I'm being chased.
I'm running.
I'm interfering.
Yeah. That's the cycle.
What?
"Hey, there's barely any description here!"
Can't help it, can I?
There's just not much to talk about.
Sure, things do change as time passes.
The split bodies are eroding Kuro's field moment by moment, gradually expanding their influence.
But even so, Kuro keeps interfering, so the progress is glacial.
Kuro knows full well that letting his field get completely overwritten would be bad, so he's using his field's power to slow the split bodies down.
It's boring, but this is a perfectly legitimate battle.
I just can't describe it in any interesting way.
Because… it's boring.
And overwriting this entire field of Kuro's is going to take an absurd amount of time.
I've been running around this whole time, and I still can't see the edge of the field.
Yay, it's sooo big!
It's not here!
No matter how hard the split bodies work at eroding, there's no way we can overwrite all of this.
I don't know the exact dimensions, but at this pace, there's no way it'll be done in a day or two.
But hey, every journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, right?
It feels like I'm picking up gravel from a thousand-mile road, one piece at a time, and coloring each one.
And then repainting the entire thousand-mile road in my color.
Hehe, can't even get the first step of a thousand-mile journey going.
Look, from the outside it might look like a boring battle, but the person actually doing it is dead serious!
You know how a full marathon looks like nothing but endless running from the spectator's perspective?
But the person running is in absolute agony the whole time.
It's the same thing!
It might look boring, but I'm out here fighting for my life, so don't call it boring!
It's boring and time-consuming, but my life is on the line here, dammit!
Seriously though.
It's going to take forever.
How many days will it take before this is settled?
If I'm not careful, maybe a month.
A year — surely not. I want to believe that much, at least.
Then again, the one who should be worried about the time is Kuro.
I don't know how much of my plan Kuro has figured out, but the longer this drags on, the more advantageous it becomes for me.
Because even as we speak, the hacking of the system is ongoing.
If I can buy enough time to fully seize control of the system, I'll destroy it, use the energy that was maintaining it to restore the planet, and free the goddess.
At that point, Skills and Status will be reclaimed from everyone.
The more Skills and Status a person has, the heavier the burden. Souls weakened by multiple
In the worst case, their souls will be destroyed entirely.
By my estimate, factoring in all the chaos after the system's collapse, at most half of current humanity will survive.
At minimum?
Zero.
Well, look — if the survivors don't go and do anything stupid, it shouldn't come to that.
At the very least, I plan to put a filter on the souls of Reincarnators so they won't be hit by the fallout from the system's collapse. And I'll do the same for others I identify as worth saving. So there's no scenario where nobody makes it.
But even with that, if the number somehow ends up at zero, that'd probably be because the survivors just killed each other after the system collapsed, wouldn't it?
I wouldn't know about that.
I can't look after every last detail.
The goddess can't accept that outcome.
And Kuro is acting according to the goddess's will.
If that's the case, then this stalemate is bad for Kuro.
The more time passes, the closer I get to my plan's activation threshold.
Hmm.
So the current situation depends a lot on how much Kuro actually knows.
Scenario one: Kuro knows nothing.
This is massively in my favor.
All I have to do is run out the clock.
By the time Kuro realizes what's happening, it'll already be too late.
Whether Kuro wins or loses, when we return, everything will already be over — that's the ending.
Scenario two: Kuro knows about the time limit.
This splits into two sub-scenarios.
First: Kuro is biding his time.
Maybe he's hiding some ultimate technique capable of defeating me, and is preparing to unleash it.
Or maybe he's just buying time, same as I am.
This is the scenario I'd rather not see.
Either way, something bad for me is happening somewhere I can't detect.
That said, if Kuro had a move that could take me out, he should've used it in the initial ambush. And if he's buying time, I can't even guess what he'd do with the time.
Because I want to buy time too.
Hmph. I can't figure it out!
Second sub-scenario — though I doubt it — is that Kuro is truly at a loss.
Kuro knows that the longer this goes on, the more my advantage grows.
But he can't make a move.
That kind of scenario.
Nah, that can't be right.
Kuro is far superior to me in raw power.
The fact that things have been going this smoothly — smoothly enough to fully recover from the ambush disadvantage — is what's actually weird.
What on earth is Kuro scheming?
That's the part that scares me.
Hmm.
Seriously, what's he planning?
What situation would give Kuro an advantage by buying time?
Kuro's movable pieces can't do anything beyond my predictions.
Does that mean there's a piece I don't know about?
Even so, I can't imagine that being the case.
Is there something I'm overlooking?
There shouldn't be.
Then what's Kuro's aim?
...I seriously have no clue!
Hmph.
No point thinking about things I can't figure out.
I need to focus on the battle in front of me.
Even if it looks boring.
Even if it looks boring!
Oh?
Kuro is trying to teleport?
He judged that the gap was too wide and he needed spatial transfer to close it?
Wait — isn't that a bad move?
Kuro activates teleportation.
He tries to bridge the space and jump to right in front of me.
"Guh!?"
But I interfere with the formula.
That disrupts the formula, and as a result, Kuro gets hurled into the warped space that's created, taking damage.
It's like trying to burst through a door only to find it's been locked — slamming right into it.
The situation is completely different, but it feels close enough.
For the record, the act of locking that door was my formula interference.
Right now, this field is an unstable place where Kuro's field and my field are mixed together, each disrupting the other.
Trying to perform high-level spatial manipulation like teleportation in such conditions is doomed to fail due to the opponent's interference.
At best, it just fizzles out. But in cases like this, even slight interference can trigger a catastrophic backlash.
Serious damage is entirely possible.
How could he make such a basic mistake?
...I seriously cannot read Kuro's intentions.