by Okina Baba
Especially someone who knows that even if they die, they’ll eventually be resurrected.
Dustin has a skill called Temperance.
Its effect is reincarnation with one’s memories intact.
Even if he dies, he’ll be reborn somewhere in the world, inheriting all his memories from his previous lives.
For this man, death is not the end. It’s nothing more than a single punctuation mark in his endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
And when he was arrogant enough to assume that such a brief pause was a sufficient peace offering, Merazophis shot him down.
It was pretty refreshing to witness, to be honest.
But at the same time, I felt a little bad.
“Must be rough to be criticized by one of the very people you’re trying to protect.”
Even if each of his lives might be trivial, when put together, the countless lives of the man called Dustin have immeasurable worth.
And they come with the equally immeasurable weight of resolution and regret.
Along with the pain of having to take the lives of humans in order to protect all of humanity.
“Nevertheless, I must do it.”
Dustin’s voice is full of anguish but also the determination not to stop.
His unwavering intent is to walk the path of purgatory with his own two feet.
That’s why I believe this man is a force to be reckoned with.
Fit to fight with as an ally yet worthy of the highest vigilance as a foe.
“Not to change the subject, but do you know of any skills besides Immortality and your Temperance that might basically make someone immortal?” I ask casually.
Since Dustin’s Temperance skill makes him immortal in his own way, I figure he might have an inkling as to White’s inexplicable quasi-immortality.
“Hrm? Strictly speaking, my Temperance is by no means immortality, but… Let me think. Perhaps Potimas’s Diligence would fall under that category? Since it means that he himself does not die, it may be close to immortality in a way.”
I see. That makes sense.
No matter how many times I kill each new Potimas that shows up, the real deal is still safe and sound behind the barrier in the elf forest.
In the sense that he still lives even though I’ve seemingly killed him, Potimas could be called immortal, too.
But it’s not exactly immortality, since the selves he sends after us do die, just not the real Potimas himself.
In which case, Dustin’s not really immortal, either, since he dies and is then reborn.
Hmmmm.
I still can’t figure out the mystery of White’s immortality.
Sure, she has the Immortality skill, but Abyss Magic should’ve blown her away.
It doesn’t make sense. How did she recover from that?
I just don’t get it.
Was the White I killed some kind of copy, like what Potimas uses?
…No, that can’t be it.
The only skill she has that makes anything like copies would be the Egg-Laying skill. But that makes the weakest duplicates possible.
Even someone as exceptional as White shouldn’t be able to easily make a clone so strong that it could hold its own against me pretty well… At least, I don’t think so.
Although it’s scary that I can’t say for sure.
“What makes you ask such a question?”
“Oh, just wondering,” I answer evasively.
White is my biggest problem at the moment, but I don’t want to let him know that.
I’m sure he’d only make things worse.
I don’t know how exactly he would do that, but it’s scary in itself.
How many unpredictable, unavoidable situations do I really need to deal with?
Can you imagine how I feel getting dragged around like this?
…The tiny part of me that thinks it’s a little bit fun is probably a vestige of “former body brain,” the Parallel Mind that fused with me.
I guess former body brain was always getting forced to do annoying jobs like descaling and stuff…
Hmm?
Parallel Mind?
Fused with me?
“Aha!”
Thud! I stand up so fast that my chair falls over.
I see. So that’s how it is.
I get it now. The reason White seems immortal.
Duh! How did it take me this long to figure it out?!
I already had a hint—in fact, I had all the information I needed to find the answer!
She uses the connection among souls to send her Parallel Minds to other bodies, encroaches on their souls, and takes over the whole operation.
Just like what happened to me.
I managed to survive without being taken over and instead wound up fusing with the Parallel Mind she sent in, but I could’ve lost completely if I let my guard down.
If the takeover succeeds, that means the invader has basically stolen the victim’s body.
In fact, their very life and existence would get stolen.
And if one of her Parallel Minds can do it, I’m sure White herself can do it, too.
Parallel Minds, Egg-Laying, copies, Dustin, Potimas.
Put all those ingredients together, and you’ve got the recipe for understanding White’s immortality.
In other words, White took over one of her own “clones,” a baby made with Egg-Laying, to resurrect herself—a pseudo-reincarnation!
Destroying someone’s body won’t actually kill them if they can swap into a new body.
Since she managed to evade my soul-destroying Abyss Magic, that means as long as she has a spare body somewhere, she can ditch her current body on the spot.
It all makes sense. She must’ve escaped from her body right before the Abyss Magic hit.
She’s not controlling a clone from her main body, like Potimas.
And she’s not dying completely and being reborn, like Dustin.
