Chapter 252: Volume 3 Epilogue

Sometimes, asking philosophical questions is inevitable. Not necessarily big ones, and certainly not the scary existential ones, though those can also become unavoidable under certain circumstances. This wasn't one of those. No, I'm talking about the simple, dare I say, mundane philosophical questions. The kind that make sense in the moment, and nowhere else. Such as, 'how come I'm still a virgin'?

I mean, let's just think about it for a moment: I'm in bed right now, with two beautiful girls clinging onto me in their thin pajamas. This is one of the most eroge developments I've ever experienced, and just the fact that I say 'experiences', as in, plural, should mean I should've already crossed the proverbial finish line ages ago, yet here I was. Two girls, one bed, only a tiny bit aroused, mostly just grumpy and uncomfortable. Was something wrong with me?

At this point, I held my breath for a moment while Judy moved in her sleep, inadvertently pushing her chest against mine and simultaneously entwining our legs. I waited to see if she would wake up, but her breathing remained steady, so I exhaled softly. Amendment to the previous statement: strikethrough 'tiny bit', replace with 'mildly'.

The point still stands though. Wasn't this a situation where I was supposed to be either really awkward, or really horny? I wasn't either of those, so… how did I actually feel at the moment? Still a little grumpy, I supposed. I had stuff to do, but the girls insisted that I should go to bed with them to take a break, even though they both knew I couldn't sleep. That said, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't feeling a little cozy as well. Wholesome would also be a good way to describe it, though I'm not sure those count as emotional states. Also, in the meantime the princess moved a little as well, raising the arousal-o-meter again just as it was about to go back down to 'tiny bit'. Go figure.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, right. Not feeling uncontrollably lusty even under the current circumstances. Sure, part of the reason was that I made a deadline, and I intended to keep it, come hell or high water, but that wasn't the core cause. It wasn't that I didn't feel attracted to the girls either, as professed by the fact that the princess's tossing and turning once again managed to raise my arousal-o-meter. Was Judy right about the Narrative messing with me (or rather, her, if her grumblings were to be believed) by tampering with my libido? Or was something fundamentally wrong with me and my attitude? Or maybe, just maybe, I'm the only sane man, and the world is crazy as usual?

Okay, that was enough pointless agonizing about a pointless dilemma for today. I'll cross this particular bridge when I get there (and make the necessary preparations, including more contraceptives than you could shake a cane at), so for now, let's forget about all of this and focus on something else. Such as finding a way to productively spend my girlfriend-mandated downtime. Since I couldn't move due to the girls acting like baby koalas, the most obvious option was using Far Sight for surveillance, except there was a readily apparent problem with the idea. It was in the middle of the night. Everyone was already sleeping. Well, everyone else, but that's beside the point.

I could also mull over today's events, but honestly, I was sick and tired of all the talks about organizations and villains and laser-sharks. What else did I have? Well, I had two extra Phantom Limbs, but I couldn't do anything with those at the moment. No, wait. I had three of them now, hadn't I? Let's see… one, two, and here's the stubby one. Admittedly, I didn't experiment much with this one, but its presence was both weird and oddly familiar, like it was always supposed to be attached to me.

As I considered that, my brows slowly furrowed in the dark. The whole topic reminded me of the circumstances when I added this newest attachment to my collection of ethereal appendages. My memories were a little fuzzy, but even now, I could feel that the me from back then, with all the insider information, was somewhere within arm's reach in my head, but whenever I tried to recall anything from back then, it eluded me. It felt like trying to collect cigarette smoke with a flyswatter. In the middle of a hurricane.

Honestly, I was a little scared of that me. Or maybe 'wary' would be the better word? Yet, at the same time, I felt a sense of longing. I couldn't exactly remember what I knew back then, but in retrospect, I felt that knowing it was inexplicably awesome. It was like… how should I put it? It was kind of like being set free after being stuck in a box for far too long. It was scary, yet liberating. The whole 'suddenly able to understand the grand truths of the universe' part was also pretty neat, I suppose.

But putting all of this aside, I had an idea. I've played around with souls quite a bit as of late, but I never tried to take a look at mine. Granted, I wasn't even sure I could, but considering I had nothing better to do at the moment, I figured I might as well give it a go. Only in moderation though; the last thing I needed was to break something important. Like me.

