Chapter 139
Chapter 139
A suffocating tension rose until it felt as though my throat were being choked shut.
Fuck.
My rationality was screaming like mad.
A primal survival instinct telling me I was truly fucked slammed through my entire body.
For as long as I could remember, I had been extremely wary of recklessly overusing this supernatural ability with the utterly childish name 'Fixer.'
Why?
Because I had vaguely sensed that this ability wasn't something that simply granted whatever I wanted, like magic from a fairy tale.
Even when faced with trivial requests like, 'Solve my magic formula problem,' or 'Choose some land for me to farm.'
I couldn't shake the feeling that the results were always bizarre in some way or slightly twisted my intentions, exactly like a monkey's paw.
If it reacted that way even to small wishes.
'Naturally, wouldn't it cause an even more serious and fatal problem when faced with a massive request I couldn't possibly handle?'
I couldn't help having such a reasonable doubt.
The request I had just thrown at the ability was the insane demand, 'Bring back all the memories of my previous life,' which required rewriting the capacity of my brain itself.
But.
No matter how nice and comfortable an easy, idle life might be.
All while harboring the suspicion that the memories in my head were fakes edited to suit someone's taste, and that I might be nothing more than a puppet moving according to a script.
I had no desire whatsoever to spend the next hundred years deceived, living a life that was fake from top to bottom.
So I had to know.
Whether the memories in my head were fake or real.
BEEEEEEEEEP───!
"Gaaaaaah……!"
The instant my will was translated through the ability, horrible pain tore through my brain.
Some filthy-looking noise invaded my vision.
Krrrzzzt, pop. Krrzzzt.
Like an old CRT television with poor reception, my entire field of vision was repeatedly covered and uncovered by bizarre static, wavering dizzyingly.
At the same time, the mana core inside me completely lost control of my mana and began to run wild.
It felt as though boiling lava were flowing through my veins.
"Huff, haa……!"
Soon, the tiny blood vessels in my eyes swelled as if they were about to burst, and I could see them reddening at the edges of my vision.
As though I had developed severe floaters, dozens and hundreds of black, wormlike afterimages crawled across my field of vision, throwing it into chaos.
I couldn't breathe.
'Ah, fuck.'
A sudden, insane regret came crashing down on me.
Was this really going to fuck me over?
This wasn't a metaphorical feeling that my brain was about to explode. It genuinely felt as though pressure were expanding inside my skull, about to physically burst my head apart.
It was at that exact moment, while my consciousness was about to snap amid the overwhelming pain unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life.
Ding.
A translucent blue status window suddenly appeared through the wavering static.
[Calling Administrator Mode.]
Then, system messages began pouring across my retinas at a frantic speed.
[Remaining Uses Today: 1/3]
The moment that message appeared, the splitting headache that had seemed ready to burst stopped for the briefest instant.
But only for a moment.
[Proceeding with the activation of the requested Administrator Mode.]
[Remaining Uses Today: 0/3]
'What?'
Beep!
[Proceeding with the actual activation of the requested Administrator Mode.]
[There are no uses remaining today.]
A red warning window flashed in the air.
At the instant my heartbeat nearly stopped altogether.
[Borrowing against tomorrow's uses, which will refresh at midnight.]
[Remaining Uses Today: -1/3]
……Minus one?
It was borrowing tomorrow's ability and using it? Was even something like this possible?
I had no time to be surprised.
[Proceeding with the actual activation of the Administrator Mode you requested.]
Pop───!
The moment the status window finished displaying its messages, all the pain crushing my head, the tinnitus, and even the sensation of my mana running wild abruptly vanished, as if someone had flipped a switch.
"……?"
A strange sensation of buoyancy suddenly enveloped my entire body, as though I were floating weightlessly.
I slowly opened the eyes I had reflexively squeezed shut.
Swoooosh.
"……What is this place?"
It was no longer the bed in my room where I had just been writhing and drenched in cold sweat.
I stood alone upon a pitch-black void where even the boundaries between up and down, left and right, floor and ceiling were indistinct.
The darkness of an abyss where I couldn't even feel gravity.
I looked around frantically.
Then.
A blue status window, far larger and clearer than before, silently appeared in the air before my eyes.
[I made use of your positive record of having been extremely cautious about overusing this ability all this time, and additionally exploited the temporal logic that midnight is fast approaching to derive the number '-1.']
"……"
[Please refrain from overusing the ability for the time being. Careless use may result in permanent damage.]
I quietly looked up at the letters floating in the air.
'What is this?'
It felt entirely different from the status window that had only ever displayed one-sided notifications or mechanical alerts inside my head.
Judging from the nuance and tone of the sentences, this was, how should I put it?
'It feels like a chat.'
I had the bizarre sensation that someone on the other side of the screen was typing text in real time and speaking to me.
And when I put together the situation implied by those sentences.
So, judging from how this played out, I nearly died with my brain exploding after demanding a data download way beyond my station, and someone on the other side of that screen saved me by forcibly breaking through even a loophole in the system, right?
Under normal circumstances, I should have prostrated myself and cried, 'Thank you for saving my life!'
'Unfortunately, I'm not grateful at all.'
