CHAPTER 459: FIVE HUNDRED FORTY YEARS, EIGHT MONTHS, AND THREE DAYS

Clack—clack—clack—

The crisp sound of footsteps echoed back and forth through the tunnel. In a place that had been silent for so long, such a sound might have given someone a fright.

But the opposite was true. The sound, caught from a great distance by Sakura’s two pairs of ears, brought not alarm but the quiet satisfaction of a long-held expectation finally being met.

She stood up and took a couple of gentle steps forward, then lowered her head and spoke softly.

"Long time no see, Michael."

Clack!

The footsteps stopped abruptly. The final step was firm and decisive, like a silver vase suddenly shattering—clearly not the sound of someone who had stopped on a whim after being called out.

"Yes, but... I’m not a fan of the phrase ’long time no see.’"

Michael’s voice sounded from Sakura’s right. She turned her head to see a blurry silhouette beside her.

"You startled me."

She gave a faint smile, though she didn’t seem particularly startled.

Michael shrugged, a little bored, and snapped his fingers. The entire tunnel was instantly as bright as day.

His boredom didn’t stem from something as trivial as failing to scare Sakura. He wasn’t that childish... it was just that Sakura had gotten the better of him back in New Zealand, and he instinctively wanted to retaliate, even if his target was just her memory data.

That’s right. The Sakura before him was clearly not the real one, but the memory data left behind in the Elysian Realm. She didn’t even know that the real Sakura had already left.

It made sense. This place was built upon quantum entanglement, fusing a physical entity into a world bubble’s phantom, and then into memory data. The process was subtle—it could happen in the blink of an eye or during a single night’s sleep.

Of course, the memory data could become aware of the original’s departure, but not at the moment it happened. Only when the original returned to the Elysian Realm and re-synced their memories would the data know.

The Authority of Sentience casually swept over the memory data before him. Compared to a "person" who existed as both a physical body and a consciousness, memory data, which existed only as consciousness, had almost no resistance to his power.

Ugh... Michael suddenly wanted to facepalm. This is the Elysian Realm, built on the foundation of the Authority of Corruption. Wouldn’t it be easier and more covert to just use that?

Perhaps it was because it was the last authority he had acquired, and there was no longer any possibility of using it against an enemy, that he always subconsciously overlooked it.

But it wasn’t a serious mistake. The Authority of Sentience worked just as well. Michael easily acquired all of the memory data’s "memories." However, he found nothing in them that could explain why the real Sakura had done what she did.

"I see..."

Michael cupped his chin and sank into thought, momentarily forgetting about the memory data beside him.

No relevant memories in the data... which means Sakura made that decision outside of the Realm. But five hundred years ago, she returned to the Realm just like Pardofelis, with no intention of going back to the real world... Then again, anyone would get tired of a place like this eventually. So, Sakura must have seen something after she left that gave her a new idea? No, there’s another possibility. Someone used the Authority of Corruption to erase that part of her memory...

"What are you thinking about?"

Sakura waved a hand in front of Michael’s face.

Seeing her smile, Michael was momentarily stunned.

"Hm? Is something wrong?"

Sakura’s expression unconsciously returned to its usual state. The corners of her mouth pressed down, the muscles in her cheeks tightened, and her brow furrowed slightly.

"It’s nothing, it’s just..."

Michael paused for a moment, then bit his lower lip hard.

"It’s just... I’ve never seen you smile like that before."

Sakura was taken aback as well. A few seconds later, the smile returned to her face.

"Is that so... I suppose you’re right. Back then, I was always running from one mission to another. I never said it out loud, but I was tired of it. Here, spending day after day with Rin, life may not be as exciting, but this is the life I fought for. This is the ending I always wanted."

Michael’s hands slowly clenched into fists—a purely instinctive reaction, he told himself, because he wasn’t aware of having any conscious thought.

"So, you no longer have a reason to draw your blade, is that it?" he asked, as if in passing.

"I suppose not. I haven’t touched my blade in over five hundred years. I don’t even... carry it anymore. When the purpose of the blade is lost, its edge becomes dull. A sword like that can no longer be wielded."

Michael’s gaze fell to her waist. It was true. He had felt that something was off about this Sakura, but he’d chalked it up to a difference between her memory data and her real self. It wasn’t impossible—look at Mobius. Only now did he realize the true difference: the Sakura before him, the memory data, was unarmed.

