Simultaneous Transmigration: We Share a Role-Playing System

Chapter 142 Achieving perfection has no reward, but the pursuit of perfection has an end.

Pioneer Locke walked slowly through the wheat fields.

The evening breeze caressed the boundless golden wheat fields, the wheat waves gently undulating like the tide. The golden light of the setting sun covered the entire world, and the soft twilight, carrying the fragrance of wheat, permeated his plain white hooded robe. Even the wind seemed to slow its pace at this moment.

He walked step by step to Shirou Emiya and stood still.

The evening breeze lifted the edge of his hood, and then he slowly took it off.

The shadow that had been covering his face vanished, and in the gentle glow of the setting sun, Shirou Emiya could see that face clearly.

It was a face weathered by time and war, the deep scars on his skin seeming to tell of how, for some unknown reason, he had chosen to shed his former glory and evolve.

And in those eyes, those eyes that had entered his dreams countless times in the dead of night, there was no remorse, no heavy guilt for bearing everything, no indifferent coldness that kept people at arm's length.

All that remains is the relief of letting go of all obsessions after traversing countless cycles of despair and witnessing civilization's destruction time and time again, and the numbness hidden deep in the eyes, hardened by endless failures and restarts, so thick it's impossible to dissolve.

"I once thought I could end the world's suffering, but after I solved all the problems—"

Locke paused, then slowly raised his head and looked up at the twilight sky.

The evening breeze ruffled the hem of his white robe, and golden waves of wheat rippled silently around them. Shirou Emiya instinctively followed his gaze and looked up. The night sky, which should have spread out after dusk, was devoid of any starlight, only a bottomless, eternal night that seemed to swallow even light.

His heart sank, and he stared intently at the slowly setting sun, enduring the blinding light.

But when he saw the truth about that "sun," reality, like a cold tide, instantly poured down on him, giving him a heavy, suffocating blow.

The gentle twilight that bathed the entire wheat field was never from a real star.

The so-called sun that hangs in the sky and casts a soft twilight glow over the wheat fields is nothing more than a giant light generator fixed in orbit in the near-Earth atmosphere. Even the warm light it emits is just an artificial simulation of the afterglow of a long-gone star.

The mother star that truly gave birth to human civilization and illuminated this galaxy had long ago extinguished the flames of nuclear fusion, exhausted its last bit of light and heat, and collapsed into a cold, lifeless, and utterly dark dwarf star, silently floating in the empty, dark universe.

"All that awaits me ahead is a desolate expanse—"

Locke's words came to an abrupt end, the last syllable carried away by the evening breeze and dissipated in the surging wheat fields.

He bent his index finger and gently tapped the ancient scepter. A vast power, enough to contain the entire Milky Way, instantly swept over him.

In a dizzying moment, the wheat field beneath his feet and the twilight behind him rushed past. Everything on Earth shrank into streaks of light that flashed by. In the blink of an eye, he and Locke were standing together in the cold, vast vacuum of space, outside of Earth.

At that very moment, the entire silent universe seemed to be suddenly illuminated.

Emiya Shirou stared blankly at everything before him, his heart almost stopping.

In the boundless darkness, countless planetary debris and shattered stellar cores and meteorites float, the last traces left by countless vanished civilizations and extinguished stars, the final legacy of the stars.

And those stars that emitted a faint glow in the darkness were actually humanoid divine soldiers as huge as planets.

The arcane runes and mechanical structures engraved on them share the same structural logic as the evolved beings who fought valiantly on the battlefield of Snowfield City. They are the ultimate creations of humanity's glorious evolutionary path.

After the truth of the universe's end was fully revealed to him, a hint of shame finally appeared in Locke's usually calm and unwavering eyes.

He gazed at the eternal night without a single star, and slowly spoke, completing the sentence that had been interrupted. His voice was so soft it seemed to dissipate into a vacuum, yet it carried a weight heavy enough to crush the soul: "The loneliness of a dreamless world."

There is no reward for achieving perfection, but there is an end to the pursuit of perfection.

Standing beneath the Dark Throne in the subspace, the Emperor revealed to Fujimaru Ritsuka the cruel future of his transformation into the Dark King and the end of everything. His eyes held only tenderness, but it was a tenderness unlike the one he showed to all humans.

Looking out over the lifeless universe 138 billion light-years away, Fujimaru Ritsuka finally understood why this place had become a Lostbelt.

It wasn't that this place was forced to become a Lostbelt. Humanity and the Counter Force had no right to interfere with all of this. It was simply because the Emperor had chosen his own destiny and voluntarily made this place a Lostbelt.

