Volume 4, Epilogue
At any rate, they had been in Ground’s Nir this entire time.
“H-hwee... I-isn’t it about time we finally got back to Earth? I-I mean, my family can be strict and grandmother is going to scold me.”
“Check the clock, Filinion. Scarily enough, not even a full day has passed since all this began.”
The White Witch had nearly gone entirely white, but now she really did turn to ashes. Although it was hard to tell with how white she was normally.
They were at the Labyrinth’s exit.
They had made their way up to a fairly shallow area while pursuing Abyss, so it had not been difficult to reach the exit on foot. Of course, that was a testament to how close Abyss had come to bringing ruin.
“Ground’s Nir...appears to be fine.”
“Yes.”
Beatrice responded to Wildefrau while looking around.
As far as she could tell, nothing had changed. But she would not forget the secret struggle that had gone into protecting this status quo. Beatrice’s group had fought a deadly battle that wore down their lives. In the past, the Iberian Orcs had done the same even though no one asked them to and they had hidden that fact in their hearts without telling anyone. Abyss had failed.
But unless Ground’s Nir ceased to function as a giant armory, another Abyss would eventually approach completion. The next one might not be given a girl’s form, but it would be given the “strongest form” calculated out based on whoever was lured into the Labyrinth.
Ground’s Nir itself would not stop.
Stopping the factory meant killing the island. They had fought Abyss to prevent that, so destroying the factory would be getting things backwards.
“But who even built this armory? And why were they trying to create something so dangerous?”
“Boo. That’s what we’re going to get her to tell us.”
“...Is that really such a good idea? Wasn’t she supposed to destroy the world once she reached the surface?”
“Well, she was already destroyed and ceased to function. More importantly, Boo Boo says she seemed to be rejecting the Ground’s Nir armory’s commands at the very, very end.”
Boo Boo held a broken doll in his hand.
It was the Abyss of whatever generation she had reached by this point.
That girl had dreamed of viewing the surface, but to avoid destroying the very scenery she longed to see, she had chosen to take her own life. The party returned to Boo Boo’s house with that corpse and immediately got to work.
Or more accurately...
“Come to think of it, the Sage did this too, didn’t she?”
Beatrice looked down at Abyss who lay face up on the floor.
“Connect multiple Shining Weapons to increase their processing speed, I mean. Abyss processed Experience Points to learn Magic, so she has to have a similar functionality inside her. I hope just connecting it will be enough.”
Boo Boo’s group did not know what had become of the Sage.
She had been caught in the explosion of Abyss’s booster and then fallen deep into the Labyrinth through the twisting pit of the central shaft. They were very curious as to whether or not she survived, but heading back into the deepest area while so exhausted would be suicide. It would be nice if they could freely descend or ascend the central shaft, but there was nothing they could do now. If the Sage was caught somewhere along the shaft, moving the elevator could end up supplying a finishing blow.
“Do you know how exactly she was connected?”
“I only saw it, but it didn’t look fiber optic. And even in Ground’s Nir, I bet you could make normal cables of copper or gold with an insulator around them.” Beatrice reached inside her armor. “Plus, I picked up a few cables inside that deepest area. A never-before-seen item seemed like it would make for some instant Experience Points.”
“Honestly... But we really need to rethink the concept of ‘even in Ground’s Nir’. That armory down there was more technologically advanced than Earth. If someone told me Ground’s Nir was a mothership that descended from outer space, I’d believe them.”
It was unclear what would happen.
The Holy Swordswoman attached the cable to her rapier’s pommel and to the part of Abyss where her severed arm had been.
Immediately, the ground shook as if from an earthquake.
“Wait, wait, wait! Reactivating her won’t destroy the world, will it!?”
Filinion tearfully put her hands on top of her head and screamed, but the unnatural shaking soon subsided.
Abyss’s head was held at a somewhat odd angle, but she opened her eyes a little.
She seemed to have done something to cut off the usual request from the armory.
“Did it...work?” asked Wildefrau.
“And, hey, Abyss is actually awake,” added Armelina.
Boo Boo peered worriedly down at her face.
“Can we ask her questions, Beatrice?”
“She can’t speak. But she’s saying she’ll type on a mirage keyboard with her eye movements, so I can read that for her. Also, she says she doesn’t have much time. If she’s active for too long, she won’t be able to shut out the requests from the armory, so she needs to begin a long hibernation once we’re done.”
“I see,” muttered Boo Boo.
And then he addressed Abyss.
“This is the world you protected, Abyss.”
“...”
The broken doll girl narrowed her eyes.
She did not even need words for this.
There was no red warning signal.
“W-well, it seems she can’t talk long, so shouldn’t we cut right to the chase? Namely, asking why Abyss was made?”
Filinion urged them on and Abyss’s eyeballs began moving rapidly but systematically.
She must have already received the list of what to decode.
With her rapier attached to the doll, Beatrice was like someone speaking on the phone or like a medium.
“To fight.”
“Against what exactly?”
“The enemy of all. That which destroyed the humans and sank them into the ocean.”
Beatrice frowned at the very words she was speaking.
Armelina also looked puzzled.
“What is she talking about?”
“No, wait. Wait just a second,” interrupted Wildefrau. “The humans she is referring to might not be us.”
That reminded Beatrice of something.
There was a human statue in Boo Boo’s house. It was a small wooden carving that he said was to thank the humans who suddenly arrived in Ground’s Nir as messengers from heaven.
Beatrice had assumed that was a legend based on the Iberian Orcs’ mistaken interpretation of Beatrice and the other humans from Earth. Or perhaps of the Sage who had turned the central shaft into an elevator to seal it off and allow them to control it.
But what if they had not been mistaken?
“Were there originally other humans in this world too?”
