Demon King Daimaou: Volume 13 Read online

  “Yeah, these all match what I remember. Go back to the present. In a few minutes, the new list of births should come in. If they’re right, it means that we’re redoing history.”

  “In other words... we’re in the afterlife, but it’s a reflection of how the world was about two years before we died?” Junko asked.

  Lily shook her head.

  “It’s similar, but no. I’m sure you’ve noticed, but there are no Liradans here.”

  “There aren’t?” Junko said in shock.

  “Nope. The ‘trio’ is down to a ‘duo,’ since Arnoul is gone. Korone and the laborer Liradans are gone too. Humans are doing all the work needed to keep civilization running. And...”

  Akuto cut Lily off before she could finish.

  “Keena.”

  “Yup. Keena. Everybody else is here, but she isn’t.”

  “These are the only two changes?” Junko asked Lily.

  “The Empress is Kazuko. And there’s no record of the black mages being oppressed. That’s about the size of it, honestly.”

  “Which means?”

  “It’s peaceful. So peaceful that I’m getting bored. No black mage rebellion. No attempt by Zero to rule over humanity. No records of the Republic. Or of other countries opposing the Empire.”

  Lily crossed her arms and put her elbows on the desk.

  “That’s the reason I’m not surprised to see you. You’re not the Demon King.”

  “Really?” Akuto asked.

  Lily nodded.

  “Are you happy? You may not believe it, but the Demon King is dead. He never revived, either. There’s no rumors about him. It’s kind of a letdown, honestly.”

  Akuto’s face said that he didn’t know quite how to process this.

  “I-It’s not a bad thing. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a good thing...” Junko whispered, clearly stunned. But she didn’t seem like she really meant it, and she kept staring at Akuto to try and discern how he really felt about the matter.

  “A different timeline? Or maybe this is just the world someone wanted...” Akuto suggested. “We have our own memories of the past. Does that mean that other people don’t?”

  He frowned.

  “Talking about time makes things complicated, but...” Yoshie started to talk, but Lily cut her off.

  “And nobody wants complicated, so shut up. The only people who have their memories are those people who got involved with you and know the truth.”

  “That’s right. She told me not to talk to you about time, but there is one thing I have to at least brief you on. Time traveling technology was something from the future that only Boichiro Yamato had. You remember that, right?” Yoshie asked.

  “I do. But the device I used was...”

  “A different type of technology. That’s why... and maybe this is obvious, but... Brave isn’t here. He got the time traveling device from Boichiro, probably.”

  Lily pulled up the demographics on the screen again.

  “Hiroshi Miwa’s name is here. Which means he’s ‘here,’ but we just haven’t seen him yet.”

  “Keena was never here to begin with... but Hiroshi was, huh?” Akuto mused aloud.

  “So then, where did he go?”

  ○

  Hiroshi was in the forest outside the town, meeting with a man whose existence he’d not once forgotten.

  “Boichiro Yamato...”

  He’d come here after his death the same way Junko and the others had. He, however, had taken another path. He’d gone into the depths of the forest, as if something was guiding him, and before too long he was standing in front of Boichiro. He didn’t know if it was fate, or if he’d wanted to see the man. But it felt like this was part of what he had to do.

  He had lots of questions he had to ask. And after Boichiro’s death, he’d never gotten a chance to ask them.

  “I met someone on your team,” Hiroshi said sarcastically.

  “From the look of it, they gave you a rough time. They’re a rowdy bunch,” Boichiro said, laughing as if Hiroshi was an old friend. He was calmer than Hiroshi remembered him, and handsome, and there was something about him that charmed the person he was speaking to. Hiroshi had planned on complaining, but was beginning to change his mind.

  “They almost killed me. A lot of times. Did you tell them to?”

  “Of course not. I knew they were like that, but I couldn’t inspire them to change. All I can do is apologize.”

  “I don’t need you to apologize. Did those guys all come here when they died? If they did, I want to find them and give them a piece of my mind.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I assume if they did, they’d be too embarrassed to come find me,” Boichiro smiled.

  “They should be too embarrassed to talk to anyone.

  “Your plan... No, I don’t know if it’s your plan... but they either misunderstood it or deliberately changed it, and did something that sent a bunch of people here.”

  Hiroshi decided to be a little roundabout with his words, but Boichiro knew what he meant.

  “Yeah. I knew that might happen. And I’d resigned myself to it, too.”

  “You sound resigned about everything.”

  “Correct. I don’t want to speak ill of the dead. But I did try to stop this.”

  His words just further annoyed Hiroshi.

  “What are you trying to say? Just say it,” he said, his voice shaking with rage.

  “I’ll explain things in the order they happened. You know that I tried to change history, yes?” Boichiro said, with a self-deprecating smile.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “This was because I saw the last great demon king awaken, and the gods come from the outer universe to destroy this world.”

  “I know that too. You said that you needed a ritual between the demon king and the Law of Identity to stop that, right? I didn’t really understand the words you used.”

  “Correct. And I failed,” Hiroshi nodded, thinking back on the past as Boichiro spoke.

