episode_0400

In the mind of the controller, who led the shadow simulacra, complex thoughts intertwined like a tangled skein.

Memories of endless training and hardship, of operations that would cause a stir if revealed to the world.

She reflected on her reason for being.

Yes, it was for humanity.

A bizarre yet merciful baptism received from an exile, in preparation for the coming invasion.

Her temples throbbed.

A flash of light streaking across the sky clawed at her consciousness. Light and screams intertwined, echoing in her skull.

The headache had worsened since that grotesque scream tore through the sky.

Someone was watching from somewhere in the dark orbit.

Her comrades felt nothing amiss, but she alone complained of a failure to adapt.

Even after her defection, the headache clung to her like a shadow.

Something alien squirmed within her skull. A being that was part of her, yet foreign, craved something.

Hunger encroached upon her consciousness.

-Crunch!

A human form appeared where fresh blood splattered. The shadow extended again, examining its spoils.

Among the torn debris, four people of different ages lay unconscious.

A simulacrum, lifting one of them, subtly paused its movement.

The simulacra were drawn into the darkness like an ebbing tide.

With thudding footsteps, a maiden with a pure, innocent appearance cautiously approached.

“Are you alright? Are you conscious?”

The simulacrum gazed at its target in silence. The girl’s pupils subtly dilated.

Even amidst fear and shock, her movements to instinctively check the patients’ conditions were flawless.

The girl’s expression twisted as she felt for pulses and checked their backs.

“Oh, to think I’d leave that behind…”

The girl, exhaling regret, quickly composed her expression.

As her staff tapped the ground, a refreshing green light pierced the darkness, completely erasing the victims’ wounds.

The girl took out a small container from her jacket’s inner pocket and put one pill into each patient’s mouth.

Judging it insufficient, she took out a few syringes and hesitated for a moment.

The simulacra, who had been watching for a long time, seized the moment to act.

A young Awakener with excellent healing abilities. Her potential was ample, but nothing more.

Mana-infused throwing daggers sliced through the air.

The girl’s body stiffened and she rose to her feet.

-Clang!

A light green barrier collided with bizarre mana, sparking.

The impact fuse of the dagger, repelled by the force field, activated. A secondary explosion.

With instant judgment, the girl took two steps back and swung her staff.

Countless simulacra poured out from the rooftop and behind the walls.

-Crackle!

The staff, surrounded by intricate hexagonal force fields, repeatedly clashed with the surging arms.

A defense that rotated and twisted to deflect. The girl’s sapphire-colored eyes trembled.

The controller behind the shadows read the answer in that gaze.

Slow movements for an Awakener.

Abilities optimized for a rear-line, non-combat role.

The girl was compensating for those limitations with standard techniques and training.

Fatal blows from the simulacra flew. The girl’s body was already enveloped in a hemispherical shield.

The barrier vibrated violently but recovered as soon as it cracked. The staff, encircled by hexagonal force fields, absorbed the simulacra’s onslaught.

The girl moved her feet and swung her staff as if dancing.

Each time the simulacra’s weapons and arms collided with the hexagonal force fields emanating from the staff, they were repelled as if by magnetic force. A truly powerful repulsion.

But that was all. Her suppressive ability was excellent, but her lethal power was insufficient.

-Swish!

A simulacrum, ambushing from the left, whipped its arms like a lash.

A wave of metal extended with an eerie sound.

Sparks flew as the whip sword bent and scraped the ground.

Blades like beast’s claws ripped through the shield countless times. The girl took a step back. The undulating whip sword slammed down on the spot where she had just been.

The surrounding simulacra launched a simultaneous attack. The anticipated trajectories of their weapons appeared in the girl’s vision. Their direction was towards the victims.

As an instinct to protect the fallen surged, she slammed her staff onto the ground.

Mana surged as if exploding, deploying a shield around the people’s location.

The controller’s lips twisted. Such a docile mindset.

Another fatal weakness was revealed.

A single moment of weakness decided her fate.

The simulacra did not miss the fleeting moment when the flow of aether was dispersed. Each simulacrum, like the skilled movements of a puppeteer, fatally surged in and simultaneously struck the temporarily thinned shield.

