Post-Epilogue Chapter 22: The Skillful Art of Throwing Cards at the Wall

Spending time with Josh and Angie was relaxing. Therapeutic, even. However, all good things had to come to an end sooner or later, especially when curfews were involved, so we bid our farewells in front of the arcade and went our separate ways. We both had plans for the evening, after all.

For them, it probably involved more studying for the coming exams. Angie needed to improve her grades big time to get into her university of choice, and since Josh wanted to follow after her (not to mention, he could also use the same political science classes anyway), he had no choice but to follow suit. In a way, I admired their determination to do things by the book and not abuse their authority in the World of Mystics for shortcuts in life.

…

Though again, considering it's those two we're talking about, there was a not-insignificant chance that they still didn't quite understand that those shortcuts were even there. Maybe that was for the better. It was their guilelessness that made it all the harder for the entrenched corruption of the Elysium and the Abyss to bite onto them, after all.

"… Damn. I'm sounding like an old geezer, even to myself," I grumbled under my breath as I arrived at one of the many tucked-away alleys in the city designated for safe Phasing. I Far Glanced (or rather, Near Glanced) around anyway, and once I was sure the coast was clear, I locked onto Judy's red dot at the edge of my perception, and I reappeared right next to her.

"Hi, Dormouse."

"Hi, Chief," she responded, as if on autopilot, without even looking at me. "Did you have fun?"

I responded with an offhand, "Lots," while looking around, and I couldn't help but let out an impressed whistle. "Well, I'll be damned. This looks really impressive."

At last, my dear assistant turned to me and humbly stated, "It's all thanks to Fulgor's assistance."

I imagined he was helping out, because the progress they’d made since the last time I'd been here was rather astounding. As for what the 'here' in question was… Okay, let me try to paint a picture.

We were currently standing in the middle of a sunny hilltop. The sky was the brightest shade of blue of the best summer of your life, with a grand aurora borealis swimming across its surface, its shifting hues perfectly visible even in the daylight. The meadow under our feet was full of colourful wildflowers in all shades of the rainbow, with ankle-height grass in between them. The air was fresh with their scent, and there was a small breeze from the direction of the woods at our backs, where stood a sea of the trees covered in vibrant green leaves of various shapes, even on the same tree.

The air around us was also alive with small motes of light swirling about, drawing colourful trails into the air as they circled us with a faint buzz. They kind of reminded me of a certain guide from a certain video game, but considerably quieter.

Finally, in the distance in front of us, there was a majestic castle seemingly hewn from living wood. It didn't have any of the grim majesty of the homes of the Abyssal aristocracy. It had more of an ephemeral quality, with various colours dancing on the visible surfaces, and on closer look, I wasn't even sure it was there. Honestly, it kind of looked like one of those hazy Fata Morgana mirages, which meant…

"The castle's not done yet?"

Judy shook her head and confirmed it with a curt, "No."

Before I could say anything more, our attention was drawn by a "Leo!" coming from the left, and I saw the class rep climbing the hill, with the translucent golden form of the Grimoire's avatar leisurely floating beside her.

"Hey, Ammy," I greeted her back with a lazy wave of my hand. "Great work."

"Thanks," she said between heaves, then wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and added, "But to be honest, Grimmy's the one doing the heavy lifting."

"Response: While the assessment is accurate, Interface:Grimmy only derived the basic artificial space schematics and support sub-systems from the original records stored in the SOPHIA system."

Everybody was extra humble today, huh? Anyhow, I glanced around one more time, and I was no less impressed than before. This pocket space, patterned after the Elysium, was much smaller in absolute size and volume, but to already sculpt and populate it to this degree was still nothing to scoff at. Once finished, it will be our stage for much of the magical girl plot the girls were cooking, the Sonnenwendenkönigreich.

For the record, I still thought the gratuitous German terminology was a mistake, but the cat was well out of the bag at this point, and we couldn't exactly stuff it back inside anymore. But putting that aside, did I already mention how impressed I was by all this?

"You really did a great job. Seriously, this whole place has a perfect magical fairy-tale vibe going on. It's awesome."

"That was the intent, yes," Judy confirmed while averting her gaze, which told me she was embarrassed by the unbridled praise. Aaaw.

"It was surprisingly easy, actually," the class rep chimed in while tweaking her glasses, followed by a shallow sigh. "I know that Mister Fulgor is supporting us from… whatever realm he's from, but to be perfectly honest with you, I'm feeling a little guilty about how much he's doing compared to us."

