73rd Move | Feeling Blue

(AN: Play: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Carter Burwell)

Rimuru stared at the person— entity in front of him. [Holmes] being completely silent didn't surprise the humanoid slime.

A female looking like someone in her early 20s with plentiful assets, Chronoa primarily wore clothing similar to what Shizue had as the Conqueror of Flames.

She had a black corset around her waist, and above the corset was a white top with a short cape out back. The ends of her legs were covered by an equally white skirt and another, a longer cape that almost touches the ground. Finally, her legs were clad in black leggings with white boots to top it all off.

Gone was Chronoa's signature mask, showing her delicate face that echoes child-like innocence, this time without a screen separating the two of them.

Rimuru was familiar with Chronoa even before her broadcast. Being the leader of a nation in a fantasy world, you'd have to investigate myths of old since more likely than not, they're real.

He was especially looking out for information concerning things like Demon Lords.

"Rimuru..." Chronoa's head tilted a bit as she spoke softly with such love, passion, devotion, infatuation, and obsession in her voice that it made Rimuru's false skin tingle as though a soft paintbrush were moving against it.

Her eyes, her lifeless eyes, those two blue voids stared at him. Rimuru wanted to break eye contact, but he can't. He felt compelled. His attention was drawn to that cerulean abyss, unable to slow his fall as more and more of BLUE consumed him.

Everything else vanished. The world slid into the unnoticed background, and in its place were the two portals to blueness.

He wanted to take his eyes off of this thing, except he can't. He can't help but be effortlessly entranced— captured— taken— by that emptiness, that silent BLUE.

The blue pressure that's weighing heavily on his soul, like a God passing judgments on mortals after they die.

He felt so small, so weak, so insignificant. If Rimuru had a normal human body, he'd no doubt would be frothing at the mouth right about now.

He can't move. He can't touch. He can't smell. He can't taste. He can't hear. He can only see.

Is he still alive even?

Those two holes in reality, like a gravitational singularity, were drawing him in, sucking him in and unwilling to let him go.

Like an observer moving past a binary star system with two blue supergiants, those two bluish voids moved past his body———

"—!——"

————He's not moving, it's the orbs that are moving—!

That realization yanked his mind out of that trance, that abyss, that void like a person desperately swimming upwards after they've been thrown overboard in an attempt to reach for a gasp of fresh air.

Just as Rimuru escaped one abyss, he found himself in another, a prison this time.

Chronoa was hugging him.

Chronoa was lovingly hugging him.

IT was touching him.

IT was touching him in such a loving manner.

This thing's touch felt cold, as though a corpse was hugging him, as though a corpse was loving him.

Intoxicating love was radiating off of Chronoa in waves, filling the dreadful silence.

Chronoa then leaned in. Rimuru then felt something wet with a rough texture trace itself across the inside of his ears.

Rimuru felt violated. He felt dirtied by ITS touch. He wanted to burn the defied clothes and skin he had on right now and purge this memory of IT ever touching him.

His body started shaking like an engine as it revved up.

He wanted warmth.

He wanted to throw up.

He wanted to escape.

"Oh Rimuru, I missed you so so so so much." Chronoa's LOVING voice said.

Rimuru's breathing turned heavy like an animal that was taking in more air so it could run faster.

A feeling of disgust dominated his mind, like how the sun dominated the daytime sky.

ITS words finally gave Rimuru the spark of courage required to push Chronoa away like a frightened wild rabbit running away from tiny humans that approach them.

Surprisingly, he was successful in getting out of Chronoa's dreaded embrace.

Rimuru moved as far back as possible, as far away from IT as possible, until he hit the edge of the black dome.

In his panicked state, Rimuru's mind resorted to his most primitive functions. While he could teleport away, his state of mind didn't allow him to and reverted back to when he was a human. A powerless human.

"Stay back!" His voice echoed across this silent world.

A powerless, weak, pathetic, insignificant human.

In retrospect, even if he could, Chronoa would never allow it. For according to Relativity, Space and Time were the same things, and Chronoa was the Hero of Time.

The thing known as Chronoa giggled. It was an awful sound, like knives in audible form.

