Inside the frost-bitten cavern, Phaser began to piece together what the countless corpses and the endless writing truly meant.
It started when he noticed something no one else would have seen. The skeletons weren't ancient at all. Despite the cave's freezing preservation, the bones were too fresh and the marrow stains were too recent. If these were victims from centuries past, time should have worn them away but it hadn't.
One skeleton's arm matched Haruno's perfectly. When he compared several others, they all bore the same healed crack. Every one of those bodies was her. They were hundreds of Harunos, each one who had died here before.
The cave wasn't filled with strangers. It was filled with her.
When Haruno began reading the ancient Japanese carvings on the stone and the dried blood across the walls, the truth unfolded in fragments. They were diary entries from desperate versions of herself. Each inscription spoke of her fleeing a Japanese village, taking the Blood Odachi, hiding from pursuers, then finding this cave where a monstrous worm stalked her. The Blood Odachi had shattered. The cycle had ended with her death. But then another Haruno appeared and wrote again.
Each version of her lived the same loop, forgetting everything upon death, doomed to repeat her trial endlessly. The cave remained as a permanent save state, keeping the evidence of her past failures while resetting her consciousness. But one thing didn't add up. Not a single writing, not a single skeleton, mentioned him. Phaser didn't exist in any of them.
That's when he made the leap of genius that tied everything together.
In MoDS, every major storyline had "routes", which are branching timelines created by the player's choices. Haruno's Blood Odachi arc was originally meant to occur in the Third Dominia Quest, not the first. The one she was in now was far too early. That meant she had forced a future storyline to trigger prematurely. This was something impossible in both the game and the real world… unless Outers existed and came to know about how to unlock the trial of the Blood Odachi earlier in the game.
Phaser knew that the Blood Odachi wasn't just any treasure. It was a Primal Synsiline Treasure, which are personally secured by the God of Chronology in game lore. So when they entered the trial early, the trial adapted by bending time itself, dragging them forward into a pseudo-future where the Odachi already existed. The past became the future, the cave became the stage of a broken script and whatever controlled the trial began the cycles, making her repeat until the destined outcome was achieved, that was Haruno must claim the Blood Odachi.
That was why 173 versions of her had died.
Each cycle was the world's attempt to correct itself and realign destiny with the path that had been prematurely broken. Each Haruno was both the victim and the error correction.
And Phaser's presence was the anomaly that changed everything.
He shouldn't have been there. In the original storyline and even in this one, Haruno undertook the Blood Odachi trial alone in the Third Dominia Quest. Only this time he accompanied her. His existence was a paradox but instead of being rejected, it stabilized the loop.
Why? He didn't know but he knew it involved the Chronological Palace.
In short, Haruno's trial was a loop meant to realign fate, but Phaser's interference had created the 174th route, a new timeline where both of them existed, outside of all predetermined paths. And as they came to understand this, the horror deepened.
If every time Haruno died, a new cycle began. And if the loop was still running even now, then the next cycle might already have begun.
Phaser looked up from the blood-stained wall. He turned silently as Haruno crouched by one of the skeletons, brushing away a thin layer of frost. But then her hand froze. Her eyes widened slightly.
"There's a letter."
Phaser moved closer, his glowing hair casting an eerie crimson light over the corpse. The parchment was wedged beneath the rib cage, darkened by old, dried stains of blood. Haruno pulled it free with care. The paper was stiff and partly frozen. But what startled her wasn't the condition of it. It was the writing.
"It's in English. This one isn't written in Japanese."
"That's weird. All the others were in Japanese."
"They were. But this..."
She slowly unfolded it, her voice lowering as she began to read.
'If anyone can read this, the Blood Odachi's trial is simple. I learned that too late. Once I grabbed it, it began sucking my blood. It won't stop unless it's full.'
Haruno stopped reading and looked at Phaser.
"That explains why all the skeletons had blood dried on their bones. It wasn't ritual sacrifice. It was the blade itself."
She continued.
'I realized the truth before I died. The others — the skeletons — they're all me. The scars on their right arms is the old injury from our... Haruno's clan's massacre. I am the 173rd one. Every single time, we came here and failed. But if I die, I'll leave this note for my next self. Maybe it will help her. The Blood Odachi devours blood. It hungers endlessly so the objective of this trial is to feed it.'
