Chapter 78

Chapter 78, Exhibition (4)

There were now dozens of new Mysteries added to Lucy.

Maybe the number had even reached a hundred.

Several dozen had been added just from the exhibition pieces, and several dozen more had been added from the Mysteries brought out by the guests invited to the exhibition.

A hundred wasn't an unrealistic number at all.

Finding the single Mystery among more than a hundred that might have blocked my regression was fairly difficult.

Of course, it was difficult, not impossible.

Among all the Mysteries newly recorded in Lucy, I eventually found the ones that seemed most likely to be the cause of this situation.

There wasn't just one.

There were three.

I calmly opened them one by one and showed them to my companions.

[Scq801, Dream Fragment of the Dreamer, Immortality]

[One of the fragments of a shattered dream belonging to a certain dreamer.

It is one of the three dreams the dreamer desperately wished for, and this fragment contains the dream of immortality.

Dream Fragments harvest the dreams of others and gather power.

Once enough power has been gathered, the power contained within the fragment can be used.

When activated, everyone nearby temporarily gains immortality.

The duration is proportional to the amount of dreams harvested.

Once all power has been exhausted, the fragment loses its power.

After gathering enough dreams again, its ability can be used once more.]

Scq801, which presumably had two more matching parts.

The Dream Fragment of the Dreamer possessed the ability to grant immortality to everyone nearby.

My regression fundamentally required me to die before it could activate.

So I thought there was a possibility that the immortality granted by this fragment had conflicted with it and blocked my regression.

Of course, that was only a guess.

There were still two more Mysteries that seemed capable of stopping my regression.

[Scq628, Déjà Vu]

[The same situation repeats endlessly.

Those caught within Déjà Vu will repeat familiar experiences, and once trapped, no one knows when they will be able to escape.

Within Déjà Vu, neither death nor change can occur.]

One of the remaining two was Déjà Vu, a Mystery similar in form to infinite regression.

[Scq854, All-Ages Rating]

[A world that everyone can enjoy comfortably will arrive.

No bloodshed will occur, and no one will die or suffer misfortune.]

The other, much like the Dream Fragment from earlier, was a Mystery that prevented death itself.

All three had more than enough potential to block my regression, so it was difficult to figure out which one was responsible.

“...There are quite a lot.”

“The problem is figuring out which one it is. And even if we do, that's still a problem, since we don't have a way to deal with it...”

With nearly a hundred new Mysteries added, simply finding the one responsible wasn't easy.

Still, we put our heads together and tried to narrow it down.

Each of the three Mysteries had different abilities and different methods of overcoming them.

So if we wanted to break out of this situation, the first thing we needed to know was which Mystery was affecting us.

Bias dropped into a nearby single-seat sofa and thought hard with an adorable frown.

Arlin also furrowed her brow and sank into thought.

While everyone was thinking, I was the first to reach a conclusion and spoke.

“I don't think it's Déjà Vu. There are contradictions if the same situation is truly repeating.”

“...Ah. Because the Eye of Ra is gone?”

Exactly.

If Déjà Vu was the cause, everything should simply repeat over and over again.

That was why I had deliberately come all the way here to check.

And the conclusion I reached was that Déjà Vu probably wasn't responsible.

If Déjà Vu had caused this, then the new situation where the Eye of Ra had disappeared shouldn't have been possible.

Neither should our new experience of coming to this destroyed exhibition hall.

Since both had happened, at the very least, Déjà Vu wasn't what had blocked my regression.

That left the Dream Fragment and All-Ages Rating.

“I don't think it's All-Ages Rating either.”

Arlin frowned and pointed somewhere.

Bias and I followed her fingertip with our eyes.

There was a corpse lying there.

One arm was burning.

Both legs were frozen and rotting black.

It was an extremely gruesome sight.

If I hadn't built up some resistance to disgusting things while surviving the apocalypse, I probably would've gagged.

Before Bias could see it properly, I covered her eyes with my hand.

Bias obediently closed them.

“...That definitely doesn't look like an All-Ages Rating.”

If I had to give that scene an age rating, forget all ages, it looked like something that would go far beyond even a 19+ rating.

