"Then... I have nothing more to say."
Faced with those blunt, utterly disbelieving words, Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone seemed to chuckle softly before speaking.
The implication was clear: if you didn't believe him, there was nothing he could do.
Believe it or not.
"Heh..."
Number 14 chuckled softly as well. Her bright eyes beneath the hood remained fixed on the shadow ahead, her gaze seeming to pierce through it and meet the eyes of Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone directly.
There had to be some deeper purpose behind this.
Chiba was being so clear precisely because he wanted us to believe him and stop thinking about anything else. In the current situation, that means getting us to focus solely on protecting these three corpses.
It wasn't as if I intended to be careless, but it was still unpleasant for him to use schemes like this.
And if it were the truth—or rather, the truth without any misleading intent—then Chiba absolutely would not have explained it so clearly. He knew that Number 15 and I were smart. Smart people did not need things spelled out so plainly.
A hint was enough.
Of course, what he had said now should also be true. At the very least, every part of it he had spoken was true.
At the same time, this thought flashed through her mind.
To be honest, although she had voiced complete disbelief, Number 14 did not actually doubt Chiba's Slug Sage Art clone's words at all.
She believed that he intended to revive these three corpses—these three people.
She also believed that the reason they could not be revived now and had to wait three years was because fate still existed. The events written in the original work had not yet ended. Everything remained predetermined; nothing had yet