IT acted like a schoolgirl about to confess to her crush, and it made Rimuru visibly recoil in revulsion. In the back of the slime's mind, the trope was absolutely ruined, completely perverted by IT.

Chronoa approached him, lovingly, slowly, oh so very excruciatingly slow like a predator playing around with an injured prey, knowing full well that the prey could not escape.

Looking around desperately, Rimuru found a monochrome statue nearby that triggered a sense of familiarity, he then noticed the street he was on was made from a specialized blend of concrete. Something was speaking to him inside his mind, yet he couldn't hear it, the voice sounded jibberish.

Looking down, Rimuru found that he was holding a really nice sword—

Sword!

A sword he could use to defend himself with! Just like the Samurai of old!

Rimuru brought the sword up, its name the slime felt like he knew but just couldn't recall in such a high-stress situation.

He pointed the sword at the approaching Chronoa.

"Stay away from me!"

Rimuru felt trapped. The wall behind him and Chronoa in front of him, the only thing separating him and IT was a really, really familiar sword... what was its name again?

His brows furrowed in confusion even as Chronoa approached him step by step.

(AN: Play: Re:Zero Season 2 OST - "Distortion" by Kenichiro Suehiro. Repeat until you see the horizontal line)

10 meters away.

Never taking his golden eyes off of IT, Rimuru silently and discreetly racked his brain for an answer. He tried to reach for an answer inside his mind yet they always seemed to be out of range, as though something was intentionally clouding it.

Fear was replaced by curiosity as Rimuru glanced at the single-edged blade.

What was its name?

5 meters away.

Damn it not now! His attention immediately returned back to Chronoa, who isn't even fazed by the sword pointing at IT, evident by the fact that her movement hasn't even slowed down once.

Step, step. Like the drums of war that heralded the arrival of the enemy within a theater play, ITS clear footsteps helped by the unbearable silence and the well-paved road to Metropolis only emphasized how IT is encroaching.

IT is coming.

IT's eyes showed only an abyss of blue and love that the slime could drown in.

Rimuru's lips thinned as he raised Kusanagi up to where the blade paralleled Chronoa's stomach— Kusanagi! That's the blade's name!

1 meter away.

Before the slime could internally celebrate, he noticed how Chronoa stopped by just beyond the reach of Kusanagi, ITS eyes now displaying a tiny flame of amusement within that loving blue abyss.

Then, Chronoa did something that would haunt Rimuru for as long as he would live.

Chronoa continued ITS movement as though there wasn't a blade between IT and Rimuru. Predictably, Kusanagi pierced the area between the thing's stomach and chest, and fresh scarlet liquid seeped out and around the impaled katana like a badly built hydraulic piston that was now leaking water.

Chronoa's face displayed only cold dispassion while conversely, ITS mouth contorted into a haunting smile. ITS face showed no hints of pain as though there wasn't a sword currently going through ITS chest.

ITS movement did not stop. The world continued to be silent save for the sickening wet noise coming from flesh being mangled as Chronoa further skewered itself onto the katana.

Rimuru's eyes widen in unbridled horror, his face exhibiting absolute existential terror as Chronoa completely walked through his greatest weapon.

"Stop..." A barely audible whisper escaped Rimuru's lips.

Chronoa only stopped at Kusanagi's hilt, the crossguard dyed red with her blood, ITS lifeless portal-like eyes to a blue abyss mere inches away from Rimuru's own.

"Stop stop stop..." Rimuru tried to back away, only for his head to hit a wall.

Rimuru felt unbelievably exposed. He felt as if a mere breeze could topple him. His body's shaking worsened, and his legs shivered as though he were human and it was an extremely cold winter day.

Chronoa continued to move forward, pushing onto the crossguard and subsequently, pushing onto the handle as well.

"Stay away, stay away stay away stay away stay away..." Rimuru's head started swaying side to side, his mind rejecting the reality before him.

The slime barely felt the Herrscher gem stabbing into his stomach in the sheer mind-numbing terror he was feeling at the moment. The void felt all-consuming as BLUE neared, even more, the black wall behind him was unmoving even as the humanoid slime tried to back away.

"Rimuru... you have no idea how glad I am that we finally met. I can't wait for you to see what will happen to Blumund."

