We drift upon the sea of time.
Each of us rides a ship destined to fall apart, waiting for the moment when wear and erosion finally claim us.
But to an elf, that current is nothing more than a shallow, gentle ripple. That is what the passing years are.
So, O eternal one, do not let go of the cord that binds you to the ship.
For those faint and insignificant lives may one day be swallowed by a great wave and vanish without a trace in an instant.
*
"Could you take a look at this magic of mine?"
Serie, who was floating a pen in the air and filling a book with spell formulas, asked Ainz beside her.
"What do you think of this theory?"
Within the hardbound volume, now transformed into a grimoire, translated Yggdrasil magic had been woven together with meticulous care.
"You made it with Piaveria?"
"Yes. I interpreted the magic you taught me and converted it."
He read the grimoire. Since the magic written in it was one he already knew, it did not lose its usefulness.
"A second-tier spell, then."
Until now, he had relied on the memories engraved into his body to use magic, but as time passed and his eye for analyzing spells sharpened, he had begun to see the complex sequences inscribed within them.
One could say this was knowledge gained from living alongside Serie, a living grimoire.
For Ainz, it was astonishing progress—to the point that it was no longer merely a matter of knowing how to fire a gun, but of being able to disassemble and reassemble it.
It showed just how actively they were exchanging feedback with one another.
If he had learned magic through Piaveria, it might have been efficient, but he would never have reached this level of mastery.
It would have been no different from the days of Yggdrasil, when one learned magic with a single touch.
"Then is it possible to inscribe even higher-tier magic here?"
"Inscribing it is possible, but there is a limit."
"What exactly do you mean?"
"The Yggdrasil magic you speak of is built on step-by-step growth. If someone cannot even use first-tier spells, then even if they learn second-tier spells above that, the results will vary wildly depending on the mage's ability."
That made sense. A game is structured to let one feel accomplishment through gradual growth, so except in unusual cases, it does not allow someone to learn the final branch all at once.
"Then what about the [Time Stop] you used before? By rights, that should be a much higher-tier spell."
He recalled the dance they had shared in the frozen world.
[Time Stop] was a tenth-tier spell, far beyond that.
If Yggdrasil magic grew in stages like the branching of a tree, then was it not strange for Serie, who had skipped that process, to speak this way?
"That was an exception. I was simply fortunate."
"Meaning?"
"It means the affinity was good. Such luck will not happen easily."
To her, who had lived through years scarcely different from eternity, time itself was like something already stopped, and so she had been able to realize that image. But other magic, she said, was not so simple.
"Yggdrasil magic is close to a perfect sequence. If you skip the earlier steps and add variations, it will distort in an instant. If you make even the slightest mistake, a hole will open somewhere."
Unless one had learned the earlier process, trying to learn a higher tier was like writing a new formula into a problem whose method of solution had already been fixed. So she spoke of the difference in affinity.
"The magic that stops time was not something I learned by perfectly mastering the system. It would be more accurate to call it a new spell, altered and twisted into my own form."
So then, the [Time Stop] Serie had used was not Yggdrasil magic after all.
It was a newly developed form, born from interpreting it in reverse.
Put differently, it was something close to creation.
Interesting. Now that the game has become reality, there are cases where the order is reversed, and differences in affinity depending on the target as well.
His flexible mind accepted it at once.
This world was not a game. It was reality, full of countless variables, and he had no intention of denying that.
"If you asked me to learn it again, well... even I doubt whether I could retrace that process a second time. I have no intention of turning this magic into a book."
Was it only his imagination that her words brought him a slight sense of relief?
At that moment, the dance they had shared in the halted world flickered through his mind.
"Then are you saying anything above second tier is impossible?"
"Not impossible. It will simply take time. By my estimate, a hundred years."
"That is long."
"A hundred years passes quickly for the likes of us."
To his surprise, he found himself somewhat agreeing.
It would certainly take time, but considering the days still ahead of him, a few hundred years was no more than an instant, gone in the blink of an eye.
Life with Serie twisted his sense of time so thoroughly that even the time he had spent with Flamme felt like a trifling thing.
"That aside, what about you? Have you made any progress with your magic?"
"I did learn one spell. Would you care to taste-test it?"
"Taste-test?"
On the plate he drew from subspace were grapes.
"I cannot eat, so tell me what you think."
At a glance, they looked like perfectly ordinary grapes.
Serie asked,
"What sort of magic did you use?"
It was not a question born of ignorance.
"Is it magic that changes the color inside the skin to one you like? Or magic that makes the skin easier to eat?"
And beyond those, countless grape-related spells flashed through Serie's mind.
"It is magic that turns sour grapes sweet."
"Ah, that spell. The reverse of magic that turns sweet grapes sour."
Serie popped one into her mouth, made a subtle expression, and swallowed it.
"It is sweet, certainly, but how can a grape taste like another fruit?"
"Could you explain in a little more detail?"
"It tastes like that fruit we ate together before. Sweet, with that crisp bite."
I see.
