"…And then?" Lin stared at the targets on the screen. He had unknowingly been drawn into the game Delta was describing. "Could the Hero never defeat the Demon King?"
"Mm. No matter how many times it was repeated, the Hero couldn't win. He could only helplessly face his companions' deaths. After they died, he loved them more, missed them more."
"..."
So it was just a different form of meaninglessness.
The Hero can never defeat the Demon King; the only way to "win" is to give up. But even if you give up, you still have to face the death of the first companion.
Giving up is equivalent to abandoning the meaning of the first companion's sacrifice.
Continuing leads to an eventual loss, meaning all the companions' sacrifices were for nothing.
A dead end.
If it were him… what would he do?
"But after who-knows-how-many times—I can't even remember which loop it was when I reached the Demon King—there was suddenly an extra option. A very simple one."
[Do you choose to defeat the Demon King?]
Lin hands stopped.
Delta continued as if oblivious. "Through countless cycles, the Hero finally mastered the way to defeat the Demon King. At this point, he could win, but he could also return to the very beginning, to when the first companion died."
"And the game warned me: if I chose to defeat the Demon King, I could never return to the beginning. Even if I deleted the save and restarted, I could never play the game again."
"If I chose to return to the time of the first companion's death, I could never defeat the Demon King, but I could stay in this cycle forever, meeting my friends again and again. I could also choose to give up after a certain death and live an ordinary but decent life."
"My sister told me that choosing to defeat the Demon King was too cruel for the Hero. He would have to mourn his fallen friends forever, searching for their traces in memories. The price was too heavy. Choosing to return to the past—though one friend died—allowed him to live with the others."
"I wanted to choose to give up, too. But suddenly I wondered… why did all the companions in the game have their own stories, but the Hero didn't? He was just a simple protagonist. Why was it that such a seemingly empty person, who just happened to be cheerful, could become the Hero and carry everyone's convictions?"
"After thinking for a long time, I realized. The experiences with his companions, this endless cycle—that was the Hero's 'story.'"
"The player can restart countless times, can choose. But for the Hero in the game, he will definitely go to defeat the Demon King in the end, because the companions 'chose' him. Every single time. He doesn't know other heroes will defeat the Demon King in the future, nor does he know that this one choice to give up will result in never being able to win. He only knows the story watered by blood along this path."
"If he abandoned his and his companions' persistence, that would be truly throwing everything from the journey and the Hero's meaning into the trash."
"So in the end, I chose to defeat the Demon King. The Hero welcomed victory in the dawn's first light. As he faced the light calmly, only then did he truly become the 'Hero.'"
Delta finished telling this complex, bitingly short story. There wasn't a sound in the room. She lay quietly on the sofa with her head tilted back, thinking of who-knows-what.
A moment later, she spoke softly again, her tone unreadable. "Will I become my sister's Hero?"
"…It's not that he became the Hero because he defeated the Demon King. It's that he could defeat the Demon King because he became the Hero."
"Eh?"
Delta thought she had misheard. She looked up in surprise at Lin sitting before the machine. His hands were on his lap. The score on the screen was frozen at 590,000.
Exactly 10,000 less than her score.
"You lost?" Delta asked, surprised.
Lin let out a long, heavy breath.
"I lost."
"The pressure has been too much lately."
"Didn't you guys only go on one mission all year? What's there to be stressed about? Over here, Dr. Mobius has new ways to torture us every day. We have to write papers until our hands go soft—sometimes she's too lazy to write them herself and makes us do it for her. That's pressure."
"Sigh, you don't understand."
Erwin was chatting with Nuwa using a dark-web chatroom, venting his stress to his friend.
Investigating traitors—one slip and it was a bottomless abyss. Right now, he felt like he was standing over that abyss on a creaking wooden stick that could snap at any second.
Nuwa was slacking off to chat in secret, so her typing speed was a bit slow, her words filled with dissatisfaction. "What do you mean I don't understand? Why are you mimicking the Doctor's high-and-mighty tone? Just tell me what the pressure is."
"Can't say. Hard to explain."
"…Is this one of those 'if you know, you know' things?"
"For your own good, stop asking."
In the end, Erwin didn't want to involve his good friend. Over the years, the number of people he was close with could be counted on one hand. After all, he was just a lowly private. Nuwa was simple-minded and exuded a certain silliness; if he dragged her down, Erwin would feel guilty for the rest of his life.
Furthermore… the dark web was likely monitored in real-time. He'd type a word, and the next second his mugshot might pop up on a monitor.
"Ugh, boring. When did you become such a boring adult?"
"Please, we aren't that young anymore…"
"Fine, I won't ask. It's probably just stuff like 'Has Lieutenant Lin noticed how hard I'm working?' or 'Would it be too rude to just nod when I run into Lieutenant Lin on the road?'"
Erwin's typing hand stopped. He stared silently at the words, each one feeling piercingly sharp.
Nuwa suddenly realized she had said the wrong thing. She immediately typed: "Sorry."
"It's okay. Lieutenant Lin… there must just be some misunderstanding."
"Mm. I see him often. Even though he's cold and tells jokes where you can't find the punchline—and irritates the Doctor into throwing him out within three sentences—he's definitely not a bad person."
"…Let's talk about something else."
Erwin gave a bitter smile.
He was currently in the eye of the storm. Could Lin be a traitor? Was all of Lin countless effort just for profit?
How could Erwin ever believe such a thing.
Therefore, after Lin was declared wanted, he became even more determined to investigate what was really going on with the traitors.
"By the way, remember to help me with the gacha pulls."
"Please, you have hands. Why do you need me to pull for you?"
"Haha, aren't you 'Lucky Erwin'? A private who survived so many Honkai eruptions—your luck must be great."
Luck, huh…
Erwin smiled helplessly.
But… fine. He hoped this luck would allow him to reach the truth.