Asahi wanted to run away but he couldn't move at all.
"No, nooo! Please! Don't kill me!" Asahi begged.
An office worker who finished overtime at work and got off at a bus stop nearby heard those cries. He looked into the alleyway where the pleas were coming from, but it was too dark at the end to see anything.
"Somebody! Help me!"
The office worker ignored his call for help and walked home. The bystander effect is indiscriminate…
Tentacles that were held at bay in the air viciously grabbed Asahi and pulled him in like rabid dogs.
His screams echoed in the alley.
"Stop! Let him go!" Shouted a boy from the entrance of the alley.
Hikaru had his back turned from the boy, so he couldn't see anything. The muscles and bones on Hikaru's face shifted. His skin tone changed colour and his hair shortened to a spiky style.
The boy went into the alley to stab Hikaru in the back with his sword but stopped a few metres away as Hikaru started turning around.
The person who turned around was a beefier Gorou but of course, he didn't recognise the face.
Hikaru inspected him and recognised that it was the same Caucasian guy he had seen through the peephole on his front door.
That time he had just killed Aimi, and this boy knocked on his door. This time, he had interrupted Hikaru again. Was this a coincidence?
'And he's holding a sword. Not a gun or a baseball bat but a sword…'
Hikaru looked at the boy with hazelnut curly hair with curiosity on his face.
***
In a large cuboid white space was a huge grey structure that was narrow at the base but widened near the top. It looked like a round fountain.
A white and blue misty orb would usually float in the middle of the viewing station but was now on a floating white trapezium table.
There was a white chair suspended in midair next to the table. The seat of the chair was a pentagon and had a large back that curved outwards like a fancy chair of a CEO.
Sat upon it was Captain Charles Shovell of the 18th century. He wore a dark blue embroidered uniform of the Royal Navy, with white facings worn unbuttoned with white breeches and stockings.
He had gold embroidery on his cuffs and a Royal Navy Rank epaulette on his shoulder.
Using the universal reality viewing orb together with a green time viewing orb, he was watching some footage of himself leading a half-baked Navy fleet through a sea of pirates to rescue the queen.
Although the sense of time didn't exist in this place, he watched for a long time, occasionally cheering and crying.
He had already received a fatal wound in the battle from the King of Pirates but made a deal with the System to live longer. It was so he could attend the reward ceremony of the next day, spend a night with the queen and have a wild party with his friends.
In the last scene, the bullet wound in his chest opened up and blood pooled into his uniform. The duration of the System's deal was coming to the end.
He stepped outside the ball but didn't walk far before he dropped to the ground. Some of his friends came out to look for him and saw him collapsed. They ran over and flipped him over from his pool of blood. They didn't understand how he was wounded and was crying. He died with a smile on his face.
Charles sobbed at this scene. He kept pulling tissues out of thin air to wipe his tears and blow his nose. Then he threw them into another pocket of space.
After a while, he did a search query with the orbs.
Navy women 1800s.
Videos and pictures of what he searched popped up in front of him.
Navy women 1800s cosplay.
He looked through a couple of minutes before stumbling to a pleasant picture. Then he got a timeline of that person and looked at the related videos. There was one that caught his eye.
When he opened it up, a video started playing in which she was making out with another man wearing an imitation of his current uniform with a white wig over his head.
"I neeeed vitamin C." The woman said.
"Oh, no… I ate all the limes because I was thirrrsty." The man said.
"Oh, no! Isn't there anything you could do?"
"I can't think of anything.. But wait… I feel something is rising."
"I feel something rising too, and it's not the lime," muttered Charles.
Charles had stumbled onto a gold mine. It was rare to find a couple that would do an old-fashioned cosplay. When he looked at their reports, he found out that they were historians.
They delighted Charles. Historians were his favourite people because they respected and valued the past.
The white space suddenly turned red and alarms went off. The room was flashing red and white in sync with the alarm.
Immediately a giant screen opened up in space. It was the Master System.
He quickly got off the chair and grovelled on all fours.
"It wasn't what it looked like! I was doing research! Just research!"
Texts were typed onto the giant transparent screen in front of him. The texts were big and green.
[Notice: The script of Earth-21 has deviated far beyond the accepted value of deviation. Reasons are stated below.]
[Debug Log: Timeline has been changed]
'The timeline has been changed?'
Charles was visibly confused. Timeline changes weren't uncommon because there were those powerful enough to break the time barrier.
The fall of a civilisation, the extinction of a race, the destruction of a planet or galaxy. Sometimes these changes were part of the script or were within expectations. However, for the Master System to switch to the maximum level of alert meant that something has seriously deviated from the plans and could threaten the System itself.
[Decree of the Master System: Correct the deviation]
"How would you like me to do that O Master System?" Charles humbly asked from the ground.
[Suggestion: Find a suitable reincarnator to correct the deviant. Use any means necessary to carry this out.]
"Yes, I will do my very best O Master System!"
[In the event of a failure, penalties will be calculated based on your performance.]
Was the system threatening him?
Cold sweat sent shivers down his spine.
"As overseer of Earth-21 reincarnation centre, I will not fail!"
With that, the giant system screen disappeared.