[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
In the extreme cold, even thought itself seems to freeze, and the flow of thinking slows.
His mind turns blank, like a snowfield thickly covered in white.
A literal state of nothingness, where not even a stray thought arises.
The frigid cold did not stop there; it quickly froze his emotions as well.
Not only the doubt of whether this would even work,
but even the constant sense of urgency that had been pressing him forward no longer truly reached him, at least for now.
“......Hoo.”
A pale breath spilled from between his lips.
Within the state of complete emptiness forcibly entered by harnessing the energy of extreme cold,
Oscar instinctively reached out his hand.
Right now, he could unfold it.
‘P e r f e c t A b s o l u t e S t a s i s .’
But at that moment, the Thought Entity rushed at him, grabbing him and rolling him across the dirt.
“Damn it! Withdraw your mana right now! Come to your senses, I say!”
His mind turned sluggishly, taking a long time before the question ‘Why?’ surfaced.
For now, he followed the demand and withdrew his mana.
“Hoo.”
Confirming that state, the Thought Entity wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and extended a hand.
Oscar took it and stood up, asking,
“What happened all of a sudden? It seemed to be working fine.”
“......Working fine, you say?”
The Thought Entity wore a complex expression that could not be described in words.
After a brief moment of thought, he slowly opened his mouth.
“Yes. From a technical standpoint, there was no problem. You did enter a state of complete emptiness quite splendidly.”
“That’s right. In that state, wasn’t I supposed to use Absolute Stasis?”
“Do you not feel that something has changed compared to before?”
“Even if you say ‘before’.......”
The time he had drawn upon the energy of extreme cold was, quite literally, only a fleeting moment.
Even stretching it, perhaps about three seconds.
Could anything really have changed in such a short time?
“No.”
“Hm. I see, is that so.”
Letting out a deep sigh, the Thought Entity began asking various questions.
“Then how do you think you would feel if I suddenly started hitting you for no reason?”
“Well, I’d be taken aback.”
“Hm. Then this time, imagine the stench of rotten meat piercing your nose.”
After throwing out several such incomprehensible questions, the Thought Entity nodded.
“As expected.”
“What exactly is the reason for this?”
“You entered a state of complete emptiness through the energy of extreme cold. Though it is a workaround, it was a state flawless even compared to the orthodox method. The problem lies in the side effects.”
“......Side effects?”
Oscar examined himself.
His mana circuits were fine, and there were no injuries to his internal organs, bones, blood vessels, or muscles.
“There were side effects?”
“There were. And quite serious ones at that.”
With a grave expression, the Thought Entity continued.
“To use Absolute Stasis, one must empty both thought and emotion. However, since you are in a state where that is impossible, you used the workaround of extreme cold. As a result, you were able to enter a state of complete emptiness... but the form is somewhat different.”
“Can it really be different?”
Isn’t it the same state of not thinking and not feeling anything?
At Oscar’s question, he nodded.
“To use Absolute Stasis, I cleanly empty my thoughts and emotions. But you are freezing them. Of course, in that moment they do not function, which is the same—but the problem comes afterward.”
“Afterward, you say....”
“What is emptied can simply be filled again. As long as there is room in the granary of the mind, it is quickly resolved. But once something is frozen, it requires time to thaw.”
The Thought Entity looked at him with a pitiful gaze.
“Do not be alarmed as you listen. From what I can see, two of your emotions are already frozen.”
“What? That can’t be.”
Letting out a hollow laugh, Oscar denied it.
If his emotions had frozen, he would have been the first to notice.
“If that were true, which emotions are frozen?”
“One is discomfort.”
“Discomfort?”
“Indeed. When I asked you to imagine the stench of rotten meat piercing your nose earlier, do you remember what you answered?”
“I said it wouldn’t bother me at all—......huh?”
Oscar felt a sense of bewilderment.
Ordinarily, if one smelled rotten meat, it would be natural to frown.
That smell is extremely disgusting and unpleasant.
What was strange was that although he understood that with his head, he did not feel that way.
‘Right now... not really?’
He felt no sense of discomfort or disgust whatsoever.
It was not simply because he could not smell it.
Even when he tried to forcibly recall the feeling of discomfort, he could not even remember what that emotion felt like.
“......Indeed, it seems my emotion has frozen.”
With a hollow laugh, Oscar asked,
“What is the other emotion that has frozen?”
“Joy.”
Joy?
As Oscar blinked, the Thought Entity spoke.
“An imperial knight discovered a demon in pitch-black darkness. How do you think that was possible?”
“......I’m not sure?”
“It was thanks to night vision.”
“Look at this. You have lost the emotion called joy.”
“I’m sorry, but that just sounds like a terribly unfunny joke.......”
“Then try recalling the most joyful moments of your life.”
At those words, Oscar searched through his memories.
There were many times that had been happy and joyful.
Even just since he awoke in this young Oscar’s body...
“Hmm?”
The moments that he had once laughed and chatted through, believing them to be joyful, now felt flat.
He then reached back even to his previous life, but the result was the same.
Not a single memory could make him smile.
“See? You don’t even laugh at my joke. That means the emotion of joy has frozen.”
