Chapter 382: Taking All the Spirits Is the Best Revenge
When Tokisaki Kurumi heard what Takumi said, she was instantly stunned.
She caught the implication in Takumi's words.
"Find her?"
She ignored the earlier part of Takumi's sentence and fixated on that. What did he mean by finding her?
Kurumi stared intently at Takumi.
"Your dear friend isn't really dead," Takumi said. "She merely fell into the Neighboring World—and fused with your Inverse self."
The White Queen from the side story is actually Yamai Sawa.
When Tokisaki Kurumi heard this, her entire body froze.
"Sawa is still alive??"
She couldn't believe it. Yamai Sawa was still alive?
"Yes, that's right~! She's indeed alive. And she has fused with the Inverse version you discarded. But if this situation isn't handled properly, she might truly die."
Takumi patiently explained all of this.
Hearing his words, the tears in Kurumi's eyes became impossible to hide and began streaming down.
"She's alive... she's still alive..."
In that moment, Kurumi was thrilled. Finding out her best friend was still alive made her incredibly happy.
"You can enter the Neighboring World as well," Takumi added. "If you want to find her, you can go take a look. Or I could go with you—we're both curious about what's in there."
The Neighboring World was Mio Takamiya's private domain and covered the entire planet. Its core was her angel, Eden.
Within it, all the laws, logic, and rules were dictated by her.
It was created specifically to house the Spirits she created.
Those who were converted into Spirits by her and had their memories erased remained within.
If a Spirit crossed over from the Neighboring World into reality, it would result in a massive spacequake.
There were ten regions in total in the Neighboring World, corresponding to the ten Sephira Crystals.
So of course, Takumi had to go.
He planned to copy everything while he was there—how delightful would that be?
In this world, Mio Takamiya was essentially a god.
If she wanted to, she could control the entire planet.
But Takumi was confident he wouldn't be detected.
"Then we'll go together!" Kurumi quickly decided.
She had made up her mind.
If she was going to the Neighboring World, she'd go with Takumi.
She was still wary of that place, which is why she rarely entered.
Takumi nodded without saying much more.
He sent her some documents in the chat group explaining this world's settings.
Kurumi quickly browsed through the files.
While Takumi was uploading the information, he suddenly froze.
"Itsuka Shiori?"
He noticed something strange. In this world, it wasn't Itsuka Shido—it was Itsuka Shiori?
That was unexpected. But thinking about it, it probably didn't matter.
Honestly, taking on Mio Takamiya wasn't that hard for Kurumi.
She could just abduct all the Spirits and dump them into Takumi's world.
Then she could make a clean getaway.
Her best friend was back anyway.
Or she could power up a few more times and return to fight Mio Takamiya one-on-one.
After a few upgrades, maybe her Sephira Crystal would fully belong to her.
Right now, it still technically belonged to Mio Takamiya.
Takumi sensed the current conditions, and suddenly a spatial disturbance rippled through the air.
Alarms blared around them.
"A spacequake is coming!" Kurumi explained.
"I know!~ But I don't want it to come. Hey, Kurumi—what do you think would happen if you took all the Spirits with you?"
"Send them all to my world instead. The Spirit you're up against would go insane, right?"
"After all, to her, the Sephira Crystals are everything. Everything she does is to revive someone."
"If she loses all the Sephira Crystals..."
Takumi paused to think.
Would she travel through time to get revenge?
She definitely would.
If Kurumi actually did this, then Mio Takamiya would certainly try to go back in time.
Kurumi isn't the only one who can manipulate time.
With this in mind, Takumi smiled faintly.
Then he sealed off the time axis.
A powerful force locked this world's timeline.
From that moment onward, no one in the future could return to this specific time.
It was like Takumi had placed a checkpoint in the river of time.
Future travelers could only return to a time when Takumi wasn't around—after the Spirits were already gone.
If the future had already happened, no one could alter it.
He simply locked this period of time.
As the Spirit of Time, Kurumi immediately noticed the temporal change.
"This??? What happened?"
She was stunned by the sudden shift.
Something had clearly changed, but she didn't know what.
Mio Takamiya felt it too.
What was this? Why did she suddenly have a bad feeling?
What had happened?
Yet, upon closer inspection, nothing seemed amiss.
She gave up thinking about it.
To Mio Takamiya, nothing was a problem she couldn't solve.
That was how confident she was.
The current issue was: what happened with the Princess?
The spacequake occurred, but then disappeared?
Did something go wrong?
Did she emerge, but not fully?
Were the Spirits acting up again?
For now, Mio Takamiya fell into deep thought.
She didn't even consider the possibility of sabotage.
To her, it was more likely the Spirits were malfunctioning.
No big deal.
If anything really went wrong, she could just reset everything.
She didn't need to suspect someone was interfering—perhaps the Spirits themselves were the problem.
If they didn't appear, just wait a bit.
It was fine.
Besides, Itsuka Shiori wasn't ready yet.
This gave her more time to prepare mentally.
With that thought, she started making preparations.
...
Meanwhile, after suppressing Tohka, Takumi nodded in satisfaction.
"Let's go! I'll take you to meet the other Spirits."
Kurumi was stunned.
"The other Spirits? You're going to take them all?"
Realizing what he meant, she looked at Takumi.
"Of course! Didn't you hear what I just said?"
"If we take all the Spirits, what do you think she'll do?"
"Isn't that fun? Oh right, did you finish reading the materials?"
"You should know who the original Spirit is now, right?"
Takumi looked at Kurumi.
Among the data he had sent her was information about Mio Takamiya.
Hearing this, Kurumi went silent.
She had indeed seen it.