This was the second time Michael had seen Sakura without a weapon.

When was the last time? R’lyeh. That was a long, long time ago. She had been two years younger than him then, but even without her weapon, she had been as sharp as a sword.

Not like now...

"But this is all fake, Sakura... The Elysian Realm isn’t a real world. It’s like a counterfeit in the Sea of Quanta. Everything here is a phantom of the past, a lie left behind."

Michael didn’t know why he was saying such things.

Did Sakura’s contentment make him uncomfortable? That couldn’t be right. If they were happy here, he should have...

Halfway through his thought, Michael suddenly understood—he just felt they didn’t deserve it.

Not that the Flame-Chasers didn’t deserve this life, but that this false happiness wasn’t worthy of the Flame-Chasers.

Sakura didn’t seem to expect him to say that, but she just smiled.

"I understand what you mean, Michael. I don’t know what the others think, but... isn’t false happiness still happiness? Or rather, what is real happiness, and what is false? Can you truly tell the difference?"

"If the real you thinks the same way..."

The thought suddenly popped into Michael’s head, and it was almost funny. The real Sakura and the memory-data Sakura held completely opposite views.

But Michael couldn’t say which was "good" and which was "bad." He had no right to define such things.

As long as the Flame-Chasers’ decisions were based on their own free will, Michael didn’t see it as a bad thing, even if their goal was to oppose him. But...

But...

But wasn’t this a part of the perfect ending he had always hoped for?

"Perhaps you’re right. No matter what kind of happiness it is, whether its foundation is real or fake, as long as you can truly feel it, the emotion itself is not false. Besides, Sakura, I like your smile."

Sakura looked at Michael in surprise. Hearing his last words, her smile faltered slightly, but her cheeks flushed red.

After that, it seemed they had run out of things to say. Apart from the sound of their footsteps, only a deep silence remained.

At some point, Sakura had fallen slightly behind Michael, quietly gazing at the back she had once followed.

They didn’t have far to go. Michael soon walked into the Elysian Realm’s central processing... hub. Sakura didn’t follow him in. Even though her sister was inside, they had spent fifty thousand years together. A little time apart didn’t matter.

She gently closed the door for Michael. She was curious—in the last fifty thousand years, Michael had only visited the Realm twice. The first was for Eve’s birthday, and the second was five hundred years ago, when he brought her and Pardofelis back. So, she knew his third visit must be for something important, or to seek an answer to some question. Of course she was curious, but it was none of her business. This life was enough for her.

No...

It wasn’t enough.

She suddenly remembered something she had overlooked—he had said he’d never seen her smile, that he liked her smile, but...

Since then, she had never seen him smile again.

---||---

"ROAR—BAM!"

The young girl stared nervously at the computer screen. As a blue gorilla dropped from the sky, her character, who still had more than half her health, performed a disappearing act with her health bar. The screen instantly went gray.

"Aaaargh! I’m so mad!"

The girl expertly hit a hotkey, brought up her chat program, and in a pinned group chat, opened a private message with "V."

"Sis Vill-V! The stats on your big blue monkey are insane! Even with a shield and a healer, I can’t keep him alive!"

After sending the message, the girl flopped back in her soft chair, annoyed, and fiddled with the blood-red streak in her bangs.

"ROAR—BAM!"

The familiar sound rang out again. Rin flinched, but quickly realized that since she had already lost and exited the game, it couldn’t be about her character.

So, she tilted her chin up slightly and looked at the other girl, a table’s length away.

"Good luck, Sis Pardo..."

It seemed Rin’s blessing worked. Pardofelis’s cat ears twitched. She patted her chest and muttered neurotically to herself.

"Okay, okay, still a sliver of health left... Your attack is over! Now it’s my turn! I refuse to believe that four of Pardofelis’s ultimate skills can’t one-shot you!"

Pardofelis’s pale face reflected the complex and brilliant lights of the screen. The dim surroundings only made the screen’s glow more dazzling, like the lights in a downtown nightclub.

"Aha... didn’t one-shot him, so close!"

Pardofelis slumped back in her chair, dejected. Two streams of tears instantly flowed down her face.

At the same time, the familiar roar sounded again.

"ROAR—BAM!"

Seeing Pardofelis’s miserable state, Rin patted her own chest and felt much better. As long as I’m not the only unlucky one, it doesn’t count. As long as I’m not the only one being tormented by the big blue monkey—uh, I mean, the Ape God—then it’s not really torment!

