46. Old Tale (8)
Kugugugugung!!!
The terrain shook without end.
And yet the chess pieces atop the board remained firmly in place, never moving unless commanded by the conductor.
Playing chess while working your mind at full speed in the middle of a dungeon collapse.
It might sound difficult, but for a mage, who was always casting spells in the middle of battle, it was an utterly familiar and natural thing.
Of course, not for me.
Aaaagh!
After driving my sword into the ground, I froze the earth and the soles of my feet with Blue Winter December’s blessing to pin my body in place.
Then, using Crimson Spring March’s blessing, I cooled my chest as much as possible and took in every piece of the chess situation.
It wasn’t difficult.
The calculations were probably all being handled by the Jikbakguri Glasses anyway.
All I had to do was endure without getting swept away in the collapsing dungeon and place the moves exactly as the glasses instructed.
Faster. Faster!
My mental power was draining away in real time.
To use the artificial intelligence function of the Jikbakguri Glasses, I had to consume a massive amount of mental force.
And considering that the last time, just facing a single high school student had made my head feel like it was about to split open…
how agonizing would it be to defeat Carmenset?
It was fortunate that, unlike then, I now also had Crimson Spring March’s blessing.
But given the situation, my mental energy was leaking away in all directions like water pouring through cracks, and my head throbbed as if it might burst apart.
[Calculating the optimal move.]
Whether I liked it or not, the Jikbakguri Glasses projected a hologram beam visible only to me into the air, indicating my next move.
I made each move exactly as the glasses told me to, without error.
Kgh, what’s happening right now?
I am winning, right?
Carmenset isn’t smarter than artificial intelligence… right?
Even Lee Sedol 9-dan beat AlphaGo once, so it’s not impossible, is it?!
Being pushed into an extreme situation made all sorts of thoughts rise to the surface.
But my worries were needless.
“Impressive.”
“…What?”
“To think that even in a situation like this, you can maintain your composure and think of the best possible moves. I have no flesh, so this chaos does not affect me. But had I been in the same situation as you, I could never have made moves like these.”
At Carmenset’s sudden remark, I hurriedly looked over the board.
I had played quite a lot of Soul Chess in the past, so even without help from the Jikbakguri Glasses, it wasn’t hard to understand the situation.
“This is…”
“Checkmate. I have lost.”
I won.
And not just won.
I won perfectly.
Without allowing even a single attack, I had completely crushed Carmenset through sheer skill.
Kugugugung!
“Ugh!”
As Carmenset’s king toppled, the tremor from it made the quake even worse.
It felt as if the roots of the dungeon itself had been torn out whole.
Even amid all that, Carmenset continued speaking without the slightest shake in his voice.
“Make your wish.”
At last, the time had come.
I rolled the words over in my head as carefully as possible, then opened my lips.
“I want you to restore Chairman Melian’s body, who came to live an immortal life through the wish he made to you, to its original state, and to permanently stop the activity of the malignant tumor gnawing at his heart, the ‘Azkan Claw.’”
“…That is quite a long wish.”
“You can do that much, can’t you? I’m better at chess than you.”
Kugugugugugu!!
As if the dungeon’s collapse were not enough, holes were now beginning to rip open one by one through the space itself.
Watching those little black-hole-like voids form in midair and swallow up parts of the landscape into some other dimension sent cold sweat pouring down my back.
“Khhahaha, yes. You are right.”
For some reason, he burst into loud laughter.
“Cursed by Silver Age November and trapped in this dungeon, I have played Soul Chess alone for hundreds of years now. Never have I refused a challenger who came to me, nor have I ever seized one who fled.”
I couldn’t understand why Carmenset’s words had suddenly grown longer.
Still, for some reason, it felt as though true sincerity was mixed into his voice.
“And today, this has been the first game of chess I have truly enjoyed. If another chance ever comes… I would like to play with you again!”
With that cry, Carmenset flashed his red eyes and then…
disappeared, vanishing somewhere.
Most likely, he had moved to another time.
