I left Mr. Mittens behind, and she took me to the eastern area of a nearby forest, close to a river.
She looked around to be sure there was nobody else in the vicinity, and she dropped her hood. Her face was fully exposed.
“What...?!” I instinctively jumped back and reached for my gun, leveling the sights on the woman immediately. The face that my gun was pointed at was absolutely beautiful; she was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.
But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was her red eyes. Her red eyes and hard ‘hair,’ the way the sun glittered and reflected from the top of her head. The way she shimmered much like the creatures I’d seen in Roadmare, and then later on in Xenoahs.
“A Dominant Construct...?!” Shit, how did one infiltrate Brunhild?! The sensors didn’t go off!
“Please wait. My intention is not to fight you.”
“...What?” You don’t want to fight? What?
“I am Lycee. If you are this Mocheyzuki Tooya, then you know Endymion, do you not?”
“Endymion...? You mean Ende?” He had a name like that? Man...
“Endymion has not yet returned from the space between worlds. The effort should not be monumental. That is why I would like to request you retrieve him.”
“Retrieve...?” I was extremely suspicious of this chick and had no idea what to think. Suddenly the girl, Lycee, threw something towards me from beneath her robe. It was a small triangular prism, around ten centimeters in length.
“If you pour magical power into this... Then Endymion shall be called here, apparently.”
“Apparently?”
“That is what Endymion told me. I have never tried it. I lack what this world refers to as magical power. He said that if I was ever to be in trouble, then I needed to seek out the sovereign of Brunhild. Mochizukey Tohya.”
What the hell... This chick is definitely a Dominant Construct, so why’s she working with Ende? Isn’t he an enemy of the Phrase? Is this a trap, maybe? I glanced over to Lycee with suspicious eyes, but I read no emotion on her at all. Still, something about her felt different to the other two I’d encountered before.
I poured a little of my magic into the prism, but nothing really happened. Is it broken...?
After that failure, I gradually increased the amount of magic I was pouring into the prism, until I’d filled it with about a tenth of my total magic. Then, it shattered into several tiny shards.
“Whoa!” I pulled my hand back from the splintered prism, and the debris floated up into the air to form a large circle. Ende suddenly appeared inside the middle of the circle, passing through it almost like it was one of my portals.
“Ah. Touya, huh? About time... You really saved me. If you hadn’t done that, it would’ve been another half-year or so before I could come back. Thanks... Man, I’m back now, Lycee.”
“I see you’ve returned, Endymion.” Ende smiled as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. His scarf fluttered in the breeze as he set foot upon this world once more.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Man, where should I even start...”
“Tell me everything. I’d like to know all the details from the beginning.” Ende began speaking as he sipped his freshly-brewed tea. We were both sitting in my castle. Lycee sat next to him, sipping her own tea much in the same way she had been sipping her sake earlier.
The only other person in the room was me. I wasn’t keeping anyone else in the dark, I just wanted to be sure of the situation first. It was serious.
“That means I might end up talking for a while, is that fine?”
“That’s fine. Let’s start with something simple. That girl, Lycee. Is she one of the Dominants?”
“She is, yes.” Ende continued to sip at his tea.
“The Dominant Constructs are the highest tier of the Phrase species, right?”
“That’s correct. Lesser Constructs, Intermediate Constructs, Upper Constructs, and Dominant Constructs. Above them there is only the Sovereign. The Dominant Constructs, as the name suggests, exert dominance over anything lesser than them. They also have higher capacity for intelligence and emotion. Well, they’re not very good at the whole emotion thing, mostly.” He flashed me a wry smile as he looked from Lycee to me.
“Let me just get one thing straight, then. This girl isn’t an enemy, right?”
“The concept of an enemy depends on circumstances, Touya. If you and your allies decided you wanted to kill the Sovereign, then that would make us your enemy.” Ende glanced at me, a subtle hint of challenge in his eyes.
“Are you one of the Phrase, Ende?”
“I might’ve mentioned it in the past, but I’m simply one who crosses worlds. I’ve been called many things in the past. A drifter, a Shift Walker, l’etranger... The list goes on. I was born in a world that exists ‘higher’ on the ladder of reality, at least compared to this one. I have the ability to traverse worlds, up and down, but only worlds ‘below’ my own. I don’t have omnipotent power.”
So he can move between worlds... That’s an incredible power, honestly... Still, he said he can only cross to lower worlds, but I wonder if that means he could visit Earth, too...
“During my travels, I found myself on a certain planet. It was the world the Phrase came from. The Crystal Planet, Phrasia. It was there that I met the Sovereign Phrase. Though the title is gender-neutral, it might be best to refer to her as a queen in this sense. She was a woman, after all.”
Huh... The Sovereign Phrase is female?
“We spoke with one another about many topics. We spent many years together on that world... It was nice. Eventually, she, well... She wished to live with me. I too, wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. But my people, the Drifters... We simply can’t settle down. We can’t chain ourselves to one world. We Drifters are driven by the sense of exploration and freedom that a new world brings. That’s why she decided she would come with me. There are geniuses in other worlds, after all... And it took her some time, but she came up with her solution. Her method to traverse worlds.”
