The End of the Festival
Eating, having sex, training, having sex, sightseeing. A fair amount of time had passed. It had been nearly 20 days since we entered Lampades. Originally, we were "supposed" to stay for about two weeks, but we ended up spending an extra five days on top of the fortnight.
The reason for the extended stay? There were a few, but one was that a stroke of good fortune had come to Shin Yuhee.
"Is this... mana?"
"Crazy. What kind of talent is this...?"
Shin Yuhee had grasped mana. Perhaps it was the help of Ernette, who had been putting her through grueling training by her side the whole time. Or maybe it was because mana had been continuously accumulating in her body while she feasted on the luxurious food of Lampades. ...Or perhaps, in the process of having sex, the magical power accumulated within me had transferred over to her.
Shin Yuhee had reached the exact stage I was at when I first awakened mana. A stage where the color of magical power had not yet been imbued. Ernette and the other warriors of the desert gave Shin Yuhee special lectures on magical power, and she made her choice.
"I will take the color of the desert."
She chose to inherit the mana of Lampades. To be precise, she decided to receive the color of magical power from Ernette, and that was why we stayed longer than planned. But that, too, was now over. While Shin Yuhee was receiving the color of magical power from Ernette, I had come to have a one-on-one conversation with someone.
"I assume you can guess why I called you aside like this?"
The Desert King, Lampades. The man who had answered my questions about all sorts of magic without hesitation had called me out alone.
"Are you telling me to leave now?"
"That is correct. In ten days... no, in nine days, a disaster will befall this place."
King Lampades' prediction was accurate. The remaining time for the tutorial quest—the escape deadline—had finally seen its first digit drop to '09'.
"The festival should be wrapped up soon. Since we've spent the last while playing and eating, it is time to prepare for our end without regrets."
"What kind of disaster is it?"
"......."
"Shin Yuhee didn't even think to ask, and I tried my best not to ask either. I thought it would be disrespectful to you all."
"Let me ask you one thing. Do you, by any chance, intend to stay and fight with us?"
"No."
If I were the Yu Siwoo of the first playthrough, I would have answered 'Yes.' And I would have done everything in my power, twisting my body to the breaking point, to save Lampades. But this place, right now, is a 'stage'.
"We are strangers, and we are people who must leave. Staying here means dying, and that would be ignoring the will of the countless Lampades residents who gave us their names."
As a regressor and a prospective hero of the tutorial, all I can do is remember them.
"I will clearly remember in my mind how you accept the end of your lives. Shin Yuhee will live on into the future, not only with the memories but with the color of the desert imbued in the mana of her heart."
"......."
"You can consider it a personal curiosity that arose before leaving."
"Why, are you thinking of defeating it later?"
"I'm not the type to say empty words in a situation like this. Would you like me to do that for you?"
"Hahaha!"
King Lampades burst into a hearty laugh. It was the first time I had seen him laugh so openly, but a bitter expression soon flickered across his face.
"A pity. Why didn't you come a year earlier? No, wait, no. It wouldn't have mattered anyway."
"Are you dismissing me?"
"That's not what I mean. The destruction is already set in stone. From my perspective. And that destruction... is recorded in history."
"......."
It was like trying to grasp at clouds. But I had already had a brief conversation like this through my talk with Chekhov. This man, could it be—
"If I chose for myself to be this way despite that, it must have been a decision made by the me of the past. So, it doesn't matter much."
"You...."
"Don't think too hard about it. For a mage of my caliber, realizing an anomaly on my own is nothing."
"......."
Should I call the GM? Estiel is surely watching, so she would step in if things went south, but—
"Hehe, don't be so tense. You're more tense than when you were trying to kill that guy named Park Changsoo?"
I relaxed my tension as much as possible at the voice of King Lampades, who was speaking with a smile.
"How would you feel if a character in a story suddenly started talking to the reader?"
"Hoho, a character in a story, you say."
"And if it wasn't because someone told them, but a result they reached on their own."
The Desert King, Lampades. He seemed to be aware, to some extent, of his own situation and that of the residents of Lampades. To be precise, the expression 'awakened' would be more fitting.
"As expected of a great mage's insight. There couldn't have been many clues you could have gotten from us."
"Even without you, this city alone would have been enough to infer it. No matter how much of a forsaken city this is, how could there be no guests at all for 20 days?"
An anomaly that occurred when it became a tutorial stage. It might be called a tutorial stage, but this is not a world of code woven with 0s and 1s, and Lampades is not an AI. A great mage who had been the king of a city-state in his lifetime. Such a great mage would not be someone who couldn't intuitively sense the special state hanging over his soul, and as the Desert King, the ideal of his nation apart from the disaster. That is why the difficulty here must be A-class.
