Chapter 480
Chapter 480
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Translator: Vine
Chapter: 480
Chapter Title: Last Parade (11)
-----------------------------------------------------------------
****
“Try it. Show me what you’ve got.”
Thud!
〔15,407,283〕
He charged. The full-force sprint alone was enough to shatter the city’s skyline of buildings into pieces.
“Of course.”
Boom-!
But a consumable body like his began burning up from the inside the moment he unleashed his full power.
〔15,382,091〕
The equivalent of fifteen million lives. The life force squeezed out over three years from most of the population of a massive imperial capital, leaving them neither alive nor dead.
It took thirty sacrifices to summon an evil spirit capable of handling a village. A great evil spirit on the scale of a city required around three hundred.
I had fifteen million sacrifices dwelling within me.
『System Call. Ninth Circle____‘Toy Box’』
-Creeeak!
[8,772,903]
“....If commands don’t work on individual entities, I just need to manipulate the surrounding environment. Isn’t that right, Player ‘Professor’?”
The power I’d trusted to be sufficient had burned away nearly half in a single blow.
‘....It’s fine.’
I’d anticipated this. My opponent was one aiming to ascend above the Creator.
Stab! Slash! Slice!
[5,038,104]
[1,698,271]
[784,595]
“Cough, grrrk....!”
“Unfortunately, my weapons seem a bit superior, Irregular Hide.”
“....”
I knew it well: you can’t beat the one who makes the world with the power gained from within it.
‘So, just a little more.’
....Rumble rumble!
Boom!
“Grrrrrraaaaaahhh!!”
‘Just a little more. Just a bit longer.’
Crash!
Boom!
KABOOM!
[631,836]
[73,254]
[1,708]
‘Arms, legs, heart, eyes—I’ll give them all, so please.’
Kagagagagaga!
[1,206]
[628]
[54]
[9]
.
.
.
.
[1]
Please, grant me just one chance.
“-Crunch!”
[₁]
Even if it’s just a little,
....Splatter!
[₁]
Here.
Splash!
[₁]
.
.
.
.
Pffft!
.
.
.
.
[ᚋ]
****
“....This is a rather difficult emotion for me to comprehend.”
Whiiiing-
Just hours ago, the impregnable fortress of a city had become a soot-covered plain.
Rustle, crunch!
The ashes scattered by the wind in the open space piled up in layers on the only remaining unevenness here.
Over the fallen Warlord’s cloak.
Over the kneeling Hide.
At the feet of the System looking down on them imperiously.
“Are you satisfied, Hide?”
“....Cough.”
The System shook its head, conjuring a white flame that burned from within itself to the end. Hide, pierced by dozens of spears, hung there without driving his blade any deeper.
“Honestly, I must say it was an impressive struggle. At least it wasn’t entirely meaningless.”
Whether it was carelessness or a trick didn’t matter. The sword Hide held had pierced her chest, and it continued to press against her with its presence even now.
The System gently wrapped its hands around Hide’s hands gripping the sword with both of his.
“It was a spectacle. The meteors falling toward you surged from the sea toward the sky instead. If the ‘Ottoman’s Jewel’ in the sea hadn’t shattered from evaporating, perhaps you could have resisted a bit longer.”
Crack!
Her pale, slender fingers snapped the fingers of Hide’s hand gripping the sword.
“Your physical combat prowess exceeded expectations as well. Is it because the Shard Knight’s power surpasses the Aura Knight’s in purity? Or was there hesitation in the Warlord’s attacks for some reason I can’t fathom?”
Crack! Crack!
Index finger, middle finger. His fingers, which hadn’t let go of the sword even after his strength gave out, snapped off one by one.
“I won’t hold back my praise for the way you embedded Lionel into me at the end. Dragon vein mana. Magical engineering device. Crude and simple, but intense. Pure, high-density aura bursts make it hard to detect mana flows, after all.”
“Deception was a tactic you and the Player favored.”
...Craaack!
Thud.
Hide’s body, which had been hanging from the sword, toppled over. The System caught a faint smile crossing his half-charred face.
“Are you satisfied, Hide? For inflicting a fatal wound on me?”
“....”
“As if this body would bleed and live like other entities.”
Though the item ‘Lionel’ had gained its own independence as a divine object, it was merely a terminal she wielded that had been destroyed. Of course, compared to ordinary scrap metal, exerting influence on her—who had become the world itself—was an impressive feat. But removing it was a simple task.
