1.
Sitting on the sofa, I drew out the structure of the troupe and the surrounding streets.
A small folding desk was set out in front of me.
This was the plan.
Well, it barely deserved to be called a plan.
A head-on armed clash.
By the logic that no plan is itself a plan, I had decided this counted as one.
You lunatic, how is charging into a 5-on-5 team fight when you’re not even ready a plan?
If you thought that, I wouldn’t really have anything to say.
But...
The problem was that there was no other way.
Silver Wolf agreed with that too.
In fact, because my combat ability had gone up so much, this had become a plan that actually looked pretty likely to work.
Like the route changed after getting beaten up by a mentor before filming a spy thriller.
If I hadn’t met Asat and Zephiro, I’m sure I’d be watching Adrian twist himself into knots instead of seeing a straight-up showdown.
I’d like to film a spy thriller too, if I could.
What was I supposed to do when this was a time attack and I couldn’t afford to take it easy?
It was all Aha’s fault.
"The troupe leader’s abilities are spatial storage... the rest are basically just slightly above-average Tier 7 fixers."
"The only one I really need to watch out for is Hanabi."
"Well, not just Hanabi. I should be more careful with the troupe leader too. I still don’t know what the last ability is."
The troupe leader really did have two abilities.
What I’d heard from the merchants was all consistent.
The only problem was that he had two abilities, and I didn’t know what the remaining one was.
Information was power.
Hanabi might join in on their side and fight too.
If she teamed up with the troupe leader, there was no telling what would happen.
Silver Wolf shifted in the special seat between my thighs.
"Hey, hey, hey! Why are you moving around like that in there?"
"Huh? What? Ah..."
Silver Wolf didn’t understand a man’s heart.
I’d have to meditate to calm my junior down for a bit...
"...I don’t think there’s any need to calm it down, though."
"Come here!"
After the time for all the roughhousing and fooling around passed.
This time, I really did finish cleaning up and lay down in bed.
Tomorrow was the day of the final battle.
The time had come for Silver Wolf and me to head to the troupe and make a mess of things.
Over the past six days, I’d used my combat power as the foundation while Silver Wolf and I completed the quest for the cartridge.
In other words, I’d carried her.
The Adrian Bus, running in comfort, had leveled Silver Wolf up.
Silver Wolf, LV.10
Her level had surpassed mine.
On Punklorde, every time your level’s first digit changed, it counted as a major leap in social standing.
At this point, she could be seen as a proper citizen of Punklorde instead of an illegal orphan.
There was something else I’d learned while doing Silver Wolf’s quest too.
My eyes were apparently the ability called [Ether Editing].
"...Seriously?"
"Yeah. It’s not an ability derived from a Path."
[Ether Editing] was the ability to intervene in reality and alter it to exert power.
It was a technique only hackers from Punklorde could use, and one that even the galaxy took interest in.
In other words, a delicious-looking local specialty.
Other planets wanted [Ether Editing] too.
Apparently, some places had even adapted it to their own methods and were already using it.
Popular, huh.
Kind of made me jealous.
I’d thought I couldn’t use [Ether Editing].
I couldn’t feel ether at all, and I didn’t have the slightest sense for it.
According to Silver Wolf, it was an instinctive form of control.
And there it was again: there’s no such thing as power without a price.
Damn it, why can’t power just be handed out without a cost?
The price of [Past Sight] was pain.
The more I used it, the more my eyes hurt, and if I overdid it, the pain spread across my entire face.
The price of [Future Sight] was losing my vision.
The more I used it, the worse my eyesight got, and if I pushed it too far, I’d lose my sight completely.
During Asat’s lessons, I’d figured out just how far the limit went.
Pain I could grit my teeth and endure.
But I wasn’t about to turn into a blind bastard without even knowing what was going on.
If I didn’t use [Future Sight] while already in a state of blindness, my vision would slowly recover.
There was a penalty, sure, but the return was so absurdly good that I had no choice but to use it.
It would’ve been nice to learn more, but there just wasn’t enough physical time.
I’d only spent eleven days learning from them.
Even if I was a genius cosplaying as a human with a 1000% growth boost, I couldn’t leap over the gap in actual time.
What I’d learned from Zephiro-sensei was basic swordsmanship, the precautions to take when using a sword, and the bare minimum of training.
But unlike those eleven-day temporary teachers...
My one-on-one master for [Ether Editing] was right beside me.
"It looks like the whole scenery is rewinding, and then fast-forwarding..."
"Damn, my eyes really hurt... even looking for a second hurts."
"Can’t you just look at only the things you want?"
Seeing the far future was impossible.
But if I could only see short, fragmented pieces of the future...
Then instead of rewinding or skipping the entire scene, I should focus only on exactly what I wanted to see. That was Silver Wolf’s logic.
At first I couldn’t even get a feel for it, since it was such a sensory kind of skill.
But Silver Wolf kept helping by using [Ether Editing] right next to me.
