Field: Lilith
“If anything happens to Noir, tell me immediately.”
Wolya impressed this upon Bisque with all the solemnity she could muster. Bisque, worried about Noir in her own right, nodded as if it went without saying.
And then Wolya added one more thing.
‘And if Noir feels even the slightest bit different from her usual self, you tell me that too.’
As far as Bisque could see, Noir was exactly herself. Her color was a touch off, sure, but compared to the day before she looked fine.
Right now, Noir was off talking with Ragna about something.
‘Those two are surprisingly well matched, aren't they.’
Noir and Ragna had been close friends ever since their Linzea days. There was clearly some mutual affection between them, but both of them seemed to have ‘work’ on their minds rather than romance for the time being.
Watching the pair for a moment, Bisque scratched her head.
“Hey, Noir, Ragna — it's been a while. Want to go out for drinks?”
It would be a dinner gathering for the former Linzea members.
“So there's nothing particularly strange? Got it. Don't think about work tonight — just enjoy yourselves.”
Just as Wolya had asked Bisque to keep watch over ‘Noir,’ Ryu Hwi had made a similar request of Ragna.
A week had passed since YggON first sensed something off, and still Noir hadn't shown any unusual behavior.
There was no way a UR-grade YggON had made a mistake. That was what he told himself — and yet, underneath, the nagging thought kept creeping up: What if it was a mistake after all?
[Are you doubting UR YggON, Master?]
And there was the robotic vacuum, once again lightning-fast at sensing exactly that kind of thing.
[Let me say this once more: UR YggON does not make mistakes. There is something about that woman. Something definite.]
He had looked into Noir, and there truly was nothing special to find. The Nimur family had been Gold for forty years, but they were barely scraping by — a household hanging onto its rank by the skin of its teeth, nothing more.
Worrying about Noir any further was starting to feel absurd, so Ryu Hwi turned his attention to the state of Legend of Lambda.
They had secured their first Quartz yesterday. Cumulative view count: thirty million. An exceptional pace, but still far from the target.
‘And I haven't pulled a single Mental Resistance skill yet, either.’
Wasn't there some way to boost the view count in one shot and push the strategy forward at the same time?
Impatience gnawed at him. He had no idea when S.E.N would make its next move. He wanted the decisive means to stand against them in his hands as soon as possible — not a minute later.
As soon as possible….
….
“Are you okay? You look pale.”
“Huh?”
Noir touched his forehead, worry written across her face. Ryu Hwi froze.
What had he been doing just now? His mind was wrapped in fog.
“Noir, didn't you go to the dinner?”
“Dinner? What dinner?”
“No, I mean….”
“And Noir? Seriously! I told you to call me Ishur when it's just the two of us.”
“Yeah? Oh… right.”
Noir — no, Ishur — made an annoyed face. That expression struck him, somehow, as unbearably cute.
“Ish…ur?”
“Mm.”
With a satisfied look, Ishur leaned into him. Flustered though he was by her closeness, it also felt like the most natural thing in the world.
“Hey, Ryu Hwi….”
Ishur looked up at him from against his chest, her eyes gleaming. Those two violet eyes shimmered, mesmerizing. Ryu Hwi felt as though his soul were being drawn into them.
That's right. Ishur was….
Mine.
[Master?]
“Gah—?!”
YggON's voice startled him wide awake.
[Are you tired? Perhaps you should rest for a while.]
He looked around. The private room in Jucheongwang — the very place where he'd been exchanging messages with Ragna moments ago.
“I'm not some middle schooler, damn it! Ungh!”
He thrashed on the spot as it dawned on him that the sweet interlude with Ishur — no, Noir — had been a dream.
‘Damn it. What kind of dream was that? This is ridiculous. I've been thinking about Noir too much, that's al—’
Then, abruptly, he noticed something strange.
He had never once thought of Noir that way. Well — lately, looking at her did stir some odd feeling in him, but he'd brushed it off as his imagination.