A sword pierced through the staff, which she was swinging like a club.

The hastily deployed hexagonal force fields shattered before the throwing daggers.

As one simulacrum, forcing its way through a gap, lunged into her embrace, the girl’s pupils could be seen dilating.

It was over.

-Splat!

“Cough!”

A red line was drawn across her white skin. With a booming sound that echoed through the darkness, the girl’s body was crumpled into the building’s interior like a cannonball.

The simulacra poured into the building like a pack of sharks chasing the scent of blood.

Beyond the human-sized holes, the girl’s form, having penetrated two or three doors and three or four layers of walls, lay collapsed beneath a cracked wall.

“Squeak! No!”

Suddenly, a talking rat darted out and blocked the way. Even in its absurdity, the simulacrum did not disregard the mana it detected from the rat.

The simulacrum nimbly kicked a flashing spark.

“Screech!”

With a sorrowful wail, the rat smashed through the window and flew away.

Under the flickering lights, the girl coughed, spitting out red blood.

Her white blouse was soaked in blood.

It was over. Judging by the amount and color of the blood, it was clearly a fatal blow.

What would it feel like to absorb an Awakener with a unique healing ability?

As the controller’s heightened emotions were transmitted, the simulacra gestured frivolously.

It was then that a syringe, having slipped from the girl’s loosened grip, rolled across the floor.

The inside of the syringe was empty.

‘What is this?’

The next moment, the silver-haired girl’s neck grotesquely twisted, and she got up.

The girl’s eyes glowed ominously, and her pupils dilated.

-Boom!

The runaway agent witnessed her simulacra flying backward, following the path they had torn through to enter the building.

Before the fallen simulacra could regain their posture, the girl rushed out from inside the building.

Within the green flash of light that enveloped her entire body, her wounds vanished as if time had reversed.

Daphne muttered as she emptied the contents of the medicine bottle into her mouth.

“This won’t bring me down.”

Her sapphire eyes burned with the will of justice.

And, of course, the effects of the medicine.

Daphne, like other Awakeners specialized in non-combat roles, possessed relatively weak physical abilities. While stronger than ordinary people, comparing it was as meaningless as comparing a cat and a tiger.

Her healing ability was powerful, but it had the weakness of being relatively less effective on herself.

Instructor Frederick and the experts from Helios pointed it out. Even the scholarship siblings couldn’t help but coldly speak of her limitations. Her place was in the rear.

Instead of submitting to reality, Daphne chose to maximize her strengths.

Her excellent metacognition, intellectual curiosity, and willpower became the driving force, pushing her forward.

The self-harm training that astonished Violet led to a leap forward. This was due to unconsciously being influenced by her friend’s way of thinking, which treated common sense and ethics as mere ornaments.

Daphne continued to strengthen her self-healing ability and experiment with its limits.

One day, while exploring minor possibilities, after understanding the effect of healing power on the body, she adopted Violet’s way of thinking and came up with a new idea.

To summarize all this verbose explanation simply, it is this:

Daphne decided to use drugs.

Addiction issues could be managed by using her unique ability. By restoring the receptors themselves, the problem vanished. Other fatal side effects like central nervous system and cardiovascular damage were also obstacles she could sufficiently overcome.

Based on her ability to selectively choose only benefits to a despicable degree, stimulants and narcotic analgesics in her bloodstream pushed her physical limits to the extreme.

-Whine!

Daphne’s slender body moved at an incomparable speed. The high-concentration stimulant injected into her neck stimulated her sympathetic nervous system like lava.

It was an amount that would have instantly killed an ordinary person, but before her eyes, as she suppressed the side effects, the world clearly slowed down. The miracle created by her extraordinary situational awareness repelled the simulacra’s onslaught. A counterattack followed.

The cylindrical force field at the end of her staff, meshing with the hexagonal force fields, struck the simulacra.

-Whoosh!

The furiously swung staff bounced the simulacra away like baseballs with incredible repulsive force. Daphne, leaping again, rushed towards the citizens.

She continuously swallowed and injected the remaining medicine. As she accelerated their internal action with a biomedicine technique, the emergency drugs permeated her entire body.