  “I know that much. Zero and the other mechanical gods wanted the Law of Identity to save them, so they tried to turn humanity into data, like they were, and send them to another dimension. That way, it wouldn’t matter if mankind was destroyed. And boss tried to stop them and buy humanity time.”

  “That’s right. And as a result, the future turned into something different than what I knew.”

  “And that was a mistake? Is that what you’re saying?” Hiroshi asked.

  Boichiro just sighed.

  “It’s hard to answer that question at its core. In fact, this afterlife is essentially the ‘time’ the Demon King bought. It’s not over yet.”

  “It’s not?” Hiroshi asked, confused.

  “But this place may be the end. Perhaps there is an end without an ending. An ending where time is eternal, like this.”

  Hiroshi sighed as well, this time in exasperation.

  “Start making some damn sense.”

  “I’m sorry. This is how I’ve always been. It’s not something I can do anything about,” he said. “This isn’t the future I knew, but the ending is exactly as I predicted. I know what happened in the history that you know. I attempted to negotiate with The One, their avatar, in order to make a contract with them. I thought they wanted a world where they wouldn’t have to invade other universes as well.”

  Hiroshi tried his best to understand what he meant. If he pulled it apart and thought about each individual element, he found he could follow.

  “But The One betrayed you.”

  “Correct. And the once-calm Republic decided to invade the Empire. All these elements may seem separate, but when you understand that the invasion from the outer universe was behind them, you understand that they were all predicted, and are all connected. The devices left behind by early magical civilization. The plots of the black mages. The faceless power. These were all to prepare for the invasion. And the success of the invasion means that in the end, we failed to change the future.”

/>   “When you put it that way, I guess I understand it. But if this place is safe for us, if it’s the ‘time’ we’ve been given, then are we still safe?” Hiroshi asked. Boichiro just sighed.

  “Still safe? What do you mean?’

  This time it was Boichiro’s turn to ask a question.

  “There’s still a chance to change the past, right? I think it’s simple. Get rid of magical civilization. Or have Earth stop fighting with each other and prepare a plan to deal with the Gods from outer space.” Hiroshi spoke confidently, as he gestured down at the bracelet on his wrist that held the Brave suit.

  “This can travel through time, right? Does that work even when you’re dead?”

  “You’re jumping the gun. So you want to save humanity, is what you’re saying?”

  Boichiro’s eyes went wide in surprise.

  “I don’t know, but I’m feeling something like fate. At least the Demon King should be able to save humanity, right?” Hiroshi grinned.

  “If that is your will, then very well. But it’s difficult to change the future.” Boichiro shook his head.

  “I don’t know about that. You said the future changed when you died. So it’s not that hard to change it if change is all you want, right?”

  “No, it didn’t change. In the end, I end up here,” Boichiro said, pointing down to his feet with a sarcastic expression.

  “Here?”

  “The afterlife.”

  “That’s hard to understand. There are so many worlds, you know. Earth. Virtual Phase Space. Other dimensions. The outer universe. The afterlife... did I miss any?” Hiroshi frowned.

  Boichiro corrected him.

  “That’s a little off. ‘Other dimension’ and ‘outer universe’ are two words for the same thing. We don’t know a lot about other dimensions, except that there’s probably infinite numbers of them. But as for the others, you’re correct. And the Law of Identity is involved in them all. It’s likely that she made them. And that’s why they’re relatively easy to understand.”

  “Keena made them? Is that why we can understand them?”

  “To me, it’s Rimu Sudo that made them. By ‘understandable’ I mean that it’s easy to explain how this world works. All you need to understand is that our universe was made by the Law of Identity.”

  “Is it that simple? And anyway, weren’t we talking about going through time to change history?” Hiroshi asked, confused. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted from this conversation anymore.

  Boichiro laughed a little.

  “If you’re going to go through time, I want you to understand that our knowledge and our world contradict each other.”

  “Aren’t we getting sidetracked again?’

  “We aren’t. What is our understanding of time?”

  It was an abstract question, but Hiroshi realized it was something critical to the core of their problems. If he was going to start the world over and avoid this ending, he needed to understand what time actually was. And at school, he’d learned the physical definition of time.

  He repeated what the textbooks had told him.

  “Time is relative. It’s the same thing as space in which matter moves,” he said. ”As speed goes up, the space you can move to increases, and so does the probability that you’ll encounter various events. But matter can only move in one direction. Expressed in two dimensions, it’s like only being able to choose one point within an expanding ripple on a lake.”

  “That’s more or less right. One thing cannot exist at multiple points in space at the same time. But here that law doesn’t apply. That’s why I was able to go back in time.”

  Boichiro picked up a branch and used it to draw a line on the ground.

  “The reason that something can’t exist in multiple places at once is that, in fact, time has a minimum unit size. If it could be infinitely divided, then the paradox of the tortoise and Achilles would be made real.”

  He drew a symbol at the center of the line on the ground. And then another at the center of the right side of the newly divided line. He repeated this process 32 times, until the symbol itself was larger than the divided line.

