189. Must save.
189. Must save.
Inside the winding alley.
The deeper she went, the thicker the 'foul stench' became.
The smell of cheap powder.
The smell of heavy perfume.
On the ground, twisted cigarettes dried after smoking and the rotten reek of the sewer.
But in stark contrast, the red lanterns were filled with laughing, chattering, merry voices.
"..............."
If corpses could breathe, she imagined it would feel something like this.
A city of the dead, filled with living humans.
Alive on the outside, yet within, a complete collection of corpses collapsed and dead inside.
"..........."
The confusion about herself still remained.
But more than that, this place was filthy.
Filthy, squalid, so revolting that merely breathing felt like it was corrupting her.
─Crunch.
"......."
Something felt beyond her shoe.
Something dried up and hardened stiff.
Rhea slowly lifted her foot.
"......!"
A dried-up mouse corpse.
A rat runt, bone-dry and shriveled without a single maggot left.
The instant revulsion instinctively froze her body, and the man ahead forcibly grabbed Rhea's hand and pulled her along.
"Ah....."
Forcibly. She was dragged along.
A huge, massive hand was pulling her.
"Ah, eup.... ngh.....!"
Deep in the darkness.
A man dragging her around.
Her own self, being pulled helplessly along.
'This is....'
Strange.
Something was strange.
A deep helplessness rising from within her chest, rising from her very soul.
A despair carved deep into her bones. A 'trace' etched into her that could never be erased.
"It's the backroom."
"............"
What she saw after finally entering the cave.
A pitch-black room. A damp, stinking prison where only breathing was permitted.
The door opened.
She was forcibly shoved inside.
She couldn't resist. She couldn't even attempt resistance.
Simply, helplessly, pulled by the hand, waiting for the next day like the dead.
And then,
What she 'saw at that time' was....
"Heueuk.... ngh.... hueueueue....!"
A woman crying.
"Wait just a moment... I, I did wrong! I'll give you all the money! I'll take out a loan and give it to you...!"
A woman begging, clinging to a tiny light.
"Mom.... mom..... he, hehe...."
A woman lost in delusion, turning away from reality.
"............."
A woman collapsed on the floor, having lost all hope entirely.
".....Oh.... euek....!"
Her stomach churned.
It was strange. Truly strange.
Surely seeing 'something like this' should have been a first.
Coming to a place like this should have been a first.
'I know this.'
'She' knew it.
Even if I did not know, 'She' knew it.
Something kept surfacing in her mind.
Though a whitish fog clouded it, something obstructed it with all its might, and in the end it scattered and vanished before she could grasp even a single clue.
"......Hm."
The sound of a door creaking open.
Beneath the crimson-pink electric light, a man appeared.
"This one will do."
The moment he tried to lay a hand on 'her'.
[Cronus.....!]
".......Ah."
Her body moved on its own.
[Please.... please snap out of it....!]
"Aaaaaaaah!!!"
She shoved the man in front of her and knocked him down.
*********************
".....Uhm."
The man rose from his spot again.
A mere fall on his rear was no real trouble at all.
There was only one real problem.
"Did the hypnosis not fully take yet?"
"Hueok! Hueok! Eup... pahah!"
Rhea breathed roughly, glaring at the man.
The man pulled a phone from his breast pocket and aimed it at Rhea──but, having already fallen victim several times, Rhea deliberately averted her eyes and dodged it.
"Hm. Nothing to be done, I suppose."
He hadn't wanted to use rough methods.
The man exuded a threatening aura and advanced toward Rhea.
An expression that said he would not hesitate to use physical force to apply the 'hypnosis'.
"You... base vermin!"
Rhea stretched out her hand toward the man with all her might.
Yet──nothing happened.
"...Why..?!"
It was only natural.
Rhea was not '────'.
Since she was not '────', she could not use 'Time' as she pleased.
─Thwack!
"───Keohup...?!"
Ultimately, Rhea left her stomach unguarded.
The man's foot drove into her belly. She collapsed helplessly.
Clutching her aching stomach with both hands, she barely strung together breaths that felt like they'd snap any second.
'It hurts!'
Pain. Unfamiliar, unbearable despair that made her whole body shudder.
"Now... runt. You gotta look this way, right?"
"Keueuk....!"
Even when her head was crushed under his shoe, she dared not lift it.
Helplessness. Frustration welled up, but more than that, just as her spirit was gradually breaking under the despair that resistance was meaningless──
──Bam!
"──Kueok...?!!"
The man's body folded into a 「 shape and slammed into the wall.
The man who, until moments ago, had seemed an untouchable 'monster' she couldn't even dare oppose, was toppled.
"Rhea, is your tummy okay?"
"........Cough!"
By none other than Mai's power.
The man was floored by a single kick from Mai.
Rhea slowly, forcibly rose from the spot and walked toward the man.
And then,
─Stomp! Crunch! Crack!
"You... insect-like bastard! Disgusting! Base! Trash!"
"!.....!!....!......"
She trampled the man's face.
Brutally, consecutively, she kept trampling him.
By the time the tip of her shoe was thickly soaked with blood, Rhea turned her head to Mai and spoke.
"Give it to me."
"....I don't have any money."
"Not that."
Give her 'Time'.
At Rhea's words, Mai's eyes went round.
Soon, slowly closing both eyes, Mai nodded.
"I am Big Brother's Servant Demon, after all."
Perhaps it was only natural.
