Korone leisurely awoke to someone calling her name.

“Please wait as I activate my memories. …Sorry, but the viscosity of my oil has increased. Can you bring me an oil can?”

She sat up in her futon, took the oil can, and chugged it like a can of cola.

“It would be too much of a pain to give the exact number, but it has been over a thousand years, Akuto-san.”

She smiled.

“Sorry about that.” He looked embarra.s.sed. “I was in a dimension where time was meaningless.”

“I do not know what you mean, but I a.s.sume everything has been resolved in some way.”

She stood up and looked around the area.

The pa.s.sage of ten thousand years showed itself in the deterioration of the room, but it still functioned well enough.

This was the s.p.a.ce station in which Keena had been put to sleep.

“Are you the only one here?” asked Korone in her pajamas.

Akuto alone stood in the s.p.a.ce station room.

“Yes, but anyone can join us if I call for them.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” she said curiously.

She must have failed to call in data from the G.o.ds because she tilted her head.

“The G.o.ds are not responding. I cannot create a transfer circle either. Mankind does not exist. How did you do this?”

“You’ll see soon enough. By the way…” He pointed out the window. “Has the earth been like this the entire time?”

“Yes,” she replied while looking down at the planet. “It is still too soon for the surviving life to flourish.”

Due to the meteor, ocean had remained only on a portion of the earth and everything else was covered in brown clumps of rubble.

“Hiroshi-san did his best, but it was useless.”

“Did he try to stop the meteor at the very end?”

“Yes.”

“I see. He was that kind of guy. He saved me too. He was probably my only true friend. Oh, I said I could call anyone here, but he’s the one exception.”

A shadow fell over Akuto’s face.

“You have been saying quite a few strange things. What happened?”

Akuto nodded in response.

“It would be difficult to explain, but that’s fine. We’ll have plenty of time afterwards and I can probably take you along.”

Korone still looked confused, so he winked at her.

“You seem different from before. At any rate, if you have some goal in mind, shall I wake the empress?”

She turned to the edge of the room where a coffin-shaped cold sleep device sat.

“Please do.”

“Then I shall. But if you can call in anyone, why not call in someone else to look after her?”

“Having someone else here would ruin the emotional reunion,” answered Akuto with a shake of his head.

“I see. Please wait a moment. Wearing pajamas would be rude, so I will change.”

She began stripping off her pajamas.

“Hurry it up.”

He began operating the cold sleep device’s console and the machine activated, but it would take some time before she woke up.

“Oh?” said Korone in admiration. She was now in nothing but her underwear. “So you can remain composed around female nudity now? I had thought something had changed, but it seems that change was the loss of your virginity.”

“C’mon…”

He spoke, but he did not deny it.

“That mature reaction is rather disappointing. You truly have grown.”

She made a show of wiping away tears.

“So who was it that took your virginity?”

“Could you not worry about that?” he complained.

She slipped on her school uniform and he finished inputting commands into the console.

The countdown until thawing began.

“How moving,” said Korone. “This means you intend to restore the earth, doesn’t it? Will you be able to reconstruct the empire?”

“No.” Akuto shook his head. “We’re not going to the earth.”

“Is there another planet we can move to? There are no planets outside the solar system, after all.”

Korone was surprised and Akuto appeared unsure how to explain.

“What is it?” she asked. “Stop hiding things from me and give a proper explanation.”

“That isn’t it. You could say we’ll be evolving.”

“Evolving? What an odd thing to say. For one thing, biological evolution means to-…”

He cut her off as she began explaining.

“I know that, but I can’t think of any other way to say it. Basically, we’ll be shifting to another universe.”

“Shifting?”

“That’s right. In other words…”

He trailed off as the cold sleep device emitted a noise.

He stopped explaining and pressed the switch to open the coffin-like cover.

The heavy-looking cover clicked and cold air flowed out from the gap. It then slid to the side and the coffin began to look more like a bed.

The person sleeping there was an empress rather than a princess, but she was a beautiful girl in white all the same.

Keena slept calmly while surrounded by cold air.

She looked like she had only just drifted off to sleep, but Akuto had been waiting to see that face for a very long time.

“A kiss would be best to wake her.”

Korone may have been joking, but Akuto silently leaned down toward her.

As his face approached hers, he felt her irregular breaths tickling his cheek.

“You’re awake, aren’t you?” he said.

She almost burst out laughing with her eyes still closed, but her lips were covered before she could.

It was a long kiss.

Her arms wrapped around behind his back and the two of them stood up together.

“I missed you.”

“To me, it feels like only yesterday.”

“Then I managed to make it easy for you,” he said in relief.

“But,” she said as if hinting at something. “I feel like I had a very long dream. In other words, I know a bit about what happened…over there!”

She pinched his side through his clothes.

“Ow! What do you mean what happened over-… Oh!”

When he realized the Law of Ident.i.ty had to know what he had done in the afterlife, he began sweating. She was likely referring to what had occurred between him, Junko, Fujiko, and Yoshie.

“Um…well…about that…”

He grew fl.u.s.tered, but she started laughing.

“But I forgive you.” She held his hand. “We’ll be together forever now, right?”

“Not even I know what our life will be like from now on.”

“Hmm. Where we’re going now is where all stories end. It is the place mankind will continue to strive for from now on.”

She must have heard that from the Law of Ident.i.ty because she did not seem to know what the words meant.

