Chapter 195
The waterless land and the ruins of stone buildings that looked as if giants had smashed through them remained the same.
How many times had he come here now? He couldn't remember well.
He must have passed through here at least as many times as he had regressed.
What he always saw here was,
"...This damn yellow cloak."
The giant cloak that covered the hill that had grown even higher in the meantime.
At this rate, couldn't the cloak's owner be crushed to death?
He began slowly climbing up, stepping on the people who had appeared in the story, as he gauged the height of the hill.
When he had first come here, the people forming the hill had mostly been Arndt, the former ducal couple, Amelia, and Leandros.
But now he could see Russel's golden hair scattered here and there, And most notably, Arenheit's body had significantly increased its share of the hill.
He had probably made it that way.
Feeling a strange bitterness at this fact, he climbed to the summit.
His younger brother was still writing a book, wearing the giant cloak that looked like it might crush him to death.
He didn't know for sure, but the pages he had appeared in so far were probably around 195 pages.
"■■■. Don't you think this is a bit too much?"
"What should I do, I can't get out, I can't get out."
"How many times have I died here? It's only because I come back to life."
"I absolutely can't get out. What more should I do, what should I do? I've done it so many times, I've fixed it so many times."
The desperate tone of his muttering to himself while writing hadn't changed from before to now.
It was understandable.
Though it hadn't been long since his younger brother's funeral in Korea, time probably didn't flow the same way in this world either.
Thinking about how many days, how many years this guy might have spent here, he couldn't guarantee he would be fine either.
"■■."
"I can't get out. I can't get out, there's no way, what should I do, I can't get out, I can never go."
"That's enough now."
He thought he had said he would write when he first saw his brother before.
But back then, he hadn't known the true meaning of 'writing.'
From that day when he had naively made promises after experiencing only a couple of regressions, he had come back here through a long journey.
He lightly covered his brother's hand holding the pen with one hand, and took the heavy book with the other.
"Your brother will do it."
When he flicked the cloak off the gaunt shoulders that were blankly looking down at his knees, the cloak, unable to bear its own weight, flowed down the hillside.
When he finally extracted the pen from his brother's hand that had been clenched tight enough to cut off circulation, he could see his liberated brother's appearance.
Not consumed by any color,
His family just as he remembered them.
Strangely, he had the intuition that this moment would be the last time he saw his brother.
"■■■."
"......"
"During all this time... if I were to meet you again, I think I had many things I wanted to say."
From when he saw his brother's cold hands, in front of the white chrysanthemums at the funeral home, throughout the cremation, he had continuously had things he wanted to say.
But now he couldn't remember them well. Perhaps because too much time had passed.
When they were alive, they had never told each other they loved one another,
And had thought they would be family together forever.
After leaving the hillside slum, they had only had each other as family.
So now, to him who had become a complete stranger, there were no words he could offer.
Himself on Earth, and him on this planet.
Perhaps the words that suited them best now were.
"I'll be back. Let's meet again someday."
He hugged his brother's gaunt body.
Though it hurt because their bones pressed against each other, it didn't matter.
He had to hug him as tightly as he could manage.
"Forgive me when we meet later."
Ah, yes. He remembered.
What he had wanted to say to his brother.
"...Don't meet a guy like your brother as family. Live a hundred times happier."
His brother, who had a body with neither warmth nor coldness, was blankly staring at the unfamiliar constellation on the ceiling.
He got up and retrieved a black horn from the hands that had sprouted from the floor.
With his back to his brother who was also Hastur's minion, sitting against the background of misty clouds and an unfamiliar sky, he put the horn to his mouth.
Before the sharp sound could reach the corners of this ruined city, he heard hoofbeats faster than anyone's.
What was running toward him, snorting, was his horse in the form he could only see when he possessed an intact horn.
As he hurriedly slid down the hill, Sleipnir, who had arrived just in time, lowered its body flat before him.
Though it looked hideously like a skinned monster bird, it only looked cute to him.
At first he had thought it was coincidence that a being like Sleipnir was here,
But if this ruined city was a place under Hastur's influence, it was natural.
The Byakhee species was one of the demonic beasts Hastur commanded.
...Perhaps the reason it had liked him from the beginning was also because they had been worshipping Hastur's avatar at Hartmann.
When he stroked its sticky scalp and climbed on, Sleipnir triumphantly raised its head high.
Though they could only meet here,
Though they might not be able to meet for a long time to come.
So he might become lonely, missing even this creature.
"Please take care of me."
-Kiiik!
According to the Pnakotic records, Byakhee were servants of He Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken, and horses of the universe born for the deity.
The only way for humans to freely travel the vast universe was to summon and ride Byakhee.
And Byakhee could also move between dimensions if Hastur permitted it.
Interdimensional movement. Movement between worlds.
If he could find even the slightest possibility.
If he could find a way to go back to before this play was staged, before all the roles were decided.
He opened the book on Byakhee's back.
Though it was already densely filled with text, he boldly tore out the existing pages.
