I won! The story is over! Ta-da!
But wouldn’t it be nice if, like in the novels, it could just wrap up with a few lines summarizing the aftermath? If life were that simple, the world wouldn’t be so complicated.
Thinking about it, the Goddess might have hated such a complicated world. Maybe she tried to establish her own order to create a simple and beautiful world. But being in an enormously complex situation made me think otherwise.
First off, cleaning up the mess after the battle was a problem.
Among the people who were truly awake here, only Sophia from the Papal State was present.
But even Sophia had no immediate way to prove she belonged to the Papal State. Her nationality was listed as Velbur. Although she was a spy planted by the Papal State, the issue was that all the high-ranking officials from the Papal State had departed to join the Goddess.
…Could they really have left for the Goddess? Did I perhaps ruin their path while they were leaving?
Well, that’s a story that only the deceased could know, so let’s set that aside for now.
The Pope is dead. Naturally, the knights protecting him from the Papal State are mostly dead too, and even the ones who survived have no sense of rationality. They were all sprawled out in front of the Cathedral.
What a dull ending. There was an insider, but for everything to fall apart over just that—ah, well, considering that it was all a path laid out by the Goddess, it makes sense. Ultimately, to make things go according to the Goddess’s plan, the Emperor had to carry her will here.
The abilities of the knights of the Papal State stemmed from the Goddess’s power. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that the number of those with power and the strength of that power were all controlled by the Goddess.
The fact that the Emperor brought everything to this point was simply the Goddess creating and filling a vacuum herself. The ‘fake Alice’ thought to be sent by the future Emperor was, in fact, a being sent by the Goddess, not the future Emperor himself. No, there was never a future Emperor to begin with. The fake Alice was created to seem plausible as the Goddess tricked the Emperor from the start.
The will of a person can’t last for hundreds of years. No matter how strong-willed a human is, the body ages. And as time flows, the thoughts left behind by the deceased are twisted and lose their meaning as they are passed from mouth to mouth. Just like how the Emperor—his descendant—had no intention of continuing the legacy of Fanggriffon.
However, the Goddess who continues to exist even as time passes is different.
Whether it’s for hundreds or thousands of years, the Goddess has the ability to faithfully implement the plans she thinks of. If she’s an existence that lives for countless eons, even the way she perceives that long passage of time would be different from ours.
Right now, she might be plotting a new plan, or she may have already put it into action.
If she truly wants to execute that plan correctly this time, she should pick someone a bit nobler than me next time.
Well, it’s harder to find a reasonably normal person among those who deeply dive into games.
She seems to have chosen someone with a poor social life who appears to be useful; I really don’t get what she thought she could accomplish by choosing someone like me who has hardly any friends.
Does the Goddess not have any friends?
Maybe she doesn’t, and she couldn’t fathom how strongly someone without many friends would cling to the few they have when they finally made any.
*
“So… this isn’t me, right?”
Alice asked seriously once again.
I couldn’t dismantle the machine itself. Except for that last piece classified as a ‘Guardian,’ the other components were all tangled together in a ridiculously complicated way, and I had no idea how to pull them out.
The only existence we could retrieve was the fake Alice inside.
The space left after extracting the Guardian was just barely enough for a person to squeeze in. The space itself was much narrower than expected, and I couldn’t imagine that the magnificent-bodied ‘Fanggriffon’ could fit inside.
Well, in the legends, the Fanggriffon was often described as a variant. Not only with its physical prowess but also with its unique charisma and cleverness, it became a leader among the gryphons, despite being abandoned.
Ultimately, it never truly understood the Goddess’s order and wanted to rebel in its own way.
In a sense, that was probably the reason the Emperor didn’t consider stepping in himself.
“The Goddess’s abilities don’t work that way.”
It functions like winding a clock from the outside, restoring the position of the world. The positions of the stars in the sky, every grain of sand—all must be put back into their original places. It’s not about reversing time itself, so ‘time travel’ or anything like that is impossible.
…And it seems like completely erasing human memories was also impossible.
The gazes of the people looking at me had been suspicious since earlier. Especially among those I was frequently entwined with.
Perhaps the memories the Goddess had been hiding so far were pouring in.
…Even Alice, right next to me, had an oddly different look in her eyes than usual.
Alright, let’s play dumb.
Let’s act completely oblivious until those memories feel like déjà vu.
“There’s no way to send the presence of the future, so to interfere in this world, it must be a ‘different’ existence. Hence, this being cannot be the Crown Princess.”
“……”
She shot me a glance when I called myself the Crown Princess, but this time, Alice didn’t bother to argue.
“But you tried to kill me. You held back on attacking me.”
“I had to act that way to make those who should notice catch on.”
From Alice herself, to myself, and the Emperor included.
We were genuinely deceived.
“So… are you saying I’m a poorly mimicked version of my experiences or memories?”
“I think that’s a reasonable interpretation.”
Alice fell silent at my response.
And for a while, she quietly watched the being that was lying on the ground, identical to herself.
I felt a bit bad about laying it on the hard floor, so I laid my coat over it. I really needed to take off the exoskeleton suit, which had become tattered like a rag anyway.
The fake Alice was in a serious state.
Wasn’t it said that the Guardian piece was inside her?
Her insides looked completely drained of blood, as if all of it had spilled out, giving a sense of unreality. Looking at the small gears embedded in between, it wouldn’t be strange if I threw up at any moment.
Though she definitely wouldn’t die gently, her expression was calm. It was so different from when her eyes shot wide open and met mine; I was almost inclined to think I glimpsed a slight smile in that expressionless face.
“From the moment of her creation, she was just destined to be used.”
To block my abilities and get suspected of being on the Emperor’s side while simultaneously making Alice feel convinced about being rebellious towards the Emperor. But at the same time, her appearances were thoroughly ‘helpful to the Emperor in terms of time and place’… I concede. Honestly, I was fooled.
Alice seemed to feel sadness upon realizing this fact. Despite the fact that she was almost killed by that being.
“If it weren’t for her, I could have ended up like that.”
“……”
Even with the existence of Claire, if I had crossed over to this side, whether the fake Alice existed or not, the plan would have ultimately failed. Alice had faint blood ties and I was an entirely separate being with no connection to Fanggriffon.
The parts of the Guardian that the Goddess sent through the fake Alice would unite, and in preparation for the situation where the Goddess could unleash her power in this world freely, I would return the Goddess’s power bestowed upon me back to her. That was the Goddess’s plan, so honestly, if the fake Alice hadn’t existed, the Goddess’s plan would have failed in any case.
If it were the Goddess, she would take a step back. The Goddess has a long time. Someday, she could set plans again and retry.
But in that situation, the Emperor would not have given up on his plans. Because he only has a lifetime of time to work with.
And in that situation, the only one who could step into the machine would be Alice.
“I don’t mean to say thank you. After all, I almost died because of her. Still…”
Alice sat down beside the being that looked just like her, bending one knee with a complex expression.
“Still, I strangely empathize with her.”
“……”
I said nothing to Alice.
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