Chapter 123: Something to Explain
———Wiina———
<3: 01 pm>
“Nineteen days!?” Karra screamed at me once I fully explained to her the phenomenon that caused all these confusions.
“Yeah. Nineteen days. It’s actually quite impressive that she didn’t take that long to come back. Not because of how long she has been away, moreso because the return trip is the most complicated part. Remember those returnees that returned after the Eclipse? They’ve been missing for over a year.” I pointed out. Of course I know her grievance wasn’t due to just the time frame alone. “I can’t really say I know the full reasonings behind every world-hopping trip, they get weird unless you learn how to do it with precise time and location in mind, which is easier said than done.”
“Why did none of us notice!? W-Why didn’t you say anything!?” Her voice became shaky and she shook me for an answer.
“First off, they already choose to seal everyone’s memories of her by the time I notice something was wrong. Secondly, that would just lead to you needlessly worrying.” I explained calmly while she still seemed to be panicking. “And while I theoretically can chase after her, I wasn’t there to witness her being snatched up, so I don’t have a clear lead. Even if I did, I never traveled through worlds before. You need to remember the scale we are talking about here. There is no guarantee that I could do it perfectly.”
Obviously, with how absurd my skill set with this body is, it shouldn’t be hard to perfect it first-try. I just don’t want to take any risk, no matter how small. Perhaps it’s cowardly to do so, but for all I know I’d just jump to the other side to see a corpse.
The world tends to work in a weird way and put you somewhere arbitrary if you can’t pinpoint the exact coordinate and time. There are a lot of odd things that could happen if I tried to meddle further. I mean there should be a good reason other people don’t interfere, right?
The least I could’ve done is to greet her when she got back, but of course something has to go wrong. Thankfully the end result wasn’t anything irreversible, but it didn’t exactly give me a sense of confidence.
“You know how much you sound like a pedantic asshole right now?” She called out. Not exactly a wrong reaction to have considering everything that just happened. It’d be weird if she doesn’t freak out and call me harsh words. Definitely still stings, but I don’t think acting pitiful would help with the situation.
“Yeah, yeah…” I don’t really have anything else to say to defend myself. We have more important things to talk about. “Thankfully she hasn’t missed anything important. We might need to catch her up on the whole ‘raining snakes’ debacle.”
“...Speaking of that. Why was Kenni and Emmie gunning for her the second she came back? I don’t think either of them have the penchant for uncalled violence. I know that’s a bit weird to say.” Indeed, it does seem rather odd. There is a pretty simple explanation for it, however.
“Simply put, they sense her return. World traveling will cause a lot of energy to be spilled out. They probably genuinely think it was an intruder coming into the town to cause havoc at first. Emmie goes in swinging and probably take a few minutes to realize it was Jennla.” I explained. “As for why it’s them that got involved. Probably bored out of their minds since there isn’t much to challenge them outside of people who obviously outclassed them like me or Rico. They took the first chance to fight someone at their level the moment they sensed the opportunity.”
“I’m confused, how strong has Jennla gotten?” She asked, wanting more context.
“Well. From what I can sense, she is in the same ballpark as the two. Usually in isekai stories the returnees tend to be super strong for the setting, and while I won’t deny that such a thing could happen, it’s nowhere near a guarantee. She obviously comes back a lot stronger, but nowhere near my tier of power.” It might not sound that impressive to not be able to easily handle those two, but there is a fact that needs to be reminded. “Remember that those two could level a city, it’s not as if she returned with a measly gain.”
“Huh? They could do what!?” Karra sounded quite surprised at the declaration. I never update her on everyone’s progress so it’s only natural that she would be caught off guard by something like this. I think she got the idea that they are stronger than her at this point in terms of raw strength, but she never saw them deploy all their strength. Heck, she never goes all out unless we’re in a dungeon. Fighting in there versus outside is a whole different game.
“Well, in terms of mana pool and output, they could theoretically do it. You’re only lacking behind by a little bit, so you should be able to do it too.” I pointed out. “The reason the fights don’t look that flash or destructive is because they are focusing on fighting one person, and inside a dungeon is very durable, so any stray attacks that could destroy buildings won’t destroy those walls.”
Her expression tells a lot. She clearly doesn't believe that her or those two could in fact destroy a city. I mean, it’s not exactly on the level of destroying it all in one fell swoop, but it wouldn’t take long to destroy an average city. Even Philadelphia won’t last longer than an hour if they put their mind to it.
Now there isn’t really a good way to convince her without asking one of them to try doing it, or even Karra. The obvious problem is that none of them are just going to destroy an entire city just to prove a point.
“Just take my word for it. So don’t recklessly throw out attacks if you don’t need to.” That’s the least I could ask her to do, so she doesn’t accidentally cause any tragedies.
Karra has been slowing down in terms of growth compared to those two. She was never as talented as them in regards to cultivating power, just nowhere near as much latent potential. The reason she was above them for a few months was entirely due to me training her personally, and she has been slacking on that front in recent date, which isn’t surprising, it’s not as if she has any important milestone she needs to reach, and I don’t want to force her if she starts to lose motivation. Those two don’t really have much else to do, so they have a lot of time to train by themselves. Speaking of things to do…
“By the way, are you not gonna talk about it on stream? You have one scheduled in a few hours, right? What was that gonna be about?” I asked, since she only mentioned it briefly yesterday.
“Huh? Oh, that. I was actually gonna go into the dungeon and stream myself fighting for a bit. Feel like I haven't been doing that type of content in a while.” She explained. Ah, so less of a ‘let’s talk’ kinda stream. I see. “I think this news coverage thing isn’t gonna work on this topic, at least not today. Who knows how Jennla will think if I just spill the beans.”
