Parallel Memory

Chapter 773: The People Who Remembered Another History

The celebration continued for three days.

Across Edolas, the same story was told.

The Devil War had ended.

Mia Lilith had led the human armies through the campaign.

Hiro had ascended to SS rank during the final stages of the war.

Hiro had defeated the Devil King.

Humanity had expanded into more than sixty-five percent of the former Devil Boundary.

It was history.

Not a rumor.

Not a legend.

History.

The people of Edolas remembered it clearly.

They remembered where they had been when the news arrived.

They remembered the names of the soldiers who had returned.

They remembered the speeches.

They remembered the celebrations.

They remembered Hiro standing before the defeated Devil King.

And yet, none of them remembered the world that had existed before.

Because the world itself had changed its memory.

****************************************

The change had not happened like an explosion.

There had been no enormous flash of light.

No voice had announced the end of an era.

No divine hand had descended upon Edolas.

The convergence had simply finished what it had begun.

It had aligned Edolas.

Not with another world.

Not with another random possibility.

With the sequence that had always been waiting beneath the altered one.

The incidents that had belonged to the original history had been restored.

The battles happened where they were supposed to happen.

The people who were supposed to meet each other met.

The victories went to the people who were supposed to achieve them.

The attention of the world returned to the person who had always occupied its center.

Hiro.

And as history realigned itself, the memories of the people changed with it.

They didn’t forget because someone erased their minds.

They forgot because, from their perspective, there was nothing to forget.

Their memories simply fit the corrected history.

A soldier who had once remembered fighting alongside another commander now remembered fighting under Hiro’s banner.

A merchant who had once remembered rebuilding a district after a battle now remembered that the district had never been destroyed.

A child who had once watched a completely different hero receive the city’s praise now remembered Hiro standing beneath the fireworks.

There was no gap.

No blank space.

No feeling that something was missing.

Their memories had been rewritten so completely that the corrected history felt natural.

It had always been this way.

At least...

For most people.

******************************************

Far from the celebrations, Zero sat alone in a room filled with books.

The table before him was covered with old documents.

He had been there for hours.

One page after another.

One record after another.

He kept searching for the same thing.

Parallel Memory.

He had found almost nothing.

The old records still described it as an F-rank skill.

Useless.

Negligible.

A skill with no practical combat value.

No evolution.

No advanced techniques.

No known applications that could justify its existence.

Yet Zero knew something was wrong.

He stared at one of the records.

His fingers tightened around its edge.

"How?"

There was no answer.

He turned another page.

Nothing.

Another.

Nothing.

He opened an older archive.

Still nothing.

The problem wasn’t simply that he couldn’t understand Parallel Memory.

The problem was that he couldn’t determine what it had done.

He had experienced visions.

He had remembered things that didn’t belong to his current life.

He had seen another world.

He had encountered another version of himself.

He had watched events that seemed connected despite belonging to different histories.

And now...

Edolas had changed.

Zero slowly leaned back.

"What are you?"

The skill remained silent.

As it always had.

***********************************

Elsewhere in the capital, a young man stood in the middle of a crowded street.

He was staring at a monument.

The monument depicted Hiro defeating the Devil King.

People gathered around it.

Children pointed toward the enormous statue.

Adults discussed the war.

Adventurers took pictures.

The young man didn’t move.

He stared at the monument for a long time.

Then he whispered,

"That isn’t how it happened."

The woman beside him looked over.

"What?"

"That battle."

She smiled uncertainly.

"The one on the monument?"

"Yes."

"What about it?"

"That isn’t what happened."

The woman frowned.

"What do you mean?"

The young man pointed toward the statue.

"Hiro wasn’t there."

A few people nearby turned toward him.

The woman lowered her voice.

"Of course he was."

"No."

The young man shook his head.

"I remember."

"You remember what?"

"The battle."

He looked increasingly confused.

"I was there."

"So was Hiro."

"No."

His breathing became uneven.

"No, I mean... I remember someone else."

The woman stared at him.

"Who?"

The young man opened his mouth.

Nothing came.

He knew the answer.

He could feel it.

But the memory seemed strangely distant.

A person.

A name.

An event.

Something that should have been obvious.

Yet every time he tried to grasp it, it slipped away.

"I don’t know."

The woman exchanged a glance with another passerby.

"Maybe you should go home."

The young man looked back at the monument.

"But I remember it differently."

Nobody answered.

They simply walked away.

The young man remained there.

Alone.

Unaware that the reason he could remember something impossible was the very skill he had once considered worthless.

Parallel Memory.

An F-rank skill.

A useless skill.

The same skill that had failed to impress him when he acquired it.

The same skill he had ignored for years.

The same skill that had quietly preserved something the convergence could not overwrite.

He didn’t know that.

He only knew that his memories didn’t match everyone else’s.

**********************************************

There were others.

They appeared slowly.

Not thousands.

Not millions.

Only scattered individuals.

A woman in a distant village who insisted that a famous fortress had once been destroyed.

A retired adventurer who remembered fighting in a battle that nobody else had heard of.

A merchant who insisted that a particular noble had died years ago, despite seeing that same noble walking through the capital.

A soldier who remembered serving under someone who, according to every record, had never commanded him.

