It's a town trapped out of time, forever repeating the cursed day when the gods disappeared from the continent.

The darkness of the "Godforsaken Lands" only fell on it for one night, and the next day the sun would fall as usual, and the inhabitants of the land were in a daze, experiencing nightmares over and over again.

The false sunshine rises again in the chaos, turns the hands back a few times, rewinds the repetition of life for a whole day, and then winds up again, continuing to make what has happened happen again, but full of minor changes, so that the life of the day falls into another "possibility".

The rings turned in vain, and all the forces of the town's fate, which had been distorted, continued to fill the light curtain, giving birth to strange eggs in the silver nest.

Esther took two steps back from the light curtain, feeling chills all over, but the temperature of the red cloak would not make her feel the chill outside:

"The day repeated...... How many years? ”

"I don't know, thousands of years, the same time as my father was betrayed by them." The crow's voice was cold.

Esther turned to it, "The key is yours." ”

The white-eyed crow rolled his eyes, and a little smile appeared in it: "You don't look surprised, you've already noticed that I'm coming?" ”

"yes, probably when the residents were singing for the 'Good Dream Ceremony'. Your twittering doppelganger suddenly stopped jumping, and then when I asked 'Zoya's anchor', you gave a fairly clear response that you knew exactly what had happened. ”

Esther curled the corners of her mouth with difficulty, but in this case, she faced the "new day" on the other side of the light curtain, and she really couldn't even show a mocking smile: "From that time on, I knew that you were already the body that was stingy with sharing memories with the doppelganger. ”

The young man with curly black hair stood to her left, an earring flickering under his hair, and he looked at Esther with a strange look.

Esther had to raise her head to meet those dark eyes, "What are you looking at?" ”

Amon smiled kindly: "I'm looking at the masterpiece of 'Zoya'." ”

Esther's demeanor returned to indifference again, she stretched out her hand to the light curtain, and the other side lit up with the warm sunlight of the new morning: "What's the use of you keeping this--such an 'anchor'?" ”

"What do you say? Anyway, you're half a 'decryption scholar,'" Amon straightened the monocle in his right eye, "and you don't want me to answer it for you, that's boring." ”

"Deterrence, hijacking, keeping in touch with Zoya, there are many possibilities."

Amon leaned against the light curtain with his back to it, seemingly unconcerned about the situation in the town: "If I hadn't stolen Zoya's anchor, there would be no 'Esther' in this world." ”

Interestingly, Amon himself always seems to resist calling her "Esther", as if trying to deny her existence, while Amon's doppelganger doesn't care about that at all.

Esther was silent for a long time, and more of her energy was spent adjusting her emotions than it would take to use her brain, and she needed to work hard to calm herself down.

She spoke in a calm tone: "Yes, if that is the case, as long as 'Zoya' appears, it will be linked to the fate of Amun's clone. Then He will not be able to escape your gaze, like a bird with its wings tethered. ”

Amon laughed, "What did he tell you? I thought there would be an irreconcilable conflict between you and Him, and we would see each other as mortal enemies. ”

Esther clenched the collar of her red cloak, feeling her breath grow heavier and heavier:

"I figured it out myself. That should have happened once before, and I saw a little memory when I was promoted...... I'm not sure if you put it out on purpose, though.

"Zoya and I rarely communicate face-to-face, but He used to take possession of my body, and as a result, I was forced to come to this continent. I can only guess that because of your interference, His current situation has worsened, and it is necessary to turn to Ulorius and His Lord to stabilize the state of 'me'. ”

Amon lowered his head a little, his dark eyes sunken into the shadow of the brim of his hat, hiding the dividing line between lies and truth: "Do you need me to praise you for being smart?" ”

Esther wrinkled her nose disdainfully, "If you really want to cooperate with Him, or as your doppelganger says, you are in a so-called 'friend' relationship, why would you snatch His anchor?" ”

"Sure enough, I should still praise you for being stupid."

This is not an adjective used to boast about people. This is not only for me, but also for Zoya. ”

The smile on Amon's face faded, making his eyes even more cold and detached as he pondered, like a crow waiting at a funeral, waiting for a carrion to peck at the corpse.

Eventually, he just shook his head slightly, "You won't understand, you're just an 'incarnation' of consumables, no different from the shell that Zoya left to die with Ulorius." ”

Esther suddenly laughed, and the smile from her heart made her originally indifferent demeanor immediately become vivid and soft: "Even if it was Zoya who asked you, you would not answer this question, but compared to the lies that are easy for me to detect, you chose to provoke my meager trust in Zoya." ”

Amon tilted his head and didn't speak, his gaze swept over Esther's forehead.