This dungeon would also move along with him as space-time collapsed, and if I got swept into that, there was a high chance I’d die a miserable death on the spot.
But I still had one last struggle left in me.
“Silver Age November!”
I shouted his name into empty air.
“I know very well that you are watching this moment!”
Back then, I had played poker with him.
And I had promised to meet him again.
For an ordinary human, “meeting again” was not difficult.
You simply fixed a time and place and met once more.
But for a time traveler, time itself was a fluid and irregular thing.
And because Silver Age November regarded reunion and miracle as one and the same, he would surely be watching me in some special way in order to make that reunion happen.
“Just once is enough!”
Woooooong—!!
Now I could no longer even hear the sound of the dungeon collapsing.
All that remained was an unpleasant white noise filling my ears, like a smartphone hidden under a blanket vibrating violently.
My body, too, was slowly…
being drawn into a crack somewhere within space-time.
Even while feeling myself disappear, I shouted toward Silver Age November.
“So then—the Spring of Time—”
The next instant—
my consciousness was extinguished.
“…Mm!”
While sitting alone and playing Go, Silver Age November suddenly felt every sense in his body sharpen all at once, and he jerked his head up.
Baek Yuseol was reflected in his silver eyes.
A terrible disaster unfolding in real time.
This is…
Since he was not constantly watching him at every moment, it was impossible to immediately determine how that bright young boy had ended up swept into a vortex of space-time.
Only one thought came to him.
I only looked away for a moment, and he got caught up in something this bizarre…!
What kind of human being had to be living this way to experience a situation that even Silver Age November himself would struggle to encounter, all in the body of a seventeen-year-old boy?
That was not what mattered.
The phrase Baek Yuseol had shouted at the end—“the Spring of Time”—had branded itself into his mind.
Baek Yuseol had asked him for time travel.
Without Silver Age November’s blessing, the side effects would surely be severe.
But if it was Baek Yuseol, who had survived while piercing through countless stretches of time…
perhaps he might endure it safely.
The problem was—
…With my current power, it is impossible to pull Baek Yuseol cleanly out of that vortex.
Had he absorbed the relic of the past, that might have been another matter.
But his power over time had grown terribly faint.
Then, suddenly, an idea occurred to him.
Wait…
Silver Age November could feel it.
At this very moment, somewhere, a Past Relic was active.
Because it was another self.
And its power had once been his own.
…Using it, at least, should be possible.
To think he had to borrow the power that had once been his own and forcibly fit it into that crack.
It was a pitiful state of affairs, but since he had brought it upon himself, there was nothing to be done.
Silver Age November sat in the lotus position and focused his mind.
The time period the Past Relic is observing… is the Aether Continent of ten years ago.
He could not bring Baek Yuseol into the present.
But if he settled him there temporarily and gathered enough strength afterward, bringing him back later would be entirely possible.
Would it not be better for him to remain briefly in the past rather than be swallowed by the vortex of time?
“Huu…”
It had truly been a long time since he had turned the Spring of Time backward, so even he felt a little tense.
Still, he calmly exercised his power and spoke.
“Baek Yuseol, can you hear me?”
He did not know whether those words could reach someone already swept into a vortex of space-time.
But he had to tell him.
“I will send you ten years into the past. However, there is one thing you must remember.”
The most important piece of advice one could give a time traveler.
“Never try to change an event that occurred in the past. It will bring about a result in which the future is erased entirely…!”
For example, modern Aether World was built upon the Third Great Magic War that occurred one hundred years ago.
Now suppose a time traveler went back one hundred years and prevented the Third Great Magic War.
Then what would happen to the present?
Would history simply be revised into another world, one in which the war had never broken out?
No.
This present world…
would be erased.
Everyone’s memories, wills, history, civilization, family, friends, ties, destiny.
Without even one of those remaining behind—
it would all become something that had never existed at all.
“You were able to defy the fate of time. Even I could not do that. But the fate of the past must never be changed! Never, never! You absolutely must remember this!”
