Lynn frowned. "That Ether? He... what exactly is he..."
The girl closed her eyes and said,
"He doesn't belong to this dream."
Lynn stood there in a daze. He opened his mouth, but couldn't get a single word out.
But in truth, there had been signs of all this long ago.
Because Ether had told him long ago that they were nothing more than a bunch of phantoms in a dream.
But...
How could...
The girl raised her head and said,
"He's an Outsider. He first appeared in the early days of my Genesis of Innovation. I have no memories of that period, but in his memories, he fought you then. There were no witnesses, no spectators. And I've only just learned that after that, he never manifested again, nor did he ever see me again."
Lynn listened in a daze.
He knew.
The person she was referring to wasn't him, but the real Lynn.
"You're saying he could actually descend into the world in the early days of this New World?"
The girl silently watched the curtain before her. For a moment, her eyes seemed to redden, but it quickly faded. By the time she looked again, her gaze had returned to its unreadable calm as she watched that curtain of illusory years.
"Only for an instant, like a phantom in a dream."
She raised her head.
"Just as it is for any ordinary person, the world within a dream is tangled and bewildering. Realizing that you are yourself inside a dream is no easy feat, let alone in a vast dream as chaotic and distorted as this."
"But after that, even that one instant seemed to become too much to hope for."
And she had long since ceased to be the little girl who knew nothing of the