29 Successor 3

"Why would you do that?"

"Of course I know. We’ve been preparing for eight years, just to find you."

"Eight years ago...?"

"That’s right. Can you understand if I tell you we were the ones who led you to this fleet that day?"

Mio recalls a single event.

The incident that led her—Mio—to drift into the Third Fleet.

"You brought me here?"

"Exactly. In a place free from interference, we wanted to negotiate with you."

Mio tightens her guard.

Because—calling what Harold described 'leading' was, at best, a euphemism for abduction.

She glares slightly. Harold lets out a laugh that borders on a wince.

"Even if you glare at me like that... I thought it odd that you’d be lured by a drone like that."

"Mmm..."

Jin had seen an invisible-type drone before.

Using it, the Second Fleet had monitored a group of ASIDs eight years prior.

More precisely, the next Queen of that group. At the time, the individual now known as Higashiō Mio was nameless.

Something, perhaps a trigger, made Mio aware of the drone’s presence.

She had pursued it, attempting to destroy it—more accurately, to play with it.

Unable to endure the chase, the drone fled—and Mio pursued it relentlessly…

Until she was caught in the overlight of the hidden Lombardia-class battleship *Liza*, flung into the vicinity of the Third Fleet.

There was no particular significance to that destination.

Originally private troops under Harold, they had occasionally disguised their movements, using other fleets as camouflage to conceal their actual affiliation.

That was only one part of it. The First Fleet was a possibility. The Fourth Fleet was also possible.

"We saw it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To establish some form of communication with the next Queen. The conditions for that had been arranged."

Yet it did not unfold as intended.

Mio, overruled by the override, followed the instinct of her ASID designation and veered toward the Third Fleet.

Or perhaps it was simpler—mere curiosity toward something new.

At that moment, she arrived mid-combat—engaged in conflict with another group.

Mid-chaos, she was struck by stray fire and fell, clinging to Ship One in shattered condition.

There, healing her wounded body, she formed a cocoon.

To evade her first attack, she housed her spirit—what might be called life-ether—within a vessel shaped like a primitive organism.

She sounded anxious. Even we cannot enter the Third Fleet’s air defense zone without meticulous preparation. That is why we lost track of you.

What came after that, Mio remembered clearly.

No need to rely on memory.

A primordial organism—essentially a vessel mimicking the humans dwelling within the Third Fleet.

Mio, whose consciousness had just transferred into this pseudo-biological construct, wandered through Ship One—until she encountered him.

Jin.

From that point onward, we focused solely on finding you—but progress was difficult. After all, we were outsiders. It took us eight years to locate you.

One reason was the Third Fleet’s highly advanced surveillance society. Personal data management and operation were strictly controlled.

Technologically, the level was far higher than the Second Fleet’s, dictated by necessity.

We surpassed them in industrial capacity, but in information warfare, we were at a disadvantage.

Why were you trying to capture me?

Even after hearing this explanation, it remains incomprehensible.

Without delay, focus shifts toward Mio, intent on activating her immediately.

“You’re the one who tried to capture me—words like that sound terrible.”

Mio’s sharpness falters again, as she’s met with that familiar, troubled smile.

Harold’s expression resembles Shirley’s—almost too closely.

“There’s something I must ask of you, Mio Higashi.”

“Ask…?”

“Yes. One day, you will grow into the queen who leads ASID. Only someone like you, capable of such communication, could fulfill this request.”

“What is it…?”

“We need your cooperation. With the Laitera Project.”

“The Laitera Project…?”

The unspoken question—what?—reaches Harold clearly enough.

“Official designation… Second Time Jump Experiment Project. Put simply, it’s an attempt to build a time machine.”

Mio’s eyes widen in shock upon hearing the name of the project.

Such a thing—.

"Can it be done?"

"It can. The very lecture you attended—was precisely this."

"I was asleep. I don’t remember."

"...I see."

It was a theory no one had ever taken seriously.

Harold had thought its absurdity made it appealing to children; the shock was brief, quickly replaced with composure.

"Anyway. The theory exists. No, the first attempt had a theory too—yet the necessary components could never be obtained. And the same held true for the second—until we found you."

The theory was nearly identical to the one Jin and Shirley had once discussed as idle speculation.

Namely:

"High-output ether, derived from a single element. Information transmission to the past via ether communication. Further, reception by a genuine 'ace'—a human so exceptional—that consciousness alone may leap through time."

"The main bottleneck is the high-output ether generated by a single element. That was the goal. Mio-chan."

Chi, who had been silent, interjected.

"Currently, the highest output reactor humanity possesses is two thousand lammy—equivalent to a Longinus-class mobile battleship. But that is far from sufficient."

"Exactly. To prevent degradation of ether communication signals, we need at least triple that output. Such power cannot be generated by humans."

Thus, Harold explained, assistance beyond humanity was necessary.

"ASID's Queen possesses the ability to generate high-output ether through a single element. Therefore, in other words, if we could obtain assistance from a Queen-type entity, this plan would be feasible."

For the first time, Mio understood why she had been targeted.

She understood—but—

"What do you intend to achieve by creating it?"

The purpose remained unclear.

Because to Mio, time-jumping was merely a means.

Achieving it was not the goal itself.

"Sending information to the past means it's no longer just a form of future prediction. You understand, right?"

"Yeah."

It's fine. I'm keeping up.

I worried how difficult it might be to follow, but Harold's analogy was straightforward.

"For example... suppose you trip over a step and fall."

"Yeah."

"But if you knew in advance that you'd trip over that step, what would you do?"

"Uh... I'd be careful, I guess."

Everyone would do that, Mio thought.

If you know an accident is coming, you take action to avoid it.

"What we're aiming for is scaling that up. Eliminating avoidable tragedies. That's the core of the Laitera Project."

"Av... avoidable tragedies..."

"The most representative case is the encounter with ASID. Unfortunately, communication with your kind is impossible, so it ends in conflict."

"……We're different from them."

"Are we, now?"

"Um, like how humans differ from penguins."

The analogy seemed to fail in the opposite direction.

Harold and Chi both tilted their heads.

Mio recalled a middle school lesson and found a more fitting comparison.

"Um, we're both warm-blooded, but otherwise completely different. We're mammals. They're more like birds."

"Hmm... interesting... No, I'll save that discussion for another time, properly."

Harold's curiosity had been piqued by the opportunity to hear about ASID directly from ASID itself, but he redirected the conversation back to the main topic.

Casualties have occurred in the conflict with ASID. But if one knows a region is occupied, one need only avoid it. That is the kind of awareness one can develop.

I think I understand… roughly.

Avoiding crises through advanced future prediction.

Indeed. That is a commendable capability.

It is not only that. Events that have already occurred in the past—those too may be avoided, if their information is transmitted.

Changing the past?

Mio is startled.

No. The reason our allies cooperate is precisely this.

Chi nods slightly at those words.

They wish to erase past tragedies. To desire a proper narrative—Right Tale—and thus named the Laitera Project.

But… even if we go back, the present cannot be changed, can it…?

There is already precedent for this. Altering the past changes the present. The flow of time becomes a single thread.

"Practical example...? E, why?"

"—The world already exists after past alterations have been made. Once, or perhaps multiple times, the past has been changed."

Harold exhaled.

"The technology has been lost for a long time. The first temporal leap experiment attempted to replicate it, but abandoned the effort."

"Why did it disappear...?"

"Unknown. Regardless, what matters now is that altering the past changes reality. We cannot perceive it ourselves."