Chapter 9 Episode 11: Vessel of God 4

Camera tunes in on the Kamata guild’s workshop area as someone talks about how yet another scene has blown up despite them not going anywhere, and that someone turns out to be Breke. He comes out of hiding as he checks his surroundings, having used his morph ability when he realized something was happening.

Breke wonders who the wrestlers are, calling their appearances weird and commenting on their agility. He figures they must be professional soldiers like himself and says they have a huge advantage in their numbers. Arc by contrast won’t last long.

Breke doesn’t know what’s actually happening though and considers whether to run. He eventually decides he should help, they way you helped him despite not knowing him. Suddenly he feels a reaction as something calls to him. He runs off to investigate as he heads to the workshop interior.

There Breke finds the Genociders’ artifacts, which he wonders is what called him over. He reaches for Harlot’s chalice, and suddenly light starts pouring from within himself once he makes contact. He ends up transforming into Harlot involuntarily soon after that.

Scene then shifts over to where Arc is, and the wrestlers laugh about how they won’t be getting any cheers with how she’s performing. She’s irked at how strong they are despite how stupid-looking they are, saying she’ll lose at the rate things are going.

The wrestlers charge at Arc as she notes more reinforcements coming in. But before they reach her the mobs are paralyzed and flop over one by one. The ones not affected try to figure out what’s happening before they notice a mist of poison. They fall victim to it too and say it’s such a heel move. Arc tries to figure out what happened when she recognizes the smell.

Before that goes anywhere else, a voice calls out saying the mobs have shown their amigo their lucha soul and how they’ll carry on their thoughts. Tiger Man’s silhouette appears as he says it’s turning into a fun war game and talks about how it’s almost his turn to get out there.

Narration describes how the Warmongers’ apparent theme is blaring from somewhere while a mic performance is coming from the speakers. Arc demands to know what crazy nonsense is happening this time.

Scene then shifts back to you at the same time, after you were dumped down a trap door. A voice calls to you calling you mother and asking you to wake up. You say you can hear them, wonder about the mother thing, or remember the falling thing. You open your eyes to see Talos, who asks you to forgive him for tying you up.

You realize you can’t move and ask what the big idea is. You’re specifically tied to a chair, and it seems nothing you can do will loosen them. Talos says he never had any plans to disgrace you, but tying you up was necessary. He asks you to forgive him again and calls you mother.

You ask about being addressed as mother, and Talos holds your hand affectionately. He seems happy to meet you, and you react either with exasperation about someone seeing someone you don’t know inside you, wondering if you do resemble them but adding you don’t remember, or say it’s bothering you because it doesn’t feel right to you.

Going A if it matters, Talos talks to you directly now, calling you his mother’s vessel. You might not know, but he asks that you let him tell you of something. Suppose you’ll be parted from someone forever, someone important enough to you that you’d stake your life for them.

Say you have feelings of gratitude, regrets, and thoughts you find hard to express kept inside your chest. And then one day a doppelganger of that person appears. Their voice, their scent, behavior, and everything is as you remember it. Would you be able to stay as a nonbeliever in rebirth? Would you be able to stay there and not pay attention to that person?

You don’t have an answer. Talos says you probably have someone like that coming to mind. Someone you think you won’t be able to see anymore. Talos says he believes from the bottom of his heart that if you were to accept those precious feelings, he’d be happy. You either try to start to argue against that, ask if he’s telling you to be the substitute for the memories, or say you’d be happy to be loved by him even if you are a vessel.

Not going with C, Talos says he’s aware he’s saying something cruel to you. Despite that, he says he can’t let you just die without doing anything. You ask him to let you go, and Talos refuses, asking if you’ll go to the battlefield if he let you loose. He says you can’t win there, so he can’t sit by and let you go.

You either respond that you don’t know if you can’t win until you get there or that you won’t give up without before doing anything. Talos says he Knows because in the previous loops you’ve tried everything. And no matter what you did, it didn’t help. He says you should have seen the memories for yourself already. The ones where one of your friends kill you in the end.

You are shocked he’d know about that and ask if he really knows about the past loops, and then say you have heard something about that from Shirou again. There’s a flashback back to Chapter 8 to where Shuuichi talks about the summoner emblems protecting memories from app battle rollbacks but not the loops affecting the whole city. Only Pillars can carry memories through those.

After the flashback ends, you either ask if he has a Pillar or ask about his artifact. Talos says it doesn’t matter. He does say that only he will not betray you, of which he is sure of. He says only he is your true friend and everyone else is an enemy, and he asks that you understand.

