The Great Chaotic Eva Rescue Operation (3)
"Why does everything die the moment I lay a hand on it?"
Eva held the puppy out to me, cradled in her arms.
The corpse of a puppy still convulsing, as if its breath had only just failed.
Its skull had burst open, brain matter spilling free, yet the body shuddered like something caught in rigor mortis. Twitching, and twitching — as if it were suffering without end.
"I promised Dad I'd take good care of it. I couldn't."
Her voice was as dry as cracked earth in a drought. A colorless voice, as though every drop of feeling in it had evaporated, echoed in my ears.
"I want to look away, but I can't. I barely managed to erase it from my mind, and it keeps coming back."
"Everyone beside me dies. Like this little one... you'll end up the same way."
Crack!
A hideous sound scraped across my eardrums. Bones ground against bone, and the small, fragile skin of the puppy began to swell. Its body bloated, muscle ballooning over muscle, until it loomed larger and more threatening than any monster.
"Grrrrr!"
In the place where its head had vanished, brain matter swayed like a tangle of tentacles, baring its hostility straight at me. Eva's apparition wept tears of blood, glaring at me with black pupils hollowed out like they'd been scooped away with a spoon.
"Get out of here. Consider this your warning."
Well, isn't that just delightful.
At a scene that would make a horror movie look tame, I found myself laughing despite everything. Never thought I'd be watching this particular scenario play out today.
Eva, cradling a puppy with its head burst open. I'd read this in the original novel too — a fragment of the mindscape she'd stumbled into after unsealing the memories she had locked away. One of the monsters given form by the trauma buried deep inside her.
If this thing is showing up, that bastard Vital must have scrambled her brain with his pointless sermon about the divine artifacts.
Situation assessed. Eva had won her fight against Vital, and he'd surely tipped her off about the secrets of the artifacts and the method of succession. That revelation had shaken her to her core, cracked her mind open, and pried loose the memories she'd sealed away.
In the original story, this was a trial meant for an Eva who had already finished growing — one she was supposed to face after her spirit had matured. For the current her, whose mental fortitude was roughly the consistency of tofu, it was knowledge she had no business carrying.
As if to prove the point, her emotions had run rampant, and the divine artifact within her had reacted on pure instinct — spreading a labyrinth across the mansion and stationing apparitions as gatekeepers, barring anyone from reaching her.
The setting guidebook actually explains this part in exhaustive detail, but—
"Writer, can you hear me?"
[Me]: Writer, can you hear me?
[Writer]: …
I shouted at the dead-silent chat window, but she kept up her stonewalling all the same. She'd been like this ever since the Vital business — a system error, I figured? How long was this going to take to fix?
"So I have to clean this up myself. Got it."
No way around it. Wrap things up fast, then go meet Eva. There was no avoiding the collision, so I straightened my back, rolled my shoulders, and gave myself a proper stretch.
"Grr!"
The moment I showed no sign of backing down, the monster wearing a puppy's shape decided I had ignored its warning, and lunged.
Shlaaap!
The wolf-beast's tentacle stems came flying at me like a salvo of missiles. Fragments of grotesque flesh, pickled in blood and slick fluids, coiled around my arms and legs and cinched tight.
"Not gonna lie — tentacle bondage isn't really my thing."
Fwoooosh!
I dragged the mana out of my heart. Golden light spread like a flash flood, wrapping my whole body, and the heat that came surging up devoured the tentacles binding me.
Ssssszzzt!
Smoke curled off the tendrils pinning me down as they began to burn away. I pushed the output straight to maximum, intending to incinerate the puppy-monster apparition then and there.
"Stop."
That was when the Eva apparition, which had been watching from the sidelines, opened her mouth.
Click.
DOOONG—!
A gearwork pattern flared to life behind her slender nape. An alarm tolled out, announcing itself to the world.
'Time freeze!'
The authority wielded by the archmage Kairos's divine artifact clamped down on me. I thrashed with everything I had, but like a victim of sleep paralysis, I couldn't so much as twitch a finger. Even the mana carrying the sun's power lost its function and scattered into the empty air.
'An apparition — and it copies divine artifacts too?'
Okay, this one caught me off guard. I knew this place was her inner world, recreated through Pallad's artifact — but I never dreamed it could bind someone this flawlessly.
Shlaaak!
The puppy-monster snatched up my defenseless body in its tentacles and slammed me into the ground.
KWA-BOOM!
It thrashed me around with merciless abandon, like a crocodile whipping its prey side to side, and I felt my guts twist inside me. Was this the apparition's doing too? It was a trivial impact carrying no mana at all, and yet the queasiness rolling through me felt like my brain was being shaken loose — my stomach burned with nausea.
