Chapter 25: Chapter 23: A Little Talk between Me and I
Is he for real? He didn't hesitate to come to me at all.
Verner could've gone to Eterna, the main heroine; Marie, the most popular character in the game; Aina, the fiery tsundere; or Layla, the straight-laced older-sister character...and yet, he'd ignored them all to come straight to me.
Are you blind, boy?
In my "dreams," I'd learned that this world was following the most bullshit of all routes—the Ellize one.
But like...why? What kinda troll route is this?
I kind of understood why, as a matter of fact. Leaving aside my actual personality, I was doing a stellar job of pretending to be a perfect saint, and Ellize looked damn cute. While the inside was rotten to the core, I was using magic to keep myself looking artificially perfect.
In a way, the fact that people liked me meant that my efforts had all been worth it, and that I was doing great. However, at the end of the day, it was all still an act. Neither my personality nor my body were the real deal—I was a fake through and through.
Isn't the main character supposed to be able to, you know, see interior beauty and whatnot?
There were plenty of stories where the protagonist was the only one to see through the awful personality of a pretty villainous girl pretending to be nice.
You're supposed to spot strange things immediately! Like, hmm... People buying a single pack of cigarettes at the convenience store with a thousand yen bill! You know, like in that one detective anime! Look, Verner, you're making the worst possible choice! This event is your chance to get onto a better route!
This dance party had only been added to the game to help the player get enough affection from the girl of their choice.
It's your last chance to avoid this land mine, you hear me?! Are you sure you wanna confirm this choice? You'll regret it! Go pick someone else, all right?
"Lady Ellize, someone is asking you for a dance," the old man said cheerfully. He seemed to be very impressed with Verner, who'd dared to invite me in spite of the event's tense atmosphere.
Urgh... Continuing to ignore him wouldn't be good for my image, right? Should I just say no?
It was good manners for a lady to dance with the men who invited her for at least one song, but it didn't mean I couldn't refuse if I really didn't want to.
There were plenty of perfectly acceptable reasons to refuse an invitation to dance, like having to go to the toilet, having an injured ankle, feeling under the weather, or even feeling threatened because your prospective partner was too drunk, just to name a few.
The issue was that I felt fine, and Verner was neither threatening nor drunk. On top of that...if I refused him in front of all these people, he'd feel ashamed, wouldn't he...?
Guess I don't have a choice. Just one song, though! I'll show you how skilled someone who's taken part in the Bon Festival dance every year is! Bon dance isn't really a thing here, but oh well.
After I'd danced with Verner, I asked Layla to join me. I wanted to try doing the male part of the dance at least once, but she immediately took on the man's role.
I don't get it.
After I'd danced with Layla, I pretended to be tired and plopped down on a chair. No one dared to bother me in that state.
As the end of the night drew near, more and more couples got together and snuck out to watch the night sky.
They're so young. How nice. Who am I kidding? I hope you all die in an explosion.
I decided to go out as well and do the same thing.
The air was so clean in this world that I could see the stars very well. They were beautiful, but now that I was looking at them carefully, I noticed how different the constellations were.
While I was staring at the stars, Verner and Eterna stepped out together.
Oh? Yes! Good going, Verner! Does this mean there's still hope for you and Eterna? Let me help out a little, then!
I used light magic and tweaked a few things until... Perfect, here's a meteor shower for you!"Wow!"
"Look, look!"
"A shooting star!"
"Amazing!"
The students who'd been watching the night sky started getting excited about the meteor shower and cheered.
It wasn't an actual meteor shower—I was just blasting light magic around, but it looked convincing enough. As long as I kept my mouth shut, they'd be able to enjoy this memory forever.
However, Verner seemed to notice immediately and turned to look at me.
Was I too obvious? Don't sweat it, Verner! Just pretend you didn't notice. It looks pretty good for a fake meteor shower.
"Yes... Truly...beautiful."
You have a good eye, dear sir. You made the right call. You should pretend you don't know anything and enjoy yourself at times like this.
◇
The party came to an end, and I went back to my room to sleep.
However, right as I closed my eyes, I found myself in a familiar apartment once again.
I stood up and looked around until I spotted Fudou Niito (me). He was looking at me.