You don’t sense that he’s lying. Talos goes on to say that while he doesn’t know everything, he can still make a guess. If he understands the system, no one can beat him. He says that the system has no end after anyone gets the conclusion they want. No matter how long things go, no matter how many loops happen, the ending keeps getting delayed.

Whether someone set Tokyo up that way or not, in the end you are always sent to a terrible end. You don’t say anything, but Talos says he knows what you want to say. He figures you must be wondering why wouldn’t he attack you in the end. Talos assures you he won’t, because if he ever does there’s a mechanism in his body that will stop him.

You either react in surprise, disbelieve him because you still think he’s Hephaestus and not a robot, or ask why he’d go so far. Talos says if he didn’t take such measures he thought you’d never trust him. After all, you only just met him and know nothing about him. Even so, he says he wants you to love him. He begs you to stay here in hiding until this loop ends.

If you can’t escape the loops, he says he wants you to live as long as possible while hiding there. His eyes seem to cling to you as he begs, his hands on your knees. He says you saw him fight off the wrestlers earlier and proclaims no one can beat him, and no one will be able to lay their hands on you.

Talos argues this would be the happiest way of doing things for you. You won’t have to worry about being killed by your friends. He also begs you to accept him as Hephaestus, your child and no one in particular. You actually are tempted by the offer as you could see Shino and Harlot and the others when the loop restarts.

A thought about Arc flashes into your head. Talos says if you fail, you can just retry it. If the loop restarts, maybe you can finally reach the perfect ending. And as such, he begs you once again to give up on this loop as he sounds like he’s about to cry.

Scene shifts away to tune in with Moritaka, Shuuichi, and Claude. Claude asks if Shuuichi has given up and says it’s such a pity what happened with Duo. He talks about how by all appearances the other guilds can do nothing but surrender. Shuuichi actually starts reacting like a flicker of life is coming back to him at Claude’s words. Moritaka is taken aback and asks what Claude is doing.

Claude proclaims that Shuuichi never protected Duo. Duo just protected him. Shuuichi gets pissed at the statement. Claude then starts talking about how there was once an experiment that took babies and remodeled them for the purposes of adapting them to artifacts. Those babies had artifacts implanted in them while they were in the womb, turning them into designer babies. There were failures, which is how Shuuichi and Duo came to be.

Claude corrects himself saying that Duo is at least partly a success. Duo has been adapted to a subset of artifact with traits of a certain Pillar. Shuuichi is shocked Claude knows about this, and Claude goes on to say that this is the human modification experiments that happened in the East that was the basis for the Fujimi Academy experiment data. That is the fourth success case that came from it, the Artificial World Pillar.

As such, Duo carries memories from the past loops, who as the fourth successful adaptor was given the designation D. Through using those memories, Shuuichi and Duo used the guidance of an accomplice to escape from the experiments in the east. And by taking aliases, this is how they’ve survived this far.

After a moment to process this, Shuuichi angrily asks how it is Claude knows all this. Claude initially brings up the Wisemen guild before saying they only ever shared bonds as brothers and laughs. Their accomplice is the only other person who should know how this happened. Claude initially boasts that the Emperor of Ikebukuro is not to be underestimated, but admits that isn’t the case.

Claude then says that the answer is simple: Duo told him everything. Shuuichi tries to deny this, but Claude says he should already know that is the only possible answer. Duo being the genius he is would never let information slip.

Silence passes between the two for a moment before Claude rhetorically asks why Duo would tell him any of this. What would he want of the man who asked him to design the underground maze? He says if Shuuichi is smart as he’s supposed to be, he should know.

Shuuichi glares as he spins the wheels in his head. After some time he says that Claude noticed the structure of the loops when he was revived. He supposes it has to do with the former owner of his artifact, but he decides to leave the topic be before he says anything more concrete.

Anyways, Shuuichi theorizes that based on that guess, Claude set up the Ikebukuro Underground to recreate the same environment as the app. His goal for doing so was to figure out make it to the end of the loop as well as “how to continue fighting for even just a bit longer.” Claude doesn’t deny this and prompts him to go on.

Shuuichi says Duo must have considered it. He must have thought that when he can no longer help, Ikebukuro out of all other guilds would be able to survive a bit longer. He must have also seen that Shuuichi would be having this conversation when he should be unable to do anything. And that there would be information hidden here only Claude would be able to reach. Therefore, the only conclusion he can come up with is that he was entrusted with this.