“The place mankind will continue to strive for from now on, hm?”

That eternal dream would likely remain within mankind thanks to the “light” stories. They would strive to reach that place where the lightness of stories finally reached zero.

“Do we have to perform the ritual to create a void body?” asked Akuto.

“It seems so. I don’t know the details, but it basically means we’ll get married for real.”

Keena sounded excited and began the process without waiting for Akuto.

That ritual brought both the stories and one’s body down to zero and created a void.

Creating that lower body known as a void body was the first step toward becoming a being not of this world.

It was data made of imaginary numbers.

It was s.p.a.ce with no time.

It was a place where the laws of physics came to an end.

It was beyond causality.

It was casting aside one’s earthly form.

It was the salvation of all.

Keena took Akuto’s hand.

For his transformation in the negative direction, all of the noisy souls inside him were transferred into her.

Countless voices filled the s.p.a.ce between them.

Countless thoughts were there: Junko’s, Yoshie’s, Fujiko’s, Lily’s, women’s, and men’s.

“What does it feel like to be saved?”

“I’ve never experienced it, so I wouldn’t know. Well, we’ll know soon enough.”

“It must feel like binding with Akuto-sama on the most fundamental level!”

“You’ve lived a carefree life, haven’t you? Personally, I guess it doesn’t really matter.”

“President, you need to be more honest with your desires, arinsu.”

“Like hunger, gya.”

“Guga.”

“More importantly, will our desire for prestige be fulfilled there?”

“Is hem-hem all you can think of when you hear the word salvation? You sure are savages!”

“Quiet, you black savage! Also, the student council president is the carefree one!”

“I’d rather you called it being relaxed. More importantly, there’s a few more people who haven’t shown up, right?”

“Apparently they won’t show up if the storyteller has forgotten about them.”

“That’s about the most basic meta comment I’ve ever heard. Are you sure we should be doing that?’

“If you search carefully enough, you’ll find Rubbers and that fly guy.”

“Please spare me.”

“Should we call in that ramen lover?”

“No!”

“You should not discriminate against male characters.”

“Headmaster!”

“Then again, I’m just about the only male character that hasn’t become the storyteller.”

“What about the members of that demon king worshiping black metal band? They had names, didn’t they?”

“They’re being saved, too?”

“All of the souls are being saved.”

“Hmph. Well, fine! Everyone, come on out!” shouted Junko.

All of the souls gathered.

They let go of their anger, sorrow, grudges, and envy. They left all those things in the real world.

The entire universe shrank down.

s.p.a.ce folded up around Akuto and completely closed.

“Will you be taking me with you?” asked Korone as she was sucked up into Akuto.

“Zero showed that a L’Isle-Adam gains a sense of self once a personality sets in. You too have a sense of self.”

Akuto smiled and his own physical body rapidly shrank as he was taken into Keena.

Finally, Keena turned inside out and disappeared into the new land that was the anti-universe.

All that remained was emptiness within emptiness. That emptiness did not even contain words. In other words, a new Empty Universe had been created.

But let us move back in time a bit.

In a fraction of an instant, the smallest unit of time that could be written of as time, this conversation took place.

A single being remained in the Empty Universe.

Just the one.

“Am I… Am I being left behind?” asked the hero.

The voice belonged to Hiroshi, to Bouichirou, to Kento, and to the storyteller.

“Yes. As I said before, you will remain,” replied the Law of Ident.i.ty.

She appeared to be a G.o.d of salvation, but she was also a cruel G.o.d.

“Why!?” he shouted bitterly.

He had half expected this, but he had hoped there would be salvation for him as well.

But there was not.

“You must remain here to leave the story here. That way the next souls can continue on as well.”

He found that hard to believe and shook his head.

“But that’s too cruel!”

“I am aware it is cruel. That cruelty can be felt through the story. You will simply be starting over from the beginning. In the next instant, you will be in an Empty Universe, followed by a Formless Universe, and then it will shift to a Gravity Universe. That will likely take tens of thousands of years.”

“Please stop! I have to redo the story?”

“Because of who you are, that is unavoidable.”

“Because of who I am? I can’t escape that!”

“That is what it means to be the Law of Ident.i.ty.”

“I will be the Law of Ident.i.ty?”

“You are the next Law of Ident.i.ty. If you are to be saved, it will be when you act as the Law of Ident.i.ty and successfully guide the new personalities. The story will be trapped by gravity, so you must guide it toward lightness.”

“But that’s so sad. I have to part ways with everyone?”

“Even sadness will be outdated and obsolete under the story that will take effect in the next instant. You will not be parting ways with everyone. There must have been souls other than yours that were not saved by this story of the Demon King in the Very Back, so if you become the next Law of Ident.i.ty, you will not be alone.”

That conversation occurred in the smallest unit of time, but there was no concept of time for the hero once he was within the Empty Universe that contained his mind.

He thought for eternity.

He thought of nonsense as nonsense.

Who could prove that he was sane?

This was the same as that.

He could do nothing but speak.

“Is someone there?”

He would search.

“I found you!”

He would shout.

He was forced to create stories.

In order to reach the best possible salvation, he had to head toward the worst possible conclusion.

Even so, if he repeated it all, he would arrive at the place he could glimpse in the distance.

He hoped against hope that the distant glimpse was not merely an illusion.

And once he arrived there, what would he do?

“I know there is something beyond all this.”

For that reason, he decided to start it all again.