Chapter 298: Can’t a Common Sense Alteration Villain Dream of Pure Love? (End)
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 298: Can’t a Common Sense Alteration Villain Dream of Pure Love? (End)
After hearing the culprit’s exact location, Lilac and I decided to split up.
Lilac went to regroup with the seniors, while I headed off to intercept the culprit in case she tried to flee.
The rooftop.
It was a location so cliché it was almost painful, but then again, villains always did seem to have a penchant for the dramatic and overused.
I was worried she might have already made her escape, but surprisingly, the woman presumed to be the culprit was waiting there quite tamely.
Actually, to be more precise, she was standing there blankly, looking as if her soul had been sucked out of her.
I stayed on guard, suspecting a trap, but the moment she sensed my presence, she jumped in fright and began to tremble violently.
“Hiieek…! H-Heek…! Who—who are you?!”
…What the? Why is she saying my lines?
“I should be asking you that. Who the hell are you, and what kind of stunt are you trying to pull at the Academy?”
“Don’t come any closer! I told you not to come!”
Unfortunately, it seemed the woman wasn’t in a state to hold a normal conversation.
What was this? Had she really lost her mind and done all this? Was she even the right person?
“I—I have to run. I didn’t know something like that existed…! It was just—it was just a prank…!”
I didn’t know what she had seen to make her this terrified, but since she was the prime suspect, I couldn’t just leave her be. The moment I stepped toward her, she looked me straight in the eye.
“Y-Yes.”
Then, she reached out her hand toward me.
“It’s you. If I take you hostage, I can get away…!”
…Take me hostage? Is she insane? Or is she just that confident in her skills?
* * *
Just a few minutes ago, before he arrived, the ‘something’ in the form of a girl that had been toying with her had muttered with genuine regret.
— What, it really doesn’t work? That’s a shame, isn’t it?
— Woof!
— No, if I do any more, she’ll break. I’ve already pushed her to her limit. Unlike Daddy or Daddy’s friends, normal people have such weak vessels.
The sensation of her talent slipping out of her control and being ‘used’ at will was something she had never experienced in her life, and it was certainly not a sensation she ever wanted to feel again.
The feeling of being forcibly tested—to see exactly where her limits lay and what was possible—was utterly repulsive.
— Hmm, I guess it’s impossible even if I pull out all her potential, so I’ll just give up. It’s a pity; I thought she’d be more helpful.
The entity was still smiling with the face of a cute child.
— Oh, you know this is a secret from my Daddy, right? He wouldn’t believe you even if you told him I did this to you, but if you do tell him, I might get a little angry.
That image was so horrifying—as if a monster that had been disemboweling her just moments ago was desperately pretending to be human.
— Play around for a bit and then turn yourself in. If you bother my Daddy any more, I might get a little more than just ‘a little’ angry.
She couldn’t stop shaking.
— Well then, goodbye.
How long had she been standing there trembling?
It felt like an eternity had passed, yet it also felt like no time at all. But one thing was certain.
“Ah, what the. You’re still here.”
She had to run away from that.
This wasn’t a place where she could just poke around for fun. It was a den of monsters where her abilities didn’t work.
She had just wanted to manipulate and watch the daily lives of those who enjoyed a vibrant youth—something she never had.
…But could she even escape?
From a monster that could dispose of someone like her with a mere thought?
To escape, didn’t she need a weapon? Something that would prevent that thing from treating her so recklessly?
“…Is she really okay? Hey. Excuse me.”
And that was when he approached her.
At first, she tried to flee, thinking the monster had returned, but she soon realized.
This was it.
If she could brainwash this guy, then that thing wouldn’t be able to touch her.
So she used her brainwashing, but he resisted, as if such a level of influence was useless against him.
Those red eyes looking down at her with contempt were terrifying.
Normally, she would have given up here.
But, driven to the brink of madness by fear, she ended up provoking another predator in her desperate attempt to flee the first.
She withdrew all the power she had deployed elsewhere and concentrated the full force of her brainwashing on him.
The problem was, even that wasn’t enough.
“Dammit…!”
A fierce golden light and irritation flickered in his red eyes.
He clutched his head as if experiencing a severe headache, but it only meant her power wasn’t taking hold.
What was wrong with them?
All these monsters.
Do they have no desires at all?
Why won’t the brainwashing work?
Pushed to the edge of sanity by terror, she desperately poured everything she had into him, only to despair at the fact that it still wasn’t enough.
One might expect her to despair over the fact that she had only succeeded in making him angry, but a human blinded by fear becomes a remarkably foolish creature.
It meant she would recklessly do anything just to escape a single target.
Of course, that didn’t change the outcome.
She possessed a somewhat extraordinary talent, but that was all. She had nothing that could overturn this situation.
However, inside her now was something that wasn’t her—a ‘Remnant of a Divine Spirit.’
The divine energy, reacting to her fierce and intense longing, recognized her survival instinct and her urge to flee as a ‘wish.’ It provided a small bit of help so that her desire could be fulfilled.
It allowed her to see inside him, past the ironclad walls of his mind.
She was jubilant.
She didn’t know exactly what had happened, but this was a sign that her ability was finally starting to work on him.
Yes, now she just had to find his desires, select one that would benefit her, and brainwash him…
But when she actually looked inside him, it was incredibly strange.
Normally, a person has countless desires.
