Chapter 92: Show
Grey awoke with a gasp, his body practically breaking apart with phantom pain. His Neural Fra reacted as though it was suffering the worst wave of cramps known to man. Well, if those cramps were also filled with the kind of jolts only soone struck by lightning would have been able to understand.
He couldn’t help it. Between the vomits of tal pouring out from his throat, he scread so violently that his throat was torn apart, blood pooling from the wounds and out from his mouth. The crimson filed in between his teeth, and by the ti he finally got any sort of hold of himself, Esralda was standing over him in silence.
’Shit.’
Grey cursed inwardly. He hadn’t had the chance to top back up to 10 units of energy. If Esralda killed him right now, it really would be over. There would be no coming back from this.
The realization made him understand just how much he was playing with fire.
No. He had always been playing with fire. Things had just been going a little bit smoother recently, smooth enough that he had almost forgotten just how frequently everything in this world had conspired to make his life a living hell.
And now he had yet another problem to deal with.
His Neural Fra was too weak to complete the Prosthetic ch. His attempt to visualize and forge its body alone had left him in a completely fried state, so much so that he had lost consciousness for an entire half day.
But that was the least of his worries.
Not only was there no easy solution to this, but the fact he would be killed for taking too long was yet another wrinkle to the endless avalanche of problems he was facing.
Even if he sohow managed to slow the forming process enough that he didn’t imdiately Overload his Neural Fra—sothing that probably wasn’t even possible in the first place—he knew that he would run into a problem of ti.
Every direction he looked, there was another roadblock.
And this witch’s face was really starting to piss him the fuck off.
Grey slowly pushed himself back up to his feet, eting Esralda’s gaze as she stared right back at him. There was a deeply unimpressed light in the depths of her eyes, her thoughts not so easy to read, and yet plainly obvious to Grey.
She was wondering if she should just kill him now and get it over with.
From her vantage, it looked like Grey had just tried to quickly raise his strength and failed to achieve anything significant. In fact, it looked like he had ended up harming himself instead.
Grey twitched, last bits of phantom pain still running through his body.
’Fuck! This shit hurts. Couldn’t that piece of shit system kill
in a more humane way?’
Grey took a breath, trying to wipe the mories of what he just experienced. It was like he had been burned from the inside out. Unfortunately, those scars wouldn’t be disappearing anyti soon.
Sohow, it had been even worse than lting himself into the Last Goblin Swordsman.
"Sorry, upset stomach." Grey said. "I’ll get back to it."
He took a step past Esralda and went back to the table. But the mont he had stepped to it, he found that she had stuck to his side like a shadow.
Grey reached for the Cyber Core again, wanting to replenish himself back up to 10 units, but a single finger landed on it first.
"I think that’s enough playing around, don’t you think?" Esralda asked gently.
A cold sweat matted Grey’s back, but he forced himself to remain calm.
After the last loop, he knew what Esralda really wanted. She thought that she’d find the chanical Jaw Lineage in his Cyber Space and was just looking for an excuse to kill him.
For whatever reason, she was also a bit of an eccentric who liked to pretend to be a good person, and that was at least half the reason she kept giving him these chances.
The other half of the reason was because she was hoping there was a small chance that he would actually be able to do it.
But, Grey had a feeling that even if by so miracle he was able to do exactly that, she would kill him for the chance either way. After all, why would she be satisfied with a Proving Class Prosthetic when she was well beyond that level?
"I will need to replenish my own ch. Otherwise, this won’t go well." Grey chose to say.
Grey didn’t have the ti for this. He had to figure out how to finish this Prosthetic, escape Esralda, and sohow clear this instance all before ti ran out for his Canon Event.
’Fantastic. Just fucking fantastic.’
At the end of this he’d have a splendid death waiting for him.
"Your ch helps in your crafts?" Esralda asked slowly.
Grey’s heart was slowly accelerating under her glare. Had he said sothing wrong? Did chs not do this?
But it was too late to backtrack now.
"Yes. It does."
"Is that so..." Esralda smiled. It was light, almost delicate. But the scarred half of her face beca just a little bit more red, just a little bit more rouge and violet. There was a pulsing in it that gave off waves of danger.
The resplendent blue in Esralda’s one remaining good eye seed to glow even brighter and her gaze landed on Grey’s jaw. An odd tingling sensation ran through his entire body, his hairs standing on end.
It was like every aspect of himself was being seen right through, his body laid out on a stainless steel board just to be dissected piece by piece, step by step.
"I’ve never heard of such a ch from the chanical Jaw Lineage."
"Maybe it isn’t from there." Grey replied, his entire body taut with tension.
"Yes? Then why is it that I can sense you only have a single ch?"
Grey’s jaw set.
Esralda’s head tilted, her smile remaining with the very sa gentle hue, but it sohow felt far darker nonetheless.
"Why don’t you show
how it works?" she asked.
Veins popped along Grey’s jaw and he tried to reach for the Cyber Core again in response, but Esralda rolled it away.
"No, no. I’m sure your ch still has a little bit to work with. I’d like to see what it can do. Show ."
The last two words ca out as far more of a command than any of the others, part of her mask slipping just the slightest bit.
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