The Gaze That Proves the World
I want to see it. To observe. Isn’t that the only act capable of proving a world? To know the world, to follow its changes, to witness its ending. Any miracle no one has seen or catastrophe no one has endured might as well have never happened at all. All phenomena are only etched into existence the moment an observer appears. The world only truly exists when someone is watching. The history of the world is written at the tip of a watchful gaze. And the one who holds that gaze must be the true master of its path. Have you ever thought about it? The countless worlds we have failed to see. How heartbreaking it is that they continue to rise and fall even in this very moment.
“Hey, kid.”
“Hm? What’s up?”
“If you keep glaring at the water with that grim face, all the fish will flee and we won’t catch a thing.”
“What? Your face isn’t exactly welcoming either, old man.”
“Haha, you looking to start something?”
The uncle beside me let out a dry chuckle. His naturally sharp features made even his smile look intimidating.
“Since you’re bored, tell me about girls. Something manly like what your ideal type is.”
“Hmm, if I had to pick, maybe silver hair. Clear, blue eyes and a straightforward personality?”
“Hahaha! As if a woman like that would ever give you the time of day. You sure ask for a lot when all you’ve got is your face.”
“…I’m leaving.”
“Hey! What kind of man sulks over a single comment!”
I rose from the fishing chair and turned my back on him. I had only come because he wanted company, but now that he had trampled all over a man’s romantic dreams, the mood was ruined. His regret-filled voice called after me several more times from behind. Yeah. I decided to ignore it. This was entirely his fault.
“…Wait. Hold on a moment, Noriel.”
The final call carried a hint of seriousness. I stopped at Jack’s summons.
“So you’re really not leaving the village?”
The old man was still staring at the lakeshore. Somehow, his profile looked bitter.
“You’re bringing this up again? You never get tired of it, do you?”
“You’ll miss the nagging once you can’t hear it anymore. Listen while you still can.”
“…There was that incident back then, remember? I’m just being careful.”
“Huh? You’re still holding onto that? Don’t waste your worry on me, you punk. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
Uncle Jack lifted his shirt, revealing his right abdomen. A massive, horrifying scar stretched across it. Yet he calmly adjusted his clothes again as if it were nothing.
“Staying in this remote backwater won’t do a damn thing for your life. If possible, you should leave while you’re still young—”
“I told you I’m really fine. I don’t have any real talent. Wandering the world would just mean drifting aimlessly. I’m okay, truly.”
I answered with a deliberately bright expression. It was a forced smile.
The old man exhaled a short sigh and gave a slight nod.
“…Is that so? I understand. Sorry for keep saying useless things.”
“It’s fine. I’ll head back first.”
A question I had heard countless times by now. It wasn’t pointless meddling on the old man’s part. If anything, it was a question only possible because he had watched over me for so long.
“Noriel.”
“Don’t give up on the things you want to do.”
Those quietly spoken words from behind pierced me more deeply than anyone else’s ever could.
I had reincarnated. That part was good. But the place I grew up in was the worst possible.
I had been left at a gloomy building that felt embarrassing to even call a cathedral.
“What’s my name?”
“Who knows? Make one up yourself.”
The priests must have been struggling to survive too. They were extremely curt with me the entire time I stayed there. The only meal they gave was one rock-hard piece of bread per day. If I had remained, I probably would have died of malnutrition and been buried in the graveyard behind the cathedral.
So the moment I was old enough to put strength into my legs, I escaped.
Right after, I realized one shocking truth.
“?? This is the game I used to play.”
This world was the setting of Arcana Saga, the game I had poured thousands of hours into before I died in my previous life. Thanks to that knowledge, I managed not to die on the streets immediately after fleeing the church. I already knew exactly where everything was and what each place meant.
It seemed like the start of a hopeful reincarnated life, didn’t it?
“??? But nothing’s coming out?”
Crushing news. This body possessed no abilities whatsoever. Not a single spark of magic or sword energy. The only thing it had was a somewhat sturdy frame. The despair I felt when I realized that… was beyond words.
On top of that, I had reincarnated into a harsh period of the original story. The world was brutal. It was the exact era of the great famine and bitter winter that always appeared at the beginning of these games. Caught in that merciless environment and overwhelmed by the realization that I had no power, I had nearly given up and closed my eyes for good—
“What are you doing, Noriel?”
Suddenly. While I sat quietly on the wooden bench, a head of brown hair popped out beside me.
“…How long have you been there?”
“Thirty minutes.”
“I only sat down thirty minutes ago…?”
“Yeah. I’ve been watching you the whole time.”
Dohesi. A village girl whose flowing brown hair perfectly suited her bare shoulders. Incidentally, she was the one who had barely kept me alive back then.
“—Ta-da.”
“…? What are you doing?”
A flower of ice suddenly bloomed in Dohesi’s hand. It was magic.
“Mockery.”
“???”
“You were probably spacing out again, muttering about how you have no powers and can’t use magic. Am I right?”
“…Did you learn mind reading too?”
“Maybe. I can only use it on you, though.”
What was she even saying? Her smug expression annoyed me. She was the only person left in this village who could use magic. After all, it was a rural hamlet populated only by the elderly.