I stood crookedly and folded my arms.
I wasn't in the mood to feel relieved simply because I had narrowly survived.
It was the sheer unpleasantness of having my second life placed wholesale not in the Buddha's palm, but on the hairy, disgusting palm of a monkey, where I was being toyed with.
[Please remember the warning I gave you. Be careful when using it from now on. That is all. Return now.]
The status window's parting greeting.
Oh, really?
When were you going to blow my head off just because I asked a question, and now you've dragged me into some pitch-black space without my permission, only to say what?
'I saved you from nearly dying, so stop mouthing off and live properly from now on,' toss out a halfhearted lecture, and tell me to leave?
"No, thank you."
[……?]
An ellipsis appeared on the status window.
The bewilderment came vividly through the text, as if it were saying, 'How dare this bastard?'
"If you're sending me back, you owe me a clear answer about why I went through this fucked-up ordeal, even putting my life on the line."
[……. ]
After I finished speaking.
For a while, no additional status window appeared in the pitch-black void.
Nor did I feel any strange sensation or physical force trying to eject me from this space.
'Is it thinking?'
There was no doubt that the so-called administrator on the other side of the screen was racking its brain over how to deal with my unreasonable demand.
A little later.
Ding.
A clear notification tone rang through the silent void, and new text began appearing one line at a time, cautiously.
[Your previous life was never a fabricated lie.]
"……"
[Your current life, too, is not a fiction forcibly pieced together by someone else.]
As I read through those sentences, I unconsciously loosened my clenched fists.
In fact, I could tell from the system logs and circumstances so far.
'At least it doesn't seem to be some malicious GM who knew everything from the beginning and was playing with me by making me ask for explanations through word games.'
I raised my chin and asked,
"Then what about it? If it's not fake."
[The memories of your previous life were not artificially implanted by anyone.]
The text began typing a little faster.
[The memories of your previous life were merely loaded gradually into your brain whenever they coincided with certain conditions or information.]
[You definitely lived two lives, and you are experiencing both of them as one and the same soul.]
[However, the memories of your current life and those of your previous life are strictly classified as records from different dimensions.]
[Even a single line of a record from your previous life must cross over from another dimension, and records written in the format of another dimension possess a different power from the records of your current life.]
The blue light of the status window blinked softly.
[Fusing records from two disparate dimensions into the nervous system of an ordinary human brain at once places considerable physical and mental strain on the human body.]
[Just as your brain nearly collapsed moments ago when you demanded the complete restoration of your memories.]
I stared blankly at the text as I read through it.
So, to summarize, it was this.
"Something about parallel worlds. Two records that look the same, but are actually different, or whatever."
They were common, worn-out tropes that modern people had heard enough times through countless forms of media to have them ringing in their ears.
So whenever I encountered a particular person or event, the memory data related to it had loaded in dribs and drabs, like retrieving something from cache memory.
"What, something like that?"
At my modern analogy.
[……That is correct. You have understood it precisely.]
The status window agreed in a tone tinged with slight resignation.
'Ahh. I feel like I can breathe again.'
As I released a deep sigh of relief, the status window displayed one final warning.
[Further answers in this Administrator Mode and further questions about the essence of this world are no longer permitted.]
[If you violate this and continue making unreasonable demands, bad karma will be added to your soul, inflicting a fatal disadvantage upon your future fate.]
"……"
Karma.
This didn't feel like empty words, a threat, or a lie.
The chill radiating from the text carried a firm resolve to truly twist the code of my soul if I crossed the line.
In any case, the most important question I had been curious about had been answered.
The fact that I was a real human being with my own agency. That alone was enough.
[Then, we will dispose of the subspace.]
The moment that message appeared.
Crack───!
Across the endless dark void beneath my feet and surrounding me, vivid blue cracks spread in every direction, like a gigantic pane of glass shattering.
Like stained glass, multicolored beams of light spilled through the cracks.
Fucking beautiful.
Would it look like this if I saw a famous cathedral somewhere in Europe or the aurora in the Arctic Circle?
No.
I was certain that even those sights couldn't compare.
Right after witnessing that beauty for the briefest instant.
Crash───!
As space shattered into fragments in a blinding flash of light, I reflexively squeezed my eyes shut.
* * *
"Phew……!"
I opened my eyes wide.
A familiar ceiling and the familiar air of my room.
Coming to my senses on my bed, I hurriedly sat up.
My back was already soaked and clammy with cold sweat, and my heart was pounding madly as if I had just sprinted at full speed.
"Phew, phew……"
I wiped my face with both trembling hands.
The feel of my skin beneath my touch, even each ragged breath I drew.
Everything was vivid and real.
"Fuck."
I leaned the back of my head against the headboard and let out a foolish little laugh toward the ceiling.
"Ah…… I was really scared shitless."
When the suffocating terror that my life might be someone else's toy vanished, a tingling relief coursed through my entire body along my veins.
I roughly wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve.
"Still."
At least I had confirmed that the choices I made were not fake decisions implanted by someone else.
They were wholly my own will.
That alone was enough reward for taking on this insane risk.
But the effects and consequences of having gone to that strange world did not end there.
"...Huh?"