Guys! Before we continue for those who used tts, I..HAVE Ascended!!!! This is the best version i had done almost the same as the translation fanfic : Parallel World Light
Novelist: I Only Write
Masterpieces. Although it eats up 10% of my weekly tokens per chapter, i just need to refine and optimize way i use to conserve token resource so that we i get to post more chapters. But enough of that, continue reading my fellow readers.
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This place was a dim basement.
Before transmigration, the Ling Ke from back then had never quite worked out why churches and places like them always had to build one of these things underground.
His first reaction was always the same. They had the air of something bright and clean on the surface, hiding ugliness underneath.
Honestly, they fit pretty well as the setting for stories built around a bit of irony.
Of course, after Ling Ke had become the Herrscher of Dominance and made use of the learning ability that had multiplied many times over inside him, he had picked up at least some passing knowledge across most fields.
So now he knew. Apart from also being usable as a small chapel, the basement of a church usually served as a "crypt."
A specific space for storing the remains of believers, holy remains, and coffins.
Right now…
"Miss Aponia. You may leave."
A black-haired young man stood beside the only exit out of this basement and gestured toward the passageway.
He smiled as he said the rest. "Thank you very much for your cooperation. And for providing such a perfect performance space for the script we carefully prepared."
Hearing that…
"It does not seem I had the right to refuse."
A tall woman in nun's clothing, her shoulder-length hair tied into a single small braid, Aponia, said it back to him.
The black-haired young man only smiled and gave no answer to that.
He simply went on. "Please rest assured. The funding for the sanatorium will be delivered shortly."
"The children won't know their 'Mother' was gone for a while today."
"And our side… will not come to disturb you again from here on."
There was no need. This chapter had already ended at this stage. One of the lead actors was about to head into the next "scene."
At that, the black-haired young man fell quiet. His right hand traced a small line through the air at his side, and a spatial gate, opened directly to the Theater of Domination, unfolded with the motion.
He was about to step through it.
"May I ask…"
Behind him, Aponia, who had not yet left the basement, suddenly spoke up. "Savior and destroyer. You who carry both sides of that contradiction… your revenge. When will it be considered finished?"
The black-haired young man's steps paused.
A long while passed.
"It seems you have misunderstood something, Miss Aponia."
He turned his head a little, and the corner of his mouth lifted into a faint curve. "My revenge is already over."
"With the complete vanishing of that old era, the Current Era, my obsession stayed there along with it."
"And now…"
The black-haired young man turned and stepped backward, one step at a time, into the spatial gate.
As it began to close, slowly…
"Now, this reborn me is using a villain's methods to force the entire world to play along with me. To satisfy my own curiosity. My own desire to know."
"Miss Aponia. Tell me…"
"If you ran into a situation like this. The act of protecting one person inevitably hurting another. Where there is no way to satisfy both."
"What would you do?"
He did not wait. Or rather, he did not expect Aponia to give him an answer.
The spatial gate closed.
Aponia was left standing alone in place, thinking for a long time.
Finally…
"Hah."
She gave a long, helpless sigh, head tilted up. "Yes. What should one do?"
"If only I were a bad person too."
"Then perhaps I would not be troubled by something like this."
-----
Meanwhile, in the small alley to the side of that broken-down church.
"Sho good, sho good, seriously sho good."
"How do you even make this stuff, boss?"
The dirty girl was crouched on the ground, both hands cradling a bag of dried salted fish.
She was chewing through a kind of food she had never run into before in her life, but felt, for some reason, was destined for her. Her cheeks puffed out until she looked less like a cat and more like a hamster.
She had fallen in love with this food.
In between the enjoyment, she lifted her right hand and gave a thumbs-up to the black-haired young man crouched against the wall beside her, looking for all the world like some street loafer.
All these good things to eat had come from him.
He had been so terrifying earlier. Even Can, the stray cat she knew, had run off without an ounce of loyalty to her. So she had assumed this person would be hard to deal with…
"You're really eating that?"
"Uh."
The chewing motion stopped.
The little bag of dried fish suddenly felt wrong whether she put it down or kept holding it.
Then, like something inside her had been switched on, her money-grubber instincts kicked in.
Even with that black-haired young man's empty eyes fixed on her, even with her skin prickling at the back of her neck, she still tilted her head back fast, stretched her neck out straight, and forced every last piece of dried fish in her mouth down her throat.
After that she just stared blankly at the black-haired young man.
Obviously, she was pretending nothing had happened.
Seeing her like that…
"Haha. I was just teasing."
The black-haired young man reached over and rubbed her cat-head again, then handed her another paper bag. "I've still got some over here…"
"If you like it, you can have all of it."
"Ah… Oh. Heh. Heh heh."
Pardo gave a couple of awkward laughs. "Thanks, boss."
Then, after confirming the black-haired young man really had only been joking, she finally let out a long breath and patted the front of her chest.