Beep-beep—

It seemed Vill-V had replied.

"Huh? A voice message?"

"What? You want to change the stats again? While that’s a piece of cake for a genius like me, haven’t you just been going around in circles, you poor child? I was kind enough to copy this popular game for you from the outside. You told me you couldn’t use real money, and you couldn’t get characters just by grinding. So I gave you the console codes for characters and weapons. Then you complained that you could one-shot everything, so I painstakingly increased the monster stats by a hundred levels for you. Now you’re complaining that the monster stats are too high? If I lower them for you now, won’t you just complain in a little while that the game is too easy and there’s no sense of achievement?"

Rin sighed heavily and collapsed back in her chair.

Although Sis Vill-V hadn’t said it outright, it was clear she wasn’t going to help her change the stats again. Though, considering her tone, Rin suspected the Vill-V currently on duty was the Conductor, who probably couldn’t change them anyway... right?

In any case, she decided to put these troubles aside for now. Worst case, she could secretly use the power of the Twelfth Divine Key to reset the game’s stats to how they were when it was first brought into the Realm.

"Um... Sis Pardo, you’ve been playing for days now. Don’t you need to restock?" she asked, looking doubtfully at Pardofelis, who still had the look of a "useless cat" on her face.

"Huh? Restock? I... uh, no! Shhh—let’s talk about this quietly!"

"But there’s no one else here, right?" Rin spread her hands. Pardofelis scratched her cat ears and realized that was probably true.

But her feline sixth sense told her something was off...

"Sigh... I only figured this out recently. Rin, Rin, look, how many lady bosses out there restock their own inventory? None, right! The reason they’re the boss is because they have employees to do simple things like that. As the boss of Felis’s Shop, I just need to sit back, wait for my employee to restock, and then solve any problems my employee can’t handle!"

"It’s mainly because the game is too fun, right..." Rin muttered under her breath. Seeing Pardofelis look over, she quickly changed the subject. "Uh... did you find an employee, Sis Pardo? Who is it?"

She had once tried to go restocking with Pardofelis, but annoyingly enough, despite having trained with her sister every morning for years, she was a complete liability when it came to stealth. After a few tries, she had to give up on such a "lucrative" and exciting job. A job like looking after the Twelfth Divine Key in the central hub was more her speed.

After all, the Divine Key hadn’t had any problems for fifty thousand years. Her "work" was more like playing video games.

At the mention of an employee, Pardofelis seemed even more embarrassed. She tugged hard at her cat ears before whispering, "Uh... actually... I just gave the nightly restocking job to Can."

As if feeling that this bordered on animal abuse, Pardofelis quickly explained, "Can is smaller than me and her movements are lighter, so it’s much easier for her to restock. Besides, all she used to do was eat and sleep. Boss Kevin was always secretly feeding her, and she was starting to look like a pig... Making her restock is a good way for her to lose some weight..."

"Pfft!"

"Pff—"

The laugh that was about to escape Rin’s lips got stuck in her throat. She and Pardofelis shot up from their chairs at the same time, staring warily into the darkness.

If not for that sudden, stifled laugh, neither of them would have realized there was a third person here.

"Sigh... What can I say? If you two want to sneak in some gaming, go ahead. But why do you have to turn off the lights?"

The male voice was unfamiliar—so unfamiliar that the moment Pardofelis and Rin heard it, tears welled up in their eyes.

Snap!

Michael snapped his fingers, and the room was filled with light. The sudden change made even his own pupils contract, his vision momentarily affected.

"Hey! Wait!"

Before he could react, Pardofelis leaped at him like a small cat, her limbs wrapping tightly around his body.

"Waaaah! Big Bro Michael, you still remember this place... I thought it would be thousands of years before I saw you again!"

"Alright, alright, is it really that dramatic?"

Michael glanced at Rin, who was standing to the side with an equally emotional expression, and gave her a reassuring look before gently patting Pardofelis’s back.

Then, he asked casually, "Did you miss me that much? When was the last time we saw each other?"

"Five hundred forty years, eight months, and three days. A total of one hundred ninety-seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight days! Uh... I can’t remember the exact hour."

The hand patting her back froze mid-air. Then, he hugged the little cat in his arms tightly.

Besides this strong embrace, he no longer knew what else he could give her.