Chương 11: Return to 2300 — A Glitch in the Future

The following morning, events cascaded in a thoroughly unintended vector. As it turned out, the regional officials from the previous evening had run straight into the capital and opened their loose jaws to anyone who would listen.

"At Kataokayama, a holy man radiating a profound, divine aura lies collapsed on the earth," they whispered. Having intercepted the rumor, a dense crowd of local villagers had now converged upon Kataokayama, their arms loaded with sacred offerings.

"Look! He still lies motionless upon the dirt!"

"Is he deceased? No—observe his flesh, it does not exhibit the slightest sign of decay...!"

"Undeniably, he must be an immortal Sage!" A swarm of dozens of onlookers had completely ringed PRINCE's position. Currently locked in a total [System Shutdown] loop, he remained as rigid as a stone monument. This was catastrophic. If this trend held, he would either be forcibly interred as a corpse, or worse, undergo a primitive autopsy that would expose his synthetic, mechanical core to the ancient world. 『Kataru, brother, do you copy?! 』 Gennai's frantic, hyper-speed voice violently detonated inside my cranium.

『The extraction vector is open! The transit beam drops in exactly ten seconds! Clear the area, or you'll get caught in the structural displacement! 』"Wait, right now?!" Shoving my way forcefully through the dense wall of bodies, I raised my voice to a manic scream.

"Step back! Everyone, step back immediately! The sacred Sage's spirit is preparing to ascend back to the heavens!"

"Wh-What did he say?!" The villagers murmured in sudden agitation. Right at that exact microsecond, the clouds directly above began to swirl into a violent vortex, and a stark, piercing shaft of light plummeted from the heavens, engulfing PRINCE's frame. 『Rebooting... Emergency Sequence... Stealth Mode... Engaged. 』 PRINCE's casing emitted a rapid series of harsh, crackling electronic arcs. Then, in the blink of an eye, his silhouette simply... melted into the surrounding terrain.

The [Optical Camouflage] protocol had successfully initialized.

"H-He vanished into thin airーーっ?!" one of the villagers shrieked in absolute terror. Lying on the bare ground where the holy man had just been resting was nothing but his high-grade purple robe, folded with immaculate, impossible precision. His physical entity had dissolved completely, as if claimed by a divine abduction.

"A miracle...!"

"I knew it! That entity was no mere mortal!"

"The literal avatar of the Prince Regent! Blessed be his divinity, blessed be...!" The crowd threw themselves to the earth in perfect, synchronized prostration, initiating a frantic chorus of prayers. Confronted with a raw [Sci-Fi Phenomenon], their primitive matrices had seamlessly converted it into a [Religious Miracle], synthesizing a narrative that satisfied their worldview. Observing the spectacle unfold, an uncanny, heavy emotion welled deep within my chest. So this is how a legend compiles, I realized.

Even if the underlying data is nothing but cold technology, if humanity perceives it, believes it, and propagates it down the generational timeline, it mutates into a sacred myth.

"... Goodbye, PRINCE." I offered a subtle, unnoticeable wave toward the empty space where his coordinates had just been. A second later, my own physical frame began to dissolve within the warm, blinding embrace of the extraction beam. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. [Mission Complete]. We had successfully sown the seeds of Order within this ancient era, departing the timeline to become an eternal myth.

Once more, the sensation of the universe turning itself completely inside out claimed my senses. Hurtling through a roaring tunnel of pure illumination, my consciousness was violently dragged back toward the modern era.

"…ーーっ!" My eyes violently snapped open, and I sat bolt upright on the floor of the Prime Minister's executive office, gasping for air. The firm texture of genuine leather dress shoes beneath me. The sterile, dry air maintained by the climate-control sub-routines. The unyielding glare of artificial, overhead illumination. I had re-entered the timeline. A. D. 2300—Neo-Tokyo.

