"It's 8:21 p.m. Recording is normal." Lin Qing opened her phone's camera app. "And so, our first strategy meeting to save the world begins. Attendees: Lin Qing and Mr. Shopkeeper."
"Do we really need to be this formal?" Chen Xuan rubbed his forehead. They called it a meeting, but it was just the two of them sitting around the coffee table, no different from their usual chats. And that was his phone. If the recording ever leaked, what would happen to his dignity as a shopkeeper?
"We absolutely do. This is an important and serious undertaking, so keeping records is essential. Even if we both meet our ends halfway through, our successors can use these records to carry on our work."
"Stop right there! What do you mean, 'meet our ends halfway through'? If you can't speak properly, don't speak at all!"
The words "still alive" in the description of Chen Xuan's shopkeeper ability gave him a sinking feeling.
"That's true. This is a responsibility I should have been shouldering." Lin Qing's gaze dimmed a little, but soon returned to normal. "Don't worry. If we face a serious danger in the future, I'll do my best to keep you safe."
Chen Xuan covered his face and decided not to press the issue. "Let me go over everything from the beginning. The world will be destroyed by the Nanobug Plague, and the Dimensional Limit Organization and the corporation funding it are behind the disaster. Since this technological revolution will happen in thirty years, you have to stop the Organization. Is that right?"
Lin Qing thought it over. "The general logic is sound, but 'we' would be more accurate in that last sentence. The Organization is dedicated to controlling and sealing away all abilities. They don't care whether they acquire them by recruitment, trade, or theft. You haven't been exposed yet, so you don't see the Dimensional Limit Organization as much of a nuisance. But if they discover you, it'll mean war."
"War? I thought you were going to say it'd be a one-sided slaughter." Chen Xuan opened a bag of chips.
Even though he'd just eaten dinner, he always needed something to snack on while chatting.
"Putting it that way would be underestimating you. Mr. Shopkeeper, your ability is more powerful than you realize. The customers you've helped could all become potential allies, so this wouldn't be one person fighting many. It'd be a war between two factions." Lin Qing spoke with complete seriousness.
Chen Xuan felt a little awkward at the praise. "But my name isn't on the Erosion Point list."
"I've been thinking about that, too." She shifted closer, changing from sitting opposite him to sitting beside him. Then she reached over and slipped her hand into the bag of chips. "Maybe you're an anomaly. Or maybe the threat you posed was so great that you were classified as a higher-level secret, and no information about you survived your elimination."
"Hmm... But what if I joined the Organization and became one of them? You said information about its members has never leaked, right?"
Crunch.
Lin Qing was chewing a chip, and a sheen of sweat had appeared on her forehead.
"Mr. Shopkeeper... Would you be willing to hand over all your abilities and let them control you?"
"Probably not."
"Exactly." She visibly relaxed. "I didn't think you were the type. The Dimensional Limit Organization can't offer you any benefits. At the very least, they'd never pay for your abilities."
Chen Xuan decided not to dwell on what sort of fate had kept his name off the list. "Do you have any concrete plans for stopping the Organization?"
Lin Qing coughed twice and sat up straight.
"No."
Chen Xuan nearly choked. "Not a single one?"
"I used to be a combat operative. I was skilled with everything from armed spacecraft to gauss rifles, but when it came to coming up with ideas..." She looked a little embarrassed. "Our strategic plans were usually provided by the intelligence department and supercomputers."
Well... When he'd met her, she really had been fighting an armed mech to a standstill all by herself.
"But it's not that I have no ideas at all," Lin Qing added. "When the Dimensional Limit Organization split, there was a leading figure. Judging by her age, she should still be alive in 2025. She'd rather break with the original Organization than give up her independence. At first, I thought that if we could find her, we might gain an ally on the inside."
She sent him a photograph.
Chen Xuan picked up the phone and took a look. It showed an old woman in a bulky protective suit, with a ruined city in the background.
"Do we have a name?"
"Her code name was Honglian, but her supporters preferred to call her their leader."
"No other information?" he wondered. Why did the photo make her look like a refugee?
"No. Her personal information was strictly protected. Back then, the Organization was determined to kill her."
"That won't work," Chen Xuan said bluntly. "The enemy is in the dark, and so are we. That's more or less a stalemate. If you go digging into their secrets, we'll be in the open, and one careless move could expose us."
Even though she'd once been a member of the Dimensional Limit Organization, an Organization from a century apart was no basis for collaboration.
