Noble and Virtuous
It was pure chance that Isabella learned the secret.
She had merely set foot somewhere she should never have entered.
A pitch-dark underground.
In that place where not a single ray of light reached, she saw a woman reduced to skin and bones inside an iron cage.
Hair tangled from what must have been ages without washing, and—
Drip. Drip.
Pus fell from both her eyes.
Pupils dead and unfocused.
"You are… the ninth."
At last the woman stretched out a skeletal hand and touched Isabella's cheek.
Terrified, Isabella could not move.
Where was this place, and who was the woman inside that cage?
"My little sister. But… you are a failure as well."
A failure?
What had she failed at?
The woman spat out a few more words after that.
But her lifeless voice was impossible to make out.
All except the last.
"Wait for death outside. That would be… happier for you."
…That dying would be happier.
The word "death," spoken by someone who somehow resembled her, finally made Isabella move.
"Don't you want to live?"
"I want to die. But if I die… another little sister will take this place."
And that will probably be you.
That was what the woman seemed to say.
In the end Isabella had no choice but to hide at the sound of approaching footsteps and leave the place behind.
…When will I die?
That was when it began.
When she started waiting for death.
The ninth clone of the Dercian family, a failure who had learned the secret.
Her end was already decided, so she was not particularly afraid.
Somehow she felt she had always expected this conclusion.
The cold gazes around her, the eyes full of disappointment.
Yet Isabella did not die.
She did not die—she was sold.
To the Desert Queen.
…The words of the woman she had seen underground had been true.
That dying would have been happier.
Because the place Isabella arrived at was hell.
There was no day or night here.
A vast underground cavern prepared beneath Faisalmer.
In that place countless children had to survive.
"Aaaagh!"
"It hurts, it hurts!"
"Save me!"
Screams that never stopped.
Sounds she should have grown used to by now, yet somehow never could.
"Did you know? This place borders the Abyss in certain parts."
"…Sonora."
Isabella turned her gaze upward.
A beautiful white-haired girl—Sonora.
The child most likely to become the Queen's successor.
And somehow… a clone who looked rather like herself.
"That's why specimens that fail to adapt thrash around like that until they become hybrids. Pitiful beasts who never properly received Her Majesty's grace."
"…"
"We, on the other hand, adapted. We grew stronger. Isabella, we can leave this place."
Unlike herself, Sonora was a positive child.
A little unhinged, perhaps, but there was no helping it.
Among the children here, that was about as sane as anyone managed to stay.
…This place was hell.
Children who failed to adapt turned into monsters.
Those who became monsters attacked the other children, killed them, and ate them.
And the children, in order to live, had no choice but to kill the monsters and tear the flesh from their bones.
There is no bright future, Sonora.
Isabella could not bring herself to say the words.
They were both clones, yet the environments that had raised them were far too different.
Isabella had been raised in the Dercian family; Sonora had been raised here.
Isabella knew she was a clone, but Sonora did not.
She merely thought they looked somewhat alike.
Only Isabella also knew that they would both eventually die at the Desert Queen's hands.
Yet Sonora's faith in the Desert Queen was beyond imagination.
Well, it was not hard to understand.
In a hell like this, the only way to survive was to believe in something even more fiercely.
"Guaaaaaagh!"
"…Arnan. In the end that child became a monster too."
Arnan had endured this hell for more than five years.
A boy who had seemed perfectly fine only yesterday.
And the longer one lasted, the more overwhelmingly powerful one became upon turning into a monster.
Powerful enough that no one except Sonora could touch him.
Indeed, the monster Arnan had become killed and ate five children in an instant.
At last Sonora took up her sword.
Then she looked at Isabella and smiled brightly.
"I'll be right back, Isabella. You rest."
Sonora, strongest among the children.
The most radiant, shining, beautiful girl.
She was injured while fighting the monster Arnan had become.
"That Arnan kid… he was pretty good, wasn't he? He'd been hiding a trump card."
It was nothing more than a small scratch, yet Sonora tossed off a joke.
Sonora had always looked down on Arnan.
