Chapter 135
The hot sunlight forced its way in, leaving me no choice but to open my eyes.
I clung to my dazed consciousness and raised my upper body.
Only after rubbing both eyes did my vision gradually clear.
I retraced what had happened yesterday—or rather, just moments ago.
Something suddenly came charging at me, then collided with me head-on.
Under normal circumstances, the force would have merely pushed me away, but I felt as though even my soul were being sucked out.
“This is Abyss’s 15th branch, isn’t it?”
It was the familiar place that had first welcomed me when I met my death in Part 1.
It was also the world I had originally chosen as my destination.
What was it?
I did manage to find my way here in the end, but...
Did I really see an illusion? Or did a collision occur when I skipped across the open worlds?
And my question was answered the moment the inn door opened.
“You’re awake, Sis! Do you know how worried I was, nyang?”
“Adella? What are you doing here?”
This wasn’t the Adella from this world.
She still knew nothing about me.
And above all, she was calling me ‘Sis’ instead of NoName.
And the body I had swapped with Adella had returned to normal before I knew it; my swaying golden hair fell into my hands.
“I... I don’t know. A demon suddenly appeared, and I was running away like crazy, but then suddenly you were right in front of me...!”
Adella explained incoherently.
Furrowing my brow, I opened the event window, thinking it couldn’t be...
[14:20][The duration of ‘Soul Exchange’ has ended.]
[14:21][NoName ⥨ Adella]
[14:21][Adella ⥨ NoName]
Could the skill ending have caused Adella to be dragged into this world during the process of exchanging our souls back?
I stroked my chin and thought it over carefully.
Maybe this was for the best.
Then Mephistopheles should still be summoned, and with Adella here with me, she wouldn’t even have to worry about being killed by it.
For a moment, Adella and I met eyes.
“Adella, can you try saying ‘What are you doing?’”
“What are you doing, nyang?”
“Try saying ‘Is it fun?’ too.”
“Is it fun, nyang? Like this?”
Yeah, that pronunciation was cute only when Adella did it. I didn’t particularly want to live in that body.
“Let’s pack our things and leave for now. If we make it as far as where Gene Chronicle was, we should be able to move on to the next world.”
“Wait, Sis!”
Her hand came to rest over mine on the doorknob.
We exchanged glances again as she widened her eyes with a meaningful expression.
“Why?”
“No matter how I think about it, something’s strange here.”
“It is a strange world. We already passed through it once, after all.”
“No, that’s not what I mean! It’s something much more...!”
“Clatter—!”
The door opened on its own before I had even turned the knob.
I nearly lost my balance and fell over with Adella, but I wasn’t going to be fooled twice.
“Are you two all right? Sorry for opening it so suddenly; I didn’t realize you were about to come out.”
At the hoarse middle-aged man’s voice, Adella jumped and fled back to the corner of the room.
He had a short, stocky build, and so many layers of black cloak wrapped around him that I couldn’t make out his shape.
But because he was someone I had seen nearly as often as Adella during my repeated regressions in Part 1, I recognized him at once even if his appearance had changed somewhat.
“Gestalt...?”
“Oh-ho, you know me as well?”
His hair was thick and full.
* * *
-Isn’t that how Gestalt looked in the flashback scene from his side quest?
-Yeah, he’s definitely gotten younger.
-But that wasn’t in Story Mode, was it?
-Yeah, he only appeared in flashbacks.
I cast a sidelong glance and scanned the chat window.
In other words, I had indeed come to a world of the past, but the problem was that it wasn’t the player’s past.
“I have a favor to ask. We make our living by the sword, you see, so we’re hopeless at looking after children. Could you watch her just until tonight?”
As when I first went to the branch chief’s office, we went underground and proceeded down a narrow corridor.
From the light leaking through the gap beneath the last door, it was clear someone was inside.
“The child won’t listen to a word I say... Ha-ha, but since you’re a beastkin too, surely she’ll listen to you, won’t she?”
He laughed shamelessly and patted Adella on the back. Perhaps unable to simply endure the rough blows, she dodged his clumsy hand and came over beside me, linking her arm through mine.
Creeeak—
“Then I’ll leave her in your care. Her mother says she won’t be coming until tonight. She must be a lonely child.”
Perhaps feeling unnecessarily nervous, Adella took a deep breath and carefully opened the door.
The moment the door swung wide, a tiny two-year-old came toddling toward us.
Her short legs couldn’t control her speed, and she sprawled flat on the floor right in front of us, immediately pulling a pout.
“Waaaaaaaaah!”
A cute tail hung from the child’s lower back, and it was the same silver color as Adella’s.
“Adella?”
“No way... Is this me?”
The operators who provided the roadmap probably never imagined that we would regress into Adella’s past.
Life was a chain of uncertainties.
* * *
“Um... hey, kiddo? Could you stop, nyang...?”
“Eek! Sis, do it again! Let my hair down again!”
“Nyaaaaaaagh! Don’t pull my hair like that!”
Adella let out a shriek, making her plea for help clear with her entire body.
The child, by contrast, seemed completely unconcerned with Adella’s scalp.
She twisted the hair this way and that, and every time she wrapped it around a finger and tugged, Adella’s voice rose another decibel.
“Huff... huff... This is a nightmare. There can’t be a worse nightmare than this! Sis, hurry and slap me hard on the cheek!”
