[What I mean is, I think the future me sent you back to the past!]
"...Explain it properly."
Alex, who had not understood a single word, pressed at his temples and demanded an explanation.
[Let me start with how you became a ghost.]
"Starting there?"
Alex looked puzzled.
[It's important.]
[Before you regressed, when you died, do you remember what you were thinking?]
"Thinking?"
Alex blinked, then slowly spoke.
"...I thought I couldn't leave Leo alone."
Yes.
Dying from a wolf attack, Alex had worried about Leo, who would lose his only family, his uncle, and be left alone.
[I told you magic is will, right?]
[Your thought, your will, is what turned you into a ghost.]
"But will alone isn't enough, is it? Don't you need mana?"
Otherwise everyone who died leaving family behind would have become a ghost.
[Of course.]
[But when you died, I was right there. My life vessel was. And you had a talent for magic.]
Ah.
Alex's eyes widened.
[Your talent for magic drew in my mana, and your will set the magic off!]
"I... used magic?"
[That's right! But since it wasn't proper magic, you ended up in the form of a 'ghost'.]
For the past twelve years he had wondered why he became a ghost, and to think it had actually been magic he cast by accident.
Alex could not help being astonished.
[No wonder the Chief God and the Demon King couldn't recognize you. My magic is magic from another world.]
[You became a being of an entirely different dimension.]
A being of a different dimension.
That was a reason he had never once considered.
"I did think at one point that he was pretending not to see me because his conscience stung over putting Leo through so much."
It seemed Solenius, the Chief God, was not quite that shameless a wretch after all.
[Though one slip and you might have come back as a ghoul or a zombie?]
That would have been a disaster in more ways than one.
The Hero's uncle, a ghoul or a zombie.
'The Holy Kingdom would surely have put me down. And then I couldn't even have watched over Leo.'
So there had been an upside to being a ghost no one could see, Alex thought.
Two Hundred snickered, then went on with his explanation step by step.
[That also explains why you can use my magic so skillfully. You said you'd been 'trying' all that time to protect Leo.]
Alex blinked.
[Magic is will.]
[You must have failed, since you lacked mana and had no circles, but you were 'using' magic the whole time.]
[For twelve whole years!]
"...Even though I only ever failed?"
Even though he had never succeeded once?
[They say failure is the mother of success, right?]
[Those failures piled up as your experience. Twelve years of it! Of course you're good at magic!]
[You're like a secondhand new hire!]
Alex simply listened to what Two Hundred said.
Those twelve years of pure helplessness, which he had thought useless because he could not save Leo, somehow came back to him in a new light.
[Besides, you didn't fail at everything. You blocked that last attack, didn't you?]
"But... I couldn't protect Leo."
Alex clasped both hands together tightly and spoke in an anguished voice. The sight of Leo dying was horribly vivid before his eyes.
[That's only natural. Do you think a 1st circle 「Shield」 can block a 9th circle attack? That was the size of the gap, so there was nothing you could do.]
Two Hundred said, as if consoling him.
[What that spell's success did instead was connect you and the future me, I think.]
"Connect? You and me?"
[Right. That me had probably been trapped in a glass bead for twelve years, staring at nothing but trees and grass and sky.]
Two Hundred's voice came through with a revolted "Ugh."
[So he'd have been searching for any way out. And that's when he found you, the one who'd just succeeded at a spell.]
"Me? How?"
[Because you became a ghost thanks to my mana, Alex.]
[Hmm. How to put it. A vassal? A subordinate? A familiar? I think you became something like that.]
What a half-baked, strange sort of existence that was. Which was presumably why neither of them had known the other existed for twelve years.
[Anyway.]
[The spell's success would have worked as a signal, and that's how I noticed you.]
[Then I'd have investigated you. Why you had even the smallest trace of my mana. Searching souls is easy work for a lich!]
[And I'd have found out that in the past, you and I were very close together on that mountain. Close enough to touch if you reached out.]
Without realizing it, Alex opened and closed the hand that had grabbed Two Hundred's life vessel.
[The future me would have realized there was only one way to escape the life vessel.]
"...Regression."
[Exactly! Going back to the past so that you would grab me, grab my life vessel. That was the only way.]
[But it wouldn't have been easy. The connection between the future me and you would have been unstable.]
Alex listened to Two Hundred's story without so much as blinking.
[On top of that, regression magic is impossible magic.]
[If it were easy, every great mage would have gone back to the past.]
Two Hundred chuckled and went on.
[Still, I'd have tried it.]
[But my will alone wouldn't have been enough. You were the one who had to go back, Alex.]
[And then you 'thought' it.]
[That you wanted to go back.]
Alex recalled what he had thought right before he regressed.
Leo,
"I wanted to make him happy...."
***
[Aaaaah! It worked!]
[When you go back, grab my life vessel!]
***
[And that's how you came back to the past and ended up grabbing my life vessel.]
Two Hundred let out a sigh of relief.
[Wow, trapped for twelve whole years. Just thinking about it gives me chills.]
[It's all thanks to you, Alex. Though I'm sure I poured out every drop of my mana too!]
"Thanks to... me?"
Alex, wearing a dazed expression, perhaps from learning the secret of his regression, muttered.
[That's right!]
[What do you think would have happened if you hadn't kept trying for twelve years, if you'd given up partway because you kept failing?]
Two Hundred spoke as though the very thought made him dizzy.
[You'd probably have failed the spell in that last battle, and then the future me would never have noticed you.]
[And then, far from attempting regression magic, I'd have stayed stuck in that bead. For a hundred years, a thousand years.]
[It's all thanks to your effort!]