She had fanned his will, telling him to hone his skills further.
The monster Arnan had used a technique he had kept hidden all that time and succeeded in wounding Sonora.
"Arnan! By eating you we will grow even stronger. You will live on inside us. I swear it—I will never forget you."
A ritual already repeated hundreds of times.
The children tore the flesh from Arnan, who had died after becoming a monster.
But Isabella could not rest easy.
"Sonora. Your… blood."
"It's fine. Don't worry."
Sonora hurriedly covered the wound.
Yet Isabella had seen it clearly with both eyes.
That the blood was not red.
Sonora was becoming a monster—a hybrid.
Even so, Sonora smiled brightly.
"I can feel it. We'll be able to leave this place soon. So when that time comes, you're coming with me, Isabella. We're like each other's other halves. It's a promise."
Day by day Sonora's condition worsened.
She was only holding on through a vast magical power incomparable to the other children's.
"…We have to kill her."
"We have to kill her before she becomes a monster."
"If Sonora becomes a monster, we're all dead."
The children instinctively sensed something wrong.
The change in Sonora.
That she had been transforming at a terrifying speed ever since she was wounded fighting Arnan.
"Have you all forgotten? Without Sonora we would already be dead!"
Isabella stood in front of the children.
She could not hand Sonora over like this.
Without Sonora this place would already have been finished.
"We have to kill her."
"If you stop us, we'll kill you too."
Words no longer reached them.
The children were mad.
Perhaps she herself was already mad as well.
Shing.
Isabella raised a sword.
Sonora's sword.
A blade ground from the bones of a monster.
She had said that if her closest friend became a monster, she would grind that monster's bones into a sword.
That was why Isabella still had no proper sword of her own.
Sonora's sword, she had said, had been made long ago from the bones of a friend who had become a monster.
If she herself died, would Sonora make a sword from her bones?
By eating her flesh and drinking her blood, they could be together forever.
"Go ahead and kill me. I never planned on living long anyway."
I want to live inside you, Sonora.
My one and only friend.
…My one and only little sister.
Apparently she had been stronger than she thought.
When she came to her senses, the surroundings were nothing but corpses.
"Hah, hah, hah…"
She could not see ahead.
Blood. Was this her own blood?
She wiped it away roughly and her vision returned.
No one was left standing.
Every child was dead.
Except for herself and Sonora.
"Sonora, it's all right. We will definitely leave this place."
"Only… one person can leave here, Isabella."
Sonora, breathing roughly, spoke.
As if she had been hiding a secret all this time.
When she opened her eyes, both of Sonora's eyes had turned pitch black.
Half of her had already become a monster.
"Isabella. If it's you… you're stronger than me, so you'll definitely overcome the trials ahead."
"What are you talking about?"
"Before I become a monster… kill me. I… I… ah."
Crack! Crrrack!
Her body twisted.
Her neck bent at an angle that should have been impossible, and bones moved grotesquely as if trying to pierce through her flesh here and there.
No.
This wasn't real.
Sonora becoming a monster?
If only one person could leave, that person had to be Sonora.
"…I'll die."
I should die and you, Sonora, should go outside.
I never planned on living long anyway.
—Wait for death outside. That would be… happier for you.
The words the woman in the underground had spoken that day.
Exactly those words.
Dying would be happier.
Even if she lived and left, only misery awaited her.
If she died and Sonora lived to leave, nothing could make her happier than that.
She lifted Sonora's sword.
Ready to die.
She meant to slit her own throat and die in a single stroke.
Just as she was about to bring the blade down without hesitation—
Zzzt! Zzzzt!
Noise filled the world.
And something appeared before her eyes.
Main Quest 1: Survival has begun.
Survive!
After that, her memories vanished.
Main Quest 1: Survival has begun.
Survive!
Where the hell is this now?
"The starting point was definitely a desert city, wasn't it?"
Staring at the computer screen, I tilted my head.
I had set it to a desert city, yet I had started somewhere that looked nothing like a desert.
"And what the hell is that? Why is a hybrid showing up the moment I start?"
