Terminal station.
There, something like a Buddha statue sat on a stone throne. Or was it floating?
Damn it. The refraction was so severe I could barely make it out.
-────.
All around us, a choir radiated some kind of grand, unfathomable atmosphere.
-Tak, tak-tak-tatadada...
Even though the sound should have been distorted beyond recognition, the wooden fish rang through the entire hall as if we had wandered into a temple.
-Whooosh─
And a monk's staff, clearly a weapon, circled the area, exuding a threatening air.
"......"
Below the Buddha statue, people had gathered.
For something related to an Abnormality, they were all dressed in wildly different clothes, each with their own distinct style.
Were they people drawn in by the Abnormality's power?
If that guess was right, then they would definitely be hostile toward us, which was bad news.
Looks like this battle won't be easy.
An odd tension drifted through the temple.
───!
Before long, it noticed us.
-Whooosh!
Then it casually moved its right hand and attacked.
-KWAANG!!
The moment I realized that, I slammed the monk's staff flying toward us into the floor.
Fast. Considering the force it had just used to smash that into the ground, it was pretty damn dangerous.
Then next... what is that?
For reasons I couldn't understand, the instant the attack was blocked, a strange ring appeared around one of its followers.
An obvious abnormal phenomenon.
I froze for a moment at the sight of something that might have been strengthening the enemy.
"──!"
At that point, Ms. Otis barked at us.
Because of the space we were in, I couldn't hear it, but I roughly understood the meaning.
Probably telling us to surround them properly. We always had the numbers advantage, after all.
We slowly encircled them and began attacking bit by bit.
But for some reason, neither the Buddha statue nor its followers took any damage at all.
More precisely, the Buddha statue seemed to emit some strange sensation that hindered attacks, and the followers recovered all their wounds after only a short time.
Even that meaningless ring kept stacking on both enemies and allies alike.
It didn't seem to be a buff, since there was no visible change in anyone's body... but if this kept up, we were screwed...
-Whooosh─!
Wait, danger—!
-Hng, thud─
The moment I saw the force behind the flying staff, I threw myself at Ms. Ishmael beside me and rolled us both sideways.
Even so, launching such a strong attack out of nowhere is cheating!
If I'd reacted any later, Ms. Ishmael's waist would have been split in two.
Ah, it's coming again!
-Koom!
Right there, I grabbed Ms. Ishmael and forced us into another roll to evade it.
It's not coming again... Good. So that was the end of it.
Damn, seriously... I'd slammed my body into the floor by force, so I wasn't exactly in good shape.
I might have broken one or two things if I'd messed that up.
"──."
Ah. I made eye contact with Ms. Ishmael.
Stare─
Th... this is a little much, getting eye contact this close all of a sudden.
Ms. Ishmael seemed to feel the same way, because her face turned visibly red as she hurriedly slipped out of my arms.
Ahem, cough. No matter how much we'd lived a life on the bus where we showed each other our guts, we still weren't completely used to it... or anything.
Right, first we need to finish the fight.
I erased that scene from my memory and immediately got back into stance.
Let's analyze this again.
...I can't figure out the method to break that thing yet.
But if I unfold every possible outcome available right now and compare them—
"...Found it."
Finding the answer wasn't impossible.
Among the dozens, hundreds of scenes I saw, two were useful.
The Buddha statue, after its torso was broken, attacked its own followers; and when the ring grew dense enough, a follower suddenly died.
Ghk...!
And once I finished looking through the possibilities, a fierce headache slammed into my skull.
Was this the price of peering into so many futures I couldn't possibly handle?
Sure enough, it would be strange if such a broken ability had no side effects.
It felt less like physical pain and more like my brain, my mind itself, had hit its limit.
I'll have to hold back on this from now on...
Still, it's good I figured it out earlier than later. It's not like I'd ever had a chance to stare at this many possibilities at once before.
In the end, I just had to find what needed to be done, so it wasn't a big problem.
First, break the Buddha statue's torso.
────And then the brutal struggle dragged on for a long while.
After my sudden solo move managed to shatter the Buddha statue's body, it began attacking its own allies.
And once the ever-growing, meaningless ring passed a certain threshold, the followers would suddenly die.