Chronoa placed her chin onto Rimuru's right shoulder as she grabbed his upper arms as if to hold him in place, her blood dirtying the slime's clothing.

"I am so glad you didn't come to love God's Blindspot. I probably would've permanently killed myself had you actually done that. So many things, eons upon eons of planning, this timeline I have finally succeeded. My ultimate victory is nigh. Every prerequisite has been met."

She then leaned in even closer, whispering, "By the way, you shouldn't trust Mobius."

Rimuru's jaw went slack as his legs gave out like a dying man. Pure existential terror coursing through every inch of his body like adrenaline coursing through a person running from a lion.

He collapsed onto the ground with a 'thud', sliding off the black dome as his dilated eyes stared at Chronoa, his hands, and arms fell to the sides as though he no longer had any control over his own body parts. Had it not been for the wall behind him, Rimuru would've fallen backward and lay there on the ground like a corpse in a coffin.

Kusanagi's handle continues to protrude out of Chronoa's stomach, the blood coming from that gash formed a small puddle around where she stood.

Chronoa hovered over Rimuru, shadow covering her face as her size seem to almost grow, dwarfing the one underneath it.

With two glowing blue orbs within that shadow combined with an unhinged smile, Chronoa created a horrifying visage that burned itself into Rimuru's soul.

"This will be our little secret. No one will believe you. Hehehehehe~"

Once again, she giggled.

That horrible, disgusting, revolting, terrifying, LOVING giggle pricked Rimuru's senses like knives dragging themselves along his skin.

Rimuru's eyes looked glazed over as he can no longer take it. His humanoid form melted into a blue slimy puddle, and his clothing was stuck inside him.

The last thing his conscious mind heard was a burst of innocent laughter, like one belonging to a child yet felt so wrong given the context.

_____________________________________________

The first thing that Shizue noticed after the teleportation was a sudden bloodcurdling scream.

Seeing how the scream came from President Rimuru, Shizue immediately threw Rimuru to the black wall before standing in front of him. With her in front and the wall in the back, there's very little opening for an opponent to strike at the VIP.

Seconds passed, and the screams continued, yet Shizue remained vigilant. While a normal person might check the President for what's wrong, a preliminary analysis from Shizue's sensors showed no lethal trauma nor even wounds, meaning that the cause for his distress is likely mental or possibly neurological in nature.

The protocol states in such an event, the first thing to do is to secure the surroundings first.

It was only when Mobius requested to appear via hologram that Shizue finally dropped her guard and went to assess the situation involved with the President.

If the AI deemed it safe enough to appear without weapons, then there are likely no antagonistic entities nearby.

Shizue's chest opened up again, and from inside it, the servant took out a spherical shell that had three protrusions on one hemisphere for 'legs'. Shizue then carefully placed the sphere onto the ground with the protrusions touching the surface of the paved road.

Moments later, Mobius appeared as a hologram projected from that sphere.

The Slaughterhouse Class Artificial Intelligence wore clothing different from its usual self. She wore things that made her appear more human— a black shirt, a white lab coat, and a pair of jeans.

It was almost a mirror image of Scientia.

By now, the screams have mostly subsided. Shizue found Rimuru in a fetal position, mumbling something about "monsters".

Just as Shizue was about to physically touch the President, she was stopped by Mobius, "Let me do it."

Shizue paused for a moment too long before relenting.

"Mr. President." Mobius shook the slime as Shizue replayed her memories at a fast pace, recalling how just after teleportation by [Sirin] was when President Rimuru became distressed.

Perhaps it was the sudden cut-off made by the Bunker Protocol? It must be traumatic to have suddenly millions of Named being cut off from the Namer.

"S...Scientia...?" Rimuru looked so vulnerable that it made Shizue do a double-take.

Mobius merely smiled softly, no doubt a comforting gesture for a distressed mind, Shizue recognized. Inside her Siberium chassis is a vast archive of data. From martial arts to biological data to complex mathematical equations involving the movements of fluids, her Lady made sure to have her be the ultimate combat machine. Thus, Shizue could easily perceive Mobius' tactics.

"No, that is the name of my Creator. I am Mobius." The AI placed a hand above her chest, gesturing to herself as she made that statement.

