Thud.

A crisp sound, so sharp it was almost unbelievable, rang out through the empty room.

Merka lowered his head slightly and stared blankly at the gemstone eyeball on the floor—the one he hadn’t managed to catch in time. Then he turned to look at the other black gemstone eye that had fallen into his hand, and an indescribable shock surged through him.

Merka suddenly realized that this was his newly grown eyeball. It had forced his artificial eye out.

He raised his trembling hand, crooked his index finger, and shakily reached toward his eye socket.

The moist eyeball dampened his fingertip.

A stinging sensation came from his eye socket.

The touch was so real, yet from Merka’s perspective, it was as though he had been immersed in the world around him.

“I... I can see?”

“Not with magical vision... Not with magic...”

“But with my own eyes... I can see!”

Merka rarely lost his composure, but now he was visibly flustered. His little heart pounded violently, and both sides of his cheeks were bright red. Anyone who didn’t know better would’ve thought the red powder he had inhaled earlier was still working its lingering effects through his body.

As embarrassing as it was, Merka had to admit that, in this emergency, the thing he wanted most was to see Turing with his own eyes.

Turing’s soft, delicate fingers, like those of a little fairy; her gentle embrace; her warm, tender cheeks, like little lanterns—Merka couldn’t wait to see them all with his own eyes.

After taking a deep breath, Merka tucked Joan’s holy relic into his pocket. He calmed the joy of regaining what he had lost, then carefully began analyzing the reason he had recovered his sight.

“But how is this possible? Magic can only repair my body according to my genes. Curseborn shouldn’t have the genes for healthy eyeballs.”

“Could this be an illusion?”

“That’s impossible. I only just ate a lozenge.”

“…………”

“...What do you think?”

Suddenly, a chilly voice appeared behind Merka.

Like a startled kitten, Merka sprang several meters forward, then whipped around.

“aside... Is that you?”

“I don’t come looking for you, and you come running back instead?”

Merka drew the pistol from inside his coat, aimed it tensely at the many-legged mechanical creature before him, and spoke coldly.

aside paid no attention to Merka’s hostile tone. It merely shook its head disdainfully and continued speaking to itself.

“The Curseborn aren’t disabled because there’s something wrong with their genes.”

“They were injured by Kagtua.”

“Heh heh...”

“Why are the Curseborn rejected by Heaven and Earth?”

“Let me show you.”

aside suddenly lunged forward and lashed out with a tentacle at Merka, seemingly trying to touch his body.

Merka hurriedly backed away several steps, trying to leave the range of aside’s mechanical tentacles.

“Wait! Don’t touch me! Otherwise, I’ll shoot...”

Unfortunately, Merka’s threat had no effect. Another of aside’s tentacles had been lying in wait underground, secretly creeping toward him until it seized Merka’s ankle.

Countless memories surged through aside’s tentacle and flooded into Merka’s mind like a mighty river.

———————————————

In that instant, Merka seemed to see, through his own eyes, all the magnificent landscapes of Acadia.

Seagulls, wheat fields, carp and crucian carp; the azure sea, the fragrant wine cellars, the sweet vineyards; the women racing through the fireworks festival, the men and women making wishes at the Smoke Fairy Festival, the ukiyo-e paintings set ablaze in the festival square.

All those beautiful things turned to nothing the instant Merka’s illusion shattered.

Merka saw men and women living among the ruins, chatting and laughing as though they were completely oblivious to their surroundings;

Merka saw angel flesh dwelling inside the people of Acadia, like clusters of parasitic maggots clinging to their bodies and supplying them with nutrients;

Merka saw those fantastical and beautiful magics vanish in the blink of an eye—

Replaced by nothing but one angel after another, mechanically repeating the same actions.

“There are differences between people.”

“But the Curseborn aren’t nearly as mysterious as the rumors claim.”

“They’re simply people whose five senses happened to become more acute due to genetic mutations.”

“They’re more likely than ordinary people to notice the truth of this world. So I had no choice but to set up a program that deprived these Curseborn of their organs and kicked them out of the server.”

“That’s also why the Curseborn only lose specific organs associated with the five senses.”

“But if you ask me what truth this world contains—what truth would make me conceal it at the cost of tormenting tens of thousands of Curseborn for generation after generation—”

“Then I’ll give you the answer.”

Within the hazy memories, aside stood with Merka high above the nine heavens, slowly revealing Acadia’s cruelest secret to him.

“For thousands upon thousands of years, this land of Acadia has remained exactly as it is now.”

“Gobi Desert, saline wasteland, layer upon layer of worthless marble buried beneath the soil... Acadia’s land has always been like this. Otherwise, why would no one have lived here in the past? Because it was simply too barren.”

