Chapter 164: [Pre-Regression Memory] Brigitte's Shameful Dark History
Up on the screen, Brigitte—the whole affair destined to be written off as her most shameful dark history—and Madame Olivia Crow were beating the hell out of each other like their lives depended on it.
The Madame was venting a murky, tar-black aura from every inch of her body. Facing her stood Brigitte, a colossal grinder mounted on her right arm, flanked by a mechanized dinosaur assembled from the very weapons she herself had forged.
"You gloomy-ass bitch!!! Cooped up in your room all day, moping around with those dead eyes of yours!!!"
"You were a total loner before you even joined a guild~?"
"Flying solo right up until Dalgui took pity on you~?"
"You seem to remember your old self as some legendary warrior woman!!"
"Well guess what—that's ancient history!!"
"If past glory guaranteed present glory!!!
"then every ex–national team player in history would've coached a World Cup miracle like Hiddink!!!!!
"Says the woman whose only talents are playing with scrap metal and hammering a calculator!!"
"Raining your precious money down on a man's face and ordering him to be yours!?"
"A woman with a child, and not one shred of shame!"
"Well, of course—it's because she can't win him over with charm, can she!?"
"Because she knows she can't have him without shoving money and power in his face!!"
"I'm different!!"
"I'm a woman who can watch over him, demure and quiet, from one step behiiind!!!"
Brigitte's red aura and the Madame's black slammed into each other, and the collision blew straight through the guild's ceiling and up into the sky.
The enormous monster—a golem wearing the shape of a dinosaur—let out a bellowing roar, and when the Madame stretched out one slender leg and drove her stiletto heel into it, part of the golem's face caved in.
"HAHAHAHAHA!!!"
"And what's watching from behind ever gonna change~!?"
"What, aiming to play the devoted wife~?"
"A bitch who scraped by in one of the most hick-town guilds on the planet!!!"
"All that pure-and-innocent acting just turns my stomach!!"
"You hopelessly gloomy bitccch!!!!"
"I am a virgin!!"
"Please stop insulting our guild!!"
"We are all women who gathered here carrying our own scars, our own paaain!!!!"
The grinder on Brigitte's right arm—so huge it could cleave the very air—lashed out in place of a fist, and the Madame caught its blade in a classic sword-catch stance.
But the shockwave of an aura-laced attack—no, an outright skill—shredded her dress, baring everything beneath.
"Kaagh!?"
"How could youuuu!!!"
To pay her back, the Madame shoved the grinder aside, drew a Jamadhar from her item pouch, and slashed it across Brigitte's chest.
"You accursed bitcchhh!!!!"
"Do you have ANY idea what this dress cost!!!!!
"You're the one who tore my dress first!!"
"If you thought you'd be the only one walking away still pretty, wake up from that dream!!"
By that point the two of them were all but naked.
Their heels had both snapped somewhere along the way, and in the end they'd kicked their shoes off entirely to fight barefoot.
Their exchange of curses and blows didn't last long.
When a golem came swooping in from the side, the Madame turned her back to deal with it—and just as Brigitte moved to seize that opening….
"What do you think you're doing inside our guuuuild!!!!"
"Oh, come ON!"
"You said you'd just stand back and watch—so why the hell are you butting in and making a scene too!"
"Who said anything about standing still, you hysterical old hag!!!"
The one cutting in to stop it all was Dalgui, the current guild master of OP.
The fight had erupted so suddenly she hadn't even had time to ready a weapon, yet she fielded Brigitte's attacks barehanded with all the ease you'd expect from a high ranker.
And when the whole laughable spectacle tipped into a two-on-one, Brigitte's eyes rolled back even further.
"Protecting your own just because she's one of yours, huh!?"
"Fine! Then I'm done holding back too!"
"──SCRAP IRON TRANSMUTATION!!!!"
"Wh— you!? Hey, you absolute nutcaaaase~!!"
