After the fight with the Grimm King, I pondered over what he'd said while inside Honda, whom Haruka had returned to our original location.
Apparently this world is more removed from the game than I originally thought. I keep finding new pieces of lore one after the other. Then I learn that the Goddess is actually evil.
My head might actually just explode.
But now that I thought about it, this world itself was pretty strange.
This was reality. As long as I didn't suddenly wake up and realize I was just having a uselessly realistic dream, there was no doubt that this world actually existed and I was in it. But for all this realism, a weirdly large amount also seemed like a game. It was weird for there to be stat values and levels that were clearly visible and acknowledgeable in the first place.
Firstly, a lot of this world would be impossible in nature, so it made sense that the game-like elements had been implemented by the Goddess on purpose. But if that were the case, the question was just where she had gotten the idea. It made no sense unless the Goddess knew of the game and had made this world to match.
Oh, yeah. Wasn't there a game like that way back when? One that had a huge and magnificent story, but the ending turned into a case of "None of this was real, since this world was just a game world." And wasn't there another one with, like, a way too advanced digital world, where programs lived and monsters evolved and stuff?
Surprisingly enough, if this world were similar, it would explain… No, nevermind. It wouldn't.
If that were true, then why would this world be so different from Xgate Online?
If this were some sort of digital world or something emulating Xgate Online, then there'd be no reason for there to be one thousand years gap since my defeat, either. After all, the passage of days didn't matter in the game. Sure, there was a morning/day/night cycle, but the dates never changed.
When I started playing, the 'world' was in the year 2000 of the Third Age of Midgar Calendar. And even after six years of playing, the year never changed. It didn't become 2006 or anything. The game repeated the same year over and over, or in other words, it was the world of Sazae-san.
The game was clearly different from the world I was in right now. So that theory didn't hold water.
…Damn. I can't come to any conclusions. I just don't know enough.
I really should have stayed and listened to the Grimm King until the very end. He was just about to talk and get me closer to the core truth of this world.
"There it is, Big Sis! It's Vanaheim!" Haruka called me, bringing me back to reality.
When I looked out the window, I saw a towering mountain with a forest at its base. Apparently we'd reached the residence of the next of the Twelve Zodiac's Guardians.
I was still concerned about this world and what the Grimm King had been going to say next, but thinking about it wouldn't yield anything for now. I just had to leave it for later.
I need to concentrate on the problems right in front of me first.
But still, Kushina of the Virgo Constellation, huh? Haruka says she's still alive and well, but I wonder if that's really true.
I didn't actually doubt Haruka, per se. But Kushina still being alive after one thousand years seemed impossible. I mean, she was a human, after all.
I believe I already covered the fact that as long as a player encountered something as an enemy, it didn't matter if they were human. They were treated as a monster by the system. It wasn't a rare occurrence or anything. In fact, it was common in most RPGs for human enemies to show up the same way monsters did, with names like "so-and-so soldier," or "so-and-so priest."
I remember that in the 8th installment of a certain nationally famous RPG series, there was an 'eat' skill that was particularly nasty, since it 'ate' the enemy to recover the user's HP. It was fully usable on human soldiers who were enemies. The sight of the main heroine dashing towards the soldiers and the ensuing awful sounds of her munching down were quite frightening.
This was basically the same.
Kushina was originally a human NPC who'd featured the name "Maiden in Service to the Goddess." She was a troublesome enemy who appeared in a high-difficulty, level 1000 dungeon. She would form a party with other human NPCs and endlessly heal and support them. But if she were on your side, those healing and support abilities were very useful.
So, wanting at least one person like her, I'd tamed her.
I did train her up a little, just in case, but I had no intention of using her in battle in the first place. I'd just tamed her because I wanted someone who could heal and support, so her combat ability was really low.
The dungeon she appeared in was of a really high difficulty. She was as strong as a level 800 back line specialist, but that was it. If she were forced to actually fight, she would probably be the weakest out of all the Twelve Zodiac's Guardians.
But it was okay that she was weak. She had high INT and MND stats to go with her abundance of SP. As long as she could provide shields and heals from the back, she was plenty useful. For wading into combat from the front, I had people like Sienna, anyway. Although the Leo was now outside of my control.
Anyway, the point was that Kushina was a true-blue human, so her lifespan was correspondingly short.
So as to the question of whether she was still alive after one thousand years… Well, it was impossible life-span-wise, right? Even if she were still alive, she'd be really old and decrepit. I found it impossible to believe she'd be in any state to travel.
If what I was thinking was right, then she was definitely now really old. It would probably be better to just have her stop occupying Vanaheim, the flugels's home, but not take her with us.
I had Haruka around to take care of the back line anyway… Most importantly, she'd probably die if we made her walk.