That makes sense. Just because a world is lower on a ladder doesn’t mean it’s necessarily inferior. The scientific advancement on Earth is far beyond the stuff in this world, but the magitech stuff that can be applied here is leaps and bounds past some of our stuff. We can’t instantly heal any wounds on Earth like they can here with magic, after all. But still... traversing worlds like that...
“So you’re telling me she became the Sovereign Core, breached the boundary of worlds, started to absorb power from people in the new worlds, and used that energy to climb upward... Right?”
“Right. Her hypothesis was that if she reached the heights that I originally came from, she could acquire a method to become an existence like me. Then, and only then, would we be able to live a full life together. That was her plan.” Ende looked downward, casting a sad frown to the floor. Lycee didn’t seem to pay much attention. She was munching on Lu’s cookies like a small woodland creature. Small, cautious bites. She was fine with the sake, fine with the tea, and now fine with the cookies... But she ate really slow. I wondered if she had ever tried these things before. I turned away from her and looked back to Ende as he spoke up once more.
“The Dominant Constructs protested this, of course. The most vehement of her protesters was the one that I encountered the other day, Ney.”
“You met Ney, Endymion?” Lycee stopped her slow gnaw to question her companion.
“Hm? Oh, yeah. She’s looking healthy.”
“I see.” Lycee shrugged and began eating the cookies again. She wasn’t expressing much in the way of emotion, but it seemed like she was familiar with Ney to some extent.
“Yeah. I was attacked after that actually, by one calling himself Gila.”
“Oh, that guy? He’s a total hothead. He’s one of the people after her power, y’know.”
Yeah that doesn’t surprise me at all. He seemed like a pompous kind of guy.
“Back t
o the story... the Dominants protested her decision to travel across worlds. They all had their reasons, of course. Some were scared for her safety, some wanted to keep her strength in the world’s ecosystem, some simply wished to take her power for their own. The Sovereign is the lifeblood of all Phrase, and gives them their supernatural resilience. Without the Sovereign, all Phrasekind would lose that power. They were scared of what might happen. None of them realized that all they had to do was agree on a new Sovereign to keep the species unified. Even if they didn’t have the same power she had, they could still go on. She hoped that they’d come to realize that in time, and left the world of the Phrase with me at last.”
“So it was like you were eloping because her family protested the marriage, huh...?”
Ende smiled a little bitterly at my comment.
“I guess that’s an appropriate analogy, yes. I didn’t kidnap her or anything, we simply wished for the same thing. We did fine for a while. We ascended worlds together. When her core made a pit stop in order to gather enough energy, I would while away my days exploring the new world, meeting people and visiting places. I was alone, but she was with me in spirit. When it was time for her to move, I would move with her. Once she emerged from the body of the local lifeforms, I could sense her presence, and I knew it was time to go. But then one day, something unprecedented happened. The Phrase began invading a world that we were staying in.”
“Wait, wait. You mean the other Phrase gained the power she had to move across worlds?”
“In a sense, yes. She tried several different methods of crossing the boundary. The easiest was to tear at the fabric between worlds, and force her way through. But she and I agreed that such a method was risky, and decided not to employ it. Shattering the boundary of a world’s protective barrier would leave that world completely vulnerable to external threats, after all. We wanted to avoid the loss of innocent life in our pursuit of greater heights. That’s why she became a core in a death-like state, and used a more benign method to travel. But a certain faction of the Phrase back on the home world discovered the more dangerous path, and began forcibly ripping down worlds to come after us.” What came to mind was the image of Ende running away with the daughter of a mafia Godfather, and the criminal goons coming after him in violent pursuit.
Naturally in that kind of story, the hero would be shot to pieces if they were ever found.
“We left that world before they could find her, and we escaped unscathed. But we later learned that the world we fled from was completely annihilated. It was then that I met with Lycee, and she informed me of what was going on. Since then we’ve been chased, trying not to stay too long and hoping others wouldn’t get harmed.”
“I understand how you’re traveling, but what about that girl... Lycee? How about her?” I didn’t get it. If Ende could bring someone with him, then why did the Sovereign bother entering a near-dead state?
“I can bring one or two people across worlds with me, it just takes a little longer. But what the Sovereign... What she wished for wasn’t simple movement. She wanted growth, evolution. She wanted to move alongside me, not just because of me.” That made sense enough, kinda. It was more like her goal was to be reborn, go from Phrase to another being entirely. In a sense, that made her similar to me. Only I’d achieved it.
But I’d been directly changed by God Almighty himself. If she was slowly ascending the spiral staircase of world hierarchy, then I’d taken the express elevator straight to the top and been granted special privileges.
“We’d been ascending the worlds one by one, but they’ve been lurking outside each world, getting the timing right and attacking us right as we leave the protection of the barrier. There are worlds with stronger boundaries than others. Any time we were in a world with a weak boundary, they’d pour through and try to reclaim the Sovereign. Many of the worlds were capable, too. A lot of races from other worlds were capable of fending them off. Naturally, I lent them my aid as well. Just like I’ve been working in this world, too. I’ve been killing them wherever I can, holding them back and preventing them from hurting her. Finally, we reached this world, some several thousand years ago... And it was here that a massive Phrase invasion happened.”
