Epilogue

“Ahh...”

I was in the dining area, savoring the tea Myusel had made me this morning as I let out a long, satisfied breath.

It had been two days since the events in the Dragon’s Den, and we were safely back in Eldant.

“There really is no place like home—and no drink like Myusel’s tea at home!”

“Thank you, sir,” Myusel said with a smile. Breakfast was on the table, and Myusel, Elvia, Hikaru-san, and Brooke’s entire family were already seated. A perfectly normal morning. Ahh. Perfect. A completely, totally quiet and undisturbed start to the day—how terrific!

“I wasn’t sure we were going to make it back this time,” Minori-san said with a wry smile.

If you were curious, by the time Myusel and I had finally grabbed, smashed, and bashed our way through the zombies or e*doskeletons or whatever they were and made our way back to the first floor of the Dragon’s Den, we discovered the scuffle between the Bahairamanian Eastern Second Unit and Garius and his reinforcements was already over.

It was thanks to Theresa.

She’d left her battered, melted avatar to work on repairing itself and transferred her consciousness to a spare avatar, after which she appeared to the combatants and said, “I’m shutting this facility down and sealing it off.”

After they were informed that all of this trouble—the ruination of the Third Capital, the earthquakes, all of it—was due to Bahairam’s Undertakers fiddling around with a facility they didn’t really understand, there wasn’t much they could say. Not the Undertakers themselves, and certainly not the Eastern Second Unit, which was still reeling from their beating at Minori-san’s and my hands.

Since I had shut down the reactor, the facility wouldn’t be producing anymore BOUs, anyway. Without the ability to manufacture dragons, the place was suddenly a lot less valuable to Bahairam. And when Garius added that even the earthquake in Eldant had been caused by whatever was lying underneath this building, the Bahairamanians seemed to lose the last of their interest in having anything to do with the place.

Theresa finally chased us out of the Den, after which she collected the last of the nekkids and the dragons, sealed the entrance to the facility as well as the tunnel the Eastern Second Unit had emerged from, and announced that she would attack any intruders, without exception. The Third Capital seemed set to become Theresa’s personal fiefdom, forbidden even to the people of Bahairam. Having what was effectively a neutral zone like that right near the border would actually be very convenient for the Eldant Empire, so Garius agreed readily and withdrew.

Okay, so on our way out of the capital we had to break through the cordon established by the Eastern Second Unit, and I guess there was a little bit of what you might call fighting—but with the Faldra’s power of flight, we broke through pretty easily.

“I’ve got to say, the last few days have been full of surprises,” Hikaru-san said. That was for sure. “I can’t believe this ‘other’ world is actually our own far future...”

“You can say that again...” I said. It still didn’t feel quite real to me. All I had to go on was Theresa’s explanation, nothing but her words. She could say it, but that didn’t mean I believed it in my bones. I mean, sure, there was the PDWS and stuff, all kinds of things that supported the theory. But I still wondered about the nature of this future. Like, maybe it was a parallel world that had split off from ours. Then again, if we were really thousands or tens of thousands of years in the future, we would be so far removed from our own reality that this really could count as a completely different world.

“So that means Shinichi-sama and y’all are actually our ancestors?” Elvia asked. She and Myusel didn’t necessarily understand all this “time slip” stuff, but she at least grasped that we were from the nominal past.

“I guess? Even the BOUs—I mean, the demi-humans—they might have been genetically modified, but human DNA is still the basis for them.”

“So Shinichi-sama and Minori-sama, you’re actually a super-duper old guy and lady who’ve been alive for ages?!”

“No, we’re not!”

Yeah. She definitely didn’t understand the time travel thing. It didn’t stop us from having a pleasant, lively breakfast, though, chatting and laughing.

Then someone appeared at the door to the dining area: “Knock knock.”

“Oh, Matoba-san, Satou-san.” Matoba-san was standing there, along with Satou-san, his bodyguard from the JSDF. “We’re right in the middle of breakfast. You guys want some?”

Myusel’s breakfasts—in fact, all the food she made—were delicious, and I never missed a chance to let others experience them. Myusel always made a little extra for breakfast, so we could accommodate a couple more people.

“A very tempting offer, but I must decline,” Matoba-san said. “I don’t believe I have the stomach for it at the moment.”

“Wha...?” That seemed like unusually feeble talk, coming from him. Wait, was he feeling poorly?

“I’ve come with a message for you,” Matoba-san said, and then he produced a handkerchief from his bag and started wiping his forehead.

“A message?”

“I’ve been informed that the Japanese government has made its decision.” He looked around at all of us.

“Decision? About what?”

“Well, I presume official written and video notification will be arriving in the coming days...”

Official notification—in writing and by video? What the heck was going on? What could Matoba-san have to tell us to make him act so stiff?

Finally he said: “Shinichi-kun, Hikaru-kun, allow me to thank you for all the effort you’ve put into running Amutech.” His brow furrowed slightly. “Koganuma-kun, we likewise appreciate your fine work as their bodyguard.”

“Hold on, what’s this all about?”

“We—that is to say, the Japanese government...” Matoba-san stopped for a second, almost hesitant. But then he said: “It is our intention to withdraw from this world. Permanently.”

（つづく）

Cont’d