Chapter 173
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 173
I had practically lived in Lapis's workshop for the past day. Unused monitors, terminals, and computers were scattered everywhere.
Scrape, scrape.
I dragged several monitors onto a single table, their wires trailing behind them in a tangled mess. When compiling data for hours on end, physical monitors were far superior to holograms.
I pulled up the data I had gathered last night, spreading it across the screens. All that remained was the tedious process of reviewing and cross-referencing.
Over the past few years, the killer had consistently posted photos of his crime scenes. I filtered for school calendars that matched the dates and times of the photos. Since vacation periods were public record, I could easily eliminate a massive number of schools. This was the kind of grunt work I could leave to the computer's built-in AI chip.
I studied the remaining schools.
‘It’s likely a strict private school for Border City's elite. The posts go up on Sunday, or Monday or Tuesday at the latest. That means he kills over the weekend and posts afterward. He's probably the child of a high-ranking Bellato official or a wealthy family, attending a boarding school with a strict curfew. Looking at the murder intervals and dates, he unleashes his pent-up urges during school breaks.’
The killer's profile was taking shape in my mind.
He was vain, driven by a twisted sense of aesthetics. Even in his brief posts, his grammar was impeccable, and he occasionally used sophisticated vocabulary.
Assuming he followed a student's schedule, his murder cycle was incredibly regular. It was like eating meals at set times. He clearly operated by a strict set of personal rules.
Click.
The workshop lights flickered on, breaking my concentration. Lapis, who had gone to bed, was back for her shift.
"Have you been here all night? At least eat something while you work. You're going to ruin your health."
Lapis set a Japa Burger bag down next to me.
"I'm almost finished. If I stop halfway, I won't be able to sleep anyway."
I pulled out a burger, my other hand still navigating the monitor.
"Is it because of the Akies Victima?" Lapis asked, unwrapping her own burger. She knew about the Akies Victima. After all, I wasn't the first Akies Victima user Japa Trading had hired.
"That's part of it, but it's mostly just my nature."
I stuffed the burger into my mouth and chewed greedily. The bun was savory, the meat tender. A rich, complex blend of flavors coated my tongue before sliding down my throat.
Even eating in a rush, the taste was incredible. Japa hadn't dominated Border City's food industry for nothing.
"I don't know what kind of work the detectives hired by Master Japa do… but none of them seem to meet a good end."
"I'd like to say I'm different, but nothing in life is guaranteed," I muttered, pushing a straw through the lid of my drink. The taste was bizarre. I checked the label, which read: New Bambam Drink Release. Apparently, it was an energy drink made from a diluted extract of snakes boiled for over a hundred hours.
"Still, of everyone who's come through here, I think you're the most skilled. Just look at what you're doing now. That's an amount of data most people couldn't process in a single night," Lapis said, taking a bite of her mini burger. She sat on the edge of the table, swinging her legs back and forth.
Crunch.
I tossed a few fried snake skins into my mouth, chewing on them as I stared at the screen.
...Annoying. The fried snake skins were actually delicious. There was nothing special about how they were fried, but the seasoning powder was incredible.
I licked my thumb and focused. As I scanned the posts, a one-year gap caught my eye.
‘After a one-year hiatus, he started killing consistently again. But from that point on, his cycle and patterns changed completely. They became looser, more erratic. It means he suddenly had a lot of free time on his hands.’
The most likely explanation was 'graduation.' He had graduated from a school in Border City, left for a year, and then returned. Out in the wider world, he must have missed Border City, where murder was so easy to get away with.
In Border City, if a lower-class citizen without a private security contract died, no one bothered to investigate. But outside Border City, things would be different. The police and security in Bellato City, the capital of the Federation, wouldn't be nearly as lax.
I plugged in the search parameters and left the rest to the AI.
Clap!
I clapped my hands, shifting my focus. Now, all that was left was to wait.
"How does the prosthetic body feel?"
Lapis finished her meal and pulled a pair of goggles down from the wall, hanging them around her neck. It looked like she was getting ready to start work, too.
Lapis was responsible for custom-building and repairing the various pieces of mechanical equipment Japa Trading required. In the Empire, her role would be equivalent to that of a dedicated weapons workshop. Even Equesians occasionally dropped by to have her service their weapons and gear.
"Excellent. It feels incredibly light, but without any loss in power."
"I designed it for agile movement. But it's a difficult body to handle. I only built it that way because Master Japa told me it was for someone 'extremely' skilled in handling prosthetic bodies." Lapis emphasized the word 'extremely.'
"True. With signal exchange this fast, responsiveness this sharp, and high output to boot… an ordinary person's nervous system would fry instantly."
In a crisis, a human body can send signals strong enough to tear its own muscles just to unleash superhuman strength. A high-output prosthetic body requires sending and receiving signals of that intensity constantly. It's something a normal human's central nervous system simply cannot handle.
"Do you mind if I pull the internal logs from your prosthetic?"
I nodded readily, popping open the ports on the insides of my wrists and ankles and removing four chips. It was just my diagnostic data, so there was no need for secrecy. In fact, showing these logs to the technician was the best way to optimize the body.
Most cybernetic prosthetics operate on extremely closed security architectures. They don't use wireless signals, running solely on direct neural commands. At most, they have a few physical ports left open for maintenance.
‘Since physical access is required for any interference, there's no need for constant security updates. Even the most brilliant electronic warfare specialist couldn't hack a prosthetic body remotely.’
While I was lost in thought, Lapis loaded my diagnostic logs onto a hologram. Numbers and graphs that meant absolutely nothing to me began to fluctuate wildly.