"Yo, Ellize. You're back. I was waiting for you."
"'Sup, me? This is really...the continuation of my previous dream, right?"
"I told you already, this isn't a dream."
It is and it isn't, he'd said before I'd woken up last time.
I was inclined to believe him. It definitely wasn't usual to see the same dream so often. It wasn't even the "same" dream—it'd be more accurate to say that they were linked and I saw the next part each time.
"Let's cut to the chase and continue our discussion. There's no telling when you'll wake up, when we'll get to talk again...or even how many times we have left."
"What d'ya mean—"
"Hang on. I'll explain everything, so just listen... Actually, can I ask you something first? Please stop speaking like that. It feels so weird. Can't you talk like you always do on the other side?"
Sheesh, he's so demanding. Well, I guess he is me, so that makes sense, but still!
I kinda understood where he was coming from. It must've felt weird to hear me talk like a dude with that face. Plus, if I got used to talking like my old self again, I'd risk slipping in the other world too. Might as well do what he wanted.
"It would seem like I have no choice... Are you satisfied now?"
"Yup, perfect. I totally feel like I'm talking to the actual Ellize. If you weren't me on the inside, I might've fallen for you."
"You're so damn gross. Forget it—where's the fun in selfcest?"
"Meh, you're not wrong." He shrugged. "Don't worry, I'm not actually interested. Personality's just as important when it comes to pretty girls."
It was refreshing to talk with my dumb other self, and I found myself laughing. I always had to act on the other side, and that got tiring at times. Being able to just be myself was a nice change of pace.
"So, where was I...? Oh right, we were talking about your identity. First of all, I don't think you transmigrated into Ellize's body at five. The version of the game where you've changed everything does say that Ellize suddenly turned a new leaf at five, but what we learn about her behavior before then makes it clear that she still wasn't like the original at all. She was a selfish brat, so that much's the same, but she wasn't as twisted. To be honest, the stuff she used to do just sounds like what I would've most likely done if I'd been reincarnated into that world without any knowledge of the game."
"I see we're on the same page here... I also thought the same thing after hearing about my childhood from Fox."
"Right. I think everything started on the night when I fell asleep after watching the ending of Eterna's route. I think I died on that day. I'm not really sure how to explain it, but I felt myself falling into a deep, pitch-black abyss, and I just knew... I felt it in my gut. But then, somehow I started breathing again. I think that's when my soul split into two. Part of it had already left this world to be reincarnated, but part of it remained in my body. Now...there's two of us," Niito (me) proudly declared, pushing up his blue light-blocking glasses with one finger.
He was talking about the whole thing like it made total sense, but the very premise was completely insane.
That being said, I was here; that much was a fact. We had no choice but to assume that reincarnation was indeed a realistic possibility. If we rejected that idea, we'd be stuck.
"In short, our soul was severed in two before it finished reincarnating. I think your spirit keeps coming here because it's trying to recover what it lost," he concluded.
"You think I'm here to recover the missing part of my soul? But then you—"
"Exactly. My understanding is that every time you appear here, you take back part of my soul. That means my death is growing closer with each of your visits. That's why I told you I didn't know how many times we had left. Eventually, my soul will fully integrate with yours, and this body will die," Niito (me) said with a lighthearted tone.
He tapped his chest, right where his heart was located. It made him sound like he didn't care about dying. Well, that much was true. He was me, so I knew that for sure. Niito (me) had accepted his upcoming death from the very start.
After all...
"It doesn't really matter, though. I'll be dead within the year anyway, so having my soul go to you doesn't sound like a bad option. I'm being promised a new life in another world—that's as cool as it gets, right? Can't say I'm too thrilled about turning into a girl, though."
After all, his body wouldn't hold on for much longer. Fudou Niito had been waiting for his death from the start.
I'd been told I only had one year left. The only choice I'd been given was whether to spend that time at home, or in a hospital bed. I'd decided to stay home and go to the hospital when the end was truly near. At least I got to indulge in my hobbies that way—they were all I had left.
That might've been why I longed for happy endings so badly, even in games. Real life was trash, so I wanted to daydream and see happiness in fiction, at the very least.