“Damn it, no matter how I think about it, that joke was terrible... but it does seem my emotions have frozen.”
Discomfort and joy.
Those two emotions were frozen, and he could not feel them.
Oscar furrowed his brow.
“If the frozen emotions thaw, will I be able to feel them again?”
“I believe so. For an emotion to remain frozen permanently, mana would need to be supplied continuously. However, when it will thaw is something no one can know.”
Emotions freezing.
Oscar’s mind began to turn rapidly.
“Discomfort and joy don’t seem to have much relation to each other... so it seems the type of emotion is random.”
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
“I agree. But since one cannot know which emotion will freeze, it would be best to refrain from using Absolute Stasis through extreme cold.”
“......That certainly seems to be the case.”
His first thought was that he was fortunate those were the emotions that had frozen.
If something like vigilance had frozen, he would have been completely unable to respond to surprise attacks.
After pondering for a long while, Oscar finally raised the white flag.
“Very well. Let’s seal it.”
Absolute Stasis using the energy of extreme cold carried too great a risk.
In that case, things returned to square one.
“Well, then there’s no helping it.”
The Thought Entity shrugged.
“Just continue your training diligently.”
It was over forty days after beginning his training that Oscar discovered ‘that.’
“Hmm?”
Running through the forest early in the morning, Oscar noticed something on the dirt path and blinked.
Then he stared at a space that could not be described.
‘Slightly bigger than my fist?’
That blackened, dead space looked like a failed crack in space.
The mana he felt from it was that of the Thought Entity.
When he returned and asked about it, the Thought Entity frowned.
“What are you talking about? My mana?”
“The wavelength of the mana is over 98% identical.”
“I don’t recall creating anything like that in the gaps I manage. Could you have seen it wrong?”
“I’m telling you, it’s real.”
“If that’s the case, I should see it for myself. Lead me there.”
When Oscar returned to the place with the Thought Entity, his eyes widened slightly.
“Huh? This... wasn’t this big before.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I saw it about an hour ago, it was just a bit bigger than my fist. Now it’s as big as my upper body.”
“Then it grew this much in such a short time.”
The Thought Entity, staring at the hole, spoke.
“......And indeed, the mana code it emits is similar to mine.”
“I told you.”
“But it is not my mana.”
Thinking he might be insisting stubbornly, Oscar glanced at him, but the Thought Entity’s face was serious.
“It lacks the delicacy of my mana, but in exchange its output is stronger.”
“Then does that mean—?”
“......Something seems to have gone wrong.”
Shaking his head, the Thought Entity stood.
“How can the mana of something that should be on the 44th floor be felt here?”
“Don’t tell me... the cracks in space have connected?”
“My original body created those cracks in entirely different dimensions. Under normal circumstances, they should never connect—.”
At that moment, the Thought Entity suddenly trailed off and looked at him.
“Could it be... because of that subspace back then?”
“Excuse me?”
Suddenly pointed out as the culprit, Oscar made a bewildered expression.
“......It’s not impossible. No, rather, it makes sense. Look.”
The Thought Entity created two spheres of space.
One hovered above, the other below.
“Originally, these cracks in space should never meet. That is because the dimensions themselves—what my original body called channels—are different.”
Tap.
At that moment, the Thought Entity created a new sphere in the space between them.
“But then your subspace entered the picture. And since it is a space undergoing tens of billions of years of imprinting, it is extremely easy to pinpoint.”
“......So does that mean the one on the 44th floor is trying to enter here using my subspace as a hub?”
“As you can see, the path is already open.”
The Thought Entity gestured with his chin toward the earlier space.
That space had already grown larger than Oscar’s height in that brief time.
“......Oscar, listen carefully.”
With a grave expression, the Thought Entity spoke in rapid succession.
“Leave this place immediately. And no matter if it takes years or decades, complete Absolute Stasis.”
“But—”
“People may have many facets, but that one is a being made solely of the most vile and dreadful parts of my original body. If you cannot win, do not even think of facing it.”
“W-wait a moment.”
With a stunned expression, Oscar asked,
“You’re telling me to leave all of a sudden? There’s still so much for me to learn, isn’t there?”
“No, my role is already finished. If you complete Absolute Stasis, you will be able to defeat it without difficulty. But... not now.”
If he were to fight it now, he would lose every single time.
The Thought Entity nodded firmly as he raised his mana.
“If you will not leave on your own, then I’m sorry, but I’ll have to force you out.”
He had never expected such a sudden farewell.
But Oscar understood that his words were right a hundred, a thousand times over.
And so, biting his lip tightly, he nodded.
“......I will definitely complete Absolute Stasis and close all the cracks.”
“Not only I, but my original body will be pleased as well.”
At the same time the Thought Entity broke into a wide smile,
a spatial slash fell from above Oscar’s head.
And as always, unbearable pain rushed in—
‘Hmm?’
No—he felt no pain at all.
The moment Oscar sensed something was wrong and raised his head,
what entered his vision was a pitch-black space.
That space seized the falling spatial slash with brutal force, preventing him from ‘dying.’
[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]

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