Doubting Elin felt like digesting razor blades, but Walter couldn't add it up. Elin was a ten-out-of-ten hyper-competent perfect woman, and he was a, well, barely average guy. Furthermore, video game influenced genetics pushed the looks of some people a bit above average. He understood, rationally, women in Eovamund chased strong men, to the point of tolerating harems, because monsters filled the world. At the end of the day, though, Elin didn't seduce him, and she waited on him hand-and-foot. He did nothing to deserve it.

When Walter first shook hands with Lord Remont Manticore, he immediately recognized the presence of magic, and it felt like a bug burrowing into his skin. What he didn't realize, until after the war, the nature of it. Too inexperienced, like Laira trying to sound out the words and read.

After Lord Remont's execution, he read the records and compiled a list of individuals affected by Remont's magic. The worst victim was his maid. Walter found her in the pauper's district, living like a mute and smiling automaton, doing chores for a charitable, but poor, matron. Even though they wouldn't execute her, as an unfortunate victim, individuals in Eovamund were callous to unfortunate circumstances. After all, they all lived next to horrendous death every day. The maid's mind was completely walled off, tortured by solitude, a prisoner inside her own body.

Remont used her, habitually, and burned the magic into her soul, like a cattle brand, so Walter hardly needed to concentrate for replication. Reverse-engineering the spell required only one attempt. He couldn't do anything about her lost past, that was gone, like an emptied recycle bin. Tears and hiccups poured out of the maid once he finished. It worked. Walter left a generous handful of silver, payment for silence since mind-control magic was illegal, and to give the recovering maid a chance.

Since he glanced at Elin's body with the 'Eyes of the Archwizard' and saw the aspects, the coding, of spells inside her very body, he suspected. Walter confirmed, between Laira and the maid, he could learn new magic that day. So, he experimented with Magic Missile. The more Walter practiced with it, the more Walter gradually changed its properties beyond the original scope. He could, without a doubt, reprogram magic. Learning new magic became creating new magic.

It tried too hard to be 'real.' Ancient magic, from the Age of Miracles, worked solely from environmental mana and imagination. With strong enough willpower, anything could be achieved. After the summoning of the First Four Heroes and Idrun the First, magic changed. The idea of programming, of computers, came with it because it naturally matched what Aratron, Prometheus to the elves, God of Magic, desperately wanted or needed it to be. Rigid. Incantations, or programming instructions in a machine, aligned and branched from the same concept, using language to control nature. Intuition, like a snuffed candle of a memory, pointed Walter to this conclusion, since Aratron's Grimoire was stipped from him. But, he didn't need it, not directly, since the Eyes of the Archwizard gradually returned, like a man adjusting his eyes in the dark. The relationship between the eyes and the grimoire bridged something akin to fluid intelligence and crystallized.

Magic teetered on the cusp of altering, once again.

The monsters did not get weaker with time, but the enlightened races did. Spells passed on from parent to child, like genetics, and it mutated. But, programs did not handle random changes well, and so they gradually failed from errors. It needed to be patched.

To fulfill his promise to Nix, so she can birth Prince Wilhelm's half-elf child, Walter needed to disable the additional magic-based chromosomes. He wanted to practice the alteration process on Rabecca's magic, to develop a 'friendly fire mechanism, to prevent self-harm each time she cast the spell. Or, even better, find a way to expand her repertoire. Social mores, it seemed, ran deep, and Rabecca rejected the idea of Walter putting his mana on her code. Walter felt confident; Rabecca did not.

So, because of his duel with Elin, Walter decided to try out changes with Chain Lightning. His hand cooked the first time. If not for his own enhanced numinous body, the compliment to Elin's enhanced body, lending itself to magical skill and enhanced willpower, then he would have lost his mind on the first try. He could understand now why Rabecca refused. The second time, it burned less. The third, he didn't even lose feeling in his arm. With understanding, seeing the code inside a person, himself, and others, he scanned Elin. Walter discovered the remnants of the Scales of Love and Lust.

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Walter might be freed of them; Elin was not. Hence, there was a chance she was an unwilling participant, like Remont's maid, in their relationship.

