"This was the worst part of your life. Memory Lock is designed to bring back memories to strengthen your psyche. And, I hate to say it... but I don't hate you anymore, Anima." Papiya spoke up from behind me as I was locked in place.
"Tell me... tell me this is false. This is just a trick. Papiya... please, I'm begging you. Don't deceive me, not right now, please. I will do anything for you. You can do whatever you want to me... please, tell me, tell me Destiny didn't kill herself." I said while staring at my hands.
They felt bloody. It felt like it was my fault...
"This isn't a moment of deception. Destiny killed herself soon after she ran away from her home to come to see you one last time. You didn't look at her, you didn't pay attention to her, and that was the thing that set her over the edge." She said.
"DON'T LIE TO ME! I TOLD YOU TO BE SERIOUS WITH ME! SHE WOULD NEVER KILL HERSELF FOR THAT! SHE WOULD COME TO SEE ME, NO MATTER HOW DIFFICULT! I TOLD HER I WOULD BE THERE FOR HER NO MATTER WHAT!" I screamed out to her.
"I'm sorry, Anima. I wish I never showed you." Papiya told me.
I don't know what I was feeling. I feel like I just watched a part of myself die.
"Papiya... why did I see that...? I wasn't there for that..." I muttered.
"Mana connects us all, no matter where you're born. This was... Earth, you call it, right? The Earthlings have Mana as well, it connects us all. If you're close enough, your mana attempts to synchronize with other mana in other people... I can show you more of her memories because of your relationship with her..." She told me.
I laid with my back to the roof and stared at the sky. I don't even want to do this anymore. I don't care that I wouldn't get Apostility... I just don't want to do this anymore.
"Take me out. I'm done. I don't want to play anymore." I told her.
"It's not that simple, you have to find your way out yourself. And it doesn't just stop here." Papiya told me while tightly holding her arm close to her body.
"I wasn't asking you how to get out. I was telling you to take me out. I've seen enough..." I muttered... until I realized that I hadn't.
There was one last thing I want to check.
"Can you bring me to my parents, as close as you can after my death?" I asked Papiya.
"Are you sure? That's not really a pretty memory either." Papiya told me while turning toward the edge of the roof.
"I don't want to be left in the dark anymore. What happened to this planet after I died?" I asked Papiya, continuing to stare at the sky.
"About eight hundred days after you died, this is what the Earth looks like." She told me. She snapped her fingers and a huge, grey cloud shot over the sky, making everything dark.
I turned my head all over while resting on the roof to see what happened, but... it was grey for miles, and the buildings beside me were all gone.
"What the hell...?" I said out loud, walking to the edge with Papiya.
"Where... is everybody? Where is everything?" I said, but Papiya shrugged.
"You asked me to bring you as close as I could. It doesn't look... good, that's for sure." She told me.
"Why can't you bring me back any sooner? And how did two years pass so fast? I've only been in your world for a month. And, that's as close as you can get? I thought you said we were all connected through mana, why don't you bring me back to my family?" I asked her.
"I don't know how long you think you were out of it for, but you certainly weren't summoned here right after you died. When Zeus and Yggdrasil talked to me about bringing you here, I was astonished that a soul left on Earth was intact for so long. By the time we got your soul, about four hundred years passed on Earth in your time." Papiya told me.
"Eh...?" I paused and tried to process that.
Four hundred years?! What the hell?!
I thought... I thought I was brought back as soon as I died, I wanted to fight to come back to Earth... I wanted to live my life there after I was done on Erinautis…
"My family... they're all dead... aren't they? That's the unforgiving memory..." I muttered, and Papiya nodded.
"I don't want to show you that. In fact, I won't. I know, Sis explained everything she could to you at our meeting... but there's a lot more to our world and when we stole you than you realize. Are you feeling alright enough to listen to it?" She asked me.
What was with Papiya being so... normal? And caring? She was trying to deceive me, I know she was.
"Tell me... why was I really brought here?" I asked her.
"We measure people based on how much mana they can wield. Well, we used to. The way we would test that is we made Zeus take over somebody's body to see what they could do. We pushed them to their limit, and my stupid step-brother wanted one body over the others... Ono. Then, when he tested you out and used your body to assume control over New Olympia, Yggdrasil and I saved you and put you into your original body." She told me.
"What...? You're telling me... Zeus used my body as he did with Ono?" I asked Papiya, and she nodded.
"He did that with everybody before you killed him. I'll admit, at first, I hated you after killing him... but that means that I can go into retirement now that nobody else is going to be reincarnated here." She said.
"And what did you do in that little group?" I asked her.
"I do this. Ready to be mind-fucked? This scene right now, that you and I are talking in, is happening before you're reincarnated. You will awaken in this world with no sense of Memory Lock even happening, and then you will repeat your course of actions until you meet me again, and then you will escape Memory Lock and win my game." She explained.
"I didn't understand a single thing you said to me. Let me get this straight... right now, this exact moment, is happening before I'm actually reincarnated? How does that make sense?" I asked her.
"Yggdrasil. Here's where the three of us come into play. Zeus steals your memories, I replace them, and Yggdrasil moves them. Think of it like this. In a circle, you start at a certain point, but if you keep going, you will hit your original point. Your original point is this scenario. You experienced this first, but the memories were shut out until you met me after defeating Zeus. Now that you're here, I'm giving you these memories again." She said.
"So... this has already happened where I'm at in our world... the first thing I did when I was reincarnated was this? To test if I was strong enough... and then Zeus used my body to test my mana?" I asked her.
"Yep. We test you by looking at your endurance in Memory Lock. This was your first stop before awakening as a Hero." She told me.
Holy shit this was confusing!