Chapter 113
Chzzik. Chzzzzzzik.
How much ti had passed?
[System reboot initiated…… 0%]
My vision flickered blue as a new log appeared.
I felt the cooling motor fan at the back of my head begin to spin. Inside my skull, where a brain should have been, the spherical AI Core sparked and slowly began to restart.
Then, one by one, my senses returned, beginning with sight. The rest of my sensory control programs still seed to be loading, as if there was a long way to go.
‘W-what on earth happened?’
My right eye seed to be completely destroyed. No visual information entered it, only a black screen that occasionally flickered with red dots, like a broken LED monitor.
My left eye wasn’t much better. Each ti I tried to move it, it shifted unnaturally, as though sothing inside was stuck.
The noise on the left eye’s feed was so severe that half my vision was obscured. In truth, I had lost three-quarters of my sight.
‘What… happened…?’
Perhaps the mory storage linked to my AI Core had been shocked. A great deal of stored information was either corrupted or wiped out. For a mont, I hadn’t even recognized who I was.
Fortunately, the data recovery system had activated, restoring fragnts of mory one by one. Among them was the fact that my na in this world was Araya.
……It would have been better if that mory had never co back.
‘Haa… haaah…!’
The first mory that resurfaced was the mont the battle with Aaron Stingray began.
I had drawn in the surrounding mana. Since I had opened the ‘Well,’ there was no shortage of power.
The spell I had cast was a type of Necromancing magic: [Corpse Field].
It dominated the surrounding area, hacked into the opponent’s internal devices, blocked wireless signals, and even forced the hacked devices to emit poison.
Though it was called a Necromancing spell, the original protagonist had never used it.
If I had used a spell that appeared in the original novel, Aaron would have easily seen through it. That was why I had devised many ‘original’ techniques of my own.
[Corpse Field] was one of them—a spell inspired and nad after countless fantasy works I had experienced in my previous world.
There was no way he could avoid it.
Since [Corpse Field] worked like a barrier, anyone who stepped within its range could not resist, no matter how strong they were.
The only way to counter it was to stop the spell before it was completed. Yet, as long as the ‘Well’ was open, Aaron could not touch recklessly.
Even Evangeline, in her childlike form, would not easily be able to break the structure of my original magic—or so I had calculated.
‘But that calculation was wrong….’
The spell had indeed been cast.
But in the very next instant, Aaron appeared before faster than the spell’s effects could take hold.
No—he didn’t approach. He simply appeared.
In the ti it took to blink, he had crossed dozens of ters. Like sothing out of an old horror film.
A black hand lood into my vision.
The hand ford a circle with its thumb and middle finger, the other fingers extended straight. A pose for flicking soone’s forehead.
What was he trying to do?
Before the thought could even reach an answer, a trendous impact struck my forehead.
Like being hit by a truck, my body was thrown back, and my AI Core shorted out, temporarily freezing my thought circuits.
Darkness filled my sight.
Had I been out for a second? When I ca to, I hastily tried to assess the situation and pull myself together.
I didn’t understand what was happening.
But I had to co up with a counterasure. My AI Core perford a split-second logical calculation, and I tried to retaliate with the fastest spell I could cast: [Magic Bullet].
But it was pointless.
Before the spell could be invoked, Aaron appeared before again.
Before the visual data even converted to electrical signals to reach my AI Core, another impact crashed into .
‘I couldn’t react at all…!’
And so it went, again and again. Every ti I tried to regain the initiative, Aaron instantly appeared and flicked .
To call it a re “flick” was ridiculous—it was a monstrous attack backed by absurd physical power.
My body, though an outdated android model, had been built from unnecessarily sturdy materials. Yet every ti Aaron’s flick landed, so part of broke.
The first flick dented my forehead inward, distorting the bridge of my nose, and made both eyes bulge out like a frog’s.
When he flicked my arm, the limb twisted out of use; when he flicked my thigh, it shattered and flew apart.
The only reason my head hadn’t been blown off entirely from the start was simply that Aaron had been holding back.
‘Nothing I did mattered….’
I hadn’t expected to be so helpless.
Of course, I had known I could never defeat him. I had already accepted defeat, so I believed I wouldn’t feel regret even if my trump cards failed.
But I had been wrong.
It was humiliating. Infuriating beyond words.
Even though I had prepared everything, ready to sacrifice my life at the last mont, to Aaron Stingray, it had all been nothing more than child’s play.
He hadn’t even needed weapons, fists, or kicks. With nothing more than a playful flick of his fingers, he toyed with my life.
What a pitiful fight this was.
What a miserable end.
‘This is the end.’
I understood clearly.
Nothing would change like this.
Not as long as I clung to this life.
“Aaron… Stingray…”
I couldn’t defeat him.
Then the only thing left—
‘—is to give up my life to ensure he cannot win….’
With that resolve, I glared at Aaron and began shutting down my AI Core. No, I tried to shut it down.
But—
“Who said you could die without my permission?”
Damn it.
Aaron wouldn’t even allow that.
“Keugh!?”
Another flick struck, sending my AI Core into short-circuit again.
