62nd Move | The Things We Do For Love

AN: Violent and Gory content ahead.

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Chloe blinked and looked around her to find the familiar room, her mouth agape at what just happened.

While she was stunned, the small crowd of mages around her groaned in exhaustion, King Edmaris of Falmuth stormed out of the chamber after another failed summoning session.

"Wha...?" Chloe was having a serious case of out-of-body feeling, everything else faded into nothingness as she tried to comprehend what had just happened.

Wasn't she just in space? Wasn't she just about to die? Wasn't she about to become one of the casualties of the assault by that alien on the subspace? These questions and many others plagued Chloe like magnets attracting those of the opposite poles, causing her to just stand there, motionless even as one of the mages called out to her.

"Hey, kid!" The harsh tone snapped Chloe out of her pondering. Turning to look at the source, the young Otherworlder found a Japanese teen leaning on the wall and glaring at her.

"Um— w—where am I?" Chloe asked meekly, half of her mind still trying to comprehend if this was real while the other half struggled to take up the work of a full brain.

"Heh, well, they just killed you y'know?" He let out a smirk.

Chloe knows this Otherworlder. His name was Shogo Taguchi, an Otherworlder who was successfully summoned by Falmuth, and since he was a young teen and thus, of age, he was branded with a slave seal.

"I see..." Chloe was having a hard time believing that everything was real, cupping her forehead, to anyone else looking, it would look like Chloe was reeling from trauma as if she had seen something that wasn't meant to be seen.

Shogo let out a 'tsk' before walking out the door. Right before he could, however, Chloe called him out, "Wait, Mister Taguchi, what day is it today?"

The Otherworlder froze mid-walk.

A pit opened inside Chloe's stomach as she realized something was wrong, meekly, "M—Mister Taguchi?"

His eyes looked like the abyss, a darkness that threatened to consume all. He walked forward, only stopping when he loomed over the young girl who was still in the middle of the summoning circle, "how did you know my name?"

Chloe was intimidated, she opened her mouth to speak yet no words came out. Chloe wanted to speak, she wanted to tell him that she might've time-traveled, she wanted to tell them all that happened, yet no words came out. Like trying to squeeze too much out at once, her mouth stopped working and just hung there.

"Easy there, Shogo, she's just a kid who's probably got some kind of Thinker type Unique Skill that allows her to know the names of people, pretty lame one if you ask me but I guess that's life."

Shogo turned to face the new teen—Kyoya Tachibana— with a sneer, "What do you want, Tachibana?"

The other teen raised his hands in a placating fashion before dropping off to the side as if saying 'What can you do?'

"Just trying to prevent you from killing such a cutie, I mean, look at her! She'll grow into a beauty once she becomes an adult, I'm sure of it." Tachibana's right hand gestured towards Chloe, his words caused her to blush a bit.

Shogo let out a quick 'ha', "Grow up? Are you joking? She looks like she's 6! She ain't going to survive up till adulthood!"

Shogo then scratches his chin, "although, if you aren't going to survive, I guess there's no problem in savoring—"

Kyoya placed a hand on Shogo's shoulder.

"Shogo, there's a line we do not cross even if we are in a new world, we gotta be better than these savages who don't even know what human rights are."

The silence was palpable for a moment before Shogo let out a chuckle, "Heh, I'm joking, I'm joking."

"Rrrrrrright."

The tension in the atmosphere was gone, causing Chloe to let out a quiet shaky breath.

Have—have I gone back in time? Chloe's mind wondered, "Um, excuse, what's today's date?"

"In your world? how the fuck am I supposed to know?"

"She meant in this world, Shogo. And the date, when converted to our old world's, is March 12th."

Chloe nodded. Two possibilities existed inside her mind; A) she went back in time right before the moment of her death, or B) she had some kind of super precognition, both of these options seemed likely until she could check her skills.

Ugh... if only she had Rimuru's [Great Sage]!

Unknown to her at the time, [Time Travel] formed a membrane around her to hide the fact that she had a Unique Skill.

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Life continued on as it always has been.

Being a child, she was let go, free to live the rest of her short life.