That was the great invasion from five-thousand years ago, then... So Ende really was here back then.
“I had to step in at the time, too. The Sovereign was very close to being found, humanity was being razed pretty hard. I fought as hard as I could, but I was only one person. Lycee didn’t assist me.”
“I have no intention of raising a hand to my kin. I simply wish to see where the Sovereign arrives in the end.”
“She’s just like that...” Ende shrugged a bit. Lycee clearly had no intention of fighting against the Phrase.
“Back then, the boundary protecting this world was completely shredded. The Phrase poured in, overflowing and destroying everything in their path. There were Dominant Constructs all over, too. It was a full-scale invasion. Humanity and the beast races were unable to do a thing. Honestly, I was going to give up. I was going to find the Sovereign, take her with me, and leap to another world. But just as things reached their lowest... the barrier was repaired. I don’t know how or why. But I knew that there was something I could do. I used my abilities to move all Upper Constructs and Dominant Constructs outside the barrier. Just like I did to Ney the last time, but on a much larger scale. But the strain it put on my body caused me to lose my powers for five-thousand years. I was no longer able to traverse worlds. I was trapped between worlds, floating until now. After I moved us all outside, the people of this world diligently killed all the Lesser and Intermediate Constructs, apparently. Then, after my powers returned, I came across you, Touya.” Ende’s long-winded explanation took me by surprise.
This is a pretty broad scale, holy crap... How many worlds has he been through, I wonder... Just how long has he been alive...?
“I think it’s unfortunate that in attempting to prevent other worlds from coming to harm, you actually herded danger toward them.”
“Indeed. I won’t excuse myself here. If we hadn’t come here five-thousand years ago, many people would’ve survived. We’ve been sacrificing the safety of other worlds, of millions of lifeforms, for our own selfish ends. But there’s no way we could stop now. We’ve come so far, to stop now would be an affront to our original promise. I will take her with me, no matter what. Even if every world becomes my enemy.” Ende’s determination danced along his gaze. He was determined, but oh so irresponsible. He was selfish, and she was selfish. They really were only considering themselves. But he acknowledged that and owned up to it, and still carried on. I couldn’t admire him for that, but I could respect the incredible willpower he required to live with such guilt.
“Now you’ve heard my story, Touya. What will you do with this knowledge?”
“...Really there’s nothing I can do about the situation as it is. This world will end if it comes to the point where the Phrase acquire the Sovereign Core, because they’d likely have to slaughter millions to find it. Taking care of you wouldn’t do much, honestly. I don’t want the Phrase to kill us. I’ll wipe out any Upper or Dominant Constructs as they come to us. No matter what you want to do, that’s what my plan is.” I stared at Lycee as I made my declaration, knowing full well she probably didn’t want her ilk to die. In response, she opened her mouth.
“I cannot approve, but neither can I stand in your way. If you truly must do battle with my kin, then I will remain an onlooker.”
Guess that means she won’t do anything even if I declare war. Good.
“Then you won’t complain if I commit genocide against the Phrase?”
“We are the species that moved to attack other worlds to begin with. We are immoral. If the Phrase must die for their hubris, then I will accept that as my species’ fate.” Part of me wondered if she wasn’t fighting so that she wouldn’t be killed, too. The Phrase wouldn’t go extinct so long as she was alive, after all.
Oh, wait... There’d still be some Phrase hanging around on their home world, I think. The ones attacking this world are separated from the original species, after all. Like a rogue force.
“I would like anyone targeting my Sovereign to die. I’m more than happy with making use of your strength to let that happen, Touya. In fact... I have a question for you... Are... Are you really a human from this world, Touya?” He hit me right in the sore spot. But as a Drifter, he could probably recognize some parts of me that didn’t fit here.
“...I’m not, no. I wasn’t born in this world. That being said, I can’t travel across worlds like you can. I consider this world my home now.”
“You can’t pass through worlds...? Then how did you come here...? Oh, were you perhaps caught up in some kind of natural disaster? A random drifter, then?”
“Well, something like that...” If you could consider god himself a natural disaster, then yes.
◇ ◇ ◇
The Sovereign Phrase was in a state that was much like death, so she was probably unaware of what was going on. In the end, those people who were pursuing her to take her power away looked like nothing more than creepy and shameless stalkers to me.
Even so, I feel like if she’d given herself up, the other worlds would’ve probably been safe. I think she should’ve spoken to them more before, honestly.
Apparently, Ende had advised her on this and had her appoint a successor before they left, but she was simply too talented a leader for a lot of the Phrase to accept the new leader. The Phrase home world divided into two distinct factions. Those that obeyed the will of the new leader, and those that did not. The ones that did not acquired the power to forcibly travel through worlds, and began their pursuit of their Sovereign.
It seemed there were geniuses amongst the Dominant Constructs, but none came close to her in terms of skill. It also seemed like a lot of the Dominant Constructs had their own goals in regards of what they wanted to do with her, and they were all in different minds about how to proceed.
In Another World With My Smartphone: Volume 10 Page 16