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One by one, we piled those conditions up and succeeded in wiping out all three followers.
────.
Ah, it vanished. Whatever had been hindering that Buddha statue is gone.
...So this is the end.
The time had come to put an end to this exhausting, drawn-out battle.
Realizing that without even thinking about it, we poured our last strength into advancing toward the Buddha statue.
*
"Ugh... that was a seriously miserable fight. Faust, this is over now, right?"
"Yes, it seems the Mirror Railway ends here."
At Ms. Faust's confirmation, Ms. Rodion's face brightened.
We'd been inside fighting for at least twelve hours, so she was probably assuming it was time to rest now.
There were some who accepted that long battle obediently, but there were also those who couldn't.
"We came all this way and all we got was a pointless brawl with no reward or anything. What the hell kind of hellish labor was that!?"
Chief among them was someone like Mr. Heathcliff. I was wondering why he hadn't said a word.
Ms. Faust, hearing that, headed toward the thing marked Lost and Found by the exit.
It had been empty when we came in, so why was she going there...?
Oh...
"......"
Mr. Heathcliff went silent in an instant at the enormous pile of rewards Ms. Faust brought out of the Lost and Found box.
Hundreds of threads, hundreds of boxes... The reward was seriously outrageous.
So the Mirror Railway wasn't just for combat training in a variety of situations.
Only now did the whole thing start to feel somewhat satisfying.
And, as always, rest time came.
"Dante, it is about time."
""
"Thank you. From this moment, we will begin up to twelve hours of sleep and rest, with possible variance. Good night."
Ms. Faust, having cleanly ended work hours, was the first to leave the Mirror Railway.
Today was rough, and I should probably head back to my room too.
"......"
Huh.
Ms. Ishmael standing beside me had also become a little awkward.
No matter how urgent the situation had been, a man and a woman clinging to each other like that... yeah. Right. I still can't get used to it.
I won't be able to look her in the face properly for a while.
"Oh? What's with you two? Saramago?"
Tch, Ms. Rodion. She's way too quick to notice useless things...
"...It's nothing."
I hurriedly brushed it off, but she didn't exactly look convinced.
More like she was thinking, "I can tell there's something vaguely going on between you two, but you probably don't want to make a big deal out of it, so I'll let it slide."
...What a pointless misunderstanding. Knowing Ms. Rodion's personality, she'd probably tease us about it or look at us with some weird expression...
This is the kind of thing that should be cleared up early, but I'm too exhausted for that right now.
I'll think about it after I wash up and sleep.
Right now, my mind is completely shredded...
*
Grrr... waking up earlier than expected because I fell asleep earlier than expected.
It's probably around 3 a.m. now... Sleeping a bit more would be nice, but I've got things to do today, so let's get up early.
There are about two things I need to do... The Ms. Ishmael matter can't be solved at this hour, so I'll skip that.
Besides, can it even be solved?
If things go wrong, by morning there might be some absurd rumor spreading that Ms. Ishmael and I are in some sort of scandalous relationship.
Considering Ms. Rodion's friendliness, the odds aren't zero...
...Anyway! What I need to deal with now is this eye. Let's leave the headache-inducing problem for later. Even if I said anything, nobody would believe it anyway.
When I fought the Buddha statue, I felt it when the eye suddenly gave me a splitting headache.
Had I been paying too little attention to this eye until now?
No, had I been using this mysterious, alien ability so naturally that I'd taken it for granted?
Right now, I know far too little about this eye.
I only learned yesterday that trying to look at too many possibilities in too short a time brings on a massive headache.
Maybe that's because I'd never pushed the eye that hard before.
Well, when it came to Kromer, my head probably hurt every time I looked at that crazy woman, so maybe I just didn't notice.
There probably won't be any major battles for a while, so this seems like the right time to figure it out.
Roughly how many things can I see at once? If I look into the past or future, how far can I go without help from things like the Golden Bough?
Or whether I can look at a "me from a completely different parallel world." Things like that.
First, I need to find a mirror.
Even now I can see the possibilities leaking out of my own body, but wouldn't it be easier to see them clearly with a mirror?
And if I'm going to run all sorts of experiments and tests with it...
Looks like this early morning is going to be a very long one.