Chapter 145

“Why is the Gadou in there doing such awful things?” Suddenly, Maya spoke to the part of Gadou that was present: her body. Surprised that Maya had the mental fortitude to hold a conversation while supporting Menou with an Original Sin conjuring, Gadou considered the question. “…What do you mean?” “Well, it’s not fair, is it?” Maya bit her lip. “She’s making you deal with all the hard stuff while she just holes up in her own world. It’s not right to be so selfish! She seems like a big bully to me…!” When Gadou realized that Maya was angry on her behalf, her eyes widened. Gadou had saved Maya when Nono died. Otherwise, when the Starhusk activated, Maya probably would have been sacrificed as a condition to activate the otherworld repatriation circle. “…I think she just doesn’t remember.” “Wha…?” It took Maya a moment to understand what she was hearing. “You mean, she’s lost her memories because of her Pure Concept…?” “…No.” Gadou shook her head. The loss of Ran Gadou’s memories caused by her Pure Concept of Vessel was a burden for the Gadou there. The Pure Concept conjuring that the Ran Gadou in the world of souls was using consumed her memories. To maintain herself despite multiplying her spirit to stay ahead of the consumption, she turned all unnecessary emotions into Primary Color crystals and ejected them outside. Thus, because of her Pure Concept, Ran Gadou’s memories would never vanish. “…About me, about Hakua, and even about this whole world.” Menou struggled to reach Gadou, not because Gadou was testing her, nor out of any will to stop her. “…It’s simple. Ran Gadou has just forgotten about what she left behind a thousand years ago.” She stated the obvious with a perfectly calm expression. Menou didn’t seem to be welcome, but she couldn’t get what she needed by letting herself be intimidated and turning back. So Menou gave a challenging look to the real Ran Gadou. “My name is Menou. I came here to ask about something you made.” Ran Gadou looked quizzical. “Wow, that seems like a lot of work. You came all the way from the physical world just for that? Normally, your soul would’ve just melted away and vanished… Ahh, it’s an Original Sin conjuring, is it?” Ran Gadou glanced at the shadow at Menou’s feet. It was only then that Menou realized her shadow wasn’t her own. This was Maya’s power. It was taking Menou’s shape to protect her in the world of souls. “Very smart. That’s a different way of preserving a soul. Out of respect for your cleverness in getting all the way here, I guess I can answer your question.” “It’s about the Starhusk—the otherworld repatriation circle.” “The what?” Gadou’s response couldn’t have been more unexpected. “Star-husk? Repatriation circle? Did I…make something like that?” She truly didn’t seem to know what Menou was talking about. There was no way she could have the wrong person after all that, but anxiety gripped Menou’s heart nonetheless. “…The activation key to the repatriation circle. It doesn’t ring a bell? Didn’t you and Nono make the Starhusk together? …You are the holder of the Pure Concept of Vessel, aren’t you?” “Yeah, Vessel is definitely me… Wait, Nono’s involved? Okay, give me a second. I’ll remember it right now. Which file would a thousand years ago be again…?” Muttering to herself, Gadou activated a conjuring. Guiding Force: Merge Materials—Paint Over, Pure Concept [Vessel]—Invoke [Restore: Log 111324] The Guiding Light that ran over the transparent boxes surrounding them grew stronger for a moment. A line of Guiding Force connected one of the rows of boxes to Gadou. She had used a conjuring to store her memories outside herself, and now she was downloading the memories from a thousand years ago into her spirit. “Oh, right. Of course. The Starhusk. I guess we did set that up. The activation key for the otherworld repatriation circle is… Hmm? Wait a minute. You already have it right there, don’t you?” “Huh?” Gadou was pointing at the scripture in Menou’s hand. For a moment, Menou could only gape at it. “This… The scripture is the activation key?” “That’s right. Stupidly long password, isn’t it? It was Nono’s idea to turn the books that Shirakami’s weirdo worshippers made into Guiding vessels. Really versatile, aren’t they? Not bad for something that was made a thousand years ago. Although they’re a little on the big side.” “…Nono decided the contents of the scripture?” “I bet she wanted to see the look on Shirakami’s face. Nono always had a mischievous side.” Seeing Menou’s mixed emotions, Gadou shrugged apathetically. “You just have to stand in the environmental control tower, activate the entire scripture, and read the whole thing. Then the Guiding Force authentication will be complete, and you’ll be able to get management authority. If you don’t have the conjuring chops to invoke the whole scripture, then too bad for you. I can’t be bothered to teach you conjuring techniques.” “…I can do that just fine on my own,” Menou responded peevishly. Menou had confidence in her abilities as a conjurer. She had studied hard to hone her skills to make up for her lack of any innate Guiding Force gift. Even if she had now forgotten who taught her those skills. The scriptures distributed to members of the Faust were intended to gather information from all over the continent for Hakua. As it turned out, they were also Guiding vessels for the otherworld repatriation circle. “I must admit, though, I’m surprised you were willing to tell me that so easily. I thought you would give me a bit more trouble.” “I just don’t care about the material world anymore. What’s