Translator: Alpha0210
CRACK.
The small camera, split cleanly in half, clattered to the floor and shattered.
Agolet sheathed the sword he had swung with a precise, measured motion.
Then his gaze, settled into a cold calm, swept over this place─ the Control Room─ once more.
Thud.
He was just about to head toward the central hub lined with hundreds of monitors, walking at an even pace.
[What do you think you’re doing?]
The voice was thick with static.
It was leaking from the severed head of some destroyed machine, rolling across the floor.
…Agolet had
destroyed countless machines in this place.
And every one of those machines had been assigned a role.
Control Room escort, continuous monitoring, crisis reporting, suppression, and even reserve units capable of performing all of these functions…
The machines Futurix created possessed intelligence and self-awareness. That was why they were sometimes called Machine Lifeforms. Yet Agolet had never grasped the personality of any machine he had broken, or killed.
He had not exchanged so much as a single word with them. They had ceased functioning without realizing Agolet’s intrusion, let alone their own deaths.
There should have been no mistakes in that cleanup, and yet a voice was leaking from the shattered machine debris…
If so, the identity of the voice’s owner was simple enough to deduce.
“Futurix, do you have enough leisure to come observe the situation here?”
[…….]
When a voice tinged with amusement reached her, Futurix forcibly swallowed the groan that threatened to escape.
Before coming here, she had entertained that possibility.
The possibility that the man before her eyes,
the man who had appeared on the monitors, might not actually be one of the Four Knights─ the White Knight of Conquest.
But now that she was looking at him directly, such doubts had been swept clean away.
This overwhelming pressure, a holiness so intense it was unsettling… And anyone with sharp enough senses would be able to feel the sticky, clinging darkness hidden beneath it.
[Why have you come outside…?]
Futurix spoke, but Agolet ignored her and kept walking.
[You never cared in the slightest how things were going on the outside. Why the change of heart now? Is it true that you follow the current Beginning Wizard as your king? Why him and not Her Majesty the Half King…]
Agolet opened his hand.
The Machine Lifeform, on the verge of shutting down, was struck by the gust of wind generated from that gesture and shattered to pieces, not even leaving a trace of its form behind.
“Futurix. Void Lord of Future City, one of the Twelve. You still possess that boundless curiosity of yours. But mind your tongue more carefully. Did my threat not land properly? Did my claim that I’ve identified the location of every core sound like an empty boast? Or do you think that because I said I wouldn’t involve myself, I also won’t kill you?”
Futurix’s eyes and ears still remained in this Control Room, so Agolet’s chilling murmur reached her with perfect clarity.
“I’m warning you. Do not ask me questions. You don’t have that right. Get a grip on the situation. What you should be doing right now isn’t running your mouth at me with pointless drivel. It’s repelling the intruder.”
[…….]
No answer came.
Then the presence vanished.
Even so, she was surely still watching… but it hardly mattered.
Agolet’s objective was not particularly to kill Futurix. If she kept being a nuisance, that could change, but for now there was a purpose that took priority.
Having reached the monitors, Agolet began operating the console. His fingers flew across the complex interface as though it were an extension of his own body, and soon hundreds, then thousands of screens began flickering to life.
“……”
Agolet’s eyes moved rapidly, scanning every last one of them.
***
‘Those Four Knights, those sons of bitches.’
Residue swallowed the curse and threw himself fully into the fight against the incoming Void Lords.
SPLASH!
The first to close the distance, arriving in a spray of water, was one of the Twelve Void Lords: God’s Envoy. The man’s frame was already massive as a mountain, and with the pressure he was radiating without any attempt to conceal it streaming off him in waves, he felt far larger than his actual size.
Residue felt his field of vision suddenly cut off, but he refused to shrink back and stepped forward to meet him head-on.
“──.”
Perhaps not expecting his opponent to choose a brawl in this confrontation, God’s Envoy’s eyebrow twitched. He seemed offended. Admittedly, going by outward appearance alone, Residue’s frame was less than half of God’s Envoy’s.
‘But size isn’t what decides who wins.’
CRUNCH.
God’s Envoy clenched his fist, and the sound that accompanied it was far too violent to be the simple curling of fingers. His bones were so thick that the fist looked less like a fist and more like a compressed lump of iron.
God’s Envoy threw the punch as it was. A clean, straightforward strike with no embellishment─ but just in case, Residue narrowed his eyes and observed the attack for a moment.
…It carried enough physical force to tear through space, but was that all? There didn’t seem to be any other dangerous power loaded into it.
In that case, there was no reason to dodge.
Residue opened his right hand and thrust it forward to meet the fist. If God’s Envoy’s opening move was a fist, then Residue’s counter was an open palm.
But just before the two attacks connected, something went wrong. A mouth suddenly appeared on God’s Envoy’s fist.
It was unmistakably a mouth, no matter how he looked at it.
It had teeth, a tongue, and was drooling filthy saliva. The teeth were sharp enough to remind him of a beast’s. It was already too late to pull back the attack, so Residue simply loaded a bit more Thunder into his palm and drove it forward.