This was already a past story, merely a flow that had been lost in other worldlines.
He knew clearly what he had to do.
He had thought and thought continuously until reaching this decision.
Even during the days he lay blankly, even when his hands and feet died from snow and ice while going north, even when walking through white fire, even when he willingly offered his heart to Yurik!
He had considered many possibilities, thought about gods and people who had no choice but to die.
And he remembered Verde's words.
-Trust those who trust Your Grace, and believe in those who move for you.
Leandros, now he would save him.
For him who had trusted him countless times in every world except one,
He too would tell of a world where he would no longer be consumed.
To see him again, even changing sides was nothing.
The first sentence he wrote in the book that had become completely blank was only one.
[Before everything happened.
The being who would come to have the human name Yurik encountered a stranger from an alien star.]
"Let's go, Sleipnir!"
The Byakhee named after Odin's divine horse that was said to carry people even to the afterlife ran forward to finally take him to the conclusion.
*
[To the respected foolish father, the blind god, the god of idiots, the thing created together when chaos that bubbles and boils for eons began to exist.
It was the one who births infinitely, the one who creates the past and all futures, the Unborn Source.
No one knows why it landed on a small star made of mere smoke and dust.
It might have been transported by someone's force, or it might have migrated with will to 'birth' something according to its epithet.
All it possessed was the desire to create everything and birth life.
Whatever the reason, when it descended to land where the heat of the new star had not yet cooled, it was something that could be called a disaster ruling from sky to earth.
Intense poison filled the atmosphere. There was a source crawling across land where rivers of molten rock flowed blood-red.
What the source birthed either burned to death or melted away when exposed to air.
But the source continued to birth, and birth again.
While beings that could hardly be called life repeatedly died and were born, clouds formed over hundreds of years thanks to the star's gravity that drew in stray planets and lost comets.
When water formed, water vapor evaporated, and water vapor that couldn't escape the atmosphere clumped together and fell as rain.
Though the source that had only repeated birthing and killing since landing on the new planet remained the same, the environment was steadily changing.
By chance, a being the source had birthed flowed into the still-hot sea.
The being grew painfully in the vast sea, desperately devouring anything edible.
The source birthed many on land too.
Among them were those that frolicked in burning rivers and those that dug tunnels underground.
Or there were microscopic life forms at an excessively primitive level, barely managing what could be called activity.
Whatever their future, the source left what it had birthed and moved forward.
For one whose only purpose was creation, the future of what had been birthed was outside its interest.
Most of what was birthed died quickly, but the extremely few survivors among them grew rapidly.
Horned ones. Those without hooves. Those with tough hide. Those with four heads. Those without mouths. Crawling ones. Flying ones. Those with soft suckers. Those that moved quickly on ten legs. Long-headed ones, short-legged ones, bent-backed ones. Black ones, red ones, mud-colored ones.
The source's children formed groups, and they began chattering among themselves while following the wandering source.
Then one day. About 100 million years later, when this star had taken on a fairly gentle appearance.
The source stopped wandering somewhere and settled down.
Continuously shaking and vibrating its body like an endless mud puddle,
Stretching hundreds of slime-dripping arms and legs here and there, melting the non-hostile surroundings,
Letting hang still its body that created scenes resembling its brother where thousands of bubbles rose and sank, bubbling,
While ceaselessly birthing life and simultaneously granting some freedom to its already grown children.
The mercy the blind creator bestowed upon its children was the essence of evolution,
The moment when children copied the creator's power and carried on the future.
During the era when mindless beings achieved prosperity, on one side of the star, another guest was attempting to land.
The extraterrestrial beings called 'Elder Things' took great interest in the source's children that filled the planet.
So deeply impressed were they that the Elder Things captured the source's children, dissected their bodies without regularity, researched them, and even identified their existence.
They utilized the results of these experiments in their own research.
Using parts of the tissue that composed the source's children, they created various things. Living things, dead things, still things.
When the Elder Things found that things stronger than expected were created, they next tried making weaker things too.
When the results of all kinds of experiments filled the star, the Elder Things created one slave species to assist them.
And just as they were about to satisfactorily conclude their research, life was born one last time from the refuse and garbage heap of completed research.
Two hands, two legs. A bipedal animal that could stand and walk by relying on long bones.
The Elder Things felt no emotion at the birth of this strange animal they had never seen before.
They included this 'animal' among their slave species. However, unlike the slave species that were large and strong, the animal was very weak.
Eventually distanced from the Elder Things' interest and unable to mix with the slave species, the animal simply ran away.
When the animal escaped the Elder Things' territory and reached the source's domain.
In the middle of a desolate wilderness, at the edge of a star that had not shed its primordial shadow, the animal encountered for the first time another 'animal' that resembled itself.
The other 'animal,' watching the hesitating animal that didn't know whether to flee or attack, was the first to communicate.
That it had come all this way to save it.
...Of course, there was no way the animal could understand those words.]
-End of Part 1