Esther looked at the world inside the light curtain: "Are they still alive?" ”

"It's like the cat in the box. You may have heard something like this, a theory that my father once mentioned. ”

"The cat in the box?" Esther quickly thought of Schrödinger's cat, "Your father is—"

She quickly shut her mouth again, digesting the two different things at the same time.

Amun's father is the "ancient sun god", the omniscient and all-powerful creator, the "darizberg", and the "time-traveler" who does not belong to this world, so this particular thought experiment can be mentioned.

In Schrödinger's experiment, the cat in the box will face the same probability of survival and death due to the decay of radioactive materials, but the result will only be known after the box is opened.

Esther pressed her hand to the glowing curtain of light, realizing that this was indeed the most apt metaphor for the moment.

The moment she opens the world, everyone is out of this endless cycle of nightmares, but once time returns to the town, their death is no longer unknown, but inevitable, only to come to an end after thousands of years of indebtedness.

Esther realized that the cat in the mercy box she had in the mercy box, even if she knew not to open the box and maintain such a cycle, it didn't matter to those souls who had become a light curtain cycle, although there were subtle differences every day, they were unaware of it, and tomorrow would never exist.

Just standing here and looking at them makes you feel sad...... Maybe I shouldn't feel sorry for this? Esther questioned herself in the bottom of her mind.

She took a deep breath and looked at Amon again, "You won't give me the key." ”

"Let Zoya help me gain control of the Source Fort, and I'll give you the key, but this key is only a seal involving the periphery, and I can't handle the innermost source."

Esther's "spiritual intuition" almost screamed in her head, and she shook her head twice vigorously: "No, absolutely not. ”

"Why? I've asked Zoya this question before, but He refuses to answer. ”

Esther tapped her head with her knuckles, "I don't know even if you ask me, I probably know less than you do." I'm not a chess player like you, I'm just a pawn that can be discarded at any time, and I can see it clearly, isn't it just an 'incarnation'. ”

Her tone was casual, and even sounded rather cheerful.

Amon turned the stud earring on his right ear: "I can help you gain control over 'Zoya', which is not difficult for the high sequence of 'Thief'. Especially since you are a thief and inseparable from Him, I have taken control of Zoya's anchor. ”

"You've finally put your chips in my face," Esther said, spreading her hands, "Wouldn't it be nice to say that earlier?" You should know that I have a special discernment for the real and the fake. ”

"Is this your way of saying no?" Amon smiled again.

Esther was silent for several seconds before she spoke: "If you had asked the clone to tell me this two months earlier, or when I was in Beckland, I would probably not have hesitated to believe you." ”

For the first time, Amon showed a hint of confusion in front of Esther, and even the ability of the "decryptor" could not allow him to hear the voice of the silent one.

Seemingly motionless, Amon had tried many times to steal the woman's idea in front of him - and it turned out to be no different from when he had tried to steal Zoya, all Amon could steal was the meaningless humming sound of flapping wings.

This tactic is clearly derived from the "thief", leaving Amon helpless.

"But what's the difference now? My conditions have never changed. Amon's confusion only increased.

His words even conveyed too sincere honesty, which made Esther stop talking, as if what the doppelganger had done, Xiao Qi and Xiao Wu, who had been erased from existence, were not enough to mention.

That's right, all bad things are done by doppelgangers, what does it have to do with the ontology? Even if it was done by the ontology, Amon would probably only take it for granted......

Esther seemed to gradually grasp the character of the "Angel of Time", and she smiled self-deprecatingly: "My opinion has changed, so we are no longer on the same side." ”

"I don't understand." Amon said directly.

Esther didn't explain it to him, because her considerations would seem meaningless to Amun.

She just quietly looked into the light curtain, looking tenderly at the townspeople.

In the distance, Esther saw a young girl running down the street, and before she fell, the old man who had thrown the seed helped her up with a smile and planted a small golden flower on the girl's sideburns.

The girl may or may not have fallen in that place.

The city obviously has no future, but there is a possibility of continuous superposition, and under the "restart" day after day, it has accumulated the power of chaos for Zoya......

Amun, who had been leaning back to the light curtain, stood up straight, and after turning around, his gaze also fell into the light curtain with Esther: "Is it because you have a better candidate in your heart?" You and Zoya have come to an agreement on this? ”

"So to speak."

If you were a 'fool', you wouldn't have chosen to put the life of this entire town on the back burner.

Esther couldn't help but think so, she had such a strong premonition.