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The world was howling.
Only a few noticed it, but of course, that few included Brave and Boichiro.
“What’s going on?” Brave asked. But he instinctively knew the answer: the world itself was losing its shape.
“This is the moment the world is reconstructed. Each time you changed the past, I was able to sense a smaller version of this. I don’t think anyone else did, though,” Boichiro explained.
“Which means the change...”
“Of course. It was caused by the Demon King. Boot up your suit. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving?” Brave asked, but as he did, he activated the suit’s time travel device. He adjusted the settings so that when he jumped, Boichiro would jump with him.
“We’re going to disappear from this space. In this moment, the Demon King is in complete control of the afterlife. We’re going to make it so we’re not a part of that.”
“You can tell me the details later.” Brave jumped to a time he’d never gone to before.
He wanted to avoid any human contact, so he’d chosen the summit of a high mountain in a time where there was no magical, or even electrical civilization.
“I figured you wouldn’t want to go anywhere cold, so I chose a place 2000 meters above sea level, in the middle of summer.”
They were surrounded by rocky mountaintops, with a forest below and nothing else for miles. Snow could be seen on the peaks above them, but the sun was shining here, and it was actually hot.
“Thanks. The weather might be better than the afterlife here. The chill from this wind is actually rather pleasant.” Boichiro sat down on a nearby rock.
“So, the Demon King changed the whole afterlife?” Brave asked, putting a hand on his hip.
“It’s always getting changed. This time, however, he erased it.”
“Erased it? You mean he reset it and did it over?”
“That’s right. The afterlife is completely within his control. One of the people around him must have told him that,” Boichiro said, looking a little troubled.
“Completely? I thought that was a place where everyone’s wishes came true, and the Demon King just had the strongest will of all of them.”
Brave frowned. There must have been dead people there before the Demon King arrived.
“No. There’s a chance that even the memories of the dead within the afterlife were only created after the Demon King arrived. Not that there’s any way for them to realize that.”
Brave nodded at this explanation, but his expression remained unchanged.
“You’re talking about that thought experiment that says that even if the world was created five minutes ago, if your memories were created then too, you could never tell. I’ve heard of that. But if that’s true... no, was always true, I guess... then what are we?”
“The obvious question. But answering it is difficult. We’re on the inside of whatever’s going on, after all. But if I were to venture a guess anyway, if the whole universe was created by the Law of Identity, then everyone, including us and the Demon King, are fictional.”
Boichiro began to choose his words carefully.
“That’s what you were saying before.”
“The afterlife is within the boundaries of her creation as well. And we can assume that it’s within the domain of the Demon King, too.”
Brave nodded again.
“I see. Everyone died and was reborn... But at the hands of the Demon King.”
“Correct. The entire world was reconstructed in digital form. Just like the computer gods once tried to do.”
“So why delete it and start over? He’s practically a god. How is he not satisfied with the world he created?”
“We can guess at that from the statements he made. Because it was a world that had ended, but would continue for eternity,” Boichiro said. “I know the feeling.”
“I don’t,” Brave complained. The frown was still on his face.
“He realized that there’s no story to him fulfilling his desires.”
“I figured that out first. Otherwise I would’ve lived here in this world with my girlfriend.”
“We can’t do that. Just because of who we are,” Boichiro said. For the first time Brave’s expression changed.
“Who we are? That’s what you were explaining, wasn’t it?”
“If the people in the afterlife are fictional characters, we’re real people. We, the Demon King, and nobody else.”
“Just us and the Demon King?” Brave asked, startled.
“We may have been chosen by the Law of Identity. Of course, we’re side characters. But we still have an important role to play.”
Boichiro’s face seemed strangely relaxed.
“Sure, I feel something here that you might call fate. We weren’t caught up in what the Demon King just did, after all.”
“The Demon King is going to start the story over and over again, and see what he can learn. Using the people who went to the afterlife as characters.” There was no doubt in Boichiro’s voice.
Brave agreed.
“But it won’t work.”
“That’s right. Something that didn’t work the first time won’t work the second, unless someone else is there to help.”
“And that’s our job?” Brave continued. There was a hint of exasperation in his voice.
Boichiro nodded.
“You’ve already made your choice, right? It’s always the hero that saves the world.”
“How?”
“There is a way. We go back inside the Demon King’s world. No, we go inside, but we interfere with it without being caught up in it. We can move upon the line of history drawn by the Law of Identity. Of course, there will be sacrifices, though.”
“Sacrifices?”
“We’re the ones who intervene in the Demon King’s world. Not our individual personalities.”
Boichiro spoke with a strange sort of resolve. There was something in his voice that made Brave uneasy.
“What do you mean by ‘sacrifices’?”
“Neither the Demon King nor the Law of Identity treat people as complete personalities. They each have their own inner world... but in the face of the story, people’s inner personalities are meaningless. That’s going to be true even after the world is reconstructed.”
“I see...” Brave said, and sighed.
“We’ll be treated as a personality that has been reconstructed to serve as the hero.”
“That’s right. Probably because that’s how the Law of Identity wants it. That’s what it means to be a character.”
“I don’t want that to happen to me,” Brave said. But Boichiro was no longer in front of him. He could feel memories, a mind, and knowledge flooding into him, and he closed his eyes to examine each in turn. He kept breathing softly, and then looked up at the sky.
“I understand. We need to show something to the Law of Identity.”