I'm not scared of death in the slightest... Fudou Niito has no future anyway. I just don't want to disappear like this, with no comfort of any sort.
"But... The timeline doesn't make sense to me. I've spent several years in that world already," I said.
"The flow of time must be different. You've lived as Ellize for over ten years, but only a month has gone by here."
"You said that the game changed after I entered it. How come no one's shocked about it?"
"Everyone else seems to think that it was always like that. They don't know Ellize used to be a piece of shit, and they don't know the original plot of the game."
The answers Niito (me) gave me didn't surprise me in the slightest.
If time flowed at the same speed in both worlds, Niito (me) would've been long dead. Plus, there would've been a huge uproar if people remembered the original contents of the game.
Since I'd personally confirmed that neither of these things had happened, I could only draw logical conclusions.
"How many times do you think we have left?" I asked.
"I can't say... But probably not more than five, at best. Every time you come here, I end up seeing your life in my dreams. At first, I felt like I was watching someone else's story unfold. Recently, though, it almost feels like I'm Ellize. Even after I wake up, this world doesn't quite feel real anymore. I'm slowly losing track of the distinction between dreams and reality..."
"I see..."
"All right, now that we're on the same page, let's move on to the actual important stuff," Niito (me) said, waking up his computer from sleep mode and opening a Kuon no Sanka fansite.
"Players have been looking for ways to deal with the witch's teleportation ability. Even before Ellize's route was discovered, there were heated arguments about it. Someone's got a pretty good idea," he said, typing on his keyboard until he found what he was looking for.
I took a look at the screen and let out a surprised noise.
602 Nameless Knight/ 10/25 (Sun.) / 00:20:14
Ok, so, I've been thinking about this a lot but, at the end of the day, teleport is a magic spell, right? Wouldn't removing all the mana around the witch solve the issue?
Lady El could put up a barrier that blocks mana all around the academy. Then she'd just need to absorb all the mana left within the barrier. Lady El can release her mana outside the barrier before she absorbs everything inside.
603 Nameless Knight/ 10/25 (Sun.) / 00:21:06
>602
That wouldn't work. Even if there's no mana left around her, the witch can use the mana inside her body to teleport.
She wouldn't be able to recover any mana, but that's about it. Getting rid of the witch's own mana is the first thing to do.
604 Nameless Knight/ 10/25 (Sun.) / 00:22:22
>603
What if someone else fights the witch first? They don't have to kill her, just tire her enough so that she doesn't have enough mana inside her to teleport. Then, >602's plan might work.
To give a telling example, they were pretty much asking me to suck in the air in the room until I filled my lungs to their max capacity.
Whatam I, Star Platinum?
When using a magic spell, you'd use the mana contained in your body. The amount you could hold inside you was different for everyone, and it would impact the power of your spells. In other words, the quantity of mana you could hold inside your body was very important.
To speak in game terms, the same spell could end up being much more destructive if you were able to use more MP when casting it. If a regular person had one MP, a knight would have around a hundred, and a member of my guard around two hundred. As for me...I'd have roughly five hundred thousand MP.
...My power level is 530,000. But fret not, I don't plan to fight you at my full capacity.
If I used around a thousand MP to blast out a magic spell, someone with a total capacity of less than a thousand wouldn't be able to block it, no matter what.
I estimated the witch probably had...about a thousand MP at worst and around three thousand MP at best.
However, the witch was supposed to be very skilled at circulating her mana, so she was able to quickly absorb the surrounding mana to replenish her reserves.
Her maximum output for one spell would never exceed three thousand, but she could pretty much use magic indefinitely.
I was also pretty good at circulating my mana, so I could pretty much do the same thing without any limits.
With that plan, I'd be able to prevent the witch from replenishing her mana. Even if she was good at it, she wouldn't be able to absorb any mana if there wasn't any around.
Figuring out the perfect timing would be a bit tricky, but having someone else fight her first was a great idea. They'd have to force her to use as much mana as possible so that she wouldn't have enough left to teleport. Then, if I succeeded in putting up a barrier and absorbing all of the mana contained within, she'd be left unable to escape.
I had a big enough mana reserve that it was doable. I could drain the entire area around the witch if I tried.
This...might work... No, it definitely will!
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