The next day.
The 3rd day of the vacation event.
But that... would be the day where an entity was finally slated to appear, an entity whose sole existence promised to bring both corruption and radical interruption once more to the supposed 'fate' of this endless loop known as the Unending.
An unforgivable devil, taking the deceptive form... of a Human.
"What's the situation?"
A man asked, his voice deep and authoritative, resonating in the strange, airless space.
He was a person who was not supposed to exist in the established narrative of this world, and fundamentally should not have been.
"The current Trizha Frantzes Unending... this is the twenty-third Unending ever since an 'Alter Being' was first introduced into the cycle to keep 'watch' on her," a woman responded, her tone as serious and sharp as a blade honed for an immediate, critical strike.
"[V] had just left for his new mission, but not before reporting that the 'Alter Being' has finally decided to take action," she added, a note of controlled urgency in her voice. "But this time, it took years- a decade, in some iterations-for it to begin its hunt in earnest."
"I see," the man acknowledged, his mind already calculating the implications. "One of the Dawn Romantica's Ministers, Yuri Calypso, she has Frantzes on hand. That creates unnecessary risk."
"Yes," the woman confirmed. "I find it reckless. The Alter Being performing the massacre inside a Mafia residence... not to mention, the other Minister named Koby Frantzes is on the move to head to the residence along with countless troops. This interference is volatile."
"And even so," the man mused, his brow furrowing slightly, "the Alter Being in there... It's a clever one. It adapts to the parameters of the Unending far too quickly. Not to mention, it possesses the Seventh Power."
The man settled into a massive, formless chair, contemplating the complex threads of causality.
"It's a cycle, a loop of predictable consequences. But we can't interfere either way," he stated, emphasizing the inherent restriction of their existence.
"The influential core of the Vanity is incomplete, therefore 「Frantzes」 must recover the core by herself. But the Alter Being kept interfering, preventing her from finishing the task, keeping her on hold..."
"And now, ironically," the woman added, stepping closer, "the change in the supposed fates made the Alter Being the one who was kept on hold for a few years. And that momentary stasis gave 「Frantzes」 the opportunity to recover the influential core and finish the core process in any minute..."
"And yet," the man paused, his voice dropping with suspicion.
"She hasn't."
He rose sharply to his feet and began to pace.
The scenery around him shifted, revealing the staggering truth of their location: the man was walking across the massive, polished, interconnected bodies of a Dyson-like platform, a structure that seemed to encompass existence itself.
"I wonder why," he mused, his voice echoing in the vast, silent void. "I wonder when. I wonder... why she wouldn't return to us. The first interruption of the current unending came to the surviving Influence of Wealth, then came the Alter Being. That's two severe interruptions within that specific Unending."
The man stopped pacing and turned to face the woman, his eyes blazing with renewed, cold determination.
"The current unending," he declared, conviction settling into his tone. "It will be a miracle of paradox. I swear it. Trizha Frantzes..." He paused, letting the name hang heavy in the air, a name loaded with history and inevitable ruin.
"...will, once more, bring about the Downfall."
***
"Oy, Trizha. Trizha... Hoy...! Wake up, sleeping ugly!" Wyne exclaimed, shaking Trizha aggressively by the shoulders to rouse her.
Trizha remained upright, her feet planted, still snoring softly.
She was asleep while standing, a talent honed by exhaustion.
Margaret watched the chaotic awakening attempt from beside them with a patient sigh.
In actuality, the trio, along with dozens of other students, were all moving forward in a large, wide hallway.
This hallway was part of the hotel's infrastructure, leading down into the underground Aquarium that, for some bizarre engineering reason, was designed to connect directly to the open ocean.
Wyne groaned, releasing Trizha's shoulder and sighing dramatically in defeat. She threw an exaggerated look toward Margaret.
"I thought calling her 'ugly' would wake her up, since she's sometimes prideful of her so-called beauty and has used it once or twice to flex on the Internet," Wyne complained.
"She's probably very sleepy," Margaret said, stating the obvious fact with a calm tilt of her head. "I mean, you forced her to play online games with you until 3 AM yesterday, and then woke her up at exactly 8 AM just to eat ramen. Why did you even do that?"
Wyne looked away, a malicious but embarrassed, proud grin spreading across her face, her eyes gleaming with entirely too much satisfaction.
"Hehe- Oh, that?" she said, shrugging dismissively. "...Let's just say I remembered how she used to shake me aggressively and made me puke bubbles the moment we pranked her the other day. Fair's fair."
Margaret began to point out. "But didn't she do that just to take revenge for the original prank-"
"Anddddd I did a double revenge. It's a closed loop of escalating aggression," Wyne interrupted proudly, puffing out her chest. "Don't worry about it."
Meanwhile, T. Myrcella suddenly appeared behind Wyne, moving silently through the crowd.
Her head was tilted down, staring straight down at Wyne with an intimidating, stone-cold expression.
Wyne was so absorbed in her moment of proud vengeance that she failed to notice her teacher looming directly behind her.
At the same time, Margaret, highly attuned to shifts in the atmosphere, noticed T. Myrcella immediately and backed away slightly, feeling the teacher's heavy, intimidating presence settle over them like a sudden drop in temperature.