"Beyond Heaven?"
Hearing Mara's murmur, Roland regained some of his clarity and shook his head slightly.
"Not entirely. My current power is indeed part of Beyond Heaven, but it can't yet be called Beyond Heaven itself."
Roland looked at his arm, which showed nothing unusual. Even with his resolve, countless words brewed in his chest.
After succeeding at the most crucial step, all the perceptions and experiences he had accumulated were useless in understanding the power now filling his body.
As Mara had said, as an unbound Outsider, Roland had resolved the trouble that identity brought by embedding his fate in the Akashic Records, thereby becoming a protagonist even the Counter Force had to steer clear of.
Whether it was a body to bear the power or heat to pay the price, Roland could handle it, but there was one thing he could not resolve no matter what.
That was a self situated on the timeline.
This was a privilege only native life could possess, just like the origin derived from the Swirl of the Root that even mortals possessed.
When this continuously extending record was activated, it brought its current vessel power far beyond the mundane. Beasts exploited precisely this.
Made in Heaven, after all, merely used the power of fate rather than modifying it. It was a compromise.
Roland's timeline was incomplete. Without a means of transcending the universe, he could not integrate into it even if he wanted to, and he was unwilling to take such an uncontrollable risk anyway.
To compensate for the fact that his incomplete timeline could not provide power, Roland had found an alternative approach through Solomon.
As the King of Magecraft, Solomon possessed power entirely different from that of conventional, exceptional Servants. Even Goetia, whose very existence approached an Authority, had to