After my declaration, a stunned silence reigned in the office.

Then the principal laughed.

“What a bold proposal. Tell me, then. What favor do you desire from my exalted self?”

It probably wouldn’t look too good to say I had no clue. “What are you willing to offer?”

“Hmm. You want me to put a price on my students’ heads?”

“It’s also the price of salvaging your reputation,” I said. “After all, if I hadn’t acted, who knows how much worse this would’ve been? If you want, you could even persuade Luka to testify that we only solved the Fantasm World due to your excellent guidance.”

“Why Luka? Can I not persuade you?”

“I’m an honest person.”

The principal chuckled. She tilted her head to examine me, eyes glimmering luminescent blue behind her tinted glasses.

“Indeed, your feats have been quite grand. The Academy recognizes this. Considering your service to the school, we could grant you a reward from the Academy’s resources…”

I tried to imagine what that might be. Money? Connections? Maybe I could use a job.

“…though perhaps that would be problematic,” she mused, unblinking. “It wouldn’t do to misappropriate funds for the sake of private dealings. Instead, we could go with a personal favor from me…”

I didn’t know anything about her or her capabilities.

“…though that may not be to your tastes, either.” The principal smiled and tapped her long purple fingernails on the desk. “Hmm, what a conundrum. I don’t know what you want.”

Cyprian cut in with a low voice.

“He wants the personal favor.”

“Does he?”

“Principal Sun,” said Sashenka, “if you intend to grant a favor to that child, then as a main contributor, Luka should receive an equal reward as well.”

I guess her personal favor was worth a lot.

“As a commoner with no background, how much could your charge have contributed?” Cyprian said sarcastically. “No. The true credit must be with my son.”

“The Scribe’s messages do not lie. Luka undoubtedly played a great role in solving the Fantasm. If anyone has stolen credit, it must be your son. After all…” She flashed a smile. “By his own confession, it was Luka’s plan he used, and it was him who first made an attempt to kill Luka. Aren’t Luka’s actions simply in self-defense?”

Hey. That description made me sound really bad.

“Confession?” Cyprian curled his lip. “Knowing your methods, you must have used brute force to press out an answer you liked.”

“Please, don’t lower me to your level. I don’t need to do such a thing.”

Before Cyprian could respond, the principal said, “Spare me your arguments, you two. I’ve grown quite familiar with them. The long and short of it is simply that Acacius and Luka are the only ones who know what happened, and neither of you are willing to subject your wards to my methods of investigation, and thus I am ill-inclined to believe either.”

“If that’s the only issue, isn’t it easy to resolve?” I said.

It didn’t feel great having everyone’s attention swing back to me.

“Ask Luka and I what happened separately. If our stories don’t match, then we can forget this conversation happened. But if they do, then I want you to promise me one of your favor.” I hesitated, faked an expression of distaste, and added, “And Luka should get a favor too. I suppose.”

Principal Sun studied me for a long moment, and then she grinned.

“Of course. It wouldn’t do to be accused of unfairness, after all. However, I have my own conditions.”

She crossed her arms on the desk and leaned forward.

“First, I won’t grant any favors related to the conflict between the two of you or your guardians. And second, I won’t grant any favors to aid either of your guardians’ political games. Should I suspect any outside pressure, I won’t move. These favors are owed to you and Luka alone.”

She smiled.

“Cyprian, Sashenka, have you any objections?”

Honestly, they both looked like they had something they wanted to say, but in the end, they didn’t. I guess even with those conditions, they really wanted us to get that favor.

“Then as it has been witnessed, so it shall be done. Acacius, let us speak privately.”

The principal waved her hand. Like light refracting in a prism, the space in the office separated into layers — one with Cyprian and Sashenka, and another with the principal and me. Then, the layer with myself and the principal snapped into place, leaving us alone in the office.

“Where did they go?” I asked cautiously.

“Oh, don’t worry about them. I’ve simply sent them on their way. I’m afraid I’ve grown quite tired of them.”

