Blue light spread across the desert.
Crystalline blue light scattered as though fireworks had gone off.
"We were too late."
Haseol scratched his head with a troubled expression.
"What should we do?"
[It may have failed. Let us watch the situation for now.]
[There is a chance you may not be able to escape the Rootstream, so move toward the wall first.]
"Yes."
Haseol walked backward while watching the ghost.
The ghost wore a crisp white dress shirt like an office worker, but its head was made of black smoke.
It tossed the broken staff-like ability gear onto the sand.
"Do you know what that ability gear was?"
[There are too many staff-shaped ability gears. I cannot identify it for certain.]
"I see. The Rootstream still seems unchanged. I will at least check whether I can get out."
With that, Haseol turned around.
Toward the wall of the Rootstream.
"......?"
He saw strange pillars of light rising there.
One was a gray pillar of light.
The other was a white pillar of light.
Within both pillars, light flowed like water.
The gray pillar's light flowed upward.
The white pillar's light circulated both up and down.
"Can you two see this too?"
[I can.]
[I can see it.]
"What is it?"
[We need to find out.]
[First, put the Reverse Life you picked up into it and see what happens. If nothing changes, put your hand in.]
"There is no option to pretend we did not see it and leave the Rootstream, is there?"
[Do you think there is?]
Haseol snickered and turned his head.
The ghost was walking across the desert toward him.
"I will check the gray one first."
Haseol positioned himself where both the ghost and the pillars of light were in view.
Then he inserted Reverse Life, the pitch-black knife, into the gray pillar of light.
Nothing changed.
"Next, the white one."
Haseol inserted the knife into the white pillar of light.
"It does not seem like anything changed, right?"
[Put your hand in.]
The ghost was approaching.
There was no time to hesitate.
"Here I go. Watch closely."
Haseol put his hand into the gray pillar of light.
Then he stopped.
It was because two landscapes overlapped before his eyes.
One was the sight of the Rootstream peeling away from the sky, and the other was the sight of the Rootstream before him still standing intact.
The Rootstream was gradually clearing away.
Before it vanished completely, Haseol pulled his hand out of the gray pillar of light.
"Did you see it?"
[See what? You were just standing still.]
"I saw a future where the Rootstream disappeared."
[It disappears? Then that means it can be cleared?]
"Does it not?"
[Then what is the white pillar of light? Check it.]
"Yes."
Haseol immediately walked over and put his hand into the white pillar of light.
The landscape overlapped once again.
This time, however, the Rootstream remained as it was.
The ghost walked backward along the path it had come.
The staff it had broken was restored in its hands, then burrowed back into the ground.
Then the ghost walked backward and disappeared beyond a distant dune.
Haseol pulled his hand from the white pillar of light.
[What did you see this time?]
"It rewound. The ghost went backward, the staff was restored, and then it was buried in the ground again."
[If it rewound, it seems we can restart this Rootstream.]
Bisan spoke.
[So we have obtained one ability gear. We can enter the gray light, remove this Rootstream, and finish here because we have obtained one. Or we can enter the white light and try again for a better result. It seems to be telling us to choose.]
"It seems so."
Haseol nodded in agreement.
"It looped before when we failed, too."
[What are you going to do? Honestly, I think it would be fine to remove the Rootstream now that we have one.]
"You do?"
[Removing the Rootstream is more important than ability gear. I would not mind ending this after accomplishing that.]
"What about you, Bisan?"
[If possible, the best outcome would be to obtain both ability gears and kill the ghost as well.]
"So you want me to loop. But is that goal not too much?"
Haseol laughed as though he found it absurd.
[Haseol, you can do it. I believe in you.]
"Hmm......"
Haseol scratched his cheek, looking troubled.
Bisan wanted the best possible outcome that could be achieved.
That was similar to Eska, yet different.
Eska would probably have wanted to obtain every sort of information, such as how many loops were possible and whether the passage of time affected the number of loops.
"Myun wants a stable result, and Bisan wants the best result......"
[You choose.]
"Hmm......"