going on out there anyway? It’d be nice if humanity had just died out already.” “Of course not. Hakua is doing whatever she pleases.” “Hmm. So a thousand years wasn’t long enough for humanity to go extinct? Given how things were going a thousand years ago, I figured they’d have blown themselves up by now, to be honest.” This person certainly said disturbing things quite casually. But the conjuring Gadou used earlier had awoken a desire in Menou. After all, Gadou had downloaded memories that she was storing outside herself. “…What you just did was replenishing your memories, wasn’t it? Does this apparatus work the same way as the Star Memory?” “Don’t be ridiculous. This is a far more advanced version of the Star Memory I built all those years ago.” Gadou’s tone was sharp. Menou must have struck a nerve. “That old relic from a thousand years ago was barely even a prototype. Going out of the way to make book-shaped Guiding vessels to store memory information, wasting space and making everything too big… It’s so embarrassing to think about. So that old thing still exists in the material world? If you don’t mind, could you maybe just destroy it for me? A single one of these has higher performance than that big hunk of junk.” As she spoke, Gadou lightly prodded one of the many transparent cubes floating all around them. “Just one cube is better than the entire Star Memory…?” Menou’s voice shook with surprise despite her efforts to hide it. If what Gadou said was true, then she was currently surrounded by Guiding vessels with even better performance than the Star Memory, which was Hakua’s hideout holding the memories of all of humanity. Storing the memories of humans was already impressive in itself, but this place was on an entirely different level. “Of course. Even all of these aren’t enough to analyze this world.” Gadou’s apparatus was collecting, analyzing, and storing everything that was the source of Guiding Force. “You don’t have my memories here, do you?” “Yours? Sure I do. They’re somewhere anyway. If you want them, I could give them to you.” Gadou quite casually offered the salvation Menou had scarcely dared hope for. It was such an impossibly good offer that Menou felt wary to trust it. “…Just like that?” “It’s not that big a deal. Let me see that scripture of yours for a minute.” The scripture could serve as a vessel for a person’s soul or spirit. In fact, the Faust’s scriptures were based on the Guiding vessels in the Star Memory, which stored memories. They’d been distributed across the continent as a conjuring tool, all while gathering information. At one point, Sahara’s self had been completely stored in Menou’s scripture, if only temporarily. It was perfectly capable of storing a person’s memory. Even here in the world of souls, the tool she’d brought with her mind should have had all the same functions. She’d been able to use crest conjurings and such in the battles on the way here. “…Hmm? Ah, that’s not gonna work.” Holding Menou’s scripture, Gadou furrowed her brow. “This scripture already has someone else’s memories in it. Mind if I overwrite them?” “What?” At first, Menou didn’t understand the question. Menou had received the scripture from Abbie not long ago. It had its surveillance function, which allowed Hakua to connect to the scripture from the Star Memory, removed. At no point had anything happened where someone’s memories would be put inside. But after thinking about it for a moment, it dawned on her. Menou had never asked who Abbie got this scripture from. “……” Perhaps… A possibility crossed Menou’s mind. And if what she’d just realized was true, then the memories inside this scripture had to be preserved no matter what. “…No. We can’t erase those.” “Really? You’re gonna give up on your own memories, then? I guess that’s fine.” “Isn’t there any way to put the memories into me directly, without using the scripture as a medium?” “Sure, but if I do that, you’ll totally lose your connection to the material world. Your soul would be directly linked to this world of souls, see. You’d never be able to return to your original body again.” What should she choose? Her own memories, or the memories in the scripture? Conflict swirled in Menou’s chest. If she didn’t jump on this opportunity now, it would never come again. This was probably Menou’s last chance to recover her memories. She thought back on the people she’d met on her way, people she didn’t know. Most of all, the image of the red-haired woman whose name she couldn’t recall squeezed at her heart. If she could only remember that woman, maybe it would be worth abandoning all she’d been pursuing. For a few minutes, Menou agonized in silence—then decided to give up on herself after all. “…Tell me something, Ran Gadou.” “……Hmm? Oh, right, I guess that was my name.” “What is it you’re doing in here?” “Me?” Menou nodded silently. Having given up on herself yet again, she found herself wondering about Gadou’s state. She was so powerful that she didn’t have to give up a single thing. If she wanted to go back to her own world, she could. Surely, she could build the otherworld repatriation circle from scratch. Why she would stay here, all alone in this world of nothing but Guiding Force, was a mystery to Menou. “When I was back on Earth, I hated the world. Things never went the way I wanted.” “What do you mean?” “Nowhere in Japan felt like home.” So it was because there was nothing she regretted leaving behind. Gadou spoke candidly about her past. “I hated other people who just did whatever they wanted. I hated the wars in far-off