Chapter 413: The Power of Imagination (Patreon)

Adventure, adventure, adventure…

From winter into autumn, more than half a year had slipped by before anyone noticed. One after another, Lefiya and the others finished their own adventures and reached Lv.9, just as they'd hoped.

But.

Of them all, Isagi had leveled up first. And compared to the girls, who had only just made it, the boy had already touched something murky that could only be called "the power of imagination."

Or rather, the [self in imagination]—

*

It was about twenty years before Isagi's timeline, before the Zeus and Hera Familias, the City's Strongest, had launched their expedition against the Black Dragon.

The boy was meeting the former City's Strongest, the highest-level adventurer in the city, for the last time: the Empress of the Hera Familia.

"This is probably the last time we'll see each other."

The Zeus and Hera Familias were already preparing to subjugate the Black Dragon, probably a year or two from now. Compared with an expedition into the deep floors, the preparations for completing the Three Great Quests took an extremely long time. The old Academic District, for instance, was a "fortress at sea" the city built with the most advanced Magic Stone technology to subjugate Leviathan, the sovereign of the sea. Call it a warship if you like. Either way, that thing alone had cost the city many years.

Having only one or two years to prepare for the Black Dragon was already remarkably short.

Isagi knew that well. When Loki and the Freya Familia had launched their expeditions into the deep Dungeon, they'd had to start planning at least half a year ahead. Buying supplies, potions and weapons, then learning the Dungeon's current state and whether any anomalies had appeared… The to-do list was a mountain.

Luckily, by the time he'd gone down to the deep floors, the Artificial Labyrinth already had its Elevator, so he never had to worry about any of that. Otherwise it would have been a real headache.

Autumn rain pattered down.

Isagi and the captain of the Hera Familia were meeting, as always, in a café run by an Elf.

The Empress was agonizing over which sweets to take back for the juniors in her Familia. After a long deliberation, she decided to order three of everything on the menu. One portion for herself. One for the juniors. One as an offering to Goddess Hera, who probably wouldn't touch it, so it would end up in the other members' stomachs anyway.

Her mood was simple, just like the last time he'd met her.

Even though.

She had already foreseen her own death.

"Little Alfia is undoubtedly from the future. She's got such a healthy body, she's old enough to marry and have kids."

"In that case, you aren't one of the juniors I know either. You must be an adventurer a generation younger than Riveria, Ottar and the rest."

"So how many years from now do you come from?"

"Well, that doesn't really matter."

The Empress still loved talking to herself. Isagi remembered how she had rambled on back then and settled on the truth almost at once.

"Either way, you're still here, and so obsessed with getting stronger… no, rather, the city has produced another Lv.9 adventurer this quickly. You level up even faster than I imagined."

"That isn't normal. So is the 'world' longing for you?"

She could sense something like Fate. Just as the gods said, the Hero would surely arrive before the Appointed Time.

"Your existence proves that we're definitely not the 'Hero.'"

If that was the case, the battle to subjugate the Black Dragon would certainly end in failure. And that meant she would die too.

That was the Empress's judgment. She had her own pride and dignity. As Alfia had once said, even knowing the expedition was doomed to fail, she and her comrades would march on and witness the arrival of fate. And they would never turn and run.

Failure meant death. Isagi could see that resolve in the woman's face with no effort at all.

That was why she'd said this was probably the last time.

After the waiter finished packing the sweets, the Empress sipped her coffee in small mouthfuls and fixed the boy with a very serious look.

She was trying to recall when she'd last met him. She couldn't quite remember. All she recalled was that little Alfia had come along that time too, sitting to one side, unable to follow a word of what the two of them were saying. Their talk had been about what lay beyond Lv.9.

But now.

The Empress could tell that Isagi had clearly groped his way toward something at the edge of it. He was about to get there. His progress was even far ahead of hers.

Why?

And Isagi's answer, of course, was:

"Because of the Dungeon."

Over the past half year, Isagi had gradually realized that the Dungeon's power also came from her "imagination."

In that pitch-black, empty space, nothing had existed to begin with. So she could only imagine. First she created all sorts of Monsters and sent them to the surface. When they died, she reclaimed their memories, then kept on "creating" with them… and that included herself.

Isagi had noticed long ago that his own Arcanum originated in "imagination" too. But it didn't conjure things from nothing. Conceptually, anything that had once been "doable" in a game could be turned by his Arcanum from "memory" into "reality."

In a sense, Isagi had taken a shortcut. He wasn't going from zero to one but from one to two, so the process came far more easily to him.

Put plainly, it was this: the Empress before him, and Lefiya, Ais and Ryuu, who had reached Lv.9 one after another and begun to touch the power called "imagination," were all people of this world, in the end. They couldn't imagine what they had never seen, never heard of, and certainly never understood.

For them, imagining a stronger power that was practical and that they could control and master was extraordinarily difficult.

That was what troubled the Empress now, and it was the Excelia she had never completed. If she could do it, she would probably level up to Lv.10 without trouble.

"Hmm…"

After staring at him for a long while, the woman finally slapped the table and stood up.

"All right, that's enough. I wanted to see your power, but… forget it. Wouldn't want it to affect the future."

"Besides, that thing isn't exactly easy to show off, is it?"

"We might have to go out to sea. Or maybe Dragon Valley?"

"With the speed of the two of us, it wouldn't matter."

To which Isagi replied:

"If you want to see it, you can see it right here."

Strength could be controlled.

Golden points of light slowly gathered in the boy's hand and finally became a golden apple.

"For you."

"Eh?"

"It's really good."

The apple was edible, and sweet and crisp. Goddess Demeter had judged it no worse than the apples she grew with her own hands.

"Seriously?"

Eyes full of curiosity, the Empress took the apple from his hand and bit into it.

It really was delicious. It rivaled the apples Goddess Demeter grew herself.

That meant what the boy had just shown her was every bit the equal of the power of the goddess of earth and harvest. It was true Arcanum.

"This is my law."

"I don't understand a word of it."

She shook her head. Looking at the apple with her bite mark in it, the woman sank into thoughts she couldn't make sense of. This was the purest kind of "unknown."

Then she suddenly smiled, as if relieved. In all its thousands of years, Orario had never lacked for geniuses, nor for so-called "Heroes." Adventurers had pressed forward wave after wave. Who knew how many had died to make a Lv.9 like her, the strongest of her time?

And in the end, there was only ever one Hero. In a sense, she was no more than a "stepping stone."

Only someone whose head was full of "the strong rule" would think this way. So at last she simply waved at the boy out of habit, as a goodbye, and left the café.

Just like all the countless ordinary farewells before it.

Isagi stood up as well. It was just about time for him to prepare to subjugate the Black Dragon, too.

With that thought, he soon returned to his own era, to beneath the Golden Tree, which now blotted out the sky and nearly swallowed the entire city, even the towering Babel, within its reach—

*

[Author's Note: PS: As everyone knows, this book is nearing its end. I originally planned to finish it in March or April of this year (if I'd kept up the earlier pace of 200,000-plus words a month). But from February on, I felt distracted all the time, and honestly I'd run out of material, so I dragged it out this long. I took a good rest over the past few days. After thinking it over, there really isn't much content left: just the formulaic fight against the Black Dragon, then wrapping things up on the Dungeon side. I've always wanted to write about the deep floors, but I never had a good idea for it, and after much thought I decided not to torture myself or you all. So that's that. I'll finish the book bit by bit this month. I'm truly very sorry.]