Ch.314Half-Baked (8)

As is typical for an Outsider, Cartesia was reluctant to receive help from humans.

But what about now?

She certainly hadn’t requested rescue. Yet Eidel had appeared, claiming he couldn’t contact her, and was now using all his strength to save her.

Even if it meant he would suffer as a result.

Thud!

“Eidel——!!”

“Young master!”

As the two women screamed, Eidel collapsed. Even as he fell, he tried to protect Cartesia. He cradled her head with his hands to absorb the impact with the floor and rolled several times.

An Outsider’s body is much sturdier and more flexible than a mere human’s. A simple fall wouldn’t leave even a scratch.

For Cartesia, who had only ever been attacked by other Outsiders her entire life, this was treatment she’d never experienced before.

Renatus retracted his mist blade that had extended behind him and said:

“I read your thoughts long ago. You’re stubbornly using too shallow a method.”

“You seem to have forgotten what kind of Outsiders we are, teacher.”

“You may have entered freely, but leaving is another matter.”

The mist blade moved forward this time and destroyed the portal. With this, Eidel’s group’s escape route was blocked.

But the bigger problem was that Eidel’s clothes began to be stained with dark red blood.

A sticky feeling. A fading pulse. Without realizing it, Cartesia was touching Eidel’s solar plexus. Her eyes opened wide.

“Y-youngster.”

His heart had been pierced.

Having observed humanity for a long time, she knew well. Having one’s heart pierced meant death for an animal.

Eidel’s pupils were hazy like salted fish. He smiled weakly and whispered in a fading voice.

“Why on earth……”

“……I’m sorry.”

Poof.

Eidel’s form turned to powder and scattered.

“He’s dead.”

Cartesia felt her neural network collapsing.

Dead?

That youngster who had played with the Queen and the Iron Fortress? Dead? Really?

Impossible.

Strength entered Cartesia’s limbs. She got up on her knees and extended her fist toward Renatus.

Whoosh!

Renatus didn’t dodge. Yet he wasn’t knocked back by the attack. Sadly, Cartesia’s hand only made the sound of cutting through empty air.

“My daughter, it seems you don’t know how to fight between members of the same race at all. Don’t do it like that… Watch carefully. This is how you use a technique by infusing it with Pron.”

[— <Total Mental Failure>]

Crack!

As Renatus’s blade pierced Cartesia’s solar plexus, her vision flipped.

***

“Hmm?”

When she opened her eyes again, she was fine.

Cartesia looked down at herself. She was still bound by tentacles as before. At the same time, the parts that had been injured were completely healed.

It didn’t take long to understand what had happened.

“Time… has been rewound.”

“Could it be those Maxwell bastards?”

“How troublesome. Where in this universe are there such ill-mannered beings who disturb others during meals?”

“No need to be so angry. They may manipulate time, but don’t we handle emotions? We should control emotions, not be consumed by pointless anger.”

“A wise saying, teacher.”

The two Outsiders regrouped and looked at Cartesia.

“Anyway, we’ve shown him death, so he won’t dare come here again. Isn’t that the nature of humans?”

“Weak indeed. Like flower petals that tear when blown upon.”

But just then.

Whoosh.

Space distorted and once more a portal appeared. Those who emerged through the portal were, needless to say, Eidel and his two women.

Step.

Landing on the floor, Eidel countered Renatus’s verse.

“Every rose has its thorns.”

Cartesia’s eyebrows arched upward.

“Youngster, what are you doing here again!”

“I came to save you.”

The strategy hadn’t changed much. He just moved faster. But such reckless actions couldn’t stop Renatus and Powehi.

Eidel met his death in a similar way this time too.

And time rewound once again.

“I’m back.”

“You keep charging in without getting tired. What a diligent fellow without any sense of fear.”

Eidel tried all sorts of methods. He attempted to bring a quantum gravity resonator into null space, and sometimes brought other swordsmen.

The conclusion was the same. Eidel was defeated. Sometimes instead of him getting hurt, Rustila or Sonia would be severely injured.

Nevertheless, the three of them kept appearing.

“Teacher, it seems there’s an Iron Fortress minion in the lower world. We need to kill that human to escape this loop.”

“You said you couldn’t manifest in your main body for a while. I’ll go kill them quickly. Meanwhile, if that little one appears, block him without delay.”

“I will ensure there are no mistakes.”

Powehi declared confidently and then circled around Cartesia like a ghost.

“That human is quite peculiar. Not a complete constellation, nor an Outsider. Why does such a half-baked being keep charging at us?”

Cartesia remained silent. The other’s words weren’t worth responding to.

But the words that followed were simply unbearable.

“Were you trying to defeat us and Laplace’s Forces by collaborating with that human? You fools really suit each other.”

“What?”

“I found out while probing his mind. Just creating useless theories and making pointless inventions? All destined to fail anyway.”

Her teeth gritted.

“…A good-for-nothing who just plays around, daring to dismiss the efforts of me and my contractor?”

“That’s exactly it! Those efforts are all in vain! Everything you’ve achieved with blood and sweat is just a piece of doom! Just as life dies eventually after being born, the universe will contract or evaporate after being created! Even a half-being like you should know what we already know!”