"I understand the feeling," Judy commented, suddenly sounding a bit down. "I hoped that we would gain a deeper understanding of the literal world-building of the Simulacrum through this project, but due to his support, we aren't getting the expected experience."

"I know, right?" the class rep doubled down. "It's like, we spend half an hour on figuring something out, Grimmy implements it, and then before we can get to fine-tune it, it just starts completing itself." She let out a soft huff and made an odd tossing gesture with her hand. "It's as if you threw a deck of cards at the wall, and then they arranged themselves into a house of cards on their own. It looks amazing, but also deeply unsatisfying."

Judy nodded along with a curt, "Agreed."

"… Do you want me to tell Fulgor to take it down a notch and let you do things on your own?"

"Could you?" Ammy blurted out, but then she shook her head immediately after. "No, no. He's really enthusiastic about the project, and as a senior, we shouldn't impose on him more than we already do."

"If you say so." I shrugged and looked around again, drinking in the scenery. "I'm just happy things are progressing at a steady pace. There's still that other place to make, too, right?"

"The Walpurgisnachtkönigreich," Judy pinpointed, then after some thinking she also added, "For that, we need to ask Benjamin's opinion. It's supposed to be his realm, after all."

"Ugh. If you do that, I'm afraid the whole place will be filled with teeth and skulls."

My response made the girls think for a moment, but then we got interrupted by a new arrival, and the whole topic just fizzled out.

"Ah, everyone's here already." Fulgor appeared with a flash and crackle, as usual, and… was he smiling? Wow. This might've been the first time I'd seen him do that. "Great job, great job. Things are proceeding smoothly thanks to your hard work."

The girls looked a bit confused for a moment, then the class rep told him, "That was exactly what we wanted to say," which made his smile disappear with a soft huff.

"Oh, please. I'm only doing the bare minimum to make sure there aren't any internal conflicts within the Simulacrum. I barely even had to do that, really. It's all thanks to your work. You are naturals at this, I tell you."

Everyone fell silent after that, so I took it upon myself to break the slowly descending awkward atmosphere by saying, "So you haven't done much," while pointing at Fulgor, then moving on to Judy, "And you didn't to much." I repeated it with Ammy next, with, "You say you did little," and then concluded with Grimmy, "And you've also only done the basics. Did I get that right?" Judy nodded, making one of the small light motes resting on the tip of her hair bow fly off, while the rest remained completely still. "That doesn't add up."

"Well, I really haven't done much," Fulgor continued to insist.

"Okay, then let's go one by one," I proposed, and pointed up. "Who made the sky?"

"Response: Interface:Grimmy is responsible for the formation of the artificial sky-dome."

"What about the swirly colours?"

"That was Judy's idea," the class rep replied on the spot. "Grimmy put it up first, but we couldn’t get it right until Mister Fulgor fixed it."

"Excuse me?" the Emergent in our midst blurted out, his brows up high. "I did no such thing. As I said, I was busy integrating the metaphysical framework of this new setting into the post-Scenario. I generally don't concern myself with cosmetic details like that."

"Who did it, then?" Judy asked, doing her best to sound grave in her own way, but it was hard to take her seriously when like half a dozen colourful motes were sitting on her shoulders and the top of her head, like a bunch of glowing finches perched on a tree.

In fact, when they noticed I was looking at them, a few of the motes circling around my dear assistant flew over to me and landed on my shoulders. Were these things intelligent? They seemed to be at least somewhat self-aware, which meant… did the girls create life?

"And who made these guys?" I asked while pointing at one of the little buzzers, and after flying a circle around my hand, it landed on the tip of my finger. It was entirely weightless and a little warm, like a ray of sunshine or somesuch.

The class rep shook her head and turned to my girlfriend.

"Judy?"

My dear assistant also shook her head, causing the motes to scatter every which way, like a swarm of transparent fireflies, only to immediately return to her once more.

"No. Grimmy?"

"Response: Negative. The Mana Well System is only capable of reproducing plant and fungal life within the Artificial Space."

Hm. I guess that meant that all the animals in the Abyss and the Elysium had to be 'imported' during their construction. I didn't expect to learn that now of all times, but that was one more mystery crossed off my list. More importantly, all eyes focused on Fulgor next, and he let out a scoff that sounded almost offended.

"Bah, please. This is your project. I would never introduce new life forms into your setting without consulting with you first. It would be terribly unprofessional to act otherwise."

