Five days later.
Lucy stood alone in the room, staring forward without focus.
Over these five days, everything she had done could be described as settling her affairs. She had handled everything she could think of-spending time with her parents and family, then erasing their memories, and more.
If she succeeded, all of these preparations would be meaningless.
If she failed...
The version of her that merged with the universe would lose all emotion and become part of nature itself. In that case, these actions were necessary.
Now, she carried no burdens.
With nothing left tying her down, she finally relaxed completely. With her mind clear, she could devote all her attention to what came next.
As if snapping back to herself, Lucy looked toward the place where Morin had disappeared.
She took a deep breath.
Then she began to move through time.
Time rewound.
As the timeline approached the moment of Morin's departure, the sensation returned-every cell in her body being torn apart by an invisible pressure, disintegrating into the universe itself.
This time, Lucy didn't stop.
She pushed forward with everything she had.
As long as she could reach the moment Morin left, she could follow him.
And ask for his help again.
This wasn't a "one-in-ten" chance.
The probability was close to zero.
But as Professor Norman once said, even the smallest, most insignificant possibility was still a possibility. And that meant it was worth attempting.
Doing nothing guaranteed failure.
As she drew closer to the target point in time, space itself began to warp and twist. Invisible forces radiated outward from Lucy's body and from space-time itself, creating the distortion.
Faced with this danger, the speed of Lucy's cellular evolution skyrocketed.
Yet her expression didn't change.
She did everything she could to suppress her development from reaching one hundred percent, while simultaneously forcing time toward the target.
She had to balance both.
Failing either meant total failure.
What restrained her were the instincts embedded in her cells and the logical laws governing this world.
To succeed, she had to break both.
"I have nothing..."
Time reached a point zero-point-many-zeros-one seconds after Morin's departure.
Everything froze.
This was the digital limit of the world. Time could not be subdivided further. No refinement was possible.
At the same instant, Lucy's brain development reached that same limit.
If anyone could see her now, they would find her appearance incomprehensible. She looked like everything. Every color. Every form.
She was everything.
She had forced both limits to the same position.
A miracle among miracles.
A probability equal to the product of countless near-zero values.
"I have no fear," Lucy said into the absolute stillness.
In the next instant, she vanished.
She broke through both limits simultaneously.
A change erupted from that point, spreading outward faster than light itself. This was no ordinary phenomenon-it involved the fundamental laws of the universe.
The digital limit had changed.
Earth itself appeared unaffected.
But as the change propagated outward-to the Solar System, the Milky Way, and beyond-the gravitational constant shifted.
Planetary orbits altered.
Stars deviated from their paths.
Celestial bodies that should have collided narrowly missed each other, while others that had long been stable suddenly crashed together.
In an instant, countless such events occurred across the universe.
Yet Earth, as the epicenter of the change, experienced no immediate consequences.
As for those distant stellar explosions...
Who knew how many thousands or billions of years it would take before their light could ever be observed from Earth?
Meanwhile, Morin was preparing to meet some old acquaintances from the Assassin's Creed world.
Fox.
"Professor X" Wesley.
And others.
Oh, right-he could even find Morgan Freeman and tell him he'd just seen him in another world, where he played a very kind professor.
As Morin planned this, he suddenly frowned.
Within his perception, something had locked onto him across an immense span of space-time.
A... law?
After using the temporary Hades character card, Morin had come to understand that higher levels weren't about raw strength, but about manipulating laws.
Still, this was the first time a law had actively locked onto him.
And stranger still-it felt weak.
Like a newborn compared to what he had previously encountered.
More importantly...
It felt familiar.
Morin searched his memory and quickly found the match.
The world he had just left.
Lucy?
How could she possibly find him?
With that thought, Morin chose not to break the lock.
Even if Lucy had grown stronger, her strength was still bound to her original world. Reaching one hundred percent brain utilization and becoming a "god" was a setting unique to the Lucy universe.
Placed in another world...
Well, setting aside everything else, just look at DC's Deathstroke. His brain runs at ninety percent, and doesn't he still get beaten by Batman?
Of course, Batman being the "Daddy of the Multiverse" couldn't be ignored.
Either way, even if Lucy had reached one hundred percent and gained the ability to cross worlds, Morin had nothing to fear.
He had reached a level where he could activate and understand portions of laws. At this point, his strength remained at its peak regardless of the world he occupied.
Lucy was different.
She was like the Flash.
Without the Speed Force-setting aside Barry's bug of generating it himself-she would become weak.
Of course, not completely ordinary.
Morin analyzed all of this calmly, standing in place and waiting.
It didn't take long.
Space began to tremble and distort, then tore open violently.
A naked woman fell out, her body covered in wounds.
Morin frowned.
After repairing the damaged space, he looked down at her.
She was unconscious.
Her bloodied state made it hard to tell whether she was even alive.
"...Is it really this bad?" Morin muttered.
He began casting healing spells without hesitation.
His mood, however, grew lighter.
That Lucy had succeeded-had even followed him-was something he hadn't expected.
This was rare.
Extremely rare.
By understanding how Lucy broke through her limits, Morin might gain valuable insight into his own future path.