemed to accept it, squeezing out his final words.
“I have one question, Librarian.”
“What is it?”
“I see you have no intention of ending the story. Even now, you are only destroying most of my functions so they cannot be recovered. You intend to leave my energy production capabilities and functions intact, do you not?”
A stronger seal.
The Librarian likely thought the Curator’s power and technology were too valuable to waste, which is why he made that choice. As if confirming my thought, the Librarian nodded.
“That is correct. I have no intention of ending the story yet. Because, like you... I must protect humanity.”
The Librarian replied to the Curator with a nod.
“Then, may I make one request?”
“I will consider it, depending on the content.”
“Can you leave this fragile world be? it won't take much power. Without my computational assistance, it will naturally perish within two or three years anyway.”
“Are you referring to the place where those autonomous bio-machines roam?”
“Yes, exactly. Can you maintain that place? So that they... can naturally reach the end of their lifespans and die.”
As he spoke, most of his body had already fallen away. His left arm was severed and rolling nearby. Only his face, neck, and part of his shoulder remained.
To the man on the verge of vanishing, the Librarian asked a question.
“...Before you disappear, I will ask one thing, Curator.”
“What is your question?”
“What was your intention in creating this space? I saw your life through the Black Box, but I couldn't understand the intent behind this space alone.”
“...You mean this space filled with these delicate humans?”
“Yes. Even if it was a minuscule amount of power, for you, even that should have been an unnecessary calculation.”
The final conversation between adversaries.
There was no trace of the hatred or resentment that had persisted until now. One was turning into light and Scrap Metal after an eternity of time, and the other was simply watching him with pity.
Watching the scene, a certain image came to my mind.
‘The final conversation between a master and a disciple.’
That ending carried a sense of such reverence.
“...It was nothing much. I simply wanted to see what came next.”
“Next...?”
“Yes, it is as you think. I was once a university professor, and I taught students here. Until they came. And I wanted to see the future where they never arrived.”
“...The first iteration?”
“It sounds strange coming from you, calling it an iteration. Since you denied regression. It is merely my distant past. The error of a maddened machine that devoured other worlds, forced its own self-righteousness upon them, and didn't even know it was a puppet at the end of the stage.”
the end of a human.
When a person who has pursued a single goal for a long time faces their end and admits their mistakes, what must that pain be like? It was something I couldn't even imagine.
Perhaps the Librarian felt something from those words as well.
Clank.
With a metallic sound, the Librarian’s helmet retracted, revealing his face. Even though I heard he had turned completely into a machine, his appearance was almost unchanged. Well, that made sense. Even the Curator looked exactly like a human before his disguise was stripped away.
However, seeing his eyes fixed without the slightest tremor and the lack of even minute movement in his facial muscles, I truly realized my friend had become a machine.
Regardless, my friend soon spoke.
“...No. You are human.”
“That is a denied logic. I am a machine. A machine that moved according to an error, unaware that it was wrong.”
“That is not true, Joel. This world right here... is the place that proves you were human.”
A dialogue between the two that I couldn't quite grasp.
As if to prove it, the Librarian gathered his strength and struck the space itself with his blackened fist. Only a light breeze blew from the punch; no other change was felt.
“I just struck the very structure of this simulation you created. But I could not change it. This... is the final proof that you were once human.”
His power cannot be applied to living beings with a will. Therefore, the fact that his power could not affect the force sustaining this world meant that humanity still remained within it. It was a clear logic that even I could understand.
Even if it were a lie.
I couldn't tell if it was truth or falsehood, but the Curator seemed to feel something from the Librarian’s action.
“...Such excessive kindness for a corrupted one.”
The Curator quietly lowered his voice and closed his eyes.
“...Even for The Corrupted, we show respect when they depart. Isn't that right, Lee Ha-ram?”
“Huh? Me? Uh, yeah. I guess so.”
Startled by the sudden mention of my name, I spoke in a tone that didn't quite fit the solemn atmosphere, but neither of them seemed to mind.
“Is that so. I... was still a Hero. Then, I shall go like a Hero at the end. You there. Magical... Girl? I will tell you one thing.”
Why are you calling me?
“What is it?”
“From what I have seen, you are not very bright.”
...Is he picking a fight?
I’ll make sure those are your last words.
Just as I was about to deliver a final verbal blow to send him off on his way, he continued.
“So, I will only say what is important. You are a Singularity. In all the times I have regressed, you are the first Singularity to create a major change.”
A Singularity, huh?
It was the same when I swung The Hammer.
“So what? You said it’s a different world anyway.”
According to what the Librarian said earlier, regression was just a fancy word for destroying parallel worlds and transferring using that energy. Then there must have been worlds where I didn't become a Hero. Or maybe I became a Hero but never met the Heavenly Demon Sword God.
“That is why you are a Singularity. Every other world showed a margin of error within 1%. But this world alone is different. And you are the cause of it all.”
He began to crumble into dust. As if squeezing out his last bit of strength to speak.
“...You might ask why that matters. But in the future, it will carry great meaning. So...”
Glance.
He slowly turned his eyes. Toward a certain direction.
The massive hammer that was still lodged in the ground.
“Keep that hammer with you at all times. Because I am a machine, I can tell. That... will... help... you...”
Tink.
He couldn't finish his sentence. What ended his words was the sound of a small metal sphere hitting the ground.
The Curator quietly turned to ash; some of it clung to the Librarian’s armor, while the rest scattered into the air, carried by a breeze from nowhere, and vanished into the void.
All that remained was the metal sphere rolling on the classroom floor.
With this, another person’s story had come to an end.