[596] The Cube of Time (3)
A hunched old woman ran along the rugged mountain path.
At eighty-two, she could not stop while the fate of a kingdom rested in her hands.
"Prince, you must survive."
The first prince of the Kazra Kingdom.
He had been abandoned to avoid the Yakma Republic's invasion, but one day he would return to Kazra and take the throne.
"Anywhere where there are people…."
The hiding place had to be somewhere even she couldn't explain, and at last she found a hunter's cabin.
"That is…?"
Shirone held his breath as the old woman opened the stable door and stepped inside.
Anchal's Jungcheong was active, so she shouldn't have been able to notice them—yet when she came this close his heart pounded.
"Prince, please preserve his life."
After placing the child down, the old woman clasped her hands, murmured a short prayer, and immediately left the stable.
"Who is this child?" Miro asked.
"The first prince of the Kazra Kingdom—born to Orkamp IV and Eliza."
Shirone knew Kazra's politics better than most; he had been invited to the palace and endured its hardships firsthand.
"But this is our home."
"It would be if Hexa belonged here. From now on I'll switch Kazra's prince with you."
"What did you say?"
Leaving Hexa here meant the prince who should have been here would be taken to the upper levels.
"Why do that? We could raise them both. And how did you even know the prince would come here?"
"You can't know until you experience it."
Shirone realized as she confirmed the old woman's footsteps had vanished.
"Reset?"
"Right. The reset is already underway. Gefin separated the upper levels' time from the original flow, so we can observe it."
Anchal explained.
"You put an event—an infant swap—at the inflection point between before and after the reset, then linked it to that coordinate."
"Exactly. That's why no one can get close. Except for Istas's upper levels."
Miro, who had left Hexa here, reached to take the prince the old woman had left behind. Shirone grabbed her shoulder.
"I haven't heard your answer. Why take him?"
"Because he must not exist. According to Gefin, Hexa is a lifeform that has taken every precaution so she cannot be used by Anke Ra's reset or any other factor."
Shirone shivered at the image of Behemoth—now fused with her incarnation.
"But this child hasn't. Left as he is, he'll be used."
"I can't accept that."
Shirone's breath came ragged.
"If I survived because someone else sacrificed themselves… then what does that make my life?"
Yolga would think the same.
'My sister would never do such a thing.'
That was why she had to do it herself.
"Shirone."
Miro cradled the prince.
"I'm not killing him. He'll be kept in Istas's upper levels."
"That's the same thing! Living a brief span repeated into eternity! This child who doesn't know reason, language, or even the existence of the world!"
"Perhaps."
Miro did not flinch from reality.
"If there had been a better way, I would have done it. Gefin's final conclusion is this, and humanity must choose. I chose it too, and I'll probably be trapped forever in the wall of space-time."
Shirone thought it wasn't worth arguing.
"Anchal, dispel the illusion."
Anchal did not move. Miro snapped.
"Shirone! Think logically!"
"How much more logical can we be here?"
"Do you know what happens if Anke Ra triggers resets at will? Our future disappears. Every human will lose free will and move according to Anke Ra's design!"
Even Shirone felt a cold dread.
A dictator might dominate people, but under such a ruler there would still be at least the freedom to resist. In a world ruled by Anke Ra, even time itself would be stolen—people would live forever as his puppets.
"If Anke Ra's weaknesses vanish, humans can't even die! He'll reset and erase the causes!"
Maybe that was divine power.
"Is that the future you want? A life without development, progress, or even regression—a life where nothing is decided by us? The moment he becomes a god, humanity loses its value as living beings!"
Shirone's gaze went cold.
"That may be. But that choice is ours to make—not Gefin's, ours."
Miro reacted sharply.
"Don't talk like Yolga."
"What's wrong with that? I get it now. Mars may be different, but at least Yolga came here to stop you, Miro. He came because your ideas are dangerous."
"Dangerous ideas?"
"You have no choice. How is this different from Anke Ra?"
"That's sophistry. I'll sacrifice myself."
"Then why should you be the one to sacrifice, Miro?"
"Because we're human! As a species we can't move forward without someone's sacrifice. You were born to sacrifice too—why can't you understand that?"
"Sacrifice?"
Shirone echoed, and Miro bit her lip.
"If you truly pity this child, accept the sacrifice humbly."
"I don't understand."
Miro sighed.
"Do you know why you must be free from Anke Ra's reset? To perfect the dimensional gate."
"So what does that mean?"
"…Honestly, when I learned you were Hexa I was confused. Hexa was supposed to be the material for the dimensional barrier I'll make."
Anchal folded his arms and listened as Shirone muttered.
"Material…."
"Gefin will leave. I'll build the dimensional barrier in his stead. But angelic powers will inevitably be able to pierce it someday. The countermeasure I devised is you, Hexa."