"You really are incredible. Your output control is as natural as if you've been using this body for years, and the signal curve is fascinating. Even before you consciously register the need to increase output, your neural signals are already strengthening and expanding their bandwidth. Because of that, the sudden spikes are smoothed out, minimizing the strain on both your nervous system and the prosthetic. It's almost as if you have some kind of precognition that lets you see 0.2 seconds into the future."
"It's not precognition. I don't have supernatural powers like the Force."
"That's why I said as if. Before your conscious mind even registers the need to fight, your instincts and intuition have already analyzed the situation and sent combat signals to your body. It means you control the machine as naturally as a biological limb. In so many ways, the Empire is a terrifying place… though I've never been there myself."
Lapis narrowed her large eyes. She had solid black pupils with no whites, but her delicate features kept her from looking eerie.
"The Empire isn't as bad as you think. If you're wealthy enough to live well even in Border City, you'd do just fine there." My twisted sense of patriotism slipped out. I suppose I couldn't escape my upbringing and environment.
"For someone of Luka's age to have this level of cybernetic adaptability, it means you must have had your limbs amputated and replaced with machines while you were still growing up. To go so far as to discard a perfectly healthy body and replace it with a full-body prosthetic…"
Despite being a cybernetic technician herself, Lapis clearly harbored an aversion to full-body prosthetics. Outside of the Empire, that was the common sentiment.
"It's a matter of perspective."
"Someday, the Empire will pay the price. The price for discarding the flesh they were born with so carelessly."
"They're already paying it. The Empire knows better than anyone how a full-body prosthetic slowly destroys the mind." A smirk twisted my lips. I knew the Empire's nobility all too well.
Imperial nobles with full-body prosthetics lived twice their natural lifespans, yet they possessed no true vitality. As the years wore on, their emotions dulled, and their humanity withered away.
I had seen firsthand the lengths they would go to preserve a shred of emotion and humanity. They craved endless, extreme stimulation, harboring a bitter jealousy toward the very flesh and blood they had discarded. Even those who appeared sane possessed a pathological obsession with proving their humanity. In short… they became twisted.
"Do you ever regret it?"
"Even if I went back in time, I'd make the exact same choice. With my personality, if I didn't have this power, I would've ended up as just another rotting corpse in some back alley. To hell with the body I was born with. Once you're dead, it's over. You have to be alive to feel regret or anything else. A shallow sense of moral superiority is a luxury only the comfortable can afford."
"A shallow sense of moral superiority…" Lapis bit her lower lip.
"I'm not blaming you. I'm just speaking my mind. I have no intention of lecturing anyone, nor am I in any position to do so. I haven't exactly lived a righteous life."
"You don't have to be so hard on yourself," Lapis offered. It would have been nice if I could have given her a bitter, self-deprecating smile in return. But I wasn't that kind of person.
"I kill people without a second thought. I don't feel guilt. If necessary, I'll kill the innocent, and if someone rubs me the wrong way, I'll kill them too. I've taken countless lives needlessly, and I'll take countless more. Violence is the only thing life has ever taught me, and I know it's the fastest, most convenient solution. I have no intention of changing how I live."
"Then… if I refused to help you, would you use violence on me too?"
"If it got results, absolutely."
Lapis froze. She stared at me, her lively demeanor vanishing.
"So you keep doing wrong, even when you know it's wrong?"
"Lapis Lazuli of the Tarpa race. I'm sick of this conversation. Let's not pretend either of us is innocent. You're a cybernetic technician. You build high-performance combat prosthetics. Those are weapons designed to kill. They allow people to tear others apart with their bare hands."
I gripped the edge of the metal table, channeling power into my fingers.
Screeech!
The steel table shrieked in protest as it crumpled under my grip.
"I…!"
I stood up. Right on cue, the AI finished compiling the data on the screen.
"I'll keep killing people while pretending to have a conscience, and you can keep sleeping soundly by forgetting that the machines you build are meant to slaughter. That's how people survive in this world, isn't it?"
The personal profile of a young man who had just reached adulthood flashed on the screen. I focused on it.
"…I have to get to work, so let's talk later, Luka." Lapis looked up at me, her expression heavy with melancholy.
"Sure. I'll go use this body you built to kill the bastard on this screen. Though, at least this one actually deserves it."
I pulled the chips from the ports and slipped them into my pocket. The screens went dark.
I could feel Lapis's eyes on my back. She watched me until I reached the door. I gave a brief wave over my shoulder without looking back.
Thud.
The door clicked shut. I closed my eyes, then opened them.
Goddammit, Luka. You did it again.
A wave of self-loathing washed over me. Did I really have to be such an asshole? I had no idea what had happened to the social skills I'd forced myself to learn over the years. Ever since I woke up in Border City, my temper had grown increasingly volatile. Maybe it was because I no longer had a superior keeping me on a leash.
On top of that, negative emotions like anxiety, restlessness, and depression clung to me constantly like a sticky shadow. But even putting that aside… damn it, I didn't even know what I was saying anymore.
Let's be honest. I hated people who pretended to be good. Actually, I hated genuinely good people too. Being around someone kind and decent only made me feel like an even bigger piece of trash.
I wished everyone in the world was selfish and evil. A place crawling with nothing but scum who deserved to die was my idea of heaven. It was the only way to justify my own ugly, violent urges.
It would have been so much easier if Lapis had just tried to exploit me. But her genuine concern and goodwill only made me feel incredibly uncomfortable.
…I really was a twisted piece of work.
Step, step.
My pace quickened. I wanted to kill someone. The bigger the piece of trash, the better. If I could find some absolute degenerate whom everyone but his own mother would unanimously sentence to death, I'd have nothing left to wish for.