c14 11

This is no time for stacking pebbles was a thought in some corner of his mind the whole time, but there was always one more pebble he had to stack before he was satisfied. Once he stacked that one, he wanted to stack another.
No, no, there was no need for stacking them at all. He wanted to stop himself. He wanted someone to stop him. Was it the same for Alice and Ahiru?
“Can we stop doing this?” Haruhiro asked.
“I wish I could stop, too...” Alice responded.
“Same here...” Ahiru agreed.
“No, if we don’t all stop together, I feel like we’ll never be able to stop. That’s just a feeling, though...”
“Then you stop first, Haruhiro.”
“You start, Alice. Or Ahiru can go first instead.”
“Ohh! Now it fell over, you idiot,” Ahiru complained. “Now I’ve gotta stack them again!”
“This is no good,” Haruhiro muttered.
Mustering all of his willpower, he grasped his right hand, which was reaching for a pebble, with his left, and he tried to stand, but couldn’t.
I can’t stand because I think I can’t. I can stand, he told himself. I can stand. I can. I’m gonna stand. Yes. I’m gonna stand. Look, I stood.
“W-We have to run!” Haruhiro grabbed Alice and Ahiru by the scruffs of their necks and ran away.
No, obviously he didn’t have the raw idiot strength to run while dragging them both with him. Still, once he fled the riverbed at what felt like a run to him, he completely forgot why he’d been stacking pebbles at all.
“What was that?” Haruhiro panted.
“Who knows.” Alice’s lips were pursed. Was that because of feeling awkward? Alice had piled up a crazy number of pebbles.
“That’s how the Sanzu River is,” Alice said. “I probably piled up even more than last time I came. Does repeating the experience increase the desire to stack?”
“It feels like you could stack them forever,” Ahiru said. “Not that I wanted to stack them at all...”
Ahiru looked wistfully back at the riverbed. He actually looked like he wanted to stack them.
“Let’s make sure we don’t get to close to the riverbed while we look around for people,” Haruhiro told them. “Just maybe... one of my comrades might be stacking pebbles.”