Phaser muttered, "Feed it…"
Haruno kept reading, her tone becoming more rigid as if she was trying not to imagine what the woman — what she — had gone through writing it.
'I explored the cave and found three places where it can be satiated and make it recognize its owner. One, the Japanese village where I stole it. The villagers there are not human anymore. The Blood Odachi's curse warped them into husks. I killed them. Their blood fed it.'
'Two the worm in this blizzard. It hunts anything that lives. I slew it too, though I nearly froze and lost myself doing it. Three, the Frost Dragon far beyond this cavern. It is a Class Six creature. Its blood is purer than anything I've ever sensed. I believe if I can feed the Odachi that blood, it will accept me.'
Haruno's voice faltered slightly at the next line.
'I've read every other version's words. None of them mention the dragon. None of them even got this far. I think I'm the only one who discovered the truth.
The Blood Odachi doesn't just want blood. It measures the quality of it. The purer the being, the higher the offering's worth. Villagers gave it strength, the worm gave it volume but the dragon's blood will complete it.'
She paused, scanning the next part of the page. The letters were messier here as though written by trembling hands.
'If anyone is reading this, maybe my 174th, or 200th self, then listen carefully. The trial isn't about surviving. It's about feeding it properly. Once you've bled the dragon and the Odachi glows crimson, you'll know it's full. Don't hesitate. Claim it before it rejects you or else you'll be crazy like the others.'
"So the Blood Odachi tests endurance through. That's brutal even for a Primal Synsiline trial."
Haruno didn't reply. She was reading the next lines, and her voice softened.
'I don't know how the original Haruno Nishikata survived this. Maybe she was just stronger or maybe she never remembered any of it. Maybe that's why she became who she did. When you experience hell like this, something inside you just stops being normal.'
Haruno went silent for a while after that, her eyes flickering across the rest of the letter. Then she read on, slower this time.
'If I'm really the 173rd, then just know I came here during the Third Dominia Quest. That's what I know. But for some reason, my memory began overlapping. I saw flashes. I saw someone with red hair. He said something about the First Dominia Quest but I'm in the Third so I don't understand it.'
Phaser's jaw tensed slightly, but he said nothing.
'If the one reading this is that future version, the one who saw him, then these are the rules you need to follow to win this damned trial.'
'One: Head to the Japanese village north of the cave and kill everyone there. Let the Blood Odachi drink until it hums.'
'Two: Hunt down and slay the worm that lives in the caverns. Let the Odachi drink again.'
'Three: Go beyond the cave, into the direction of the blizzard, and find the Frost Dragon. Kill it. Feed the Odachi with its blood.'
Haruno swallowed, then read the final paragraph, written faintly in a shaky hand.
'If you're reading this, then it means I failed the third step. I couldn't kill the dragon. It's too strong or maybe I wasn't worthy. I'll try to leave clues about how it fights before I die, but if I can't, I hope the next me will figure it out. This blade will never belong to anyone who fears death. It only obeys those who feed it their life without hesitation. Good luck.'
When Haruno finished, the cave was silent for a long time. The only sound was the faint hiss of snow filtering in through the cracks above.
"So she figured out the Blood Odachi's real nature. It's a parasitic weapon. It doesn't test power. It tests persistence and blood will."
Haruno lowered the paper and sighed.
"Yeah. And she knew she was going to die. She wrote this so that her next self could carry on where she stopped."
"Which means every version of you was fighting toward one thing. They were filling that blade. Each iteration gets closer to completion."
Haruno nodded faintly, staring at the skeleton with a strange look of pity and fear.
"And now we know what to do, even if it kills us. Though I'm not alone this time"
Phaser exhaled slowly, running a hand through his glowing hair.
"Kill the villagers. Kill the worm. Kill the dragon. A perfect guidebook for suicide."
Haruno folded the letter and tucked it carefully into her inventory.
"Still, she left it for us. Maybe this time, we're the ones who finish it. And if we don't, maybe the 175th Haruno will."