NOVEL NEXT Chapter 156
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“Adam, you say?”
“Yep! That’s right!”
Mr. Powerful, back from the search, recounted what he saw to his comrades. The figure he glimpsed at the Evil Organization’s headquarters. The one they had been waiting for all this time…
It’s a given that Mr. Powerful’s claim wasn’t immediately accepted. The idea that the person they had waited ages for showed up so easily was just too hard to believe.
Thus, Mr. Clear turned to Mr. Raise, who had accompanied Powerful, and asked.
“Is what he’s saying true? Raise?”
“…Well, it could be seen that way.”
“So… now we’re calling him Adam, huh?”
Without even a moment to scowl at why they didn’t believe him until Raise chimed in, Powerful immediately started listing several pieces of evidence to support that he was indeed Adam.
“Look! His name is Eight! Apparently, he’s a famous scientist in the academic world!”
“A scientist, huh…”
“Proof of the soul, the development of anti-gravity devices, the beginnings of powerful AI. Word has it there’s a ton more hidden things! Where would such insane scientific prowess come from?”
Indeed. Eight’s accomplishments were way beyond what a mere genius could offer. It almost felt like he came from a dimension where science surpassed theirs, like an alien from another universe.
To those unaware of this world’s existence, he might just look like a genius, but—these four guardians, united under the grand duty of protecting humanity, knew better.
“Not to mention, there’s absolutely no history of someone producing such outrageous results! There’s no way he learned science somewhere or displayed any genius since childhood!”
“Truly, he seems like a being that just fell from the sky.”
“Yeah! So he is—.”
“—But that doesn’t prove he’s Adam.”
Mr. Clear firmly shot down Powerful’s statement. Just because the scientific level was incomprehensible and it didn’t seem likely he could learn that scientific knowledge somewhere doesn’t mean he could jump to the conclusion that he was Adam.
If he truly was Adam, the one they had yearned for all this time…
“Then why didn’t he come to us first?”
“What?”
“If he really is Adam, he would have sought us out first.”
But Eight didn’t do that. He chose to go down the path belonging to the Evilus Corporation and was still aligned with them. Submission to others was something an individual they were waiting for would never choose.
As evidence for and against Adam flooded in, their opinions begun to clash.
“Maybe he just couldn’t find us, or forgot about us! Our identities are tightly concealed!”
“That’s the kind of thing you say when you’re blinded by hope. Even if we’re hidden, if he’s the real Adam, he should have found us somehow….”
“So what if I’m blinded? We might finally be able to shake off this tedious duty!”
Powerful said this while glaring at Clear as if ready to kill. Upon hearing Powerful’s words, Clear stared back with wide eyes as if questioning his sincerity.
“…Are you serious?”
“Did you not know? The only one here who enjoys this work is you.”
“You pathetic, faulty piece of work…”
“If anything, the real faulty one is you, you old junk.”
“Are you looking for a fight?”
“Sure. Anytime.”
As the two, genuinely ready to fight, were being restrained by the other two guardians, Powerful, having said all he needed to, decided he couldn’t waste any more time in such a place and easily left the headquarters.
The middle finger raised was extra.
Watching Powerful retreat, Clear meticulously read through the information he had left behind. Eight, a male in his twenties, winner of the ABC Science Award, a mysterious figure who suddenly fell into this world, affiliated with Evilus Corporation, an executive of an Evil Organization…
As Mr. Clear scanned through all the information, he hesitated when he came across a name that seemed oddly familiar. City E and Evilus Corporation. His machine-like brain instantly began indexing past memories. After a moment, information about the Evilus Corporation surfaced.
‘…Evilus Corporation? That one from back then?’
The suddenly emerging new corporation. The other 25 corporations did not recognize the remarkably growing Evilus Corporation as a traditional company like them. Instead, they showed an attitude of restraint and even war.
Domination of the world meant that the will of those 25 corporations was the will of the entire world. Upon receiving their message, Mr. Clear assassinated the former owners of the Evilus Corporation to protect humanity’s peace.
It seemed there were survivors from that process, but he didn’t think much of it. After all, they were just kids, and he didn’t believe a lone child could manage much.
But now, years later…
“So it’s true.”
The girl who survived back then was still an immature little girl but had simultaneously become the head of a massive corporation.
Even more so, she had a being suspected to be Adam under her command…
Mr. Clear’s legs began to twitch slightly. Hoping, praying that Eight wasn’t the kind of being they feared.
Hoping.
Praying.
* * *
“Ah!”
During the experiment, the Saintess, with her eyes clenched shut and head down, soon looked at me with tear-filled eyes.
“I can’t see… God. Are you really a God?”
“What are you talking about… You can’t see my future?”
“Yes… Normally, others can see at least a bit of the past or future, but for some reason, I can’t see anything about you.”
The fourth dimension could be divided into two types.
The fourth dimension as commonly thought by ordinary people. The space constituted by the four coordinates awakened in the Saintess. A new axis added on top of xyz.
And the fourth dimension that ordinary scientists speak of is the Minkowski spacetime proposed by German mathematician Minkowski. The four-dimensional spacetime by adding one dimension of time to the three-dimensional space we inhabit.
As a being now in the fourth dimension, Lizbel could also see the fourth-dimensional spacetime. That was one of the reasons she had never failed. She only needed to abandon the worldlines that led to failure and follow those that didn’t.
A kind of future prediction. No, considering that she could choose her own future, it was closer to future confirmation.
‘You can’t see my figure there? Why not?’
It made sense that she wouldn’t see my past. If we assume that her ability reads the spacetime of this world rather than individuals, my past, which had only been here for a bit over a year, wouldn’t exist here. She probably needed to extend her sight all the way to Earth to catch a glimpse.
But the future was different. I was living here, and thus my future was also bound to this world. If she could see far into the future, it was normal that she could also see mine…
But reality was not like that. For some reason, Lizbel could not see my future.
“Isn’t it just your skill level dropping?”
“That can’t be it! I’ve been using this for years… then should I try looking at someone outside?”
As Lizbel said that, she leaned out the window. Pointing wildly at the people walking down the main street, Lizbel reached out to someone, then suddenly froze in place.
Frozen as if broken, she let out a small moan and cautiously opened her mouth.
“Um, did I… break it?”
“Why? What’s up?”
“No, it’s not that… it’s just that… I see two people who are strangely long.”
“Long, you say?”
“Um, usually when you view the past of a normal person, it’s around 1 to 2 minutes max, right? That’s about 100 seconds?”
About 100 seconds. This meant that you could summarize someone’s life to about a second each year. Nodding as if I understood, Lizbel then pointed at the people down below and spoke again.
“But those two down there are… they’re just so long…”
“How long are we talking?”
“Three days?”
“…Three days?”
I paused for a moment. If we presume I view a year as about one second, then three days equal 72 hours, 4,320 minutes, 259,200 seconds. Which equals 259,000 years.
Records so unbelievable for a living being. Could even a dragon like Hisberk, flown in from another world, have survival records that long? Two of them, no less?
I peered slightly out of the window to see the two figures Lizbel pointed at. There were faces I felt I had seen somewhere. A scrawny guy and a brawny muscleman.
“Oh?”
Right there, yesterday.
Those insane journalists who came to interview our organization were there.
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