Unavoidable Disaster
The elite Awakener assassins of the Corvo Family were mostly former military personnel or intelligence operatives with years of training behind them.
Even accounting for the action-restricting effects of mind control, it was never easy to take on the entire group at once.
In particular, among the ones who had come out first, the ones guarding the engine room included several A-Rank Awakener-level individuals.
“Hah… hah…”
Still, I managed to shove every last one out the train door.
It had been far from easy, but somehow I had pulled it off.
“Damn, this is rough…”
If I had been anywhere but on the train, I would have been in genuine danger.
All of them had known how to coat metal with mana, and if they had used the seats inside the car as cover, I might not have made it through.
I took a few breaths to steady myself and pushed open the engine-room door.
There was no sign of the remaining mafia, but I had better keep an alert eye out for traps just in case.
“Uwaaaap!”
Clang!
“What the hell are you doing?”
“…Can’t I at least pretend to be in pain for a little while longer?”
The moment I stepped inside, someone brought a bottle down hard across my head.
Of course an Awakener felt nothing from a metal pipe, and even less from an ordinary person. Not even a tickle.
“Who are you?”
I seized the man by the throat at once.
His build looked like it had no special conditioning, but I could feel mana flowing through him. He was no Awakener.
He had been born with it naturally.
“Gah! Uck, wait, surrender! Let go, I’m going to throw up!”
“Why should I?”
“You came here to get that medicine, right? Didn’t you?”
The man pulled out a small vial filled with blue liquid.
I snatched it and hurled it straight out the train door.
His face went slack with astonishment.
“Lie will get you nowhere. If you’re an empathetic Awakener, you can read pulse rate, micro-expressions, and pupil dilation. You’d know the difference between truth and falsehood.”
He sounded like he had practiced lying a lot, but he was still nowhere near good enough.
To lie to an Awakener you needed control beyond that of a top-tier spy.
On the streets I had rolled around in for years, even such basic lies were laughable.
“Woa, I actually got hit by the real thing? Fair enough, that was just a bottle of whiskey.”
Only then did he draw the genuine article.
A small safe, small enough to fit in his palm, locked with a password. Inside, the medicine looked real.
But why had the Corvo Family bothered to give ordinary civilians this kind of package? The clothes he wore were not engineer’s overalls, and there was no sign of a scientist. Had they kidnapped one after all?
“Ah, don’t try to force it. If you break in with brute force, the safe will explode. The contents inside will become useless, won’t they?”
“…”
It sounded real.
Even the weight of the safe and the medicine inside felt subtly off.
I drew my dagger and pressed the tip to his throat.
“Why are you suddenly waving a knife at me?! Are you savages who only know violence when you’re cornered?!”
Violence was primitive, but the most reliable solution.
The longer I delayed, the closer I pressed the blade.
A single drop of red blood welled up along the edge that touched his neck.
“From what you said earlier, you seem to know the password to this safe.”
“Wait! Don’t you know who I am? Obviously they sent me from the Federation! How can you treat me like this?!”
I didn’t know.
In the Hero Maker world I had never seen a man like this. The only reason I had kept him alive was to learn the safe’s password.
“I am! Me! Ethylene! I’ve won two Nobel Prizes! Haven’t you ever heard of me?!”
“…Ethylene?”
Dr. Ethylene.
The name rang a distant bell.
He was the brilliant scientist from the Federation who had created drugs to turn humans into super-beings and solutions for mana-related diseases, even though he was not an Awakener.
But I knew he had been branded a spy by the Federation government after contacting the Corvo Family and executed long ago…
Yet here the Corvo Family’s—specifically Lilac’s—executer was standing right in front of me.
In any case, the person who had appeared in the story was dead.
But had he really been alive all along?
“Knowing who I am doesn’t matter. Tell me the password and I’ll spare your life.”
A little surprising, but it didn’t matter.
If he refused to give the password, I would make him feel something far worse than death.
Or I could drag him back to Van Helsing and force the confession out of an Awakener with mind-manipulation powers there.
“I don’t want to. You’re trying to take my lunch money…”
“How unfortunate.”
I adjusted my grip on the blade and aimed for his eye.
“Stop! Stop! Don’t you speak English? Stop! Please! I’ll open the safe—just don’t kill me!”
The instant my hand stilled, the man exhaled a sigh of relief and took the safe.
