The reincarnators stared at the footage in stunned silence.
The first to recover was Kudou-san.
"Hey, let's say this footage is real — how many years does this planet have left?"
Her words jolted the reincarnators back to reality.
Well, think about it normally — if someone told you the planet would collapse in a few days under these circumstances, you'd probably just nod along. And when you're confronted with such a vivid sense of impending doom, of course it gets to you.
"Rest assured. At the very least, the planet won't collapse while you're alive."
If my calculations were correct, the planet wouldn't collapse even as things stood.
It should hold out long enough for the reincarnators to live out their natural lifespans, at least.
That said, I couldn't make the same guarantee for someone with an elf's lifespan.
I had, after all, eliminated Potimus — the single biggest source of energy waste. From here on, things should gradually recover.
Yes, given time, recovery would come.
But that recovery would inevitably demand a sacrifice.
And that sacrifice was the goddess
Sariel was already on the verge of being used up entirely by the system.
There was no way she could endure for that long.
Furthermore, the degradation of souls among this world's inhabitants was steadily approaching a critical threshold.
The Demon race was suffering from declining birth rates precisely because soul degradation had begun preventing reincarnation.
Souls that had been reincarnated again and again were wearing thin, becoming damaged.
Force-reincarnating a soul in that state meant only one thing: the soul's destruction.
And once that happened, reincarnation would be impossible ever again.
Kuro had set up places to isolate people whose souls showed signs of degradation, but Oni-kun went and wrecked those.
Besides, that kind of symptomatic treatment couldn't address the root problem.
What Kuro had done was essentially the same thing Potimus had done to the reincarnators — preventing people from acquiring Skills.
By doing so, people could live out their lives without burdening their souls with the extra weight of Skills.
Skills, even just having them, placed a strain on the soul.
For a healthy soul, that was no issue. But for a degraded one, the burden became too much.
Still, keeping people from gaining Skills ultimately wouldn't heal their souls.
It was more like slowing the progression of a disease.
The only way to restore a degraded soul was to halt reincarnation entirely and let the soul rest.
And as more souls entered that state of rest, birth rates would drop.
The result: the world's population would keep shrinking.
Humans had a larger total population than the Demon race, so it wasn't as apparent yet.
But given time, the effects would become increasingly visible.
As the population declined, the planet's recovery would slow. And as time passed, soul degradation would accelerate further.
Would the planet recover first, or would soul degradation reach its breaking point first?
It was turning into a sort of chicken race.
Well, none of that really concerned the reincarnators anyway.
Once their current lives ended, reincarnators wouldn't re-enter this world's cycle of reincarnation — they'd return to the normal wheel of rebirth.
They didn't need to worry about any of that.
"So you're saying our children's generation would be the ones in danger?"
Kudou-san's words caught me slightly off guard.
Children?
I couldn't help but glance at her stomach, but she caught my gaze and immediately started backpedaling.
"I'm not pregnant or anything! I'm talking about the future!"
Ah.
Right, right.
Children.
That was something I genuinely hadn't considered.
Whether it was a blind spot, a difference in perspective, or something else entirely, I wasn't sure. But from where I stood, having children in this world seemed like sheer madness.
The very idea of producing offspring hadn't even crossed my mind.
Babies?
Those were — well, a separate category entirely from "children" in the usual sense.
Having a child in this world meant giving birth to someone's reborn soul.
Someone's reincarnation would emerge from inside your own body.
Well, if we're getting technical, that was true of the original world too. But here, it might literally be someone you knew — reborn.
And if you were unlucky, it could very well be the reincarnation of someone you had killed.
If people knew the truth, would they ever want to have children?
That was probably why the Pope of the Shingengon sect had made people forget the truth in the first place.
Being reincarnated endlessly as penance, living on as a device for generating energy.
If people learned that, what would they do?
Suicide? Absolutely plausible.
But suicide would only lead to another reincarnation.
So how did you escape this purgatory?
You offered it up.
Your very existence.
I wouldn't dream of doing something like that myself, but desperate people might well wish to simply cease to exist.
And even if one person sacrificed themselves, the energy recovered would be negligible.
It might be a decent amount for a single moment, but in the long run, keeping people reincarnating endlessly would generate far more energy.
People hadn't simply forgotten the truth — they had been made to forget it.
But was this really the right time to bring all of that up?
Maybe ignorance would let them build happy families. Maybe not.
Maybe you really could build a happy family if you didn't know.
"At the very least, this planet will not collapse anytime soon. In fact, I defeated Potimus precisely to prevent that collapse. With Potimus gone, the planet's decline will halt, and from here it should gradually recover."
I wasn't lying.
I just had my own plans to set things in motion before that.
I deliberately avoided touching on the matter of children.
Bringing it up could only lead to misery.
There were plenty of things in this world people were better off not knowing.
Well, given that birth rates were already declining, whether or not they'd be blessed with children was a moot point.
Actually — wait. Did she even have anyone to have children with?
"Potimus — that's the one who locked us up, right?"
Kudou-san pressed her hand to her forehead as she asked.
Her gaze wasn't on me, though. It was directed at the Teacher.
As for the Teacher, she could neither deny the word "imprisonment" nor form a coherent response. She sat there in a catatonic state, completely burnt out, eyes blank.
Perhaps the sheer weight of everything had rendered her incapable of thought.
Well, the Teacher was strong. She'd be fine.
I switched the footage.
From the display of the planet's current condition to the recording of the previous battle.
There it was — countless urchin-shaped and pyramid-shaped objects floating above the forest canopy.
And mechanical soldiers moving through the woods below.
Science-fiction elements utterly out of place in this fantasy-like world.
"Potimus needed energy to operate these weapons. That energy was nothing less than the planet's life force itself. It was being drained — and that is what reduced the planet to its current state."
Footage the reincarnators had never seen with their own eyes, and likely had never seen even through a screen in their previous lives.
They stared at it, utterly transfixed.
"Potimus gathered reincarnators because it sought their unique abilities. It intended to exploit those abilities for its own ends."
In truth, Potimus had planned to throw reincarnators into a blender in pursuit of immortality — but I wasn't about to describe something that grotesque, nor was I going to mention it.
Besides, when someone told you they were seriously, genuinely pursuing immortality and had gone to all this trouble for it, it would actually sound *less* convincing.
"So what does that mean? We were kidnapped and locked up so we could be used?"
"Yes."
I confirmed Kudou-san's blunt assessment without hesitation.
Because that was exactly what had happened.
"So — wait — so, we — were — for — what — "
Hmm?
What?
I turned toward the hoarse, broken voice and saw the Teacher convulsing as she collapsed out of her chair.