[You do not have much time to choose. The ghost is coming, and we do not know how long the pillars of light will last.]
"Yes."
Haseol nodded and made his choice at once.
He stepped into the white pillar of light.
As though time were rewinding, the ghost moved backward.
"Now that I see it, I can also see the Rootstream turning black in proportion to how far it rewinds."
[The more time we rewind, the greater the effect on the Rootstream.]
"I think so. The staff was restored and went into the ground, and the ghost went far enough that I could not see it anymore...... Huh?!"
Haseol furrowed his brow.
Then, in the next instant.
He was back where he had first stepped into the Rootstream.
The wide desert and its dunes.
It was the scenery he had seen at the beginning.
The Reverse Life ability gear he had held in his hand was gone as well.
"I will run straight to the staff."
The moment he spoke, Haseol began running across the desert.
[Are you trying to take both?]
"I will find out what kind of ability gear the staff is. We need to know whether it is valuable enough to loop several times for it."
[That is true.]
[We need to obtain everything.]
[Huh?]
[We cannot judge whether an ability gear is good or bad right now. As long as we do not know how each ability gear will affect the process of the world's destruction, I think we need to obtain every one of them.]
What Bisan said was, in the literal sense, an ideal.
[There is some sense to that, but do you not think it is too much to demand of Haseol right now? He has only been involved with supernatural abilities for a few days.]
[Not at all. Haseol is someone who can do it.]
The conversation between the two began to turn serious.
"Your opinions are tied one to one, right?"
[What?]
[Pardon?]
"Then I will try doing what I want."
Haseol approached the staff buried in the ground.
"I still cannot see the ghost."
He rapidly approached the staff and thrust his hand deep into the sand.
Grip.
Haseol gripped the staff and pulled it out.
Could it really be called a staff?
Judging from the notches carved into it, it looked more like a support meant to be fitted into something.
Yet even though it had been buried in the sand, its surface remained smooth without the slightest trace of weathering.
Perhaps it was smooth precisely because it had been buried in the sand.
"Do you know what this is?"
[I do not know.]
[I do not know either. I will look it up for a moment.]
"Okay. Then I will......"
"Huff. Huff. Huff. Huff. Huff."
Heavy panting began to sound again.
"Hic, hii, hii, hngh."
Haseol stopped as he was about to walk and immediately turned toward the sound.
Asha was climbing a sandy dune on trembling legs.
"Hnghhaaaaaaaah!"
Then her strength gave out, and she rolled down the sandy dune.
"Aaaah!"
She rolled down the dune, throwing sand everywhere, then crashed face-first into the sand.
Fwoosh!
She lifted her head.
"Pfft, pfft, pfft!"
Asha spat sand from her mouth.
"Nngh, nnghhhh......"
Then she made a sound as though she were about to cry, kneeling in the sand.
"Waaaaah! I don't want to! I don't want to! I said I don't want tooooo!"
Asha sat down in the desert and slapped the sand with both hands.
Like a fussy infant.
"Why are you doing this to meee?! What did I do wrong to make you make me do this?!"
She grabbed sand and threw it into the empty air where no one stood.
"Waaaaah!"
She cried sorrowfully.
Tears welled in her large eyes and streamed down her face.
"......"
Haseol watched her in silence.
"Sniff. Sniff. Hic."
Asha hiccupped as she cried.
The sand on her face became wet with tears and fell away.
"I do not want to......"
Asha mumbled in a choked voice still thick with tears.
"Can't you just let me go to school? You can make someone else do it. Why me? Why does it have to be me?"
She sniffled as she complained, but there was no one to listen to her.
"There must be an expert better than an ordinary high school girl like me. Why me, seriouslyyyyyyyyy?!"
She shouted with reddened eyes, but no one came to comfort her.
"......"
Rustle.
Then she rose to her feet, her body covered in sand.
"If I do it, it will work, right? If I do it."
With that, Asha began climbing the sandy dune again.
Her figure disappeared.
"Whaaaaaat?!"
Then Asha's voice rang out from somewhere else.