She’s trading into a copy of herself, so if her real body dies, the copy just becomes her new body in a perfect succession.
It basically uses the best points of both Potimas’s and Dustin’s quasi-
immortality.
…Yeah, come on, how was I supposed to figure that one out all by myself?
Even with all the information in front of me, I don’t know who else would put two and two together.
How did it take me this long to figure it out? More like, how did I even figure it out just now?
“Is something the matter?”
“No, it’s nothing.”
Dustin looks up at me in surprise, since I stood so abruptly.
But I’ve got no time to waste on him right now.
“Anyway, you just do whatever you want, ’kay? Because I’m certainly going to. I guess the next time we meet might be on the battlefield, huh?”
“I would like to avoid that, if at all possible.”
“Ha-ha. See ya later.”
With a short farewell, I shoot out of the tavern like I’m fleeing for my life.
I’m sure Dustin will take care of the bill. Right now, I just need to be alone and think.
I wander the streets aimlessly as my head spins.
But no matter how long I think about it, I reach only one conclusion: It’s impossible.
The question is whether I can kill White.
And the answer is no. I can’t.
With her method of immortality, I have no way of killing her.
It’s already pretty difficult to kill someone with the Immortality skill.
You have to either use Abyss Magic or attack their soul directly with a Heresy-attribute attack. Those are the only two options.
But since White has Heresy Nullification, that leaves only Abyss Magic.
The sole way to kill White would be to catch her by surprise and use Abyss Magic before she can run away.
But she’s so fast, and Abyss Magic takes a long time to prepare.
So that’s already a stret
ch.
The only reason I was able to pull it off before is because all kinds of conditions were working in my favor. But even then, she still got away.
I would need to catch her unaware and hit her before she can run away…but that’s impossible.
There’s no way I could prepare to invoke such a huge spell without White noticing.
It would be almost impossible to catch her by surprise.
So I’m already screwed here.
But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I somehow manage to hit her with Abyss Magic.
That still doesn’t mean she would die.
I mean, how do I even know where her main body is?
White has the Parallel Minds skill, a skill that divides your consciousness into pieces.
All the minds that are created by that skill are equally the user’s consciousness.
You could say that every one of them is the real thing, the real White.
So what if each of them gained a body?
If I’d been taken over completely by the Parallel Mind known as the former body brain, I would’ve become a second White.
A Parallel Mind with a body of its own.
Isn’t that every bit as real as the original?
The same person, just with a different body.
It’s a paradox: a single individual that exists multiple times.
But it’s still very possible.
If White has given her Parallel Minds their own bodies, that means there are multiple Whites in existence.
For all I know, the one I’ve been keeping an eye on is just one of several.
And in order to kill just one of what might be a multiple set, I’d have to get so lucky, it’d be nothing short of a miracle. The odds are so bad.
It’s no use. I can’t kill her.
I heave a sigh.
What a monster she is.
How can I possibly kill her?
Taking her on as an enemy means nothing but risks, with no benefits to speak of.
I thought that if I figured out her secret, I could find some faint glimmer of hope, but instead it crushed the possibility of ever beating her into nothing.
Okay. I give up.
I can’t kill White.
I can’t kill her, so it would be foolish to make an enemy of her.
That leaves only one option going forward: I have to get her on my side for real.
If I can get a beast like that under control, she’d be the most powerful ally imaginable.
It’s not gonna be easy.
Naming her doesn’t seem to be letting me control her, for one thing.
I didn’t just start calling her White for funsies, you know.
There’s a skill in this world called Naming. If you have it, it’s supposed to give you power over any person or creature you’ve named.
But giving her the name White doesn’t seem to have had any effect.
She’s probably just too strong.
I mean, I did it knowing it was a long shot at best, so the fact that it failed is no big deal.
The problem was when White tried to give the puppet taratects names.
They were already getting attached to her, so if she had named them, she might have been able to steal them away entirely.
Here I’m trying to get White on my side, and instead she almost steals some of my own forces from under my nose.
The scariest part is that, judging by her reaction, she didn’t even realize she was doing it.
I have to win her over somehow, in spite of how she manipulates people without even trying.
It’s a pretty tall order.
But I have no choice but to do it.
At any rate, my course of action is clear.
“Ugh… I’m sorry. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to avenge you.”
I apologize quietly.
In my mind’s eye, I’m picturing the queen taratect White called “Mother.”
Not to mention the puppet taratects and the queen’s subordinates who were all felled by White’s hand.
My own kin, all of them lost.
But I can’t kill White.
So I have no choice but to accept her.
That means I have to give up on getting revenge for the queen and White’s other victims.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”
Please forgive me. Just like Dustin does, I had to sacrifice you for the greater good.