He shouted desperately toward Baek Yuseol one last time, and then—
Flash!
A silver spring filled the night sky, spun backward exactly 3,650 times,
and disappeared.
“Huu…”
After confirming that Baek Yuseol’s presence had vanished completely, Silver Age November wiped the sweat from his brow and rose from his seat.
“Please… let nothing go wrong.”
Eizel and Flame searched a different part of the ruined city of Karakornia from the rest of the exploration team.
In truth, to call it a search at all was generous.
Their investigation was extremely clumsy.
Experts could determine what level of technology the people of the time had possessed, as well as what their eating habits or culture had been like, from nothing more than small stone fragments or traces left on buildings.
Using that information, they would quickly figure out where something “important” had been hidden and begin a proper investigation.
By contrast, Flame and Eizel had never learned anything about exploring ruins.
In the first place, they were magical combat cadets who fought Dark Folk.
They might have had a little camping experience, but when it came to ruins, they were complete beginners.
Here, they were no more than ordinary people who could use a little magic.
Still, it’s not as if only experts can ever uncover something.
Flame thought back to a scene from a movie she had seen when she was young—
No, more precisely, in her previous life.
It had been the kind of story where countless experts and brave men failed to discover a legendary treasure, only for an ordinary heroine to stumble across it by chance and gain supernatural powers, and the real story began there.
Being ordinary did not mean you were incapable of doing anything.
That story had been a film, fiction.
But wasn’t Eizel, as a being, itself something scarcely different from fiction?
That didn’t mean Eizel herself was fictional.
It meant she was someone extraordinary.
Eizel, you’re the protagonist.
Flame quietly followed behind her.
Unfortunately, she herself had no special power that followed fate.
But Eizel had that.
And just as Flame expected, Eizel was slowly approaching the correct answer.
Without knowing anything, simply wandering aimlessly through Karakornia…
the strange sense of incongruity did not fade.
It only grew closer and closer.
And then, at the place they finally reached—
“…It’s a tower.”
“Yeah. It was so tangled up like a maze that it was hard to find, but we finally made it.”
It was a place they had read about even in Stella’s underground library.
Though its shape was a little different from the records, its overall characteristics were very similar.
Standing before the tall tower that rose skyward, Eizel and Flame looked into each other’s eyes.
“…Shall we go in?”
“O-Okay.”
To say they were not nervous would have been a lie.
Eizel took a deep breath, then reached her hand toward the tower’s front door.
Now all she had to do was push—
“Hello?”
“Huh?”
“Ah?”
…Or so they thought.
But they were already inside the tower.
“W-What is this…?!”
Flame hurriedly looked around.
Three cups filled with warm coffee.
A red carpet, and red curtains.
The warmth of a crackling fireplace wrapped the room in coziness, while a cool breeze drifted in through wide-open glass windows.
“What are you so surprised about?”
And in that room—
there was Kaila.
Having cast aside her adventurer’s attire, she wore an elegant dress, and walked toward the girls like a princess.
“My little darlings, didn’t your adventure wear you out? Honestly, I’m exhausted myself. Would you like to enjoy some refreshments for a bit?”
Eizel and Flame looked at her with wary eyes, each taking a step back as they drew their wands and aimed them at her.
“Oh my~ we were getting along so well. Did you come to hate me all of a sudden?”
“…What exactly are you?”
At Eizel’s question, Kaila smiled brightly.
“Well. I’m curious about that myself. I have no memories of my childhood.”
“You have no memories?”
“Mm-hm. I only realized at some point that… I had abilities like this.”
She took out a ruined apple from her bosom and gently stroked it with her palm.
At once, it turned into a fresh apple with a healthy red sheen.
Crunch!
Taking a bite of it, Kaila closed her eyes and gave a delighted little shiver.
“Mmmmmm~! Delicious~!”
“…What kind of magic is that?”
“Magic? No, this isn’t magic.”
Kaila quietly stared at the apple she had restored.
The thoughts in those blank eyes were impossible to read, and that only doubled the tension.