If this was a river, there was a fountainhead and an estuary. Or did rivers not work like that in Parano?
Whatever the case, they headed upstream while taking note of anything happening in the riverbed. The compulsion was so strong that he expected at least someone to be piling pebbles, but though there were signs of stacking everywhere, nothing was moving. He didn’t see any dream monsters, either, so the mysterious magic of the pebbles that made people want to stack them must not work on dream monsters.
“Who did all that stacking?” Haruhiro wondered.
“People like us, I guess,” Alice answered.
“Wonder where the guys who did it went,” Ahiru commented. “Think they committed suicide by drowning themselves in the Sanzu River?” That was an ominous thought.
Well, to be honest, Haruhiro had been thinking the same thing, but this was Parano. Couldn’t they go on stacking pebbles for eternity?
Perhaps not.
Time flowed even in Parano, people would age, and all things would rot eventually.
Could he say for certain that wasn’t true?
The far bank was gradually coming into clearer view. That meant the river had narrowed.
The times he remembered his comrades, he made a point of repeatedly thinking, I want to see them, I want to see them, I want to see them.
Let’s go home. To Grimgar.
When he just thought about Grimgar, that was too vague, so he tried to imagine Alterna. Even more specifically, the places he had probably spent the most time in, like their room in the volunteer soldiers’ lodging house.
He only remembered it well enough to go, It was kind of like this, I think? though.
Was he pining for it? Was Grimgar a homeland that merited returning to?
Not really; it wasn’t as if he’d been born there. He’d awakened to find himself in Grimgar for some reason. He didn’t remember anything from before, so he couldn’t say where exactly, but it had probably been some other world.
The Dusk Realm, Darunggar, and now Parano. There were apparently multiple worlds. Where had he been before Grimgar? Could it, surprise, have been Parano?
Yeah, no. That was clearly not it.
But on the one-in-a-million chance that this was his homeland and he just didn’t remember it, there might be no need to go back to Grimgar. Haruhiro would have come home. If so, wouldn’t it be best for him to live here?
No... he wasn’t seriously thinking that.
The fountainhead of the Sanzu River was a round fountain. It was maybe ten meters across at most. The water seemed to be endlessly flowing out of that spring. The bubbles were shooting out at an incredible speed, too, and they danced wildly around the area.
He seriously considered looping around the spring before checking the downstream direction before deciding against it. This was a hunch, but if they stayed near the Sanzu River any longer, they’d no longer be able to resist the pull of the magic pebbles. The estuary would have to wait for next time.
Haruhiro and the others visited Alice’s former home in Ruins No. 6, as well Ruins No. 5 where Ahiru had built all the statues, and Ruins No. 3 where Nui had lived with the girl dolls.
At Ruins No. 3 with its scattered doll parts, dream monsters were rapidly gathering around, but when they saw the group, they took off running.
The king’s castle was at Ruins No. 1, and Ruins No. 7 was the territory of the king’s vassal Rainbow Mole. It was right in the middle of enemy territory, so they looked at Scarlet Forest and Rainbow Mole’s Nest from a distance, but there were no new discoveries.
They tried Ruins No. 2, too. Bayard Garden had been destroyed by Haname’s own power, but it had been restored, if not to its former glory, and flowers of many colors were blooming.
Obviously, they didn’t touch a single one.
It seemed the bird man they had met on their previous trip here, Suzuki-san, had moved on. They didn’t spot him.
They went to the Iron Tower of Heaven, too. With the girl dolls still scattered around, Alice didn’t want to climb the tower. Haruhiro went up to the landing where the rusted man and Nui were with Ahiru.
They saw Nui not at all rotting, but slightly rusted.
“Ah...” Ahiru whispered, looking up to the polka dot sky.
I didn’t want to bring it up with Alice, but I was secretly worried she’d rot before she rusted, Haruhiro thought.
Well, everything else aside, at least Nui would be spared from rotting.
There were seven ruins. Only Ruins No. 4 remained.
“That’s Mimic’s town,” Alice said.
According to Alice, Ruins No. 4 was where a trickster called Mimic and the yomus lived.
“Yomus?” Haruhiro asked.
“They’re dream monsters. They live in that town, following a bunch of rules set out by Mimic like ‘No talking,’ or ‘Be quiet.’”
“So there’s a place like that, too. Or rather, there are dream monsters that act like that, too.”
“I’m sure there are all sorts of dream monsters,” Alice said. “But if you were to say these ones were special, you wouldn’t be wrong. If you break the rules, the yomus will attack, so it’s not exactly safe.”
“If you kill dream monsters, you can take their id,” Haruhiro said. “By taking their id, your ego will grow, and your magic will get stronger. With your strength, Alice, couldn’t you deliberately break the rules, and, uh... The yomus, was it? Couldn’t you kill them as they came at you, and make a ton of id that way?”
“Even if I could, I wouldn’t,” Alice said. “It’s a pain to explain why. You tell him, Ahiru.”
“What, it’s my job now...?”
Though he griped about what a hassle it was, Ahiru explained.
Ego was your strength of self. Whether or not you were selfish had nothing to do with it. It was the degree to which you rationally saw yourself as different from others, and were definitely aware you were yourself and no one else.
In contrast, id was the power of your unconscious, instinctual impulses and desires.
Ego and id generally fluctuated up and down but remained roughly equal, and a scale with the two placed on either end would sway, but remain mostly even.
If you killed others and took their id, what would happen? Naturally, your id would rise that much, so the scales would be tipped.
“Id is your impulses and desires,” Ahiru said. “When it gets stronger, well, you know. It turns out like A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“Huh? I don’t think I get the reference...”
“It’s like, you know in your head what you’re doing is a bad idea, but your lower half doesn’t listen.”
“...Ohh. That sort of thing, huh. I think I can imagine.”
When that happened, you would try to suppress those impulses and desires. In other words, your ego would rise, and as a result, the id and ego would happily be balanced again.
Ahiru stopped. “Hold on, you’ve gotta be way younger than me. What is going on with kids these days?”
“I don’t know that I’d say ‘these days,’” Haruhiro said. “I mean, this is Parano.”
“I guess you’ve got a point.”
Haruhiro more or less understood the relationship between ego and id.
Alice, and likely Ahiru as well, had raised their egos by stealing id from dream monsters. Ego was the source of magic. The higher your ego rose, the stronger your magic.
“But the thing is, try as you might, you can’t steal ego,” Ahiru said. “Only id. Still, if you just keep building up your id—”
“It’s fine if your ego can keep up, but... it can’t, right?” Haruhiro said slowly.
It isn’t something that can be converted into numbers and precisely calculated, but for sake of argument, let’s assume Haruhiro has an ego score of 50. His id score is roughly 50, too. A certain dream monster has an id score of 10. Haruhiro kills that dream monster, stealing its id. Haruhiro’s id rises 10 points up from 50 to become 60, creating a 10 point gap between his ego score and id score.
In order to close that 10 point gap, Haruhiro’s ego score will rise. Eventually it becomes 60, equalizing his ego and id scores.
However, now assume that dream monster’s id score was 50 instead. It was a tough foe, but with help from Alice and Ahiru, Haruhiro killed it. Haruhiro’s id score will rise 50 points to become 100. His ego score is 50, so the difference is 50.
“In my experience, when you kill someone who’s on about the same level as you, you’ve gotta watch out,” Ahiru said. “It feels like... there’s this itch, it drives you crazy, and you get these irresistible urges.”
“Irresistible...” Haruhiro murmured.
“If there are enemies in front of you, you’ll want to kill more,” said Ahiru. “You might think once you’ve killed them all that the problem sorts itself out, but it doesn’t. What comes after that is a breakdown of the balance. The fall into darkness.”
“You become a trickster?”
“Yeah. People fall into darkness when their ego drops too far, or they steal too much id. If the gap between the ego and id is too great, desires and impulses run wild. At that point, it’s too late. You can only become a trickster.”
For Haruhiro with his ego score of 50, it will be the same if he kills a single dream monster with an id score of 50, or ten of them with an id score of 5 in close succession.
It won’t be easy for him to take out an id-score-of-50 dream monster, but he might be able to mow down id-score-of-5 dream monsters one after another.
And if he massacres dream monsters with an id score of 5, he’ll go well past the danger zone.
“Everything has its limits, and it can be hard to see where they are, huh?” Haruhiro said.
“Have you never done that thing?” Ahiru said. “Where you’re about to cum, but you hold back and do multiplication tables in your head?”
“I’m not sure what situation you’d do that in, but no, I probably haven’t.”
“Seriously? I guess it feels like a wave that was about to wash over you gently receding. When your id, which was about to go wild after growing, is suppressed by your growing ego, that’s about what it feels like.”
“So if you haven’t felt that, and you keep stealing id, it’s easy to fall into darkness?”
“If your will weakens, your ego falls, so—no, maybe your will weakens because your ego falls? Whichever it is, that’s bad, too. If you get ridiculously down and depressed, that’s the end for you here.”
They climbed an awfully twisted hill and the town came into sight.
There was a thin haze, but he could tell there were many buildings, gardens and stone walls, and roads, too.
Were there people?
Yes, there were. Moving on the road. Lots of them. Not so much walking as running, probably.
“That’s Ruins No. 4?” Haruhiro asked. “It doesn’t look like a quiet town to me.”
Alice thrust the shovel into the ground, taking a deep breath. “Looks like something’s going on.”
“You can just ignore those guys usually,” Ahiru put in. “They’re harmless.”
If they were harmless, that might be another reason Alice didn’t try to earn id in Mimic’s Town.
Haruhiro began descending the hill towards the town.
“Ah, hey!” Ahiru chased after him.
What would Alice do? Haruhiro didn’t turn back. Alice would probably come.
As he got further along, his heart raced. There was something going on in that town.
Who had caused it?


