37. The Crystal Myth
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Time had entered its final countdown. Less than three minutes remained, and the enormous World-Ending Flower was shedding petals with ever-increasing intensity. Chen Shou brushed several fragments from his body when he suddenly heard a voice:
[Infection by Berserk Virus in progress]
The World-Ending Flower transmitted a virus that turned people into red-eyed berserkers.
Chen Shou and Marjie looked toward Li Nuo.
“Take out the [Fragment of the World-Ending Flower]. Then we can complete the Main Mission,” Marjie said.
As he spoke, Chen Shou’s heartbeat quickened.
Fatty was thinking that, since the difficulty level of this scenario exceeded twenty and they had managed to complete it with such narrowly avoided danger, they would surely receive rewards comparable to those from three or four scenarios.
The number of coins awarded by each scenario varied.
It differed slightly according to the player’s methods and the number of side missions completed, but the reward would always bring the player’s total close to the amount required for the monthly life-extension fee.
“Wait. I have an idea about the hidden world setting,” Li Nuo said. “Look at the color of the sky. It should be night outside, shouldn’t it?”
Marjie had no idea what he was talking about and urged him, “I don’t want us to fail at the last moment. At the very least, shouldn’t we complete the Main Mission first?”
“You’re right.”
Li Nuo stood and inclined his head slightly toward the two members of the Resistance who had followed them all this way.
“Thank you both for your help. Leave this place immediately.”
The ponytailed girl hesitated.
In her mind, Li Nuo was a member of the Resistance whom she had found in the forest and brought back to the camp.
She could not simply abandon him.
“But—”
“If I tell you to leave, then leave.”
There was no room for negotiation in Li Nuo’s voice. Even Chen Shou was taken aback. He had never heard the man speak in such a stern, commanding tone—unless something truly serious was about to happen.
After the two Resistance members entered the elevator, Li Nuo gave them one final instruction:
“Leave the factory area within ten minutes. Take as many people with you as you can.”
“Um… Li Nuo, what exactly are you planning to do?” Chen Shou asked.
“Where should I begin?”
Li Nuo took out the [Fragment of the World-Ending Flower] and walked toward the enormous white blossom. The giant flower exuded a sweet fragrance and carried the virus within it. Its shadow enveloped him.
[Special Mission of the Hidden World: Return the Fragment of the World-Ending Flower to within three meters of its original location. The world is about to return to its original state.]
Hearing the system’s voice, Li Nuo did not release the fragment from his hand.
“I’ll start with the answer.”
Li Nuo stopped four meters before the flower and said calmly, “This is not the world of NieR:Automata. This is the world of Final Fantasy.”
“What are you talking about?” Marjie asked.
“We were misled by our own assumptions,” Li Nuo said. “The Resistance camp at the beginning, the androids, the Resistance—everything was telling us that this was NieR:Automata. But in reality, that isn’t the case at all.”
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He asked, “Do you remember the description from the system, both on the train and after we entered the factory area?”
Chen Shou stared at the final countdown on the mission panel and said anxiously, “How could I possibly remember that…? Brother, there are only two minutes left!”
“Was it something explaining the cause and course of the events?” Marjie asked.
Li Nuo recalled it aloud.
“The first sentence: ‘The gears of reincarnation begin to turn.’ In the NieR setting, there is a tower containing records of history and everything that has happened. Everything, including the World-Ending Flower, can be materialized by the tower. Recreating reality in the form of data is another form of immortality and reincarnation. As for the Final Fantasy setting, Final Fantasy XIV is an online game. We players are immortal and indestructible, which also symbolizes reincarnation.”
No one urged him to hurry.
They felt that interrupting him would be less effective than allowing him to release his overwhelming urge to explain himself. That was what Marjie and Chen Shou both thought.
“The second sentence: ‘A daylight world without night.’”
Li Nuo continued, “The main story of NieR takes place in the Land of Day. There is no night there. Dusk and dawn are the night of this place.”
He looked up at the dusky sky.
“After the androids were knocked unconscious by tectonic movements and some unknown destruction, the dusk and dawn that symbolize ‘night’ appeared here. The Resistance’s diaries also reveal their astonishment that ‘night’ had appeared in the world’s sky…”
“The NieR setting says that tidal locking stopped the Earth from rotating. Day remained day forever. The yellow sky above us now represents night. Which brings us to the question…”
“Does the planet beneath our feet rotate at all?”
Li Nuo answered his own question.
