Chapter 47
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 47
Chapter Title: 5.9 Resurrection 2
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What is this?
I blankly stare up at the ceiling.
Then, belatedly, I realize that my eyes are open.
I'm seeing the ceiling with my own eyes.
"Ah..."
A voice rises through my vocal cords.
It was truly my voice.
Am I... really alive?
"Whoa. That's startling. It comes back to life the moment we put it in?"
"How do you feel? You with us?"
A man. And a woman.
The two people I'd glimpsed through the hazy window were peering down at me.
Their eyes were like those of entomologists who'd discovered a rare caterpillar.
"It's just like a toy with fresh batteries. Starts right up the second you swap them."
"Hm. Consciousness isn't fully back yet? Can you hear me?"
"Doctor, let's just cut it open for now. That'll snap it right back to its senses."
...What the hell is this guy saying?
Cut it open? What does he think a person is?
"Ugh...!"
I have to get out of this nightmare place.
That's what I thought as I tried to move, but my body wouldn't budge.
-Click. Click-click-click.
A cold sensation on both wrists.
Metal handcuffs were tightly fastened around my wrists and ankles.
...I can't escape?
"Don't move too suddenly. The blood hasn't fully circulated through your body yet."
The scalpel in the man's hand gleams under the light.
"Right. We paid a fortune for you. If you don't behave, we'll have to make it hurt until you do."
The man's eyes held no human emotion as he spoke.
He wasn't seeing me as a person at all.
Chills run down my spine.
He was a mad scientist straight out of a comic.
Am I going to be dissected alive by these lunatics?
My family... those people sold me to a place like this?
How could they... how could they do that...
-Graa... aaaah...
A horrifying sound makes me turn my head to the side.
There... a bizarre, blood-soaked lump of meat... something like a ragged doll was writhing.
-Gruaa...
My mind goes blank.
On what might have been its head, a bit of black hair remained.
It was human hair.
I barely managed to comprehend that this grotesque lump had once been a person.
Like me, sold by their family, butchered by these maniacs until they ended up like that.
And probably, me too.
That lump of flesh was also a glimpse of my future.
-Gruu...
Its single remaining eye, devoid of light, turns toward me.
That eye seemed to resent me, envy me.
Or maybe beg me to kill it.
...I can't end up like that.
I can't become some unrecognizable lump of meat.
I reached out, not caring if the cuffs tore my wrist skin raw.
Somehow, my hand grabbed the wrist of the man standing beside me.
"Hm? Cute. Scaredy-cat?"
The man smirks at me, only his lips curling up.
Chills.
No human emotion in that face.
...But he won't be smirking like that for long.
I squeeze out my mana.
"...Hm?"
Almost no mana left in my body now.
Right before I died, I'd poured more than half into Naibusu.
Then I was killed by him immediately after.
The mana hadn't recovered while I was dead, of course.
Naibusu.
Thinking of that name stirs unease in my heart.
Only about 20% mana remaining.
Can I kill this guy with this little? Naibusu couldn't be killed even with several times this much.
Even pouring everything I had into him, I couldn't land a single scratch.
I recall those gleaming eyes looking down at me amid the flames.
The man's emotionless gaze as he plunged the blade into my chest.
...No. No time to hesitate.
This is my only chance.
If I fail, I'll end up just like that lump beside me.
Mana flows from my hand gripping the man's wrist.
And the mana I squeezed out ignites into flames.
"Wha? Ah? Gya, gyaaaah!?"
The man's body bursts into flames.
The small fire climbing his wrist engulfs him in an instant.
Mana-born flames ignore the laws of physics.
They move at the user's will, adjustable in size and shape freely. No need for oxygen or fuel. As long as there's mana, it can burn anything—objects or people.
Watching the man writhe in agony amid the blaze, I think to myself.
See? My ability was fine after all.
Naibusu was the freak.
"What the?!"
"Ah! Aaaah! Aaaack!?"
Acrid smoke fills the air, carrying the nauseating stench of burning flesh and chemicals.