"Welcome back, Kataru-kun." Sitting across the monolithic executive desk, Naosu Yari was casually sipping a cup of coffee with a perfectly serene countenance. Inside the floating monitor array, Gennai was snickering to himself, puffing lazily on his electronic long-pipe. 『Fantastic execution, pal! Man, that final sequence was an absolute masterpiece! No wonder future annals will compile legends claiming Prince Shōtoku was the literal reincarnation of Bodhidharma!

』 Dragging my trembling, unconditioned legs beneath me, I managed to force myself to a standing position.

"Hah... hah... That was an absolute nightmare.... But we pulled it off." I dragged my heavy steps toward the massive, bulletproof viewing window.

"PRINCE executed his roadmap flawlessly. He permanently integrated the 17-Article Constitution and forced the adoption of a structured bureaucracy. This should have permanently cured the citizenry of their 'cognitive paralysis.' Japan is officially a modernized, rule-abiding nation now." Despite myself, I could feel my heart hammering with a sudden, triumphant swell of anticipation. We had successfully rewritten the source code of the past.

Beyond this glass, an entirely new, vibrant, and fiercely alive Japan had to be waiting for us. A nation that engaged in heated, passionate debates, birthed revolutionary ideas, and stood tall as a global hegemon leading the world forward.

"Now, show me, Prime Minister. Let me observe the finale of the new narrative we just compiled!" With a confident, sweeping motion, I deactivated the opaque shielding on the bulletproof glass. But what flooded my retinas was a panorama that defied all rational comprehension. The exact millisecond the shade retracted, a landscape of almost sickening, terrifying "beauty" slammed into my field of vision.

The skyline of Neo-Tokyo gleamed with a pristine, blinding whiteness, looking for all the world like a freshly laundered dress shirt. The skyscrapers that had once stood in chaotic, discordant clusters were now completely uniform, engineered with soft, rounded curves that pulsed with a faint, synchronized pastel illumination. In the skies above, fleets of automated air-vehicles cruised in immaculate, single-file lines, navigating their vectors without a single millimeter of deviance.

On the streets below, there wasn't a single scrap of refuse to be found; not a single piece of peeled billboard adhesive, nor a solitary drop of graffiti defiled the urban grid.

"Wh-What in the world...!" My hands slammed against the glass as I pressed my face hard against the viewing window.

"Do you see this, Prime Minister?! It's gorgeous! The Tokyo that was hovering on the precipice of absolute decay has mutated into a flawless, spotless futuristic metropolis! This is an unadulterated triumph!" I shivered with raw, ecstatic validation. We had actually done it. In that muddy quagmire seventeen centuries ago, the seeds of "Order" I had sown alongside PRINCE had endured the test of time to blossom into a perfect reality.

The debt-ridden, filth-stained, hopeless Japan of my memories had been completely erased from the server. What stood before me was a pristine, unblemished Utopia that the world could only envy.

"... Kataru-kun," Naosu Yari's voice drifted from behind, dropping to a low, chilling frequency.

"To your eyes, does this status register as a triumph?"

"Huh? Well, obviously. Just look at it... Look at how peaceful the terrain is..." I began to turn my head back toward him, but a sudden, jarring dissonance violently snagged my awareness. Peaceful? Yes, it was undeniably peaceful. There wasn't a single manifestation of conflict or chaos visible anywhere across the sector. And yet, something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. A critical, foundational element of reality had been completely de-allocated from the world.

"... There's no audio," I murmured. Even accounting for the premium acoustic dampening of the executive office's bulletproof glass, the ambient, heavy "thrum of the city" was completely absent. The abrasive blare of car horns. The overlapping frequencies of holographic advertisements. The chaotic, vibrant noise of human voices talking, laughing, and shouting. None of it existed.

There was only a terrifying, suffocating silence wrapping itself around the metropolis like a wet shroud, slowly tightening around my throat.

"Engage the magnification sub-routines," Yari commanded flatly. Following his directive, I activated the window's high-magnification optical zoom, bringing the civilian pedestrians navigating the ground level into crisp, detailed focus. The second the data rendered, a choked scream nearly tore itself from my lungs.

"Wh-What... What the hell is this...?!"