"Have you seriously lost your mind!?"
"There are still lines you do not cross!!"
"Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!"
"I want to be happy as a woman too!!"
"I've lived my whole life having everything stolen from me!!"
"My shining school days, stolen by the queen bee!"
"My beloved big sister, taken by trash so vile that swallowing them whole wouldn't have been enough!!"
"And after I took in my daughter Rhea—my life as a woman!"
"And now you're telling me you'll take the one person I love away from me tooooo!!!!"
The world shook.
I had no clue what was going on, but our poor ajumma was gnashing her teeth at the antics her dark-history past self was pulling on screen.
"AAAAGH!!! She seriously busted out her 'trump card' over some petty shit like thaaaat!!!!"
…Trump card?
I looked back at the screen.
Iron. It was iron.
Before I could even begin to grasp the situation, the entire guild had transformed into a golem.
Seventy meters…?
No—easily a hundred. Something that scattered destruction in every direction just by taking a step.
"G-Guild Master!"
"What on earth is happening!?"
"AAAAAAAH!!!"
"That crazed bitccch!!!!"
"She's gone and made an offering of the whole guild building, everything inside included, just to fire off her skiiiill~!!!!"
"Wh-what!?"
"Don't you dare piss me off!"
"You're nothing but hicks hawking water in the boonies!!!"
"Here I am, daring to make an honest home of my own—!!!"
"SO DON'T GET IN MY WAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!"
What unfolded after that was a deluge of destruction.
The golem tore the ground apart in its attempts to swat the two women down, rampaging without restraint.
With a body that size running wild through the Tower, there was no need to spell out how much damage it left in its wake.
Every hunter available was thrown into the fray, and all hell broke loose as they tried to bring Brigitte down.
Even then they couldn't fully subdue her, so rankers from the Skyscraper eventually put together parties and joined the effort.
"That sorry sight… was me, once…?"
"Guess I was pretty far gone over him, huh?"
"Huaaaaah… aaargh… AAAAAAAAARGH!!!"
The scenes kept changing, skipping right along—much like back when she'd fallen for me on sight and come showering me with one gift after another.
The high-rankers finally managed to subdue Brigitte, and the guild-turned-golem slumped back down into its original spot like a worn-out toy.
Dragged off to the Skyscraper, she was interrogated—and even there, she kept right on screaming.
In the end, it was the Madame who broke.
"That's enough…."
"I will give up…."
"Sinking my teeth in any deeper would only… bring harm to Chang-ki…."
"You'll be suffering through the cleanup anyway… so by all means, see to it as you see fit…."
"You should've given up from the start…!"
"Why did you make me go this far!?"
……….
"…I have nothing to say."
And so the crow came down from the stage.
Did that make it Brigitte's victory?
She'd certainly wrecked everything nearby, but factoring in the Mechanic guild's deep coffers, it was no great problem.
Every hunter gathered at the Skyscraper shot Brigitte venomous glares, yet none went so far as punishment.
Because the Mechanic guild's standing was—for the time being—still unshakable.
"This'll be enough…."
"I've come this far… no one will dare lay a hand on my Chang-ki now…."
She'd stirred up far more than she could cleanly handle, and the cleanup would be hellish—but even so, she looked confident she could pull it off.
On the surface, it was an unqualified solo victory for Brigitte.
Memory Transfer Progress
■■■■□ 85%
And yet the end of this loop was creeping closer with every passing second.
As long as I was watching this memory, something was bound to happen over there. That much was certain.
The memory skipped ahead a short way, revealing a stricken look on Brigitte's face.
"He got hurt because of me?"
"Yes."
"He was in poor condition to begin with, as I'm sure you know."
"Amid the fallout of your rampage, Guild Master, he ended up buried under the debris, and…."
"Hahk— hhahk! What about treatment!? He can still make a recovery, right!?"
"Yes."
"A skilled healer just happened to be nearby."
