episode_0259

The phenomenon of humans mutating into demonic beasts or having seizures was not limited to the exhibition hall.

“Huh, what? Aaaah! Stop, stop it!”

“Jamie. Are you okay?”

Starting with a Hunter clutching his head and collapsing, mutations occurred everywhere.

“Snap out of it! Damn it!”

“Let’s become one! Aaaah! You come with us!”

“Captain-nim? What do we do about, about those?”

In his bewilderment, Klein gritted his teeth and gave the next order.

“…Those aren’t people! Shoot them!”

The wavering defense line was also caught by the Apostle’s eye.

One of his consciousnesses, split through divided thought, could see the human forces in chaos through the eyes of the demonic beasts.

“We move to the next stage. Enter.”

He made a decision. It was time to crush them.

Following the divided thought, the demonic beast forces split into several branches and mobilized.

“Protect the heavy weapons! They’re bypassing the assault force!”

“Heads! Watch above! The demonic beasts are targeting the upper armor of the vehicles!”

As the more sophisticated offensive, centered on medium-to-large demonic beasts and flying demonic beasts, exploited weaknesses, the Apostle dispatched a new reserve unit that had been prepared.

Among the horde of demonic beasts, new demonic beasts with knight-like appearances emerged.

Armed with what resembled human swords and shields, they looked like human-shaped lizards at first glance.

-Crunch!

“G-Gasp…!”

“Be careful! They’re new demonic beasts!”

“…What! What are those? Don’t tell me those are Code Omega?”

The Apostle, watching the subordinates beyond the gate ravage the humans, felt satisfied and pulled out his last card.

One of his divided thoughts materialized as a doppelganger.

His doppelganger, having leaped into the battlefield, blinked. It felt the flow of communications and messengers converging in one place.

The doppelganger casually walked closer.

There were beings who appeared to be human commanders.

“What, who are you-”

-Crunch!

A group of people, led by a man in military uniform, crumpled and turned into a mass of flesh.

Thinking that the Federal and Hunter commands had been annihilated with this, he moved on.

“Why aren’t they here yet? Brainwashing shouldn’t take this long.”

“Just a moment, please wait a little longer!”

As the Apostle urged his comrade and advanced, a strike like black lightning flew towards him.

-Clang!

The Apostle gladly parried the attack. To think he would encounter another human that his comrade had been interested in, here of all places.

“So you’re the Captain.”

Sophieel stared at the entity in front of her with cold eyes.

This was the being that had caused Violet pain. Unless this was defeated, the problem wouldn’t be solved.

It looked like a human, but it didn’t feel human. Soon, a fierce sword strike poured down.

Every time the Apostle’s gaze swept by, the ground flipped, and gravity fluctuated. Narrowly evading all those attacks, she continued to attempt close combat.

“You’re troublesome.”

The Apostle chose another method. As he extended his hand, an ominous color spread out.

Even though she quickly dodged, when a part of the attack grazed her, Sophieel felt as if she was being torn in half.

‘This is…!’

Sophieel felt bewildered by the unexpected difficulty.

Because now her battlefield was two places.

While her mind resisted the invasion, her body had to continue fighting.

‘Is this the monster Seijis talked about?’

For a moment, her anger flared at her secretive younger brother, who hadn’t contacted her at all.

The perilous fight continued. Until the being in front of her suddenly retreated.

“…!”

Simultaneously, the advancing demonic beast forces temporarily halted.

“What? Why are they doing that…?”

The Apostle detected an anomaly.

“This place…?”

The invasion of the human girl named Violet wasn’t going as planned.

It was strange at first. He had tried to stimulate her trauma to invade her in the traditional way, but it was as if the memories were being washed away, as if they weren’t hers.

Could it be that this crude collective consciousness contained other, separate memories within it?

“The resistance is quite strong. Such a human…”

The comrade instructed her again, in a suspicious tone, to focus on the situation.

The Apostle continued to try. If she tried just a little longer, this beast’s trauma would consume itself.

“Is this not it?”

It was strange. If they were ordinary humans, their egos should have been instantly tainted and irrevocably damaged.

They should have become puppet subordinates of the legion in an instant.

Her ego remained intact. The girl with her eyes closed merely thrashed in a nightmare.

And then, something that shouldn’t have happened, occurred.

“The invasion, it’s peeling off?”

The pitch-black, dark wave of invasion covering the girl’s body began to peel away.

She tried to invade again and again, but the Apostle’s magic couldn’t bring about any change.

Just as a lotus leaf silently sheds muddy water, or barnacles cannot adhere to a coated hull, her attempts scattered meaninglessly.

