episode_0294

The administrator’s plan was on track. He had finally grasped the long-awaited “possibility.”

The game character, Eve, who was nothing more than a fragment of data, did not accept her fate. Transcending the program code that simply outputted the inputted values, she made her own choices and lived her own life.

From the game server administrator’s perspective, it was a simple error. Nothing more than a merging of the same entity’s data due to an unexpected bug.

However, from the administrator’s perspective, who had conveyed the memories of the star, Eve’s regression was the realm of a transcendent being who changed her own destiny. It was the power to leave the universe and live as another version of herself.

And at the starting point of it all was one player. Character name: Adam. Considering Earth’s Bible, the two names were like pre-ordained destinies.

A pair who birthed a miracle. There were no more fitting names for the two of them. They were undeniably suitable to commemorate the creation myth.

The administrator marked the two. First, Eve Istar, a lonely soul possessing the power to destroy fate. With her mortal body that had endured eons of time, she would surely find the answer.

Second, Adam, the human who controlled that character. Even after Adam’s death, he played Akasto countless times. His experience, skill, values, and approach to life—besides being the framework for ‘Eve,’ he was a worthy adversary.

Moreover, that man loved the world of Akasto itself. This gave the administrator confidence that he would also love the original star. He felt reliable enough to protect it from all threats.

However, it was slightly different from the original plan. Originally, they only intended to impart experience and knowledge to deal with the black star.

But Adam and Eve were irreplaceable. The administrator thought so. He couldn’t guarantee that someone superior to them would appear, no matter how much time passed. The two were that extraordinary, and that much to the administrator’s liking.

The plan was partially revised. In Eve’s case, it was simply a matter of extracting her soul from the server data and transferring it to the original star.

But Adam was a living human. Cloning and transferring his soul was beyond the administrator’s capabilities. He had to choose for himself. He had to participate in his journey with Eve of his own free will.

The administrator decided to contact him first.

…

『We invite you to be a ‘beta tester’ for the Akasto update server.』

The man stared at the message on the screen with bleary eyes. He rubbed his eyes several times before suddenly looking up sharply.

“Update server… beta tester…?!”

He reacted like a child, overjoyed as if he had been eagerly waiting for this moment. But soon, he began to make a cold judgment.

“…Isn’t this spam?”

He had never heard of them sending beta tester invitations via email. They were usually hired as non-regular employees through specific criteria and screening.

Furthermore, it’s rare for them to operate a test server. Along with its extreme freedom, the keyword symbolizing Akasto is perfect coding; it’s famously bug-free, to the point that one might believe a god wrote the code.

So, they wouldn’t recruit ordinary people this way. No matter how skilled an Akasto player is, security issues arise if their identity cannot be accurately verified.

Just as he was about to conclude in his mind that it was a spam email, another email arrived.

『Don’t you want to meet Eve again?』

Thump—Rumble—

The man leaped to his feet. He wasn’t mistaken. Who was Eve? Meet again?

『The woman you loved, that is.』

The message didn’t give him time to escape. It drove the point home. The Eve Istar he had adventured with and loved as ‘Adam’ years ago – the woman he had lived for, waiting for the day they would meet again.

Memories sparkled. His forgotten youth revived like a rekindled flame. The image of her back, the one who taught his stiff life a heartbeat, came to mind.

No matter what conditions followed, the man was already ready to leave for the test server. He had lived for this moment. He could throw anything else away.

『You must abandon everything.』

He would still go. The man clenched his fist.

『You may forget her memories until that day to meet ‘Eve Istar’.』

It didn’t matter. If his head forgot, his body would remember. Even if someone blocked the corridors of his soul, he was certain he would eventually recall.

『Are you… really going to leave?』

The man solidified his opinion to the end. Even if he died and was reborn, his answer would be ‘yes’.

Light enveloped the man, and his soul entered the administrator’s possession, along with Eve’s soul, fated to repeat their second journey in the same world.

…

The administrator borrowed something from the man. It could also be said that he was in debt. He had lied to him and temporarily stolen his memories.

Even if the man prepared himself for everything, he had still stolen a soul from a living human. He felt he deserved to be reproached.

If the man demanded compensation after regaining his memories, the administrator was prepared to comply.

The reason he took his memories was simply this: The administrator didn’t think he should let the man and Eve meet easily.

It was because Eve performed miracles when she lived to meet Adam. The moment their reunion is achieved, the power that had served its purpose would disappear.

Even if a new power was generated in the process, it remained only a hypothesis. He had to reproduce the potential the two had shown on that star, as reliably as possible.

Erasing Adam from Eve’s memories wasn’t easy, for tens of thousands of years were all for Adam.

The solution lay elsewhere. If the man’s appearance differed from Adam’s and he didn’t remember Eve, they wouldn’t recognize each other even if they met again.

Making them fail to recognize each other even when they’re right before each other’s eyes is, in a way, the worst kind of deed. Still, it had to be done. The administrator continued to repeatedly intervene, exceeding his authority.

Just before leaving Earth with the two souls, a fading life entered his sight – another Akasto player, a woman who had died in a tragic accident.

If that fate had befallen the man, retrieving his soul would have been easier. By chance, the administrator encountered that soul, which was just beginning to wander in space, and offered reincarnation, just in case.

It was unexpectedly easy to persuade her. Was it because her life was already lost? There was nothing bad about it. Being from the same Earth, she would make a good supporting character for the man.

With an unexpectedly far greater harvest, he returned to his original universe. It was now only a matter of planting the three souls in the reborn star.

However, the administrator encountered the black star on his return journey.

…

Lumine and Gaia had lost most of the administrator’s power through direct intervention in the star. That was the law of the universe. To gain something, one must pay the price of something else.

The administrator, who was transferring three souls, had to pay a great price. Due to the forced escape from the encounter with the black star, he was unable to directly intervene in the reincarnation.

As a result, the supporting character’s soul was sent to a different time period: a thousand years before the Great Continent. He had dropped an innocent person into a remote area.

However, she turned the crisis into an opportunity. With a body slightly different from that of humans, she used the power of the soul inherited from the administrator and rose to become a strong leader. Then she flew to a safe human territory to prepare for the end.

The administrator was reduced, losing his power and becoming a star. He could no longer entrust anything, or extend his hand; he was a mere observer.

He could only feel regret watching the supporting character. But she didn’t give up. She noticed the time for Adam and Eve’s rebirth was approaching and requested a final exchange.

“My body cannot bear children… but you would know how.”

The fading star of the observer flickered again. He had realized the supporting character’s intention. He asked if it was all right.

“I’ve enjoyed myself enough. I want to leave everything I’ve enjoyed… no, I want to pass it all on to her.”

He had forgotten. Humans were originally these kinds of beings: existences often driven by emotional impulses rather than rational judgments. The observer’s star burned intensely.

The final flicker. The observer offered his existence to execute the final deal.

The supporting character, Leah Flora, was a futanari. Biologically complete hermaphroditism meant being magically sound at the same time.

Therefore, even though she possesses physiological functions, she cannot bear fruit. She has both sperm and eggs, yet cannot bear children.

But Leah realized it. The research she had accomplished throughout her life provided her with a final choice: to burn her own soul to facilitate the birth of a new life.

The observer’s last authority. He connected Leah Flora’s death to the birth of a child.

As the observer’s star set, a girl, with a spirited cry, was born. Narita Flora Nifrantz, the fifth princess of the Nifrantz Kingdom, was her name.