Okay, so that means he wasn't responsible for these guys either, which meant… what exactly?

I floated a hopeful, "Any ideas?" but nobody seemed to have any until the class rep tentatively raised her hand.

"Could it be that they are made by the… erm… it was the Simulacrum, right?" I nodded, and she hastily clarified, "I mean, even back in your notes, you said that it would adapt the world to match expectations and… 'tropes' was the word, I think?" This time, she didn't wait for me to confirm it, and she quickly moved on by pointing at the glowing little flyers congregating around Judy. "You said it yourself that this pocket space is meant to have a sort of fairy-tale-like atmosphere, so maybe they were generated because of that?"

"From a distance, they do look a bit fairy-like," I mused, but Fulgor shook his head.

"These are low-definition pixies at best, but more importantly, while the Simulacrum's framework can certainly fill in details like this, it's a much slower and more deliberate process."

"Or at least that was the case in the past," I argued back. "Maybe Id- and/or Superego-me are taking an interest in this project of ours?"

"That's… a potential hypothesis, yes," the Emergent admitted, and then we all fell silent as we considered the options.

I, for one, was pretty sure my guess was on the money. After all, while my theoretical Id- and Superego-mes running the Simulacrum from the shadows were still not one hundred percent confirmed, if they were real, they would still be my subconscious, so it made perfect sense that they would want to support the girls in small ways, such as kicking the Simulacrum's built-in fine-tuning features up a notch to make prettier skies and more scenic forests for them.

In any case, since we couldn't do much about that, and the silence was getting a bit suffocating, we decided to head out and take a tour in the half-finished pocket dimension. We didn't linger for long, because we had other things to do, but I managed to draw three conclusions from the trip: things needed a lot more polish, even with the environment self-tuning itself to a degree, we needed to look up reference images for the castle, and that those colourful motes were really, really attached to Judy, and wouldn't stop buzzing around her for a second.

That only made me more convinced that my subconscious version had something to do with this, because I found her being surrounded by all those literal fairy-lights pretty, which meant my subconscious would've obviously found it pretty too. Q.E.D., we had the motive figured out. Now all we needed was a smoking gun, and I could pin the whole thing on myself.

Jokes aside, once we were done and the others discussed their short-term plans, I ferried the class rep home, and then it was finally time for me to Phase away with Judy as well, though in our case, the destination wasn't home. Not ours, at least.

"Ah, Papa! Judy Mama!"

"Welcome back!" Elly greeted us as well, though she didn't get up, because she had the little red-haired menace in her lap.

We were in the princess's room in the Dracis Mansion, and the two of them were sitting at her desk on the girly side of the room, with a whole bunch of school textbooks laid out in front of them.

"How did it go?" Elly asked without getting up, and my other girlfriend made an odd gesture with her hand as she approached the two of them.

"So-so. We made a lot of progress and ran into some confusing developments. Overall, it was fine." She stopped next to the desk and looked over the books. "What about you?"

"We're almost caught up with the fourth grade!" the princess declared with a wide grin, mirrored by the little girl still sitting in her lap.

"Purin now knows everything about fractions!" she declared, and she even puffed up her chest with pride.

Long story short, while Purin was still part of the Pudding-kun hivemind, and thus had access to the accumulated knowledge and brain power of the whole collective, that didn't necessarily translate into academic performance. As such, the princess took it upon herself to tutor her so that she could fit in with her peers in Red Lake Elementary.

"Look, Papa! Look! Full scores!"

"Yes, yes. Good job, Purin." She beamed at me, even though my praise was rather half-hearted, so I cleared my throat and gestured in the direction of the big queen-sized bed. "It's getting late. How about we get ready to sleep?"

Truth be told, if anything, it was still early, but we had a schedule to keep, and Purin didn't seem to mind.

"Okay! Purin never slept before! It's going to be fun!"

Oh, right. That. As I've learned, Emergents don't sleep. It made sense, since sleep was a biological process required to clean up the body and the brain, and while Emergent Definitions looked human (or at least human-adjacent), they weren't beholden to the same rules. Except in her case, I was pretty sure her lack of need for sleep had more to do with the whole hive-mind thing than that, but I digress.

In any case, she jumped off Elly's lap and declared, "Pudding is going to get her pajamas! Don't go anywhere!" and then she… dashed into Elly's closet.

"She's so energetic," my princess noted with an affectionate grin on her face. "It's honestly hard to keep up with her."

"I'm still not completely used to the 'Mama' thing," Judy added a bit absently. "It makes me feel old."