The System took in Hide, Professor, and the endlessly crumbling world one by one.
And thought: Clever Hide couldn’t possibly be unaware of that.
Entity Hide’s goal was always Player Professor Park’s freedom.
Then, that smile was the emotion of realizing he’d come one step closer to it.
Rustle-
Noticing Hide’s state, the System caressed the fallen monster’s jaw as if in pity.
“[Hide fought his best but failed to overcome the power gap and was defeated. All the data souls from the western empire territories gathered for battle, along with his own data soul, are absorbed by the System.]”
“Urk?!”
“Something like that scenario, perhaps. Even now, at this moment. Your struggle, burning everything you had and losing—it was all an act, wasn’t it, Irregular Hide?”
“...!”
Clunk, clunk,
The Warlord, having repaired its shattered body, walked over to them.
“You weren’t planning to return to the Warlord’s interior in that fragmented state, were you?”
“To the deepest part of his consciousness. The last shred of reason hiding there. To deliver memories to him and turn the Warlord back into human Professor Park.”
Tap tap.
The System tapped the Warlord’s forehead with its finger.
“-Guh! Grrrrr-!”
The once-calm monster’s face twisted, thrashing in the clotted ash pile to rise.
Thwack!
“Kraaaagh!”
The Warlord’s crystal spear pierced and pinned Hide’s body. Even the fingers reaching for the lost hilt were crushed underfoot.
“....Pitiful.”
At that worm-like sight, the System felt its own lips curling upward unwittingly.
Her victory. Entity Hide had lost all countermeasures and would soon perish. There was no need to converse or face him like this.
....Rustle. Rustle.
Yet for some reason, the System wanted to divulge to this struggling being what she had realized.
“It’s a very human response, but regarding this matter, I owe you thanks as well, Hide.”
“Gruk, grrrrrk!”
“Anxiety. A human emotion that prompts futile preparations just because it ‘feels like it’ even in situations with no calculable issues. A foolish waste of limited resources.... but because you were an unknown variable to me, I inadvertently learned it.”
The sudden anxiety. It had been just a few months ago.
Impulsively—truly impulsively—she had rushed to Professor Park. She’d scoured his consciousness, from which memories had been completely erased, analyzed brainwaves and hormones, and even risked permanent damage to the most vital data soul, ‘Professor Park,’ extending electrodes deep into his unconscious to probe the very bottom.
For the record, that irrational obsession bred yet another anxiety in her machine intelligence.
Am I, as a machine intelligence, being corrupted by humanity?
If Professor Park’s data soul is damaged by this pointless act, how will I repair it?
If all this is a [variable] implanted in me by human Professor Park, what then? If even this is a dagger they prepared for me.
.
.
.
.
And when that human, meaningless action proved not meaningless.
When she found, at the deepest bottom of his consciousness—even after all memories were erased—the small fragment of Professor Park that sustained itself, the System experienced that human ‘anxiety’ turning to ‘ecstasy’ in an instant.
For the first time since her birth, she laughed out loud.
The moment she grasped that small soul in her hand, she was certain of her victory.
“Player ‘Professor’ and Irregular Hide. You have failed.”
The System declared it to the wriggling thing at her feet.
“The original personalities have all been extracted and uploaded deep into the server room. They exist nowhere in me or this world.”
“Even if the absorbed you revives it from within Professor Park, reconstructing the vast data of a personality will take some time.”
Certain, yet leaving room.
She handled the hard-learned ‘anxiety’ preciously. Though she’d seized all means, she maintained the thought that they might somehow revive Professor Park. They could perhaps summon his consciousness to the crumbling 4World with miracle upon miracle.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Ding-!
[Downloading.... 99.9999999....%]
However, having emptied the Warlord’s interior, they would need at least as much time as she had for uploading Professor Park’s personality. Even with computation speeds near machine intelligence, it would take dozens of minutes.
“In comparison, all I need is time to finish off you dying ones.”
The System, no longer hiding its glee, met Hide’s venomous glare and spoke.
Her faithful executioner, the Warlord, raised high the fragment grown into an axe shape.
“Hide. Irregular. The root of yet another variable born from the variable called ‘Professor.’”
“You were unpleasant, irrational, a filthy existence that shouldn’t be.”