Powehi raised his voice violently and kicked Cartesia’s abdomen with mist shaped like a blunt weapon.

Thud! Thud! Thwack!

One, two, three hits.

“Ugh, kugh…!”

With each hit, anger boiled inside Cartesia. Meanwhile, Powehi, intoxicated with distorted sadism, disparaged her even more.

“Just abandon dreams that can’t be fulfilled and enjoy the present! How beautiful is the back of someone who has let everything go!”

“After binding me here for hundreds of millions of years, you dare say such things… Aagh!”

She was hit properly, strongly. Her vision shook and space separated. The thought-body forming the neural center of the Descartes system flickered like a dying light.

Powehi said in a low voice.

“Sorry, but whether you’re in pain or not doesn’t matter. What matters is whether we can enjoy ourselves.”

Thwack!

Powehi hit Cartesia once more and then looked around. There was no sign or trace of a portal being created.

“That idiot is late this time? Has he given up and decided not to come? Hahaha!”

No sooner had he said this than a portal formed about 100 meters away. Powehi lazily swayed his main body and prepared a preemptive attack.

“You don’t know how scary Outsiders are, yet you came again.”

The extended mist wrapped around the portal like a snake. Powehi flowed the mist into it just as the space was about to open.

He shouldn’t kill him right away. Killing him first might cause time to rewind again. Powehi intended to torment him until Renatus returned, so he cast a <Paralysis> effect on the mist.

What came flying in return for injecting the mist was a golden bullet.

Tang!

A star-infused bullet wrapped in smoke came and set fire to Powehi’s main body. It was flame soaked in Aether. Powehi was startled and quickly cut off part of the mist.

“W-what is this.”

What emerged from beyond wasn’t Eidel, the swordswoman, or the maid bioroid.

A black-haired woman.

“Haa, haa.”

It was Ireh Hazlen.

“You, you… I’m sure I turned you into a bitch crazy with lust?”

“Don’t call me by such words. I’ll kill you.”

Ireh exhaled heated breaths. To Powehi, she hadn’t completely overcome it.

In reality, Ireh had regained some of her reason through special measures from Zernya. With that small amount of reason, she was suppressing her swollen instincts.

In other words.

‘She’s enduring through sheer stubbornness.’

When constellations contract with humans, they look at the human’s strengths and characteristics. Altair of the Cowherd Star had the keywords “patience” and “indomitability.”

Endure. Never give up.

Though she had lost control and gone berserk at first, she could somehow manage now when not directly facing Eidel.

[— Using <Binding Bullet>.]

Bang! Tang!

Ireh continuously sniped at Powehi. This wouldn’t kill an Outsider, but it could at least restrict their movements.

“What an impudent human. This time I’ll truly turn you into a dog with nothing but instincts!”

Powehi gathered Pron and infused it into the lingering mist. He combined two skills. One was <Surging Lust> and the other was <Mental Collapse>.

Ireh didn’t respond and threw herself behind the portal.

And from the same portal emerged Sonia.

Clang!

The Calipers of Wisdom blocked the attack filled with madness. Only then did Powehi realize what strategy the humans were employing this time.

“Miss Rustila!”

Indeed, next came the blonde swordswoman with her ponytail flying as she charged at Powehi.

The blonde swordswoman, Rustila. She was the most troublesome existence for Powehi.

This was because she had an abundance of Aether and excellent combat sense. It was a level that even an Outsider would acknowledge.

[— <Surging Lust>]

Rumble!

Rustila, who had been trying to dodge through acrobatics until now, this time took Powehi’s attack head-on.

Powehi was bewildered. Unlike Ireh, Rustila showed no signs of shrinking back.

Was it thanks to the Virgo constellation she contracted with?

No.

Rustila provided that answer.

“…I’m always excited anyway.”

Slash!

The trajectory of Aether cut off all of Powehi’s mist. All except one.

“What a crazier woman…!”

“Now!”

Rustila shouted toward the portal. It was obvious who would come out of that rift next. Powehi reflexively extended his remaining mist tentacle toward the portal.

But there was nothing to touch.

‘A feint.’

By the time he felt the chill and turned around, Eidel had already put Cartesia on his back.

***

“You stupid fellow. Don’t you have any learning ability? Did you come here to die again?”

“No, I told you I came to rescue you.”

I cut all the tentacles binding Cartesia and put her on my back. It took a bit longer than carrying her in my arms, but this was much more comfortable.

“You cunning one, using such tricks…!”

What’s there to say? All the processes of dying until now had been buildup to make Renatus and Powehi let their guard down.

Someone once said that there was only one portal that could enter null space.

With understanding of coordinates and measure, one could create portals with the same destination, or even intercept another Outsider’s portal destination and exchange it with a different portal.

Renatus, who was probably trying to attack the Saint, must be scratching his head in the front yard of Stern right now.

Having Cartesia on my back, there was only one thing left to do.

“Rustila!”

At my call, Rustila returned to the current world through the opposite portal. I also threw myself into the portal that had been created right next to Cartesia as soon as I saw signs of Renatus returning.

[— The true form of the ‘God of Wisdom and Curiosity’ manifests.]

I embraced Cartesia to protect her from injury as we fell through the gap. When I came to my senses, she and I were lying on my bed at home.