It was enough to make me lose my mind.
A hybrid. And not an ordinary hybrid—something higher-tier.
A monster a Level 1 character could never defeat even if he died and came back to life!
"…I just slapped this character together for practice. So this is why they say you should never set your starting point to a desert city."
A place you must never designate as a starting point.
If you got dumped into the Calzman Desert, you were better off just deleting the character and starting over.
And the hybrid in front of me was a wall that even a god-tier controller could never climb.
I quickly checked the equipment I possessed.
"Oh, a Rare-grade Bone Sword? The difficulty's high, so the weapon's decent. Maybe this is doable?"
If I could land effective hits, it might be possible.
The talents I had weren't half bad either.
Besides, the hybrid had not yet fully become a monster.
Crack! Crrrack!
I loosened up.
A challenge beyond the impossible.
I had always welcomed challenges like this.
"All right, let's play."
Click!
I grinned and moved the mouse.
A fight I could never win.
A future where death was already decided.
But I was the one who changed the future.
The man with a 99.9% survival rate.
I had not the slightest intention of abandoning that record.
Guaaaaaaah—!
After a full two hours of desperate struggle.
The hybrid collapsed.
It screamed and died slowly.
Victory in a fight that could never be won.
"Ah…"
Having examined every memory, Isabella let out a deep sigh.
Memories were truly ambiguous things.
Uncertain memories tended to reassemble themselves however they pleased.
Everything she had believed was true until now had become a lie.
She had hypnotized herself for the sake of her own rationalization.
"I… made a contract…"
She had made a contract.
With the Blue Bird. With the being that introduced itself as the Operator.
Since she was going to die anyway, she would stake this body for the chance to live.
And so, the moment death was certain, Isabella's body was taken from her.
And according to the contract, she survived.
By a thread of hope.
No—by a possibility even thinner than a thread.
"…Sonora."
In the end she was the one who had killed her.
It was no different from killing her friend just to keep this body alive a little longer.
She had said she wanted to die, yet in truth she had wanted to live more than anyone.
Whom should she blame?
Whom should she resent?
Everything had happened because of her own choice.
Park Hyunmyung had simply done his best at the task given to him.
It may not have been the best, but he had given his all and produced a result.
No one could condemn him for it.
—My beloved child. Park Hyunmyung, that man sealed the Demon Blood King inside his own body for your sake.
Jormungandr spoke.
The Desert Queen's true intention.
A ritual to summon the Demon Blood King!
Isabella had taken the source of corruption into herself in order to stop that ritual.
—Even after transcending and awakening his name, even knowing that you hated him, he willingly accepted death.
Yet the Demon Blood King was never summoned.
It was annihilated.
By Randolph.
And that choice, in truth, had not been Randolph's—it had been Park Hyunmyung's.
Knowing everything, he had still saved Isabella.
Even knowing that once she learned the truth she would turn away from him.
—If Randolph dies, Park Hyunmyung dies as well. But the Randolph of this moment is not Park Hyunmyung. A newly born existence—or perhaps this is the true form of Randolph. So now… choose. Whether to kill yourself and save him, or kill him and save yourself.
It was time to choose.
Isabella looked at Park Hyunmyung once more.
At his memories, at his story.
Noble humanity.
Virtuous spirit of challenge.
The figure of a single human composed solely of those two things.
Isabella nodded.
Perhaps the outcome had been decided from the very beginning.
Of course she had failed once in the past.
She had saved herself and killed Sonora.
But this time was different.
This was a moment she could choose completely on her own, without any contract.
"Come back. And… thank you."
He had killed the Desert Queen and made every one of the Queen's intentions fail.
Without him it would never have been possible.
Suddenly Sonora's voice rang in her ears.
Just before she died after becoming a hybrid.
She had said:
—You have to be happy, Isabella. You must. It's a promise.
Isabella smiled.
She had been happy.
It had not been a long time, yet she no longer had any regrets.
Swaaah!
Isabella's body gradually grew faint.
She was unmistakably vanishing.
But that was all right.
Because now she would be able to meet Sonora again.