countries. I didn’t like the family around me, either. And that awful place they call school was nothing but a big box of trauma. I hate everything outside of me that doesn’t do exactly what I want.” The heart of the Mechanical Society was shaped like a Japanese school because it was molded by the first piece of trauma that Gadou ejected. “So when I was summoned to this world and I learned about the power I’d been given, I was happy.” When she came to another world, she received the Pure Concept of Vessel. Now Gadou spoke of her feelings at the time and her dearest wish, all kept in the memories she had just downloaded. “Because I wanted to become a god.” A chill ran down Menou’s back upon hearing this vision of the future that not even a child would wish for. It was so dramatic that it sounded like a pipe dream. But once she was summoned to this world and gained a Pure Concept, it was a dream well within Gadou’s reach. She could create spaces. Create objects. Create intelligent life. With the ability to craft entire worlds, conjurings of the Pure Concept of Vessel were as close as a person could get to the power of a god. “With the help of Nono’s abilities, I laid down a path all the way here to the source of this world built of Guiding Force. And then I decided to stay here.” The Pure Concept of Star could see the future. By peering into this place, the wellspring of the planet, it could make incredibly accurate predictions. They created a Guiding Force processor with Gadou’s abilities that could assess the entire world and its possible outcomes, and they combined the pair’s powers to complete their precognition machine. “If I just could understand how the world works, then I should easily be able to become a god.” Ran Gadou desired influence over the things she could not control. The Primary Color space she’d made inside the monolith was only a stepping stone to follow a path laid out by Nono Hoshizaki’s Pure Concept of Star. The Star Memory, which bound the world’s past in books; the Dragon Gate, which allowed long-distance teleportation using the earthen vein; and even the Starhusk, which opened a path to the other world—all of these were just leftovers created in the pursuit of Gadou’s ultimate dream. All so she could come here, to the ultimate model of how to build a world. “If you managed to become a god, what would you do?” “If I become a god, I can finally be free of other people for the first time.” As someone who had hated people all her life, Gadou had no interest in the lives of other humans. What was Guiding Force, exactly? That was the only subject Ran Gadou was interested in. “But…it’s not working out. My by-products are much cleverer than I am, so they won’t do what I say, and they’re always pointing out my failures.” The girl who had used a power akin to creating a world for the past thousand years smiled forlornly. The Primary Triad conjured soldiers. They were an unintended by-product of Gadou’s subconscious, beings with wills of their own who learned to move freely. And, in the end, they succeeded at Gadou’s wish before she did by creating their own world. “Honestly, it’s so annoying.” There was one thing that still bothered Menou. “You know, I heard you originally had three personalities.” “Oh, yeah… I guess maybe I did?” “I’ve already met one of them. She’s been substituting memories for your Pure Concept all this time.” “Ah, that’s right. I didn’t really want anyone to come here, so I set things up so the shell of the Mechanical Society would automatically grow around the monolith and left her in charge of that fantasy world. …Right, I guess that means you came here through that prototype fantasy world. How embarrassing. That’s a thousand years old, too, so it’s not very well-made.” “Where did the other one go?” Even as she asked, Menou strongly suspected what had happened to the other third of Gadou’s divided spirit. She had a connection to Nono, she’d fled from the Mechanical Society, and she’d attached herself to a human of this world. There was only one being who met all of those conditions and had been active for the past thousand years. “I think I remember her, kinda… She didn’t get along with Nono at all. I think the way they lived was just too different. Unlike that pathetic other one, this personality has a dirty way of surviving.” “I knew it… So you’re the Guardian after all.” The Elder Guardian, a coconspirator of Hakua’s for the past thousand years, was the third and final personality of Ran Gadou, drifting without a body or a soul. “Yeah, exactly. I remember now. Nono hated that thing, but I don’t mind it so much. It was originally one of my personalities, after all. Oh, right! She was basically a manifestation of my ideal form. For better or worse, that personality came into being because of my wish to be able to force other people to do my bidding. Wow… So she’s still alive, huh? Not bad for a scrappy little spirit. Is she using Possession or something? That’s the one ability she took from me, you know.” “Why are you using your own body to preserve your memories anyway? Couldn’t you use this setup here to handle the memory consumption of your Pure Concept?” “Huh? Ooh… Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just left her connected the whole time, that’s all. Force of habit or whatever.” This version of Gadou spoke the terrible truth so casually, without a single thought for the torment her own body had been going through all this time. “To get into this world of souls, I needed a connection to a body, at least at the beginning. I had to keep her