Chloe, after confirming that she does indeed now have Ultimate Skill [Yog-Sothoth] by controlling a bit of space to teleport to Ingrassia, felt a bit directionless, after all, who would believe you that an alien invasion is coming?

But even so, Chloe spoke to whoever would listen, only to get promptly ignored as the ramblings of an overimaginative child at best or a heretic at worst. None of the Western Leaders would even notice her, and she had to be extra cautious in the West since she accidentally harmed this one influential Nobleman in Falmuth because he was getting to... lecherous, to say the least.

After experiencing so many failures, Chloe felt lost, aimless, and confused. So, in such a state, the child from another World decided to just trace her steps and went back to the School she had met Rimuru in during the first loop.

It wasn't until her third year in this world that reports of a new power arose in the Great Forest of Jura, a new nation led by a familiar slime.

So she waited, and sure enough, said slime came around like clockwork.

He was using the body of an elf when not in slime form, wearing a familiar blue coat with a katana around his waist, Chloe breathed out a silent sigh of relief about how her teacher didn't change too much.

Desperate for at least someone to believe her, Chloe blurted out everything that was bound to happen over the next few months, everything from his near assassination at the hands of Cardinal Hinata Sakaguchi to the War with Clayman to the Eastern Empire invasion and even the alien attack.

Instead of accepting her answer, Rimuru took a few steps back with a look that in hindsight anyone who's sane would display when being told unproven information about the 'future'.

Despite it being the logical response, Chloe still felt hurt, so with the sheer awkwardness still lingering in the air, the Otherworlder retreated to her room for the rest of the day.

After that event, Chloe Aubert became extremely anti-social, only speaking when spoken to. It was made even worse when the other students in the class started to ignore her as well, and complete social isolation became a daily fact of life for the depressed young girl.

Because of a small slip of the tongue, Rimuru revealed that Chloe didn't need a spirit as her magicules were stable. This in turn caused some of the other students like Alice and Kenya to passively bully the black-haired girl by making a snide comment or insult here and there whenever their teacher was not looking.

Rimuru did manage to stop the bullying after handing out strict punishments, but this caused a schism between the remaining students and the teacher, and what respect he managed to earn on the first day here dried up like a puddle of water under a summer day's sun.

Even with the hostilities, Rimuru still upheld his promise and saved the 5 Otherworlders when they visited the Dwelling of Spirits and gave an artificial spirit to those whom the Inferior Spirits deemed unworthy.

But, everything went wrong the day after the slime left.

"A...are...that...that can't be!" Chloe choked out in the middle of the classroom after hearing the news from Miss Noel, her new teacher after Rimuru left.

"Chancellor Rimuru of the Jura Tempest Federation has been slain by Cardinal Hinata Sakaguchi, and the Holy Empire of Ruberios has declared Total War against the monster nation."

Chloe fell to her knees, her body went limp as it still stood upright, her head tilted backward before being draped forward like the rebound of an elastic band. To an outside observer, the girl would look like the mirror image of a devasted parent who's just been told all of their children had died in the war.

Chloe's mouth was wide open as she stared lifelessly towards the ground, her mind desperately trying to find an answer, some form of reason that made this timeline worse than the last.

Am I the reason? That was the only justification she could come up with, that her telling Rimuru about the upcoming assassination attempt somehow made it come true.

Horror, disgust, and self-hatred grew like a set of exponential equations inside her mind, the vile thoughts that she had somehow killed her teacher, the only one who had saved her in both timelines, made Chloe just want to crawl into a hole and disappear forever.

Chloe's arms crossed over each other, each hand gripping the other's shoulder like ancient Egyptian mummies, her body leaned slightly forward as though the girl could not breathe.

Rimuru's...dead... and...I'm responsible... Chloe despaired, and the outside world became meaningless as her mind was transformed into a prison.

Because of my actions, the assassination succeeded... Chloe felt an overwhelming sense of guilt as she started to violently tug at her clothing hard enough to actually cause some rips.

Her fingers dug into her skin as she started to scratch it, and small traces of blood started to drip down her hand like the cracks inside her mind.

As an adult, a person's mind has completed its development, the adolescent growth period has removed all unnecessary nerve connections inside the brain and made it harder to change while also making it easier to deal with traumatic events.