15. A Boy Named Desire [sexy_drive]


Question:
Who does this world exist for?

Answer:
The world is mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
The world exists for me.

Do you get it?
Don’t you get it?
Basically, that’s how it is.
What does that mean, you ask? Well, the world exists for me. I dunno why. I can just tell. I know these things. It’s just a thing you get.
Like, you can see it. Once it comes into view, it’s easy to have an epiphany, you know? For real.
When I had my epiphany, I jumped right up, and grabbed this bald, octopus-like dream monster’s slimy face in my vice-like grip. Then, I smushed it good.
It was damn easy. Like cooking made easy. Nah, I wasn’t gonna eat him. From there, I rolled around laughing. Wahahaha! No need for meaning. The meaning can come later. Like how meaning gets attached to the things I’ve accomplished.
While I was rolling and laughing, it got more and more fun. Wahaha! Wahahahaha!
Rolling around and laughing is the best. Spin, spin, spin, spin. It’s the secret to good health, you know? Spin, spin, spin, spin.
While spinning around, I found a dream monster that looked like a sea anemone running away.
Ping. Locked on.
Zoom! I spun around, and I took that spinning power, that revolution, you might say, and both using and not using it—no, using it, yeah, using it good—bam, I got him with the large katana. Right in two, slice. It felt sooooooooooooooo good.
But why was I crying?
Because it felt so good?
I screamed.
“Classic...!”
Damn, I thought. I dunno what was classic about it, but the way that word sounded coming off my lips, seriously, hot damn.
The universe of waves in its flavor gave it a supernatural groove that already bordered on divine. It was a god damned miracle, wasn’t it?
It was, or more like I was. I was God, wasn’t I?