“Just grasp it in one go like I did. The circuits engraved in my body opened overnight, remember? It’s surprisingly simple.”
“Normal people train for years just to open one circuit…”
“Even my contract with the god came to me in a dream and was completed the next day.”
“Were you a witch in your past life?”
“If that’s how I look, shouldn’t you watch how you speak to me?”
“…Y-Yeah. That’s true.”
In this world, using magic required forming a contract with a god. Though they were called ‘gods,’ they were really just conceptual representatives of certain attributes. They had no particular purpose or will of their own. In the original game they had simply been system elements, but it seemed this world had its own proper lore.
I quietly lowered my gaze. It fell on the area near my left chest. There, engraved like a scar, was a bizarre pattern.
“…”
Perhaps I hadn’t been completely abandoned with an empty vessel after all. After all, an imprint that had never once appeared in the original work was now carved into my body. I still had no idea what it meant, though.
“Why are you staring at your own chest like that? You look like a pervert, Noriel.”
“Doesn’t it look reliable? I’ve been exercising, so it’s probably bigger than y—”
“Heh.”
“Ah, sorry. Sorry, wait—mmph?!”
Dohesi conjured a fist-sized lump of ice and shoved it straight into my mouth.
“You know what? They say if something this cold keeps touching your scalp, you’ll go bald easily. Should I start peeling that black hair off?”
“Ugh, mmph?!”
While uttering that terrifying threat, she placed her hand on top of my head. An icy chill strong enough to make my hair stand on end immediately poured down.
Save me. I had only just become an adult—anything but that. To protect my future, I shot to my feet and ran. She seemed delighted by my reaction and chased close behind me.
After only a few steps, my gaze froze on one spot. It was the village entrance.
“Huh, that’s…”
People had gathered and were noisily seeing off someone carrying a backpack.
“Oh? That’s Melia. She said she was leaving today? I thought it was supposed to be a few months later…”
“Staying in the village won’t help your life. It’s better to leave while you’re young if you can.”
Olpia Village. A remote hamlet among remote hamlets, located at the very edge of the continent. The Pielses Great Forest spread out right in front of it, making the place geographically isolated as well. It wasn’t without reason that the old man kept telling me to leave.
“…Yeah.”
I heard the sound of her footsteps halting behind me. When I turned around, she was staring into the far distance. Perhaps beyond the horizon.
“…Noriel, are you going to stay in this village forever?”
“? Uncle Jack said something similar earlier, and now you too? Is today some kind of special day?”
“Stop dodging the question.”
Through her fluttering brown hair, Dohesi’s wistful eyes shone. The atmosphere was heavy enough to pull even me in.
“…What, I’m planning to be buried in this village. What about you, Dohesi?”
“Hmm. Then I’ll do the same.”
“Really? In that case, maybe I’ll set off on a world tour instead.”
“…Then I’ll do that too.”
“Haa? What exactly do you want to do, Dohesi?”
“Well… right now, it feels like I want to beat the crap out of dense little you.”
Dohesi was seriously pissed off. Had I said something wrong? Her expression quickly settled, and she continued.
“Noriel, I know you want to see the world. I can at least notice that much. We’re family, after all.”
At those words, my lips froze mid-motion. It was an undeniable truth.
“…If you already knew, you could have just said so instead of testing me.”
“So, are you really not going to leave this village?”
‘So you’re really not going to leave the village?’
Why? Why did they all keep digging up the dream I had already abandoned?
I quietly closed my mouth and walked ahead. I wanted to hide my expression.
“I told you it’s fine. What could I possibly accomplish out there with this empty body?”
“…”
“See? You can’t even answer. The limit is obvious, so I—”
“You said it yourself back then. That you wanted to see every single thing in the world.”
Thud. My forced smile shattered.
“…Ah.”
I wished they would stop asking.
Yes. I want to see it.
I want to see the world with my own eyes. More precisely, I want to capture the changes of the world and the conclusion waiting at its end with these very eyes.
‘You played the original game, so don’t you already know the ending?’
No. There was one crucial difference between this world and the original work.
In the world I reincarnated into, there was no [protagonist].
Arcana Saga had never possessed a fixed protagonist from the start. Only after the player personally ‘created’ a character would history begin to flow. The fact that I had fallen into a time long before the game even started meant that the protagonist itself did not exist in this world. There was no way a character I had never created would have been born on their own.
A world without its protagonist.
The flow of the original story I knew would now twist in a completely different direction. In the original, the protagonist would have appeared around this exact time and set the world in motion. The number of nights I had stayed up planning, wanting to see with my own eyes where that trajectory would lead—dozens, hundreds of them—were beyond counting.
But I had eventually given up on that hope. The reason was always the same.
“I keep saying it, but since I have no abilities, there’s nothing I can do even if I leave. I’m really fine.”
I wasn’t fine at all. I wanted to ‘observe’ every single flow of the world with my own two eyes.
“Seriously, you don’t have to look at me with those eyes. Staying in the village is the best choice for me, so what’s the problem?”
Choice was not permitted to someone without power. That was what it meant.
“I’m not interested in how the world flows.”
I wanted to capture the world’s ending with my own eyes.
Even right this moment.