However, as an 8-year-old, Chloe's brain has barely finished developing the ability for reasoning, perception, and basic skills like reading, math, and comprehension, meaning that it is more vulnerable to change and traumatic events since this is the prime time for cognitive and mental development.

Like how a growing sapling is more prone to growing off to the sides without any support, it's why childhood trauma causes things like sociopathy when children reach adulthood.

So is it any wonder that Chloe's mind is straining under the heavy burden? Twisting and turning in on itself to adapt to such trauma.

"Chloe! What the hell are you doing?!" Noel rushed forward and grabbed the Otherworlder's arms, taking control of it and ripping it away to prevent her from harming anymore, "stop it!"

"I... I can fix this!" Her mind screamed at her, her limbs struggling against Noel's grab, "I must fix this!"

"Stop! What are you doing?! You're hurting yourself!"

Something inside Chloe broke at that moment.

"I can fix this! I can fix this! I can fix this! I can fix this! I can fix this!" Her rambling started to grow half-mad, like a sinner about to be sent to hell saying that they will repent, "I can save him! I can definitely save him!"

Before Noel could say anything more, Chloe used [Yog-Sothoth] and traversed backward in time, this time once again appearing inside the chamber used for summoning.

"A 7-year-old?"

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1,000,644,016 Time Loops later

Chloe huffed and puffed as she stabbed her sword— its edge coated in a layer of broken space-time— into the core, the machine around her finally started to power off once the blade was fully inside. Chloe had been looping enough times that her Soul had undergone multiple transformations. She became an Enlightened by the 408th loop, a Saint by the 6998th, and a True hero— an existence standing on equal footing with Awakened Demon Lords— by the 25879th loop after being blessed by Ramiris during a previous loop.

As Chloe would come to discover, any Skill she learns stays with her when she time loops to correct a mistake or reset the whole board.

After fighting for so long... after looping so many times, in this one, she was finally able to defeat the Alien Mothership by uniting every race, monster, human, angel, demon, and even True Dragons, together under One Unified Banner.

The world was at peace, no one suffered, no one went to bed hungry, slavery was abolished, and people were given an unprecedented level of freedom. Chloe became a perfect ruler by having effective perfect precognition through time travel: essentially, she knows what her subjects want before they do, she knows what project would fail and what would succeed, she knows how someone thinks and can effectively plan against it, she knows what future holds and the steps needed to acquire victory. Even Guy decided to pitch in after seeing what she was able to do.

Chloe was seen as the World Empress, the wisest, most powerful, most intelligent ruler in all of history.

She was the Perfect Leader. Flawless in all regards and Perfection Incarnate, she's worshipped as a Goddess by a majority of her subjects.

In this place, no one was sad, as Empress Aubert would often slightly nudge events to ensure that everyone, at all times, would have at least one friend. No one had gone to bed hungry, as Chloe had introduced the wonders of Industries to the general population. No one was unsatisfied with life, as Chloe would stage a 'crisis' inside their lives that she knows will result in them gaining confidence after defeating it. The people lived at peace with the environment, forming a symbiotic relationship.

She was able to play the perfect balancing game, maximizing happiness and each citizen. Everyone was granted eternal youth after she had discovered a mass-producible method during the 129,160th loop.

It was a utopia.

Yet, all of this finally ended when the Cylinder appeared once more above the skies, the Alien Mothership parked itself in orbit above the planet like a moon.

The Battle started fiercely, the Nightfighers did their usual routine as Chloe had seen thousands of times before, all of these Sycamore seed-shaped crafts looked like meteors as they zipped down and approached the ground, shooting out their blue rays of disintegration.

However, unlike any previous planets, they would find their blue rays nullified when they touch an invisible spatial barrier that encompasses all major and minor centers of the population, ensuring most of the people would be safe.

It was then that Chloe and the rest of the preparations she made would strike. In squadrons of 12, each appearing over the largest congregations of Nightfighters in huge [Spatial Transportation] circles, these teams comprising of demons, humans, monsters, and phantoms were specialized in the use of manipulating space using magic and were thus hyper-deadly against any Nightfighters.

