A Conversation?
“Ugh?!”
Leo opened her eyes.
For some reason, she found herself lying down.
Something plush and soft pressed against the back of her neck, and above her stretched a neatly squared ceiling. She distinctly remembered catching on to a secret and slipping into combat stance, but—
“…The headmaster's office?”
“That's right.”
“Mwah?”
She shot upright in an instant.
Lily sat on the sofa just a few steps away—not behind the office's desk—sipping tea with a knowing smile.
Squish.
Leo's cheek stretched out, long and slow.
Wh-what is this?!
“Mweeeh!”
“You were out cold for quite a while, so I was a little worried.”
Lily's hand kept pulling, stretching Leo's cheek further and further.
It truly was like a ball of sticky rice cake, yielding and elastic. Was this some side effect of her complete Nymph transformation?
“It really does feel similar now.”
“Wh-what does?”
“The sensation of touching a nymph. The nymphs were as fond of me as the spirits were, you know. Though I didn't get to see them often.”
I stretched Leo's cheek once more, long and slow.
Squooosh. Squooosh.
This was genuine magic. Why on earth did nymphs have bodies like this? The fact that a cheek could keep stretching indefinitely was wondrous in itself—but it never went so far as to be grotesque.
“Mmmgh…”
It stretched only to the point of cuteness. Only to the point of being delightful to look at.
“Don't worry, I barely touched you while you were asleep.”
“…Yhu were bullhyung mhèe, werenh't yhu.”
“It's only fun when you get a reaction.”
When I said that with a smile, Leo puffed her cheeks up as round as they would go. My hand got pushed away by the inflated cheeks before I could knead them again, but it hardly mattered.
I'd already had my fill of fun.
“Stahp! Stahp it!”
Fwap!
Leo shoved both my arms away with her tiny hands and, quicker than lightning, leapt up to hide behind the sofa. Her ears perked straight up—that famously floppy blond hair bristling—and her heterochromatic eyes glared at me with everything they had.
Absolutely adorable.
“…Come to think of it, why did I—”
“Why did you pass out, you mean?”
“Right, the secret… the secret… Huh?”
She had certainly figured out Lily's secret, come to this office, and spoken with her about 'Complete Unity.' And after that, she had seen the anomaly in the condensation stone—namely, Lily's past—
“That past!”
“What past?”
“…I remember it?”
She remembered working as a professor at the Imperial Academy, teaching children. She even remembered coming to an alien planet on a covert mission.
There were no gaps in her memory at all.
“Hng?”
“I was just testing something. I figured it'd be funny to pull one of those classic tropes.”
It was pretty funny, wasn't it?
“…That doesn't justify clobbering me with a hammer.”
“Well, it did produce results.”
“?”
Leo tilted her head, puzzled.
I gazed steadily at the faint white lightning flickering across her body—the residue of an enormous quantity she had 'expended' not long ago, yet which still remained.
“Doesn't it feel much easier to guard against than before?”
“Ah… ah?”
When I had struck Leo down, I had packed power beyond any reasonable measure into that hammer blow. If she had been the old Leo, the correct outcome was simple: she either wouldn't have endured it and died, or she'd have been revived by a revival item.
“Well, well?”
Instead, Leo, having achieved Complete Unity, had reached the point where she could 'endure' a direct hit. It went beyond a sturdier body—the very limit of what her soul could withstand had been raised.
She's risen to at least Yena's level. Just how much did Rasty meddle with her?
I decided I'd need to have a word with Rasty.
“But what's your real identity, really?”
“An alien.”
“……”
“It's true.”
“If it's true, then I could spread this arou—”
“In that case, you'd really lose your memories, wouldn't you.”
“……”
For the record, there was precedent.
■
(Image of the list of names who cleared)
As of 1 day, 5 hours, and 20 minutes since the entrance exam began.
Total passers so far: 19.
Rank 1, Leo—well, that was a given. Below her, a string of familiar names. But Beriad? Who the hell is this guy lmaooo
No seriously, I saw a clear time of 17 minutes—straight-up bug-tier—so I checked, and he's that shut-in kid from the black magic crowd who was listening to Lily's lecture at the start. The one with some hikikomori-looking Penalty. Was he always THIS strong?
(Screenshot of the Progenitor firing a lance of blood)
I used to wonder why pictures of the Progenitor barely ever got posted on the forums—turns out the path to her boss room is absurdly brutal. Every single step is a challenge in itself. That short little hallway ate up over thirty minutes of my life.
So I barely managed to push the door open and get inside, and boom—my stats weren't just restored, they were MASSIVELY buffed. Skill cast speed and destructive power were both running at about four to five times my usual output.
But above all—she's completely insane. Her looks are basically no exaggeration a 0.7-Lily-tier? Considering her childlike form, I'd guess her matured form would hit 0.8.
Of course, beauty aside, she's stupidly strong and one-shot me lmaooo
■
“If the two of them fought? The Progenitor, obviously.”
After seeing Leo off, it was time for my broadcast. I wandered the Academy, still under construction, answering the questions that drifted up through the chat.
Normally, questions like these were answered in exchange for donations—but donations had flooded in so relentlessly that running the stream had become impossible. So I made an announcement—I don't accept donations at all!—and shut the donation system off entirely. That choice had now been in effect for months.
“Right. Quite a few people have challenged the Progenitor, but not a single one has cleared her yet.”
Leo, countless other rankers, and legions of players hunting the clear reward had all tried—and in the end, none could kill the Progenitor.
Though the very idea of "killing" her was nonsense to begin with.
The Progenitor was an undying existence. To kill an immortal, you either needed an Authority capable of nullifying her immortality outright, or you had to drive her until the power sustaining that immortality was utterly spent.
The problem was that the Progenitor's immortality outclassed that of most dragons and demons, and her power was vast enough to be rightly called the Blood Sea. To kill her, you'd need to be prepared to overturn an entire continent.
And yet.
“Isn't she a bit too strong, though?”
“The Progenitor is strong, but not to the point of being unkillable.”
Her overwhelming might, after all, belonged to her true body alone. Her avatar—the one standing in that dungeon—was nowhere near so powerful. A physique only slightly superior to that of Sword God in his prime, or to the enlightenment and strength of a Yena or a Leo.
And if you had her patterns fully memorized, she was more than beatable. In particular, so long as one of her signature techniques—Blood Body Regression—remained sealed, she could absolutely be killed once the blood in her body ran dry.
Nightmare of a skill, that one.
Have you ever seen a vampire rise again after her body was destroyed and every last drop of her blood spent? Even wounds to the soul regenerated under her power. She had seemed like an evil god fit to bring the world crashing down.
She'd been defeated in the end, of course—sealed away inside my soul, where she now resided.
“Allow me to show you right now.”
I set off, and before long arrived at the Dimension Space Implementation Chamber. There, I selected Tier 2 without hesitation and stepped into the dimension.
Clack! A crossbow settled into one hand, a silver sword into the other.
It was about time I had that conversation with Rasty.