The man rolls on the floor to extinguish the flames on his body; the woman frantically grabs a fire extinguisher.
The beauty of rune flames is their low risk of spreading. The caster can pull them back from unwanted spots immediately.
The fire on the man's body is the same.
Even as he thrashes wildly, spreading it everywhere, I snuff out any flames that stray. The fire I made burns only his body.
-Sizzle!
The woman sprays the extinguisher on him.
Even covered in white powder, the flames barely die down.
My fire doesn't consume oxygen.
Rune flames will keep burning indefinitely as long as mana supplies them. Once I decide to kill, there's no saving him.
"Kieee—!"
The man shrieks madly before finally going still.
Dead.
I withdraw the flames.
Any more would just waste mana.
All that remained where the fire died was a charred black lump.
Next, that woman.
I reach out toward her.
Mana's tight, but since she's just a regular person, it should be enough to kill her.
Not far away either. I can do this.
I squeeze out mana again.
The woman, dazed after the man's death, notices and blurts desperately.
"W-wait! If you kill me, how do you plan to get out? How will you get those cuffs off?"
...The cuffs.
Her words snap me back to reality.
Right. I'm still strapped to this operating table.
"No one comes here all day. You could wait days—no one will come save you. And if someone does, they'll see the scene and know you killed us. No idiot's going to rescue a murderer."
I can't take her word at face value.
But it's true I can't remove these cuffs if I kill her.
How can I make her unlock them?
She seems more reasonable than the dead guy, at least.
Maybe I can talk her into it?
Still holding my palm toward her, I say.
"...So? You want me to beg for my life?"
My throat hurts from not speaking in so long. My voice doesn't even sound like mine.
"Wait! Hear me out first. You might think you're alive, but you're a corpse that's died once already. A golem powered by mana, basically."
I know better than anyone that I died once.
What baffles me is why a dead me is alive again.
A golem? Like a robot or something?
"...I'm a golem?"
"Yeah. Keep blasting mana like that, and you'll shut down again soon."
Shut down.
She said 'shut down,' not 'die.'
Talking like I really was some machine.
I recall the scene when I died.
Floating consciousness in utter darkness, nothing else.
...I see. That wasn't dying—it was shutting down.
If I burn through this last bit of mana, I'll go right back there.
..........No. I don't want that.
I don't want to become that lump next to me, but drifting forever in that void is even worse. Anything but that. Never.
I want to live.
I... want to live...
"Feel it already, right? Your mana steadily draining."
Just like she said.
My mana was trickling away even now.
Not even using the rune—just breathing, just staying alive, was consuming it.
Tsukimiya Akane, the human who recovered mana just by living, was dead.
The current me, burning mana to merely exist, was truly a golem powered by mana like a battery.
I accepted this pathetic reality. I had to. No choice if I wanted to survive.
At this rate, my remaining mana would vanish soon. Then back to that darkness.
That... I absolutely, absolutely cannot let happen.
"...How do I recover mana?"
Once I thought that, I had to ask.
About how to restore it.
The woman's eyes seemed to sparkle at my words.
"Finally in the mood to talk, huh."
"I asked how to recover mana."
Too late, I realized my mistake.
She'd seen my desperation.
I'd handed her my weakness on a platter.
"Don't rush so much. I'm a scientist, you know. Don't want to lose a hard-won sample so easily. You don't want to die either, right?"
...Yeah. I don't want to die.
Never again.
I never want to go through that horror twice.
To avoid it, I need to learn how to recover mana.
If I use mana to kill her here, I die.
Even without using mana, if I can't get these cuffs off, I die soon.
I had to accept I couldn't survive on my own.
She held my life in her hands.
I held hers too, but killing her meant mutual destruction. But I don't want to die, so I can't kill her.
I had to admit I was completely at a disadvantage.
"I asked how to recover mana."
To hide my inner turmoil, I bluffed.
Said it like a threat, like I could still kill her.
The woman sighed lightly and answered.
"Simple. Get semen from a mana-bearing lifeform."
"...What?"
Semen.
I thought I'd misheard.