That really had nearly scared the life out of her.
This boss had a bit of a mean streak in him, no question. Spending too long around him would not be kind to her little heart. That was what Pardo was thinking.
But the things he gave her tasted good, and she did not see any nasty little tricks in it, like drugs, so she figured she would not hold it against him.
"It's free anyway. Costs nothing…"
"Hehe."
Pardo laughed without a care in the world.
Granted, the first time she had run into this man, that singular pressure of his, that sense of standing in front of an apex predator, had been super, super, super-duper terrifying.
But she had not picked up any malice off him.
Instead, there had been a tiny strange pinch of goodwill.
So she didn't change the rules just because it was him. The same as she had done with the other woman before, she had answered the goodwill back.
Once she had tried interacting with him a little after that.
He had told her Nia was fine, that what had happened earlier had her permission, that he was a filmmaker who had paid to use the place as a set. Well, those excuses were fine to hear. Believing them was another matter.
Anyway. The man wanted her not to worry.
And.
And besides, he gave her food!
After everything that had piled on top of everything else, Pardo had slowly come back down off it, and now…
Her cheeks were puffing out again.
About this man.
The black-haired young man. Ling Ke. Had been wandering through Nagazora's night market not so long ago.
Now he had jumped thousands of kilometers in one go, from the far Far East across to this chaotic Middle East.
Sundown Alley.
Right now, as the main body, of course he did not need to do the kind of work for that "play" that took effort. The kind that had to be done with his own two hands.
His position was clear by now.
He was the "director." The "scriptwriter." And also the "audience."
Not like the black-haired young man down in the basement, the Domination puppet, who would handle jobs like set designer.
At most, he might play plagiarist for a moment, throw on some fitting background music or something similar, and call it the finishing touch.
So why had he turned up here in person, all on his own?
Purely because it was fun.
Or, to be more accurate. It was interesting.
Pardofelis. The girl who would, in a later era, become the thirteenth Flame-Chaser, bearer of the Signet of Reverie.
Earlier, in the scene Ling Ke had specifically arranged. The one that felt familiar but had a certain person's position turned around.
She had made a different choice from the Raiden Mei of back then.
Faced with a stranger, she had not "trusted" them either. But at the very least, she had "responded."
He would admit it. He was curious.
Curious about whether Pardo only acted that way toward certain specific people. Or whether, even toward the current him, she could still produce a "response."
So he had come.
Once again. He had tried releasing his goodwill.
It was embarrassing to admit.
The current him was no longer weak. He had once even risen to godhood. His existential rank now was something far above ordinary.
And yet, in this one small attempt, he still became cautious, almost trembling, when he tried this.
And the goodwill he released was not much.
A few pieces of street food.
The conclusion, in the end…
"People really are different."
Ling Ke quietly noted it to himself, the words cutting both ways.
He, too, had received a "response."
Looking sideways at the dirty girl beside him, that already good mood of his, the one that had been brightened earlier in Nagazora by witnessing the artistry Eden had put on display, got even better.
Life was like that, after all.
A person could be crushed by the pressure of one tiny "despair" after another.
A person could also see light through one faint "hope" after another.
The reborn Ling Ke had come into the sunlight.
Just as Raiden Mei and Bronya once had.
But.
"Night suits me better, still."
"Quiet. Harder to be disturbed. Easier for getting things done. And it hides plenty of things I would rather not see."
He thought it. It was not regret. He was not wallowing in the past. He had simply satisfied a small curiosity of his. He braced one hand against his knee and stood up.
He looked up at the sky. His left hand came up to shield his eyes without him thinking about it. He squinted. "Tch. I really am not used to having my eyes dazzled every so often."
The sunlight was too bright.
It did not suit him anymore.
He had no feeling for it anymore. No need for it either.
For now…
"See you, Little Pardo."
Ling Ke tilted his head down to look at the dirty girl still crouched on the ground. "I have to go to work."
He started to move away.
"Oh. Right."
Ling Ke lifted his right hand, index finger up. "Next time you run into something like this. Remember to hide as far away as you can."
It was the piece of advice he had pulled out of his own lived experience. "You're just an ordinary person. You don't owe anybody anything."
"There's no need to throw yourself into it."
In that moment, it was as if he were already seeing the future of this girl who still looked so carefree in front of him.
On the silent moon, in the middle of a wasteland, lay a broken cat-paw badge.
It stood for the fact that there had once existed an ordinary mortal whose only small wish had been to eat enough every day.
For a flicker of a moment…
"You're just an ordinary person. Why go and risk your life? Honestly…"
Ling Ke muttered it to himself.
It sounded a little like self-mockery. A little like a sigh.
Once he had said it, for the last time, by habit, he reached over and ran his hand over Pardo's cat-head once more.
He had to admit. He had grown to like the feeling of it.
He enjoyed it a little.