Chapter 16

Chapter 16

My suspicion lasted only a moment. Before long, I decided to stop wondering about the young man’s identity. In the first place, whatever his identity was had nothing to do with me. The only important fact was that “I needed this person to complete the research assignment.”

“But why did you ask whether I knew that mage named Adalhedis?”

“Uh......?”

“Surely that cannot be you...... no, certainly not.”

“Because Maga means a female mage,” the young man added, smiling broadly as he looked at me. For some reason, that gaze felt as though he was trying to uncover my identity, and without realizing it, I flinched like a freshly caught fish and pulled at my hooded robe.

No, why is he staring at me so hard? As I wavered in panic, not knowing what to do, I suddenly heard the young man let out a short hum and mutter to himself.

“Hmm, somehow...... it does seem a little similar.......”

“Huh? What does?”

I looked at the young man in puzzlement, but he did not give me any real answer. Or rather, he was still merely muttering to himself, lost in thought.

“No, the age does not match for that. No matter how I look, fourteen or fifteen...... Yes, it certainly does not match. It seems to be someone else after all. But why...... does it feel so similar? Is it only my imagination? No, no. To dismiss it as that, something fundamental is.......”

No, so what in the world is he talking about? Seems similar? The age does not match? But it still feels similar? Who, with whom?

As I frowned at the questions rising one after another, the young man finally seemed to notice my gaze. He flinched, closed his mouth, and waved his hand, saying it was nothing. At that, my brow furrowed a little more, and the young man rolled his eyes, cleared his throat, and brought up another topic with a somewhat troubled expression.

“Well...... in any case, I should take my leave now. I do feel somewhat sorry to depart so suddenly while I was expressing my thanks, but there is something I must confirm urgently.”

“What are you talking about? Do you think I’ll just let you go because you say you’re leaving?”

In the first place, if I was going to just let him go, why would I have gone to the trouble of bringing him all the way to the Magic Tower? Besides, even if I did say I would let him go, it did not seem like the young man could go anywhere. He could not use his right leg at all right now.

At my point, the young man glanced once at his right leg, let out an awkward laugh, and shrugged.

“This...... will probably be fine. I am used to not being able to use this leg. I have lived quite a long time with only one leg, you see.”

He had lived quite a long time with only one leg? Then did that mean he had not been able to use his right leg since quite a long time ago? Uh, strange. That should not be possible.

Originally, the human body rapidly deteriorates if it is not used properly for a long time. Just as the body of a person bedridden for a long period loses motor ability due to degeneration of the muscles and joints.

However, the young man’s right leg showed no trace of deterioration despite his saying he had been unable to use it for a long time. Compared to his left leg, there was no difference in appearance at all; it was in an extremely normal state.

From how I saw it...... it seemed likely that errors caused by overlapping causal relationships had made him unable to use his right leg. Its causal relationships were more severely tangled than the other parts of the young man’s body, so it was as if the young man’s body was confused, asking, “So is the right leg attached, or is it not attached?”

As for my view, the young man simply offered no excuse and held his tongue. Or rather, he cut it off firmly.

“I am sincerely grateful that you saved me. However, I do not wish to tell you all of my personal circumstances. We have only just met, so on what basis should I trust you? You would not wish to tell me your personal circumstances either, would you? It is the same.”

“No, that’s......”

Honestly, who said I wanted to know anything about someone else’s personal circumstances? I was just trying to seek his cooperation so I could complete my research assignment.

***

＃002. Collection of Related Samples and Design State Check

→ Sample collection and design code extraction work (In progress)

→ Awaiting analysis and error identification.

☆★Warning★☆ Analysis and error identification must proceed only after sample collection from the main experimental subject is complete!!

＃003. Investigation of the Cause of the Anomalous Phenomenon

→ Do not stop at identifying the cause. Prepare countermeasures for it as well!!

→ If there is a collaborator, be sure to seek cooperation!! (Handling everything alone is forbidden.)

***

Yes, this research assignment. To complete this, I absolutely could not just let the young man go. There was the fact that the young man was the main experimental subject, and there was also the fact that he might have witnessed the bastard who used that strange formula.

And even if I put all of those reasons aside, as long as the young man’s causal relationships were tangled into a complete mess, I could not simply let him go. The young man’s own safety was a problem too, and if the error occurring in his right leg was left as it was, it could possibly contaminate his surroundings.......

“Then I shall be going now.”