“Hm. Fair enough.” I guess she won’t actually say anything publicly regarding this topic for a while. Now I don’t really think the others are so patient and calm, those onlookers who have zero clues about what is actually going on. Many are probably panicking, which combined with more miscreants coming out of the woodworks it definitely isn’t a good look. “I can’t imagine your viewers not shutting up about it though. Some would probably enter the stream just to ask for explanations.”
“I’ll just say I’m looking into it and hope things will die down. Dealing with those kinds of people became more and more common as time went on.” She said with a slightly bitter tone. Well I’m not gonna press her on that front.
“Alright then.” I said, looking to pivot the conversation to something she will be less frustrated by… Now let’s see here…
“By the way, why were you fighting her in the ocean?” She asked before I could come up with a topic. I guess I didn’t have the time to explain to her until now. That fight took way too long for my liking and a few things came up afterward. Not that it would help with Jennla’s situation, she came back when I was already done with all of that anyway.
“Oh. She just barged into my front yard and demanded a fight immediately. I flew away just to make sure we didn’t start the fight in the town. I have to switch locations.” It’s pretty straightforward, she just wanna fight after being interrupted yesterday. For some reason she just chose to stay in this time period. Fighting her off today doesn’t really convince her to leave just yet, but she did promise to not harass me for the time being.
“Sounds rough.” She remarked. Indeed. Taking way too much of my time. “By the way, her presence wouldn’t cause any problems, right?”
“It shouldn’t. Time works in a very simple fashion. It won’t let any kind of paradox happen. It works as a stable time loop. An act that intrudes on the past was always meant to happen. It is considered part of the natural flow of time.” If it worked differently, the world would probably implode on itself. The damages done to the space-time continuum would be too much and would just accelerate the ending of the world.
“Well that’s nice to know.” She commented. “...Wouldn’t that mean it is impossible to change the trajectory of her future then?”
“Indeed it does. It’s impossible to change it, which is probably why she is choosing to stay here. It wouldn’t really matter what she does here, it won’t affect her in any way.” It’s an overall secure mechanism, there is nothing to really worry about. “Even if she chose to kill her past self, it wouldn’t work. There will be cosmic forces preventing her from doing so. However, I’m pretty sure she already knows that.”
“Feels a bit… I don’t know. Depressing? From my impression it doesn’t look like she ended up very well?” She said, sounding way more concerned than she should be.
“Any concerns you have, it’s best if you bury it deep. Even better, forget it entirely.” I firmly instructed. If this is going to eat away at her, then it’s best for her to never think of it again. “There are things in this world none of us could really oppose. This is just one of them.”
She looks even more concerned with my words. I was supposed to help her feel less stressed out about all the crazy things happening. Looks like it’s not working. Now what else could I say to help her out, or maybe an act?
“...Look. If it’ll help you clear your mind, we can do it early today.” Let’s try this out to see if it’ll work.
“W-What!? Where the hell did that come from!?” She said with her face completely red, basically forgetting everything else we were talking about. Okay, that seems to work.
“So? Do you want to?” I asked with a straight face.
“I have something else to do later you jerk! Save that for later!” She shouted loudly. Well at least she isn’t depressed anymore.
———Kenni———
<4: 03 pm>
Man… Feels like we didn’t quite get to the climax. Maybe if I didn’t try to perform a trade then she wouldn’t have stepped in? I was trying to make the fight more spicy but I guess I was taking too much punishment than I needed to.
Who would’ve thought that nerd would’ve come back so strong? With all those novels nonsense you’d think she’d decimate Emmie and I, but she just coincidentally came back about as strong as we are?
“You’re still dwelling on that fight earlier?” The one in orange and white asked, walking up to me and blocking the view of the slightly muddied sky.
“And what of it? You could’ve intervened at any time but you didn’t.” I pointed out. Isn’t this town supposed to be a shared territory? Surely she would be the one to reprimand any ‘foreign’ entities. “Seriously, do your job.”
“And ruin your fun? Not that it looks like it was very satisfying by the end.” She said with a hint of mockery as she took a few steps away. “You sure take her absence and return well. I bet most of your classmates are panicking and confused right about now.”
“Yeah. Bet it’d be a fun watch, but probably not something I could chime in without getting yelled at way too many times for my liking.” I still want to lay down and rest anyway. I didn’t use all of my energy during the fight, but it still left me quite winded. “...So why didn’t you stop her from being plucked away?”
“Those kinds of things are almost always instantaneous. It’s not like I have clairvoyance. Even if I did, it couldn't account for everything.” …Somehow, it felt like there was falsehood in those claims. “It’s just Walsuna and I, and Mana, I guess. The other guys have their own things to do and places to be. It’s just one slip-up. It’s more convenient to make everyone forget for a while.”
“Certainly a rather cruel method, not that the alternatives are much better.” I said with a sense of melancholy. “Well. All’s well that ends well. I shouldn’t blame you too much for it. Not that I think those are the only reasons you have in your head.”
“Are you sure you should be playing smartass with me? I know I don’t try to appear intimidating all the time, but I haven’t been subtle with my nature now, have I?” She said with a brief glare that I could make out in the corner of my vision.
“Just saying what I think. Nothing more than that.” I said with a small relaxed smile. “No need to get bothered with the little old me.”
“Hmph. Whatever you say. See you later.” She waved her hand and fully walked out of view.
…I still feel like I am missing something important, but I get the feeling no one is going to tell me, no matter how much I insist…