Cloud City (1): The Illusion of Free Will
Humans do not have free will. What does that mean? It means every thought we have is ultimately the product of external factors. All our choices are predetermined, and the sense of free will we experience is nothing more than an illusion. Exactly like fate.
Bullshit, you say? This question has been one of philosophy’s oldest and fiercest battlegrounds. Are our decisions truly made through our own complete, independent reasoning? Or are they passive choices, already swayed in every direction by our environment and settled automatically?
Ancient philosophers and scientists reached these doubts after watching their own bodies act without conscious intent. One famous experiment was even conducted to test the existence of free will: the Libet experiment.
The setup was simple. A subject sat in front of a ticking clock and a single button. They were told to stare at the clock and press the button the moment they felt the conscious urge to do so. Researchers then analyzed the brainwave patterns before and after the action.
It was a straightforward test, yet the results were shocking. Logically, brain activity related to movement should have appeared after the decision “I’m going to press it.” Instead, the motor-related signals showed up before the subject even formed that thought.
In other words, their muscles were already preparing to press the button before their conscious mind had decided to do it. A truly fascinating discovery. Naturally, the experiment sparked enormous controversy about free will.
From the viewpoint of neuroscience, all human thought and action ultimately boils down to brainwaves—minuscule electrical signals. The exchange of ions in neurons generates those signals, which then move our bodies. At the most fundamental level, the driving force behind living creatures and machines is not so different.
That leads to an obvious hypothesis. If we could fully analyze a person’s brainwaves, wouldn’t it be possible to control their thoughts and actions like a machine?
In the world I came from—Earth—similar successes were already appearing. Robotic arms, word processors, and drones controlled directly by brainwaves. If thought could move machines, was the reverse truly impossible?
A person’s will shifts according to their environment, their hormone levels that day, and their brainwave state in any given moment. The choices we believe we made entirely of our own volition are, in reality, choices swept along by everything around us. Therefore, free will is an illusion.
There is no need to even contemplate “Am I perhaps a brain in a vat?” We are already living in a world no different from one.
Seriously… Is it because I have no one to talk to? All kinds of nonsense are spilling out of me these days.
I seemed to be thinking more and more lately. Maybe it was the lack of anyone I could open my heart to. All the words I wanted to say out loud had nowhere to go and simply piled up inside me. In short, I was lonely.
The reason these thoughts suddenly surfaced wasn’t particularly profound. It was simply that the people around me only ever showed one-dimensional reactions because of the curse. So I wondered—wouldn’t it be more accurate to view them as programmed phenomena? Thinking that way wouldn’t change how they behaved, but it did reduce the mental damage I took. When I reminded myself that their hateful words were also just the result of being swept along by the curse, my mind felt far lighter.
That was the first reason. The second was the next Heavenly King.
Net the Puppeteer.
In simple terms, a puppet master. That was his official title in the game, but players called him something far more blunt and lowbrow.
Right. The hypnosis app. Although he bore the title of Puppeteer, the puppets he controlled were not ordinary dolls. They were living beings. He was a monster born with an innate ability. A single word from him could entrance dozens of people. One gesture could move hundreds. He had known he could do it from the moment he drew breath. No one understood exactly why. It might have been brainwave manipulation, as I mentioned earlier. Or perhaps he used magic to plant hypnotic suggestions directly into their minds. The precise mechanism remained unknown. It resembled magic yet operated under completely different rules. That was what an ability was.
The second Heavenly King being the Puppeteer… Just thinking about it made my head ache.
Of all the rotten luck…
The order had come out just as horribly as with the first Heavenly King. Fortunately, his difficulty wasn’t as nightmarish as the Insect King’s. No matter when he appeared, he always offered a reasonable challenge. The real problem lay elsewhere. If he had shown up second, it meant the third and fourth would be them.
Iron Spirit and Aeon.
Both were bosses whose difficulty skyrocketed in the latter half of the game. The kind of bosses that made you want to simply start a new run rather than face them. For reference, if those two were left for the endgame together, I would delete the file without hesitation. Yet this time, that exact situation had occurred. In a run where I couldn’t even retry.
That wasn’t the only bad news. My Insect Magic would naturally be sealed as well. He was the Puppeteer—one who fought by controlling living creatures. Bugs were living creatures too, so my power would be weakened by default. In the worst case, the insects I summoned could turn on me instead. I wouldn’t be able to use them comfortably. In short, I was screwed.
I had no idea who had arranged the order, but they had done a masterful job of making it miserable. I glared resentfully back and forth between the sky and the direction of the Demon Realm—toward the colossal beings hiding within them.
Who exactly am I supposed to resent for this…?
Was this too part of the contract? Who had decided the original sequence of the Heavenly Kings? Had the Goddess poured so much power into the previous hero that the initiative had passed to the Demon King? I understood none of it. Ever since meeting Enen, my thoughts had grown far too tangled. I wasn’t sure whether I should trust her completely, yet antagonizing her seemed impossible given the overwhelming power she possessed. Honestly, without the contract, she probably could have crushed the Demon King in a straight fight. Her strength was on that level. So hostility was out of the question. And regardless of anything else, she was at least acting as an ally toward me.
Sigh. I don’t know anymore.
After thinking in circles for a long time, I finally gave up. Yeah. What was the point of ruminating like this? My job had been decided from the start. Grow stronger, cut off the Demon King’s head, and save every single one of them. Even if my body was completely destroyed in the process, catching the Demon King would let me reincarnate into a new one. So all I had to do was kill the Demon King. Just the Demon King. Setting aside the difficulty, the goal had become beautifully simple.
“Ugh, I’m bored. When the hell are we going to get there?”
Just as I was steeling my resolve, Lily’s whining voice drifted over from beside me. We were currently riding a carriage toward a border city in another country. When the messenger had burst in, I assumed trouble had broken out somewhere nearby. It turned out he had galloped for days and nights all the way from another nation just to reach me. Thanks to the laws of distance, we had no choice but to spend many long days in the carriage ourselves. Even though it was magically reinforced and far faster than an ordinary one, the boredom remained unchanged.
I spoke up to soothe her. “Just endure it a little longer. We’re almost at Cloud City. We’ll be able to step on solid ground soon. Of course, our actual destination is still a bit farther, so we’ll have to ride a few more hours…”
“Haa?”
When I explained it that way, she pulled a blatantly dissatisfied face. “Oh please, what’s with the sudden polite speech? Just talk to me casually like you did back in the empire.”
“Come on, how could I possibly do that?”
It seemed the chaos I had caused in the empire still bothered her. Still, I had expected the scolding, so I brushed it off with an easy grin.
“Still, a demon army raid. Since they lost a Heavenly King too, they’re being unusually aggressive.”
“You can say that again. I should probably send a warning to the knight orders.”
While Lily continued to grumble, Adel and Kamilla were engaged in a far more constructive conversation. Among all the Heavenly Kings, the Puppeteer was the one who invaded the human realm most frequently. His ability forced him to constantly gather living resources, after all. This raid had most likely been orchestrated by him as well. I would have to confirm the details in person, though.
We kept riding the carriage like that—eating when we grew hungry, chatting sporadically. Perhaps because we had already taken down one Heavenly King, the party’s mood was noticeably softer than it had been inside the Insect Assembly Castle.
After several hours of travel—
“Haa~ We’re finally here!”
“My whole body feels stiff from sitting so long. Don’t you agree, Lady Adel?”
“Well… This level of waiting is simply part of daily life for me, so it isn’t particularly boring.”
“…This is exactly why elves are—”
We had finally arrived. At Cloud City.