LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 107
I open my eyes.
A ruined city, people bustling around, the warmth I feel next to me.
A somewhat large, rough hand.
“…Who are you?”
“It’s me.”
The voice was slightly different, but familiar.
I could recognize it well enough.
“Skylar?”
“Yes.”
I slowly sat up and looked around.
It seems my gamble was a success.
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[ Loading – The Moon, Merciless Queen of the Night ]
[ Loading – The Light of Heaven is Everyone’s Star ]
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Two titles appeared on my Status Window.
It seems my other self from another world is stronger than I am.
I felt a bit unfair and a little gloomy.
I turned my head to look at Skylar.
“…Uh, uh, uh?”
I froze solid. Like an awkward gargoyle statue, I could only creak and open my mouth wide, making strange noises.
And no wonder, the Skylar I knew wasn’t there.
To be more precise, a big Skylar was standing there.
“Skylar, is that really you?”
“Yes.”
“No, I mean, why do you look like that?”
“I accidentally got it back. Just temporarily for now.”
“Temporarily?”
“The other personality that took over your body… well, I doubt we should even call it a personality to begin with. That person fixed it. With a Scroll.”
“With a Scroll?!”
“Who would have imagined there exists a human who could solidify wind and air with space, then write magic circles with magic power on top?”
I had to admit it.
The other me from another world is far superior to me.
Even worse, this body has a low intelligence and not much magic power!
—And then I suddenly thought.
Could there really be a simple magic that fixes all problems without any side effects in this world?
But soon after, that worry faded from my mind.
When I saw his face, I was convinced that all our comrades had survived.
In the face of such great blessings, even minor doubts could wait for later.
Ah, how could I be so sure they all survived, you ask?
If another comrade had died, Skylar’s face wouldn’t look… so odd.
‘…I was angry, but I felt no sadness. Who am I even mad at?’
How strange.
After spending a long time with Skylar, I could usually read his feelings easily. But this time, I couldn’t read him at all.
I feel like I had a similar expression once before…
“Selina.”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Can we talk a bit?”
There it was. The most dreaded phrase a man can hear from a woman: “Can we talk?”
Of course, Skylar was a man, and since I also had a male mind, it wasn’t exactly that kind of mood, but still, the fact that it came out of his mouth was enough to fluster me.
“Uh, I mean, suddenly? Right now? Don’t we have other busy things to do? Like helping restore the city—”
“No. This is the most urgent matter.”
“…Okay. What question do you have?”
“I thought it was strange for a while, but I think I can confirm it now. Selina, are you perhaps… a ‘created personality’?”
“……What?”
Skylar asked a question that was completely different from my expectations.
For the short term, this was a good thing.
But for some reason, what he said bothered me.
Like having a fishbone stuck in my throat.
A created personality.
As soon as I heard the words, I felt an unknown fear.
“Selina?”
“…Yeah. I’m listening.”
“First, your body is unusually frail. You have some strange curse as well. And oddly unhelpful blessings too.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Every time your life is in danger, for some reason, another personality pops out. Here’s where my hypothesis comes in.”
“What hypothesis?”
“I assumed you were one of the Church’s, Mage Tower’s, and the Mad King’s test subjects. But it seems neither the head of the Central Church nor the Mad King himself knows anything about you.”
I glanced over at Fura.
Floating in the sky, she sprinkled divinity on the injured, looking like an angel.
Propertyius and Nisha were also helping heal the injured around her.
Nisha, perhaps in a bad mood, said she’d rather do some stretches than help.
“…But?”
“If you really were a test subject and you had multiple personalities in one body, what if the people who experimented on you didn’t want you to die and installed a safety mechanism?”
“The safety mechanism is my other personality?”
“Yes.”
Most of Skylar’s assumptions were wrong.
I had suddenly fallen into this world, and suddenly a Status Window popped up, and suddenly functions began to activate. Everything happened abruptly, and it was all just coincidence.
I simply entrusted my fate and life to chance. That’s all there was to it.
But one single fact remains to torment me.
Can I really be sure I’m not a created personality? The perfect body I thought I customized was just an empty shell someone prepared, and someone might have implanted a delusion of being a man into it?
Simply for the purpose of conducting a mad experiment.
Cold sweat dripped from my body.
In fact, it was something I could easily grasp if I thought about it for just a moment.
Traversing dimensions requires highly sophisticated operations in this world. It’s hard to chalk it up to mere coincidence. In other words, there’s a good chance someone deliberately summoned me to this world.
