The young man heard this and rolled his eyes.
"Ma'am, how many times do I have to tell you? Stop bringing up my age. It's kind of weird."
"Besides, I'm already pushing fifteen hundred at this point."
The woman shrugged.
"You certainly keep close track."
"But yes, that's the right number: one thousand three hundred and forty-eight years. Correct."
Kairos heard that figure and felt the corner of his eye twitch.
Over thirteen hundred years old?
And yet she looked no older than her early twenties.
So after entering the Reverse World, this was essentially immortality?
The woman finally pointed to herself.
"As for me, I'm a little different from the others."
"I came here voluntarily, chasing greater power, looking for the absolute peak of what I could become."
"Giratina agreed to my request and let me stay, giving me unlimited time to train and grow."
Listening to all of it, Kairos began to piece things together.
So these people had come from different worlds, not unlike the parallel worlds he had visited himself.
Some had been facing near-certain death back home, and Giratina had pulled them back from the edge.
Others had walked in willingly, chasing some personal goal.
What they all had in common was that Giratina had seen something in each of them, and so they had joined the Reverse World, where they got to live forever and even kept their youth.
No wonder the people here had seemed to dress in completely different styles when he first arrived. Some wore what looked like medieval armor, some were in modern casual clothes, and some had on ancient robes. They had all come from completely different places.
This was nothing like a prison. It was more like a retirement home that reached across worlds.
Or maybe an exclusive club was the better comparison.
The woman seemed to read the thoughtful look on his face, as if she had already figured out what was going through his mind.
She pointed to the black mark still clearly visible on Kairos's chest and continued:
"As for you."
"That mark means Giratina considers you an exceptional Trainer, someone worth bringing into the Reverse World."
"Looking at you, you can't be more than your early twenties, can you?"
"Someone this young already qualifying for that mark... I have to say, I've never seen that before."
The people around them nodded along, voices chiming in one after another:
"That's the truth."
"The big guy usually only takes notice of seasoned veterans, people with talent, strength, and solid character."
"If this kid earned the mark at his age, he must have something real going for him."
"He just might end up being our newest addition around here."
Listening to the murmurs around him, Kairos's brow furrowed slightly.
The Reverse World certainly did sound like a pleasant place, even something of a paradise in its own way.
But he did not like the feeling of having things arranged for him without his say. That mark in particular felt like some kind of invisible leash, a constant reminder that a connection had already been established between himself and Giratina, one that would not be easy to shake off.
So he raised his head and asked something no one in the room had seen coming.
"What if I don't want to join the Reverse World?"
The moment those words landed, the easy, relaxed atmosphere in the room went completely cold.
Everyone went still. Apparently, nobody had expected Kairos to say anything like that.
In their eyes, being invited into the Reverse World meant endless life and freedom. It was something countless people could only dream of. Giratina had always been extremely selective, and not just anyone could get in.
And yet faced with something like that, the kid was actually turning it down?
The woman was visibly caught off guard, but she recovered quickly. She stepped forward a couple of paces, closing the distance between them.
"Don't rush into anything. It's completely fine."
She said it gently, with a note of reassurance in her voice.
"This mark forms a connection between you and the Reverse World, but that doesn't mean you're already one of us."
"One month from now, the mark on your body will bring you back here again."
"But you're completely free to simply walk away, to go back to your own world and live your life."
"When the day finally comes that you die of old age, or go out in some accident, your soul will find its way back here on its own, looking exactly the way you do now."
At that point, the woman's expression grew a little more serious.
"That's when you'll truly need to make a choice."
"Join us and live forever, or let go and fade into nothing."
"Giratina will respect whatever you decide. No pressure, either way."
Kairos stood there in silence as the words settled over him.
So the Reverse World was something like... the afterlife?
After death, a soul could come here and go on living, never snuffed out, just like the people standing around him right now.
He had to admit, that was genuinely appealing.
He was honestly caught off guard. He had not expected the reality of Giratina's world to be anything like this. It was completely different from what he had assumed, and from everything Marshadow had told him.
Even so, he could not just take these people's word for everything and go along with it.
After all, when he had heard Marshadow's version of things, he had not simply believed it either. He had chosen to come and see for himself.
This was no different.
These people all seemed sincere, and the Latias was right there beside him. But trust still had to be built over time.
While Kairos was turning all of this over in his head, the woman spoke again.
"Look, the Reverse World really is a good place."
"Everyone here was hand-picked by him. People come from all kinds of worlds, but we all get along well."
"Here you've got unlimited time. You can learn whatever you want, live however you want."
"The one downside is that we can't leave to see other places, other worlds."
"After spending so long in one spot, looking at the same unchanging scenery... it does get a little dull sometimes."