I’m sorry for being a terrible mother, who can’t even avenge her children.
Somewhere in town, I hear a hymn of the Goddess religion.
I’m not exactly a believer, but for whatever reason, I offer up a prayer.
Goddess, please let my lost kin rest in peace.
I know more than anyone how futile that wish is, but I continue to pray for it nevertheless.
THE OLD MAN MEETS AN ADMINISTRATOR
The spiders have narrowly escaped the attack of the three earth dragons.
And now, they’re in the midst of a mass migration through the Lower Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
As they skitter along in droves, I walk in their midst as well.
I wonder at first where we’re going, but before long, we arrive at the destination.
And there, I immediately understand the spiders’ current purpose.
“Eggs…?”
Before my eyes are several enormous eggs.
And standing at the forefront to protect them are several earth wyrms.
Looking closer, I see the corpses of some spiders at the earth wyrms’ feet.
I see.
The earth dragons were trying to protect these eggs.
A small group of spiders must have happened upon them while hunting, and the dragons defeated them, then set out to retaliate against the spiders’ main army.
They were trying to cut off the threat at the source before any harm could come to the eggs.
How tragic, then, that all three of them were defeated instead.
It’s possible that two of them were even the parents of these eggs.
But now, since those parents are gone, the eggs’ only protectors are these wyrms, far weaker than their dragon counterparts.
Generally, wyrms are not considered weak monsters, but they don’t stand a chance against this powerful spider army.
Perhaps they know that as well, for the cries they let out to intimidate the spiders now sound frail and fearful to my ears.
Nevertheless, the wyrms bravely stand to protect the eggs, and the spiders charge at them mercilessly.
At this rate, the wyrms will all be killed and disappear into the spiders’ stomachs along with the eggs and their contents.
Until someone arrives to prevent that future from coming to pass.
“I think this has gone far enough.”
It’s a man shrouded in darkness.
His body is completely covered in black armor that almost looks like a carapace.
His handsome face is dark-skinned as well, giving him the overall impression of the embodiment of the color black.
The only exception is his red eyes, which are now staring coolly at the spiders.
He looks at me for just an instant, then averts his gaze.
…Perhaps it was my imagination, but his expression almost seemed as if he’d seen something he shouldn’t have.
How rude.
But who exactly is this rather impolite fellow?
Surely he is no ordinary human, since he’s appeared here in the Lower Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
In fact, is he even human at all?
I attempt to Appraise him, but the result reads simply CANNOT BE APPRAISED.
Cannot be Appraised?
It’s a similar result to when I Appraised the master, but while that great being somehow blocked my Appraisal, here it is impossible to begin with.
This person must be on a similar level to the master, then, or perhaps something even more mysterious. That is the only possible conclusion.
Especially given the reaction of the nine spiders, who are all eyeing the man with a wariness that borders on fear.
These same spiders defeated those earth dragons with ease, but they are treating this man with the utmost caution.
He must be strong.
So strong that I doubt I could lay a scratch on him.
I didn’t even sense his arrival, after all.
He must have used Teleport, but I didn’t even notice.
Unbelievable.
There wasn’t even the slightest hint that someone was about to teleport here.
His skills with magic must be extraordinary.
If I didn’t know better, I might even suspect that he could be stronger than the master.
“Withdraw at once. Any further violence will be taken as a declaration of war against me personally.”
At that, the spiders all freeze in place.
For a moment, everything is perfectly still.
Then the spiders turn around in perfect unison and flee the area at incredible speed.
Unable to keep up with their sudden acceleration, all I can do is watch them leave in shock.
Sensing a gaze on my back, I turn around to see the man in black armor, staring at me with an impossible-to-read expression.
“Why are you following those creatures?”
His voice sounds genuinely puzzled.
In fact, his bafflement is so like that of an ordinary human that the tension leaves my shoulders.
“It’s obvious, is it not? To pursue the pinnacle of magic.”
I puff up my chest.
“The pinnacle of magic. In other words, you wish to improve your magical abilities?”
“Indeed.”
That strikes me as an oversimplification, but I decide to agree instead of wasting valuable time quibbling over the details.
I am not simply seeking to improve my magic. I wish to reach the ultimate heights of what magic is capable of.
“Why are you so concerned with refining such a thing? They are a part of that which wiped out your men, you know.”
Why would I want to refine my magic?
What a ridiculous question.
“If I do not strive for the greatest heights of magic, then who will?”
It’s quite simple.
If I do not attempt to reach the pinnacle, then no one will.
That is why I must reach it. I have no other choice.
If I am humanity’s strongest mage, then I must be stronger in magic than anyone else.