TFHITS Chapter 241

I shuddered all over, as if I had gained some profound enlightenment.

At that moment, Neril looked at my face and seemed to realize something.

She turned to Kaeld and asked,

“Aren’t you going to talk about me? I’m curious what I was like before the regression.”

Ah.

Neril was trying to buy me time to think.

She had read from my expression that I needed time.

Is this what it means for husband and wife to be of one mind?

Kaeld replied flatly,

“You’re not even worth talking about. You must have already recognized Mide as the leader instead of me even before the seven-year regression.”

“Hm. Well, I don’t remember it, but that sounds about right.”

“The only reason you stuck with the party in the first place was because of Mide. That’s why, when I said I would expel Mide, you said you would quit too.”

“I see. That makes sense.”

“Kh.”

Thanks to Neril, I gained a bit more time.

Let’s think.

When we came to the capital tonight,

There was definitely a conversation I had with Bion.

That conversation was clearly...

-Then I will just call it. Let’s say fifty million.

-Huh.

-If it goes over fifty million, let’s say we get to learn even the secret of the thing that’s been tormenting us.

-Is that something we can just decide like that?

-My intuition has never been wrong. I had a feeling fifty million would do it.

-True enough, intuition really is Mr. Mide’s fundamental weapon.

As if she were reading my thoughts, Bion’s voice rang out.

[Mr. Mide. You’re over fifty million now, right?]

[Yeah.]

[Now you can see the secret of the Primordial Demon King!]

So it really worked.

How on earth did I manage to hit that fifty-million mark?

[I can hardly believe it myself…… the range of the Eye of Omniscience has expanded infinitely now that you have crossed fifty million, Mr. Mide.]

[Hah.]

[I don’t know how you managed to guess the right number. But that’s not what matters right now, is it?]

[Of course not. Show me immediately.]

[Yes. This secret can only be seen by you, Mr. Mide. It seems invisible to anyone with less than fifty million fame. Please use this secret to kill that bastard.]

Tap.

A screen window appeared.

I focused all my attention on it.

But that screen window was somehow different from usual.

No, it wasn’t just the screen.

‘Huh……?’

What is this?

I could feel my body floating.

Suspended in midair, my body slowly descended to the ground.

I blinked and looked around.

‘This isn’t the palace rooftop?’

Right.

This wasn’t a rooftop.

No, this wasn’t the “world” at all.

A bizarre place, difficult to express in human language or writing.

Both pure white and pitch black.

Both fast and slow.

Up and yet at the same time down.

Front and yet behind.

A realm of incomprehensibility, the place I now occupied.

I muttered unconsciously,

“Where on earth is this……?”

That was when...

-Finally, I am able to have a conversation with you.

Goosebumps erupted over my entire body.

The voice I had just heard was echoing inside my head.

A voice I had never heard before.

It sounded male and female at once.

Like an old man and a young child at the same time.

“Who are you?”

-I am the being who spoke to you through the laboratory’s central screen when you regressed 230,000 years.

At those words, I searched my memory.

In the Eye of Omniscience that Bion showed us, when we regressed 230,000 years, there was a sentence we saw first.

-1-20kqpsio11@@#$!gDㅃ[P[Q

A bizarre sentence or rather, a string of symbols.

It was strange that I remembered that meaningless sequence without a single mistake.

-That sentence meant, “Please discover me.”

“What?”

-You and your researchers…… and humanity as a whole were caught in a trap. I wanted to help you somehow.

“A trap, meaning...”

-In your terms, it refers to the Primordial Demon King. As you already know, he made you regress in order to wipe out humanity in one fell swoop.

I was starting to guess who or what this was.

But I couldn’t quite believe it.

So I told myself not to be embarrassed even if I was wrong, and asked carefully,

“Could it be…… the ‘Law’?”

The answer came back quite calmly.

-Yes.

Unbelievable.

The Law actually existed?

-You once called the Primordial Demon King the Law. Back then, I found that very regrettable.

“A-Are you saying the Law has a will? Emotions?”

-Yes.

Another short answer.

“……Why did you find it regrettable?”

-Because I cherish humanity. It saddened me that those I cherish mistook me for a completely different being.

“Why do you cherish humanity?”

Perhaps it was my imagination, but the Law seemed to let out a light chuckle.

-The reason is the same as what you surmised. I have never been ‘fully’ discovered by anyone. I certainly exist, but if my existence is not perceived, it is no different from not existing at all.

“What do you mean...”

-You... that is, humanity  discovered countless ‘me’s’ in a remarkably short span of time. You figured out, one by one, how the world and the universe work. That was an immensely joyful thing, and something I greatly looked forward to.

“…….”

-Even the civilization that gave birth to the Primordial Demon King could not find so many laws ‘in such a short time.’

The voice continued gently.

-I can say this with certainty: within the next five hundred thousand years, you will discover more ‘me’s’ than that civilization ever did. You will.

“……That’s a long time.”

-Well. To me, it feels like a fleeting instant.

I asked once more, cautiously,

“Then how am I communicating with you through the Eye of Omniscience?”

-Because the Eye of Omniscience itself was created by imitating a part of me…… that is, the Law.

“But my researchers and I created this.”

-Yes. But the idea came from you. I helped you make it that way.

“……?”

-I granted you an intuition that transcends humanity.

For an instant, it felt as though my breath had stopped.