Then, working the iris scanner and fingerprint reader, he began to open it.
Now I saw that the password had been nothing but a lie from the start.
“Unlocking it takes about three minutes. I built it that way on purpose.”
“Make it fast.”
Three minutes would do.
No pursuit had reached us yet, and I needed a little rest myself.
“Ugh…”
Thud!
The bullet wound in my gut throbbed.
I had stopped the bleeding, but a thin trickle of blood still seeped through.
Fortunately the bullet was ordinary, so it was not a fatal injury. But since the bastard knew how to coat metal with mana, even an Awakener’s tough body had been pierced.
On top of that, my right arm felt a little cracked. I had prepared too hastily and paid for it.
“…Hm, you don’t look like the Federation’s dog at all.”
While the safe waited to open, Ethylene spoke to me.
“I’ve never seen an Awakener like you on the Federation side. Then why did you come all the way here? Taking on the Corvo Family is no easy task…”
At first I thought I would answer lightly, but remembering what kind of man Dr. Ethylene was, it was better not to.
I ignored his words and focused on staunching the blood.
He was the villain who had crossed between the Corvo Family and the Federation countless times for his inventions and turned countless children into test subjects.
“He’s not an ordinary strongman. If he only wanted to strengthen mana, he wouldn’t have needed to do this…”
Among the children were many the same age as Lena. Instead of letting them go, he had forced them to continue the experiment while they cried and begged to be spared.
More than a thousand children had died because of those experiments.
I wasn’t in the position to call him a villain, but perhaps it would have been better to kill him right here.
“Ah, so one of the people you were close to was a Mana Incompatible?”
My body jerked at the words.
“So that’s it.”
It seemed I had no choice but to kill him.
By opening my mouth to worry about my wounds, I had accidentally fallen into his trap.
It wasn’t a problem, but if he could deduce that much about me, I shouldn’t have sent him to the Corvo Family.
They might come looking for revenge.
“Then stop. Feeding you that medicine would only pour oil on a fire.”
“What are you talking about?”
But I could not ignore that line.
“The man who created that medicine knows the truth. Even if you don’t know who he is, if he’s someone precious to you, walk away. You can extend your life for a little while, but that’s all it will do.”
The question had left my lips again.
I drew the dagger once more.
This time Ethylene didn’t even blink.
“This medicine increases the amount of mana you can store inside your body and amplifies the user’s power. That’s true, so it can extend the life of a Mana Incompatible by a few years, can’t it?”
“But what’s the problem? I already know it can’t cure you. But it worsens the condition.”
“Isn’t that obvious? When the stored amount increases, the regenerating mana also rises. The pain you feel only grows worse even if the lifespan itself lengthens.”
“What does that mean…”
A Mana Incompatible’s body cannot endure the accumulation of mana. When it reaches the limit, high fever and organ failure follow.
After one surgery you feel fine for a few days, but gradually the burden on the body begins to increase again as mana piles up.
That was why I had fed him this medicine—to raise the total mana capacity Lena could bear.
…Wait!
“So you understand now? When you take that medicine, the pain only grows worse. If you push past the limit, you might even die of shock.”
Exactly.
The only thing the medicine could increase was the amount of mana the user could store.
In that case it had no real meaning.
A Mana Incompatible’s problem was not simply that the mana in the body reached its limit.
As the amount of mana they possessed grew, the body began to numb little by little until death came.
Even if I gave him the medicine, Lena would simply reach a higher limit she could bear. The burden on her body would actually become greater than before.
She might end up paralyzed or a vegetable.
“No…”
“Your expression is quite an art. You must value that person so much you would steal the medicine while risking your own life.”
“Ha, she’s my only sister. That was the only hope I had.”
I had come all the way here to pull a lifeline for Lena.
But that lifeline had been rotten from the start.
It was no more than hope porn—a false hand that was never real.
Damn it…
What now?
Should I just feed him the medicine?
Just feed him the medicine and do the surgery earlier than usual, and everything would be fine, right? No, because of how often the surgeries had to be done, Lena wouldn’t be able to endure it.
“Goddamn…”
I slammed my fist on the floor in frustration at my own stupidity.
My mind went blank.
I had somehow saved Lena until now, but the method I had just found was wrong.
No other sharp solution came to mind.
By the time the medicine was made, Lena’s condition would already have deteriorated beyond what she could bear…
“Hey.”