"I think it's cute," Elly insisted, while I graciously removed myself from the conversation and inspected the bed.

It wasn't the first time I'd slept over, and Elly's bed was bigger than mine, but I was still a bit skeptical about how all four of us would fit here. We would figure something out, I surmised, just in time for Purin's return.

"Look, Papa! Purin's pyjamas are cute, right?"

"It's…" I started, only to frown when I took a closer look at the simple, child-sized blue onesie covered in a pattern of little, cartoony Pudding-kuns. "Where did you get that?"

"Galatea made it for Purin? It's cute, right?"

"Yes, very!" Elly responded in my stead, making her pleased grin stretch from ear to ear.

"Should we head out?" Judy asked while undressing, and my other girlfriend hurriedly corrected her with, "You mean, turn in for the day?"

"It's the same thing, really," my dear assistant insisted, and after some grumbling, my princess also skipped over to her wardrobe, and the two of them changed into their night gowns. There was no need to be shy, as we had seen each other in all manners of undress already, but it still felt weird to change our clothes in front of a child. Even if she was just a child-version manifestation of a mini-shoggoth collective.

Before long, the four of us slipped under the blankets, turned off the lights, and…

"Why are you on top of me?" I asked the little girl lying on my chest, making her giggle.

"Hehe! Because this is Purin's spot!"

Should I point out that this was a one-of-a-kind situation, and we wouldn't be sleeping like this in the future? Or would that just ruin the atmosphere? In the end, I didn't object and just wrapped my Phantom Limbs around the three of them, and once I was sure I was holding them secure, I slowly retreated from the Simulacrum.

So far, everything was mostly normal, except…

"The heck?"

Halfway out, I ran into a problem. The girls were fine, but the phantom limb around Purin felt like I was trying to pull a small car. Even after adding more ethereal appendages, she barely budged, and it took a couple of minutes to get a good enough grip on her with multiple phantom limbs and drag her out, at which point.

"Whoaaa!"

She exclaimed the moment we arrived in my Domain, and she was looking left and right in awe, her long hair floating all over like she was underwater. After my experiences during my first extra-Simulacral trip with the girls, I was already expecting that she would arrive in her birthday suit, so I quickly Defined a simple sundress and sandals onto her. She didn't even seem to notice the changes and kept gawking around like she was in an amusement park.

Meanwhile, I pulled the girls over and asked, "Everything in order?"

Elly floated over to me and gave me a silly salute along with an upbeat, "Aye, aye, captain!" a gesture that Purin eagerly tried to mimic. It only caused her to start spinning in space, so the princess flew over to help her, while my other girlfriend said, "I'm also fine."

"I'm glad to hear… that?"

The second half of my response trailed into a question when I looked at her.

"Is there a problem?"

I wasn't sure. She was much better at changing her Definition than Elly, and every time we came over, she would have a different outfit, which was true this time as well. On this occasion, she opted for a simple knee-length blue dress with some accessories, and while it wasn't anything extraordinary, I couldn't help but feel that something was off about her. Was it her hair? Or maybe her eyes?

No matter how long I stared, I couldn't quite figure out what gave me the strange feeling of incongruity, so I shook my head and told her, "Nah, no problem at all. You're cute, as usual."

"Chief, please don't flirt in front of Purin. You must be a good role model."

I would've liked to point out that she, through all the Pudding-kuns, must have seen way wilder things than that, but I didn't bother to argue and waved for Elly to bring the little menace over, so that I could wrap everyone up again and pull them into the not-dark not-room.

It was especially true to its name this time, as it was configured to look like the sunny garden with the gazebo where we first met Aurora and Brook. Oh, and speaking of them.

"They should be here at any…" Carmine bit back the end of her sentence and flashed a thin-lipped smile at us. "Oh, speak of the devil."

She was sitting in the aforementioned gazebo, along with the two guest Emergents. They looked exactly the same as the last time I'd seen them. Brook had the height and build of a standard fantasy dwarf, but with an almost comically tall hat on his head, while Aurora was still sporting that blue-skinned Indian goddess kind of look, along with the six arms. The two of them looked rather nervous, and nearly jumped when we arrived.

"Ah, Sol?" Aurora greeted me first with a smile, and also lightly bowed her head towards the girls while making a complex set of gestures with her many hands. In contrast, Brook was more awkward and only nodded at us.

"Thank you for arranging this meeting," I told Carmine, and she smiled at me again, this time the gesture feeling both warmer and more relaxed.