Elin tried to yank her arm away. "Walter! No, you bastard--"

> Method of Loci.

Darkness. Utter darkness. Walter experienced this only once before when he first vaulted the threshold between Earth and Eovamund. The void-oil body of Ouroboros.

"Well, ghosts can't talk, at the very least. Right? Maybe they can. But I don't feel like a ghost. I would probably know without a doubt if I was dead or not, right?"

That was Walter's disembodied voice, spoken by Elin's memory of him, while he waited for Elin to pull him through.

"Ouroboros, can you hear me?"

That was Elin. Wait, that's not what she said. Was it? Why is she praying to the Goddess of Chaos?

"Yes! I can hear you! Where are you?!"

"I'm on the other side of the door. Can you see it?"

"Yes! I see it!"

The door, again, like the silver screen without a movie reel, rotated ninety degrees. His past self's hands appeared. Then Walter, third-party to Elin's salvation that pulled him from Ouroboros, noticed that Elin's memories included his hands in the light and only his hands. How did she see them? His body didn't exist yet. It was being created.

He knew this. Of course, he knew this. The Duke of the Rotting Garden alluded to it.

"Good! I need you to fight, okay? Pass through the door!"

"I will!"

Chains, ephemeral like his own Magic Missile, coalesced between then.

Yeah, this is where I accidentally trapped her with the curse, I think. Wait? What? What is going on?

The chains extended from her to him.

Why is Elin cursing me? She wouldn't do that, and she wouldn't even be capable at the time. No, I see. Ouroboros fulfilled Elin's wish, but would she really? I can't believe she'd do that. No way.

Walter frowned. His trespassing mind into Elin's memories passed through the door. He had to see the results now.

The clocktower opened up before him, where Elin found Walter, hostage of the Duke of the Rotting Garden, where she got a look at his lonely sexual practices back on Earth. The kinky pornography on the monitor was embarrassing, and he blushed. These images might have misled her into behaving so submissively with him, after being so dutiful and strict and assertive. The memory versions of themselves talked, but the words muted out like bubbles under the surface of a lake.

Wait, this is not how I remember it. No, wait, this is what Elin saw. Oh, God, no. That's the last thing I wanted her to see. Jesus, Elin, I'm so sorry.

Porn didn't display in the magical mirror behind Walter. He, himself, was framed in the glass, hanging from a rope. Dead. He handled the revelation with as much emotional turmoil as he might find out he recalled the incorrect day. Of course, a little porn wouldn't have driven him insane when the Duke of the Rotting Garden talked to him, so this made much more sense. Yes, he did that. Walter simply forgot. Now, he didn't. Walter wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm. Did I? No, I passed out playing video games, right? No, I must have died playing them, but how does someone die doing that? He concluded he must have. But why would I? I must have because there is no other way to isekai without a portal. Isn't that how these stories go? Was I really that lonely, then? But I wouldn't! I don't feel that way now!

He felt off-balance. Any moment, he might trip. No, he had to hold it together and find that remnant and erase it, and free Elin--

--wait, didn't she do this to herself, then?

¡ʇno ʇuɐʍ I

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Walter sucked in a breath.

Elin yanked her hand away. "--bastard, don't you dare! You'll ruin it!"

Walter balked. While he stared, she looked into the distance, the way people do when attempting introspection, then finally sighed with relief. "Oh, thank Gaia, it's still there."

"You cursed me with the Scales of Love and Lust?"

Elin closed her eyes. Then she winced. When her face twitched, she lowered her head. "It's not what you think."

"Am I actually a monster or not?"

Elin crawled forward and leaned on his thighs. He leaned back.

"No. Yes, Ourobors created you, but you're alive, you're not a monster, you're something better, more than a hero, even, listen, please, Walter--"

Everything makes sense now. I'm literally Elin's made-up relationship fantasy, templated right from her trashy pamphlets, the mismatched kinky rule-breaking couple, and I can control magic because I was born of it. No regular human from Earth can just show up and toss around spells. That was stupid to assume. I'm the reward for her deal with Ouroboros, whatever that was.

It explains why she gave up on Gaia.

"Wait!"

He teleported.