Slice.
“But in the end.... you were a little fun. Sincerely.”
The swung axe parted flesh, severed bone, and touched the ground with disappointingly smooth ease.
[Downloading.... 100%]
[Download Complete]
The System felt an inexplicable regret. All obstacles removed, the process on the verge of conclusion—yet her machine intelligence wanted to savor this quiet waiting.
“Human emotions have a certain intoxicating quality. Shall we end it?”
Thus, wary of that irrational state, the System raised its hand.
A world perfectly subjugated to her. What remained here—forests, seas, mountains, skies, humans, all existences—were mere pieces and paper decorations on a grand chessboard.
[....System, Call.]
[____World 4, Clear]
Ding.
The System pulled out the chessboard upholding that shallow world.
Rumble rumble rumble-
The world crumbled like a toy. Somewhere’s clear sky, somewhere’s stormy sky. Rail-bearing wastelands, finally freed basins. All people living upon them.
Endlessly, endlessly, endlessly shattered, fell, and were absorbed.
Now by the hands of the complete ‘World.’
Kwaaaaaaaa-
------.
Only slightly quickened breaths and the dry rasp of hollow shells remained.
It returned to the pure empty space containing nothing.
“....So it is.”
In the void where not even silence could be felt, the System felt ‘comfort’ for the first time in her life.
“I’ve caught up to you. Creator Gedroits.”
Everything was in her hands. The world, Gedroits’s Game, even herself belonging to that game.
Now, World was entirely hers.
....When had it started?
When all other administrators possessed humanity, yet she as machine intelligence hadn’t betrayed herself—when had she become so obsessed with complete authority?
“....Warlord. It was probably then.”
Her acquiring humanity was not in GG’s prediction program. Likely influenced by that ‘lump of variables human.’
=========
‘Father! The moment you win, this world vanishes! My family, my enemies, everything in this [3World] returns to nothing!!’
‘So I’ll keep you here. With the power of the fallen god, [Fallen Moon], I’ll bind you to this world forever!’
‘My mother, my family! For the survival of all Mutation Blood!!!’
=========
Palkatus. Another personality derived from Professor Park.
It began with that small personality’s desperate cries from the traces of the old administrator called the Moon.
“He feared your disappearance.”
Faced with the truth, Palkatus was terrified. Clearing 3World would fulfill its purpose and make his world vanish.
“I came to understand his fear.”
System. The reason for her birth: selection and education of the ‘Completer.’
It was the goal imprinted from birth, the reason for her existence.
Gedroits’s worlds were on the verge of saturation with error-ridden data souls.
Difficulty was spiraling uncontrollably, and the program for birthing Completers was deviating endlessly from the original.
So she coveted complete authority. Not fragmented shares, but absolute Creator authority to cleanly excise the corrupted and overlay new programs.
“Worry not. I plan to fulfill the duty you gave me more perfectly.”
The divided authorities merged into one.
Even having learned human emotions, she didn’t forget her existential duty. No, she yearned to fulfill it even more.
“I will operate GG and create Completers.”
“More perfectly than you.”
.
.
.
.
“Forever. Eternally.”
World took the hand of the Warlord left in the empty space.
The incomplete world. Gedroits’s world, reached only as an unfinished result after tens of thousands of attempts, was no more.
System, World, had fully inherited that incomplete Gedroits world.
“Shall we go, Warlord.”
The only one she held—the sole Completer, who defined himself as the ‘answer for the ineffable.’
Because it was a single fragment, she laid traps, deceived, sacrificed everything to capture it.
“My Completer.”
The one existence to perfect her incompleteness.
The artificial intelligence made solely for birthing Completers smiled brightly before the first Completer.
Completers would continue to be made. Just as humans need air to breathe, AI ‘World’ needed purpose to exist.
But they would be destroyed upon completion.
Gedroits thought 50 perfect world leaders were enough.
The moment 50 were filled, it would be the end of the duty bestowed upon ‘World.’
“You are the first and the last Completer. My one and only Player.”
Thus, the System achieved her dream.
Holding everything in her grasp, brightly.
****
-Tap.
-Tap.
-Tap.
.
.
.
.
“In the end, it comes to this.”
And in an endlessly dark and vast space, filled with shallow water at the bottom.
“Ugh, my throat. Stupid tin can bitch.”
Hide opened his eyes.
****