Editing City Series:Volume6b Chapter6 (section)

===Part 2===

“I see.” Schweitzer nodded without asking what she meant. Then he spoke his mind. “It’s been 5 years now, I suppose, but a woman once had me promise to defend this country. We were out drinking at the time. …What will you have me promise at this party?”

“I have no qualms about lying, so are you sure you want to promise me anything?”

“The promise is for me to keep and any lies will come from you. The two are not in conflict.”

“Trying to be nice? I don’t want your pity. Did you actually believe what I said about ’43?”

“Then do you not want a promise? Your loss. I doubt another chance like this will come along.”

Lowenzahn frowned, but her expression eventually relaxed and she wrapped her left arm around Der Held. She made sure her slender arm could not be removed from his metal right arm.

“Promise me…” She kept her voice low.” Promise me you will believe me no matter what lies I tell you.”

“An easy promise to keep for someone as bad at detecting lies as me.”

“Way to ruin the mood. But I do have one thing to tell you now. Assume it’s a lie if you want.”

“Understood.”

“What would you think if my prophecies stopped being so accurate?”

He had no answer for her, which she must have expected since she continued without missing a beat.

“Are you listening, Captain Hellard? A Sofort Leser can read the Tons of destiny and of time in this country’s Tons and that tells us what will happen to it in the future. But do you know why the future is recorded in this world’s Tons?”

“Hm…”

Schweitzer still had no answer.

He looked at Lowenzahn, but she did not return his gaze. She kept her eyes dead ahead, on the important people discussing important things in the mess hall.

She watched her subordinates.

“Listen carefully, Captain Hellard. We know the answer. During the Obstacle Era, the world was destroyed time and again, so someone worked desperately to create a world that would not be destroyed.”

“Berger once mentioned something similar. While this world was remade, the current one was built from an arrangement of Concept Existence Tons that would not be destroyed.”

“Yes, so in a way, all of those destroyed worlds were the price we paid to gain the world we have now. It might be destroyed, but its destruction is not guaranteed either. And those Concept Existence Tons all contain information from those previous worlds, not from this one.” She took a breath. “This world was created through trial and error. We did not want to be destroyed, so we created a world that could avoid the Nibelung’s cycle of destruction. That created a world where anything goes: reincarnation, gods, demons, and so on.”

“…”

Lowenzahn looked up at him.

“A Sofolt Leser reads the Concept Existence Tons that record the events of the past worlds. But I’ve run into a bit of a problem. All I’m reading are the records of those past worlds, so they are ultimately not about this world. The world has been reset countless times and the same things happen each time, but they’re still different.”

“Different?”

“Yes, my prophecies are nothing more than reading ahead to see what happened in the previous worlds that were destroyed. But lately, things have been changing. For some reason, things in this world are happening differently.” She pulled his right arm close and faced forward once more. “What if I told you the Berlin Conflict in ’35 was actually supposed to happen in ’37? And what if I told you the Sylphide incident was supposed to happen this year?”

“––––?”

“Ever since ’35, my prophesies have required some corrections. Since I failed to predict that incident, the Geheimnis Agency failed to respond in time and I fell ill, unable to even leave my bed…but my prophecy in ’37 was correct.”

“So things have sped up by 2 years?”

“Yes. That means the Kaiserburg’s development was shortened by 2 years, doesn’t it? Marsch Gant developed the Sylphide based on the Kaiserburg, so that explains why it too was completed 2 years early. …P. Wagner, developer of the Kaiserburg, must have done something different from any of the past worlds at some point.” She frowned a little. “That means the Messiah girl was put through her trial 2 years early. She should have met the Sylphide when she had a couple of years’ more wisdom, but reality and its words hit her before she was ready.”

“She still managed to overcome it, though.” Schweitzer repeated the term “2 years” to himself as he looked to the people in the cafeteria. “Is that why we are excavating the Alfheim Meteorite Pit?”

“We have two reasons for that. The first is because the original prophecy said P. Wagner should have built the Kaiserburg at Berlin University and caused the Armored Hammer of God Incident in ’37.” She stood up. “And the other is a list of special letters sent out by the Post Office. A special letter was delivered to P. Wagner in 1920.”

“A Verlsten Brief?”

He never received an answer. She gave him a mischievous smile and prepared to speak, but she was cut off by a young man’s panicked voice coming from the mess hall’s entrance.

“Emergency! It’s an emergency!”

A soldier stood in the entranceway with a message in hand.

“The #8 Base…is under attack! We’re under attack! We need to respond!”