And now, at this bizarre timing, he'd dreamed that?
“YggON. Scan my body.”
It was possible Noir had done something to him.
[Bodily functions normal. No anomalies detected in the SEED.]
It had been all in his head, then. He buried his face in both hands. He wasn't some adolescent losing his mind over a girl — what on earth….
“Ugh. I need some fresh air. Clear my head.”
He stepped out of Jucheongwang. A cool breeze brushed both his cheeks.
A beautiful space of water that always held the perfect weather, at any hour, in any season. He'd grown quite fond of District 13.
Which was exactly why the figure that appeared without warning before him felt so profoundly unwelcome.
And the water-blue hair — so perfectly suited to this beautiful city of water — only soured his mood further.
“Hecate.”
He drew the power of the Heavenly Demon Divine Art up through his body.
“Ah — hold on, just a moment. I'm not here to fight today.”
Hecate raised both arms in surrender.
“Nothing inspires less trust than an S.E.N member's word.”
“Ouch! That stings! But this time it's true. Tell me — have you been having strange dreams lately?”
“….”
The words caught in his throat. He'd had one of those very dreams mere minutes ago.
“Judging by that reaction, you've already experienced one, haven't you? Well, it wasn't too late after all. I was on pins and needles gathering the information on all 108.”
Hecate wiped the sweat from her brow, visibly relieved.
“You contacted me before because of that woman ‘Noir,’ remember? That's why I'm here.”
When Hecate took a step closer, he unleashed his ‘magic’ as a warning. A bolt of lightning struck the ground right beside her.
“Don't come any closer.”
“What a positively crackling fighting spirit. Ordinarily I'd love to provoke you even more, but today isn't the day for it.”
There was no composure in Hecate's expression. It wasn't like her at all, and that puzzled him.
“State your business. What about Noir?”
“Her real name is Ishur Nimur, of course. The Nimur clan has managed to hold onto ‘Gold’ all these years without anything in particular to recommend them.”
“So? Are you saying there's something in the Nimur bloodline?”
“Not only in the Nimur bloodline, to be precise. 108 that I've personally confirmed. Nimur is merely one part of the whole.”
“A part?”
He couldn't see where this was going. What on earth was Hecate trying to tell him?
“Nimur, Helgram, Asta, Dimuros, Azzel, Crosian, Romart….”
Hecate recited names one by one, as if reading from a list.
[Those are the names of Gold-rank families, Master.]
YggON identified the list at once. But Gold families were hardly rare. Roughly a thousand households had been granted a ‘name’ as top-tier citizens — and the families Hecate was naming, Nimur included, were none of them particularly famous. Was there some pattern to this list? Aside from their obscurity, nothing connected them.
“Hestel, Bright… Please commit all 108 families I've named to memory. These families are all….”
[[[That's enough of that.]]]
A voice echoed from somewhere. Not from one direction — from several at once.
His Intuition, a beat late, sensed something and screamed danger.
Violet eyes were gleaming in the darkness.
The uncanny sense that District 13 — beautiful only moments ago — had in an instant transformed into some unrecognizable somewhere else. And the source of that wrongness was the violet eyes glowing on every side.
“Tch.”
Hecate clicked her tongue, scanning her surroundings.
[[[Has S.E.N forgotten its own policy of non-interference in other members' affairs?]]]
The voice rang out again and again.
[Confirming surrounding signatures. 108 in total, Master.]
108. The same number Hecate had just spoken.
“Don't make me laugh. I had my claim on Ryu Hwi first, remember? You're the one who interfered with my entertainment.”
Hecate scoffed, firing back at the voices.
[[[In other words, you have no intention of stepping aside?]]]
“By S.E.N's own policy, you're the ones who should back down.”
Unlike when she faced Ryu Hwi, Hecate was radiating raw killing intent now — not the playfulness aimed at a ‘game,’ but the hostility reserved for an ‘enemy.’