Was it okay for a principal to say that so openly?

“Now, do share your side of the story,” she said. “With all this intrigue, my curiosity has grown. How did you and Luka end up at each other’s throats?”

Under her questioning, I relayed how Luka and I had worked together to solve KP-04. I explained our first attempt to mitigate the disaster, though instead of detailing how the Signifier’s curse had caused my body to merge with the [Last Genesis], I just said I’d used certain capabilities granted to me in the Fantasm World. As for the basis of Luka’s plan, I waved it off as “relying on a personal skill with certain side effects.”

Actually, I still wasn’t sure why he’d tried to kill me after resurrecting, but it hadn’t been hard to notice that he was out of his mind. I guess coming back from the dead couldn’t be that easy.

Luckily for me, although Principal Sun pressed for details, if I stonewalled her enough, she didn’t pry.

When we finished talking, the principal told me to wait for a moment and closed her eyes, seemingly deep in thought.

“While I look into Luka’s testimony,” she said, “let’s chat a little further. What do you intend to use my personal favor for?”

“I figured I’d save it and use it when appropriate.”

“Come now, don’t be shy. You must have given some thought as to what you want.” She gave me a sudden, sly smile. “Surely you didn’t propose such a deal simply to ensure that your classmate could tell his side of the story too, did you?”

Uhhhh.

I cast around quickly for something I might want from her.

“Actually, there is something.”

“Yes?”

“I want a good grade on this special assignment. Five hundred percent.”

That seemed like a safe margin.

“And also, no matter how bad my grades get in the future, don’t fail or expel me for it,” I added.

The principal stared at me for a moment before she burst out laughing.

“Five hundred percent is too much. However, you will certainly receive a bonus, regardless of the outcome of our conversation.”

It was worth a try. “And the other part?”

“I won’t protect you from expulsion entirely, but it won’t be for bad grades,” she agreed. “As for passing classes and graduating, you must still maintain an attendance rate of eighty percent or higher, barring special circumstances.”

That was pretty generous. I was planning on attending, anyways.

“Are you sure this is what you want to spend your favor on?”

“Do you have other suggestions?”

She chortled. At least one person was having fun here.

“Well, Acacius,” she said, “Luka’s testimony matches yours, so congratulations.”

I blinked. “You… talked to him?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “It’s a simple matter to conduct simultaneous interviews. Now, given the circumstances, I understand that you have no interest in pressing any charges against Luka. Is that correct?”

“Correct.”

“Excellent. I do love a clean and convenient solution. Still, I must say, it’s too much of a waste to use your favor on something as trivial as your grades. I’ll have the Academy make a special provision for you, unrelated to the favor. Come see me again when you know what you really want.”

Huh. Cyprian and Sashenka had been so nervous, but I guess the principal was easier to talk to than they thought.

“I’m in a good mood, so I’ll send you to your destination,” said the principal. “Where do you plan to go?”

Like how she’d transported Cyprian and Sashenka away? Being thrown into this mess as soon as I woke up had drained all the energy out of me, so I said, “My dorm room.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to check on any of your classmates first? Luka, Veric, or Roxana, perhaps?”

“Is anyone dying?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

It felt like talking to any of them would be awkward in various ways. Anyways, since Luka wasn’t in trouble anymore, Veric would get the good news soon, so I didn’t have to worry about telling her anything.

For whatever reason, Principal Sun laughed again.

“The Year 2 Governance track has the rest of the week off to recover and take care of personal matters,” she said. “We hope to see you back in school on Monday. Enjoy your break, Acacius, and once more, congratulations on solving KP-04.”

She gestured with her hand. Space refracted and folded around me, showing scenes from various places around the school. When it consolidated once again, I was standing in front of my dorm room, alone.

I breathed out a sigh of relief, went inside, and collapsed on the bed.

It felt like an eternity since we departed for the field trip on Monday. Psychologically, I was exhausted. I wasn’t even in the mood to finish checking the rewards that Kosmonymia had promised me. I just wanted to rest.