Recognition flared inside Rimuru's eyes as he got up. His right hand clutched the side of his head as his eyes gained a faraway look.

Shizue observed how the fingers of Rimuru's free hand are twitching subconsciously without him realizing it, like a human that's undergone an extremely stimulating experience.

Something traumatic must've happened.

"Shizue..." Rimuru stared at Shizue for a bit too long before the AI coughed, gaining his attention.

"President Rimuru, why were you screaming?"

"I..." Rimuru held the side of his head again as his eyes narrowed in contemplation. "I..."

'No one will believe you.'

"I was visited..." Rimuru's mouth shut as he is once again reminded of that BLUE, that eerie blueness, and that god-awful LOVING giggle, both of which will forever haunt his nightmares, serving as an eternal backdrop.

Like a ghost, he could always swear he can hear that giggle as he frantically looked around him for the source.

Before either Mobius or Shizue could react, the light returned to Rimuru's eyes as he yanked back control from his fears. "I was visited by Chronoa."

Even when Rimuru was prepared for it, the coming silence was deafening especially when there were no natural ambient sounds like the whistling wind or the chirping of birds.

[Holmes] had stopped any attempt at lightening the mood by Rimuru.

"That's..." Mobius looked exasperated, "How?"

Rimuru opened his mouth to speak, only for no sound to come out after [Holmes] assessment.

That's easy, he thought, I have Kusanagi—

Kusanagi was strapped to his waist, exactly where it should be before he had pulled it out against Chronoa.

'Hehehehe~'

A chill went down his spine as Rimuru's once again reminded him of that giggle.

Taking a quick glance, the slime saw how the blade was untouched by blood, as though IT hadn't impaled itself onto the blade.

Ignoring [Holmes]'s deduction, Rimuru pressed on.

"It was a time stop. Chronoa paused time so the both of us could... talk." Rimuru spat out the last word like an insult.

"That's impossible." Mobius stated frankly, "According to the Theory of Supercausality, time as we experience it is an illusion. Time is the act of cause and effect being enacted. Time is absolute in the eyes of a superluminal observer. You can think of the passage of time as something like those anime you've watched: 30 frames of reality, snapshots in time, bundled up together and layered like ceramic plates about to be washed within a single second, where the changes between those frames as you watch them are simulating a continuous sequence of time."

To help Rimuru in comprehending, Mobius projected a thin holographic string into reality. Mobius then zoomed in on this string until Rimuru saw how it's never a 'string' at all, instead, it's a series of frames reminiscing of CDs stacked on top of each other and giving it the illusion of a 'string' from far away where the details are less discernable.

"You never notice these 'frames' that are the size of the entire universe as you live your life because each 'snapshot' lasts exactly one Planck Instant. Specifically around 10^-43 seconds (one with 43 zeroes in front of it) before the next frame comes, a length of time so short there are more Planck Instants within a single nanosecond than there are nanoseconds within the current age of the Universe. Moreover, if time is stopped, causality would cease, and all you can perceive is darkness."

Thanks to [Holmes | All of Creation], Rimuru was able to at least somewhat keep up with what Mobius was saying.

"I know that. My Ultimate Skill concluded how it's possible that Chronoa didn't touch the time of those photons destined for my eyes and the particles around me at the time—"

"My Creator's research concluded that particles undergoing wave functions are independent of time and space; they turn into non-vibrating one-dimensional quantum strings, it's how they're able to teleport sub-atomic distances irrespective of the lightspeed limit, allowing them to be unaffected by General Relativity despite being sublight particles. She then theorized it is quite possible there's actually only one electron in the entire universe after the time-traveling experiment proved the existence of the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle." Mobius interjected, turning to look at Shizue.

"My point is: if the time for the universe actually was stopped, Shizue would've still been able to compute information. In effect, even if she's stuck in place, her mind would still be cognizant of being stuck."

Shizue, upon noticing the hint, nodded, "Indeed, right after the teleportation, I appeared exactly where I imagined myself being."

"Then... how was I able to have a chat with Chronoa?" Rimuru's fingers trembled a bit without his knowledge, and the other two people noticed.

