“Gould? What are you doing?”
“The plan has proceeded to the final phase. I require your help, Scarlet... No, Maestro.”
“Hm?! Heh... Heh heh. Very well, Chrom Ranchesse. I will become your arms and legs as I promised. In exchange...”
“I know.”
“Good.”
Gould held out his right hand and distorted the space again with his crown skill, disappearing into the tear in space together with the metallic red frame. All that was left were the Fishmen and Gollem soldiers. There was a lot we had to think about, but first, we needed to clean up the mess in front of us.
I took out my smartphone and connected to Yumina.
“Begin the cleanup operation. Make sure the Nereids don’t let any of them escape underwater.”
“Understood. Um... Is Kuon safe?”
I silently turned the phone over to Kuon.
“I’m safe, mother.”
“Oh, good...”
She’s such a worrywart, I thought, but I really wasn’t much different myself.
Still, what did it mean that Chrom Ranchesse was Gould? I thought the god of erosion had taken it over... Could even a god—no, a former god’s fragment not keep its consciousness once its main body disappeared? It was as if the only thing Gould had inherited was the erosion ability, which was a perfect match for the Gluttony Slime. The ability to erode anything and the ability to absorb anything...
Almost anything, at least. It seemed the sacred treasure couldn’t be completely consumed, but it did steal the divinity that served as its power source. It was the same as when the old witch-king sucked out all of our mana.
Doc Babylon had once said that my boundless mana was a godsend for a researcher, since it meant they didn’t have to pay too much attention to how much mana they were expending while experimenting. The speed at which Brunhild and the Frame Gears were developed was thanks to both my mana capacity and divine power. Having that used against us by the enemy was a bit of a sore spot, especially because they’d stolen the divinity from the sacred treasure, something that was made by condensing loads and loads of divinity into a weapon.
I wasn’t sure how much divinity had been absorbed from the sacred treasure exactly, but it was more than enough for use on the surface.
“I really messed up... It was a complete oversight to think the sacred treasure would be safe from erosion just because it had my divinity infused in it... I prepared absolutely no countermeasures for the Gluttony Slime...”
That thing absorbed not just physical objects, but energy as well. The Gluttony Slime was originally created as an Artificer that could deal with dangerous objects during the ancient magic civilization, so of course it was made to be able to absorb residual mana. It was born into an era where magic and artifacts were as common as electrical appliances on Earth, after all.
Well, because of that, the country that developed the Gluttony Slime ended up being destroyed, so it was no laughing matter.
“There’s no point dwelling on what has already happened. For now, we should focus on cleaning up what’s in front of us.”
Oof... A six-year-old consoling me feels real bad...
What Kuon said was right, though. Rather than thinking of what I could have done, I needed to think about what I was going to do from now on.
“Oh, right, Silver. What do you think about the gold crown? Is it really Chrom Ranchesse?” I asked. The silver crown was the only one here who knew Chrom personally.
“Honestly...I couldn’t tell ya, buddy. The thing spoke just like him, but it’s not enough to say for sure, y’know? And like, what does it even mean if that thing is Chrom? Ya tellin’ me Chrom’s ghost decided to haunt a robot?”
“Hmm... Do you think his brain could’ve replaced the Q-Crystal?”
“Ew.”
Silver clearly didn’t like the thought of it, but we did have an example of that with the witch-king. It wasn’t impossible. Hell, even Doc Babylon had done something very similar.
I glanced at Gold, who was standing nearby. Gould hadn’t known that Gold existed. Now assuming Gould was Chrom Ranchesse, that would mean Chrom was not the one who created Gold. But then, who made him? It would have to be someone who was as much of a genius to make a completely identical unit.
Were Gold and Gould completely different units, then? Gould had Chrom Ranchesse’s brain implanted inside it, while Gold was the Gollem that had a Q-Crystal installed.
I seriously have no goddamn clue where to go with this.
“If ya ask me, rather than Chrom takin’ over the thing, it feels way more likely that he copied his personality into it.”
“Hang on... Copied his personality? Did he have technology like that?”
“Well...the guy managed to create somethin’ like me. My personality is molded based on my wielder an’ all. Isn’t it super likely he could transfer his personality?”
Now that he mentioned it, Gollems usually had some semblance of a personality formed from all the memories they’d built up over the years, and crowns were no exception to that. But according to Kuon, Silver’s original personality had been that of a murderer. It was through their contract that Silver had turned into more of an obedient minion—and that meant Chrom Ranchesse had managed to plant a moldable personality into a Gollem. With that in mind, him implanting his own personality into the gold crown wasn’t out of the question.
“So...that’s what this is all about.”
Research was being carried out into a technology that would make it possible to digitize oneself using all sorts of information like their thought processes and thinking patterns and create a replica of the person—digital cloning, I think it was called. That technology would allow us to know the thoughts of even dead people. In a way, it was research into immortality.
If something similar had been input into Gould, then it wouldn’t be so incorrect to view him as Chrom Ranchesse himself, would it? Well, the man himself was dead, so maybe it was more accurate to say it was the ghost of him.
“I just remembered... When Steph accidentally erased a massive portion of unknown data from Gold, could that have been Chrom Ranchesse’s personality data?” Kuon asked.
“Wait, it could be!”
If that was the case, then the theory that Gold and Gould were the exact same Gollem actually started to hold water.
But did that mean if Steph hadn’t mistakenly reset Gold’s data, we could’ve had two gold crowns with Chrom Ranchesse’s personality running around? Was my daughter secretly a genius? She totally prevented a disaster before it could happen!
“Hey, kiddo, uh...your papa sometimes acts a little loopy, huh?”
“This is normal. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”
I didn’t like the conversation going on in front of me one bit, but whatever. More importantly, why did Chrom Ranchesse implant his personality in the gold crown to begin with? Did he want to acquire pseudo-immortality or something?
No, that didn’t seem right. According to Albus, when the white and black crowns went berserk, Chrom ended up losing his memories as a price of the white crown’s crown skill. Did he do this to keep a record of his memories? Perhaps he tried to create a copy of himself in order to fight against losing both his memories and his sense of self...
Losing one’s memories was akin to losing oneself. It resulted in the collapse of one’s identity, the disappearance of the foundations of who you were. Could there be anything more frightening? If I had to lose my memories of all the time spent in this world, could I really bear it?
It was in that moment that I truly began to understand Chrom Ranchesse’s state of mind.