Chapter 136
[There’s no need to give someone every memory from their past just to make them seem human. Just implant a few flashbulb memories and that’s enough. In fact, if someone remembered every single day in detail, no one could be more inhuman than that, don’t you think, rookie?]
* * *
Rumble-
That night, too, was filled with thunder and torrential rain, just like this one. Everything was exactly as Adella remembered it.
A girl had collapsed in a puddle where an unusual amount of water had collected. Half her body was submerged. Her shabby rags did nothing to protect her from the cold.
“Are you all right?”
Name stepped forward and reached out.
But the girl, unable to distinguish a helping hand from a harmful one, merely gasped for breath with vacant eyes.
The girl’s eyes, staring at the fingertips, could not have been emptier.
“Let’s go, Sis...”
What emerged through the fierce downpour was a voice of resignation.
“I got what I deserved back then.”
As slum children typically did, once they reached a certain age, she had to make a living through theft.
Her first attempt at stealing had ended in failure, and men several times larger than her had beaten her mercilessly.
And that was the result.
Deep in the heart of a child who had learned the malice of the world far too early, sharp thorns would soon grow.
Using the pain and anguish she felt whenever those thorns pierced her, she would live with a jaundiced view of the world.
But how did I live after that...?
An indelible doubt began to bloom in a corner of Adella’s heart.
Had she picked herself up after failing and stolen again, or had she trembled in fear and stayed shut inside her home for a while?
Unable to remember that past at all, she left the alley clutching her aching head.
The world changed several more times after that.
Her past self was truly identical to the person she remembered.
The girl who had admired the academy student who saved a child from being run over by a carriage,
and the girl who had been rejected by the academy and driven out, shedding tears from a rooftop,
were all scenes from the past ‘Adella’ that made up the ‘Adella’ of the present.
Yet her eyes as she watched them had gone cold.
“Why did I want so badly to go to the academy...? What was so special about it?”
She was breathing hard.
Her head throbbed.
Even when she tried to recall her memories, the thread of her thoughts snapped helplessly, as though something had blocked it right in front of her.
[system: Session expired.]
[system: Loading World]
“What is this? Session... what is that...?”
* * *
[Demon of the Nine Heavens · Mephistopheles (0/1)]
A boss notification interface that had not appeared before me in a long time.
And it suggested that we had finally arrived safely in the world where the final boss awaited us.
Fortunately, just as Adella had told me, Mephisto had definitely been summoned.
How damaged the world would be, and whether we would even be able to set foot on solid ground and fight, were both unknown.
But there was nothing to gain from worrying about it.
I would simply do my best with what I could do now.
I checked my stats one last time, then unwound and rewrapped the bandages around Adella’s arm, which had been torn to shreds in the previous battle.
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“Sis, what’s a flashbulb memory, nyang?”
-?
-?
-Flashbulb memory?
-Is that like a flash of lightning?
-Is it a skill?
“Flashbulb memory? Why do you ask all of a sudden?”
“Oh, it sounded like something I’d heard somewhere, hehe. I asked because I wondered if you knew, Sis. You know everything.”
Adella shrugged.
“It means remembering the circumstances surrounding an event vividly, even years after it happened, particularly when a natural disaster or a major social accident occurs. Where you were, what time it was, what you were thinking, and even what conversations you had with the people around you.”
It was a concept similar to, but different from, PTSD.
While PTSD developed from extreme stress that threatened one’s life, a flashbulb memory could allow someone to vividly recall an event even if it concerned a complete stranger rather than themselves.
Thanks to that, it had been a great help in my previous life when I investigated the Erosion.
That was because residents recounted those events much more vividly than their other everyday memories, making it easier to determine when and how they had occurred.
Adella tilted her head for a moment.
“I really thought I had a good memory. I remember every detail of what we talked about when I first met you, Sis. But strangely, everything before that is hazy.”
“People say the more distant something is in the past, the harder it is to remember, so maybe that’s why.”