Mai approached Rhea.
And she transferred 'Time' into Rhea's body.
"───Ah, ah."
It was unfamiliar. Yet not unfamiliar.
I don't know it. But I know it.
Someone does. I do. I don't know. But I know it.
Feeling the 'Time' gradually filling her body, Rhea clenched her fist tight.
"....I will kill you."
To whom was she speaking?
Rhea didn't particularly think about it.
Simply, arrogantly, she stepped out of the cave that imprisoned her.
"!, Where do you think you're coming out from──kueeook?!!"
The man guarding the door.
The moment she lightly swept her hand at him, his body rotted and crumbled to dust in an instant.
The power of 'Time'. Before absolute time, nothing could maintain its existence.
"Catch that bitch!"
"This tiny fucking brat!"
She stepped outside the cave.
She climbed upward, following the light.
The trash blocking her path. The maggots obstructing the road to the light.
"Drop dead......uh, uwaa...?!"
"My body is turning to sand...a, aaaaaah!!!!"
She crushed them.
She weathered their very existence into the history of time.
She hadn't received that much time from Pegasus, but it didn't matter.
Because what she had done was merely sharing her own '1 second'.
"Bow your heads before Her."
An ordinary person cannot even contain 'Time'.
How many 'vessels' in the world could possibly accept the flowing 'Time', the continuous 'concept' of the world?
Even for someone extraordinary, merely enduring it was the best they could do; if the body couldn't withstand the 'Time' forcibly crammed into it, collapse was inevitable.
A mere human, at best,
could never become a 'vessel' to contain the concept of 'Time'.
'Unless, like that child, they completely give up everything of themselves.'
Unless one became a vessel purely for 'Time', who knows.
The vast majority of scum would likely turn to sand just from mere contact.
And as if proving Rhea's thoughts correct, soon not a single unscathed person remained in the basement.
"...Is it over."
What remained were only the women imprisoned in the basement and the sand that used to be people.
"No, not yet."
Rhea entered the room where the women were imprisoned once more.
She threw the door open with all her might and spoke to the women trapped inside.
"Follow me out."
"""".............""""
Blank stares.
Eyes clouded over and absent-minded.
'How displeasing.'
Rhea approached the women.
She walked up to one woman who caught her eye and placed her hand atop her head.
"So it was this."
"Mom...? Mom, is that you...?"
Cyclops's divine power.
She ripped it out and annihilated it using 'Time'.
"Mom.... Mom.... aah, aah.......?"
Her two eyes gradually cleared.
The gaze of one regaining her reason.
The woman blinked her two eyes and stared blankly at Rhea.
"Next."
Rhea immediately reached out for the next woman.
She tore out Cyclops's divine power using 'Time'.
The gradually diminishing Time. Her own self becoming increasingly powerless.
The fact that she was becoming something less than that lowly trash which had collapsed coughing from a mere kick by a lowly human made her body tremble, but.
'I cannot stop.'
She absolutely could not stop.
She simply could not leave them and just watch.
That was what she, what her soul, was telling her.
"Haaaah...."
After restoring the women inside the prison to their original state, the remaining Time was roughly about 1/3.
Quietly, Rhea expanded her 'Time' and sensed the 'Time' outside.
'....Disgusting.'
Cyclops's divine power.
If counted, at least 30 people.
At least 50 women were being indiscriminately exploited beneath these red glass lamps.
She had to save them.
She had to get them out.
She was utterly fed up with just watching.
"..............."
But reality was a cruel thing.
For now, there was no 'Time' left.
Perhaps she could ask Pegasus for more Time, but Rhea could feel it.
That the Pegasus right before her had also transferred the vast majority of her time over to her.
'What can I do....'
Could she save them all?
Could she reverse everything without looking away?
Rhea kept agonizing over it.
And the answer to that was...
"Rhea, if you look at this app, there's a 'Hypnosis Release' button."
"............"
"Couldn't this do it?"
".....Shut up."
Surprisingly, she could find it right next to her.
As an aside.
"Hoo... hoohoohoohoo....!"
Kochiomi Ro's private residence.
She smiled again today, using the girl next door’s chest as a pillow.
"As expected of this body! A genius among geniuses!"
She smiled as she looked at her phone.
Her Hypnosis App had always suffered from 'memory shortage'.
But not anymore. The capacity had swelled from the kilobyte (kB) level to the megabyte (MB) level.
This showed that her plan had worked out perfectly.
"That I, of all people, would think to introduce a cloud system to the Hypnosis App!"
The Hypnosis App was made from Cyclops's divine power.
Then wouldn't the effect be strengthened as the number of Cyclops's faithful increased?
Thus began the 'Mother Brain Project', born from such contemplation.
At first, progress was sluggish, and she was disappointed, wondering if it was just a meaningless act──but once the number of faithful began to grow, the capacity started to inflate exponentially.
"On top of that, I sent that bastard Jupiter's cunt of a mother off to the whorehouse too!"
She had unusually strong resistance to hypnosis and took a long time, but she finally succeeded in sending her to the red glass lamps.
Though today was only the beginning──if he found out that his seemingly pure mother was actually a hostess serving men at night, how torn apart would that bastard's face be!
"Kekekekekeh!"
Kochiomi Ro beamed a bright smile and checked the capacity again.
[-Memory Shortage-]
[-Approximately 5 minutes until forced termination-]
"......Wuh?"
What was this.
Give me back my memory.