"Once you solve one problem, another one will immediately appear. It's like happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin; to end one side, you must eliminate the other as well."

The emperor slowly raised his hand, and the badge that he had personally given to Fujimaru Ritsuka, following the connection deep in his soul, crossed the distance of time and space and gently landed in his palm.

This token, which carried boundless power and the entrustment of life and death, was as light as an ordinary coin in his hands.

His fingertips traced the raised double-headed eagle pattern on the badge again and again, his fingertips moving slowly and gently across each engraving, as if caressing a lost treasure that had been found again, or as if using the cold metal to reminisce about something that could never be found again.

The soft light of dusk fell on the metal surface of the badge, reflecting the tenderness and longing hidden in his eyes for thousands of years, never spoken aloud.

Under this eternal night devoid of stars, in the afterglow of the sun that has burned out, this small badge became the only remaining, warm anchor point in his eternally lonely life.

"I once chose to end suffering in the world so that no one would suffer the same pain I had endured."

"I originally wanted to change all this with technology and intelligence, until I discovered the Holy Grail War, and I found that magic was a shortcut for me."

The emperor indifferently raised his hand, and the vast spiritual energy instantly tore apart the barriers and spacetime constraints of several world lines.

The Arcane Pioneer and the Lord of Man, two divine aspects born from the same origin, simultaneously conjured up their "history"—a history they had not experienced but which was etched into their very being—and presented it to the two individuals in different universes.

Emiya Shirou and Fujimaru Ritsuka, separated by an insurmountable distance in time, glimpsed this "truth" sealed away by time at the same moment.

"I used my innate talent to decipher the fundamental laws of magic, and integrated the mysterious essence of magic with the universal logic of modern technology, ultimately creating Hextech."

Two Locke voices rang out simultaneously across timelines, as calm as if they were telling someone else's story.

"This path, which could completely disregard the mysterious principle of concealment that the Clock Tower held as its guiding principle, and efficiently spread extraordinary power to all mankind, swept across the world in just a few years and was even called the Third Industrial Revolution by later generations."

Before they could finish speaking, the scene before their eyes suddenly shifted.

Buildings rose one after another from the barren land, and the dim city was completely illuminated by the warm light of Hextech crystals. The extraordinary power that originally belonged only to a few magicians became an everyday thing that ordinary people could easily access.

The scene fast-forwards at a speed visible to the naked eye, with old high-rise buildings collapsing and being replaced by giant buildings that are more futuristic and better suited to the needs of human evolution; Hextech energy has gone from factories to thousands of households, permeating every corner of medical care, military, and people's livelihoods from industrial production, and has become an indispensable foundation of human civilization.

Efficiency and the future have become synonymous with Hextech. "Unfortunately, I have never been able to break through the final barrier in the core of Hextech: human evolution and live body fusion."

Until the old aristocracy of the Clock Tower could no longer tolerate my breaking of the mystical monopoly and shaking their millennia-old foundation, they launched a deadly assassination attempt against me.

The voices of both Locke's faded simultaneously, and the scene abruptly shifted to the dimly lit, blood-soaked underground research laboratory.

In the scene, he lay on the experimental table covered in blood, his vital signs rapidly fading. Meanwhile, the young Shirou Emiya, with red eyes, ignored his last attempts to stop him and resolutely activated the experimental device. He then merged the Hextech Core, which was still in an unstable experimental phase, with the core of his dying body, completing the fusion that would rewrite the fate of all human civilization.

"Since then, I have finally mastered the core of Hextech, touched the true mysteries of arcane magic, and gained the power to end everything."

And ultimately, that's exactly what I did. I chose to abandon humanity and embark on the path of glorious evolution.

The moment the words reached their ears, the world before Fujimaru Ritsuka and Emiya Shirou turned upside down once again.

The Earth, once brightly lit and prosperous thanks to Hextech, was instantly engulfed by an endless sea of ​​fire.

The rows of futuristic buildings collapsed in the flames of war, and the warm light of the crystals was completely covered by the crimson blood and fire.

Having long since shed his mortal form, Locke led the Glorious Evolvers away from their devastated home planet, spreading the "gospel" of Glorious Evolution to every corner of the universe.

And he did indeed do it.

Arcane magic, which reaches the very source, allows him to make the most correct choice in the shortest time, no matter what kind of enemy he faces, making him virtually unbeatable.

He made all the pain, wailing, strife, and hatred in the entire universe disappear.

After countless years, only absolute, undisturbed tranquility remained in the universe.

He realized his original dream.

To end all suffering in the world.

"But after I personally ended the clamor of the entire universe, I realized that this deathly eternity was not what I wanted at all."

