I wait for a few heartbeats, but no message comes, and the halo doesn't activate in the end. It just floats there.
I run a few more checks and assign part of my mind to keep monitoring it, while also setting up some defenses. Only then do I leave it alone and let it float above my head. It draws a few looks, but no one says anything.
Following behind Io, we move through the hallway. I still have so many questions about the gilded wolf thing that just ended up outside the space base in that pretty explosion of mine. Thankfully, Io seems to be in a better mood now that he is taking the lead, and we’re following him. He starts talking and begins to share some information.
“There aren’t many replicas here, and they’re not much stronger than us. If I had to guess, they’ll probably rely on traps and the functions of the asteroid base itself to take us out, so stay ready for anything. We’ll need to push through the defenses to reach the more secure areas, and they’ll be expecting that.”
“Can’t we just blow up the base?” I ask.
“This Beyond quest lasts one week, and we won’t have a way to return before then. The Last Elf is very familiar with the system and knows it well. There’s no guarantee, but he might know or at least suspect that we’re here on a Beyond quest. After all, quests like this aren’t exactly rare. At some point, he may try to use that against us, as you can probably imagine.”
“I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“Why are we killing the Last Elf?”
Io turns to the hallway on the left, and even though I sense it’s a dead end, I follow behind him.
“Who is your Handler? This is something you should have known before accepting the quest,” he says.
“She is a nasty, greedy person. You wouldn’t like her. I’m regularly getting scammed by her.”
“You know you can change your Handler, right?”
I pause there. Is he actually a good guy? There was almost a hint of concern in his voice. Is this a trick to make me put my guard down?
“Yes,” I answer.
“Then why?”
“I’m normal.”
“I didn’t say anything about…”
I ignore him and turn to Tacita, who’s following behind us. “Tacita, do you at least know why I haven’t done that?”
She quickly draws with the glowing tip of her finger:
(￣～￣;)
“Thanks. And for tripping the alarm too.”
(￣ヘ￣)
“Sure.”
We reach the dead end, and Io seems surprised by it. With all the active interference around here, I can’t blame him too much. Even I had to use most of my senses to know that we were heading into one.
I wonder if this is one of his weaknesses. Maybe the one that kept him from becoming S-rank? Or maybe it’s a lack of damage output on his part? Does that mean my senses are A-rank level, or is he just really bad at this? Or is it just one of those oddly specific situations where I’m better?
We turn around again and head down yet another hallway. This base is probably built throughout the entirety of an asteroid that stretches on for miles. I stop my train of thought.
Would this be large enough to kill all the dinosaurs on Earth?
Did that bastard known as the Last Elf do it? I've wanted to see a dino since I was a kid.
I guess probably not. That was about sixty million years ago, and he shouldn’t be that old, but it makes for a funny idea.
After we march for five more minutes, Io says, “The Last Elf is one of the few beings alive who was around before the system.”
“There aren’t many of those beings?” I ask.
“Plenty who were hunted down by the early Absolutes and Rulers. Some of them even ended their lives and destroyed their own bodies so they couldn’t be taken for study or harvested for materials by the early generations.”
“How did the system come into existence?”
The slim thylarin snorts. “Let me know if you find out. I don’t think even the current Rulers know for sure. Though maybe an older Ruler, such as the Ruler of Charity, knows.”
“Oh? Is the Ruler of Charity the oldest?”
“From what I have heard, he is very old. You’re asking an awful lot of questions.”
“I get told that a lot. So what happened to the other elves?”
“No one knows.”
“You mean, you don't know. There could be others who do know. Who’s older, the Elf or Charity?”
Io pauses for a moment and signals the others to stop. He looks as if he’s listening to something coming from the hallway ahead. I’ve already checked and know it’s another dead end, but like before, I don’t say anything.
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While examining it, he says, “Logically, you’d have to answer that the Last Elf is older. But it’s also possible the Ruler of Charity existed long before the system and only took on the title of Ruler later.”
I feel almost proud as Io identifies it as yet another dead end, and doesn't head there this time. We follow him in a new direction, some of the others also chatting quietly behind us.
“So, no idea if someone created the system, or if it just appeared out of nowhere? Or if we’re all in a simulation run by something that’s forgotten we’re in here, or somehow wound up dead, while someone else watches us like a reality show? It could be a rogue robot vacuum AI or something. Maybe it’s not even technology, maybe it’s some ancient god that digitized itself and forgot it was a god, and decided to start handing out quests and stats because it thinks that’s what life is supposed to be. Or some overgrown code experiment gone feral, or a psychic parasite that latched onto reality and started handing out quests to keep us busy while it feeds, or it’s literally just a runaway script in some abandoned server farm in the year 30291 that’s been auto-generating the system ever since the lead dev died in a scooter accident.”
“I don’t even know what most of that means. But no, we don't know. There are dozens of opinions, and none of them are confirmed.”
"That sucks. You’re not as bad as you seemed at first."
"Thanks for nothing. You already know my name, apparently. I’m Io, from the Astral Brotherhood. And you are?"
“Nathaniel. Angry Kitt… I mean, Primordial Knights.”
“No way!” another voice calls out, and from behind, a figure crashes into me.
