[Current time: 12:45 AM.]
[Master, it's time to get up.]
[…]
"Mmm…"
"System, just… five more minutes…"
"…"
Her drowsy mumbling was barely more than a dreamy whisper.
No need to check—she was clearly still out of it.
All Kiana did was curl up on her side, wriggle a little deeper into her blankets, and then… stillness.
The System, as though long accustomed to this, continued in its ever-calm tone.
[This is the 45th time I've called you.]
[You are three hours and forty-five minutes past your usual wake-up time.]
"Hahh… okay…"
"I get it…"
Kiana struggled for a good two or three minutes.
She flopped onto her back.
Her right hand came up to rest on her forehead.
Eyes open, she stared blurrily at the ceiling. Awake, yes, but her mind was still completely blank.
A few more minutes passed.
Then, slowly, she pushed herself up, stretched, and let out a big yawn.
She started chatting idly with the System.
"So, System, notice anything new on your end today?"
It was a routine question.
Like checking the news over morning coffee.
Kiana wasn't expecting any surprises.
But…
The System's reply, delivered in its usual serene tone, mentioned a worldline and a name that made her jolt upright in shock.
Suddenly, she was wide awake.
"That *Jyahnar*?" she blurted out. "You mean *the* Jyahnar? The Cthulhu lady from GGZ?"
[Yes, Master.]
[Among the countless worldlines, one previously unobserved has now surfaced, containing these specific elements.]
[It does not appear that you consciously located that world and began exploring it.]
[Rather, the Planetary-Level Herrscher known as Jyahnar accidentally discovered our world. She seems to have followed the scent of your Finality authority here, arriving through a series of coincidences.]
[…]
The System patiently reported the details.
Kiana kept nodding along, making soft "uh-huh" sounds, looking utterly adorable.
As mentioned before, the number of worldlines is countless, perhaps even vaster than the grains of sand in the Ganges. There's simply no way to tally them all.
In any single worldline, some individuals carry more "weight," some less; some events are critically important—that's also due to the influence of this "weight."
You could look at the relationships *between* worldlines in a similar way.
The more significant a worldline is, the more prominent and clearer it appears when you attempt to observe the future.
The less significant, the more improbable it is, the more obscure and harder to detect it becomes.
Clearly, observing a worldline where Jyahnar bursts into *her* world was just one possibility among many.
In fact, this particular possibility was far more remote, tinier than most others.
But…
The chance still existed.
Didn't it?
And if it appeared, it meant new material to work with.
Kiana was thrilled.
Because, as mentioned earlier, as her power grew, the capabilities of the System—her tool—would also gradually expand.
At the very beginning, she truly could only observe.
And the number of worldlines she could observe was far fewer than now.
The most she could do was act as a nudge, a tiny variable, pushing the present course toward a better worldline.
But now it was different!
She was stronger today than she was yesterday.
Forget the distant past.
Just looking at the present, she could now perform more precise operations on those worldlines, actually *do* something to realize her ideas.
For example, before, she might only have been able to take a segment from a more prominent worldline, extract it as material, and graft it onto her own.
That way, she wouldn't need to painstakingly nudge things along.
It would be as if the event's occurrence, the character's story, simply *belonged* there, seamlessly integrated.
But now!
She could do more than that. She could even choose the grafting point herself. She could pick and choose, extracting just the elements she wanted instead of taking a whole chunk unchanged. This allowed for much better adaptation to the actual conditions of her own world, making conscious adjustments.
All of this was good news.
She could even discover material, locate it, extract it, and if she wasn't sure how to use it immediately, just store it away.
That way, even if that worldline vanished the very next moment, the material was already secured.
It didn't matter!
She wasn't forced to figure out a use for everything the moment she saw it.
Even her material storage had no limits.
Find it, harvest it. Locate it, store it.
Later on, when her resources were more abundant, everything would naturally become easier.
She wouldn't necessarily have to push every worldline she saw toward development.
Wouldn't it be better to take her own worldline as the core, and selectively incorporate the best parts of others, discarding the dross?
This essentially represented Kiana's—or rather, the System's—growing power, their increasing mastery over the worldlines…
Even setting that aside, just the thought of being able to see more worldlines, see further into the future, witness more and see clearer…
Well, that alone seemed like a reason to be happy.
Right?
You have to understand, these were tangible improvements. Obvious, even. Noticeable, day by day.
It was fantastic!
The most frustrating part of anyone's growth isn't the hard work itself, but working hard and seeing no results.
Even though Kiana had already consolidated the certainty of her becoming the Herrscher of Finality, spreading that outcome across time, so that the future influenced the present, meaning she grew stronger every day without even needing to *do* anything…
She still felt, well… she'd put in the work herself. Having growth, seeing results—wasn't that a good thing?
At the very least, she didn't enjoy fighting.
If you told her she was a great fighter, it wouldn't mean much to her.
But telling her she could see more of the future, more stories, like flipping through books, viewing more worldlines? That genuinely made her happy.
So sometimes, for simplicity, she'd ask the System. But other times, if a worldline seemed interesting, she'd take a look herself.
Although, speaking of this…
There was something she just had to complain about.
The System could observe the far, far distant future.
A little further out, it might be foggy, but maybe once Kiana grew stronger, even that would become clear.
But what it could see now was already plenty.
The problem was!
If it could see such a distant future, why couldn't it see the next few days, or even the next couple of weeks—the near future?
Was it farsighted or something?
Even though… the nearer the future, the smaller the potential changes might be.
Reasoning backward from the nearest observable future, there probably wouldn't be any major upheavals.
And even if that were the case, it wouldn't be a big deal—just a thin veil adding a bit of surprise.
But this issue of the System being blurry on the close-up details… was sometimes really quite annoying.
You could even say that for the *extremely* distant future, she couldn't see clearly, and for the *extremely* near future, she also couldn't see clearly.
It was like there was a specific range where her vision was sharp.
She wondered if getting stronger would eventually fix this peculiarity.
It was another point Kiana was curious about.
--+--
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