Even if they can't completely kill them, rending the sycamore seed-shaped fighter into multiple parts does slow it down, creating time for the main strike team comprising of all the True Dragons, Primordial Demons (except for Guy), and Angels to attack the main Cylinder.

Even so, the battle is a grueling one. Its gravitational anchor is strong enough that it took the combined might of three True Dragons and Feldway to force the Mothership down to earth, crashing it into Holy Void Darmagania; known to the humans as the Barren lands, it is Dagruel's domain and where the Gate of Heaven resides.

Chloe smiled as she ripped out the core after confirming that The Alien Mothership was dead. It took thousands of loops in order to ascertain Feldway's weakness, and when she did, it took another 773 resets for Chloe to convince Feldway to join her, to accept that Veldanava is dead and that this is also part of His Plan. Though Insect Lord Zelanus brick-walled any attempt at negotiation as the metaphysics in their universe was hostile to a being of the System like Chloe, the Hero opted for completely sealing the universe away.

Walking out of the hole that she made when she attempted to finish off the core, Chloe appeared on top of a half-destroyed cylinder. The Mothership looked like it'd seen better days, what with it looking more like a cactus with the number of light spears jutting out from its body, all of which were thanks to the Angels flying around the skies, their number was large enough to partially blot out the sun and darken the remains of the battlefield.

It was for this reason that Chloe had ordered the Alien Cylinder to land in Dagruel's domain; being so close to the Gate of Heaven had allowed for rapid deployment and swarm tactics of millions of angels in a relatively short amount of time. Due to the weakest Angel being B-rank in strength and Heaven's ability to mass-manufacture them, they were the perfect meat shield and, just as the Time Traveler predicted, integral in combatting the Cylinder.

Using [Space-time manipulation], the Hero appeared on the highest point of the fallen cylinder, looking down on the entire battlefield as if she was standing on the peak of the highest mountain in Dwargon and looking at the Great Jura Forest.

She saw the fruits of her labor; all the races in the world united, all the nations in the world unified peacefully into a single unitary state, everyone living the best lives they could, no one suffered, a true utopia.

Chloe then cast her gaze down at the many broken parts of the downed cylinder. Perhaps she may have gone overboard with [Absolute Severance], cutting apart the Mothership like a chef preparing a chicken.

Massive scars littered the Barren lands, and huge valleys and canals crisscrossed everywhere like a mutilated tic tac toe board, formed as a byproduct of the entropy lasers belonging to the aliens when they had hit the ground instead of the sky.

The many downed Nightfighters were too small to see from how high she was.

Chloe raised the broken core up high like a champion raising their trophies, using [Yog-Sothoth], she broadcasted her message to everyone as if she was right there next to them, "WE HAVE DONE IT! The invaders are dead! We are victorious!"

Even from this high up, she saw how the crowd moved, how the miasma of angels interlaced with demons flew about in a cheering manner, of how she could feel pure joy from each of the connections she's made using Unique Skill [Leader]

Beyond just creating a Utopia, due to Chloe's reputation as the perfect leader, when she said that an Extraterrestrial Threat was coming, other people took her seriously. So, about 100 years ago, Chloe tasked Velgrynd to explore the multiverse, trying to find the multiversal threat before they could get into her world.

After 50 years of constant searching, Velgrynd returned with nothing, causing Chloe to question whether or not it was the right decision. Eventually, she decided that it was a waste of time, and traversed once more back in time to redo that decision, having the Scorch Dragon search the cosmos instead.

That decision was again, repealed when Chloe traveled back in time and had Velgrynd stay put until the Aliens invaded.

It was through the use of tactical time travel that Chloe Aubert was able to achieve a Utopia and be seen as the Perfect Ruler. If she made a mistake, she could just unmake that decision by traveling back to before she made the choice, thereby turning that failed timeline null and void.

However, certain events seemed to be acausal, like the birth of Relentless. Chloe had allowed Rudra to research a possible unkillable weapon against the 'hypothetical' Motherships. That ended in disaster as the entirety of Nasca went offline. Less than an hour later there was now a scar that cut the province off from the mainland.

Chloe repealed her decision, but it seemed she was stuck with the Perfect Homunculus as it'll appear without cause, literally right out of thin air every 400 years before the coming of the Cylinder.