The woman sighed softly, and a faint, fleeting shadow of something sad passed through her eyes before it disappeared.
"So there's really no rush on any of this. When the time actually comes, you can decide then whether to stay or go."
"One piece of advice though: while you're still young, get out there and see the world."
"Otherwise, by the time you reach my age, you won't be able to anymore, and you'll spend forever wishing you had."
The woman smiled and settled back into that composed, unhurried way of hers.
"That said, since you're here, and since the big guy has given you this task, I do have a small favor to ask."
"Please help us recover the fragments of the Reverse World."
Kairos didn't nod right away. Instead, he looked her in the eyes and asked the one question that mattered most to him.
"What's actually going on with Giratina and the Reverse World right now?"
"Why did it shatter? How did things end up like this?"
The woman heard the question, glanced over at the blond man, then looked around at the others.
She seemed to be checking something unspoken.
Finally, she turned back to face Kairos and spoke plainly:
"Given your situation, I don't think there's any reason to keep this from you."
"The truth is, the Reverse World was once far larger than it is now."
"What you see today is genuinely a fraction of what it used to be. Compared to its peak, this is less than a tenth of the original."
"The cause of all this was a disaster that happened several hundred years ago."
The woman's gaze grew distant, as though she were sinking back into memory.
"We weren't clear on exactly what happened, because the information was kept from us too."
"But we could feel it, unmistakably: in one terrible instant, the Reverse World shattered."
"Afterward, a huge number of fragments broke off and drifted away into other worlds."
"Giratina could have ignored us entirely and simply pulled everything inward to restore his own strength."
"But to keep the remaining fragments from collapsing, to let those of us living here continue to survive, he poured out an enormous amount of his power."
"From that point on, he's been mostly in a deep sleep, using whatever little strength he has left just to keep this world running."
"The one time he actually woke up... was when he met with you."
As she spoke, the expressions on the faces around her shifted in all kinds of directions. Some were thoughtful, some were clearly hurting, and some wore a look of undisguised admiration. But whatever the expression, every single one of them carried, without exception, a deep sense of gratitude and respect for Giratina.
The blond man sighed and said:
"That's right. The big guy has genuinely worn himself out looking out for all of us."
"If it weren't for him, we'd have been wiped out along with the collapsed space a long time ago."
Listening to all of this, Kairos finally understood the full picture. Everything fit now, with nothing left unaccounted for.
Giratina's reason for wanting the fragments recovered was not just about restoring his own strength. It was about repairing this world so that the people living here would still have somewhere to call home.
After a moment of quiet thought, Kairos gave a slow nod.
"Then I'll do everything I can to help."
"This was already something I was going to deal with regardless, and I did make a promise to Giratina."
"I've actually already started."
The energy in the room lifted the instant those words came out. Whatever heaviness had settled over the group seemed to vanish all at once.
"Really? What do you need from us?"
"Just say the word if there's anything we can do!"
"That's right. We can't leave this world ourselves, we're stuck here. But we can absolutely back you up in other ways."
"Whatever we've got, just ask!"
A large man in medieval armor said nothing more. He turned and disappeared into one of the nearby buildings.
A few seconds later, he came back hauling an enormous chest, which hit the ground in front of Kairos with a heavy thud.
He lifted the lid, and it was packed to the brim with gemstones, pearls, and gold, all gleaming so brightly it made Kairos's eyes water.
"These are the savings I put together back in the day. Figured there was nowhere to spend them here, so I kept them as a keepsake."
The large man chuckled and scratched the back of his head.
"But since you're here to help the big guy, take all of it and put it to use."
A moment later, a man in a modern suit stepped forward. He reached into his pocket and produced something capsule-shaped. With a light press, a pile of colorful ores and rare materials materialized on the ground in front of them.
"These are some rare resources I pulled together from my world. They might not be the most elite items out there, but in your world they should be pretty hard to come by."
"Every single one of them is high-grade. Hope they come in handy."
Kairos stared at the pile on the ground, genuinely floored.
He actually had a real use for all of this. Not for keeping himself, but for handing out as rewards in the game. This stuff was legitimately valuable.
The woman watched it all unfold and smiled softly, then spoke:
"Whatever questions you have, whatever help you need, just ask. We'll do everything we can."
"In fact, after all these years of working at it, I've figured out that I can actually leave the Reverse World on my own now."
"Not for long, a minute at most, but if that can help you somehow, make sure you let me know."
"Because helping you means helping our world, and helping ourselves."
Kairos got that completely. He gave a nod and, without standing on ceremony, raised one hand.
A familiar pale blue system panel flickered into view in front of him, displaying a complex spread of game interfaces and icons.
"In that case..."
Kairos looked out at the gathered faces and spoke each word with deliberate weight:
"I have to ask: have any of you ever heard of a game?"