-Thump-thump-thump!

The first to spread was an octahydroepinephrine-based cardiotonic. Her entire body grew hot, and her heart pounded unprecedentedly.

Her healing ability forcefully held her heart, which was vibrating and twisting hundreds of times, preventing cardiac arrest and making it race.

Leg strength that surprised even herself. A whip sword flew towards Daphne’s rushing legs.

A short leap. Hexagonal force fields deployed beneath her feet.

She stepped on the force fields as if they were stairs, leaping over the killer. A momentary exchange of sword strikes unfolded in mid-air. She fended off her enemies and approached the victims again.

The simulacra’s swords crossed in a regular, dance-like pattern.

Daphne was all too familiar with that pattern.

‘This is a typical joint attack. I’m used to these!’

Yes, it was Violet’s method. Countless sparring sessions with her friend had built her adaptability to multiple linked attacks.

Daphne even felt a strange familiarity with her enemies due to that familiarity.

To protect the victims, she deployed a shield and leaped into the air again. Exhaling hot breaths, she ran atop the hexagonal force fields.

She blocked overhead attacks, erected shields, and her drug-amplified concentration allowed her to control her unique ability in microscopic units throughout her body.

The killer, while marveling at the enemy’s astonishing physical abilities, pushed forward.

A pleasing prey.

As the shadow simulacra moved nimbly, fresh blood splattered once more.

“Aaauugh!”

A short scream echoed through the darkness of the street. An attack that tore through her shield sliced diagonally across her body.

Daphne, re-gripping her staff, realized her left hand had been severed.

Struggling, she diverted mana to her feet and stamped. A deployed shield. Before her eyes, sword and barrier sparks collided.

While gaining time, she moved the hand holding the staff towards her severed left wrist. Concentrate. Her lost fingers surged out, joint by joint, at the cost of mana.

As a gap appeared, she emptied the rest of the medicine. The sound of the empty medicine bottle falling to the ground echoed slowly.

The effects of Carbamoyloxicodone relieved the pain that her unique ability hadn’t fully managed.

She fought, swinging her staff, leaving the unconscious people behind her.

Her appearance was like a runaway biological steam locomotive.

Large quantities of cardiotonics and muscle-enhancing drugs pushed Daphne’s body to its limits.

Analgesics alleviated the pain of muscles and blood vessels rupturing and damaging in real-time.

Stimulants whipped her body, which could otherwise relax due to the analgesic’s effects. Her precise unique ability healed various side effects like massive bleeding and nerve paralysis.

It was an unstable trinity created by exquisite drug regulation.

Daphne was certain. As long as her mana didn’t deplete, as long as her head didn’t burst, she would never fall.

She would absolutely not die in a place like this.

-Clatter!

“Ugh!”

Her ear was torn off. It surged back with a green light. Her shin, broken by a kick from close combat, twisted and reattached.

She deployed shields and charged, stabbed, fired magic bullets, rolled on the ground, and used every auxiliary magic possible to halt the hundreds of attacks.

‘Just hold on a little longer, Violet will come!’

She deployed a hexagonal force field directly in front of the charging enemy. When she struck the head of the rebounding simulacrum with her staff, it bounced on the ground like a rubber ball.

Her right elbow shot into the air. Even amidst immense shock and terror, cold reason dictated.

Hexagonal force fields, spread like stairs, bounced the arm in the air back to her like a slide.

She reached out, grabbed it, and reattached it.

Again, continuous attack. Counterattacking with all the wisdom and willpower she had learned from Violet as her weapons.

There was no retreat.

The resolute girl, who would be called a saintess in the future, bravely confronted the malicious shadow.

“Whoever you are, I will never let you harm these people!”

She struck a nearby motorcycle with her staff, sending it flying. Simulacra rushing low from the right fell like bowling pins.

Her firepower was insufficient.

She couldn’t kill them, but she wouldn’t be killed either.

If she endured, she would win.

That was Daphne’s unwavering objective.

She gazed at her enemies with trembling yet clear eyes.

Her beautiful silver hair, reminiscent of moonlight, and her entire body were already stained with her own blood.