I turned an ear to the heavens and listened. “I can hear it. The voice...”
“What voice are you talking about, Bossari, you utter nitwit?!” There was Tonbe-kun, running at me with his beloved, oversized mirror. Hilarious.
“Eheheh.” I stopped his mirror with just the index finger of my left hand.
“Urkh! Wh-Why you! Wh-Wh-Where is that idiot strength coming from, you big pile of narcissism?!”
“No, no, Tonbe-kun, you’re just weak,” I smirked. “I can do better than this. I’m holding back. This is me, pulling my punches. Is that you at max power, Tonbe-kun?”
“N-N-N-No way is this my max! I’ve still got my trump card!”
“Then show me! Show me your... trumpet?”
“Trump card!”
“Yeah, that!”
I kicked Tonbe-kun’s massive mirror and sent both it and him flying. Did he really have a secret... What was it? Dump cart? Well, if he had one, I seriously wanted to see it. But before that, I had a feeling Trashman would be coming for me with a surprise attack, and not even so much as a polite hi-yah before he did it.
That was exactly what happened, too. Trashman wound up with his great sword and lunged. He was like a violent blast of dark wind.
Dark Storm. Whoa. Badass. But I saw it coming, so I swung my large katana hard.
My shockwave collided with his Dark Storm.
“Whuh...?!” Trashman sputtered as my shockwave peeled his Dark Storm off him. He stumbled in an exaggerated manner, and he couldn’t finish his swing.
“Ahaha,” I laughed. “What’s the matter? You’re looking weak there,
Senior. Is it because you’re Trashman? I guess, since you’re Trashman, you were always trash, huh.”
“I... I ain’t Trashman! I’m Gomi!”
“Gyahahahaha!” I laughed. “You’re hilarious. That’s so funny, I wanna kill you like the trash you are!”
I wanted to kill him so badly, my vision was going blurry. That’s a thing that happens, you know? You didn’t know? Well, now you do. Isn’t that great? It was that kind of urge to kill you get when every hole in your body is oozing I-wanna-kill-something juice. If you don’t know what that is, you’ll never understand this.
“Kuzaku! What’s gotten into you?! You’re acting strange!” Setorachan was yapping like a little dog.
I’ll kill her next, I told myself. When I killed her, that’d be the end of it, which was one drawback, but it was obviously better to kill her than to not, so, yeah, I was gonna kill her after all.
What was it gonna be like killing Setora-chan? Sad, I guess. The sadness would tear open my chest, and something would poke its
face out to say peek-a-boo, I bet. Then it’d be like, Let’s kill, kill, kill, baby! and urge me to go on. I couldn’t wait for that, so I shouted out loud.
“Uwahhhhhhh! Re! Vo! Lu! Tioooooonnnn!”
Bzzzapzapzap! The power arced off of me like lightning. I was tingling thanks to it. This feeling of the blood vessels bursting inside me. It was so, unbearably, gooooood.
“But why am I crying? Eeeeheheheheheh...”
While I laughed, my lungs convulsing like crazy, I brought my left hand up to touch the area around my eyes. My fingers got wet. When I looked, they were red.
“Huh? No...? It’s not tears... this is... blood?” Is, like, my face, like, a total mess?
This, it’s all blood, isn’t it?
I’m covered in blood, aren’t I?
“Pfft...” I burst out laughing. What was I getting myself covered in blood for? “Gwee! Gwehehehehe! Gwahah! Bwuhuhuhuh! Bweheh!
H-Hilarious...”
My sides hurt. My head hurt. My body hurt. I hurt everywhere. It hurt so much, I couldn’t stop laughing.
“This is bad.” Someone said that.
Bad? What did she mean, bad? Ba-ba-bad? Was it bad? It might be bad? Be bad, be bad, be bad?
Splitting. It was splitting. Trying to split. My outside. Outside, inside. Maybe my inside, too. Feelings of love. Redundant trap.
Trap. Rapping noises. Symbolic princess carnivalvalvalval. Oh, shit. Shiiiiiit. Something was coming out. It was going nom, nom, nom, nom. I was getting eaten. I might’ve been doing the eating, too.
Feelings of love. Feelings? What feelings? No, this wasn’t the time for that, I was breakingeakhingbreakbreakbreak.
Blaaaack. The me that was coming out of me was so black. The black me was eating me.
No, not black, dark. Ohh, was that me...?
Something had wrapped around the outside of mememememememememe.
“Kuzaku! Don’t fall into the darkness!”
Darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, darkness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, darkness, ness, ness, ness, ness, ness?
...Hahh.
Throw... ow, ow, ow, owowowowow it off? The thing clinginginginginging to my outside...?
They’re gone.
Everyone’s gone.
It’s just me, alone...
The darkness is me, and I am the darkness, and dadadadadadadadadadadadadarknessnessnessnessnessnessnessnes s—
(No...)
A...
(You’re wrong.)
U...
(There is someone.)
I...
(You’re not alone. You’re not...) O...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
O.
(You know that, right? ...I’m here.)
A,
U,
I,
O,
(I am...) Ha,
Ru,
Hi,
Ro?
(That’s right, Kuzaku, I’m here. Here. With you. So... you can’t fall into the darkness. It’s like... What’d he say again? When you’re about to cum, you hold it back, and do multiplication tables inside your head, was it...?)
Multiplication tables... One times one is one... One times two is two... One times three is three... One times four is four...
(Don’t let your lust... your urges... get the better of you. They’re yours... They’re a part of yourself... So accept them... Recognize them, make them your own...)
Three time five is fifteen... Three times six is eighteen... Three times seven is twenty-one...
(You don’t actually have to do multiplication tables, though. It can be anything. Like, you just need to calm yourself down, take hold of your reins for yourself. If you were a horse, think of it like learning to ride yourself. Man, I’m the one saying this stuff, and it still kinda makes no sense to me...) Ohh... but...
(...Yeah.)
Hold on...
(Huh...?)
...I get it.
...You’re there, right, Haruhiro?
(I am... yeah.)
...Right there.
(Well, yeah... I’m here.)
When I think about it like that, you know... I feel like it’s all gonna be okay.
Maybe?