So, after mentally preparing myself, I gingerly reached out a Phantom Limb, curled it back towards my chest, and then… nothing.

"Huh."

The grunt escaping under my breath made the princess mumble something in her sleep and hug my arm even tighter. Once I was sure she was asleep, and that my arousal-o-meter was still in the green, I focused my attention back on the Phantom Limb, and tried again. Stab, and still nothing.

Well, that was anticlimactic. I tried my other extra limb as well, but got the same result. No getting sucked into a non-Euclidian space, no weirdness, no nothing. I wondered if something was wrong with my Phantom Limbs, so I carefully poked Elly with one, and before long, I could make contact with something inside her. I quickly withdrew my appendage, as I had no plans to stab into her and mess up her insides tonight. The important part was that my incorporeal limbs were still working as usual. That meant the issue was somewhere else.

Maybe it really was impossible to observe my own soul like this? Or maybe my approach was wrong? For the sake of certainty, I tried touching my abdomen and my head too, but the result was the same. Nothing.

There was still one last option though, even if it was a little uncomfortable. The stubby third limb was, well, short. That meant it took some finagling to get it to touch my chest, but there was still no effect. In for a penny, in four a pound, I proceeded to repeat the process with my gut and my head, and on the last one…

"What the hell?" I uttered in surprise as my environment went completely black. Or maybe not? It wasn't as much of a color as a lack thereof, and it was surrounding me like a viscous mass, and I was stuck in it. I was used to weird crap happening whenever my Phantom Limbs would interact with something, but this was new. Instead of going through some kind of psychedelic landscape of audible shapes and edible sounds, I was just stuck in the dark. Except, it wasn't dark. It just was.

I also couldn't help but notice that I was lacking body parts, and I was somehow looking everywhere at once in a three hundred sixty degrees angle in all directions, but that was the kind of crazy stuff I was already used to, so I didn't really mind it much.

Once I got my bearings, I tried to do the most obvious thing and look for my soul. I mean, that's why I was here, wherever this was, wasn't it? However, no matter how much I looked everywhere at once, I was only met with inky non-darkness. No spinning ball of glowing yarn anywhere in sight.

Okay then. It was time to take a deep breath… or not, because I had no lungs at the moment, but I still needed to calm down. What did this mean? I used the stubby Phantom Limb to interact with my head and ended up here. There were two distinct possibilities for the lack of anything here: I either didn't have a soul, and that's why the other two invisible appendages couldn't find purchase, or my new tentacular limb worked differently from the rest, and it didn't put me in contact with my soul, to begin with. The former option was unlikely, since the Oaths and the Celestial agent's healing both interacted with my Astral Body, which was either directly analogous, or something very closely related to my soul. That meant the second option was more likely… and that didn't help me to figure out what's going on at all.

It was at this point that I've noticed something peculiar. There was a sound coming from somewhere… no, calling it a sound wasn't exactly right. It wasn't a wave, but more of a repeated change in the viscosity of my environment. I stilled my thoughts to 'listen', sincerely hoping that it would help me figure out where I was and how I could stop being here anymore, but instead I found myself moving, except not. More like, everything around me was moving while I was standing still.

Then, before I could even come up with a good analogy to how the entire universe shifting under my non-existent feet felt like, I was suddenly in a… not room. Or a room that was inside-out? It was hard to explain.

"There's too much burden on the—!", an oddly familiar voice exclaimed, though I couldn't catch the last few words. It sounded like a man, but also not. It was like…

"You're making a fuss about nothing," a youthful voice cut my attempt for making a simile short. "You're just mad because the Free Actors broke your plans again."

"I'm not mad, I'm concerned!" the first voice thundered.

"We're all concerned," a third voice, that of an adult woman, chimed in. She sounded distracted, almost absent-minded. "This is going too far, even for one of his pranks. We need to find him."

"I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about the structural integrity of this instance of the Simulacrum," the masculine voice told her in a slightly more respectful tone.

"Yes, and we all agreed that it's compromised because of him. We need to find him, or at least figure out why he's doing this."

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"Maybe he's planning to come in at the last second?" a brand new voice proposed. It sounded like it belonged to a prepubescent boy. Meek, soft, and sulfuric.

