Field: Nox
Ryu Hwi straddled one of the demo bikes sprawled nearby and kicked it to life.
He rode for the coordinates Seven had sent. He had no intention of getting tangled up with Asea ever again, but Hecate's parting words had been too ominous to ignore.
The place Seven had designated came into view — a park with a fountain in Zone 17 — and the bizarre scene unfolding in front of it made Ryu Hwi doubt his own eyes.
Something unidentifiable had swarmed the area in a thick, writhing mass. Amorphous matter — if you had to put a name to it, beings closer to 'slimes' than anything else.
There were supposed to be no 'monsters' in Rider-On.
Seven was holding the shapeless entities off on his personal bike, weaving Rider skills into every maneuver. But Rider-On's main content wasn't 'combat', and Seven alone had limits when it came to fighting off this bizarre horde.
"Quit being such a damn nuisance."
Ryu Hwi touched his deck.
[Rammut — Infancy] [Lv UP]
↳ Summon: Rammut — Growth Stage (+Lv UP)
The newly grown Rammut spread its wings and took to the air. The black shadow flames it unleashed scorched the amorphous beings a furious crimson. Wrapped in the black fire, they bubbled and seethed before melting away into the ground as if sinking into it.
"Ryu Hwi!"
"Hey, what the hell are these things? What happened to Asea?!"
"How should I know?! I thought I'd saved her, and then these things just popped out of nowhere and dragged her off!"
So Seven had failed to rescue Asea. What were these slimes of unknown origin, anyway? His Intuition was firing off danger signals without a moment's pause. The feeling was eerily similar to when he'd faced 'Linpel'.
"Don't tell me…"
Just as you suspect, Master. The Trucardia Virus reaction is being detected from these amorphous entities.
"Why the hell would these things give off a virus reaction!"
From somewhere not far away, a gaze was watching them. It didn't take long to figure out who it belonged to.
"Hecate!"
Seated on a high rooftop, looking down with lazy amusement, Hecate wore a startled expression.
"Oh my, you noticed."
"Cut the games and answer me. What are these things?"
At his demand, Hecate gave a casual shrug.
"I did tell you, didn't I? That you're not the only one whose life was ruined because of that human called Asea. Most of them spiraled into despair and fell from grace. So where do you think the obvious 'refuge' is, for people who've hit rock bottom?"
Digital narcotics. He'd seen plenty of humans who'd given up on life and drowned themselves in the euphoria those drugs supplied.
"Those strange things over there are the dregs — people who gave up on being human, but only halfway. Even the Trucardia Virus can't just turn every random Tom, Dick, and Harry into a ██████."
Linpel Darius had possessed the aptitude. Those who lacked it, however, had transformed into these alien, unrecognizable things instead.
The warmth gradually drained from Ryu Hwi's eyes as he glared at Hecate. A gaze of absolute cold turned toward her.
"Hecate."
Ryu Hwi's emotionless voice reached her.
"You — I'm going to destroy you with my own two hands. That much is certain."
In that instant, Hecate wrapped her arms around herself and shuddered. The ecstasy of her soul would not stop. The impulse to play a delightful game with Ryu Hwi this very moment overflowed within her — and she barely forced it down.
"By all means, do as you please. Nothing in this world makes my soul tremble quite like a game with you."
Ryu Hwi ignored her and turned toward the amorphous beings.
"Ryu Hwi, what was that just now? The Trucardia Virus? What does that have to do with Asea?"
Seven pulled his bike up beside Ryu Hwi and pressed him for answers.
"It means your precious Asea has been busy — that's all. And from the look of it, these freaks here are all people who hold a grudge against her."
"People with a grudge? What kind of bullshit is that? You're saying humans turned into this? What nonsense—"
Seven tried to refuse to believe it. Ryu Hwi snorted with contempt.
"Bullshit? What's bullshit about it? You don't know how absurd the things Yggdrasil Items can do are?"
"Ugh!"
Seven had no comeback. Yggdrasil Items shattered common sense and theory alike without breaking a sweat. Someday, they might even collapse the boundary between game labyrinths and reality itself.
These entities are already subordinated to the game labyrinth. They are no longer human — merely monsters moving on instinct alone.
Ryu Hwi caught what YggON was getting at. It meant: kill these beings who had once been human.
The only path remaining is to destroy them — and hope they reincarnate as residents of the game labyrinth.
It was said that beings belonging to Yggdrasil reincarnated even after death. These things, transformed into nameless entities of the game labyrinth, might well be reborn somewhere else — if things went well.
Master bears no obligation to feel burdened by these—
"Spare me the bullshit."
His resolve was set.
"I can't stand people who slap petty excuses and justifications all over their own actions to pretend they were in the right."
Choosing vengeance, dragging Linpel and Asea down into the abyss — all of it was his own choice. He had no intention of justifying each and every act with convenient reasons. What he could do, he would do. That was enough.
Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger and opened fire on the amorphous beings. His Intuition told him all he needed to know: unlike Linpel, these things carried an utterly faint presence. They could be killed without any need for Delete.
"Ryu Hwi? You—"
Seven was horrified by what he was seeing. These amorphous beings had once been human — supposedly — and yet Ryu Hwi pulled the trigger without a flicker of doubt. If that was true, then Ryu Hwi was committing murder right now.