Even amidst this, she indifferently pushed her half-severed shoulder back into place and casually healed the wound.

When green light surged, the injuries healed perfectly, as if they had never been there.

At that absurd sight, Arsite’s runaway agent paused even in her madness and muttered.

“What, this… this hydra of a woman…”

One simulacrum spewed out its master’s subconscious. Anger and stubbornness surged.

Now, this was neither an easy target nor a toy.

An annoying adversary.

“D-die!”

The agent’s simulacrum, having leaped while expressing emotion, flew away with a flash of light.

A long, thin beam of light sliced through the gloomy street.

-Sizzle!

“Damn it, what’s that now?”

The darkness, spread like a fog, lifted, revealing the clear night street.

Only then did the outside world reappear.

Reinforcements had arrived.

Daphne, turning her head with welcome, saw an unexpected person standing before her eyes.

“I came to drop off the luggage, and what in the world is all this…? Hey, Daphne? Is that really you? Are you alright?”

Lucian’s expression twisted in horror as he faced the blood-soaked Daphne.

“Damn it… why are you doing this alone? Where’s Violet? Where did you leave her? What is that bastard? A simulacrum?”

“It’s a simulacrum killer! I have to protect the people behind me until Violet arrives!”

“Ah, *that* killer?”

Lucian, having understood the situation, adjusted his combat gloves. At the unexpected appearance of an adversary, the killer retreated, assessing the situation.

“You left your stuff here, didn’t you?”

Daphne’s expression brightened as she wiped the copious blood from her face.

She combined the weapon taken from her bag with the end of her staff and put on gauntlets on both hands.

Her two arms protested numbly, throbbing faintly.

The heavy weight of the staff and gauntlets was considerable. It was a shame she didn’t have an exoskeleton, but this much was enough.

Other trump cards she had learned from Violet and been provided by Irene.

“Lucian-ssi, what will you do? Violet will be here soon. I’ll hold this place, so please evacuate the people behind me. And request support-”

Lucian shook his head.

“It’s too late. As you can see, that guy blocked the escape route. I reported it earlier because of the suspicious darkness, but that’s it.”

Simulacra filled the street. Nevertheless, Lucian interlocked his gloved hands and smiled confidently.

“Still, I didn’t know that killer bastard was just a bunch of simulacra. Then we can just do what we learned before, right? It’s what we’ve done a lot. Beating up swarming simulacra.”

“Are you sure?”

“Am I sure? Are you crazy? I’m scared of what that Violet bastard will do if I leave you here.”

Daphne chuckled at his gruff reply.

She attached a magazine to the end of her staff and pulled the bolt.

The distinct barrels of both gauntlets engaged with the weapon, making a metallic sound.

-Click!

Daphne declared, fueled by firm resolve and the effects of the medicine.

“Alright, come on.”

A shadow charged as if provoked.

She blocked it with her force field staff and repelled it. The runaway agent’s simulacrum parried the staff with its sword and lunged in.

A dagger aimed at her abdomen.

Instructor Frederick’s teaching came to mind.

‘If it comes down to it, give flesh to gain bone as much as possible. Understand?’

Daphne replied.

‘Yes, Instructor-nim. I will do that.’

Clumsy yet fierce movement. As the knife pierced her abdomen, her left gauntlet flashed.

A fist flew at the simulacrum’s head. The impact wasn’t much, but it was enough.

A deafening roar erupted from the large-caliber barrel at the end of the gauntlet.

-Boom!

Point-blank range firing tore apart the simulacrum’s head.

Her left arm dangled from the violent recoil. Daphne grabbed her dislocated left arm and reinserted it into the joint.

“In-insane…”

Daphne decided to ignore Lucian’s disgusted expression.

And then, she loaded new ammunition into her left gauntlet. As expected, even without an exoskeleton, it was within a manageable range.

Focus.

“They’re coming, get ready!”

The full-scale battle had begun.

It was around that time, late at night, that Restraid’s air defense network shrieked.

[Emergency! Emergency! Unidentified high-speed flying object detected!]

An unidentified fighter jet entered the southern sector and flew in.

「Prototype equipment ready!」

「5 minutes until support begins!」