[[[Then we have our own thoughts on the matter.]]]
Step.
Footsteps echoed.
Amid the violet eyes glittering here and there in the dark, a single figure approached out of the shadows.
Just then, Ragna's call came through.
“Boss! Something's terribly wrong!”
He didn't need to hear the rest to know what had happened. The glittering violet eyes — and the ‘she’ who stood as tall as any grown man had revealed herself here, in this place.
“Noir — she's gone!! She just vanished!”
Of course she had. Because Ishur Nimur — Noir — was standing right here.
[ID number confirmed. SKN-2755002222.]
It was not Noir's ID. It was the ‘mutated ID’ YggON had detected before. She wore Noir's face, but she was not Noir.
The violet eyes glowing faintly in the darkness were nothing like the Noir he knew. Her eyes had never burned with that kind of greed.
“Well, this is inconvenient. It's a far cry from the plan, but I suppose I'll have to corrupt you by force.”
With Noir's face, she wore an expression Ryu Hwi had never seen on her — alluring and, at the same time, nauseating.
“Watch your mouth. A corrupted Ryu Hwi is no fun at all. Ryu Hwi shines brightest exactly as he is.”
Hecate planted herself between him and the woman — an enemy, shielding Ryu Hwi. The whole situation left a foul taste in his mouth.
“Hmph.”
One by one, the others began to reveal themselves.
They ranged from young children to full-grown adults. What they shared in common was this: every last one of them was a woman.
[Master, I have found an eerie commonality among the 108 families Hecate named.]
“Could it be — they only ever bear daughters?”
[Correct. Every direct bloodline has produced ‘women’ only.]
The puzzle pieces snapped together. The 108 women gathered here were the direct bloodline descendants of the 108 Gold families Hecate had listed.
Watching them move as though animated by a single will, Ryu Hwi felt an unease beyond words.
“Are they being controlled?”
“Close — but no.”
Hecate answered his question while warily watching their surroundings.
“Long ago, there was a madwoman named Eve.”
The original owner of the ID SKN-2755002222.
“The first human ever to discover the Trucardia Virus.”
“…!”
“And the first ‘human’ to become ▆▆▆▆▆ — which is why, in the records, she was listed as ‘deceased.’”
Marked dead in the records. Which meant she hadn't truly died at all.
“That lunatic had a dream. She wanted to become a being that corrupts humans, just as the Trucardia Virus does. And as her first experiment, she dissolved her own soul and transplanted it into the 108 humans she had handpicked.”
Dissolved. Transplanted. The very words made his head swim.
“Her soul passed down to her descendants like a gene. Because of it, the heirs of those 108 families were born ‘female’ without exception — and the moment her soul awakens within them, they become nothing more than vessels existing solely for ‘Eve.’”
“Then that means….”
“Eve implanted her soul into her own SEED and then copied it. She inserted those copied SEEDs into her descendants, and now she clings to the underside of their souls like a parasite.”
Sheer, unadulterated madness. Every one of the women standing here was nothing more than a puppet carrying Eve's soul — just like the woman wearing Noir's face.
“Having become ▆▆▆▆▆, Eve gave herself a new name.”
Lilith.
He had heard that name before — it was on the list of S.E.N members that Midgard had passed along.
“Enough chatter. Spilling someone else's secrets to a nobody outside S.E.N — are you in your right mind?”
Noir, her Lilith soul awakened, scrunched her face in visible displeasure.
“You interfered with my entertainment, so you should have prepared yourself for at least this much. And S.E.N or not — I never liked you from the start.”
“Oh my. What a coincidence. The feeling was mutual.”
Hecate and Noir locked eyes.
And then — no one could say who moved first — they moved at the same instant.
Hecate snapped her fingers in the empty air.
Noir pressed a finger to her lips, miming a kiss.
“System….”
“Engage!”