Chapter 564: The One Who Closes the World (2)
District 25, designated as a Sealed Zone, was completely isolated from the outside world.
It was a past spacetime, left behind on a timeline from decades ago, now dissociated.
Yet, this phenomenon didn’t occur because Kaiser had successfully completed his spacetime anchoring research.
The culmination of research that should have ended in failure. The presence of someone who, using the Sealed Zone as a cradle, continued the past timeline.
Lennok and Kaiser had intended to find that Dreaming Being within this spacetime and completely resolve this dissociation phenomenon, but…
Even after making such a grave resolution, the two of them were still bickering over how to handle the anchoring device.
“I’m telling you, you can’t just completely stop the anchoring device right now. What have you been hearing all this time?”
“As long as the power source is here, we can reactivate it anytime.”
Lennok replied, fiddling with the dashboard instead of Kaiser.
“It’s better to just stop the device once and find the problems. Why are you interfering?”
“No, not interfering, correcting. From the perspective of Mana Particle Observation Theory, once you observe the internal particle flow, it becomes irreversible. You need to find the cause before stopping the device.”
“In a fixed spacetime domain, the indeterminacy of mana particles holds little meaning. That theory, from the start, is an outdated one that can’t even explain mana’s spiritual resonance phenomenon.”
Kaiser’s brow furrowed at Lennok’s reply.
“…Damn it. It hasn’t even been five years since the observation theory was announced at the Travach Magic Tower, and it’s already obsolete?”
“If you understand, step back and await my instructions. Explaining things to a researcher who’s decades behind is truly exhausting.”
At Lennok’s words, Kaiser’s eyebrows twitched furiously, his expression resentful.
“Ho, hoho… There’s never been a researcher who dared to speak to me like that, to my face…”
“Well, now there is one, so feel free to rejoice.”
“…”
Speechless, Kaiser grumbled incessantly from behind Lennok.
“So this is what they meant by having bad luck when you meet someone from the future. I’ve learned a truth I didn’t need to know…”
“Who do you think is really having bad luck here?”
Even as they bickered without yielding an inch, their hands moved busily, tapping on the dashboard.
Kaiser, too, moved briskly around the column of light, ceaselessly adjusting the power unit to eliminate any recoil.
CRRRUMBLE!!
“Even so, my thoughts haven’t changed. Now that things have progressed this far, stopping the anchoring device ambiguously, in any way, is dangerous.”
Kaiser, dripping with sweat, said from the outer edge of the anchoring device, from which light was bursting forth.
“Do you think I backed up the anchoring device’s data for no reason when you blew up the power room?”
“It’s highly probable that the anchoring device’s operation has little to do with the current phenomenon. I told you that.”
Lennok replied, ceaselessly manipulating the dashboard as well.
“This space existed even before we completed the research. The chances of something going wrong if we stop the device now are one in ten thousand— ”
“One in ten thousand, but it does exist, doesn’t it?”
“…”
Lennok raised his gaze at Kaiser’s ominous reply.
“What happens if, by that one-in-ten-thousand chance, the device stops and we find ourselves in a state of neither life nor death?”
“Kaiser.”
“If this succeeds, I will vanish along with this space. But that’s not solely because I genuinely desire it.”
Kaiser said quietly.
“It’s because I know there’s no other path, and I’m simply trying to end it in the most certain way possible. Such a half-hearted compromise is unacceptable.”
“Half-hearted compromise, huh…”
Lennok quietly chewed on Kaiser’s words.
Because he was convinced that he himself was a being from the past. Because he understood that this situation, this space, was created by someone else, not him.
Kaiser intended to put everything aside and bring a definitive end to this timeline.
But that by no means meant he had given up his will to live, or stopped seeking answers.
Knowing he still had lingering attachments, he wanted to take measures to leave no room for doubt or hesitation.
Because otherwise, Kaiser himself couldn’t guarantee how he would act at the very last moment.
Reaching that realization, Lennok inadvertently turned his gaze and muttered,
“He doesn’t trust himself.”
“Is that even a question?”
Kaiser chuckled, then roughly pounded a component of the anchoring device.