-The king cat is giving her a proper lessonㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Is this what they mean by using one evil to defeat another?
-A cat with another catㅋㅋㅋ
-Why is Adella so cute when she was tiny?
-But real-life parenting is different, right?
-Fuck, the way she’s so exhausting is exactly like my daughter...
└ Mister, it’s the weekend, so stop watching the stream and hurry up and feed your kid or something.
It didn’t feel as though we’d been playing together for long, but the sun was already sinking.
Could it be because, as past data, even the time of day had been set to fast-forward?
But perhaps because she had experienced our time together as much longer, Adella seemed eager for night to arrive.
“Adella, do you remember what you were like as a child?”
“As a child? How many people remember what they were like as a child, nyang?”
“Hmm...”
“Come to think of it, it’s amazing. Gestalt knew me since I was little. Isn’t he actually a stalker? Brr, that gives me chills!”
Adella didn’t know that she had visited an Abyss branch when she was very young.
So she seemed terribly troubled now.
I could be excluded as a reincarnator, but thinking back to my first life, humans live on having almost entirely forgotten their memories from childhood.
We must have clearly existed in that past, yet if we wanted to verify that fact ourselves, we had to rely solely on data such as photographs and videos.
Then how are we any different from artificial intelligence?
While Adella was playing with ‘Baby Adella,’ I went to look around the capital for a while.
Thanks to that, I learned a little more about this world.
At Remnant Academy, famous for its crowds, there wasn’t a single NPC to be seen, as if by some miracle.
The only exceptions were people like Gene Chronicle and Alphonse Shepot, who were doing some light warm-ups in the sparring grounds.
It seemed appropriate to call this a kind of ‘learning world’ created for NPCs to remember the past.
This must be the world used to show the flashback scenes the viewers talked about.
-Parents who raised us like this, you are the real GOAT.
-But why does the baby look so realㅋㅋ? I can’t believe she’s an NPC at all.
└ㅋㅋㅋㅋ Childcare (Despair Edition)
-Did they apply ASI to the baby model too, instead of ordinary AI?
-Gene Chronicle is ASI, and so is Giselle Phoenix. They’re all the same ASI, but each NPC gives off a different level of uncanny valley vibes.
-Then I guess they used Super-Ultra-Mega-Awesome ASI.
└ The original form of Mephistopheles, the world’s strongest being, as expected.
-But how do we get out now?
Knock knock—
For the child who had been playing happily, it was the sound of despair; for Adella, the sound of salvation came through the door.
“Could I really meet my real mother? I’ve been curious for a long time—what does the mother who gave birth to me look like?”
The fully grown adult, if anything, looked more filled with anticipation than the child.
But contrary to expectations, the door did not open; instead, unintelligible shouting passed back and forth.
I exchanged a glance with Adella, sat the child down on the floor for a moment, and carefully put my ear to the door.
One voice was definitely Gestalt’s. The other, a sharp, ringing voice, was hard to identify beyond the fact that it belonged to a woman.
“How did you raise her to end up like this?! Do you call yourself a human being? Huh!”
“She’s not even your damn kid, so why are you prattling on so much? If you’re that worried, take her and raise her yourself.”
“People aren’t objects you can just take and raise! Why are you doing this?! You weren’t like this either!”
“Phoo... What kind of person was I, then? I’m asking because I really don’t know at all, Gestalt.”
“I... you...!”
Gestalt’s voice trembled with rage.
At the same time, Adella’s expression as she listened intently grew increasingly grave.
Her hand was on the doorknob.
If she merely turned the knob, she would have been able to see the face of the mother whose appearance she couldn’t even remember.
Yet despite the force she put into her hand, the knob didn’t move an inch.
“Don’t keep living like this. No—if you insist on living that way, then do it alone. But not Adella. Don’t shove your daughter into the pit you’ve dug for yourself, understand?”
“Oh, please. You think I’ll be scared just because you raise your voice? Do whatever you want. Even though she came out of my womb, I never really thought of her as my child anyway. Oh, right—I’m not paying child support, am I?”
“Seriously, you just keep...”
-Why is Gestalt going that far when Adella isn’t even his biological daughter?
-Gestalt’s childhood friend and first love was Adella’s mother.
└ Gasp...!
└ This is a bit much...
└ Reuniting with his first love was the worst possible outcome—the final evolutionㅋㅋ
-The reason Adella was able to survive in the back alleys for over a decade was that Gestalt kept protecting her from behind the scenes.
└ This is truly twisted devotionㅠㅠㅠㅠ
-Where did this story come from?
└ The condition is to clear Mephisto while retaining over 90% HP.
-Adella’s frozen. What do we do...?
“Sis...”
Adella lowered her head and spoke in a hoarse voice.
“...”
“You know... I’m just going to pretend today never happened...”
Moisture pooled around her unfocused eyes.
But only for a moment. She immediately lifted her head and looked at the ceiling.
Having forced her tears back, Adella spoke calmly, her emerald irises glistening.
“I have someone who likes me enough even without hearing things like this... So I’ll just think of my mother as someone who was good, too.”
[system: Session expired.]
[system: Loading World]
[A critical error has been occured: 6a 61 69 6c 62 72 65 61 6b]
“It’ll be okay anyway, right, Sis?”