In typical fashion, the world did not respect my plans.

The next day, late in the morning, Cynara and Linden came to my door. Cynara I could sort of understand, but I didn’t get why Linden was here.

Before I could ask, Cynara shoved a huge stack of envelopes into my arms.

“You haven’t updated your address yet,” she said. “All your mail is still coming to our house. I’m sick of answering them for you.”

Wow, another problem I didn’t know I had. I picked up an envelope and memorized Acacius’ previous address: 105 Veratrum Row, Nithemoore City. “I think you’ve been doing fine job managing so far. Why not keep it up?”

Cynara narrowed her eyes. “Ever since you accepted Father’s little punishment, all your former work has been hoisted onto me. Shouldn’t you have some sense of shame?”

I’d had actual work? Thank god I managed to dodge that bullet. “Look at that, the Duval family genius is capable of doing so much. It’d be a shame not to take advantage, don’t you think?”

“Acacius, watch it,” Linden bit out.

What was he going to do, challenge me to another duel?

“Forget it, Linden,” Cynara muttered. “It’s not worth it.”

She gave me one last cold look and shouldered past me into my dorm.

It felt like more trouble than it was worth to try and kick them out, so I followed her in and tossed my mail onto the kitchen table before sitting down. Linden skulked in after us and closed the door.

I didn’t actually feel like welcoming them in, so I didn’t make any tea.

“Everyone wants to know what you plan to do with your new Fantasm World,” said Cynara. “Especially the Broken Kaleidoscope. Father wrote to you, too.”

She handed me an envelope. I opened it and scanned through the contents.

Cyprian wanted me to seize the technology of the kaleidoscope perspective frame, or, if I couldn’t do that, then to hand the administration of the Fantasm World to him. Once I achieved either condition, he would reinstate my privileges as part of the family.

So in other words, I could ignore it. I discarded the letter and picked up the next, which was from the Broken Kaleidoscope.

After they finished issuing a bunch of apologies, they explained that they wanted to buy the rights to use the Fantasm World and continue their research, and they sincerely hoped that we could broker an agreement that would preserve Fulsgate’s status as an autonomous zone.

Cynara and Linden waited while I picked through other letters in the pile. There was one from Yugrazal Kamara, co-president of the Fellowship of the Silver Wing, advising me that this was a good opportunity for Iyiria to exert control over Fulsgate; and another from Javier Baschet, the other co-president, telling me I should consider the unique research value of the world when making business decisions. Both of them wanted to arrange meetings to discuss further, which seemed like a big threat to my peaceful life.

There was also a letter from the Iyirian Land Authority asking me to register my ownership of KP-04 within the month, regardless of any decision to keep or sell it. It also informed me that I needed to arrange for a government appraiser to survey the land available in KP-04 so they could calculate the taxes I’d have to pay on it.

Whatever it meant to solve a Fantasm World and own it, it seemed like a huge hassle.

Cynara watched me throw the letter aside, next to the pile of envelopes that still remained unopened. “What do you plan to do?”

“I plan to not deal with any of this until Monday.”

“Are you serious? This is urgent.”

“Is anyone dying?”

“No, but—”

“Then how urgent can it be. I just spent the last two days cleaning up after other people’s messes and I don’t feel like doing it more. I think I must be really kind-hearted to provide this kind of social service at all. What do I even get out of it?”

Cynara looked like she wanted to throttle me. “You got a Fantasm World.”

“And what of it?”

Before Cynara could work herself up again, Linden spoke up. “Let us take a look at it. If you do, we can help block everyone off until next week.”

Maybe I should show some hospitality to them after all.

I got up and put a kettle of water on the stove, said, “Give me one minute,” and went to my room.

I pulled out one of the books I’d borrowed from the library in preparation for the field trip and flipped to the section about solved Fantasms.

