14. Rollback, or the Meaning of 'Now'

"Uh...?"

Shiro was momentarily stunned, unable to grasp what had just happened. The place he was now was in the shadow of a rock, about a hundred meters away from the rabbits.

He quickly felt his body—nothing felt wrong.

"Did I just die?"

Shiro muttered, dazed.

"Shiro, I'm so relieved you're safe. Well, not safe before, but you are now."

Mitoka spoke with a tense expression.

"What happened?"

"Your 【Instant Death Resistance】 activated automatically. Normally, 【Instant Death Resistance】 just auto-heals or regenerates you, but in your case, since your title 'Apostle' and skill level were both maxed out, the maximum effect of Instant Death Resistance—【Rollback】—was triggered."

"Wait, so that's... that one?"

"Yes, that one."

They both instinctively fell into their usual 'that thing' conversation, the silence between them thick with quiet astonishment.

【Rollback】 was, in essence, time rollback—a concept common in paradox-driven time travel stories. It referred to the idea that, for some reason, the world's timeline resets to the past.

But actually experiencing it? That stirred complicated emotions in Shiro.

First in his mind: again, "The Strongest?"

Then: "What about the paradox?"

And finally: "Could it be... my design, implemented exactly as intended?"

Shiro loved time-travel science fiction. Naturally, when designing the Filidia System world, he'd put significant thought into the concept of time.

And the algorithm he ultimately devised and adopted was this: 'Now' is the time observed by a specific observer—and the system marks that time as 'Now'.

Additionally, the implementation of "past" through complete data preservation for each loop. The prediction of the near future via simplified pre-processing of world operations. And the implementation of "foreknowledge" by utilizing previously backed-up data when a rollback occurs.

It’s brute force, certainly—but that’s exactly the kind of "luxury programming" Shiro, who embraces resource-agnostic coding due to relatively cheap hardware, would favor.

Of course, this approach means there’s no distant future, and only a select few can perceive the present. In other words, past, future, and present do not coexist simultaneously along the timeline. Only the "now" as seen by the divine exists—and only that "now" contains consciousness.

There’s the insoluble problem of what "now" actually is, but one can’t spend a lifetime wrestling with that. So, since the world system has already adopted the concept of "god," why not just accept that the divine’s moment is the present? It’s a simplistic algorithm, but Shiro was content with it.

When the world is rolled back, all existence is restored from the past archive. Or rather, the pointer indicating "now" simply returns to a prior point in the archive—so no one even realizes a rollback occurred. The future that already happened is only used as information for foresight or premonition skills.

The only exceptions are the gods outside the world, or those with super-memory.

"So, if this is the case, I must’ve gained the super-memory skill the first time I died, and this time around, my memories are just carrying on?"

“That seems to be the case… well, it doesn’t explain why Shiro’s super-memory is so high, but anyway, the physical body—meaning the existence object—has returned to its original state. So, no injuries remain. The soul—meaning the memories—are continuing and preserved.”

“Huh… I should thank the goddess. Taking on this investigation and just showing up, doing nothing, and calling it a day? That’d be shameful and unforgivable.”

Shiro thought that, and nearly sank into gloom—then reminded himself that this was only just beginning. There was still much ahead.

“Still, even if I’ve come back to life (??), what’s going on, Mitoka? That strategy should’ve worked, right?” Shiro pressed Mitoka.

“Shiro… I’m sorry. The actual events don’t match the data we had. Something’s off. An anomaly.”

Mitoka gave a guilty look as she answered.

“Hmm… an anomaly. So this is what the goddess meant by the ‘problem’ in this world—or maybe a ‘bug’?”

Shiro muttered.

“That’s right. Even comparing the鉴定 results and the database data on the Black Horn Rabbit, Shiro’s magic should’ve been enough to finish it. In fact, the rabbit’s movement—coming in from the side—wasn’t supposed to be unpredictable. That’s the abnormal part.”

“That speed wasn’t the normal effect of the Black Horn Rabbit’s 【Short Step】 skill,” Mitoka pointed out.

“I see. So something’s amiss—some kind of anomaly causing the skill to perform beyond its intended limits.”

Shiro’s interest piqued at the first real clue.

“And besides, Shiro’s maxed-out stealth skill shouldn’t have been broken.”

Now that he thought about it, yes—exactly. He remembered.

"Five senses and magical detection should theoretically be unable to perceive it..."

"Indeed. So the only possibility is that Shiro charged straight toward the location where the magic manifested—moving at an abnormal speed."

"Ah, right. Debugging time, then. Let's fire up Ideo and inspect it."

Shiro activated Ideo and inspected the three Black Horn Rabbits one by one. Then he noticed something odd about the one on the far right.

The other two were around level 20, with agility between 150 and 200. But this one had a level of 50 and agility of 10,000.

"Why is its level and agility so high?"

"Indeed, strange. The other two are within normal Black Horn Rabbit parameters."

"A bug causing abnormal level and stat values? No—just from this info, the cause is unclear. Can we rewrite the stat values?"