Over a million timeloops later, Chloe's age is nearing that of some stars. She's been through so much, that her sanity waned and waxed like the moon throughout all of these time loops. Sometimes she would see herself as the Destroyer of the World while in others it's vice versa. The only thing that allowed her to move past the deepest pits of despair was Rimuru.

It is truly a blessing and a curse that she's got a flawless memory by being a True Hero and all, she thought idly as she looked at her soldiers, the ones she spent hundreds of thousands of timeloops cultivating to be the equivalent of S-ranks at the very least.

This was the first time she'd ever fully defeated the Alien Mothership without anyone important to her dying. Sure, while defeating the Mothership is somewhat second nature to Chloe after so many times, doing so while the planet remains somewhat habitable is... difficult. Hell, previously, having less than five billion deaths was considered a massive victory.

"Is it done?" A familiar voice called out to her. Turning around, Chloe saw her lover, her beacon of hope, the one who mattered the most to her: Rimuru Tempest.

During some of the throwaway timelines when she was consumed by nihilism and hopelessness, it was his will to fight for his ideal that inspired and drove Chloe to do the same. So she would continue to take up her sword and travel back in time once again, trying to defeat the Mothership that would always come some two and a half years after Rimuru's reincarnation.

In a sense, the Mothership was a lot like the reaper's scythe, a pruning device, the Cutter— a hard limit on her timelines as everyone she knows will get disintegrated EVENTUALLY by the blue rays, possibly even True Dragons but she's never been there long enough to tell.

It really is annoying how the Mothership is a blind spot to all forms of Skill and Magic-based precognition...

"Yes," with the sun falling over the horizon, the sky was dyed red, and the many clouds looked like streaks of gold and red as they reflected the dying sunlight. "We have done it. It is over."

As she leaned in to kiss Rimuru, the humanoid slime let out a gasp of horror and took a few steps back in shock. Seeing how his wide eyes were pointing up towards the skies, Chloe moved her head to look up and saw a sight that only existed in her worst nightmares.

Dozens, potentially even hundreds of white cylinders appeared in the skies.

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930,552,720,202,000 time loops later.

"Haaa...Haaaa...Haa..."

Chloe, in thoroughly torn and shredded clothing, huffed and puffed as she diced the final Cylinder into multiple pieces using [Yog-Sothoth, God of Space-time]. The destroyed alien craft looked more like chunks of sausages after it had been through a butcher's shop.

In the close to 1 billion time loops she's done, the Hero determined that having the world be hyper-militarized was the way to go as they usually last the longest.

One of the constants Chloe would experience in her travel is Relentless' birth. Always, it will always be 400 years before Rimuru's arrival.

It was that one event that sowed the seed of perhaps the System breaking down inside Chloe's mind since there is no other explanation.

Previously, in the 400,000th timeloop, Chloe discovered that she was hard-locked to the time period right after the Creator's death, which means that she can't just ask him for help or even a bit of advice.

However, traveling back over 6,000 years to before even the founding of the Eastern Empire, when it was just the Kingdom of Nasca, Chloe reshaped and overwritten history by creating a grand, militaristic, globe-spanning magic empire and cultivated a martial culture within the said empire to serve as a bulwark against the eventual alien invasion.

Chloe created Intelligence out of Ultimate Skill [Yog-Sothoth]. This intelligence— Manas: Chronoa— is an acausal entity that exists outside of time and space, viewing and recording everything as though it were a book. Its primary job is to collect every last bit of knowledge and information in a single Grand Time Loop before Chloe resets it, returning back over 6,000 years ago to try again.

To Chloe, a normal time loop means her effectively jumping back in time to correct a mistake, akin to loading up a save file in a game. A Grand Time Loop on the other hand is the whole 'game'.

Effectively, this means that in just two Grand Time Loops, Chloe would have every last bit of magical knowledge of a 12,000-year magical empire, with each Grand Time Loop resulting in incremental increases of 6,000 years. As a byproduct, Chloe would have the memory and experience of the one hundred billion souls that lived and died during that 6,000-year period on the tips of her fingers in the form of Manas: Chronoa.