"What do you mean?" the cratery voice of The Man inqui— Wait, why did I call him that?

"Um, you know? Things are working out really well so far, right?"

"I just told you that there's too much stress on the Simulacrum," 'The Man' retorted with a huff. Huh. I guess that was his name. Or maybe not? Anyhow, he also said, "The localized complexity level of the island rose exponentially in the past three cycles. Things were never meant to be happening all at once like that, and it puts more strain on the—"

"Yes, I understand that, but… Doesn't it still work?" The Boy, for I suppose I might as well call him that, interrupted him. "The scenario proceeded in a completely unexpected direction because of the presence of two Free Actors, but the actual results are some of the best we've ever had."

"Maybe, but what does that have to do with him?" the ocean of feminine ruby of… Ugh, what…? My head was getting more messed up the more I listened to them.

"We all agree that he's the cause of the deviations, right?" The Boy proposed, and the rest nodded their heads, and… wait, hold on! Since when did they have he— oh, never mind. Now they are planets. And now they are not even there, and I'm back in the not-dark not-room, and my nonexistent head hurt.

"Yes. What's your point?" The Man growled.

"So, I was thinking. What if he did all of this to raise our expectations, lull us into a false sense of security, and at the end of the scenario, he would show up to ruin everything at the last second?" The Boy proposed.

"That would fit his personality," the fourth voice of the young girl agreed.

"Oh, please. He can be insufferable at times, but he's not that cruel," The Woman scoffed at the idea, but The Man didn't leave it at that.

"No, I think that's exactly what he would do."

"Do you all think so?" The Woman inquired, sounding a little uncertain, and the rest… well, they either nodded, or every atom in the universe simultaneously exploded at the same time. One or the other. "I understand. In that case, what do you think we should do?"

"I have an idea," The Girl chirped. Literally. As in, she spoke the words, but at the same time, it sounded like birdsong. That… was actually the least weird thing I've experienced since I came here. "If we know that he'd try to break the climax of the scenario, then couldn't we lay a trap there and catch him red-handed?"

"We don't actually know that yet," The Woman objected, but The Girl didn't pay her any heed.

"So, what's going to be the climax?"

"It's hard to tell," The Man pondered aloud. "We've deviated from the original scenario, but based on the direction it's heading right now, the original Free Actor hasn't reached the branching point yet so that can still go at least three different ways, and at least one of them was a newly generated scenario because the Abyssal girl survived. As for the second Free Actor, I think his story arc should reach its end-point with the upcoming tournament arc, and—"

"A tournament arc? You've got to be bloody shitting me!" I exclaimed without meaning to, and suddenly the whole not-dark not-room became deadly quiet. Uh-oh.

"What was that?" The Woman called out as the whole space shook. "Did you hear that?"

"I think I've also heard something…" The Boy said a tad uncertainly.

"Is there someone else here?" The Man called out, and I suddenly got an itching, aching sense of… something. It was something like a heavy mixture of foreboding, a sense of helplessness, and toothache, and somehow I knew that if I remained here, it was going to get much, much worse.

Oh shit. How do I get out of here? How did I get in here in the first place? Think Leo, think!

I forced my brain into overdrive and tried to recall the feeling of the world moving around me, but in reverse. It worked. At first it was sluggish, then space and time began to move faster and faster around me, and before I could even get a grasp on the situation, I was ejected back into my body. I'd like to say my eyes popped open in shock, but they were open from the beginning, so I had to settle on a soft gasp.

It was still completely dark outside, so not much time have passed, but I was drenched in a cold sweat, and I had to clench my teeth, as I wasn't confident they wouldn't be clattering if I did otherwise. I had no idea where I was a moment ago, who those people were, and what they were talking about, but there were two things I was completely sure of.

First and foremost, the whole experience was bloody terrifying, at least in retrospect, and I'd never want to do this ever again. Secondly, if this wasn't just a weird fever dream and we're really going to have a tournament arc sprung on us, I'll have no choice but to go back and eavesdrop again anyway.

Now then, let's figure out how I could explain all of this to the girls in the morning without sounding like a raving lunatic.

…

Goddamit, me! Why couldn't you stick to pondering about your arousal-o-meter for the night…?

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