After inspecting the production plant, ister took another nap.
While she was once again using her ability in her sleep to move through the facility, the heroes of W-City held an awkward conversation in hushed voices—just quiet enough that the soldiers wouldn't hear.
“About ister’s ability...”
“It’s... not as amazing as I thought, right?”
“Yeah. I really expected her to be so insane genius or sothing.”
When ister had announced she would inspect W-City’s facilities, the heroes had been filled with a sense of excitent—expecting so dramatic change.
But in reality, all she did was blankly look around and then fall asleep.
And when she woke up, what she said was downright underwhelming.
“Not much has changed... Ah, for so reason, at consumption has risen significantly. Is the city’s market economy unbalanced? You might want to take corrective asures...”
“Thank you for your hard work, ister-nim!”
“Yaaawn... What’s next againnn...?”
“Server connection check and Black Cat observation are all that’s left.”
Even after checking the server, all she said was that she wanted to sleep a little more.
When she briefly got up again, she just muttered that nothing seed to have changed—and went back to sleep.
This ti, it wasn’t her ability—it was actual rest.
While ister slept, the heroes effectively had free ti while pretending to be on guard duty inside the base.
“So this is it? Once we check in on Black Cat, we’re done?”
“Kinda anticlimactic.”
“I thought every ti she showed up, things changed drastically—at least that’s what the data said.”
“She’s... not really doing anything.”
“She’s not a genius, just a psychic.”
Looking closely, ister never actually did anything herself.
Even during surgery, it was just “try this,” or “adjust that.”
At other facilities, it was “tweak this,” “be mindful of that.”
With all that, was there really any need for her to co all the way to W-City?
They could’ve just reviewed the recorded footage afterward.
“ister’s ability is just... really weird.”
“Ah, senior.”
Yu Anna approached the group of heroes who were casually munching on hot dogs and sipping drinks.
“Even just maintaining the facilities is a big deal. The point is... she can quickly identify if sothing’s gone wrong.”
“But can she really know just by glancing around? Honestly, it feels like she’s just pretending to look.”
“She can tell even from a glance—that’s the kind of ability it is.”
Yu Anna looked over the B- and C-Class heroes and hesitated.
Was it okay to explain ister’s ability in more detail?
Judging by the current mood, it was probably best to clarify.
“...Does anyone know about ister’s ability, Dinsional Archive?”
“It’s classified. We don’t have clearance.”
“I skimd so files before the info lock. Isn’t it sothing like a hyper-enhanced future sense—like an advanced precognition?”
“No. That’s not it.”
Yu Anna let out a sigh at the confidently wrong answer and began speaking as she sipped coffee from the machine.
“To put it simply, it’s ‘sothing that answers questions.’ If ister falls asleep while using her ability, she connects with sothing unknown in her dreams—and it tells her things that humans normally can’t know.”
“Huh? Sothing unknown... like a god?”
“So interpret it that way, but according to ister, it’s not a god.”
“How would she—oh.”
All the heroes ca to the sa conclusion at once.
She must’ve asked. Are you a god?
“So... you’re saying that even if it looks like she’s barely glancing at a place, she can just ask, ‘Is there a problem with this facility?’ and imdiately find out if there’s sothing wrong?”
“Exactly.”
“Wait—that’s actually amazing.”
“It ans you don’t need a whole team to inspect things anymore.”
“Just have ister walk by, ask the question, and that’s that...”
“Actually, she doesn’t even need to look, right? Couldn’t she just ask, ‘Is there a problem in any city humans are currently living in?’”
“No, it doesn’t work like that... ister’s ability... has a lot of issues.”
If she did it that way, she'd end up responsible for checking everything by herself.
Yu Anna spoke with a bitter tone and began listing the critical flaws in ister’s ability.
“I can’t explain everything in detail, but... okay. Can any of you give an answer about this coffee I’m holding?”
“Um... Synth-coffee manufactured at the W-City production plant?”
“Lightly sour beans, warm, cos from a vending machine?”
“Sure, that’s enough of an answer. But this coffee is specifically the one in my hand, from W-City, from that vending machine. Unless the question contains all of that specificity, the response goes haywire.”
“Huh?”
“For example, if you ask, ‘What coffee do W-City heroes drink?’ you’ll get everything—all coffee types consud in the city, their bean origins, why people drink them, taste profiles, chemical components, sales numbers—just all of it.”
“That’s... kind of... too much information?”
“Exactly. So if ister wants a proper answer, she has to see it for herself and then ask, ‘Is there a problem with this exact thing I saw with my own eyes?’”
“So if she asks, ‘Is there a problem with W-City’s production facility?’ it won’t just tell her if there’s an issue now—it’ll also tell her past problems and even hypothetical future ones?”
“Right. And what matters most is that the thing she’s asking isn’t a god. If ister doesn’t feed it new information with her question, it answers based only on old data.”
“Got it... Damn, that’s a seriously frustrating ability.”
If she doesn’t precisely limit the scope of the question, the answer becos bloated and unusable.
If she doesn’t observe sothing personally, she can’t phrase the question as “is there a problem with this specific thing I’ve seen.”
And if she needs an updated answer, she has to see it again or else the response is based on outdated information.
“The biggest problem... is that ister’s not actually a genius.”
ister is only a D-Class psychic.
Because her power output is so low, the number of tis she can use her ability—or ask questions—is also severely limited.
This is also why ister is almost addicted to the exhaustion that follows each excessive use of her power.