Her frames and lines of fire illusion Magic were putting together a bold theory.
And at the moment, all they had seen of this world was an island they could walk around in 3 days. Only the giant armory left behind by the former humans. In that case...
“Did someone...destroy them? Did they sink the islands, the continents, and every other livable space...and with such great force that not even the giant armory of Ground’s Nir was enough to fight back...???”
“And since the factory is still trying to bring Abyss to completion, whatever it was that destroyed the former humans must still be wandering this world!”
It was the same as with the Sage.
Why would they need such a powerful fighting force?
Because an even more fearsome enemy awaited them.
“Who is it...?” muttered Beatrice.
She completely forgot to manage the information with her frames and lines.
“Who the hell is this formidable enemy that requires so much power to fight!?”
Past Ground’s Nir’s southern forest and on the midnight beach...
“Oh, dear.”
Those words were spoken by Kallikantzaros, the Vampire lying in a beach chair on the ghost ship’s deck. Even among the Break News, she had the greatest affinity for darkness and death. That may have been why she was the first to notice the change.
She gave the moon an irritated look as she sipped at some Dew Tea which reproduced a rusty flavor using the reaction between several herbs and the sea breeze.
“An out-of-season awakening? Are we having abnormal weather this year?”
The Cave of Tears had a gaping entrance on a coastal cliff face which allowed great quantities of seawater inside. Within that cave, a skeleton wearing a cowboy hat used a torch to illuminate the walls. At night, the moonlight reflected off the seawater and wrapped the entire cave in a pale bluish light, but that was not what he was here to see.
“Honestly, that wife of mine wanted a huge treasure storehouse, but she didn’t really care what was there originally. Well, that’s part of what makes her so cute.”
The faint blue was swept aside as the blunt manmade light revealed a collection of cave paintings covering one wall.
There was no obvious writing or numbers. Only flat diagrams that ignored any sense of perspective. And that made it harder to decode than an awful code calculated out by a computer.
Or perhaps the writer had avoided anything like that because they were so familiar with codes. They may have taken advantage of how reproducing the flavor of a specific bowl of miso soup was more difficult than breaking a fully-digital password lock.
(This isn’t one of the Iberian Orc cave paintings I sometimes see. In fact, it feels more like the Iberian Orcs happened across the analog codes left by the ancient humans and copied them without knowing what they meant.)
In that case, there would be no decoding it by any normal method. It would require a processor that surpassed the limitations of the von Neumann architecture. But he alone instinctually understood what was displayed there.
Although that may have been because he had already died once.
“Hmm. An existence that brings about an age of conflict that surpasses mere death, huh?”
No one knew it, but on the puny planet known as Earth, there were a few individuals or groups known as Over the Wall who gathered all forms of information across time periods and national borders. For example, the world’s largest search engine. For example, a shipping family that had controlled the distribution of goods since the Age of Discovery. For example, a group of fortunetellers that still kept close to heads of state and honorary presidents of major corporations while viewing those VIPs’ destinies. Capitalist or socialist, records from the distant past or simulations of the distant future, they had all forms of information at their fingertips and could guide it in the direction they wished.
And here was one of those Over the Walls.
“...”
A small sound could be heard.
“? Is something the matter, Letter Master?”
“No...”
In some Western European catacombs lit by countless candles, a girl known as both a knight and a magician received a vague answer to her question, which probably only increased the innocent girl’s doubt. After all, “she” had gathered great trust from the Over the Walls as the second coming of the response device that had given permission for the establishment of every magic cabal in the world and that provided immediate answers to any mystery given to it.
But that translucent demon lord, Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier, was too focused on a certain possibility to keep up appearances.
She had used any means necessary to greedily gather all classified information related to the state of Ground’s Nir, and that had led to a certain result:
“...Overturning...the soul...???”
In the Ushigashira Shrine of Akasaka, Tokyo, the Master of the Attic sighed quietly while listening to the voices of frolicking children.
There were some things that reached her even between worlds.
“I see. So the shrine maiden princess’s time has finally come.”
Why did the other world not seem to have any land aside from Ground’s Nir?
Why did the Next Voyager ship return empty after setting sail into the ocean?
Why was there no sign of whoever had constructed the clearly manmade armory?
...The answers to all of those questions were found here.
In the middle of the night, the dark ocean split apart and a giant structure emerged. It was large enough to swallow Ground’s Nir whole and it looked like a marine creature, specifically like a rotting shark or orca.
“Cursed by god to wander for all eternity, that land is known as the Underworld.”
As Beatrice read the movements of Abyss’s eyes, an incredibly unpleasant sensation ran down her spine.
It felt horribly wrong for “that” to appear as something physical rather than a mere concept.
But it may have been possible in another world such as this.
After all, Boo Boo’s Shining Weapon contained plenty of digitized Iberian Orc souls. Who could say it was not possible to directly remove the souls of living creatures and use them in some way?
That may have been why they did not hesitate to destroy, did not fear the end, and did not see it as a taboo. To them, to be dead and soulless was the norm. A living body was like the egg contained in its shell before cooking a fried egg. History had proven it. They had bombed the islands and sunk the continents as if they were merely expanding their territory somewhat and acquiring some slaves to work for them. They really had destroyed the humans like that.
When designing Abyss as a counter weapon, the humans had chosen to make her a doll, but that may have been because the humans’ final hope was in a being that never had a soul and thus could not be affected by the Underworld.
And Abyss said more concerning the identity of the nightmarish existence that had wholly erased the human race from an entire world.
She gave the final definition.
“That land is ruled by the Underworld Lord, by the very problem of death that all living beings must face.”
The lines connected to all of the frames led to a single answer.
That was the moment when the true enemy was proven.
This chapter is updat𝓮d by fre(e)webnov(l).com