Upon solving a Fantasm World’s historical crisis, the time loop would end, and the Fantasm World would convert into a stable space based on the geography and ecology of its original history. There might be lingering dangers, but the threat posed by the primary crisis would be gone.

Although lacking its original inhabitants, the Fantasm World could then be used as a basis to research and reproduce the technologies of that world. This was how frames like the 6E frame were brought into Kosmonymia; a solved Fantasm World could be used to produce artifacts, which enabled the use of that world’s respective frame.

Whoever helped solve the Fantasm would split the ownership through something called the Record of Authority, which allowed them to set rules for who could enter and inherit it.

The kettle started whistling in the kitchen, so I went back and steeped some tea. Cynara and Linden both declined when I offered, though. What a waste of my generosity.

As I poured myself a cup, I mentally called out for the Record of Authority, just as I usually did for my Record of Existence.

Sure enough, a book materialized before me and flipped open at my mental command.

“Still so old-fashioned,” Linden muttered.

“What?” I said.

He shook his head. “I just don’t understand why you still insist on using books.”

Could you freely change the Records’ formats, like how Kosmonymia had switched to reading them out to me while I was blind? It was something to explore more later.

Inside the Record of Authority, under the header of “KP-04,” were different sections: Inheritance Rules, Standard of Entry, Entrances, and Owners’ Personal Record. Under Entrances, a doorway in Fulsgate was listed. Under Standard of Entry was a line of slanted cursive that read, “Guests accompanied by at least one of the owners.”

Unlike my Record of Existence, there was a pen that came bound to this particular book. I picked it up and experimentally scribbled in the empty “Owners’ Personal Record” section. The ink sank into the pages and slowly faded away.

Then, a line of cursive appeared by itself.

—Acacius?

What the hell.

I made a conjecture and wrote back as the previous line began to fade.

—Luka?

—Yes. It’s good that you’re alive.

I didn’t know what to say to that, because now that I was interacting with him, I was remembering that I was still mad that he’d asked me to kill him. Asking how he was doing would also make me seem friendlier than I cared to be, so I changed the subject.

—How do you use this thing?

—We write down the entrance rules we want to set. They can be erased or modified by the other owner. If you want to open a new entrance to KP-04, you can use the door button, but we only have three we can set, total.

Luka drew a scratchy diagram of a button with a door icon, something straight out of a tech interface. My book distinctly did not have that. I frowned and wrote back.

—Have you gone in yet? Is it safe?

—Yes.

I waited, but there was no further elaboration. I guess that was his answer to both questions.

—I’m taking a look inside. Don’t bother me.

Luka didn’t respond to that, which I decided to take as a positive sign that he would listen to me.

Given how I’d interacted with the Records before, I tried mentally calling out, Door.

A page detached itself from the end of the book and hovered in the air, expanding into a gold-framed door with an etching of a beheaded snake.

“Is that the Fantasm World?” Cynara said, eyes riveted. “Can we go in?”

“Do you trust that I solved it correctly?” I said.

Cynara grimaced, but her expression soon became firm. “I trust the Scribe’s declarations. Let’s go.”

I held in a smile and opened the door.

When we arrived on the other side, we were on the hillside of the mountain, overlooking the city by the sea. Unlike when I’d first been in KP-04, the city was silent and still as a tomb. Not a hint of human life could be seen.

All of us had arrived in our original clothes and equipment, too. I guess it was because we no longer needed to blend into KP-04’s “history.”

Linden and Cynara were silent as they took in the scenery.

Then Linden glanced at me. “Aren’t you going to show us around?”

“I didn’t see that much of the city.”

“Didn’t you have independent time to explore the world?”

I shrugged. “Yes, but I had an encounter with the Order of the Black Sun. They hit me with a sedative after they…” No, I didn’t actually want to admit I got brainwashed. “Anyways, I got knocked out. But I still managed to kill them, so it turned out fine.”

Linden looked at me for a while. I looked back.

“You can show us something else at least, can’t you?” he said finally.