“ister can’t rember everything she learns from a single answer. She doesn’t instantly understand it all either. She has to re-read the answer multiple tis, and ask new questions just to grasp what it ant in the first place.”
“She needs a question to understand the previous answer...?”
“And only ister herself can see the answer. Each ti there’s sothing she needs, she has to wake up and imdiately jot down whatever she rembers from the dream. But for parts she forgot, she has to sleep again, use her ability again, and ask again.”
ister’s ability only gives the answer.
It doesn’t force her to understand it.
And she’s not even skilled enough to fabricate the items described in the answers herself.
When ister wants to create sothing, she writes detailed specs—what it is, what materials it needs, and how to make those materials.
Then companies use that information to actualize and produce the item.
ister is a human search engine... and a human printer.
And not even a high-performance one—just sothing that barely works.
“If the answer is too long, ister can’t take it all in... If she phrases the question wrong, the ntal overload could actually kill her.”
“Wait a sec—so she’s doing all the computation for the ability herself?”
“It’s her ability, after all.”
The energy and computational load required for humans to use psychic abilities—the processing to produce a response—was automatically consud by her heart and brain.
If she asked a question that generated too many answers, her own ability could very well kill her.
With that realization, the image of the utterly exhausted ister flashed through the heroes’ minds.
“...Isn’t that ability kind of... ambiguous?”
“The more I hear, the more I feel like she’s not the heroic genius savior of humanity I imagined.”
“Exactly. ister isn’t a genius—she’s just a psychic. And yet that vague ability is what kept humanity alive.”
At that mont, Iron Might approached with a giant sandwich in one hand, chewing.
“The shelters built from new materials capable of withstanding monsters, the food production that sustained daily life, the construction drones that rapidly rebuilt hos—ister made all of those through her ability. If not for her, every normal person without powers would already be dead.”
“We get that.”
“It’s just... her ability is kind of a ss.”
“It’s not just a ss. It’s a garbage-tier ability, dumbasses.”
And right then, Electrice ca up behind Iron Might and tore off a chunk of his sandwich by hand—
specifically the part he’d bitten into, packed with at and cheese.
W-City’s heroes all turned to look at her as she shalessly stuffed it into her mouth.
“What? I’m hungry too. I’m an energy-type with acceleration. Do these W-City idiots not get how inefficient my ability’s fuel consumption is?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Or what, you mad because I butted into your convo? I’m just saying what needs to be said—those dumbasses put way too much faith in ister. I don’t like that bitch either.”
As the W-City heroes glanced at Iron Might, he changed the subject with his usual blank expression.
“Even if ister’s ability is limited and imprecise, she’s still a real hero... ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) She keeps asking questions, even when they might kill her, just to gather information that could help humanity. Everything we eat, this entire building—we owe it all to her. Especially in the early days of the monster outbreaks, when no one knew how to respond... she was an enormous help.”
“Yeah, and now she’s more like used-up gum, or fruit peel after the flesh’s been eaten.”
Sothing you could keep chewing or boil into tea, but whose main value was already long gone.
Electrice’s cold, unsparing assessnt of ister made the W-City heroes exchange glances uneasily.
“Can you really talk about her like that?”
“No matter what, she’s the hero who made it possible for humans to survive the monster era.”
“This is that whole psychic supremacy thing, huh...”
“She ca here to guard ister and now she’s shit-talking her?”
Clicking her tongue, Electrice snatched Iron Might’s drink and took a long sip.
“You think I wanted to guard her? If I didn’t, those governnt pigs would’ve pulled sothing shady. I had no choice. And I have no plans to co back to this idiot-infested city again either.”
She handed the drink back to Iron Might with an irritated sigh.
“Sure, she was helpful at first. But now she’s just a burden... All she does is cause confusion or fatten up those governnt pigs.”
Fuu.
ister causes chaos.
Yu Anna silently agreed with that statent as a mory resurfaced—
A long-ago event, from the early monster era, when governnt higher-ups and research departnts across all cities spent endless hours in discussion, eventually settling on a so-called solution:
The Monster Weaponization Project.
As S-Class heroes, both she and Electrice had been able to read the full transcript of questions and records related to ister from that ti.
The questions those governnt officials demanded ister ask were:
[Can monsters exist that do not antagonize humanity?]
[Can humans create such monsters?]
And the answer to both... was yes.
Just that single word—possible—was enough to drive humans to try taming monsters.
The monsters, seemingly subdued with drugs and machines—or just pretending to be ta—
began to rampage.
Countless heroes and civilians died.
The Monster Weaponization Project beca a waking nightmare and failed catastrophically.
The cause of the failure? Lack of data. Lack of ti.
And most of all... the fact that they tried at all.
If there had been no hope, they wouldn’t have tried.
“That bitch’s biggest flaw is that she answers yes even to nearly impossible problems. Or no... maybe...”
Even now, there are people who refuse to let go of the dream of weaponizing monsters.
People who push forward with the Artificial Psychic Project.
All those who lived through that daymarish failure say the sa thing.
If only ister’s ability had been a little stronger.
If only she’d been able to ask more questions.
ister, arriving at the sa conclusion, had driven herself into the ground trying to extract more information.
Even when her ability overclocked and left her spewing blood,
Even while suffering from malnutrition,
She kept going.
ister had no ti to grow as a psychic.
“The problem is she’s weak.”
A weak psychic is nothing more than a tool,
used up by the governnt,
and sacrificed for humanity.
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