“Yes. As long as this is not NieR’s Earth, it rotates. For example, the planet in Final Fantasy.”
Chen Shou said, “But Final Fantasy has a real night! And, Brother… the time—”
“The diary says that the android exploration team discovered that the region was covered by a white dome and that they could not escape. It was as if a frosted glass sphere had enclosed us, separating this place from the outside world.”
Li Nuo shaped an oval with his fingers.
“First, Emil said he could not find the road home. His home is underground. Second, after the crust fractured, a great quantity of crystal appeared from beneath the ground. That means the crystals themselves had been underground.”
Marjie’s eyes widened.
“So… an area of NieR was transported here, along with its androids, buildings, every blade of grass and every tree. That caused some of the humans who originally existed here to become trapped inside walls because of the positional displacement. But the underground space was not transported. It remained the subterranean world of Final Fantasy?”
Li Nuo nodded.
“You left out one thing. The sky was transported here as well.”
[Final thirty seconds of the countdown]
“The third sentence: ‘Being invaded by darkness.’”
Li Nuo took two steps forward.
“The night outside the dome has stained the daylight within it. The boundary between night and day created dusk and dawn.”
[Final twenty seconds of the countdown]
“The fourth sentence: ‘Dawn will become the anchor point.’”
He held the [Fragment of the World-Ending Flower] in his hand.
“‘Dawn’ and ‘dusk’ are both symbols of night in the NieR setting, and they are also the time we currently occupy. Once we complete the mission within the appointed period, the dome separating the two worlds will disappear as well. This part of NieR will completely merge into, or vanish within, the world of Final Fantasy. It is both the beginning and the end.”
[Final five seconds of the countdown]
Li Nuo carried the [Fragment of the World-Ending Flower] into the three-meter range required by the system. The fragment instantly slipped from his hand.
[Mission complete]
[Main Mission concluded. Returning to the train in five minutes.]
Chen Shou dropped to the ground with a thud and let out a long breath.
“You scared me to death…”
Li Nuo ignored him and muttered to himself:
“The gears of reincarnation begin to turn… A daylight world without night… Being invaded by darkness… Dawn will become the anchor point… Beginning a new…”
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“The fifth sentence clearly wasn’t finished. It was actually a fill-in-the-blank question.”
Li Nuo looked at the [Fragment of the World-Ending Flower], which was splitting and expanding endlessly in midair.
“If we relied on blind guessing, it would be easy to find the answer. So we had to use evidence to reveal the truth before the fifth sentence could be completed. As for the answer to the blank, all it needed to be was a code name consistent with the Final Fantasy setting. For example… the crystal born from the earth, or the mythological theme represented by Final Fantasy.”
The fragment of the World-Ending Flower entered the center of the giant white blossom and condensed into the outline of a woman.
He said, “The gears of reincarnation begin to turn, a daylight world without night, being invaded by darkness, dawn will become the anchor point, beginning a new Crystal Myth.”
[Hidden world setting deciphered]
[Completed by: Li Nuo]
[Upon mission settlement, experience and coins increased]
Li Nuo opened the reward panel and showed it to them.
“See? I was right.”
As the humanoid entity at the center of the World-Ending Flower expanded without limit, its shadow had already covered the top of the tower. Above them, the light of dusk receded, replaced by the darkness that belonged only to night.
Li Nuo looked at the translucent wormhole above the World-Ending Flower.
He opened the mission panel.
The Special Mission [Return the Fragment of the World-Ending Flower to it, restore the flower’s integrity, and send it back to the space where it should exist] was now marked complete.
He said, “I’ll bet fifty cents that the wording of the Special Mission is a play on words.”
“Where is the space in which the World-Ending Flower should exist?”
“The world of NieR?”
“Or every parallel world contained within the games created by publisher Square Enix?”
“Could breaking the dome and merging the other two worlds also count as sending it to the space where it ought to exist?”
His four questions in succession left Marjie and Chen Shou unable to follow his train of thought.
“Brother… what are you planning now…?”
Chen Shou had even changed the way he addressed him. He was genuinely afraid that Li Nuo’s habit of leaping beyond every boundary would bring disaster upon them.
Li Nuo said, “I had those two Resistance members leave first, and I completed the Main Mission at the precise moment in order to buy them time to escape. I’ve done everything I can. What remains is in the hands of fate.”
He took out the [Summoning Materia] and handed it to 2B.
“Please do us one final favor. You’ve seen Bahamut before. Summon it and destroy the World-Ending Flower.”
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