There is information that even the guild from the East cannot get to in the Ikebukuro Underground. And Shuuichi is the only one who can trace the way Duo thinks. Duo must have submitted himself to the ones in the East who made him, and in doing so draw eyes away from Shuuichi to let him go free.

Claude verbally pokes at Shuuichi saying there’s a limit to how reckless you can talk of things, then asks how he’s so sure of that. Shuuichi yells that the reason is because he’s Duo’s brother. Claude seems a bit surprised and asks if he’s gone mad. Shuuichi is willing to roll with it and says he’ll happily become insane if it’ll get his brother back.

Claude smiles and asks what it is Duo might have been thinking about through all the loops. How many times must he have repeated his escape? And how many times did he drag his hindrance of a brother? He must have kept coming up with ideas even with all the memories of his deaths. Why would he forsake him at this time? He should have forsaken him when he made his escape.

Claude is about to guess why he did, but Shuuichi stops him saying he doesn’t need to say what his guess is. He feels he should just ask Duo himself. He admits he might have been reliant on others and left everything to his brother. He must have left him with the weight of all the loops. So Shuuichi decides. He decides he will carry the burden next and end the loops.

Shuuichi says he doesn’t even intend on giving forgiveness. Ignorance must be overtaken by human intelligence, and what is already known must be changed. He says he won’t forgive the ‘wisdom that should be at the top’/his (or the?) beloved one that looks down from above. Shuuichi swears to destroy everything and send them to the depths of hell with all their regrets.

Shuuichi then faces Claude and says that he as Wisemen vice guildmaster will take over the request in Duo’s place. Claude agrees to it and says he’ll be counting on him. Moritaka thanks Claude for kicking Shuuichi back to life. Claude waves it off saying there’s not much he hasn’t done before. Claude then says the last key is you. He calls you the one who stoked the fire in his frozen heart and says there is no way you can let anyone run ahead of you.

Speaking of you, scene shifts back to your side of things as Talos asks if you understand. You refuse to stay as you decide to end the loops. Talos asks why and says you’ll die. You say you’ve been entrusted with ending the endless battle. Talos is surprised by this.

You talk about how there was someone important to you that came with you to the ends of the battlefield that you cried over. There was someone who lamented the endless battle who kept fighting until the end. If the loops happen, you’ll likely lose the memories you were given by them. And so you’ll end the loops, because you are the only one who inherited those memories.

As you shout that out, your sword appears on its own as if responding to you, like it has its own will. You are surprised by this and wonder if Solomon is doing something. The broken sword attempts to cut you out, but the bindings undo themselves on their own only to tie themselves back up.

Talos says it won’t work and that the bindings have been made so that you can’t cut yourself out on your own. You have the concept of Severance along with 22 others, except there are countermeasures put in place inside the binds I think. He names the powers of distance, bloodlines, control, gravity, and dreams and reality. Those and any other powers have some sort of counter put in.

You ask why he knows about your artifact, then realize his knowledge of the loops must go that far at least. Talos says They know everything you can and can’t do. That’s what it means to lose the information war. They aren’t after you now, but it’s only a matter of time. Once they’re done with the Things They Need to Do, they’re after you next. When it happens, you won’t be able to do anything. As such Talos insists this is the only thing that can be done.

There’s suddenly a reaction and a flash of light which takes Talos by surprise. You say it also happened during the battle with Musashi, and that the power from then is reappearing, where two dragons are overlaid. The sword you summoned before returns, still with the crack in it. Except now yet another dragon’s shadow lies on top of it.

The sword cuts you free. You ask if it’s Solomon in there and thank him and you hold the cracked sword to yourself. Talos is shocked by this turn of events and let slips that Hephaestus used the past loop data to make it impossible for you to break out no matter which of the 23 powers you used.

You do catch on to him mentioning his ‘creator’ but you decide it’s unimportant now. You tell him to let you go because Arc and the others are fighting. Hephaestus appears and says he really couldn’t keep you hidden. You are shocked by his showing up thinking it’s a copy before you notice some differences.

Hephaestus thought that if his Ideal Self used his ideal outline it might have worked. He then orders Talos to step back, who obeys if somewhat reluctantly. You ask if Hephaestus is the real thing, and he confirms it. He also adds that he’s an unsightly, disgusting weapons maker. As you face him, your sword shatters as no one can hear it, and the episode ends.