Seven had been fighting these things all along, too. But now that he knew they might be human, the thought that he might have already killed people raised goosebumps across his skin.
Then he noticed Ryu Hwi's eyes trembling. Those trembling eyes looked like a scream trapped inside, one he couldn't bring himself to let out. Ryu Hwi wasn't killing them because he wanted to. He was killing them because he had no other choice.
"Damn it all!"
Seven hesitated, and hesitated again — then gripped his handlebars. He was still only half-convinced by Ryu Hwi's story, but if it was true, then this duty belonged to him, not Ryu Hwi. He was the one who had accepted Asea into GA-ES even knowing what she'd done. He had to take responsibility.
"Ryu Hwi, fall back! These things are mine to handle!"
Seven hammered the amorphous beings with his bike's attack skills. Gun barrels deployed from the bike's frame, spewing fire without pause. Once Seven committed everything to the assault, the amorphous beings couldn't withstand the impact and began to break apart.
"Ghk…"
Swallowing down the urge to vomit, Seven kept pouring on the attack. The amorphous beings staggered — and then began drifting in a single direction. Seven caught where they were heading.
"That's the direction Asea was dragged."
"…!"
Ryu Hwi hurried after them. A nasty premonition had been gnawing at him since earlier. His Intuition kept warning him of something — as if something that must never, ever happen was about to happen.
A short while later, Ryu Hwi and Seven found Asea. Bound to a cross like a condemned criminal, she was being swarmed by the amorphous beings, more and more of them converging on her.
And they weren't merely gathering. The amorphous beings were being continuously absorbed into Asea's body.
"Asea!!"
Seven roared her name, but Asea didn't so much as flinch. Even as he screamed, the beings kept melting away into her flesh, vanishing as though sinking into it. It looked as though they were being drawn inside her.
Ryu Hwi's Intuition screamed. That's dangerous. Leave it alone, and something monstrous will happen.
When Ryu Hwi spread his right hand, a faint light gathered in his palm.
"Stop!"
Seven threw himself in front of him.
"That light — you're thinking of using Delete, aren't you? Asea can barely hold her body together after the shock from that earlier bug. If she takes a Delete on top of that, who knows what could happen!"
It was true that Ryu Hwi had never used Delete on a human who had been 'Converted', rather than on an account. But this was no time to be worrying about that.
"Move! We don't have time to argue!"
He could feel it — horrific grudges and despair, the shrieks of the destitute and abandoned, all converging on Asea. Beings who bore a grudge against her, who had fallen so far they couldn't even sink into the Abyss, were corroding her.
"If you want to erase Asea, you'll have to erase me first!"
Seven fired every attack function his bike had, trying to block Ryu Hwi's path.
"You idiot! Can't you see? Something is about to happen that might make death the merciful option!"
"What?!"
"Move!"
Ryu Hwi shoved Seven aside and lunged toward Asea. There was no time. He trampled through the amorphous beings as he pushed forward. With Swift, he could have crossed the distance in a heartbeat — but there was no 'Swift' in his current deck. He'd burned the Swift card fighting Linpel.
The instant the hand carrying the power of Delete was about to touch Asea — her eyes opened. Suspended in them glowed rings of gold.
"…!"
Asea's lips moved faintly.
"System… Engage…"
That voice reached Ryu Hwi's ears, unmistakably.
"Field: Nox."
And then everything was dyed in 'night' — a deep, dark night as if the sun would never rise again.
"Oooh."
Hecate, watching the scene unfold, breathed a sigh of admiration.
"Humans truly are terrifying. To think something like that could be born — even I'm surprised."
Turning Asea into a '██████' had been part of the plan. Once Asea became a being of the Abyss, Ryu Hwi would undoubtedly kill her without hesitation — all so that Hecate could play a delightful game with a rage-burning Ryu Hwi someday. But even she had never anticipated this.
"Just how deep a despair did they carry, for something like that to be born?"
A curtain of night that blotted out the world. Gazing up at that sky, Hecate broke into a sweat.
"How am I supposed to clean this up? This is dangerous. I get the feeling Mr. Crowley is going to chew me out later."
That darkness felt as though it had dragged the Abyss itself, whole and unfiltered, into this world.
"Honestly, what am I going to do."
There stood a woman draped in a dress that seemed woven from the night sky itself. The being who had once been 'Asea' looked up at the heavens.
"Ase… a?"
Seven called her name in a voice drained of all hope. Even without Intuition, he could tell. That thing was no longer 'Asea'.
Ryu Hwi observed the thing with cold composure.
"Could we actually beat that thing?"
If you fight it now, Master, the odds are roughly eight in ten that you will die. What does your Intuition say?
"It feels about the same as when I looked at the GA-ES bug with Intuition at Lv1."
In other words, it is a threat beyond what Intuition Lv3 can even register. However, I do not recommend recklessly raising your Lv.
Linpel Darius had been dangerous too. But this was on an entirely different level. His Intuition was warning him: do not even think about fighting it.
The being that had once been Asea — the one that hadn't spared Seven so much as a glance — reacted to Ryu Hwi's voice. Eyes filled with darkness turned toward him.
Realizing there was no escaping this fight, Ryu Hwi spat a curse and deployed his deck.
Ah, so you mean even going all the way to pity-pity pity didn't offset it.
And yet, strangely enough, his luck had been good lately.