BOOM!
The collision of the two attacks sent the water’s surface heaving violently and shook loose aged dust from the ceiling. As Residue and God’s Envoy clashed, the first to spill blood was Residue. His entire palm was shredded as if slashed by blades.
He’d been fooled by that brutish exterior.
He had written him off as a pure brawler, one who relied on nothing but his body as a weapon.
God’s Envoy was not so honest and simple-minded. And now Residue could truly feel what that body, which appeared to be nothing but a mass of muscle, was actually made of.
“You really did feast on god’s corpse quite thoroughly. Seems like you’d be more accurately called an Absolute than a Void Lord.”
“You really do talk a lot. You.”
This retort did not come from God’s Envoy.
The voice came from below.
Residue reflexively looked down, and there in the shallow water he saw The Sinking One, submerged. The bastard looked exactly like a water ghost. The instant he let that trivial thought pass through his mind, the hair wrapping The Sinking One’s body shot out like tentacles and lunged at Residue.
He was sick and tired of this kind of attack. Residue tried to fire off Thunder in retaliation, but before he could, his body locked up cold.
‘What the hell is this now…’
Rolling only his eyes to scan his surroundings, he saw the golden eyeball at some distance away, blazing with an enormous aura of power.
Damn it. That bastard. Some kind of binding ability?
He hadn’t anticipated this.
Of course, he had fully expected the eyeball monster to pull some petty trick… but he hadn’t thought its power would actually work on him.
It wasn’t arrogance. Residue’s body, as it currently was, had been sturdy enough to shrug off any ordinary curse, hex, or supernatural ability with ease.
‘Come to think of it, didn’t they say Golden Eye ranks among the upper tier of the Void Lords?’
While he wasted time on that useless thought, the damp tendrils of hair coiled around his entire body, and Residue was dragged straight into the water.
But the water level, which should have only reached his shins, had become impossibly deep. It didn’t stop at fully submerging Residue’s body. The two of them sank endlessly toward the pitch-black floor of the abyss.
This was probably that seaweed-head’s ability.
While sinking, Residue suddenly felt pain hammering across his entire body. It was the sensation of having every muscle torn apart and every bone shattered by something like an iron club, and it wasn’t caused by the constricting force of the hair.
Something, something other than this one, was pummeling his entire body.
Residue realized it was God’s Envoy’s fists, and at the same time felt several of his precious life being shaved away.
That was the moment he lost any thought of holding back.
True, in this godforsaken world, the strong deserved respect simply for being strong and served as chess pieces that could be useful at any time─ but they weren’t worth preserving at the cost of his own precious life.
Simple arithmetic.
Residue decided that his own spare lives could accomplish far more than anything these four Void Lords could offer.
CRACK-BOOM!
The instant a massive thunderbolt struck down, he felt the shackles across his body release.
At the same time, he realized he was still standing there blankly, bound in hair.
In other words, the scene of sinking into the deep sea had been nothing more than a hallucination.
“Hah.”
A scoff forced its way past his lips.
He couldn’t tell if it was directed at himself or at his enemies.
Probably both.
You dare cast an illusion on me? And I fell for it like an idiot?
At this rate, he couldn’t tell whether becoming ‘Residue’ had made his mind stronger or turned it to mush.
CRUNCH.
Residue grabbed a fistful of the hair and ripped it away by brute force. Sharp barbs like teeth were densely embedded along the strands, so strips of skin tore off with it, blood streaming freely.
“Mmm……”
The Sinking One let out a low groan at the gruesome sight.
Did that man not feel pain? No matter how formidable a being’s mental fortitude, no one had ever torn free from the Sea of Nightmares so savagely. Forcing it off like that would normally cause a person to faint from the agony, or simply lose their mind altogether.
That was why he had thought the fight was already over the moment the hair wrapped around the body─
CRACK-BOOM!
The Sinking One couldn’t finish the thought. Before that, a flash of thunder and lightning flooded his vision white, and a devastating impact blurred his consciousness.
A moment later, he realized his body had been sent flying dozens of meters before crashing into the water.
“Hurgh……”
The instant he retched out a mouthful of blood, a horrific pain tore through his abdomen. A quick glance revealed that the organ known as his abdomen might as well have ceased to exist.
“─Spacetime Fist, maybe I’ll call it that? Or is that too tacky.”
He’d been losing confidence in naming things lately, anyway.
The mocking voice drifted over with that casual addendum.
Residue stood there, fist clenched for all to see, wearing a sneer as he stared them down.
And it wasn’t just The Sinking One who had been caught in that attack.
God’s Envoy, Golden Eye, and even Futurix were tumbling through the water as if they had all taken that strike unawares.
Residue surveyed each of them, one by one.
They were sprawled in undignified heaps, but not a single one among them was out of the fight, and he wasn’t even sure whether the blow had properly landed on that eyeball freak.
‘What do I do?’
Residue considered several possibilities.
First, subduing all four of them was impossible, both physically and in terms of time. Maybe if Agolet were here, but with Residue alone, it was an uphill battle no matter how he thought about it. That damned White Knight.