Now it was different.
For example...
"What I’m seeing is me five minutes from now, an enemy route I can dodge, and an attack that could become a fatal wound."
"Got it?"
"Fuuuck!!! Success!!! A genius who insults even God has been born!!!"
"Sigh..."
I’d gotten an absurdly broken utility skill that could see both the future and the past.
The price hadn’t vanished completely.
But if using it without thinking felt like having my eyes seared by fire, then using it through incantation cut the pain by about half.
[Future Sight] was the same. It still demanded a much steeper price than [Past Sight], but the speed at which my vision deteriorated had clearly slowed.
It wasn’t a power I could spam recklessly, but having one more trump card was good news.
I’d also watched Silver Wolf’s swordsmanship a bit, so at this point she could at least smash someone in the back of the head if things got desperate.
Using the remaining resources from leveling up, I’d also reshaped the sword to fit Silver Wolf.
"...Still looks like a Mark sword, though."
"I like it this way."
The stone sword, which had once been somewhere between a knife and a normal sword, had grown long enough that you could clearly call it a sword now.
Its length was adjusted to fit Silver Wolf perfectly.
The grip and handle had also been modified for her comfort, making it a custom weapon.
And once she could use the Path of Elation...
Silver Wolf changed her approach, using the Path to strengthen the direction of [Ether Editing].
In other words, unlike me, who was using a pure Path, she pivoted toward reinforcing her own strengths.
She fused the cost of the Path with the cost of [Ether Editing].
That gave her more things she could do.
And she’d already learned the Path of Elation before I ever started training.
Silver Wolf hadn’t just been goofing off while I was away either.
"Adrian, do you really think what you said is true?"
"No idea. Honestly, I was just going on instinct."
The last thing left was the strange sense of déjà vu and unease I’d been feeling.
I visited the troupe and met Hanabi.
We watched a play together.
Then I clashed with the troupe leader and got closer to Hanabi.
After that, we left together and wandered around until Hanabi suddenly went off the rails and we split up.
In the previous loop, Hanabi had lied about her own combat ability and traveled with me.
Didn’t that start to feel weird?
Unless you were an idiot, it gave off a strange sense of déjà vu.
As my level rose, I could see things that had once been invisible, and the sharpening of my senses brought suspicion with it.
That suspicion reached its peak thanks to my final conversation with the troupe leader six days ago.
"Come to think of it, Miss Hanabi has been saying she misses Adrian quite a bit."
"Hanabi?"
"Yes. Adrian is quite handsome, after all... If you have time, please come by for the final performance. It’s only proper to say goodbye when fate allows it."
Didn’t anything about that conversation seem strange?
I’ll tell you the answer.
After meeting the troupe leader, I had never once told him my name.
The same went for Hanabi’s name.
In fact, Hanabi’s name had been something I made up on the spot when we first met.
It was information the troupe leader should not have known.
Of course, it was possible Hanabi had told him.
Maybe they’d chatted over tea and she’d casually mentioned it.
But if I went back over my last memories, Hanabi and the troupe leader had been in an openly hostile relationship.
They weren’t the kind of people who’d laugh together over a name some guy she’d only just met had given her.
It felt like a gear grinding without any oil.
Maybe I’d been watched, but then Zephiro and Asat somehow didn’t notice?
That made even less sense.
However I looked at it, all I was left with was a sense of déjà vu and suspicion.
At the end of that train of thought, I arrived at only one possibility.
Maybe... all of this...
Was a fake play someone had scripted.
Hanabi, the troupe leader, me, and Silver Wolf.
What if we were all just dancing on top of a sloppy, hastily assembled stage play?
What that hidden hand probably hadn’t expected was Asat and Zephiro getting involved.
No matter how I thought about it, Zephiro and Asat were not the kind of people who’d let themselves be toyed with or sit quietly and do nothing.
In other words, a strange fourteen-day gap had been forcibly created in the play.
In a performance that should have had a beginning, middle, and end, the middle and end had suddenly been ripped away.
I had no proof.
Even Silver Wolf had doubts after hearing my story.
And after confirming it again with the pawnshop owner, of course I still had doubts.
The quest conditions were hidden.
Suspicion kept piling up layer by layer.
What the status window wanted from me.
Even the difficulty labeled as top class.
Once again, I felt grateful to Nanook. If not for the red thread Nanook had given me, I might have stayed a useless nobody forever, dancing around in a fake play.
Even the idea that it was a fake play was only my guess.
Still, I wasn’t going to think too deeply about Hanabi.
If she was an enemy, I’d kill her.
If she wanted to stand on my side, I’d keep her alive.
And if she was the hidden hand...
I’d cut her down.
She’d pay the price for deceiving me and making a fool of people.
I’d show her that life wasn’t so easy.
"Adrian, let’s go to sleep already."
"...Yeah. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow too."
One day left until D-Day.
The thinking was over.
Now it was time to act.
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