The slime might not trust Shizue, but he trusts Mobius like a surrogate Scientia since she is the Perfect Homunculus' last creation, like the daughter of your best friend. This trust effect is further compounded when Mobius wore clothing so similar to Scientia's, so to hear surrogate Scientia completely rejecting Rimuru's claim started to make the slime seriously question if the talk with Chronoa really did happen.

Looking back on it now, Rimuru concluded it was indeed a really surreal experience, him talking with what he sees as the enemy that caused him the most amount of pain.

Rimuru entertained the idea that perhaps the whole thing was a hallucination, that he hated Chronoa so much he accidentally activated [Time Acceleration] and dreamt up a scenario—

"I theorize that it's possible that the breakdown of the System is starting to affect souls. Even with the Spirit Theory, there is much still left to be discovered about souls and Essence. For example, Essence has a near acausal nature, that is, trying to affect their time is a very difficult endeavor even for my Creator. Not even tinkertech time magic could fully stop the temporal decay of Essence. Even if the true nature of time eludes me, the equations, theories, and notes my Creator has made are incoherent to my current understanding of physics, as they seem to suggest time is somehow cyclic. Supercausality alone is already difficult to understand, the time loops like the one you see before you should be impossible if time is an illusion, yet it is clearly not."

Mobius let out a sad sigh, "it is... remembering and learning is two different concepts."

"I— I see..." Rimuru stammered, a bit embarrassed and deferring to Mobius' more knowledgeable expertise. "So, the breakdown of the System is what caused my 'hallucination'?"

'You shouldn't trust Mobius.'

The green-haired AI nodded.

In all honesty, between [Holmes] and Mobius, Rimuru trusts the latter more.

Thus, it isn't a surprise that Rimuru intentionally ignored [Holmes]'s assessment.

Gaslighting, an act of psychological manipulation that makes a person question their own reality with the end result of being disbelieving an experience.

In truth, gaslighting is shockingly easy for people who have very little knowledge. It's how religions first attracted followers. Gaslighting is even more accessible when the victim themselves don't want to believe what actually happened.

The brain also intentionally forgets the exact details of traumatic events just like how it never memorizes the actual physical pain related to a specific memory.

Rimuru doesn't want to think that 'talk' was real, so he subconsciously ignored details that might clue him to a different conclusion. Eventually, over the course of a few seconds, the doubt ceased to exist as he mentally reassured himself that it was all but a dream.

So does he still feel a chill down his spine whenever he's reminded of Chronoa?

Rimuru couldn't dismiss [Holmes]'s words entirely. Thus instead of that, he put these particular bits of knowledge on the mental equivalent of a post-it note, not forgetting but neither is it on the front of Rimuru's mind.

'I'm sure Mobius has her reasons. After all, Veldora used guilt-tripping and those puppy eyes all the time!'

The slime mentally replied to [Holmes], who stayed silent. The Ultimate Skill was specialized in recognizing patterns and information over a large set of data, just like the real Sherlock Holmes as the detective solves a crime. It can mimic the power of [Tattletale] but to a lesser extent as [Holmes]'s predictions become more accurate the more data it receives.

Rimuru's current thought was that the Ultimate Skill's assessment doesn't paint a complete picture, and moved on.

Yet even as the slime tried to dismiss these discrepancies raised by [Holmes], a seed of doubt had been both planted and started spreading its roots, completely immune to any attempts made by the slime in removing it.

Rimuru let out a tired sigh He closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts, contemplating their next move—

"—!"

The black dome.

Just as the humanoid slime turned around, he noticed the gigantic dome which encompassed the entirety of Metropolis.

"Right, let's talk about the elephant in the room; namely, that." He pointed at the black wall that seemingly reaches beyond the skies themselves, "what is that?"

Mobius looked at the black dome for a few moments too long, as though she was contemplating something before responding, "That is the defense mechanism my Creator crafted for the defense of the nation. In the event of a rebellion, a city's loss to an enemy during war, or the large deletion of a city's populace detected, every city with a population above that 10,000 thresholds will get trapped in a time loop. Since war is the capture of cities, this defense mechanism takes that possibility away from the enemy since said cities become unassailable."

