The Pure White Witch
Beep... beep...
When I first perceived the world, it was pulsing with a steady rhythm.
"Yes, I understand perfectly. We are deploying the spirit created from the remnants of the World Tree into the experiment. Is this agreed upon with the Spirit King?"
Something was standing in a place filled with countless other things, making sounds.
"Yes, understood. I will record this test subject separately. Still, it would be best to decide on a designation."
The thing making the sound began to touch a small, square object.
"Yes, the first attempt at an AS (Artificial Spirit). Quality is the highest grade, A-Class. AS-1-a should suffice."
The thing slowly approached me.
"You will become the hope we have created."
The thing was still saying things I couldn't understand.
No matter how much I listened to its constant chatter, I couldn't understand.
And so, time passed.
As time passed, my body gradually took on a fixed form from its amorphous state.
I began to understand that the things making sounds were called 'researchers,' and the various things around me were called 'test subjects,' just like me.
They came to me every few days under the name of 'checkups,' tickling various parts of my body.
"It should be fine to start now. It's completely stabilized."
The researcher who said this to me took me away.
Speech.
How do I do that? How do I make sounds?
I was thinking about that.
"AS-1-a"
The researcher said what was probably my name.
"We have high expectations for you. Everyone believes that you can make our research a success."
Expectations. Success.
These were words the researcher visited me with every single day.
What are expectations? What the hell is success?
Speech still seems difficult.
It was when I was thinking about this and that.
The researcher put me in a different room and disappeared. Then, researchers in similar attire came in.
"Spirit Binding Magic. Forced Materialization Magic. Deploying."
What is this!
This feeling is weird!
It's stifling!
My body won't move!
"Subject restraint complete. Permission to administer the drug."
Permission?
What are you permitting?
Wait, that was the researcher's voice from earlier? Are they talking from somewhere I'm talking from somewhere I can't see? Amazing!
"Administering HK-3182."
Ouch.
It stings. What is this?
Ah.
Ah.
Ahhhhhhhhh.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
It hurts.
This is weird.
This is wrong.
My body feels like it's shattering into pieces.
It hurts.
It's agonizing.
It's terrible.
I hate it.
I'm scared.
Don't come.
It's excruciating.
"Entering the next phase of the procedure."
Stop it.
I hate it.
Don't do it.
"Detecting rejection response."
"Understood."
I hate it.
I hate it.
"Administering sedative."
My body went numb.
What is this.
Why are you doing this to me.
"Understood. Beginning tissue transplant."
What is this.
I'm dizzy.
"Administering additional magic power reaction inhibitor."
"Administering mutation rejection inhibitor."
"Excising necrotic tissue."
I don't understand what they're saying.
I feel like I've gone back to the beginning.
These words are all too.
Too difficult.
I can't understand anything.
Why do I have to hurt this much?
Why are you making me hurt?
"The procedure is complete."
It's over?
Then.
I want to sleep a little now.
It hurts so much.
I severed my consciousness from my agonizing body.
No, my mind couldn't endure the pain of my body and fled.
But even if I ran, my mind could never truly escape my body forever.
Naturally, I opened my eyes again.
From that point on, I was trapped in pain.
It's agonizing.
I want it to stop now.
But what?
What can I stop?
In the first place, what am I doing?
[Life.]
And a strange voice echoed through my head as if piercing it.
"Kuaaaaaaah!"
The first sound I ever made.
Unable to bear the pain.
A scream of agony as my head felt like it was splitting apart.
I don't want to do anything.
"Hmph, still no reaction?"
"Yes, no particular reaction. The body is becoming increasingly unstable. The pattern is similar to the collapse of other test subjects."
"Tch. We invested a huge budget to bring this one in for this project."
Why are you looking at me like that?
Your gaze.
It's cold.
You used to look at me with a smile.
But why?
"Still, we were able to confirm this much. It's not a complete failure."
"Yeah, well. Just throw it somewhere with the others."
'It'?
What is 'it' now?
Where are you taking me this time?
Are you going to do that painful thing again?
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it.
[No.]
That voice again.
My head...
My head feels like it's going to explode...
Ughhh...
Where is this?
Oh, there are a lot of uniquely shaped friends here.
They're all white.
"Ooooh..."
"All..."
They all look strange.
[Shattered.]
Ugh!
Don't talk!
My head hurts!
[Absorb what those failures have. Then you will become stronger.]
Argh!
You completely ignored what I said!
Still, I'll get better?
Then, just a little.
I approached their group a little and reached out my hand.
I wasn't sure how to do it, but when I acted according to the voice that felt like it was shattering my skull, the strange white things slowly came towards me.
It felt unpleasant.
And then.
"Kuaaaaaaah!"
When I absorbed it, my body hurt just as much as before.
Liar. You said I would get better.
It hurts.
[But your head hurts less now, doesn't it?]
Ughhh.
That's true.
But it still hurts!
And so, I lived in that place where the failures were gathered, slowly absorbing power.
I don't know how long I was there.
I have no concept of time.
Many test subjects died here and new ones came in, over and over again.
Then, one unique test subject came in.
"Ah, you sons of bitches."
From the start, she said things I couldn't understand.
"Just a few years ago, you were all going on and on about how I was the closest thing to success, and now you're treating me like a failure over some bullshit about the number of Authorities?"
Her appearance was similar to the researchers.
But she was small.
Her voice was louder and noisier.
Still, since she looked like the researchers, I was as wary as possible.
"What's this? There's a cat here too. Here, kitty."
She said and did things I couldn't understand.
"Oh? No reaction at all. Then I'll just have to come to you."
With that, she ran over to me and picked me up.