From grand mental ones like wanting success, wanting to love someone, or wanting to be loved, to simple physical ones like lust or the need for sleep.
Even the simplest human harbors dozens or hundreds of desires, but his interior was strangely hollow, with only a few remaining.
And even those were hidden away so tightly it was almost chilling.
Still, she couldn’t back out now.
If the brainwashing failed, this monster might kill her this time.
The first desire was a scene in a place with a very soft, gentle atmosphere, where a young boy was lying down.
There were several people around him, and when they spoke to the boy, he would smile and answer.
Was it his family?
This didn’t seem like a dream that would be particularly helpful to her.
So she looked at the next desire.
This time, it was a slightly older young man gazing quietly at a landscape.
In a flower garden where all things warm and beautiful were gathered, the people who loved him and the people he loved were gathered, waving their hands.
It was a desire depicting him very slowly, step by step, closing the distance toward that place.
This seemed like it could be helpful if handled well, but the dream was so precious that she couldn’t see any opening to wedge herself in.
And so, she arrived at the next desire.
The moment she opened the door that had been most strictly guarded, a soul-crushing chill blasted out.
What kind of desire could this be?
The moment she looked inside, she froze.
The one offering an apology was a black-haired corpse.
The ones condemning and hacking away at him were his precious loved ones—the very people who had been waving to him in his previous desire.
She couldn’t understand.
This was a desire?
Not a trauma or a nightmare?
The man repeating his apologies looked so relieved that she could tell he was genuinely feeling happy, but she couldn’t comprehend it at all.
The moment she fled from that horrific desire she no longer wanted to see, her eyes caught one last remaining door.
What kind of desire lay beyond that door, which was sealed even more strictly than the others, as if it would never permit entry to anyone?
Just as she felt an instinctual warning that she shouldn’t look and tried to approach it anyway—
— Who do you think you are?
The ‘door’ answered.
— Get lost. Don’t come in.
Feeling a massive repulsive force, she was flung out of his subconscious.
“…Aaaagh!?”
Immediately after being ejected, she frantically checked his condition.
If the brainwashing had failed, she might be dead.
To put it simply, the plan was a failure.
Originally, she had intended to either insert herself among his precious people or put him into a sleep-like state so she could take him and flee to negotiate.
But because his desires were so alien in form, she couldn’t even choose how to brainwash him, and since she had been kicked out, it couldn’t be called a success.
However, if you were to ask if the brainwashing had no effect on him at all, that wasn’t true either.
It seemed she had touched him in a very dangerous way.
Something unidentified from within him was trying to leak out.
She didn’t know why, but she knew instinctively.
That was the ‘door’ she hadn’t been able to open at the end, the seal that had been forcibly hiding a single desire.
She didn’t know how something from the world of the mind was crawling into reality, but it was certain that by touching it, she had messed with something she shouldn’t have.
It was truly a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
To make matters worse, perhaps because she had borrowed an unknown power, her talent was running wild and was completely beyond her control.
Just as she thought it was all over.
A burst of golden light erupted, blocking whatever was leaking out of him.
* * *
I felt like crap.
I didn’t know exactly what had been done to me, but I had seen countless illusions in an instant, and when I came to, the Authority of the Creator was raging violently within my body.
It was as if it were furious at something that had dared to intrude upon its domain.
Not only Black Shadow, who had been awake, but also the Will of the Saint and the Touch of the Devil—whose connections had been restored as the brainwashing weakened—each tried to use their power to control the Authority. However, the more they tried, the angrier the Authority became, thrashing inside me until it finally began to crawl out of my body.
Dizziness aside, I couldn’t let the Authority run wild here.
But this unbridled power seemed so hurt that even I was trying to suppress it that it resisted even more fiercely. My consciousness began to blur from the unbearable pain.
…If I pass out like this, nothing good will happen.
Lilac would be arriving here soon with the seniors.
If I went berserk then, there was no telling what would happen.
Please, I’m begging you, just listen to me…!
But in the end, the thing didn’t listen to my plea.
Shaking off the power of all the artifacts and ignoring my request, it finally tore itself from my body and began to sharpen itself into a blade, as if to shred the woman before me.
I wanted to scream at her to run, but the pain prevented any sound from leaving my throat.
Just before the Authority completely broke free from me.
— Good grief.
I heard a voice.
— Do you have to cause trouble every single time I see you?
The voice of the person speaking to me, draped in a magnificent golden light, was so familiar and welcome that for a moment, I even forgot the pain.
…Wait? No? It really doesn’t hurt.
Startled by the subsiding pain, I looked up and saw something shining in gold.
— And you, stop acting like a wild colt.
Then, she suppressed the Authority with incredible ease and sent it back to its original place.
Slowly manifesting in the physical world, she turned to look at me with a familiar face and burst into laughter.
I see. What I had seen was her blonde hair, shining like a brilliant sun.
“Quite the grand welcome the moment I wake up. Shall we see what you’ve prepared for me next?”
“…You were actually awake for a while and just waiting for the right timing, weren’t you?”
“Listen to this guy and his mouth. Maybe I should have let you hurt a little longer?”
“Ah, I’m just so glad to see you. Is the repair really all finished?”
“Yes. In fact, I’m sturdier than before.”
Sun Wukong.
My strongest artifact and the helper who had always stood by me had finally, completely returned.