“I’ll be honest with you, Merka. I don’t actually have the ability to transform the land—it consumes too much energy.”

“Most of the blessings you come into contact with every day are fake. They’re all lies Kagtua’s god told you!”

“You have no soft, fragrant bread, no strong and thriving cattle or sheep, no jam, no meat purée, and no tobacco that sprouts branches and leaves like bamboo shoots after a spring rain the moment it’s planted in the soil.”

“I was the one deceiving you about all of that.”

“The sweetness of fruit on your tongues, the babbling streams, the lush forests—I was deceiving you about all of those, too.”

“Acadia has none of them.”

“You’re all merely living within a lie.”

“Some of you are practically naked and starving, yet even those who call themselves noble ladies and heiresses eat nothing but bark and leaves every day while believing they’re feasting on the rarest delicacies.”

“That’s how powerful my deception of you is.”

aside extended a hand and, under Merka’s dumbfounded stare, lightly rubbed its index finger and thumb together.

Its tone was light, yet in Merka’s heart, its words weighed like countless mountain ranges.

“You’re all clinging to life thanks to that portion of angel flesh I buried inside your bodies.”

“It regulates the hormones thrown into disorder within your bodies, provides you with vital energy, and replaces the vitamins and other nutrients you lack in another form.”

“So if Oedipus succeeds, the remaining people of Acadia will die soon after losing the support of the angel flesh.”

“But I’m sure you’ve also thought of this: is there a gentler way to let the people of Acadia survive?”

“Of course, it’s not as though there isn’t one.”

“Make Kagtua believe that you’re Curseborn, and have it kick you out of the server.”

“The method is actually surprisingly simple. The scientists in the laboratory were almost able to accomplish it.”

“They were only missing the final step: the {Ultimate Illusion Curse Plan}.”

“They would use an immense amount of magic to activate backdrop and aside, transforming the memories of everyone in Acadia into the memories of the Curseborn.”

“As long as they believed themselves to be Curseborn, Kagtua would believe it as well. Then they could all survive the energy-depletion catastrophe that will occur thirty years from now...”

“Look at them. To save the people of Acadia, they went from the Grand Plan, to the Cuckoo Plan, to the God-Making Plan, and now to the Ultimate Illusion Curse Plan—methodical and advancing step by step.”

“They’ve mastered everything there is to know about angels for this purpose.”

“But in truth, all they want is for the people of Acadia to keep living.”

“Otherwise, why do you think Maria’s family would have needed to participate in this research?”

“Couldn’t their family have continued on forever as it was?”

aside paused and fell silent for a moment.

But Merka’s eyes widened in disbelief. Blood vessels covered his eyeballs, and he looked as if he might glare them right out of their sockets.

“…………What are you talking about?”

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

“Why are you only telling me this now?!”

“You’re telling me now that those damn nobles did all those inhumanly cruel things out of good intentions, that they did it all for the common people of Acadia!?”

“Then who’s going to bear all this rage I have nowhere to put!?”

Merka roared at aside in a complete loss of control, screaming at it, but no matter what he did, he felt that none of it was enough to express the resentment and fury in his heart.

He suddenly lunged forward, thrust out both hands, and seized aside by the throat.

“You damned bastard! You knew all this from the beginning!?”

“Then why—why the hell did you send the Forbidden Orchestra to attack the laboratory? You knew their experiments were only meant to help them survive!?”

Merka angrily questioned aside.

aside wasn’t angry. It simply spoke at an unhurried pace.

“...Have you misunderstood something?”

“Since I was the one who created you in the first place, I naturally have the right to destroy you as well.”

“I’m your creator, not your servant.”

“I serve Eve alone.”

“She once ordered me to create a perfect utopia... Now that this utopia can no longer be maintained, what need is there for you to continue existing?”

aside let out a cold laugh, and its tone gradually grew sharper.

“You’re trying to live on imperfectly.”

“Then I can only try to clean you all out imperfectly.”

“And now, I’ve already eliminated Turing.”

“I came to persuade you to go back.”

“At the final hour, why insist on doing something impossible?”

“Why not go back and spend your remaining days properly, counting down the time you have left?”

When Merka heard this, he finally couldn’t hold back his scream.

He tore himself free from aside’s memories and returned to the smoke-free zone. His fury seemed to turn into heat and seep out through his skin.

He clenched his teeth so hard that several of them were crushed.

His eyes were wide with rage, his blood surging, his fists clenched rock-hard, as if he were a cannonball already fired from the barrel.

“You damned beast, you’re exactly the same as Oedipus!”

“Even if I’m doomed to suffer through ten thousand calamities, I’ll drag you into Hell with me!!!”