"His limbs were reattached—barely."
"That said, he will need to live carefully, without moving, for at least one month."
"Th-then that's fine!"
"Thank god! If that kid had died because of me— huaaaaah!!"
…So the me of that loop had been seriously hurt, huh.
Hearing that, Brigitte—without so much as a thought of sending me to a hospital—took me into her own care.
From there, time flowed quickly, and through one commotion after another, the Mechanic guild found its footing again.
At least, that's how it looked through Brigitte's eyes.
"Mom."
"What is this?"
"Ignore it."
"Don't believe a word that comes out of those pieces of trash."
"It's all doctored."
"But…."
"Listen to your mother."
Rhea held up her phone and, through HunterTube, played the footage of Brigitte and the Madame's fight.
The voices of the two women—brawling in a jealous catfight with barely a stitch on—came through loud and vivid.
And the one who had uploaded that video was none other than Dalgui.
With the reach of a famous influencer, retaliation had been dealt to the Mechanic guild.
"Everyone's cursing us out."
"Even at school, people ask me about it."
"They ask me if my mom really fought naked over a man."
"That she caused all that damage with a skill like that and never even apologized."
"That she's a woman gone mad over a man…."
"Shut it!"
"I told you to listen to your mother!!"
"Whatever those people say, it's got nothing to do with us!"
"Anyone trash-talking us is the one who's broken, so don't you let it get to you!!"
"Mom. Cracks have begun to spread through the bedrock our guild stands on."
"And it isn't just outside the Tower anymore—people have begun avoiding us from within as well."
"Even the people of the Skyscraper have turned their backs. It's only a matter of time now."
"The major guilds are working in concert behind the scenes. If we leave this be, things will become very difficult."
"Difficult how?"
"What would you even know?"
"Even I know."
"Every one of the major guilds is looking to jump ship to the competition."
"There may be no damage yet, but what happens when they all turn away for good…."
"Didn't I tell you an elementary schooler has no business fussing over every last one of those things!?"
"Act your age! Go play at school where you belong!"
"Mom's business is Mom's to handle!"
"Mom…."
The door shut.
Her whole body declared it plainly: she had no intention whatsoever of making peace with OP.
As Rhea stood before the door like a ghost, the guild's hulking men gathered swiftly around her, closing ranks to shield the poor kid.
"Lady Rhea."
"No luck, I take it?"
"No…."
"It seems Mother simply cannot let that man go."
"Gh! That bastard is a walking plague on this guild!"
"Just having that man tucked in her arms is enough to make headlines!"
"And the last incident? That was only papered over with money—the rift underneath hasn't healed one bit!"
"If this keeps up… the guild will…."
"This is the precious guild my late mother left behind."
"I have no intention of leaving things as they are."
"Before it gets any later, let us cut the rumor off at its source."
"Lady Rhea."
"What exactly are you planning to do!?"
"'Cut off'…?"
"You don't mean—!?"
……….
"A man who bewitched not one but two rankers—drove them to claw each other's eyes out."
"Netizens everywhere are dying to know who he could possibly be."
"He's even got every last whore over at OP wrapped around his finger, no?"
"It's entirely possible he possesses a skill that seduces the opposite sex."
"And used it to egg Mother and the Madame on, engineering this whole debacle…."
"And given the face he has, wouldn't people find that version all the more believable?"
"…You'd handle it that way?"
"If the need for an excuse ever arises, that is the story I will tell."
"So long as we're not caught, I will handle the cleanup myself."
"Naturally, I will be the one to deal with him as well."
"I ask that the rest of you do not lay a finger on him."
In the end, she flat-out declared she was going to kill me.
Not the kind of thing that should ever come out of an elementary schooler's mouth.
"R-Rhea?"
As if she'd never once imagined her own daughter would make a choice like that, Brigitte's face had gone deathly pale.
Memory Transfer Progress
■■■■□ 95%
Death was closing in.