Chapter 150

The girl Akari knew as enviably small and slim, annoyingly adorable, and just a little admirably determined…who was always foul-mouthed and sassy…was crying. “Huh?! Wh-what’s the matter? Are you hurt, Momo?” “It…failed…” Momo didn’t even look at Akari. She held the hand of a corpse that had been reduced to bones, tears streaming down her face. “What failed?! Why are you crying…? Wait a minute, I have no idea what’s going on right now!” “But…there was no other way…” None of this made sense. Momo clearly wasn’t going to explain anything. Akari’s gaze shifted. The clothes on the skeleton Momo was holding looked oddly familiar. “…What?” It couldn’t be. These clothes didn’t quite match her memories. The person Akari remembered was always wearing priestess robes. But she could think of no other reason that Momo would be crying. “No… Don’t tell me… It can’t be…” She was afraid to even voice her fear. But she couldn’t go on without knowing, either. “Is that…Menou?” Momo nodded. “You’re lying!” A shrill scream wrenched out of her throat. “That can’t be true. That thing…!” Looking at the skeleton, her breath caught. “That…person…can’t be Menou! There’s no way—” “Shut up!” Momo’s scream of rage cut Akari’s words short. “My darling…ended up like this…to save you when you became a Human Error…!” “A Human…Error? Me…?” “Yes, you!!” Momo didn’t stop crying, nor did she wipe her tears away. As she made no effort to hide or hold back her emotions, her words gave Akari a glimpse of what must have happened. After the girl in the sailor uniform erased her memories, Akari must have become a Human Error. “B-but why would Menou wind up like this…? As nothing but a skeleton?!” “Because of her stupid Guiding Force connection with you. You became the same person in a conjuring sense, so she was able to transfer your damned Pure Concept into her own soul…!” Momo gnashed her teeth with rage and regret. Akari realized, whether she wanted to know or not, that Menou had taken on her Pure Concept. “Then she pushed herself to the point of becoming a Human Error. But…it failed… I thought even if she became a Human Error, I could just bring back her memories…but now…!” There really was no other way. From the moment Menou decided to take on the Pure Concept of Time in Akari’s place, there was no saving her. She was careening toward an unavoidable death, just like all the Otherworlders Menou herself had killed before. So Momo planned for the possibility that Menou would turn into a Human Error. “But now…now…she’s gone…!” Perhaps it was because she wasn’t an Otherworlder, or because she was created as a clone. Whatever the reason, Menou’s body couldn’t handle the Pure Concept’s rampage, and she couldn’t even become a Human Error at all. Her body was weathered away by the Pure Concept of Time, leaving only her clothes and a bleached-white skeleton on the ground. There was no way to return the memories to her living body, as had worked with Maya. “No…way…” Momo would never joke about something like this when it came to Menou. It was horribly clear from Momo’s state. The skeleton in front of her really was Menou. “Ah… W-wait, it’s okay, Momo!” “Don’t come any closer…” “I can just use Regression on her!” “Just go away already… Please…” Ignoring Momo’s listless protests, Akari held up a finger and focused. The Pure Concept of Time could transcend death. Akari herself, who had been revived countless times, was proof enough of that. But now, the conjuring she had always been able to construct as easily as breathing wouldn’t come to her at all. “Huh…?” Akari could only use Time conjurings because the Pure Concept was attached to her soul. Now that it was gone, she was essentially just an ordinary person. In this state, Akari couldn’t even dream of bringing Menou back to life, as Momo already knew. The Pure Concept of Time became a Human Error and self-destructed. It didn’t even exist as a Pure Concept in this world anymore. When a lost one who became a Human Error died, their Pure Concept would be redistributed into the world as a conjuring phenomenon. Eventually, time-based conjurings would be discovered in this world and a new system would slowly develop. But that could be ten years from now, or a hundred, or even further into the future. In other words, there was no way in the present to revive Menou. “Why…” Crushed by her own powerlessness, Akari staggered over to Menou’s remains on trembling legs. It seemed impossible that those ruined bones could be all that was left of such a beautiful girl. “Why…?!” Heat crept into her tear ducts. It wasn’t just sadness. It was regret, helplessness, and anger at Menou for passing on without her. Menou had ended up like this to save Akari. Did she really think Akari would be happy to be saved at the cost of Menou’s life? No, Akari knew all too well. Menou would have chosen to save Akari even if it made her angry. That was just who Menou was: her irreplaceable best friend. Akari placed both hands on the skull of the girl who had made the terribly selfish choice to sacrifice herself to save her. Tears welled in her eyes, and Momo made no move to stop her when she brought her face closer to all that remained of Menou’s. “Menou…how could you…?” As tears streamed down her face, Akari placed a kiss on the bleached skull. “…Ah?” When her lips touched Menou, Akari sensed something. The remnants of the Time Akari had lost still lingered in