A child who drew pictures of places that no longer existed.

They had one thing in common.

Their memories contradicted reality.

And none of them understood why.

They didn’t know about the convergence.

They didn’t know their memories had survived something.

They didn’t know that their minds were carrying fragments of an erased history.

Most importantly...

They didn’t know that they possessed the F-rank skill Parallel Memory.

To them, it was simply a useless ability.

Something they had been born with.

Something they had never thought about.

Something that had never seemed important.

They had no idea that it had become the reason they could remember what the world had forgotten.

********************************

The first rumors began quietly.

Someone is confused.

Someone is remembering things incorrectly.

Someone has become obsessed with the past.

Someone is telling strange stories.

Then the rumors spread.

People began avoiding those who insisted that history had happened differently.

Some were told they were imagining things.

Others were told they were mistaken.

A few were taken to healers who could examine the mind.

But no examination could find anything wrong.

Their memories were real.

Their experiences felt real.

Yet there was no evidence.

That was the cruelest part.

The world itself stood against them.

Every document disagreed.

Every person disagreed.

Every building disagreed.

Every record showed the corrected history.

The people who remembered the previous history had nothing they could use to prove themselves.

And eventually, many of them stopped trying.

**************************************

One such person sat alone in a small room.

A middle-aged adventurer.

His hands rested on an old notebook.

The notebook contained drawings of a city.

A city that no longer existed in the same form.

He had drawn it years ago.

He remembered walking through its streets.

He remembered a battle.

He remembered people who were no longer part of the city’s history.

But when he showed the drawings to others, they laughed.

"That street has never existed."

"This building isn’t there."

"Are you sure you drew this yourself?"

He always answered the same way.

"Yes."

But eventually even he began doubting himself.

He stared at the notebook.

Maybe he had been wrong.

Maybe his memories had become confused.

Maybe the years had changed his recollection.

Maybe everyone else was right.

He closed the book.

On his status screen, one insignificant line remained.

Parallel Memory — F Rank.

He had never bothered to learn what it meant.

Why would he?

It was useless.

At least...

That was what he had always believed.

*************************************

Back in the capital, Zero continued his investigation.

He had begun comparing records.

Not just recent records.

Old ones.

Very old ones.

He wanted to know whether the changes had always been part of Edolas.

The answer seemed to be yes.

That was impossible.

He found records describing Hiro’s achievements as if they had happened years ago.

He found reports describing the Devil War in the exact sequence everyone now remembered.

He found biographies.

Military reports.

Newspapers.

Personal journals.

Every one of them agreed.

Hiro had been at the center.

Mia had led the war.

Hiro had defeated the Devil King.

Humanity had expanded over sixty-five percent of the Devil Boundary.

The records were consistent.

Too consistent.

Zero placed one document beside another.

His eyes narrowed.

"It’s as if..."

He stopped.

He didn’t finish the thought.

He wasn’t sure what frightened him more.

That the records had changed.

Or that they hadn’t.

If the documents had simply been rewritten, there should have been contradictions.

Older records should have contained traces of the previous history.

But there were none.

It was as though the previous history had never existed.

Zero looked down at his own hands.

Yet he remembered.

He knew he remembered.

There were things inside his mind that the world denied.

People.

Events.

Conversations.

Changes.

He couldn’t explain them.

But they were there.

He closed his eyes.

For a moment, the room disappeared.

He saw another version of Edolas.

Different streets.

Different faces.

Different events.

Then it vanished.

Zero opened his eyes.

His breathing was slow.

"Parallel Memory..."

He stared at the old F-rank description.

For years, the skill had been treated as worthless.

A skill nobody cared about.

A skill nobody studied.

A skill that had never seemed capable of changing anything.

And yet something had survived.

Something had remained.

Something the convergence had failed to erase completely.

Zero didn’t know that yet.

He didn’t know that there were others.

He didn’t know that scattered across Edolas were people carrying memories that contradicted the world.

He didn’t know that the people he might eventually encounter had no idea why they were different.

And he certainly didn’t know that their so-called useless F-rank skill was the only thing standing between their memories and complete oblivion.

For now, Zero only knew one thing.

The history of Edolas had changed.

And somehow...

He remembered the history that came before it.

********************************

That night, the capital celebrated Hiro again.

Fireworks illuminated the sky.

People gathered in the streets.

Children shouted his name.

Songs were sung about the Devil War.

Stories were told about the SS-rank hero who defeated the Devil King.

Everyone remembered.

Everyone except the few who carried memories the world no longer recognized.

They walked among the crowds unnoticed.

Some were confused.

Some were frightened.

Some had begun doubting themselves.

And some were still stubbornly holding onto memories that nobody else believed.

They didn’t know what protected those memories.

They didn’t know why reality had changed around them.

They didn’t know that their F-rank skill had preserved something far more important than power.

They simply remembered.

And for the first time since the convergence had finished...

the rewritten history was no longer perfectly silent.

There were cracks.

Small ones.

Scattered across Edolas.

Waiting for someone to notice.

And somewhere inside the capital, Zero turned another page of the ancient record.

He had no idea that the answer he was searching for was already walking through the streets outside.

He only knew that the skill everyone had called useless...

was beginning to look like the most important mystery in Edolas.