At that moment Ethylene walked over and held out another box that looked like the safe had.
“…?”
“Take this instead of the medicine. It tastes like strawberry. Even a child can eat it without any burden. The password is in the necklace; open it to see.”
“What is this…?”
“It’s medicine. Of course it’s not a finished product, but it suppresses the mana generated far better than the medicine you wanted, doesn’t it?”
Inside it was another drug.
I didn’t have time to verify whether it was true or false, but I couldn’t afford to be picky right now.
Why did this bastard even have such things?
“I’m a Mana Incompatible too. My hair color—don’t you see? It’s almost white. Mana Incompatibles turn gray from stress. If you take this medicine, you’ll feel a little better.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
I couldn’t understand why he would suddenly hand me the medicine when he had been blackmailing me for it moments ago.
“…Just think of it as atonement. I may be trash, but I’m not that low. It’s my own fault for falling for the Federation’s lies.”
Ethylene smiled bitterly.
I didn’t know what had happened, but if what he said was true, this medicine could save Lena.
I couldn’t save her completely, but at least I could reach the goal I had wanted all along.
“In exchange, you can’t cross me with that medicine? Actually, if you open it, it will send even an S-Rank Awakener straight to heaven.”
That was clearly the truth.
Looking at Ethylene’s face, I saw a man soaked in revenge so deep and cold that it gave me a chill down my spine.
In those blue eyes lay a dark abyss no sunlight could reach.
It was certain that Ethylene was the genius scientist renowned even in this world. Given enough support, he could have created such things.
On top of that, he had said there was a bomb inside.
If I had opened the safe as he expected, perhaps none of this would have happened.
“Then get up quickly. If you stay here any longer, the Federation or the Corvo Family might come looking for you.”
I had delayed too long.
If I kept going like this, I would reach the Corvo Family’s subordinates. Fighting with this body right now was impossible.
“…Sorry. About what I did a moment ago…”
I grabbed Ethylene’s hand and rose.
“It’s fine. When the lives of your family are on the line, a person can do anything. I understand that feeling. So…”
It was when he was about to hand me the safe with the medicine and the necklace.
“Run away from the doctor.”
“What?! That bastard is already here?!”
Ethylene looked shocked.
From the entrance of the engine room, a voice that should not have reached here came floating in with a red glow.
Lilac.
The Corvo Family’s executioner had caught up with me after all.
“Gah…!”
A red arrow was already aimed at my heart.
I was one move too late to react.
Puff!
In the end, red blood splattered across my face.
Lilac’s expression froze.
Absolute Defense
The blood-red arrow froze in mid-air before it could pierce my chest.
I could see the faint outline of my mana shield shimmering like a dome of liquid gold around my body.
The moment I released my hold on Ethylene’s hand, the man’s knees buckled and he collapsed onto the floor with a thud.
“Capella!”
A voice full of urgency cut through the air.
Lilac’s eyes narrowed as she took in the scene: the bullet wound, the blood on my face, and the unconscious Ethylene at my feet.
She was still in her formal, robotic tone, but there was a faint tremor beneath the stiffness.
“You… survived.”
Her gaze flicked toward the safe I had left open, then back to me.
The air crackled with tension.
I could feel the mana in the engine room thickening, the faint hum of Lilac’s teleportation magic already coiling around her like a spring.
Ethylene’s shallow breathing cut through the silence.
“…Lilac. You followed me.”
His voice was hoarse, laced with disbelief and something darker—remorse, perhaps.
Lilac did not answer. She simply raised her hand, and the red arrow reformed in her grip, gleaming like fresh blood.
The train shuddered as the door at the far end of the car slid open.
A second red glow appeared.
Corvo Family reinforcements.
The underboss’s underlings had arrived, drawn by the chaos.
I glanced at Ethylene, then at Lilac, then at the safe on the floor.
Three paths.
Run.
Fight.
Convince.
None of them felt viable.
My body ached from the bullet and the cracked ribs. The mana-suppressing fog from earlier still clung to me like chains.
And Lena—my little sister, the only reason I had ever fought in this cursed world—remained trapped in the hospital bed, white hair and red eyes a cruel reminder of the Mana Incompatibility that was slowly killing her.
I had come here for a medicine that would only make things worse.
But Lilac had caught me anyway.
A small, bitter smile tugged at my lips.
“Well,” I muttered, voice dry as dust, “looks like the Hero Maker script has been rewritten again.”