“Well, yes. It probably isn’t magic. To be honest, I’m not completely sure myself.”
“I… see…”
How much of this should they believe?
How much of it could they accept?
“Anyway, why don’t you sit down already? I don’t bear any ill will toward you. I really don’t.”
Eizel and Flame met each other’s eyes.
In any case, now that they had already been dragged here, there was no way to escape.
And the instant the girls reluctantly nodded—
Woooong!
“Ah…!”
“Ugh…!”
At some point, they were already seated in chairs.
“All right, then, shall we talk? Actually, I find the phrase ‘shall we talk’ very awkward. What in the world are we even supposed to talk about? Is there any meaning in such a conversation at all?”
“Mmm, judging by your expressions, at least I can tell that this sort of topic isn’t interesting. Then shall we change the subject? Let’s talk about why you came to find me.”
At those words, Eizel’s eyes widened.
“You’ve probably guessed already, but there’s a very high chance that I am ‘Silver Age November’s Relic.’ That is the answer I arrived at after living for a long time and reflecting on myself. What do you think?”
To think she did not even know her own identity.
No, more than that—
to think a relic… was a person.
And not just a person, but one living among people, as though she were an ordinary person.
Eizel wanted to reject the existence before her.
It felt as though her common sense was being overturned from the roots.
And yet, in the end—
“I… think what you’re saying is right.”
When a situation that lay outside all common sense actually arrived in reality, there was nothing to do but accept it.
To have one’s common sense denied was a horrifying and painful thing.
And perhaps it was even more painful for stiff-necked Eizel, who trusted only in her own reason.
“I wondered what possible reason there was for you to seek me out. In truth, I don’t know that much about you. But… I sensed a very familiar and intimate aura from you, so I came to find you myself.”
“Pardon? Wait…”
“W-What did you say?”
It was not only Eizel who was startled.
“Unnie, did you just say ‘you two’?”
“D-Didn’t you misspeak?”
“No. I sense a similar aura from you too. My foolish knowledge can’t tell me exactly what kind of feeling it is… but anyway, I thought it smelled nice, so I approached you. Why? Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…”
Just…
That aura was only supposed to be felt from “the protagonist, Eizel.”
What exactly is going on…?
Why could something similar to Eizel’s aura be felt from herself as well?
Flame could not understand Kaila’s words at all.
“…Enough of these incomprehensible stories. I’ll speak plainly.”
Eizel stared straight into Kaila’s eyes.
Her eyes resembled clear silver jade beads.
They were beautiful.
“Show me the past from ten years ago.”
That resolute statement carried a certain force and will.
A determination to uncover the truth about her father no matter what means or methods it required.
Kaila looked straight back at Eizel.
Only a few seconds passed, and yet it felt as though a very long time had gone by.
Then—
“Mm. All right.”
She answered with a bright smile.
“That much, I can do for you. But… once you go to that time period, you won’t be able to do anything.”
Rising from her seat, Kaila stretched as she spoke.
“Remember this. Think of it as merely watching a recorded videotape. Even I can’t perform some grand act like actual time travel.”
“Th-That…”
To think that not even Silver Age November’s Relic could truly perform time travel.
“Well, every now and then, the ability to time-travel activates without me realizing it, but I don’t understand the principle myself, and I don’t want to use such an incomplete power on you.”
“I see…”
“Anyway, it’s impossible to interfere with the people of that era, and impossible to meddle with history. Truly, there’s nothing you can do except go there and watch.”
Kaila repeated that sentence several times on purpose.
You may see the past, but you can do nothing.
As if…
she already knew in advance what kind of past Eizel wished to see.
“Even so, do you still want to go?”
It didn’t matter.
Whatever truth awaited there, Eizel had already decided to see it.
She nodded with a firm expression, and Kaila gave a bitter smile as she said,
“All right. I’ll send you there. To the world of ten years ago. Go and see it. All the truths you’ve believed in so dearly.”
At that moment—
the world blinked out.