Rimuru had no words. All he felt at that moment was indifference and acknowledgment since of course, only Scientia would make something as overpowering as a timeloop into a glorified defense system.

Although speaking of timeloops...

"I thought that time was an illusion? And what's with the black dome?"

The hologram halted as though its wifi went out.

"This time loop was created through the careful manipulation of a gravitational singularity. As you know, gravity deforms the structure of spacetime according to the Theory of Relativity." Mobius looked at Rimuru expectantly, as if she would be tremendously disappointed if he didn't know.

The slime nodded furiously while having a knowing smile on his lips. Being around Scientia long enough and things like Relativity become common knowledge.

"As sublight particles bound by General Relativity, through deforming the structure of spacetime in a certain and very precise manner using a hyper-dense object like a black hole, you can cause the light cones of every particle within a certain radius to loop back in on itself, creating what's known as a Time Loop as each particle traces their own worldline like a train track. The black dome is an impenetrable event horizon, a cavity within the universe which carries the looped space forward in the time axis."

Rimuru's confident smile turned awkward as he sweatdropped. Even with [All of Creation], he didn't understand a single thing! He felt like a caveman that's just been given an iPhone.

Hell, the only thing he understood from that sentence was 'worldlines' and that's because an anime he watched had traveling between worldlines as the main premise! Even without the deductive ability of his Ultimate Skill, Rimuru could tell the 'worldlines' in this case didn't involve timelines.

"You didn't understand a single word I said, didn't you?" Mobius said with narrowed eyes.

"..."

The AI sighed in exasperation, acting very much like an impatient teacher whose students kept getting stuck on what in their perspective was a really easy math question.

"Tell me what you don't understand."

In an awkward tone, Rimuru scratched the back of his head, "Everything. I don't even know what the latter half of that sentence was about. It sounded like someone speaking the language of the gods."

Mobius frowned, a hand on her chin as she made an expression of deep, indecipherable thought.

"Like worldlines are another word for timelines, right?"

"..." Mobius stared at Rimuru in such a fashion that after a couple of seconds, Rimuru couldn't stomach it anymore. Seeing the slime squirm in discomfort caused the green-haired AI to continue, "for your sake, I hope dearly that was a joke."

"It was a joke!"

"Right. A worldline, in the explanation I used, describes the path a particle takes as it travels through 4-dimensional spacetime."

"Ahhh, so it's the travel history of a particle mapped out?"

Mobius nodded. Then the AI projected out a hologram of a graph from a graphing calculator, only except there were two additional lines that branch out from (0, 0), both at a 45-degree angle upward to the ends of the positive Y-axis, forming a cone shape.

"This is an outdated model of a Minkowski Space but it serves its purpose in simplifying what I'm about to say down to a level where a beginner like you could understand with the aid of [All of Creation]." Mobius then pointed at the axes, "The cone represents every possible place that a particle could be in at a certain point in the future. The X-axis in this example describes space and the Y-axis is the movement in time. As one approaches the edge of the cone, one would approach the speed of light, hence the name 'light cone'. Typically, if one breaks the light barrier, according to this model of spacetime, they would be unbound by causality and can travel backward freely in time. But here, this doesn't happen, hence why the Minkowski Space is considered outdated, replaced by a new model that my Creator made specifically to deal with superluminal physics, called:

Supercausality."

"Right..." Rimuru nodded along as though he was tired, which was immediately noticed by Mobius. Internally though, he was getting a serious case of deja vu with how similar Mobius is explaining things.

So similar were the two of them that if one were to ignore physical features, Rimuru could honestly say that he could not tell the two apart.

"I'll explain to you why true time travel isn't possible after one breaks the light barrier later. Now, imagine spacetime as a turbulent sea, and particles are ships on that sea. It is possible, as we're seeing right now, for the sea to be turbulent enough— thus creating enough curvature within spacetime— that the ships move back to where they had started. By manipulating the gravitational pull of a singularity, Scientia curved the spacetime inside the city to such a degree that it looped back in on itself. As for the black dome, it's a spacetime cavity that brings the time loop forward with us on the Time Axis..."

Funnily enough, the information said by Mobius was actually starting to click.