With the goddess gone, the Demon King dead, and the saint in hiding, not one person capable of tearing dimensions remained.
It makes more sense that some crazy wizard wanted to conduct a peculiar experiment and created me.
“Selina.”
“……”
“Selina! Are you okay?”
Skylar’s large hand grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
I roughly brushed his hand off.
“…Sorry if that upset you. But I just suddenly began to breathe heavily.”
“…Sorry.”
I avoided his gaze.
His enlarged form was still unfamiliar to me.
Plus, I wasn’t sure about his words.
If I were a created personality, what would I even be? Why would the person who created me install a strange function called a Status Window? Why give me a body?
I couldn’t understand.
If only my mind would just stop thinking, that would be nice, but right now my brain was spinning far too quickly. Just like before I came to this world.
No, to be honest, it was spinning even faster.
My head throbbed.
I wanted to stop thinking altogether.
Questions about my identity or the ship of Theseus didn’t really matter, did they? I just needed to live. Right?
Couldn’t I just leave everything to Skylar and let him choose for me?
That thought felt dangerous.
At the same time, it was a sweet thought.
“…Have you said everything you wanted to?”
“Yes.”
“You said I might be a created being. How do you think I feel about hearing that from you right in front of me?”
“Well, um, I don’t know.”
“I feel really bad.”
“It’s not a confirmed fact. I just spoke the theory that seemed most likely. Selina, I thought you should know—”
I said nothing and quietly regarded Skylar.
When I thought I just fell into this world for no reason, I could follow him around without a care, and everything would just be resolved.
But now… come on, why do you have to shove reality into this fantasy, huh?
Couldn’t we just ignore it and pretend nothing happened? Skylar? Really?
If someone were to say that I was a deranged person who believed himself to be a man because he swapped dimensions, then I’d never come to terms with that!
“Let’s talk about this later.”
“…Okay.”
Big Skylar wore the same expression and actions as small Skylar.
I scratched my neck to erase the feeling of something stuck there.
Still, no cough came out.
***
Skylar had a rough idea of the situation.
Naturally, the claim that Selina was a created personality was utter nonsense.
It was a conveniently made-up story.
Then why did Skylar present this plausible-sounding nonsense so seriously to Selina, causing confusion?
The answer was simple.
To gauge her reaction.
‘…From her reaction, it seems she’s also uncertain.’
The love of wizards had a different meaning than that of typical love.
This was the first time Skylar had ever genuinely felt the emotion of love.
If he had experienced love in the past, he might have interpreted his feelings differently, but unfortunately, this wasn’t the case this time.
What the wizard felt now was a sticky possessiveness.
He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was, but being with her made him smile, and even when he was already watching her, he wanted to see her more and wanted to know every little thing about her.
To own someone, you first needed to break them down.
And then, assemble them.
For the shattered remnants to stand as a building, pillars were needed.
A person who could no longer trust himself began to rely on others.
And that “other” would be Skylar for Selina.
His heart raced.
He couldn’t be sure how long she would stay by his side.
It looked like she could fall apart at any moment.
When he saw her wanting to sacrifice herself today, he realized.
That’s why he wanted to possess her.
A very simple, subtle magic that she wouldn’t notice, operating invisibly in the background.
To shake her up, that was more than enough.
***
I looked up at the sky in the broken, empty room.
Half of the ceiling gone jolted my mind awake. Yesterday wasn’t just a dream, it had really happened.
Even if I wanted to close my ears and deny it, it didn’t let me, forcefully digging into my ears.
The edge of the north, destroyed by the Mad King, was still suffering from the aftermath.
It had already been a week since I quietly sat and helped restore the city.
Skylar’s words stirred my heart.
The health issues I thought I had already resolved quietly reemerged.
I had only cleared the minor status penalty, so it made sense. I still had a far from perfect physical ability and health compared to an average person.
Fortunately, what came out of my mouth wasn’t a black mass, but a clear red liquid.
I had improved.
Alright. This much should be fine.
‘…Was I always such a deep-thinking person?’
I slowly cleared my mind and decided to act as usual.
Playing the innocent bard who knows nothing might be better for my mental health.
It didn’t really matter how I fell into this world; that reason wasn’t particularly important.
What mattered now was… that thinking about it was giving me a headache.
In the end, my choice was to escape.
I gulped down the remaining alcohol all at once.
My mind feels hazy, but my brain is still working.
“Skylar.”
I called his name.