Worthless Skill Escape (WN)

Chapter 158

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TL: ALT

Chapter 158 – 20%

“Why did you do that?”

Splefnir smiles at my question.

“I don’t know. Don’t you have any idea?”

“…You’re not going to say it was so you could enjoy watching me struggle, are you?”

“That’s what you say. Haha, I’m sorry. The chances of you clearing it were less than twenty percent, but you won’t be upset about that, right? You’ve gained a different kind of power that you couldn’t get in your original world, the world you call the skill world.”

“T-twenty percent?!”

“Don’t worry. If you can weave a strong cause and effect, the odds won’t even be a reference point. If fate is on your side, you’ll succeed, and if it’s not, you’ll fail. That’s all there is to it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds like a post-hoc argument.”

“The world is made up of post hoc arguments. God doesn’t roll dice… I see; it seems that people in your world also say some pretty good things.

“What does this great God want from me?”

I think I have heard that before.

If I keep up with his pace, we’ll never get anywhere.

“You said something about giving a tip to a great actor, right?”

“That’s right. I didn’t call you here just to praise you. You’re not the kind of person who would be moved by praise from a god, are you?”

“If god praised me for being a good person, that would be fine.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say. I went to all this trouble for you.”

Sighing, Sprelnir said.

“I didn’t ask for anything.”

I replied to Splefnir, who was being selfish.

“Reward those who have overcome hardship. We’ll think about the direct reward later, but since you’re here, why don’t you ask me the questions you want to ask? You would feel cheated if you just went back to your world as it was, wouldn’t you?”

…That’s true.

Only this God can explain the situation I’ve been dragged into.

“Then tell me about that world first. It wasn’t a hallucination, was it?”

“Of course not. You already know that. If it was a hallucination, then your original world would also be a hallucination at the same level. That too is undoubtedly real.”

Splefnir nodded.

“What was that world? It’s too similar to be another world. Is it a parallel world?”

“Well, I guess that’s the best way to put it.”

Splefnir folded his hands behind his head.

“Reality is not as solid as you think. Reality is a fabric woven from countless fine threads. The countless threads become entangled, sometimes fraying, sometimes breaking, and then weave themselves into a fabric.”

“So you’re saying that the world wasn’t something you created?”

“Yes. The world you got lost in was one of the threads that failed to be woven into reality, and was about to disappear into the interstices of the world as lint. A fragment of the world, a scrap… call it what you will.”

“A world that failed to be woven into reality, huh?”

I remember the flow of causality I saw in Escape from Difficulty.

That showed the flow of causality up to the point where I encountered that difficulty.

Of course, you can’t see that with the naked eye, so I guess it was something that the skill visualized in some way.

This kind of tree diagram of galaxies must be only a small part of the causality that makes up the world.

But you can also imagine a larger causality that spans a longer period of time.

I imagine that the flow of causality would have branched off in many different ways, just like the partial flow I saw.

For example, what would have happened if the dungeon had appeared when I was in high school?

It’s possible that the skill world and the job world were originally one world, and the only difference was the timing of the dungeon’s appearance.

“…Could it be that there was such a future?”

“I don’t know. There are good reasons why it didn’t become a fabric. Maybe it didn’t mix well with the other threads, or maybe the thread itself was too thin and couldn’t withstand the power of the ‘real world’ when it was woven together.”

“Even though there are different possibilities in the world, not all of them will come true, right?”

“That’s right. You should compare the two worlds you call the skill world and the job world. There are big differences between the two worlds, even outside of the time when the dungeon appeared, right?”

“Skills and jobs?”

Both worlds share the fact that dungeons appeared suddenly.

However, the status systems for the explorers that were “implemented” in response to the appearance of the dungeons are completely different.

The skill world is based on skills, and the job world is based on jobs.

Because of these differences, I initially decided to call each world the “skill world” and the “job world.”

If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, there are also subtle differences in the types of ability values (such as Attack Power and STR) other than skills/jobs.

“Could it be that there are worlds where different systems have been implemented, different from the skill world and the job world?”

“Of course there are, but not as many as you might think. Even so, the causality is distorted by the extraordinary foreign element of the dungeon. The worlds that have adopted systems that are difficult to reconcile with the rest of the world have disappeared without being able to spin a strong causality.”

“Disappeared…”

“If it’s a very thin thread, you might be able to weave it in without being rejected, even if it’s a slightly different color. But if it’s a fairly thick thread, or a long thread, or a bright color, it will disturb the harmony of the fabric. Such threads will be expelled from the fabric as foreign matter. And so one of the fragments that was expelled from the cloth was arranged as a test for you.

“So that world was one that was half realized and then disappeared?”

“You felt that in that world too, didn’t you? That world was too comfortable for you. In fact, that world was only comfortable for you. It was a world out of balance.”

“So that’s what it was.”

I don’t think that’s a very accurate analogy, but what I was thinking about was an MMO.

If there’s a system that only benefits certain players, sooner or later, that game will lose its popularity.

A world like that can’t continue because it’s not balanced as a whole.

However, if the bias is not so obvious, it can be overlooked.

When I heard the phrase “very thin thread” earlier, I thought of Haruka-san.

I’ve been wondering about that in the skill world, too.

Even if you look it up on the Internet, ask someone, or check the Explorer’s Church database, you can’t find out how long ago the dungeon was created.

Even so, there was no dungeon before I became a shut-in.

But Haruka-san came into the world while Honoka-chan was still in her mother’s womb.

Honoka-chan is fourteen years old.

I was a shut-in for a few years at most, so the timeline is clearly strange.

“The concept of time and causality is not as solid as people think. It’s just a rough pattern you can see when you look at the threads you’ve collected from a distance.”

“So even if there are a few foreign elements mixed in, it won’t be noticed? Is that the same logic that allowed me to blend into this world?”

“Well, yes. I am the being that defines the boundaries of the world. The boundaries of the world don’t just mean spatial boundaries. They also include temporal and causal boundaries. Of course, even I can’t completely control the flow of causality. However, if I have an excuse to give a hero who wants power as a just reward for a trial commensurate with that power, then I can pull off a trick like that.”

Splefnir said nonchalantly.

“Is that even possible?”

Kudave spoke of Splefnir as if they were equals.

He said that they were different in nature, so a simple comparison was impossible, and it was impossible to say which was higher or lower.

But if what Splefnir just said is true, he’s even crazier than I’d vaguely imagined.

He’s managed to manipulate causality, even if not perfectly, and turned a fragment of the world into a test for me.

…I wonder if Kudave was just exaggerating?

I think he was just trying to prove his useless competitive streak by insisting that it was a 50-50 match.

I’ll have to complain to him when I get back safely.

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