I thought about it and took them up the mountainside to the Cagzol Institute of Biotechnology. Like the city, it was empty of people, so it was easy to lead them to the stairs that went down to the caverns.

“So, what do you know about the caverns?” Linden asked as we descended.

“The Kalos butterflies breed here. They’re the basis for the Eye of the Kaleidoscope, but I don’t know how the process works.”

“Really?” said Cynara. “I thought the Broken Kaleidoscope would have explained at least a little bit before everything that happened.”

“The tour was interrupted because of the Order’s ambush, and the staff members were killed. Then after the cave-in, we were all trapped in the flooding caverns while the Order hunted us down. Learning about the history of this world wasn’t a high priority.”

Linden said, “I heard that most of the students regrouped with either Cardinal Jules or Mehran Sattari, but no one is exactly sure what you did.”

I reminded myself that I was answering them for the sake of a few days of peace.

“I took some classmates with me to find Professor Raoul, since he was still missing after we got rid of his doppelganger—”

“Doppelganger?”

“He was replaced and sealed away by one of the traitors in the Broken Kaleidoscope. Anyways, I thought he would be able to create an exit from the Fantasm, so we staged a rescue, but we were off by a few hours, so he wouldn’t finish creating it before the disaster hit.”

Linden and Cynara’s gazes towards me sharpened. “The disaster?” she asked.

“It was an apocalypse that contaminated what it looked at or what looked at it.”

“Then how did you solve it?”

Well, I was turned into a bug, and then I was cursed, and then my classmate sealed the apocalypse into his body where I could break the disaster all at once, and then he went crazy and I killed him…

Yeah, I didn’t need to answer that much.

“We’re here,” I said, pushing open the doors at the bottom of the stairs, and we stepped into the Cagzol Caverns proper.

It was a peaceful scene. Streams of water flowed down cracks in the cave walls and pooled on the cavern floors, cradled by porous rock formations and beds of moss and grass. Giant blue flowers bloomed and cast their gentle light on the walls.

Cynara gasped softly, looking around in wonder, and Linden stepped forward, drawn into the scene.

But my attention was drawn elsewhere.

A wisp of golden light descended before me and materialized into the same book that had greeted me when I first was summoned to Kosmonymia.

Black ink wrote itself over the pages.

[As the one who overcame the trials of history, you have obtained the trust of the {Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope}.]

[The {Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope} has exchanged the weight of its existence to the Tripartite for a chance to continue its legacy.]

[The {Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope} entrusts its legacy to you and passes down its true desire.]

[“Please ensure that we survive.”]

A golden box materialized in my hands.

When I opened it, I found a large green leaf, the same as what grew from the glowing blue flowers. Hundreds of translucent, dewdrop-like eggs had been laid on the surface.

Hey, wait a moment. I wasn’t the right person for this. I didn’t know anything about raising butterflies! Just because I knew how to kill others, did that mean I could be a caretaker?

But maybe it was too late for the [Last Genesis] to regret.

[The {Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope} has passed through the final door.]

[Kosmonymia will be watching the inheritor of its legacy.]

The last line finished itself with a flourish. The pages fluttered closed, and the book disappeared.

I stared at the box in my hands, and then I called up my Record of Existence to check the entry for [Executor of the Sacrifice’s Last Will].

Description: A title obtained by carrying out the last will of those who died or were killed unjustly in pursuit of a greater cause. Of those you’ve met most recently, only Acacius Duval and the {Last Genesis of the Kaleidoscope} fit the conditions.

[…]

Note: This title is borrowed from the future. If you do not achieve the conditions to make it true within 1 year and 10 months, you will die.

I sighed. I guess the [Last Genesis] had been pretty smart with its choices, after all.

When I looked up, Linden and Cynara were watching me with wide eyes.

“What was that?” Cynara asked. “What happened?”

I closed the box and smiled bitterly.

“I’ve inherited one last problem to clean up.”

Chapter 36 Back to Index