I blacked out once more.
* * *
“P-please, stop this! Didn’t you say it would take a long ti before the Well could be closed? You clearly said you must not kill him before then!”
“You really don’t understand anything, do you?”
“What do you an?”
“If I don’t keep doing this, this bastard will kill himself.”
I said that as I flicked Araya’s head once more, sending another shock through him.
The impact finally dislodged his dangling eye completely, leaving it swaying loose. Blue android blood stread from his ears and nose.
It was a grueso sight.
The only reason I could do this was because he was a machine. If he had been human, I could never have gone this far.
“I’m not trying to kill him. I’m just keeping him unconscious so he doesn’t ruin everything by ending his own life.”
“B-but if you only an to knock him out, there’s no need to go that far….”
“Evangeline, he’s not human. Unlike ordinary humans, this kind of shock won’t kill him, nor is it easy to knock him out.”
“Eh? I-is that so?”
Evangeline didn’t really know what an ‘android’ was.
How could soone who barely even knew what a movie was tell the difference between an android and a human? She probably thought I had just beaten up a normal man half to death.
But if I had ant to kill him, I wouldn’t have dragged this out.
Since I knew Araya was an android, all I wanted was to give him just enough shocks to keep forcing him into short-circuit.
When I explained this, Evangeline closed her mouth and lowered her head slightly, ashad for having raised her voice at without knowing anything.
“M-my apologies. I had no idea and raised my voice against you….”
“If you’ve realized your mistake, then hurry up and finish your work.”
“Do not worry. Do you know how startled I was because of you? I constructed the ‘Well-Sealing’ ritual as quickly as possible to make sure nothing went wrong.”
“How much longer?”
“Thanks to you, I am now at the final stage. I daresay I have never completed a formula this quickly in my entire life.”
She said all that without slowing her work one bit. Honestly, I felt a little suspicious.
“You didn’t make a mistake, did you?”
“How could I possibly make a mistake on sothing this important? It’s almost finished. All you need to do is keep him from waking up until the end.”
If the expert said so, what else could I do?
It seed we would finish much sooner than expected and head back. I even felt a small sense of relief, but….
‘Could there be more?’
The Junk Chip, this whole incident—
It didn’t sit right with that soone who had always planned so ticulously had fallen apart so easily.
‘Is this really the end? Just forcing open that Well, dying, and triggering a rampage? Was that simple trap all there was to it?’
No matter how I turned it over in my mind, I couldn’t find an answer.
It seed he had developed Shade’s necromancing in his own unique way. Because of that, my ability to fully grasp his powers was limited.
‘There has to be so clue. Sothing….’
I retraced every step of what had happened so far, refusing to let my guard down.
The Academy. The Mana Thread. The Well.
The hallucination incident, and the summoning magic that was never cast.
Joy Bennet and the rampaging android.
Could all of those really have been aningless misdirections, only to end like this?
Even if I told myself it was just my nerves, the unease and sense of wrongness wouldn’t leave .
What had I missed?
What was it that I…?
“Phew. It’s over now, Aaron. I’ve successfully sealed the Well. All that’s left is to deal with him and return.”
At that mont, Evangeline wiped the sweat from her forehead and spoke. Then, seeing my dark expression, she asked:
“Why do you look like that?”
“…I’m just thinking.”
“Thinking of what?”
A fierce alarm rang in my head.
Then suddenly, sothing flashed through my mind.
“Summoning magic… could it be that…?”
“Hm? Summoning magic? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
Evangeline asked, but instead of answering, I questioned her.
“Evangeline. Last ti, we analyzed that the puppet this guy controlled was trying to use summoning magic.”
“Y-yes, that’s true.”
“But was that really a spell to summon a high demon or elental? Are you certain?”
“If you put it that way… no.”
Evangeline shook her head.
“Summoning spells generally have similar structures. From the overall shape and the mana he consud, I only assud so. But as for what he was actually trying to summon, I cannot say for certain….”
“Then what about the Mana Thread? Why, when he had opened the Well here, did he send it to the Academy instead of using it against ?”
“I-I don’t know. When I checked that great building, there was no formula constructed there. He was simply channeling vast amounts of mana into it.”
“And could that be used for sothing?”
“If one wished, anything could be done. If another caster had been present there, they could have used that massive mana. But in that state….”
“…There was. Another caster.”
“What do you an?”
I didn’t answer.
But soon enough, she seed to realize.
“C-could it be there was another puppet there too…?”
“Yes.”
Crunch!
I crushed Araya’s collapsed body completely underfoot. Blue android blood seeped out.
‘That damned trolling bastard.’
I knew he had decided to overturn the entire board no matter what.
But I had guessed the wrong place.
The Well, the so-called Mana Catastrophe—those were nothing more than diversions to temporarily tie down.
I should have known.
Drawing attention one way and striking elsewhere—that was Araya’s thod.
What he wanted to bring down wasn’t the world. It wasn’t , either. His target was far more petty and small.
“We must return to the Academy.”
That was his goal.
It was the stage called ‘Academy’ itself.
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