CLUNK!
The device joint broke under his touch, and the light from the source gradually dimmed.
“Ever since I embarked on this journey to find answers, I’ve never once trusted the answers I’ve come up with.”
Watching one side of the giant column of light gradually fade and disappear, Kaiser began to walk.
CRACKLE!!
As he tore off the power joints and overloaded the output to break them, the column of light gradually faded.
The anchoring device, shaped like a blooming flower with wide-open petals, crumpled with each dying pulse of light, gradually reverting to the shape of an egg.
Kaiser continued to walk ceaselessly around the anchoring device as he spoke.
“Alkaid knew many things, but most of it was just knowledge from failed outcomes. Ultimately, moving towards the answer was entirely my burden.”
“…”
It was the first time Kaiser had spoken about Alkaid with his own lips.
“Every moment was a time of shaking off and overcoming doubts and delusions. Stumbling, breaking, just failing was overwhelming enough. After decades of that, creating a city called Vulcan… attracting infrastructure and resources, and finally reaching this point…”
Kaiser, unable to speak for a long time, slowly struck down and broke the last power joint.
WHOOSH…!!
Before the two of them, the anchoring device had reverted to the shape of a giant egg.
Kaiser gazed at the egg-shaped device with an indescribable expression, then slowly walked down from between them.
Kaiser, who had been silently gazing at Lennok, gave a faint smile.
“But sometimes, you have to end your journey in unexpected places. Don’t you agree?”
“…”
Lennok couldn’t reply.
Because he didn’t know what to say in front of Kaiser, who was trying to put an end to his own time.
If a similar end were to one day come for Lennok in this manner, would he truly be able to understand and accept that situation?
The fortitude to accept even the irrationality and absurdity unrelated to his own will, with his own will.
Kaiser’s singular determination was a resolve to never share even such pain and anguish with others.
As Lennok operated the dashboard in reverse to shut it down, the anchoring device’s joints burnt out and broke off, falling away.
The immense egg shape slowly lost its light and began to sink.
Kaiser stood before it, slowly closing his eyes.
“Completely cut the reserve power and format the system. At that moment, I will deploy my Self-Attuned Domain and directly find the Dreaming Being.”
Only his voice quietly echoed through the top floor of the Ventilation Tower.
“If I use my technique to reverse the very time in which the anchoring device existed, a rift will undoubtedly form somewhere in this space. And then, it’s your turn to…”
“Wake them from the dream?”
“…If you can just find them, ending the dream itself won’t be difficult. Especially if the being who created this space is who I suspect it is.”
Only then did Lennok realize the true reason why Kaiser had needed an individual unaffected by Defying Heaven magic.
It wasn’t merely that he needed help stopping the anchoring device.
The Mind Imprint projected by Kaiser Bajour’s Self-Attuned Domain would fundamentally be a landscape rooted in Defying Heaven magic.
The only person who could assist Kaiser without being affected, even in the midst of a Mind Imprint where all power flowed in reverse.
Lennok’s role had been determined from the very beginning.
“Wake them from the dream, huh…”
But instead of explicitly mentioning that fact, Lennok changed the subject, fiddling with the dashboard.
“When I asked if the one dreaming was an Outer God, you only said they were a being comparable to them. You avoided a concrete answer.”
Lennok spoke, watching the silent Kaiser.
“That’s to say, it’s evidence that this current situation has no relation to the Outer Sea, yet at the same time, it has some connection to you.”
With Davi’s help, Lennok sequentially inputted format codes into all the dashboard’s systems, leaving only the final reserve power unit active, then he asked,
“It was Alkaid, wasn’t it?”
“…”
“When you realized you were a person from the past, you knew that the Dreaming Being in this spacetime was him.”
Lennok continued without waiting for an answer.
“That’s why you could accept this ending. Because you knew this situation was one of the failures that originated from you.”
Endless silence flowed.
But Lennok remained calm, awaiting Kaiser’s next words.
The roar of battle echoing around them gradually faded, and the shockwaves bursting forth from all directions subsided.