“Uh......? Huh, w-wait......!”

I snapped back to my senses and tried to grab the young man, but he gave me no time to stop him. He flung the window open and promptly jumped out. For an instant, my mind seemed to turn completely white, and then bewilderment surged in.

He just jumped out from here? From the top of the Magic Tower, which is about 1,000 meters high? Is he sane? I could use flight magic or gliding magic, sure, but the young man is a swordsman, not a mage. No matter how much of a swordmaster he is, from this height, it should be impossible for him to land with all four limbs intact - though his right leg is already not intact.

And above all, there was one most important problem.

Namely, the fact that my experimental subject had escaped.

Come to think of it, Master had once used this comparison for situations like this.

-If you leave a cookie that escaped from the oven alone, the day you learn that cookie’s taste will never come. If you merely want to eat cookies, you need only bake new ones. But that cannot resolve your curiosity about the taste of the escaped cookie. Therefore, should you not catch the escaped cookie and bring it back? Yes, you, of all people.

“Uaaaaaaah! My escaped cookie! Stop right there!”

With a scream bursting out of me, I immediately leaped from the window. In the moment of floating weightlessness, I deployed flight magic and looked down. I saw something like an enormous green pole stabbing into the ground, tilting toward the opposite side of the Magic Tower, then disappearing repeatedly. Looking closely, I saw that the young man was using aura drawn out in a long shape to repeat something like a pole-vault and move beyond the forest.

I was dumbfounded by this use of aura, which I had never seen or heard of before. Drawing out aura to a length of 1,000 meters alone was something that would make one’s eyes widen, but to create it in succession and use it as a means of transportation? This was possible?

Of course, if he was a swordmaster who had trained for a long time and experienced all sorts of hardships, perhaps he might be able to do something like that without a thought. But the young man was, at most, only a little past twenty. There was no way he had accumulated the years of experience needed to do something like that as if it were nothing. In the first place, the fact that he was a swordmaster at that age was shocking enough.

No...... perhaps those years of experience had already accumulated. The young man’s causal relationships were currently overlapping, and his time axis was strangely tangled. So to speak, the young man in the present was both a young man in his twenties or thirties and an old man in his seventies.

If that tangled causal relationship had manifested in such a way, could it not make a certain degree of sense? Thinking about it, the young man’s way of speaking did seem like that of someone with quite a few years on him. It was not simply that he spoke like an old man; even his attitude was somehow old, making it feel as though he had lived all the way into old age and had only just returned to the past.......

In that instant, an absurd possibility crossed my mind. Perhaps the young man was someone who had regressed from some point in the future to the present. Part of me wanted to deny it as impossible, but once the thought sprouted, I could not stop it from taking root in my mind, growing, and spreading branches.

Yes, come to think of it, the strange formula’s time axis had been abnormal too. The world line, which should have flowed only in one direction, deviated from its original trajectory and returned the world point to a position it had occupied in the past, so to speak.......

After thinking that far, I felt as if I understood what that strange formula was. When I witnessed it, I thought it was simply a mistake in spatial movement magic, but now I saw that it must have been magic that regressed someone from the future to the past. And the one who had regressed through that magic was surely that young man. That was why the causal relationships of the young man - or should I say the young man who had been an old man? - had overlapped. The appearance of those strange creatures must also have been caused by contamination from the regression magic.

In other words, if I missed the young man now, something incredibly dangerous would happen. Since he was someone who had regressed from the future, the young man would know what would happen in the future, and using those memories as soil, he would distort everything that was to happen from now on and tangle the causal relationships.

That would certainly be the case. There was no one who could know what would happen in the future and still live as if they knew nothing. It would be only natural to try to change the flow somehow so that the things that would happen in the future would bring even slightly beneficial results to oneself.

Someone who was originally supposed to die would not die due to the young man’s involvement, and because of that, the situation would change, causing something that should have happened not to happen. If that happened, all the related causal relationships would become tangled at once.

To the young man, he would merely be trying to correct things he had regretted or found unsatisfactory among what he had experienced in the past....... But he must not. It was an act that violated the order of the world. If the past was changed, every causal relationship would inevitably become tangled into a complete mess, and then chaos would arise throughout the entire design that composed the world. What awaited at the end was the great disaster known as the “destruction of the world.”

Therefore, I had to catch and stop the young man. Somehow. I deployed acceleration magic and chased after the young man as he grew distant beyond the forest.