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Transferring your memories to a Gollem meant that you yourself still had those memories of that process, so you’d know exactly why you existed, but I wasn’t sure if it was something you could so easily separate in your mind. No matter how much you tried to argue against it, a fake was a fake. You were now an artificial existence, a puppet with copied memories implanted inside of you. Was that something a regular person could withstand?
“However, according to Albus, the original Chrom Ranchesse gradually lost his memories due to the price paid for the activation of the white crown’s crown skill, correct? In which case, being the only owner of his complete memories, Gould would be the closest to the man himself, no?”
I understood what the Professor was getting at, but it also felt like a little bit of a stretch. Gould and the Chrom Ranchesse that lived five thousand years ago were ultimately two different existences. Gould just happened to have his memories.
“He truly is the ghost of Chrom Ranchesse.”
“That’s a very fitting phrase.”
It was indeed. A different body that still retained your memories of when you were alive? That sounded similar enough to a ghost to me.
“So does Gold not have Chrom Ranchesse’s memories whatsoever?”
“None. That large volume of data that Steph deleted had to have been his memories.”
In other words, it was as Kuon had suggested. Steph really had prevented a calamity.
“So are Gold and Gould the same type of Gollem?”
“Not quite. It would be more accurate to say that they’re duplicates, I guess?” Doc Babylon responded, putting two images up on the monitor. “On the right is Gold and on the left is Gould from footage Gold captured in the Ark.”
Honestly, beyond the cape and eye colors, they really did look exactly the same.
“Then if we enlarge this...” she mumbled as she zoomed in on their necks—but nothing looked different to me. “Notice anything?”
“Uh...not really? They look the same to me...”
The outline of the plating, the coloring, the exact marks, all of it made them seem like the same type of unit.
“Wait...even the marks are the same?”
“You’ve got it. We’ve thoroughly examined each of them, and they have the exact same marks in more than one place. Even if they were from the same batch, they shouldn’t be this similar unless they were marks made deliberately. That’s why they’re more akin to duplicates.”
In other words, they were originally one unit, but then they made a duplicate using something like what we have in the workshop.
“Think about it for a second. At that time, the Phrase invaded, Chrom’s black and white crowns went haywire, and time and space got all messed up. The world’s barrier was restored, and the Phrase were chased into the dimensional gap, correct?”
I nodded while listening to the scientist’s explanation. But wait, why was she explaining this now?
“What if the gold crown was shot through time at the same time as the Phrase? Don’t forget that Steph originally saw Gold falling through a hole in space-time. And then, perhaps the black crown led to another gold crown being brought through from a different timeline.”
“Oh! Through Noir’s Parallel Shift?”
The black crown, Chronos Noir, had the ability to control time and also to interfere with parallel worlds. He could call forth all sorts of things from all sorts of different worlds and times.
If that power had taken effect...did that mean the exact same gold crown was simply pulled from a different timeline? No wonder they had identical marks. Even if they were from different timelines, they were still the same existence. The fact that they had the same marks had to mean they weren’t taken from too far apart in time, though it was hard to tell if it was from the past or future. In other words, the small marks on Gould and Gold’s plating were caused when they were shot through time.
“But if they were wrapped up in the black and white crowns going haywire, would that not mean that Chrom’s memories weren’t implanted into them?”
“We were working under the assumption that Chrom only implanted his memories after he’d begun losing them as a means to preserve them, but isn’t it possible that he’d actually done it before that? Maybe as a backup in case he had to use the white crown’s crown skill.”
“I understand. You mean that he may have intended to use the memories within the gold crown as a substitute.”
“It’s a pretty crafty way of doing it, but not impossible.”
The Professor and Elluka agreed with Doc Babylon’s hypothesis.
Meanwhile, I’m starting to get lost.
“Here, let’s set up a timeline.”
“Big thanks.”
Was I just stupid?
Doctor Babylon began laying out an estimated timeline of Chrom Ranchesse’s movements.
Five thousand years ago, Chrom created the crown series of Gollems in the Reverse World. The red, blue, white, black, green, and purple crowns were made.
Chrom traveled from the Reverse World to the Upright World with the black and white crowns. Paying the price of the black crown’s crown skill, he de-aged from an old man to a young boy. He then traveled to the United Kingdom of Pillaisula.
Chrom learned magic, had a family, and then the Phrase invaded. He began researching how to return to his original world without paying the price; this led to the creation of the silver and gold crowns. He then transferred his memories into the gold crown to try to use them as a substitute for the crown’s crown skill(?).
The Dominant Phrase, Gila, attacked Chrom’s village. He lost his wife and daughter in the attack. The black and white crowns went haywire.
The barrier to the world was restored. The Phrase disappeared from the world. The murder of his family was reset. Two gold crowns ended up existing in this timeline due to the black crown. Each of them was shot forward five thousand years into the future.
Chrom began to lose his memory as a result of the white crown’s price. His contracts with the black and white crowns were reset.
Four thousand years following these events, the black and white crowns were activated by Arthur Ernes Belfast. A fierce war broke out between this world and the Phrase who managed to slip in through a gap in space-time. As a result, the black crown was thrown back into the Reverse World and the white crown entered another slumber under Lake Palette.
A thousand years later, the black crown was discovered by Doctor Elluka. The white crown was pulled up out of Lake Palette.
Steph discovered Gold. She initialized Chrom’s memory, deleting it from Gold. Gould activated still with Chrom’s memories intact. He began putting his plan into motion.
“I think that about sums it up.”
It did make much more sense when it was all lined up like this, but it did kind of make it feel like Chrom Ranchesse was the cause of everything... Well, if he hadn’t existed five thousand years ago, the world would’ve already been destroyed by the Phrase, so in a way, he was the world’s savior. Still, I was pretty sure the man himself didn’t save the world because he particularly wanted to. It didn’t help that the wicked devout and a fallen god had gotten involved and made everything worse.
“That’s your wheelhouse, isn’t it? Having gods as our opponent is a little much even for us.”
“You’re absolutely correct...”
Right, I’m the one who has to do something about this...
“So then, what did Chrom Ranchesse ultimately want to do?”
“Who knows? He was a prodigy who wasn’t content learning from only his own world, so he traveled to a different one entirely to study magic. Maybe he was just after the knowledge of the world?”
“Like trying to make the ultimate Gollem?”
“The ultimate Gollem, huh...?”
I couldn’t explain why, but that felt a little off to me.
In Chrom Ranchesse’s...Gould’s eyes, I felt as if I could see some deep, dark fire of passion. A ruthlessness that didn’t care about what victims he created. If any ordinary person heard me say that, they’d probably wonder what the hell I was going on about. It was a Gollem, but... Just jumping off of the previous conversation, it wasn’t a case of him knowing that he was a manufactured fake and feeling so much despair that he was taking the world along with him, right...?
Plus, he had the power of the fallen god inside of him as well. It might not just be Chrom Ranchesse’s memories affecting him, but the memories and emotions tied to the god of erosion as well. If that was the case, you definitely couldn’t call that Chrom anymore; it was a weird new combined something.
“Still...I never would’ve thought that idiot Maestro would go so far as to become a wicked devout...”
“No wonder we thought the Kyklops felt similar to his work. Everything suddenly makes so much more sense.”
That plague-mask wicked devout...Scarlet. Gould called him Maestro. That was the name of one of the five great gollemancers, an absolute genius Gollem engineer. Doctor Elluka—also known as the Restoration Queen—the wandering Professor, the Seekers who were an organization of Gollem engineers, and the late witch-king were deemed the five great gollemancers known throughout the world.