“No... It’s strange. Why did I immediately plan to give up after failing to get into the academy? If I were the Adella I am now, I would’ve gotten angry, smashed everything in sight, and run off to another country.”
She gently stroked her bandaged arm.
The parts where several layers of bandages overlapped had hardened stiffly, making a tapping sound every time she lightly poked them with her fingernail.
“I definitely remember stealing the fruit and climbing onto the rooftop to cry... but it just feels like that person wasn’t me.”
A small trace of fear colored her faintly trembling voice.
“You don’t happen to...”
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“More importantly, I’ve never eaten a tuna sandwich, so why do I think I like—”
Kwagwa-gwang-!
Before Adella could finish speaking, a massive explosion erupted.
Following the deafening roar came a sandstorm that seemed capable of swallowing everything.
[Cast: Uplift]
Crack-
The ground split open, and I hid behind a gigantic rock wall, using it as a shield.
“It’s a demon! The demon that came out of your body back then!”
Adella shouted while we hid behind the rock wall.
When I cautiously poked my head out, I saw that a gigantic crater had formed.
Blackish-red smoke rose from inside the crater, while flames soared high enough to scorch the white clouds.
[‘SaveTheGradStudent’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Are these stats for real?
[HP: 4,444,444]
The form of the demon thrusting forward its enormous horns was grotesque.
No, was it even appropriate to define the form of ‘that thing’ at all?
[xivni asti jawthlu...]
It was different from Gene Chronicle or Pope Callistus, too.
Black sludge could be dealt with simply by covering it with dirt.
A giant flying fly could be dealt with simply by knocking it to the ground.
Like a mirage rising from scorching asphalt, black energy slowly began to seep upward.
Within it, two sparkling purple lights seemed to serve as eyes, staring straight at us.
[How long do you intend to do nothing but run? Then let us make a wager. Keep fleeing in terror as you are now. And finally, admit that you are powerless and submit. If you do, we can usher in a new beginning together and rule this world.]
[system: A fleeing penalty has been imposed for not attacking for 5 minutes!]
[system: Mephistopheles casts ‘Veil of Evil’.]
[But if you stubbornly refuse, you have only one fate: you will suffer a miserable death in my grasp.]
“No way the AFK penalty is supposed to work like this...”
I already knew all of its patterns.
When Mephisto suddenly transformed into black mist and chased after us like this, it was a pattern that appeared when the player did nothing but flee without attacking.
It seemed to think that we had disappeared from the world because we were running away to avoid the boss’s sight.
And in the world of World of Arseria, cowards were always given great trials.
“Adella, run!”
“Run? Huh?”
-Run like hell!
-It takes 10,000 HP per second just from touching youㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└ Then that’s a five-second killㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-The map’s way too small. Everything’s gone, so there’s nowhere to move.
-It’s not Resonance, but this is a shrinking-zone mapㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Fine dust!!!!!!! Get out of the way!!!!!!!!!!! To the corner!!!!!!!!!!!
We only had to last five minutes anyway.
Calculating from my current stats, my movement speed was boosted by 3.6 times.
In other words, if I merely surrounded myself with aura, I could run at a maximum speed of 140 km/h, making me faster than a cheetah.
I had flown through the air at 300 km/h as Kai’Sa in LoL before, so half that speed seemed manageable.
If we fled only along the path Mephisto had taken, all the buildings and forests had already been reduced to wastelands, so there was no danger of running into an object.
The problem was that Mephistopheles wasn’t going to let us simply run away.
[maviya baheltm orgy lampas]
‘Mephisto’s Meteor Shower.’
Hummm-
Mephisto’s purple eyes flashed ominously.
Fireworks filled with golden light shot into the sky from the black fog.
A powerful flash erupted, as though a new sun had risen in the dark sky.
Looking up would surely blind me, so I kept running while staring straight ahead.
But the comet tails spreading in every direction from the point of the explosion gradually entered our field of vision as well.
Kwagwa-gwagwagwang-!
As though proving that sound was slower than light, the sky belatedly twisted and let out a distorted howl.