Lilac’s eyes narrowed further.
“You’re talking too much for a dying man.”
“Am I?” I wiped the blood from my face with the back of my hand, smearing it across my cheek. “Tell me, Lilac. Did you come here to finish the job the Corvo Family started, or are you just delivering a message?”
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Both.”
The single word was clipped, precise, like a blade sliding home.
Behind her, the reinforcements poured into the engine room, weapons raised, faces hidden behind raven masks.
I counted seven more Awakener signatures, most of them A-Rank at least.
My left arm throbbed where the bullet had grazed it. My right arm felt like it was on fire.
I could feel the weight of Ethylene’s gaze on me—guilt, regret, and something like hope.
Hope that I would kill him for them.
But I was not a hero.
I never had been.
The train rocked again as another forcefield slammed into the side, pushing me back a step.
The hero makers, the Federation, the Corvo Family—they were all pieces on the same board, and I was the only one who could see the board.
And right now the board was about to crack.
I looked down at the open safe, at the strawberry-flavored medicine Ethylene had promised would save Lena, then at Lilac’s steady red eyes.
A quiet, almost gentle laugh escaped my lips.
“So this is how it ends, huh?”
I straightened my back, feeling the familiar weight of the dagger in my hand.
“Capella,” Ethylene whispered, voice breaking, “don’t…”
But I was already moving.
My left foot planted, mana flaring around me in a ring of blue fire.
“Absolute Defense.”
The red arrow in Lilac’s hand shattered into harmless sparks the instant it left the bow.
She staggered back a single step, eyes wide.
I had bought myself one second.
That was all I needed.
I reached for the safe, fingers closing around the necklace.
The password scrolled across my vision like glowing code.
“Three-twelve… six-nine…”
Lilac’s face twisted with fury.
“Stop!”
Too late.
The safe clicked open with a soft chime.
Inside, nestled on a velvet cushion, lay the finished medicine—small, blue, and humming with suppressed mana.
I scooped it up, shoved it into my coat pocket, then turned to face Lilac head-on.
Ethylene was on his knees behind me, tears cutting tracks down his soot-streaked face.
Lilac’s gaze flicked between the medicine and my face.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
“…You’re giving her up.”
It wasn’t a question.
I shrugged, the movement pulling at my wounds.
“Looks that way. Lena’s the only family I have left. If this is the only way to save her…”
My voice cracked on the last word.
Ethylene’s hand shot out, grabbing my wrist.
“Capella—please.”
I didn’t pull away.
I looked at him, at the man who had once been a hero in the game, now reduced to this.
A man who had chosen the wrong side of the war.
A man who had lost everything.
And I, the one who had been reborn into this world, was the only one who could walk away from it.
I squeezed Ethylene’s hand once, then released it.
“Run,” I told him quietly. “Take the train. The medicine will buy you time.”
He stared at me, broken and furious.
“You idiot…”
“Name’s Capella,” I corrected, flashing a tired grin. “And I’m not dying today. Not while my sister still needs me.”
Lilac’s hand rose again, but this time she did not draw the bow.
Instead she simply stood there, red eyes burning with something that looked almost like sorrow.
“…You’re making a mistake.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s my mistake to make.”
The reinforcements behind her shifted, uneasy.
I could feel the mana-suppressing fog thickening, pressing against my skin like an old wound.
My vision blurred at the edges.
The bullet had nicked something vital.
But I was still standing.
Still breathing.
Still holding onto the only thing that mattered.
Lena.
I took one step toward the door, then another.
Behind me, Ethylene struggled to his feet.
Lilac watched us go, silent and still.
The train rattled on into the night, carrying three broken men toward whatever came next.
I did not look back.
I had learned long ago that looking back only invited the past to catch up.
And right now, the past was coming for all of us.
The Corvo Family.
The Federation.
The Hero Maker world itself.
I pulled the strawberry medicine from my pocket and held it up to the dim light.
It was small, but it held the only hope I had left.
A single drop of blood fell from my lip onto the glass.
The medicine hummed once, as if in answer.
I smiled, tired and broken and still alive.
“Time to go save my sister, I guess.”
The train doors hissed shut behind me as the nightmare of the engine room faded into the darkness.
And somewhere far away, in a hospital bed surrounded by machines, my little sister Lena waited for the miracle I had just stolen.
I hoped it would be enough.