Then should he kill one as an example? That was also iffy. Setting aside the fact that these creatures had no sense of camaraderie, they simply didn’t look like the type to meekly submit out of fear just because one of them died.
So then how…
It was the moment Residue was deliberating.
“…That’s enough. Stop.”
A voice steeped in exhaustion reached him.
It was the voice of the one who had kept silent until now, watching the situation unfold without uttering a word.
It was the Half King’s voice.
“Beginning Wizard. I understand your intentions well.”
“What exactly do you think you understand?”
“Stopping Destruction. It may be beyond me alone.”
The Twelve Void Lords drew a collective sharp breath at the Half King’s sudden declaration.
“Your Majesty, how can you say such a thing……”
“You must not waver. Please, do not heed that man’s words.”
Futurix and The Sinking One spoke urgently.
The Half King regarded them with a complicated expression, then turned back to Residue.
“I will not waver. There is nothing for you to worry about.”
“Then what you mean is……”
“Beginning Wizard, I will continue to fight alone.”
The Half King’s declaration made Residue narrow his eyes.
“…I’m not even angry anymore, that’s how badly you’re failing to understand. Didn’t you just say you understood my intentions?”
“I did.”
“And you think that kind of conclusion is going to convince me?”
“No. That is why… I hope you can understand. This was never a matter that could be agreed upon.”
Watching the Beginning Wizard and the Twelve Void Lords fight, she had thought about many things.
Must I truly fight alone? Is there really no other way?
She knew this was the Void Lords’ selfishness. She could no longer deny the accusation that they were cowards.
Part of her felt wronged. Part of her felt hurt.
They were strong, not as strong as her, but tremendously strong nonetheless. So why did they push all the responsibility onto her? Why wouldn’t they fight alongside her? Why?
…But.
Even so, they were the ones who had made her. The ones who had brought her into existence.
She hated them, despised them for pushing her into this pain, yet loved them even more than that.
Even if this was conditioning. Even if it was a heart planted artificially.
The Half King could not turn away from that.
“But separate from this decision, I want to say that I am grateful to you. You…”
The Half King got that far before her lips moved slightly, but in the end she could not say it.
She could not say it in front of the Twelve Void Lords.
That she had been able to steady her faltering heart thanks to him.
The words that she did not need to fight alone.
The words that she was precious, that she was a treasure.
The difference between being fine and pretending to be fine.
He had told her so many things she had never heard from anyone.
That had been the first gift the Half King had ever received, and it would serve as the driving force that kept her fighting onward.
When things grew hard and she wanted to give up, she would gently take out those words she had kept stored in her heart, and they would give her strength.
“You should leave now.”
The Half King wished Residue understood her true feelings.
“The discourtesy and disturbance you caused here, I will hold you accountable for none of it. This is a directive I issue simultaneously to you, the Void Lords as well. It is my command, so shut your mouths and obey. I will not hear defiance.”
The Half King smiled with confidence as she gave the order, but she failed to realize that from Residue’s perspective, that smile was being interpreted as meaning the exact opposite.
And the Twelve Void Lords neither lamented nor defied their king’s resolute command.
Their faces were deeply moved as they gathered near the Half King and prostrated themselves, heedless of the puddles of water.
“Your Majesty.”
“Your Majesty.”
“We are overcome with gratitude, Your Majesty.”
“……”
Residue’s face twisted as he watched this spectacle, but the Void Lords seemed to have already forgotten his existence, and their mutual celebration showed no sign of stopping.
And as Residue watched them─
he was struck by an inexplicable sense of wrongness.
***
An anomaly.
“Your Majesty.”
“Your Majesty. We are overcome with gratitude. Your Majesty.”
An anomaly.
“Your Majesty, Your Majesty……”
“That’s enough. Stop……”
An anomaly is when something grotesquely bizarre, far beyond the realm of expectation, occurs without warning.
“Your Ma, Majes… ty……”
“What’s wrong?”
“Your Majesty, Your, Your Majehhh, Majes, ha, ah, aghh, AAAGH……”
“…What?”
The Half King blinked, dazed.
The face of The Sinking One, who had been closest to her, began to warp, and he was repeating the same words like something broken.
BZZT, BZZZT…
Accompanied by a blood-curdling sound, The Sinking One’s skin was peeling away like sheets of paper.
Through the gaps in that torn facial skin, the Half King saw the form of an entirely different being.
Events unfolded in rapid succession.
SHRRK─
As if it had been waiting for this exact moment, the space behind The Sinking One split open.
Until the pale bluish fingers burst violently through from within─ the Half King could not move a single finger. She was unable to move.
Like someone whose soul had left their body, she could only take in the unfolding catastrophe with her eyes.
‘Destruction?’
The Sinking One had been Destruction?
And those fingers belong to the Exile.
Had he been hiding in the gap between spaces? Since when?
The Half King’s disbelieving eyes widened to their absolute limit.
SQUELCH.
The pale bluish fingers pierced straight through flesh.
─Not the Half King’s.
The body of Residue, who had thrown himself in between.
*****
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