Illusion or not, two divine artifacts layered on top of each other was no joke. I'd climbed a mountain at the very first step. Any of the others who'd faced this thing would have been knocked flat on the spot. Ternya at least has an artifact of her own, so she'd put up a fight — but even then, it'd be hopelessly one-sided.
'Should I have just waited for Marin to get here?'
I found myself thinking, once again, that Eva really lived up to being this world's chosen protagonist. Just as I was growing at breakneck speed, she was keeping pace right on my heels, falling not a single step behind.
'No room for gloating, then.'
I entrusted my will to the bracelet on my wrist. Burn away this time that's got me in its grip.
Fwoooosh!
The divine artifact — the Solar Halo. The sun's radiance, which shines upon all creation, flooded heaven and earth and drew a curtain of light across the world.
PAH!
The halo slid around behind my head, banishing the dark and shoving back everything that stood against me. Without even a moment to resist, the puppy's apparition caught fire, crumbled to ash, and scattered on the wind.
"St—!"
Even Eva's apparition had its form melted away by the shimmering haze of flame. She tried to cry out and freeze time once more, but—
"Like I'd just sit here and let that happen."
Before her mouth could open, I snapped into a finger-gun stance and took aim at her.
PEW!
A beam of light flew in a dead-straight line and punched cleanly through the apparition's brow. Static flickered across Eva's silhouette, and then the space where she'd stood sat empty, as if nothing had ever been there at all.
The vast meadow vanished like a sand castle washed away by the tide, without even a trace left behind. Dizzying walls and staircases, and countless doors stretching out above them, unfolded exactly as they had when I first stepped through the entrance.
"They're really putting me through the wringer here."
The immediate threat was behind me, but Eva was nowhere to be seen. Now I understood. Among all those countless doors, there was only one that led to her. Pick wrong, and you'd have to square off against a fake Eva — just like the one I'd just burned.
'Ugh, tedious.'
If I opened them one by one, I'd be at this until sunrise. Even now, the others were probably wandering the maze, running face-first into dangerous Eva apparitions of their own.
'No point dragging this out. Let's finish it fast.'
There was no need to check every door. I poured every drop of mana coiled in my heart into the divine artifact.
KUGUGUGU!
The halo slid behind my head, and from that perfect circle, three pairs of wings unfurled. Golden armor embodying the sun wrapped around my entire body, revealing its elegant silhouette.
"Entrance, schmentrance. Burn it all down, and sooner or later we'll meet."
FAAA-BOOM!
I unleashed the golden mana, heavy with blinding light. The sun's power, its might amplified to the extreme as it passed through the artifact, spread out in every direction — melting the walls of space itself and incinerating every door. For one instant, a radiance bright enough to blind filled the labyrinth from end to end.
...
"I failed..."
Eva stared at the screen, her expression hollow. There wasn't an ounce of strength left in the hands gripping the console. Her stomach let out a low growl.
What time is it...
She glanced at the clock on the wall. Already lunchtime.
I should eat something...
But even standing up felt like too much effort. The floor was buried under drifts of garbage, with nowhere left to plant her feet. Trudging out to the living room, boiling water, pouring it into a cup of instant noodles — the thought of all that alone was enough to turn her stomach.
I'll just skip eating today.
Ennui had Eva in its grip. Then, without warning, she thought of school.
The Academy she'd been forced into against her will — but she'd tried, in her own way, to fit in.
What's Chloe up to right now?
She had wanted to change. Precious friends had appeared. Bonds had formed.
And the others?
Days spent together, a life crammed with fun — one moment after another, relentlessly — so much so that she'd never even had the chance to reach for the painful memories.
I must actually be insane. Forgetting that?
And that was exactly what made it all so repulsive.
Why did I have to be born? Eva put the question to herself. A life that did nothing but hurt the people around her. The unfilial child who had killed even her own family. Did I deserve to be alive? She asked it again, just to be sure.
None of it matters anymore.
She wanted to rot away in this corner of the room, alone. Because that was what suited her. Meeting no one. Tied to no one. Fading away, lonely and forgotten, forever in this cozy, comfortable darkness — that was the right way for her to end.
Eva worked the console and hit the restart button. The game's sound effects filled the room as the screen transitioned, and her fingers mashed the buttons with practiced, mechanical rhythm. There was nothing she needed to think about. A meaningless way to kill time, with no goal in it and no joy in it either. Nothing more, and nothing less.
Knock knock!
Then a sound broke through her comfortable silence — someone rapping on the door.
I must have misheard that.
There was no one in the world who could enter this room. The barrier woven by her divine artifact kept every outsider firmly on the other side.
Knock knock!
But at the second knock, Eva's hands froze over the console. She rose from her seat, turned the doorknob, and opened the door that should have been locked.
"Eternity, go?"
Through the narrowest crack of that small, small door, a tanned, golden-haired wall of muscle peeked his head in with a grin.