"Don't mention it. We're f-family."

Ah, there was still a small stutter at the end, wasn't there? I didn't blame her for still feeling a bit awkward about our relationship, but her rate of adaptation to the concept was pretty abysmal.

I responded with a simple, "Yes, quite," and then turned to the other two Emergents. "And thank you for showing up on such short notice. Have Carmine told you about why we wanted to see you?"

"Something about the Seed Amalgam," Brook uttered flatly, trying to look calm and disinterested, but the way his gaze kept moving around told me he was quite nervous.

"Yes, that." I took a deep breath and frankly told them, "We have discovered its whereabouts."

Aurora perked up at once, while the short man only uttered a skeptical, "Really?"

"Yes," Judy spoke up next to me, drawing their attention to herself. "The situation is a fair bit more complicated than expected, though."

I picked up the thread of the conversation with, "As it turns out, all the Seed Amalgam fragments settled down at the bottom of the Simulacrum, colloquially speaking, and kind of merged into a new Emergent already." They were getting confused, so I decided to cut to the chase by signalling to Elly, who then pushed Purin to the front. "Please, allow me to introduce you to Purin."

"A… Venerated one?" Aurora muttered, so I quickly waved a hand.

"No, no. She might feel weird because she modelled herself after Benjamin, but she's, technically speaking, an Emergent born from your Seed Amalgam."

"Along with all the others," Judy chimed in on the side, and it only caused more confusion.

Case in point...

"Papa? Purin doesn't understand what's going on."

Brook echoed her with a shocked, "Papa?" and I could barely stop myself from groaning out loud.

"It's a long and complicated story, so let's go one step at a time." I descended to one knee next to the little girl and told her, "Listen. These two are kind of like your parents, in a sense." She still looked confused, so I tried again, "How should I put this…? Let’s say they are responsible for your birth. Partially. They are like how Carmine and Apollo are my parents. Technically."

That made the woman at the table hiccup, while Purin furrowed her brows.

"So… It's like how Papa has Grandma Carmine and Grandpa Apollo, but also Grandma Morgana and Grandpa Arnwald?"

"Erm… Kind of?"

Purin's eyes lit up, and she suddenly turned on her heels and rushed over to the Emergents at the table in the gazebo, her face beaming with excitement.

"Hi! Are you Purin's Mommy and Purin's Daddy?"

"W-Wait…" Aurora raised all her palms. "This is all too sudden, and…"

"Does that mean that Purin has many moms and dads like Papa?" She raised her hands and started counting on them, no doubt the princess's influence. "I have Papa, and Elly Mama, and Judy Mama, and… um…"

"Brook and Aurora," Elly helped her out from the side, so she continued her counting.

"… and Brook Mommy and Aurora Daddy!"

"No, that's the other way arou–"

My objection was interrupted when Purin suddenly jumped back and let out a loud, "Ah!" and then turned on her heel. "Papa! Why didn't you tell Purin beforehand? I can't introduce Purin like this!"

Before I could ask what she meant by that, she balled up her fists, set her feet apart, and started making strained noises, like a character in a shounen anime powering up. Confusion set in once again, but only for a moment, until it was replaced by alarm as a pink fleshy blob materialised next to Purin and fell to the ground. Then another. And another.

"W-What's going on!?" Brook exclaimed, sounding downright frightened by the sudden appearance of…

"Nyuuu!"

"Nyunyunyu!"

"Nyuuu~!"

… dozens and dozens of mini-shoggoths, rapidly piling up around the Gazebo.

At last, the rain of one-eyed flesh-balls stopped, only for Purin to pick up the nearest one and present it to the table.

"Hi, Mommy and Daddy! This is Pudding-kun, and this is Pudding-kun, and this here is Pudding-kun, and oh! Purin almost forgot about Pudding-kun, and…"

…

"Dormouse? Princess?"

"Yes, Chief?"/"Yes?"

"We should've explained everything ahead of time instead of trying to make this a surprise, huh?"

"We should've," Judy concurred, while my princess only let out a vague sound that I also decided to interpret as agreement.

"And now it's going to take ages to explain all this, right?"

"We have the whole night," Elly told me while patting my back, trying to make me feel better, but…

"Ah, Pudding-kun! Come back! We need to introduce ourselves to Mommy and Daddy! Pudding-kun, don’t wander away! You’re after Pudding-kun!"

…

Hindsight was, and it will forever remain, my mortal enemy.