Having this much experience and foreknowledge allowed Chloe to churn out multiple legion's worth of Ultimate Skill Users.

The Hero's mind returned to the present and as she looked at the area around her, the entire planet was a wreck, the empire was shattered beyond belief, and choose a random point in the world, any point, and you cannot walk more than 30 seconds in any direction without encountering alien wreckage.

All of the continents were unrecognizable, the landmass changed, the planet's rotation is off its axis, and most of the ocean boiled away when these aliens moved tectonic plates at such a speed that one can see noticeable changes if they viewed it from space. Moving at this speed, the friction created a titanic amount of heat as well as massive earthquakes and volcanic activity that covered the planet in enormous dust clouds blocking out the sun.

In fact, the continental drift would've been faster had Guy not stepped in.

Colossal valleys capable of consuming entire countries span the land, taking up the majority of all remaining water like a reservoir.

She took a breath and grimaced at how hot the air was, the average global temperature even in the poles was 70 degrees Celsius, causing a mass extinction as most animals could not handle such a drastic change in temperature.

Needless to say, the areas around the equator were uninhabitable, and all but the sturdiest buildings that the time traveler deemed important survived the continental restructuring.

With many billions dead, this was the best result that she was able to get from almost 1,000,000,000,000,000 'normal' time loops. In most of them, she gets steamrolled by the Motherships, or the planet just up and explodes when the aliens decide that enough is enough and trigger the sun to go supernova by shooting this cherry red beam into it.

However, in this time loop, she had done it. She has succeeded as hundreds of Alien Motherships lay destroyed all over the globe, most of the Primordial Demons and Angels lay dead but not permanently, half of the many hundreds upon hundreds of Demon Lords and True Heroes she cultivated were killed, and over 99% of the population were gone, mostly due to the hyper-militarized martial culture she crafted that would make pre-WWII Japan say 'chill dude'.

Chloe merely dismissed Veldora's death as he'll return in a few years.

But, most importantly...

"Chloe..."

She turned around to see the grim face of Demon Lord Rimuru, his clothes tattered and torn from the fighting that had occurred continuously without end for the past few months. Behind him are Praetorian Guard wearing heavy bright red armor that is dented all over the place. The Praetorian Guards are made up of the strongest people in the entire world, in order to even apply you would need at least two Ultimate Skills.

A bit behind Rimuru, to the right, is another Otherworlder, Hinata Sakaguchi, the Captain of the Praetorian Guard. She is known as the strongest human on par with Field Marshal Rudra. Behind Hinata was Testarossa, a dear friend... her best friend...

The fact that Chloe's clothes are ripped all over the place, resulting in her being almost nude is lost on everyone.

"We have done it."

At least 200.

Every time, the second wave is always at least 200, sometimes it's ~250 or even 300 Motherships that come after the first one is defeated, it really depends on how quickly the first Mothership is defeated.

The True Hero looked up, a world ablaze and filled with smoke, the shattered moon formed into a bright ring stretching from east to west in the sky. If a third wave does not come, then it's still possible to revitalize the planet again, even if it will be difficult, to say the very least.

All she needs to do is just ask Manas: Chronoa for the DNA sample of extinct animals, plants, and bacteria and recreate them using [Azi Dahaka, Lord of Evil Dragons]. Concerning the land, she can just get Guy to use his [Gaia, God of Earth] to reshape it back to how it was.

Her gaze returned to her subjects, all of them, even with their training, looked relieved at the prospect of the War finally ending.

(AN: Play: [Gun Girl Honkai Gakuen] Jhana character song - 「Incarnation」(full song))

But again, the carpet was pulled out from under Chloe's feet when a black sphere with blue outlines appeared a dozen meters away from her current position.

"—!"

A wave of pressure eclipsing everything Chloe had felt in all her time travels washed over her. The air felt heavy as if an anvil had fallen upon Chloe's chest. The hair on the back of her head stood on its ends, her warrior intuition was telling her that this was a threat far greater, far more powerful than the combined might of even the Three True Dragons, probably dwarfed only by Veldanava himself.

The black hole disappeared, and in its place was replaced by a nude humanoid individual of haunting, ethereal beauty.