“...Wogh.” A weird groan came out of his mouth.
His eyes opened. Wait, they’d been closed? Apparently they had.
Kuzaku kneeled on the ground, hanging his head. His large katana was lying on the ground next to him.
As for what was clinging to his back, that went without saying.
“...Haruhiro?” he mumbled.
“...Yeah.”
“Sorry, I...”
“It’s fine, man. It looks like I made it in time, at least. Thank goodness.”
“You saved me, didn’t you? I was in serious trouble there, wasn’t I? Like, I was going crazy. I’ve got no idea what happened, though...”
“You killed too many dream monsters at once,” Haruhiro said. “Your id went up too much, and the gap with your ego... Oh, whatever. We can explain that later.” With a grunt of exertion, Haruhiro pulled
Kuzaku to his feet. “We need to get out of town now! Can you run?!”
“Huh? Uh, um, probably!”
Picking up his large katana with his right hand, he rubbed his face with his left hand. Whoa. It’s all red, he thought.
He couldn’t see very well. He wasn’t totally blind, but his vision was blurry. His hearing was a bit off, too. Like something had been stuffed in his ears. He apparently had a nosebleed.
His body hurt here and there, all over... actually, his body was in the worst possible condition, but Haruhiro said they were getting out of town.
Even if he couldn’t run, he’d run. He could run.
He had a lot of thoughts, like, There are a bunch of people here I don’t know, or, I could have sworn I saw that guy in the moss green coat somewhere before, but right now running came first.
Haruhiro was here.
If he could see Haruhiro’s back in front of him, he had to keep following.
Because Haruhiro was here, after all.
He didn’t need to think about anything else.
It seemed he’d gotten quite deep inside the town at some point, and no matter how much they ran, they weren’t reaching the gate, but occasionally Haruhiro would turn back to encourage him, so he was easily able to keep going.
The gate was blocked with that same thorny vine stuff as before, but someone busted a hole in it so they could get through.
Even once they were outside, they ran for a while.
For his part, Kuzaku wanted to stop running, but Haruhiro shouted at him, “Not yet!” so obviously he did as he was told.
They climbed a hill that was made of chaotically interconnected stairs. He tripped on the steps repeatedly. Each time, Haruhiro would help him to his feet.
Thanks, man, I’m super grateful, Kuzaku thought.
His eyesight had gotten a lot better. He could even hear halfdecently. It’s amazing what you can recover from. No, could you recover from all that, normally? Was it because this wasn’t Grimgar?
When he reached the summit, the feeling of accomplishment was going to be incredible. Haruhiro would probably praise him.
But was this even a hill? It wasn’t, was it? Hold on, it had changed completely from before. Kuzaku was climbing the steep slope of what seemed to be a mound of rubber tube-like things piled up. When he squeezed with his hands, those tube things stuck to him, making it pretty hard to climb.
Well, not that it mattered. He was almost done.
“All right...!” Kuzaku yanked on the tube things to pull himself up, finally reaching the summit.
There she was, crying.
Sparkling, sparkling, the tears flowed.

Chapter end