"Actually, I had many worries about what to do with you. You are... well, it doesn't seem like you held a wedding, and there were quite a lot of awkward parts."
If there is a case where the difficulty suddenly rises from B-class to A-class, it is when King Lampades tries to imprison or eliminate the prospective heroes entering the tutorial.
"But you two just learned, practiced, and enjoyed yourselves in Lampades. You could have come to a page in history and continued an epilogue that had already ended, or you could have rampaged and changed the story, but you just quietly enjoyed the desert festival happening in Lampades."
But Shin Yuhee and I didn't do that. We didn't intentionally pick fights with people, and instead, we learned and practiced with a humble and modest attitude.
"Answer me. What are we?"
"Are you sure you want to hear the answer?"
"I am. Just as you are curious about the disaster here, I am also just curious about this place. To be precise, about my state, and the state of my people."
That is why King Lampades is treating me with a gentlemanly and friendly attitude right now. Of course, even while talking like this, even while wearing a good-natured smile, there are many cases where they stab you in the back—
"Your souls were harvested by the Goddess."
"...The Goddess, you say."
"Yes."
"I see, that would be it. The desert has forsaken us."
Judging by the experience of someone who has met countless people, King Lampades is not the type of person to stab you in the back after forming a relationship like this.
"Your souls are in the Heavenly Realm, and the Heavenly Realm must have made a deal with you."
"A deal?"
"Yes. To allow those who came from a distant 'foreign land' like us to grow, to allow us to gain experience to become stronger within the fragments of the past."
"...Is that so."
Despite being doused with the red pill of the truth of the world, there is no particular reaction. Neither King Lampades nor Estiel, who must be watching this place right now.
"If a contract was made, it wouldn't have been such a bad deal after all. It would mean all the residents... stayed with me until the day of the final disaster."
"I suppose so."
Those gathered here are those whose souls were harvested by the Goddess. Since they weren't just harvested, but all harvested from Lampades, it naturally means those in this tutorial stage are the people who were killed on the day of the Lampades disaster. It means they are beings who, in the end, did not avoid the disaster until the very last moment, did not abandon the city, and fought against it.
"...How many times has this world been repeated, exactly?"
"That, I do not know either."
"I see. But no matter how many times it has been repeated, I would have made the same choice in the end. The end that has been dealt to us is for us to face, and it is not something for a 'guest' to face."
King Lampades rises from his seat. When he reaches his hand into the air, a golden staff as long as his height flies into his hand, and King Lampades begins to walk forward, clutching the staff.
"I will show you. The end of Lampades. The disaster that will open in this place."
Thud.
King Lampades strikes the floor with his staff. The floor instantly turns to sand, and the entire floor, except for where I and King Lampades were standing, begins to scatter into sand dust.
"Is this the disaster...?"
"It is my magic. It is a pity that I could not pass on my sand magic to you—"
"Ah. If it's that, I've already memorized it here."
I tapped my head. "Aside from the magic you didn't record in the archives, I've stored pretty much all the magic in the Lampades Magic Library in my head."
"...What's there is only the basics."
"Then how about this, would you teach me even the applied parts during the remaining time?"
"There's no way that could happen. Your words might not be a bluff, but no matter how excellent your aptitude is, it's not a degree you can master in 9 days. If you had intended to learn my magic directly, wouldn't you have come to me and asked me to teach you long ago?"
"That is true."
I reach my hand forward and stir up magical power. "I am satisfied with just having discovered this oasis in this desert."
Water balloons floating above my two hands. Inside the water balloons, which could easily contain one person's head, was pure water as heavy as that size.
"Because I've learned what I absolutely had to learn."
"I see. That technique, if you meet others later—"
"I will tell them, 'King Lampades taught me'."
"...Hehe. Anyway, you only pick out words that are pleasant to hear. I wonder if this is why kings kept sycophants by their side."
"If I had met you while you were alive, I wouldn't have been a sycophant, I would have only given you bitter advice you wouldn't want to hear."
"Are you saying you speak comfortably because I'm dead?"
"But aren't you accepting it all anyway?"
"...That is true."
Whoosh.
Sand spreads in all directions, and a huge hole is bored into the underground.
"This is the disaster."
"This is...?"
A familiar hole. I felt a chill down my spine at the giant black hole-like hole that was devouring everything as if to prey upon it.
"One of the magics used by the Demon King. As far as I know, it is called [Dark Hole]."
"......."
Underground of the city. A black hole-like thing that seemed to be exactly the size of the city's area was unfolding.
"And that Dark Hole is... what we call a 'dimensional gate'."
I know. I know it all too well.
"The moment the gate of the Demon World opens, millions of demons that we cannot handle will pop out from underground."
It's a gate.