At first, I struggled, but her embrace...
How should I put it.
Anyway, it wasn't cold.
"Whoa, this is fucking soft. This is the life."
She was still saying things I couldn't understand.
"I'm Run. What's your name?"
Then she showed me a meaningless picture she had drawn over the existing one on my identification tag, the letters 'LUN'.
The one who introduced herself as Run then felt me up.
"What does it say here? Eh... Aesia?"
It said AS-1-a.
Actually, I didn't really care what it said.
As I spent time with Run like that.
At some point, the voice also became interested in Run.
"What the fuck is this fucking voice?"
"If you want revenge on those bastards, if you want to get out, absorb the power."
"Fuck, if I knew how to do it, I would have done it already. Are you stupid?"
Maybe it was because I didn't absorb much, afraid of the pain.
I shouldn't have done that.
I had run away because I was afraid of simple pain.
In contrast, Run didn't seem to be afraid of the pain at all. She continued to grow her power.
The more she did, the stranger she became.
The familiarity disappeared somewhere.
At some point, she had become one with the failures. She had become a mass that only craved something.
"So you're the last piece."
Her vulgar tone had become solemn, as if she were a king.
She. No, it grabbed me with a rough hand.
It hurts...
I hate pain...
The test subjects were already rampaging, destroying the facility, and I was gradually being consumed by that impulse too.
"Ugh... No."
She threw me away, along with the identification tag that had the word 'LUN' on it.
"Run away! Don't get tangled up with me anymore, go find your own happiness!"
I ran away with that identification tag.
I ran away somewhere.
I kept running. Outside the white city.
I hid my body and continued my life.
I don't know why I continued.
I just.
Unlike the beginning, I didn't want to stop.
I simply learned everything, put on the mask of a human, and formed relationships with things called humans.
I was so weak that I couldn't live without parasitizing somewhere, and they knew my value, so they only extended their desires towards me.
Then, a great number of people gathered. To destroy the white city.
The white city I had run away from in fear was devoured by a giant tree and a dark shadow, disappearing, and I just watched the city crumble.
Then, again.
[Only you remain.]
[Act according to my words.]
It returned to me.
I refused it and ran away.
But it persistently tormented me.
I stubbornly resisted, but it succeeded in entering my mind.
But I was no fool.
The foolish, innocent little spirit from back then was no more.
After I succeeded in fully wearing the mask of a human, I acted like a human for two years.
My learning ability was beyond imagination, and there were countless people who coveted it.
I was more outstanding than they expected, and I devoured and learned everything.
The ugly relationships I got tangled up in during that process made it so I could no longer see the world purely.
I learned, observed, and reflected over countless hours.
I was no longer an ignorant fool who knew nothing.
I studied it.
I understood its Authority.
I found a way to utilize its Authority using the remnants left within me.
I could now apply its Authority.
Its Authority of Assimilation makes others the same as itself. And once they become one, the Authority of Domination places their ego completely under its control.
So, just as it had done.
Just as it had devoured her.
I devoured it.
The monster that could make me lose myself no longer exists.
What have I lived for?
p>
Did I find happiness, as she said?
I can't even remember the warmth I first felt.
I can't even remember what emotion I felt towards her.
I had created nothing in those two years. Just efforts to run away from the fear that remained in my memories. And the disgusting things that fed on the byproducts of those efforts.
It's nothing.
Nothing remained for me.
I am nothing.
I was always afraid of it, not knowing when it would come, and even after it disappeared, there was no one left for me to meet with a smile.
It's futile.
Why is nothing left for me?
What have I done all this time?
Right.
I took revenge.
On the one that stole the little happiness I had.
Is the revenge over?
Did I hate it enough to want revenge?
No.
Nothing is over yet.
My hatred wasn't directed at it.
The ugly, filthy things that made me this way, made her this way, and tried to revive it, are still alive.
No, come to think of it, maybe it never intended to devour me.
Unlike the things that showed their ugly desires towards me, it didn't have desire, but a firm reason. It simply judged that I was more suitable for its goal and seeped into me.
I looked at the two identification tags in my arms.
LUN
AS-1-a
Lunasia.
Now, this will symbolize my rage and become the driving force for me to move forward.
My name will ensure I never forget the path I must walk.
I will wear a crown and take my revenge.
On the world that made me this way.
I know the contents of the original work.
It is an event that has already happened.
And also an event that is yet to come.
I turned my head and looked at the small child.
This child was still protecting her innocence. An innocence that the ugliness of reality had not yet touched.
Without me even realizing it, I was changing this child's future.
The child in front of me was not a witch full of anger and hatred, but a girl seeking happiness.
But, this child still has an unerasable pain and a constant fear within her.
And this child still has the power to take the lives of countless people if she makes a wrong move.
So, the future I saw was not a future I prevented, but merely a future I delayed.
If so, can I give up my happiness and the child's happiness to prevent a 'what if'?
No. I cannot.
I am not a hero of another world.
I am not a hero who would willingly sacrifice himself if it meant saving people, even if it meant giving up my own happiness. I am not the vessel to become a cold-hearted leader who sacrifices the greater for the lesser.
I just do my best for my ideals.
My happiness.
Other people.
This child.
A stubborn, immature fool who can't give up a single thing.
A dreamer who dreams only of ideals, without regard for reality.
A greedy person who wants to pick up everything, even though he doesn't have the skill to pick up everything he wants.
But I don't hate it. All of that defines my existence.
So, I must become stronger.
I haven't even taken down a King yet. And a Hero is chasing me.
What can I do?
Not much.
Still, I have to try something.
Even if I'm a half-wit who can't do anything properly, I want to believe that if I try, I can change something.