around to make myself a base here in the Guiding Force world…but I don’t plan to return to the material world again, so I guess I could cut the cord now. Just tell that girl I said she’s free to do as she pleases from now on.” “You know…” Menou’s face darkened at Gadou’s selfish ways. “You really are a Human Error.” “Who, me? Don’t be silly. I’ve got the memory problem totally under control.” “No. That isn’t what I meant.” She wasn’t like the other Human Errors, whose Pure Concepts went on a rampage. In a way, Gadou was the human who’d had the most influence on the world. Out of all the Otherworlders Menou had met, Gadou was the one most suited to the title of Human Error. “I dunno. I mean, maybe? But the god of this world is very rational and good at crisis management. For one thing, Vessel and Evil showed up at the same time. Doesn’t that seem deliberate to you?” At that point, Gadou was mostly talking to herself, not even looking Menou in the eyes anymore. “If it weren’t for Maya, this world would’ve been putty in my hands.” The statement sent shivers up Menou’s spine. “In that respect, Hakua is a problem, too. Her Pure Concept can turn the whole material world into a blank white slate. …Oh, right. That’s why I made that promise with Nono, isn’t it?” With this unexpected mention of an old friend, Gadou looked at Menou. “I guess I better send you back to the material world safely, then. Once you’re back, hurry up and take Hakua away, will you? I don’t care if you die in the process, or even if she does. Whatever it takes, Hakua Shirakami simply should not exist in this world.” Once again, Gadou was pushing what was convenient for her on others. “By the way, if I could get your opinion…” Menou had only come to get the activation key for the otherworld repatriation circle. Still, since she’d come so far, she thought she might as well ask questions. She decided it was a good chance to pick the brain of someone who knew how to build the repatriation circle in the first place. “I want to make sure otherworld summoning never happens again.” “Oh yeah? Sounds good to me.” “I’m glad you agree. I think it’s possible to stop the summoning phenomenon from occurring… The problem is, that would mean altering the planet. Do you think that might have an adverse effect on the material world?” “Now, this is just based on my findings from a thousand years ago, mind you…” Gadou dropped her gaze to the transparent floor. “When the circle first came into existence, there was nothing in the world at all. No matter, no spirits, no souls. It was just a completely empty space. There was power, but with no bodies to wield it and no point in doing so. It was just a void where Guiding Force drifted around. In other words, the whole world was like this place.” She raised her head abruptly. “Now, pop quiz. How do you make something exist in a place where there’s nothing?” “…You bring it in from somewhere else.” “Exactly.” When Menou responded based on the current state of the world, Gadou nodded. “It’s cutting corners, don’t you think? But that’s exactly why the otherworld summoning phenomenon exists. They brought concepts in from another world. When someone summoned from Japan passed through here, the Guiding Force began constructing physical matter to realize the concepts they defined. That whole world is a conjuring phenomenon—brought about by what it summoned and pulled in from the other world.” “Are you saying you think someone created this world?” “I believe so.” The person who had come closest to creating a world herself nodded. “I’m a creationist, see. After all, even I made a world, albeit an incomplete one. So of course it’s possible that someone made the imperfect world that’s only built a little bit better than mine. I think my old world and this one were both made by someone.” It certainly was convincing, even if she had no proof. “The conjuring we call ‘otherworld summoning’ is a system that was only necessary in the early days of the world. Now that most concepts have been summoned and successfully realized, the summoning isn’t necessary anymore. It’s nothing but a remnant of the world creation process that stubbornly keeps on working.” The girl who had lived for a thousand years went back to her analysis of power. She immersed herself in studying the seemingly endless sea of Guiding Force. Then Menou finally realized. The faint flow of Guiding Force she had felt since she first arrived wasn’t part of the world of souls behind the material world. It was a conjuring Gadou was producing to analyze the space. And this conjuring, which was so unbelievably large that Menou had mistaken it for the flow of the planet’s wellspring, still wasn’t enough. Not to decipher the origin of the world. Gadou would probably be here forever. For thousands of years, tens of thousands, a hundred million, and beyond, as if even that were still not enough, until the concept of numbers lost all meaning. She would keep focusing on her analysis to the point where a thousand years would seem like the blink of an eye. And someday, she was going to create a world of her own. “Hey.” Abruptly, Gadou tossed a question at Menou. “Was Nono smiling?” The unexpected question caught Menou off guard. “…Yes. From beginning to end.” “Oh yeah? That’s good, then.” Once she heard the answer, the space around Menou began to break apart. She was being dismissed now that her business was finished. Gadou didn’t look at Menou again. Nonetheless, Menou spoke to her one last time. “Good-bye, god-in-training.” Gadou probably didn’t even hear her parting words.