Locke's voice gradually faded, and the scene before their eyes shattered into countless flowing light and shadow, each piece containing the resolute determination to turn back time, each scene imprinted with a cycle of repeating the same mistakes.

"I reversed time and time again, traversed countless despairing timelines, and finally found that glimmer of hope."

In the end, Shirou and I personally brought it all to a complete end, utterly abandoning the path of Glorious Evolution.

The moment the words fell, countless timelines unfolded before their eyes, like a book suddenly opened, filled with reincarnation and life and death, each page depicting a complete journey and destruction.

"I will not fail."

That was the first time Shirou Emiya reversed time and space. Standing in front of the Hextech Tower in the apocalypse, he gritted his teeth and made a vow to Locke, his voice filled with an unyielding stubbornness.

"Don't lose to this world that has nothing but greatness."

That was the shout he uttered to every Shirou Emiya in countless reincarnations, a shout that shook even time itself.

"Let's try again, this time, do it right!"

Those were the words Emiya Shirou whispered as he wiped the blood from his face and pressed the button to reverse time in the final, annihilated battle. They were gentle yet carried a resolute determination.

Every struggle, every near-miss, every time they stood back to back against the world's malice, every time they watched hope crumble to dust, was clearly displayed before Shirou Emiya and Ritsuka Fujimaru's eyes.

Emiya Shirou's eyes reddened uncontrollably, and hot tears welled up in them.

He stared blankly at the countless parallel universes before him, his heart feeling as if it had been violently struck by something.

Only at this moment did he finally understand that in countless timelines and in countless parallel worlds, their fate had already been predetermined at the very beginning of reincarnation.

"And after that, the present history began. I hid in the shadows to help humanity and successfully navigated the Golden Age, until the anomalies in the Warp and the emergence of the evil god forced me to take action personally."

"But it's still not enough. To end the Chaos Gods, you have to erase the emotions they represent along with them. Otherwise, they are impossible to kill, and I don't want the past future to repeat itself."

"In order to change all this, I had no choice but to create another mirror world that is the same as but not parallel to the original one. By grafting the future onto it, I abandoned the time point of the birth of the four gods, forcibly grafted the future of the empire onto another world, fixed it with a quantum fixation belt, and completely erased the world in which the four gods existed, making them disappear completely."

Countless fragments of parallel worlds disappeared, and in their place appeared a world that Shirou Emiya and Ritsuka Fujimaru were very familiar with: the Holy Grail War five years ago.

Only then did the two realize that Locke and the Emperor had such a purpose in that Holy Grail War.

The Emperor looked at Fujimaru Ritsuka, whose face was full of shock and who had not yet recovered from the truth of reincarnation. With a slight lift of his finger, the scene in front of him suddenly flipped.

It was no longer a fragment of reincarnation spanning countless ages, but her own life.

It was the arduous journey she had taken, every step fraught with peril.

Clutching the Chaldea emblem amidst the ruins of Fuyuki, escaping death countless times in the seven singularities, raising a fist against the Demon King in the Temple of Time, bearing the weight of the entire pan-human history on a blank Earth, making world-destroying choices in one Lostbelt after another.

Those unseen tears, those sins that had to be borne, those nights when I gritted my teeth and persevered after losing my companions—all of these were clearly displayed before my eyes.

"The moment you appeared in the mirror world, I immediately saw the truth of the world you inhabit." The Emperor's voice was calm, yet it was like a knife gently pressed against her heart.

Then, the video suddenly sped up.

It ruthlessly skipped over her current Lostbelt conquest, rushing straight to the future and dumping the end of the journey and all the hidden truths right in front of her.

She witnessed the full extent of the alien god's descent, saw through the astonishing deception the old director had laid out from the very beginning, and understood the true nature of the Chaldea, the machine that had accompanied her through countless life-and-death experiences.

The scene stopped at the end of her journey. She stood on a blank Earth and finally understood what she had been doing all along.

And at that moment, the Emperor's voice crashed down, shattering all her faith: "Fujimaru Ritsuka, your so-called efforts to save humanity have been in vain. Because the world you risked your life to protect is the greatest Lostbelt!"

At this moment, Fujimaru Ritsuka finally understood why Zeus had laughed so hard when they said they wanted to save the planet and save human history.

The scene before her eyes transformed into the moment when she first arrived at the Warhammer Singularity and met Varo Tigurius.

She now realized that the language the other person spoke, which didn't sound like human speech, was actually the result of the emperor's distortion, and she could now clearly hear what the other person was saying.

That's right.

"The enemy of all human history!"

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