  “Imagine this symbol as the minimum unit size of time, and you’ll understand.”

  “I can understand that. But what does that have to do with it being possible to go back in time? Doesn’t that make it so going back in time is impossible?”

  “Correct. In the model with the rippling lake, the other points on the circle are just probabilities. In other words, they might have happened, but they didn’t. Even if matter returns to the point it was in before, the other matter is no longer there. But the world that we know is not like the lake.”

  He erased the line with his foot, and drew another.

  “This world is, according to standard physics, impossible. This world is like a video, or a book. It’s linear.”

  Boichiro drew several squares above the line, with the number of squares increasing as the line moved to the right.

  “Here, all matter exists simultaneously. The past continues to exist. Imagine blocks being piled up on top of other blocks. And these blocks can be rearranged.”

  “And that’s why it’s possible to rewrite the past, and change the future.” Hiroshi nodded in understanding.

  “Correct. It’s possible to change it,” Boichiro said.

  “Then tell me how to use the suit.” Hiroshi pointed to the bracelet on his arm.

  “Of course, I will. But as I’ve been saying this whole time, it’s pointless.” He furrowed his eyebrows in frustration.

  “You keep saying that. It’s possible to change the future, but it’s pointless?”

  “That’s what I said at the start. For some reason, you always come here in the end.” He pointed to the ground.

  “In other words, the afterlife.” Hiroshi frowned.

  Boichiro’s expression remained the same.

  “Correct. And to this place, and this instant. You’ll come here again and again.”

  2 - Eternal Happiness

  “Okay, time for school to start!” Mitsuko Torii said, her voice loud as she drew out the words of her announcement.

  “They said an asteroid hit the Earth, but it seems to have all worked out. Good news, huh?”

  She laughed, and for the first time the students laughed loudly too.

  “I guess it was the Demon King that brought the asteroid, huh?”

  “And Brave died trying to lessen the damage?”

  The classroom was filled with voices.

  “But you know, I thought I was a goner when I saw the asteroid hit. I don’t know when everything went back to normal,” Mitsuko said, not particularly interested in the topic.

  They seemed to be at the point several days after Akuto had come to school. Akuto and Junko had joined the class midway, and from the things Mitsuko was saying and the curious gazes of the students, they were able to figure out what was going on.

  Many people didn’t realize that they’d died.

  They knew something was wrong, but the world was the same as ever, and there was none of the suffering of war. Their lives hadn’t changed in any way, so there was no sense in realizing that they were dead. What really surprised him though, was how his classmates treated him.

  His magical power hadn’t changed at all, but none of them seemed to fear him as the Demon King.

  The class was on ordinary magic, and for Akuto, it was very simple. It felt good to see the jealous looks the other students gave him, but it felt even better to be treated like a human.

  “You’re amazing, new kid. That explains why the class rep is so obsessed with you. She’s your fiancee or something, right?”

  “H-Hey! Stop it!” Junko shouted, her face red, but she buried her face in Akuto’s shirt in embarrassment.

  Maybe all they’d gone through had made her love deeper, because now she was making no effort to hide her feelings. Akuto, of course, didn’t mind at all.

  “I think we should get
used to being together a little more,” Akuto said with a smile. Their classmates looked on, shrugging as if they realized there was no point in making fun of them.

  “I’m never going to get used to being around a dangerous guy like you,” Junko said, trying to hide her embarrassment. The classmates moved away to give them their space.

  After class ended, Fujiko Eto, who’d heard the news, came running up and jumped at Akuto with terrifying speed.

  “AKUTO! I MISSED YOU!” she said, forgetting her normal good-girl act.

  For Fujiko, this meeting was a long time coming, and it was natural that she would cry. But for the students, it looked like she’d suddenly gone insane.

  “H-Hold a second, Fujiko...” Akuto stammered. Fujiko seemed to regain control of herself. She adjusted her uniform, and coughed loudly enough for the students around her to hear.

  “Ahem... Sorry. Akuto is an old friend of mine. Our houses were next to each other, and we would always go into each other’s rooms from the second floor window...”

  From the look of the wink she was giving him, this was probably something she’d made up.

  —I guess it’s just like when Keena rewound the world.

  Akuto realized that everything was just like Lily had said. The memories of the people who were most involved in what had happened hadn’t changed. Anybody else had either had their memories erased or altered. And Fujiko had arrived here ahead of the others, and realized that her memories were different than those of the people who’d come later.

  “But still, Fujiko...”

  “Aww, Akuto... You know you used to call me ‘Big sister’ when we were alone...”

  Her voice got louder when she said the last part, so the people around her could hear. This was, however, news to Akuto. There were screams from both the boys and the girls, and no attempt was made to hide the other students’ jealousy.

  “H-Hey, get off me, Fujiko...!”

  Junko leapt out from the circle of students, and things seemed about to get even more complicated. But Fujiko just smiled and put her arm around Akuto’s, and then said something even more incredible.

  “Oh, Hattori. I mean, Junko. We need to get along here. Polygamy is normal in this world. And Akuto is worthy of having at least four or five wives!”