If All-Ages Rating had caused this situation, there was no way a corpse like that would be lying around.

We eliminated All-Ages Rating as well.

Now only the Dream Fragment remained.

“That's fortunate. If the Dream Fragment really is the cause, then eventually we'll be able to turn back time.”

“It has a duration, after all. Lucy also says it only activates temporarily, so it seems like it'll disappear before too long.”

That was very good news.

Compared to Déjà Vu, which had no clear end, or All-Ages Rating, which didn't even specify a duration, the Dream Fragment was far better.

Since its description specifically said temporarily, it probably wouldn't remain active for something like one or two hours.

I let out a sigh of relief and sat down on the chair behind me.

I planned to simply wait until the effect ended, then regress without hesitation.

We still hadn't figured out who had attacked the exhibition hall, or why the President of the Association had displayed a dangerous 900-series Mystery.

But that didn't seem important anymore.

Looking through the more than one hundred Mysteries added to Lucy one by one had made me realize something.

Death regression wasn't an unbeatable cheat.

There were plenty of ways to block regression.

There were also plenty of ways to bypass it and harm me directly.

Unfortunately, the book wasn't invincible.

And I wasn't a god.

My regression had been blocked right now, hadn't it?

Only now did I fully realize just how dangerous some of the things I'd done had been.

When I fought the Company and the Order, the mindset underneath everything had always been that if I failed, I could simply regress.

Thinking about it now, that had been extremely risky.

I had been very lucky so far.

But I couldn't expect that luck to continue forever.

I probably needed another layer of insurance.

For example...

The Eye of Ra.

Something like that.

“...”

I looked at the empty display where the Eye of Ra had been, then slowly closed my eyes.

Regret and disappointment welled up inside me.

A hole opened in the dam of my emotions, and disappointment leaked through it.

I forcibly sealed the hole and ignored the feeling.

It wasn't reasonable to be disappointed.

It had never been mine in the first place, so I didn't even know why I felt regret over losing it.

There was something else I should actually be disappointed about.

One Mystery came to mind.

A Mystery that should rightfully have become mine.

The Runestone.

The moment I thought of the Runestone, my disappointment became even greater.

I had planned to receive the Runestone from the President as compensation for the earlier mistake.

Other than the Eye of Ra, there hadn't been any particularly useful Mysteries in the exhibition.

And even when there were, I usually already possessed a superior version.

Because of that, instead of performance, I had started judging Mysteries based on other things like rarity and potential.

The Runestone fit my tastes perfectly in that regard.

The rarity of being a stone from two million years ago.

The mysterious runic characters that no one had ever deciphered.

And the potential to evolve once those runes were deciphered.

To put it plainly, I really wanted it.

It had caught my interest from the moment I first saw it.

And after finishing the entire exhibition, I had already decided that the Runestone was the Mystery I wanted.

And then all this happened.

“...Wait. Why do I have to give up on it?”

At the thought that suddenly came to me, I rose from the sofa.

Now that I thought about it, there was absolutely no reason I couldn't take the Runestone.

The President had already promised to give me one Mystery.

Sure, neither the President nor any Association members were visible right now.

But that didn't mean the compensation I was already promised had disappeared.

“Arlin, Bias. Let's go to the first exhibition hall.”

It wasn't like I was taking the Eye of Ra.

Surely no one would blame me for taking something like the Runestone as my promised compensation.

With my heart pounding from the possibility that the Runestone might already be gone, I began walking toward the first exhibition hall.

I kept one hand ready to summon flames at any moment in preparation for a possible battle.

Arlin also spread her mana outward to detect our surroundings.

Bias walked beside me tensely, carefully scanning every corner around us with both eyes.

Then Arlin spoke.

“There are three people ahead.”

“...What condition are they in?”

Arlin's detection magic had improved even further than before.

Now she could read not only life-signs, but to some degree, their physical condition as well.

I had thought it would become extremely useful in battle someday.

I just hadn't expected that day to be today.

While I was thinking, Arlin calmly answered.

“Two are heavily injured, and one has minor injuries. It appears they were in the middle of fighting.”