In this day and age, few people even knew the Organization existed, let alone knew enough to uncover the identity of one of its members.
"Let me think..." Chen Xuan pondered for a moment. "Without the Dimensional Limit Organization, the world wouldn't be worse off, right?"
"That's beyond question," Lin Qing replied with certainty. "Many Erosion Points are indeed dangerous. Left unchecked, they can cause disasters on the scale of a city being destroyed, and the spread of Erosion Points can lead to even worse ability-related crimes. But none of that comes close to the complete destruction of Earth's ecosystem. You could say the Organization's original intentions were good, but in the end, things turned out the opposite of how they'd hoped."
"I once met Joan of Arc in another world," he mused. "Going by the course of history, she should've died at nineteen, but I helped her change her fate. Wouldn't that have affected history?"
"Good question. The early Organization was very worried about that. They even classified Erosion Points like those as contamination." Lin Qing spoke as she chewed on a chip. "But that turned out to be a false alarm caused by insufficient technology. Later, the research department developed a way to precisely measure the gravitational fluctuation coefficient of each world. That proved a world couldn't invade itself, so histories that looked similar could actually be very different."
"So the parallel-universe theory was proven in the future?"
"The universe is a complicated thing. We can only take it one step at a time; we're nowhere near being able to draw a firm conclusion." She nodded, then shook her head. "Actually, you can already observe 'weight that shouldn't exist,' can't you? It makes up as much as ninety percent of the total mass. Scientists call it dark matter, but in reality, it could very well be the weight of other worlds."
Whoa. If he published that conclusion, he could probably win a Nobel Prize at the very least, right?
"Hold on. By that logic, there's only one worldline, so no matter what you do, you can't change the future where Earth's ecosystem is destroyed, can you?" Chen Xuan spotted a bug.
"That's the key!" Lin Qing's voice grew animated. "Right. It's theoretically impossible, but you actually did it!" She raised her hand and waved the watch on her wrist. It was strange that she still wore a wristwatch despite having such an extensively cybernetic body. "This thing is a miniaturized gravitational wave detector. When the fluctuation coefficient changes, it sends out a warning. That's why I was so astonished when I saw that Earth was still intact. You don't reach other worlds by passing through Erosion Points. You rely on your own special ability. That might be the key to breaking the theory of impossibility!"
Chen Xuan narrowed his eyes. He couldn't shake the feeling she sounded like a salesperson trying to recruit him into a pyramid scheme.
If she left all that out, she was a proper cyberpunk-spirited beauty.
"You're doubting me." Lin Qing noticed his mind wandering. "But I understand. Human development is like blind men trying to describe an elephant. We can only observe what we're able to see. With that in mind, any theory could be overturned."
"You're pretty open-minded."
"It's not open-mindedness. It's sticking to the facts," she corrected him.
"Fine... If Erosion Points and abilities don't have to be sealed away, then we can't let the Dimensional Limit Organization keep hiding so comfortably beneath the surface." Chen Xuan thought it over. "We need to muddy the waters—as much as possible—and bring it into the public eye. Then it'll have to spend most of its time dealing with public opinion, which would make it easier to find people or uncover its weaknesses."
"You mean we should reveal the existence of other-world incursions and abilities?" Lin Qing immediately understood what he meant.
"Exactly. What's incredible to me is that the Dimensional Limit Organization managed to keep this information secret for so long. Either way, their efforts to keep ability users in the shadows are sure to set off a public outcry. People are bound to be fascinated by it."
"...That's a great idea!" She couldn't help clapping. "After all, people get abilities because of the influence of Erosion Points. It's not something they can control themselves. Forcibly taking those abilities away is a violation of a person's basic rights. That way, we won't even need to act directly. People will oppose the Dimensional Limit Organization of their own accord."
Whether they'd oppose it or join it... It was too soon to say, Chen Xuan thought.
But one thing was certain: once these secrets came to light, they'd cause an uproar throughout society. Unlike Area 52 across the ocean, which supposedly researched aliens, alien corpses and flying saucers were little more than urban legends, never backed by hard evidence. But abilities were something people could see and touch.
Besides, this plan wasn't very risky. It was perfect for testing the waters.
Never mind how much damage exposing the truth would do to the Dimensional Limit Organization. At the very least, people would be able to talk openly about abilities. Ordinary people without abilities would naturally start envying those "lucky ones" who had them. One thing would lead to another, creating demand out of thin air.
And where there was demand, there would be supply.
For the Ability Store, that was a guaranteed profit.
Before you continue