It was a God of machines.

Its height is a bit taller than Chloe's.

Its skin is absolutely flawless and snow-white, like the surface of those cylinders.

Its naked body is androgynous to the point of unknowability when trying to determine its gender, furthermore when there are no genitals.

Its long, uniformed hair is alabaster white, with stars and galaxies filling the inside like two different colored pieces of paper glued together, giving it an otherworldly appearance.

Its face is of absolute perfection with not a single asymmetry or mistake anywhere.

Its eyes are crimson, bright crimson red like freshly spilled blood.

Its mouth is small and thin, yet when resting, it looks perfect to be kissed.

Its hands and feet are covered by boots and gloves of silvery mechanical components. With the left hand carrying a single hammer with a long handle, this gave it— Perfection— a godly look... which is only exacerbated when behind the being is a band of golden light in the shape of a ring, like an Angel's Halo. The band of light's lowest tip only reaches its hip area, with the tallest point being three heads above—

—[PERFECTION].

It was both a Machine God and an Alien God, and it is [Perfection].

It is [Perfection] actualized in reality.

It is [Perfection] manifested upon the surface of this unworthy, ugly world.

It was as if the very concept of [Perfection] itself left its platonic world and descended down upon the material universe like someone taking a tour of the less fortunate.

Chloe fell speechless, everything else became meaningless at the sight of that [Perfection], of Veldanava Reborn since no other being, not even Relentless, could be so perfect.

There was a sudden blur next to the Time Traveler. A mass of red rushed toward Perfection.

—In response, the God of Machines only tapped the base of its hammer onto the ground—

It was as if a new world had been birthed by that single tap. All around them, all evidence of the fight against those alien motherships was gone, wiped away. The world reverted back to its most primitive state— the one before life existed, and so, the mass of red was gone as though it never existed.

Perfection then stared at Chloe. But, it wasn't staring at Chloe. The Machine God's focus was elsewhere as if looking at something beyond Chloe.

"This... is... the... original... world..." The Machine God said slowly and awkwardly, like a person speaking in another foreign language.

Its voice sounded so alien, yet so pleasing to the senses that Chloe could just continue to listen to it for the rest of time and will never be bored, "how... curious... this... changed... so... quickly..."

Perfection then said something that no one other than it could understand.

At the same moment, Chloe was lost in the voice, completely ignoring its content like a drug addict ignoring their future as they take another dose. Oh, what wouldn't she give to hear [Perfection] sing?

*VUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM————————*

The being then raised its right hand, and the band of golden light behind it started to glow brighter and brighter, eclipsing everything else like it was the only thing that mattered—

*FRAAAAAASSSSSHHHH———*

—And unleashed a golden wave of stillness that would dissolve any organic compounds as easily and as surely as water flowing down a waterfall.

It was a flood of corrosion, an inescapable wall of death and destruction.

However, before the light could reach Chloe Aubert, Manas: Chronoa yanked the entranced Hero out of that time and placed her all the way at the start of the Grand Time Loop some 6000 years ago.

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AN: Steins; Gate turned up to eleven.

This chapter is meant to showcase just what happens if Rimuru isn't there to help Scientia. Without him being a moral anchor, the Perfect Homunculus would quite literally go off into the deep end and become God.

The band of light behind the unnamed Scientia is inspired by the electro circle that would appear whenever you play as the Raiden Shogun from Genshin.

You know, after watching Weathering With You... it triggers me so much that I can't even describe it. Not only is everything so perfect that it causes me to cringe, but think of the potential repercussions of sinking the largest city in the world and the end of one of the major economic hubs of Asia. Can you even begin to imagine the impact such an event would cause? It'll result in a global economic recession worse than the 2008 housing crisis, which will result in several regime changes as poor economies tend to radicalize people. Prepare for a decade full of war and other similar events.

(Also where the hell is the CIA or the international attention in all this? A Weather Girl is a potential strategic weapon greater than even an atomic bomb)

There is a reason why I made it so that Scientia could never control time beyond speeding/slowing/stopping it even when it's so prevalent in the Xeelee Sequence, if I did then she would become effectively omnipotent and all enemies would become useless as she would become a new Xeelee.