...The regression was thanks to me?
...Those twelve years of effort weren't wasted? They hadn't been useless?
[And you're good at magic now thanks to those twelve years of training, too.]
[Like a new hire with a career behind him!]
Alex thought back to the magic that had reduced the goblin shaman to ash in a single stroke. And that was thanks to twelve years of effort.
"Ha...."
Alex buried his face in both hands.
[What's wrong?]
Two Hundred, whose view had suddenly gone dark, asked in surprise.
Through Alex's senses, he felt something hot spilling from his eyes.
[Are you crying?]
"...It's just...a little...."
His heart churned and his chest ached in a way he could not put into words.
"I was never able to help Leo. Not once in twelve years."
Alex spoke as if vomiting up the helplessness, the self-loathing, the misery piled inside him. Twelve years' worth of it was very heavy.
"I really thought I was useless.... But I wasn't."
Those twelve years of effort had sent Alex into the past. And they had become the power that destroyed the goblin shaman, and that could destroy the Demon King in time.
"...I wasn't...a useless uncle."
That was the greatest relief of all.
[Useless, my foot!]
[You're an uncle who turned back time for his nephew!]
At Two Hundred's words, Alex let out a deflated laugh in spite of himself. Somehow those words made his heart swell.
"All right. I'll grant you leniency."
Alex said, leaning back in the chair.
[Yes!]
[And of course, I will do my utmost for the subjugation of the Demon King!]
[And I will pave Leo's flower path too!]
[Even back on Earth I never killed good people. Haaa. I never knew I'd cause this much damage.]
"Forget it. In this present, it hasn't happened."
[Right!]
He seemed to bounce back awfully fast.
Then again, moping would not solve anything.
[So what should we do first?]
"Travel the continent and build up my skills. Whatever you want to do, you need strength."
Alex's eyes gleamed.
"If there's a corrupted dungeon along the way, clear it and collect your bones. Gather information on my sister and brother-in-law, and kill demonkind and the Demon King."
Alex clenched his fist as if making a vow.
"That's how hard I have to work. For Leo."
Hadn't twelve years of failed attempts come back in the end as a successful regression spell?
'As long as I don't give up, even if I fail....'
No one could know how it would end.
Still clenching his fist, Alex looked at the bone fragment in his hand.
"Come to think of it, about the mana in this bone. Can't I use it?"
It was the power that had evolved a lowest-grade goblin into a lower-middle-grade goblin shaman. If he could use it, it would be quite useful going forward.
[I'm not sure about that.]
[For one thing, I'm a lich, so I'm harmful to humans.]
[You've got something like demonic energy here, right?]
Demonic energy.
The powerful force possessed by demonkind.
Human, animal, or monster, any living creature stained by demonic energy would turn into a demonic beast and lose its reason and go berserk, or fail to withstand it and die.
"Hmm."
Remembering that, Alex pushed the bone fragment to the far end of the table. The way one keeps away from a poisonous mushroom.
[Don't treat it like a lump of germs! That's my little toe bone.]
"Is it really all right for me to keep this?"
Divine power could purify demonic energy, but there was no one here who could use divine power.
And this was the bone of a lich from another world, on whom divine power barely worked.
[It's in a slightly corrupted state, but just carrying it should be fine.]
[My soul's already inside your body anyway.]
Ah.
Right, he was already carrying something more dangerous than a bone.
"Le...."
[It's no problem for Leo either!]
[Totally fine! Totally!]
[As long as you don't use it!]
Ahem.
Alex cleared his throat lightly at Two Hundred's frantic reaction and asked,
"But what do you mean by corrupted?"
[My mana is green normally. But this one's blackish-green, right?]
"...Now that you mention it, the Demon King's skull used blackish-green mana too."
Alex clicked his tongue, as though the thought alone disgusted him.
[It probably got corrupted because a being other than me was using it.]
[Like that red streak left behind when you scoop cream sauce with the spoon you used for tomato sauce!]
It was a very Two Hundred sort of comparison, and easy to follow.
"So I can't use these bones until I've gathered them all?"
[I'll have to think about it.]
[You using it directly seems difficult... and we'd have to prepare thoroughly to keep the priests here from catching on....]
While Two Hundred sank into thought, muttering to himself,
Alex picked up the bone fragment and slipped it into a small pouch. He would have to keep it somewhere safe so he did not lose it.
"It's gotten late."
By the time he had learned the things he had been curious about, the moon had tilted a fair way across the sky.
He did not know how many hours of sleep he would get, but he decided to sleep anyway.
'When I have time, I should write down what happens in the future in a notebook. So I don't forget.'
He had not been able to write anything down until now because Two Hundred shared his field of vision, but now he could record it with an easy mind.
Alex rose from the chair and lay down beside Leo. The steady sound of that small breathing calmed his tangled heart.
Just as he was about to fall asleep,
something occurred to Alex and he opened his eyes again.
"Come to think of it, I never asked. Two Hundred, you said you became a lich from a human, right?"
[Yeah, that's right.]
"Then your bones would be in a human shape. How many do I have to find?"
Alex, who knew little about the human body or medicine, asked how many of Two Hundred's bones he would have to find.
Two Hundred hesitated a moment, then said,
[...206.]
"...What? How many?"
Alex, who had asked without much thought, opened his eyes wide. Somehow his voice seemed to tremble.
[It is 206... though.]
"Are you crazy?! 206?!"
Mindful of Leo sleeping beside him, Alex voiced his shock in a low tone.
[But hey! You found one, so now you only have to find 205!]
Was that supposed to be helpful?
At Two Hundred's answer, Alex's vision went dark.