Shirone remembered when she first met Miro in Miro's space-time.
"Could it be…?"
"I'll create another dimension inside the dimensional world I build. You—unaffected by the reset—will be inside it. Then not even angels or Anke Ra can break the wall. Humanity will survive forever."
A dimension within a dimension, digging on and on.
It would be a flawless rift, conceptually different from the trance Miro had tried alone.
"There must be two, so it's infinite. I can't do it alone."
"But I'm here."
Miro was puzzled by that as well.
"Honestly, I don't know why you still exist in this world."
"You sent me, Miro."
"No. That can't be. I swear I'll put you into my barrier. I have to."
"But it's true."
She had proof nineteen years in the future; there was no way to refute it.
'I don't understand. If Hexa didn't make the barrier, how is the world still standing?'
This was before Gaold abandoned the god.
"In any case, the threat hasn't gone. That's probably why you came to the upper levels too. If you intend to sacrifice yourself for this child, then be the offering for my barrier instead."
Her voice was cold—typically Miro—but Shirone recalled the last night before they parted from training.
—Let's keep in touch.
"I can't accept that. If you were the Miro I know, you wouldn't make this choice."
"No, I know myself. The chances I'll change my mind are—"
"Wah—wah." "Wah—wah."
At the sudden crying, Miro's expression faltered.
'Hexa….'
Shirone felt it too.
A sorrow that could only be told in cries.
That cry surfaced a fact everyone had been suppressing.
'This child is a living being too.'
"Who's making noise at this hour!"
At Vincent's voice, Shirone flinched and looked up.
"You rotten bastard! I'll cut you to pieces!"
Vincent's appearance as he opened the door was shockingly youthful, and tears welled in Shirone's eyes.
Seeing the infant, Vincent quickly sheathed his axe and approached cautiously.
"Waaah. Waaah."
"Father! Don't abandon that child!"
Shirone pounded the Jungcheong barrier and shouted, but Anchal's illusion—bolstered by the magical eye—was strong.
"Father! That's not the child! Your son is—!"
He should have been the prince of Kazra.
'I'm not him. The prince should have lived.'
He should have been raised by good foster parents like Vincent and Olina, loved, and then returned to the palace.
"Who is it! Who's playing a joke? Abandoning a child—you bastard! Come out here!"
"Father…."
Such were their parents.
"You really abandoned him! There's no more chances! Just show your face once! I'll smash it to mush!"
Vincent's words finally broke Shirone; she cried.
She could no longer tell them to abandon her.
She could not deny the lives of the people who would raise that child with everything they had.
"Honey, what's wrong?"
Startled, Olina opened the stable door, and Vincent's trembling hands cradled the baby.
"What is that child?"
At Vincent's words, Shirone ultimately sobbed.
"That… looks like our child."
Time: 1:48.
Space: Supernatural Psychoscience Research Association.
Among the countless overlapping incidents, Mars's unit discovered Rukang's corpse.
"Confirmed dead."
Mars's captain Nikel paid more attention to the child lying where the chain-sickle had fallen than to his subordinate's body.
"Instant death. It's definitely the child Miro had been carrying."
"We did it."
Only then did Nikel's gaze turn to Rukang.
"The mission is complete. As long as the child is dead, Gefin won't be able to leave."
"No. The final mission remains."
Nikel's eyes snapped.
"Find Yolga."
Time: 1:13.
Space: Warehouse No. 44.
"Phew."
Lycon opened Warehouse No. 44 and entered; the safe Fermi had designated waited inside.
"How many… how many will be gathered?"
Because Istas's spatial structure had shifted, he'd taken a long detour, but the objective was achieved.
"Here you can't tell cause from effect."
Even as a hired killer, Lycon was a mage.
From countless incidents he already knew how the upper levels were functioning.
"Three degrees left. Sixteen degrees right."
Picking the safe's lock felt like a child opening a present.
"How long until I have to wait?"
Before casting Stop Magic, Fermi had answered Lycon's question.
"Time isn't important. The incident is. If the incident of you putting into this safe completes, past and future will repeat endlessly and stack in an instant."
"Until the safe is filled by the event."
Fermi winked.
"That's it."
'I'll make you a fortune.'
A five-billion-gold object would spill out; Lycon prepared to catch it the moment the safe opened.
"…What the—?"
Blinking, he found the safe empty.
"Why?"
Thinking he'd miscounted, he put the object he'd brought into the safe, left Warehouse 44, and came back in.
'Does the incident have to end first?'
When he opened the safe again and even the object he'd just placed inside was gone, his face contorted.
"An incident."
The conclusion was clear.
Someone had already caused the incident of removing the safe's contents.
"You tricked me too?"
And as far as he knew, only one person knew the safe's secret.
"Fermiiiiii!"
Blue lightning crackled across Lycon's body.