It came from near the place where Haseol had found Reverse Life.
"You are telling me to get that too? Really? Are you seriously saying that? No, right? Really not, right?"
Asha stood before the place that ended the loop and the place that allowed another attempt.
"Right? I can end it, right? Ah~~, what a relief. I'm only an ordinary person, so I'll end it here. I will end it, right? You said I could end it too, so? I'm really ending it?"
Though she spoke that way, Asha had stopped in front of the gray pillar of light.
"Fuck. Fuck. Seriously. Fuck. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. I said I don't want to."
Even so, Asha walked into the white pillar of light.
She started over from the beginning.
For the perfect outcome.
She had chosen the same option as Haseol.
"Ghk, nngh, nngh, nngh, you, nngh."
A voice sounded right beside Haseol.
The Asha made of wavering white light was being strangled once again.
Lying collapsed on the ground, she stabbed the ghost with Reverse Life in one hand.
The ghost punched Asha in the stomach.
THUD!
"Ghk!"
It hit her side, then hit her face.
The sound of a person being struck echoed through the quiet desert.
As Asha struggled, sand flew in every direction.
Blood that burst from Asha's face stained the ghost's fist and scattered around them.
Though Asha struggled and stabbed the ghost with the knife, she could not inflict a fatal wound.
Reverse Life fell from Asha's hand.
Then she disappeared from view.
"Does Asha have no supernatural power at all?"
[It appears that way.]
"......"
Haseol quietly took a deep breath.
"If the sight of Asha just now showed something that happened in the past, did this Rootstream fail?"
[That is likely.]
Holding the staff, Haseol turned his head.
He looked toward the place where Reverse Life had been earlier.
It was still there.
But.
"Ah."
The ghost was lifting it.
The ghost lifted the black knife, gripped it with both hands, and exerted force.
CRACK!
It broke it.
As before, blue light scattered in every direction.
"If I obtain one, it breaks the other......"
[You did waste a little time watching Asha.]
"What if I run at top speed?"
[Since we do not know what kind of ghost it is, would it not be better to test another method?]
Holding the staff, Haseol walked backward.
[When you obtain one, the ghost is at the other one. Does that not mean you simply choose one of the two?]
Myun spoke.
[Between an ability gear whose performance we know for certain and an ability gear whose use we do not know, which do you think is better, Haseol?]
[Reverse Life is cursed, so having it will definitely help you. Do not use it for the Pairing Effect. Just use it.]
"What about this staff?"
[Put it in the Fairy Realm. You can take it out if you have a use for it, but there may never be a use for it.]
One ability gear would certainly make Haseol stronger, while the other had an uncertain function.
That was why Myun was telling Haseol to choose.
Two options.
Haseol turned his head.
Behind him, the white pillar of light and the gray pillar of light rose into the air.
"I can still remove the Rootstream while holding this staff."
[You can.]
Bisan did not sound entirely satisfied.
[It is still early, and we do not know how many Rootstreams will appear in the future. It would be better to finish quickly now and rest.]
"Hmm......"
[Shura went to find a weapon for you anyway. Even if you do not have Reverse Life, you will have a weapon to use.]
"That is true. Then......"
After thinking for a moment, Haseol spoke.
"If both ability gears are destroyed, there is still a chance that it will loop, right?"
[That is likely. It happened before.]
"Then this time, I will go fight the ghost."
[What? Why fight the ghost?]
"If I can kill it by fighting it, I will kill it. I will learn as much information as I can."
Holding the staff, Haseol walked toward the ghost.
"If it seems killable, then in the next loop, I will not go for the ability gears. I will go straight to kill the ghost."
[Huh.]
"Then there is a way to obtain both ability gears."
[That is true, but...... Will you be all right?]
"I will try. Asha moved to obtain both of them too, so I cannot take the easy route and obtain only one."
[Good. That is a wise choice.]
Bisan approved of Haseol's choice as well.
"Whew. Then I am going to fight the ghost."
Haseol began sliding down a sandy dune toward the ghost.