[All of Creation] worked off of knowledge Rimuru already knew, so while he could perfectly notice the structural flaws within a building using [All of Creation] since he used to work as a general contractor, the really in-depth sciences are way out of [All of Creation]'s ability to comprehend.

In a way, it's like a book; it is a representation of what Rimuru remembers.

Since Scientia rarely, if ever, talked about things related to spacetime. Consequently, the slime had no knowledge to work off of. Thanks to Mobius however, [All of Creation] is slowly starting to help him comprehend it as he gathered more and more information.

Still, Rimuru's humble enough to know that he's still lightyears away from truly understanding spacetime on a level close to Mobius.

Let's not even get to Scientia, who somehow possessed the ability to conjure strings made out of spacetime.

As he thought of this, one thing stood out from that complicated bundle of extremely technical terms.

"Say, Mobius." Rimuru stared at the black dome before looking up, the curvature of the dome ensured he couldn't see the top. Even after looking at it for so long, the dome was still a breathtaking sight with how large it was, "the people inside... whenever a loop finishes, do they retain their memories?"

In a span of time so short it could be measured in hundreds of nanoseconds, Rimuru could almost swear the holographic Mobius panicked as if she hadn't expected him to ask that question.

"They don't remember. Memories are just electric signals in the brain after all, and none of our citizens are Spiritual Lifeforms that could think with their souls." She calmly said, conviction filling every word coming out of her mouth.

The brief flash of panic was so short that Rimuru had to second guess whether or not the expression he saw was real or if it was another hallucination caused by the breakdown of the System.

[Holmes] instantly connected the information with previous sets of data, painting, in Rimuru's opinion, only a slightly more accurate image, not fully accurate.

Instead of getting suspicious, the slime had to suppress a smirk. He rarely surprised Scientia, and it's always the Perfect Homunculus who surprised Rimuru. This trend continued with Mobius, thus it's refreshing to surprise the Super AI for a change.

"Well, regardless of whether or not they remember the loops, we should probably wait until Jeanne and Diablo get here before freeing them. With the angel massacre finally stopping and Zalario being stuck inside, we can set up a trap with the Primordial and kill that Youten." Rimuru then paused, "you all do know who Zalario is right? And that he's a Youten?"

This time, Shizue spoke up while Mobius stayed oddly quiet, "My Lady has set up eyes all over Metropolis. There's likely no place in the city where her sight doesn't reach."

"..." Rimuru stared at Shizue, shaken by how casually she just admitted to secret surveillance. Snapping his fingers and pointing at the black dome, the slime decided to focus on the problem at hand instead dirtying his mental image of Scientia even more, "Disturbing Big Brother behavior and violation of privacy aside, I think Scientia has a way of popping this dome?"

The information deducted by [Holmes] made Rimuru pause for a brief moment. If this is the case, then a dome with a radius of a couple of hundred kilometers must be on an insanely small time loop.

"I would not recommend popping the dome."

The humanoid slime stopped all movement to stare at Mobius in appalled shock.

"W—why not? The massacre has ended—"

"541,405."

"What?"

"Five hundred and forty-one thousand four hundred and five. That's how many people I counted visibly die during the initial assault of the Great Tenma War. Within one hour, more people died than what it took to awaken my Creator as a Demon Lord."

Like a bandaid being ripped off, Rimuru practically hissed, "Scientia's awakening took 50,000 souls, not half a million, why are you repeating the lies said by Chr—" An uncontrollable chill went through Rimuru's entire being, "...that thing?"

The idea that his resurrection took the lives of half a million, a number greater than both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, would be more than he can handle, so he ignored it.

"My point being, I think it would be far better if the people remain inside the time loop. It would be far safer for them that way."

"Wars are fought with people. In my old world, the nation that I was born in lost to another nation because they had twice the number of people my nation had—"

"The common people are considered important if only they are somewhat equal. For example, a True Dragon is worth far more in terms of value compared to a normal human in every way. I could supplement the lost population with General or Narrow Artificial Intelligence I can easily build. It's ridiculously easy for a Super Artificial Intelligence like myself to create a lesser version of me. I can also arm any remaining population with weapons that can shatter mountains if necessary, but I hardly think so as I can always produce drones."