I tried tying it to the food creation I knew of as knowledge, but was that too much? It seems I cannot reproduce a flavor I do not know at all.
Before becoming undead, the only tastes he had known were processed foods, and after coming here, only Serie's descriptions of fruit.
I thought if I could realize this magic, it would help me create magic that lets me taste things.
Just as Serie was imitating Yggdrasil magic, he too was devising spells that might aid him.
This world overflowed with food unlike before, and so he wanted to experience it.
But just as an ordinary person cannot truly understand the suffering of someone disabled, creating magic that could feel taste was not easy.
And so, after putting an ordinary grape into her mouth, Serie spoke.
Simply and plainly enough for him to understand.
"It cannot be helped. I shall explain grapes to you. The difference with sour grapes is—"
And so the two of them delved deeply into one another's magic.
The magic of this world, realized through image, and the magic of Yggdrasil, established upon a system.
These supernatural arts, which had evolved in opposite directions, were fundamentally incompatible, yet the two of them, each biased toward one side, formed a relationship that complemented the other.
And so, from the completed depths of the sea, they moved toward a shore of boundless stillness.
That was not, by any means, a bad thing.
But there was something Serie alone could not teach him.
One might feel kinship with those of a similar kind, but it was impossible to learn what was different from them.
They could fill in one another's differences, but there was no one to change what was the same in both of them.
Time.
Yes. The two of them were endlessly free from time.
Because they were complete in their very existence, everything else drifted far away.
In the blink of an eye, years passed, and day and night changed places.
Before, there had been Flamme, who kept hold of their time, but this time she did not come.
When he thought of her and went to visit, what he found there was not a red-haired woman, but a silver-haired elf.
Flamme's house.
Inside it, Frieren was reading a book aloud to goblins.
The sight called to mind Snow White and the dwarves from a fairy tale.
"You want to know where Master went? Well, I do not really know either. Master is busy. Hmm... I suppose the last time I saw her was a year ago."
As Frieren read naturally from the book, her mana was still immature, but quiet.
She must already have reached a level where it had become familiar to her.
"Where did she go?"
"Probably wandering around somewhere. She may be eccentric, but she isn't the sort to do nothing."
At that, the goblins nodded in agreement as well.
"Lord Ainz, your timing was unfortunate. It seems you should come again later."
They looked eager to hear what came next in the book.
So he decided to leave it for another time.
There was all the time in the world.
It was the way of thinking of an immortal, one who would live an endless life.
And so he spent time with Serie once more.
On the sea of time, the ship drifted farther and farther away.
When he came again, Frieren was there, unrolling a scroll and writing characters upon it.
"What a shame. She left not long ago. About three and a half years, I think?"
"And the goblins?"
"They said they were heading out on an expedition, so it will be quite a while before they return."
As Frieren was now, there was no visible wavering in her mana.
Yet if one concentrated, one could still detect a faint sense of strangeness. Even so, it would not be easy to pry into that gap.
Time passed again.
This time, Frieren was alone, lying in a flowing stream and idly splashing the water.
"Master? I haven't seen her in quite some time."
"The goblins."
"They left with her three years ago. It may be a very long time before I see them again... or perhaps I never will."
"This time, I shall stay a while before leaving."
"Do as you like."
Life with Frieren in Flamme's house was dull and peaceful.
She spent most of her life repeatedly increasing her mana and suppressing it in order to deceive demons. That was likely a way of thinking only an elf could have.
Though I was little different, wasting time here as well.
One day he would meditate, the next he would hunt harmful monsters in the area, and when food ran out, he would go to the city to buy more.
Sometimes there were unusual days. On those, she would write formulas concerning magic onto scrolls, and among them were spells he had never seen before, wholly unfamiliar magic.
Developing magic?
Perhaps because of the habits he had formed with Serie, his gaze was drawn there without thinking. But she seemed uncomfortable, like a child caught with her diary being read, and hid it in her robes, which only made things more awkward.
While repeating that sort of life, there were times when he would occasionally leave his place, an act meant to keep his being undead from being discovered. It was just as he returned from outside.
Frieren, meditating atop a cliff, said,
"What a pity. Master came an hour before you returned, then left again. It may take even longer before the next time."
The timing had missed so badly it almost felt malicious.
Or perhaps it was someone's meticulous calculation.
"I will come again next time."
But even then, he simply turned back, thinking he could always visit again later.
Flamme, who had always drawn them onward with fierce waves, was gone. Beside him were only elves watching ships drift away into the distance upon gentle swells.
Staying there, his sense of time dulled, and he forgot that time was something relative.
By the time he realized something was strange, time had already flowed by in the blink of an eye, and the ship had gone too far to turn back.
It vanished far away, too distant to see.
Beyond that sea, to a place no one could know.
What lay beneath it, one wondered.
It was likely a sight invisible to those who lived in eternity.
One day, Serie approached holding a scrap of paper and said,
"Flamme is dead."
The news of her death came quietly and without a sound, like a bottled letter washed onto the sand.
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