Menou’s bones. A body that contained a Pure Concept could serve as conjuring materials, even as a corpse. Menou herself had told Akari as much, in fact. And when a Human Error disappeared, that Pure Concept was distributed into the world as conjuring phenomena. In other words, it became available for general use as a conjuring. Of course, it would normally take years to incorporate a new concept into preexisting conjuring systems. But Akari was a former Human Error who had more experience with Time conjurings than anyone in the world, and Menou’s bones were the remains of the Human Error of Time. Conjurer and target: Both were closer to the Pure Concept of Time than anyone, and they were the same person from a conjuring point of view thanks to their connection. These two conditions, normally impossible, became the catalyst for the first Time conjuring of its kind to exist in the world. Guiding Force: Merge Materials— Akari closed her eyes. She pressed her forehead to that of the skull. She focused intently, concentrating on the power she had once used so effortlessly. Skeleton, Pseudo-Concept [Time]— She put her emotions and theories to work at the same time. It wasn’t a Pure Concept. Her brain was nearly boiling with the effort of trying to assemble Time into a conjuring phenomenon that existed naturally in this world. She drew on all the conjuring theory she could think of and desperately strung it together, combining it with the Guiding Force drawn from her soul to build it into completion. Invoke [Incomplete Regression] Menou’s skeleton, the remains of someone who had nearly become a Human Error, served as the conjuring materials to invoke the first Time conjuring ever made in this world without a Pure Concept. Purple Guiding Light surrounded the pure white bones. The restoration began. Muscles and veins were rebuilt as the skeleton’s time rewound. At the same time, the Guiding Force tree that towered over them and blotted out the sky began to break. The enormous amount of Guiding Force that had belonged to Michele fed into the conjuring phenomenon linked to the scripture resting on Menou’s chest and began to restore the information within. “How…?” Momo looked up at the sky. It wasn’t just Akari reviving Menou’s body. Somewhere, someone else had activated another conjuring to save Menou. “Ability… No, someone else, too…?” As Momo murmured quietly, Menou’s body finished restoring, and her eyelids fluttered. She blinked a few times in evident confusion, then she shook her head as if to rouse herself from sleep and looked up at the girl in front of her. “Akari?” The newly awoken Menou first spoke Akari’s name. Then she looked around and saw Momo, who was holding her breath in disbelief. “And Momo, too… Oh?” Menou opened and closed her hand in wonderment. She could move. She was alive. And she had her memories, too. She remembered Momo, Akari, her battle with Michele, her travels over the past six months, and all the way back through the rest of her life, all the way to when she first met her Master. “What? How did this happen?” As Menou slowly absorbed the reality of her own salvation, something that had never been part of her plans, the other two girls both dove on her at once. “Menou! You big, dumb jerk…!” “Darliiing! R-really, you went too far this time… I’m so mad at yooou…!” As the pair bawled their eyes out and berated her, all Menou could do was watch with her eyes wide open. The Guiding Force tree was fading away, used up by the ceremonial conjuring. In the church at the heart of the ceremonial hall Michele and the others had built, Maya murmured thoughtfully. “I hope Menou got her memories back all right.” After Michele and Menou’s battle, Maya and Gadou had gone all the way there. When she saw the giant tree that sprouted as Menou defeated Michele, made of a massive amount of Guiding Force, Gadou had an idea. With the Guiding Force equal to that of Dragon, they might be able to surpass the material world to reach the world of souls and rebuild memories that way. She asked if Maya wanted to restore the memories she’d lost. Maya had asked Gadou to use that method to restore all of Menou’s memories instead. Gadou only came up with the plan because she’d had a channel to the original Ran Gadou for so long while serving as her substitute. Originally, Gadou had been working on conjuring theory to connect to the Ran Gadou in the world of souls. She wanted to get the original to cut her loose now that she was no longer needed. She’d never had access to the vast amount of Guiding Force it would require, until Michele’s Guiding Force tree appeared. That meant she had everything she needed to draw memories out of the world of souls—except that when the Mechanical Society disappeared, it took most of the world inside the monolith with it, leaving Gadou without an invocation medium. They needed a ceremonial hall that could hold up to the conjuring needed to interfere with the world of souls. Just as they were about to give up, a tiny blue butterfly appeared. Left without enough materials to maintain a human form, Abbie told Maya and Gadou about the ceremonial hall Michele and company had made. With Abbie’s guidance, they reached the ceremonial hall. There, Gadou used the massive Guiding Force tree to establish a connection to her original personality, draw the memories from the world of souls, and pour them into the scripture Menou had carried.