The one unique weapon I had always possessed.

More than swordsmanship or fame.

More than all kinds of techniques or petty tricks.

The weapon I trusted and relied on most was intuition.

-The Primordial Demon King had been eyeing humanity for a very long time. I chose you as the one who could break through that crisis.

“……”

-And I gave you a weapon.

“Intuition.”

-Yes. Based on that, you created the Eye of Omniscience, built various systems, and established the laws of the world. The laws of the world you established share many similarities with me, because you made them through the intuition I granted you.

The laws of humanity’s world are the same as the laws of the universe.

Of course, the laws of the universe are far broader and more vast.

But at the points where they overlap, the two are connected.

-I am still hiding in many places.

“What?”

-You have discovered an astonishing number of laws, but compared to ‘my entirety,’ it is no more than grains of sand on a beach.

“……”

-If you overcome this trial, you will be able to discover me in greater numbers, and more quickly. And if you eventually discover ‘all laws,’ then someday all of humanity will be able to sit beside me and share a pleasant conversation.

“……”

-Of course, to do that, you will have to kill the Primordial Demon King. From now on, I will tell you the secret he most wants to hide.

I held my breath, waiting for what would come next.

Soon, the Law whispered into my mind.

I could feel it myself.

My mouth hanging wide open.

My eyes stretched as wide as they could go.

-Now you can kill the Primordial Demon King easily, can’t you?

“Yes. Thank you. Even if you cherish humanity, there was no real need for you to take our side.”

-Not at all. No matter how vast or powerful negative energy becomes, it can never discover me. I have no interest in beings that cannot discover me.

“……Why can’t he discover you? He’s an existence with such omnipotent power.”

-Because...

Perhaps it was just my imagination.

The voice echoing in my head seemed to soften.

-The negative energy can never ‘move forward.’ It is always stagnant.

“……!”

It was exactly the same as what I had said to Aktion in our final exchange.

My answer to the question of whether humanity had enduring value.

Perhaps the reason my thoughts matched the Law’s was because I had received the gift of ‘intuition’ from it.

-You are the civilization that moves forward faster than any other lifeform in the universe. The Primordial Demon King was blocking your steps.

“……”

-If you kill the Primordial Demon King, you will be able to leap forward once more.

“Thank you.”

-Then you should return now.

In an instant, my vision blurred.

The bizarre world where front and back, left and right coexisted began to fade away.

The Law spoke one last time.

-I eagerly await the day we can speak as equals.

When I came back to my senses, my party members were in the middle of a war of words with Kaeld.

“Honestly, Mide being impressive is one thing, but you being pathetic is way bigger.”

“Right? Even if we’d made a random ant passing by the leader instead of Mr. Mide, it would’ve been better than Kaeld.”

“Even if it was before the regression, it still feels disgusting to hear that you took me in as a party member after dumping all the blame on my mother.”

“Kaeld is Kaeld for a reason.”

“Everyone, please forget that I completely fell for his line about turning me human. That’s a part of my history I want erased as badly as Adwin’s embarrassment.”

Kaeld looked on the verge of exploding at any second.

If he waved his hand even once, we would all be annihilated.

There was no way my party members didn’t know that.

And yet, they were provoking him at the risk of their lives to buy me time.

Kaeld said,

“Enough. Let’s end this now.”

And I said as well,

“Yeah. Let’s end it.”

“Hah.”

Kaeld let out a scoffing laugh and turned his body toward me.

A sneer that seemed to say, what could you possibly do at this point?

But that sneer vanished in an instant, as if it had been washed away.

“Y-You bastard. What happened to you?”

He had noticed that my condition,  just moments ago on the brink of death, completely drained of energy, had clearly changed.

No, could it even be described as simply changed?

I had become a different being.

Even stronger than just before, when I had converted fifty-six million fame into power.

An infinite power, unlike anything I had ever experienced, overflowed through my entire body.

Step.

Kaeld took a step back and said,

“W-What the hell is going on? Who are you?”

“Hey, Primordial Demon King. Or…… did you say you and Kaeld are one body now? Then I will just call you Kaeld.”

“……”

“You schemed quite a bit.”

The reason I regressed time by seven years was to avoid the Demon King’s interference, if only for a moment.

I had ‘intuited’ that the instant time was reversed, he would lose the authority to interfere with the world.

It seemed the weapon the Law had placed in my hands had worked perfectly.

“Yeah. When time was turned back, you definitely couldn’t interfere with our world for a while. Bion connected to Trail at that moment, then guided him and had him dwell within my body.”

“……”

“It worked. At least until then. But unlike when we turned back 230,000 years, when you couldn’t interfere for about ten thousand years, the seven-year regression only bought us a few minutes at best.”

A few minutes.

Right after the regression, I had used the Eye of Omniscience on the bandits for the first time through Trail.

His ‘re-interference’ had already begun at that very moment.

“You must have agonized over it too. Thinking, that bastard Mide seems to have used his final trump card, so what do I need to touch, and how, to stop him?”

“……”

“You polluted the researchers’ minds and even made it so they couldn’t have kids. You tormented us by forcing Idria to descend before the negative energy had even fully accumulated.”

“……”

“And even after all that, we didn’t give up…… so what on earth should you interfere with next?”

I grinned.

“It wasn’t a bad idea, really. ‘Messing with the system,’ that is.”