Chapter 195. In a Collapsed World
First.
Only within a certain area around where I was standing could I feel things like color and smell, all the senses that normally didn’t exist in this place.
Second.
Inside that area, it was surprisingly warm.
And third.
At the center of it...
There was a sleeping elf.
The way she gave off light and the overall atmosphere around her made me wonder if she might be the same race as that monster I had just seen.
Hope ended up looking like that too, so it’s entirely possible.
Anyway, this wasn’t a place where anyone could live normally.
I could understand someone ending up like that.
“Haa....”
There was something else too.
Monsters far stronger than anything I had previously encountered in this place were currently rampaging around nearby.
Saying they were on a completely different level would probably be accurate.
In games, anything with words like ancient or legendary attached to it was usually supposed to be strong, so I could understand the setting.
The only fortunate part was that I had become fairly strong myself.
Even so...
These monsters were either slightly below my current level or almost exactly matched to it.
Every single one was Demon King-class.
Good thing they were far away.
Seriously, was this some kind of joke?
“Is this what Hope called the Remnants of the World?”
I picked up one of the things piled over the sleeping elf.
They looked like seeds.
Each one contained enormous life force, as though every seed had originally been a completely different living creature.
If I used these properly, they might work like some kind of immortal pill.
Should I take a few home and use them to brew alcohol for Mother?
I began stuffing some of the seeds into my pockets.
Then I stepped out of the safe area spread around the sleeping elf.
I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do...
But something would happen only if I moved.
Besides...
I didn’t want to stay beside that elf.
She slept a sleep she could never wake from, her soul scattered and torn apart like Pie’s.
Looking at her made me imagine a bleak future I didn’t want to see.
Pie and I have both lived more than enough miserable lives.
Isn’t it about time we started being happy?
[...Hey....]
A faint voice reached me.
It barely hung on the edge of consciousness.
The kind of voice that somehow felt like it would get angry if I simply walked past pretending I hadn’t heard anything.
Maybe some sealed ancient something-or-other was hiding somewhere nearby.
This place used to be both a funeral ground and an execution site, apparently.
So that wouldn’t exactly be impossible.
In that case...
I guess I should head toward the place I had been deliberately ignoring because it was radiating such an obviously dark atmosphere.
If something like that Fruit happened again, I was seriously going to lose it!
Hahaha!
If that happened, I was really going to march over to Super Real and complain!
Tell them to stop overdoing it!
[Oh! Yes! You noticed me quickly! Thank goodness! Seriously, thank goodness!]
I cleared away sand from a spot where the Flow was strangely twisted.
And underneath...
Was a sword.
It was so enormous that I genuinely wondered if a person could even swing it.
And its design was so excessively ornate that I felt like I might stab myself just trying.
It looked like a perfectly ordinary fantasy-game sword.
At this point, it looked like something you’d sell as a premium cash item.
The only thing making it different from an ordinary item was the fact that it didn’t blend naturally into the surroundings.
The Flow around it was being cut apart in places.
Maybe it was just supposed to be an absurdly sharp sword.
Something like—
One swing cuts space itself...!
If I carried something like that around, game balance would collapse instantly.
Even if I got it, I probably shouldn’t use it much.
[Nice to meet you! My name is Darkness Sharpness! I am the sword that cuts things apart!]
Hmm....
Maybe that Fruit, or that distant-future version of the sleeping elf, or whatever it was, had sent me here because it wanted me to hurry up, take what I needed, and leave.
If so, that raised one question.
Did the Chairman know about this situation?
If the Chairman had created everything happening now...
Were the events that followed actually meant to help me?
Chaos is annoying even to the Chairman...
But the Fanatics themselves are probably useful.
The Chairman was running an enormous experiment that could last for years, and one failure could force him to start over again.
Chaos, who wanted nothing but destruction, had to be a thorn in his side.
Maybe the Chairman wanted to use me to kill Chaos this time.
Hmm.
[Hey! Look at me! I’ve been here way too long and I’m lonely... And listen carefully. Don’t you hear it? Step, step....]
What a noisy bastard.
What sound are you even talking abou—
Tap.
Someone brushed past me from behind.
I hadn’t noticed them at all.
The man was bigger than me.
His entire body had been wrapped in a special fiber obtainable only in this Black-and-White World called Steel Seaweed.
He looked like some villain wearing a skin-tight suit.
[You’re looking at the past right now.]
[This man was my friend from a very, very long time ago.]
[His name was pretty strange. Park Duruk or something like that....]
[He said he got hit by a truck and ended up here where I was.]
The man called Park Duruk approached Darkness-whatever and tapped the blade several times.
[You’re going to have to find me.]
[Is that an order? It’s an order.]
[Is it a request? It’s a request!]
[Please! Get me out of this fucking world!]
Hmm.
He was surprisingly entertaining.
If he’d been boring, I was going to leave him behind.
Fine.
Let’s watch until the end.
Duruk headed toward the place I had come from.
The place where the sleeping elf was.
Now that I looked carefully, there was a tall cliff not far away.
A small hole sat by itself high on its face.
Apparently, when I first regained consciousness here, that man had been sleeping inside that hole.
[Duruk was someone who fell into this place against his will.]
Darkness-whatever moved around near the elf as Duruk carefully examined her condition.
He tried moving the sword around her.
Even holding it against her once.
But obviously, something like that wasn’t going to change anything.
If he didn’t understand what Darkness-whatever actually did, he could hold it for a hundred years and never figure out how to use it.
[Honestly, he might have had an easier time if he had fallen into the lake and simply died.]
[But he couldn’t even die.]
[His body’s nature had already changed to match this place.]
[It’s a tragic life, but in its own way... perhaps it was also one with hope.]
And the hope he found here...
Was that sleeping elf?
[He was only an ordinary young man.]
[After falling into this lake, he spent a long time breaking down beneath the fear of death and the terror of losing every sensation.]
[She was the only hope he found.]
Well...
In a place where you couldn’t feel color or anything else...
An area that let you experience those things again, along with an elf who seemed responsible for it...
Would probably look like heaven.
Or an angel.
Especially if he had wandered around for ages before finally finding it.
There probably wasn’t anything he would’ve been happier to see.
[Hayangi: ...So what the hell does any of this have to do with me? Get to the point.]
Exactly.
That was exactly what I wanted to say.
What did I care how this Duruk guy lived?
I wasn’t curious.
What I wanted was something that could help Pie.
Not the story of some middle-aged man whose face and name I didn’t know and whose existence wouldn’t change anything even if I did.
He probably ended up becoming the strongest being somewhere else in the world, living just fine like that summoned old man from the Isolated Sea.
I was already annoyed with the current situation.