“Yes… That’s why, when you first spoke that name, I didn’t doubt it at all.”
Facing the night sky that was slowly but surely growing quiet, Kaiser quietly opened his mouth.
“I had been feeling a sense of strangeness about this entire situation, and I thought he had sent an assistant to resolve it. I even considered that you might be another being who had gained that qualification.”
“…”
“But that wasn’t it. If you had truly gained that qualification, the spacetime anchoring research would never have succeeded in such a way. At that moment, I…”
Had he been thinking that everything surrounding him might just be a fragment of the past?
From the very beginning, Kaiser had known that the cause of all these phenomena originated from a dream being dreamt by Alkaid.
“I see.”
As Lennok finally shut down the reserve power system and initiated the format, the giant egg’s joints began to close completely.
SCREEECH…!!
The anchoring device’s shape was closing. The enormous column of light that had shot up into the sky vanished, revealing a clear rift peeking through the night sky above.
Kaiser stood before the anchoring device, observing its transformation, as Lennok gathered his mana before his eyes.
VWOOM!
The moment the Self-Attuned Domain deployed, he had to remain perfectly conscious, without succumbing to the Defying Heaven magic.
“You need to be careful.”
Kaiser said quietly, looking at Lennok who had approached him.
“When I devised this research with Alkaid, he wasn’t like this. The fact that things have turned out this way is proof that either I, in the future, or Alkaid, had a change of heart.”
“…”
“Worst case, it might even be both…”
As Lennok raised his hand and placed it on Kaiser’s shoulder, the air around them began to twist slightly.
The Defying Heaven magic was twisting the surrounding spacetime, rising and transforming into a platform for the Mind Imprint’s deployment.
Kaiser, standing on the faint ripples spreading beneath his feet, continued to speak.
“Even if you successfully resolve this, you must return to reality and verify the truth. At the time, only a handful of powerful individuals, led by the mayor, knew the full story of the project, excluding those directly involved.”
“I remember.”
The mayor of the mega-city.
Come to think of it, a considerable amount of time had passed since Lennok began operating in Vulcan, yet he had never once personally seen the mayor’s face.
If there had been no news of the mayor changing or dying, it would mean that the individual who reached the pinnacle of the city decades ago still held that position.
No, could such a person truly still be alive and performing public duties without issue?
Even knowing that John Meyer’s ultimate goal was the mayoralty of Vulcan, Lennok had never truly thought that deeply about the position of mayor itself.
Perhaps that itself was a clue.
As Lennok was lost in thought, Kaiser fell silent, a hint of hesitation in his demeanor.
“And, and… yes, I should tell you just this.”
As if he had let something go, Kaiser slowly closed his eyes, his resolve seemingly steeled.
“Alkaid…”
THWACK!
Kaiser’s body trembled violently once, and at the same moment, he stopped abruptly.
His face, with a slightly dazed gaze, looked down.
An ink-black hand erupted from the center of his solar plexus, piercing through it and aiming for Lennok’s heart.
But it ultimately failed to reach Lennok’s heart, unable to penetrate the shield, and the forearm recoiled.
Behind Kaiser, the massive eggshell had, at some point, shattered into pieces.
From inside the anchoring device, which everyone thought was completely closed and broken, an ink-black shadow burst forth, shattering the shell.
Something that resembled a human form, yet exuded an infinitely alien aura, as if it weren’t human at all.
It was as if the starlight and galaxies of the night sky had been condensed together, mimicking a human form.
[To dream, in the end, means just that.]
The shadow whispered in a tone as if softly caressing Kaiser’s heart, which it had just crushed.
[To chase an impossible ideal, yet be able to vanish like foam at any moment.]
“You…!!”
Kaiser, trembling spasmodically with an incredulous expression, turned to look behind him.
[This is our last promise, and the first message sent to a failed timeline.]
DRIP!!
The shadow casually wiped away the gushing blood, then slowly raised its gaze.
Its gaze, whose direction couldn’t be discerned, was not on the collapsing Kaiser, but aimed at Lennok standing beyond him.
[From now on… I shall deliver Kaiser Bajour’s last will, left before his death.]