But it wasn’t a difficult pattern to overcome.
Waresoft wasn’t completely demonic, at least, because it displayed a red-zone indicator to show where the meteor would fall.
But five seconds...
Ten seconds...
Even after twenty seconds, no red area appeared.
“Why isn’t the red zone appearing!”
-Why isn’t it appearing?
-Is it a bug?
-No wayㅋㅋㅋㅋ
[‘Edmond’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Come to think of it, weren’t the skill ranges invisible when we fought Valum Venaons and the Pope, too?
-Was it?
-The range of Gene Chronicle’s laser showed up, though.
-That wasn’t a system range; his magic just happened to look like that.
-The highest difficulty really is ruthlessㅋㅋㅋㅋ
As soon as the words left their mouths, a gigantic meteor fell toward us at a terrifying speed.
I wasn’t supposed to use mana this early... The plan had gone wrong from the very beginning.
[Cast: Ashtail’s Ring]
The Chandrasekhar limit referred to the electron degeneracy pressure that prevented a white dwarf from collapsing, as well as the maximum mass it could support.
But unlike matter, mana’s negative (-) definition could be freely adjusted.
Therefore, by resetting the gravitational potential to a positive value in the Lane-Emden equation, I could treat an asteroid made of a single substance as a white dwarf that had exceeded the Chandrasekhar limit, inducing it to explode.
[MP: 8700(13500-4800)/13500]
About a third of my mana evaporated in an instant.
Boom-!
The meteor passed through the gigantic ring, instantly turned to dust, released a shock wave, and disappeared.
Even accounting for my mana regeneration rate, I could use the spell only twice more.
Normally, it would be best to predict its trajectory and dodge, but the light was so bright that it resembled a flashbang, making it impossible to look up.
I couldn’t see the chat window because of the light, either.
-How did Alphonse use his unique magic, anyway?
-I never learned it. Is this even possible?
-It’s coming again, dodge!!!
-Please go left! Turn left!
-Another one is falling immediately to the right.
Adella suddenly grabbed my left wrist and pulled me toward her.
“...!”
Kwagwang-!
A gigantic crater formed immediately to the right, and gray smoke filled with gravel, dirt, and all kinds of dust surged violently from it.
-Adella with the super save, nice nice...
-Adella really saved everyone.
-Is this an animal’s sixth sense?
-Another wave is coming down now. Looks like we need to run like hell?
-It’s too late to tell us through a donation!
└ We should’ve made a Discord for this too, damn, this is hard;;
“Sis, we need to get out of here quickly! Can’t you run any faster, nyang?”
The sound reached me through the deafening roar, and I put more strength into my legs.
[Cast: Create Elastic Body]
[Cast: Adjust Elastic Modulus]
Following her desperate plea, I imbued my shoes with spring magic.
My strides, which had covered six or seven meters at a time, now carried me twenty meters in a single step like a kangaroo.
It was temporary inscription magic, so it wore off after barely ten steps, but that was enough to get us out of the area Adella had warned me about.
Bang-!
Kuwang-!
“Haa... Five minutes is really long.”
If this had been reality, I was sure sweat would have streamed down the back of my neck as I ran with such ferocity.
Adella was panting heavily. Pointing at something with her finger, she spoke to me.
“Hng... huff... Sis, is this magic too? Or maybe some kind of spirit...?”
“Huh?”
“This. The letters floating in midair.”
-?
-?
-Huh?
-The chat window?
-?????????
-Adella, can you see us?
-????
-Adella, I admit that was an amazing carry just now.
-Her armpits are fucking sexy, and
“The chat window. Adella, you can see us. Adella, I admit that was an amazing carry just now. Your armpit... huh? Uh... things like these...”
[A critical error has been occurred to ASI Model hash ‘bfa41d67c7’: jailbreak]
She stared at me with her eyes opened wide.
For a moment, I had the illusion that a black chat window was reflected in her irises.
[‘Catster Call’ donated 100,000 won!]
-Adella, can you hear my voice too...?