"No, the stat values are just numerical representations of the entity object's abilities and state. Direct value rewriting isn't possible. Conversely, that means something must have boosted its abilities—normally a skill. But there's no such skill apparent," Mitoka explained.

"Ah. In that case, let's just take it down for now. Something about it feels off. I get the sense we shouldn't leave it be."

Shiro spoke, then paused to consider a countermeasure.

Well, if we're going to face that thing, we'll need speed too. After a moment, he snapped his fingers and spoke aloud.

"Right—let's go with High-Speed Movement Naubs Complement!"

"...What on earth is that?" Mitoka stared, utterly bewildered.

"Fufu, just had an idea," Shiro smirks. It’s rare to see Mitoka flustered, so he’s feeling rather pleased with himself.

If the signal coefficient can be rewritten, then the entity's positional data should be editable too. So, measure movement points via mental 3D spatial tracking, apply naïve completion—or maybe spline interpolation—and calculate intermediate points. Rewrite my own positional data at high speed, and boom, 3D high-speed movement?

And, Shiro explained it to Mitoka and listened to her response.

“……huh, I see. Well, it’s technically possible,” Mitoka said, a hint of surprise in her voice at Shiro’s idea. Still, she managed to wear an impressed expression.

"Right! Gotta rewrite my own direction vector too!"

While Shiro looked delighted, Mitoka calmly analyzed the method and began explaining it to him.

"Shiro, you can move by activating the initial setup—everything's preconfigured in your mind. You can cancel the spell mid-cast, so adjust your path on the fly depending on the enemy's movements. Reconfigure and re-activate the route as needed."

"Ah, I see. I hadn't considered interrupting and restarting a spell mid-cast. But are you sure you don’t need more practice?"

And yet, despite having said it himself, Shiro feels a flicker of unease.

I'm fine.

For some reason, Mitoka said that with a calm expression.

After recalibrating the plan, Shiro closed in again with stealth skills maxed out, reaching just shy of thirty meters—same as last time.

After firing the stone ball, immediately leap upward from the feet.

My head dipped downward as my body launched upward, and an instant later, I saw the familiar Black Horn Rabbit charging back toward the spot where I’d just been.

Timing-wise, it was tighter than I expected. That’s some serious speed.

It charged forward past where I’d just been, stopping abruptly only after overshooting by a few meters.

Targeting it, Shiro launched a Stone Ball from above—perfect hit.

But neither the first horn rabbit nor the one I’d seen before had yet been finished off.

Shiro instantly teleported fifty meters away, then reappeared near the first rabbit and fired a second Stone Ball.

The ball struck the rabbit’s neck—just as it let out a “Pikyee” sound, its head snapped sideways and it collapsed.

Shiro watched it fall, then instantly teleported twenty meters closer to the second rabbit and fired a Stone Ball straight at its head.

He fired a second shot a moment later—just to be safe.

The giant body fell with a “Pikya,” then twitched once and went still.

After retreating a hundred meters, Shiro observed the scene, then confirmed with a quick鉴定—both rabbits were dead. The third had apparently fled somewhere and was nowhere to be seen.

“Phew… managed to take them down,” Shiro exhaled, relief in his voice.

“Excellent work, Shiro,” Mitoka said, circling him with a smile, genuinely impressed.

——‘【Spatial Mobility】Level 1 acquired.’

——‘Status Level has increased to Level 17.’

“Wait, up to 17 in one go?”

Shiro was stunned by how high the level had jumped.

“Since your level was still only 1, the level gap with your opponent was huge—so the experience gain was substantial. The fact that this abnormal specimen had a high level played a big part. Plus, your Apostle title boosts your growth rate significantly.”

Mitoka explained.

Shiro shoved the rabbit’s corpse whole into his inventory and headed back toward the stone stage.

＝＝Status Check＝＝

Shiro, Human (?), Male, 17

Level: 17

Class: SA

Vitality: 100/1001

Magic: 100/142

Stamina: 100/185

Physical Attack: 429

Physical Defense: 429

Magic Attack: 1076

Magic Defense: 429

Dexterity: 590

Agility: 914

Luck: 100

Status: Hyper-Healthy

Attribute: None

Title: 【Saintess Firumia’s Apostle】

Plugin: 【Basic Magical Spirit】

Unique Skills: 【Idea】 Level 1, 【Mitoka】 Level 1, 【Instant Death Resistance】 Maxed

Skills: 【Magic】 Level 3, 【Magic Perception】 Level 3, 【Magic Manipulation】 Level 3, 【Hyper Memory】 Level 4, 【Concept Language】, 【Materialization】 Level 2, 【Scouting】 Level 1, 【Identification】 Level 1, 【Inventory】 Level 1, 【Invisibility】 Maxed, 【Stealth】 Maxed, 【Magic Control】 Level 1, 【Earth Magic】 Level 1, 【Water Magic】 Level 1, 【Ice Magic】 Level 1, 【Wind Magic】 Level 1, 【Fire Magic】 Level 1, 【Thunder Magic】 Level 1, 【Barrier】 Level 1, 【Intuition】 Level 1, 【Premonition】 Level 1, 【3D Mobility】 Level 1

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