"After leaving the academy, Claire and I traveled across the land. First, I went back to that village to apologize for what I’d done. After that, we didn't have a set destination, but we made sure to see as much as we could."
"Lord Zenon realized that the people of this world—those he once thought were merely game characters—were truly alive," Claire added. "Once his perspective changed, he felt a deep need to understand this world. He said he wanted to learn how to truly live as a member of it."
His reason for leaving hadn't been an inability to endure the cold, biting glares from the students and faculty of Luminous Academy. It was because he finally understood that the world he once dismissed as the setting of Luminous History was his new reality, and he felt compelled to see it with his own eyes.
Yugo kept his gaze fixed on Zenon as Claire supplemented the story of his efforts to change.
"As we moved from place to place and learned more about the world, I started to notice that strange things were happening far too frequently," Zenon continued.
"Strange things? Like what, exactly?"
"Magic Armor Beasts I’d never seen before were appearing everywhere. Humans were being transformed into monsters and used to spark major incidents. The same kind of chaos we saw at Luminous Academy was playing out across the entire globe."
For Yugo and his companions, who were generally limited to information from the academy’s immediate surroundings, this report from Zenon was invaluable. They listened in silence as he went on.
"Like I told you, I was a die-hard fan of Luminous History. I remember most of the events and character data—not everything, but enough. When I saw enemy characters and scenarios that never existed in the original game, I knew something was wrong."
"I see," Yugo said. "It’s a sense of incongruity you could only spot because of your knowledge from your previous life."
"But didn't the other Reincarnators think it was odd?" Yui asked. "That things were happening that weren't in their memories?"
"That’s likely my fault," Zenon admitted. "In the original game scenario, Yugo wasn't supposed to be defeated by the protagonist until much later. But after I was reincarnated, I forced that event to happen much earlier than it should have."
"So, because the first step was off-script, the other Reincarnators just assumed every subsequent event was drifting away from the original timeline too," Ryuga surmised.
"It’s just a theory for now, but it’s possible that some kind of mental tampering during the reincarnation process played a role as well," Zenon added.
Claire spoke up then, gently steering the conversation back to the main point as it began to drift.
"Once we realized that these anomalies weren't isolated to the academy, Lord Zenon and I visited the towns and villages where the incidents occurred to gather intelligence. We fought the Magic Armor Beasts alongside the locals, gathering information piece by piece."
"So you were out there fighting for the people," Yugo said. "That’s actually pretty impressive."
"I didn't do much," Zenon said, deflecting the praise. "Claire was the one making a real difference by treating the wounded."
"That isn't true at all," Claire insisted. "So many people told us the battles became easier because you were able to identify the Magic Armor Beast's weakness."
She offered the encouraging words to Zenon as he continued to disparage himself. In truth, even when facing unknown threats, Zenon’s encyclopedic knowledge of the base monsters used to create the hybrid Magic Armor Beasts must have been a decisive advantage. Identifying which creatures had been fused, knowing their natural weaknesses, and predicting their traits—Zenon’s contributions had undoubtedly been immense, even if there were slight variations from the game data.
"Through those battles and our travels, we discovered that someone was operating in the shadows of several different incidents," Zenon said. "Among the perpetrators, we found individuals who had been granted the power to transform into Magic Armor Beasts by beings who could only be described as masterminds."
"It’s the same pattern as here," Yugo noted. "There were groups lurking everywhere, intentionally turning people into monsters."
Lost, Drop, and Abyss. Based on the masterminds they had encountered so far, it was highly unlikely their group consisted of only three members. In fact, new masterminds like Dogma had already emerged, and Zenon’s group had sensed the presence of even more players separate from those Yugo had fought.
"When I learned about the incident on Wind Island, I became convinced," Zenon said. "There are groups—factions, really—trying to plunge the entire world into chaos. I had just started thinking we needed to dig deeper into these masterminds when that Great Hole began to appear."