The demon woman throws her arm around my shoulder and shakes me. “I almost joined them too, but they seem to be going down the drain with their guild master doing nothing and just uselessly staying on the fifth floor all the time. Why did you join?”
“I like underdogs.”
She shakes me more energetically and leans in so close I could probably headbutt her if I wanted to.
“You're fun, and I like your hearts. You said you are Nathaniel, right? I'm Malika. Abyss Bound, Fourth Squad.”
"Sounds like a crappy guild. Even worse than the Primordial Knights, and ranked lower, too."
Her smile widens into something sharper, and her arm tightens around my shoulder. “Isn’t it better to join a new, growing guild, one that’s actually strong, where you can make your own mark, instead of siding with some washed-up group clinging to old connections and still managing to slip in the rankings, even with all their supposed advantages?”
“Sounds like something a loser rejected from the Primordial Knights would say. Now take your arm off me.”
“But I don't want to〜”
Before she can even finish, I split my mind into two more parts. One of them boosts my movement with mana, the other with kinetic energy, and I headbutt her.
As her head snaps back, both parts of my mind merge again, and I halt her movement mid-air. The blood spraying from her face freezes as well. The field that Lioren liked to use so much stops all motion around us. As she channels her gravitational energy, I feel pressure building around my head. I shift it to the side, and only my cheek and ear twist and tear as a compressed zone of steep gravity sucks at them while I move out of range.
Another gravitational zone forms around my head, following me like a trap about to snap shut. Malika’s red eyes stay locked on me, sharp and unblinking, even as she hangs motionless in the air.
It is not so different from what Min-Jae does with his primordial energy and Gravitational Wavelength Iris. She continues to manipulate gravity all around me. It strengthens, it weakens, it pulls me toward the ceiling or the walls until directions themselves become hard to estimate.
It all happens in a single second. She starts reaching into my head, trying to compress my brain. Her power slips through my natural defenses with a precision I’ve never seen before, and the sheer control behind it stuns me for a moment. Maybe my lacking physical stats are part of the problem, but even so, I never thought something like this was possible against someone at a similar level.
I throw up a barrier around my brain and conjure something like mana pillars to resist the compression, which now looks like a bubble trying to collapse inward.
A quick Wraith Dance puts me right in front of her. I tap her forehead with the tip of my finger, sending a pulse of kinetic energy through her, just enough to rattle her properly.
Then I wait and look at her.
She almost passes out from that, but regains composure. Her eyes still hold that same look, and the pressure on my brain intensifies further.
So I tap her forehead again, this time with a weaker pulse, a gentle nudge, barely even an attack. Just a message that the next one will be the last.
I return her gaze even as the pressure increases and my defenses begin to crack. All the careful balancing, my mind working in overdrive to protect me, and the absurdity of the whole situation make me smile unconsciously.
“Three,” I say, and her pupils widen.
“Two,” I continue, and they start to tremble.
“On…”
Before I even finish, the pressure around my brain vanishes.
I tilt my head and keep holding her in place. I stare into her eyes without moving at all, almost as if I were frozen by [Redistribution] myself.
Then she looks away.
Only then do I let her go.
"Got it, got it," she says with a smile as she takes a step back. She wipes the blood from her face, and the wound on her waist doesn’t seem to bother her that much at all. It’s still bleeding, but I saw her using some kind of item on it, and the rest is regenerating.
Just in case, I watch her for a bit longer, but I see no ill will. Competitiveness? Aggression? Sure, both are there and strong, and I’m sure she will try again if she thinks she has the advantage. But at the same time, I don’t think she would try to stab me in the back or something like that.
What a weirdo.
I fix the golden halo over my head that shifted during our... altercation, and send another message, getting no response, even now.
When I turn around, I catch a tall, slender gray man saying something to Tacita. She ignores him, just like she does with everyone else, and takes a step back. He looks confused, repeats himself, then steps closer and reaches out to touch her.
Oh, this won’t end well.
In the next second, his arm flies through the air, freshly cut, and he staggers back with a dagger lodged in his neck. As he looks on in shock at such a display of speed and lack of hesitation from Tacita, she takes a swift step closer and pulls the dagger out of his neck to take it back, then steps back to avoid the resulting spray of blood.
The gray man disappears into his shadow, which moves across the wall and slips into the larger shadow cast by one of our lighting orbs. When he reappears, his arm is reattached, and his neck is healed. The blood on his body remains, and I notice the mana radiating from him is noticeably weaker.
And as expected, Tacita moves. In a few steps that feel both animalistic and instinctual, yet strangely elegant and dance-like, she slips behind my back.
I have no illusion that it’s something she’s doing because she trusts me, and that she wouldn’t be stabbing me in the neck if I were the one to cross her line. I think she just acknowledges the fact that she might need to cooperate with us and stays close, for whatever reason. Maybe she saw something when she left on her own, if I had to guess.
So, at least here, I’m someone she knows a little, and she knows what to expect from me. As annoying as it is, I also don’t mind it all that much. I know she takes notice of my "cooperation" and will pay me back if needed.
But in the end, it is confirmed once more. The thing I say so often.
Among all of us present, my behavior falls closest to what might be considered standard.