“Is it an operation error? I didn’t expect her mental immunity level to be this high…”

Occasionally, humans with high mental fortitude would resist their mind control.

But, was this girl such a being?

As she pondered why she couldn’t penetrate the brain of a lowly human, the Apostle suddenly realized that the empty scenery around her was subtly changing.

The scenery, hazy like a mirage in the desert, gradually materialized.

By the time she noticed, her surroundings had already finished transforming.

“…!”

The Apostle suddenly found herself in the middle of an alien city.

“Where is this?”

She armed herself with sharp thoughts and surveyed her surroundings.

The Apostle soon realized she was standing in a wide plaza.

A vast space spread out among towering skyscrapers that seemed to pierce the sky.

The ground was covered with wide, smooth, gray stone tiles, and to her right, where she stood, a black road wide enough for six cars to pass simultaneously stretched out.

Although it was empty now, if this were a real city, it would be bustling enough to be called the heart of a nation.

The Apostle’s curious gaze settled on a strange building far ahead. An edifice made of sturdy stone walls and three large entrances.

The Apostle instinctively knew. This wasn’t Trist. The architectural style of double roofs built with blue tiles was something never seen even in the academy city of Rustrum.

“Then, where is this place?”

Above the gate, the words were crookedly attached.

The Apostle’s confusion was further amplified by a golden statue and a statue clad in black armor in the center of the plaza.

The statues depicted human males, and such clothing and armor were nowhere to be seen in any of Trist’s ancient civilizations, which had been swallowed by Eidos’s forces.

“Could it be, that it came from another world-”

“Ugh!”

Violet, who had been subdued by the Apostle, staggered to her feet.

Just as the Apostle was about to subdue her again, she looked around at the strange ominousness pouring forth.

And she was terrified. A multitude of girls surrounded her.

“W-What is this?!”

Beyond the building’s glass windows, countless pairs of hostile eyes.

Countless girls approaching from between the alleys.

The girls’ faces, plastered with pain, were filled with volcanic, explosive fury.

Only then did the Apostle fully grasp the terrifying truth.

This plaza, this was the human’s space.

“H-How can a mere human… possess such a mental space…!”

The Apostle mumbled in disbelief.

How could a lowly, underdeveloped human possibly construct such an elaborate and massive world of consciousness?

It was impossible. It should have been impossible.

The possibility of a human possessing a space of this magnitude is more difficult than a monkey self-initiating an industrial revolution.

Amidst her shock, she used the Eidos’s unique keen senses and insight to examine the inner space.

This must be a misconception. It had to be.

“No way…! No!”

Unfortunately, the Eidos’s way of thinking was ill-suited for self-deception.

The Apostle realized why she hadn’t noticed the scale of this space earlier.

“As they say, in the forest, you cannot see the whole forest…”

This space is too big.

As the Apostle, unable to hide her confusion, took a step back, the Violets took a step forward.

“You called us bugs earlier, didn’t you?”

One Violet spoke.

“Your words might be true. You are strong! Tremendously advanced!”

“We must look primitive like cavemen!”

Another Violet chimed in.

“But, do you know what animal kills the most people in the world?”

The Apostle, feeling intimidated, muttered unconsciously.

“Isn’t that the demonic beasts-”

Violet shook her head, feeling pathetic for the Apostle who didn’t even know such common knowledge.

The human, a silhouette of an ineffable form, stared at her as if asking for the answer.

Violet answered.

“Wrong! The answer is mosquitos.”

“Mosquitos kill people!”

That wasn’t common knowledge in Trist.

It was an answer far removed from the statistics of the academy city of Rustrum.

But it didn’t matter to Violet.

She decided to impose the common sense she knew, from where she came from, upon this garbage-like monster.

Because they were imposing their way of thinking on their world.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying. What in the world…”

The Violets shouted, crossing their arms.

“Anyway, this is our territory!”

“Illegal intruder!”

Girls on the street, glaring with bloodshot eyes. As the Apostle instinctively tried to step back, her legs wouldn’t move.

The Apostle, startled, looked down at herself.

The girl she had been trying to invade just moments ago was holding onto her leg.

“L-Let go of me!”

“No! You can’t go!”

Violet said that and bit the Apostle’s ankle with a snap. The effect was immediate.

-Thud!

A chilling pain shot through her left ankle. The Apostle knelt and slumped down.

“Graaaah!”

A chunk of her ankle, her Achilles tendon, clearly tore off.

Her ego immediately began to regenerate.

The next moment, something that shouldn’t have happened occurred.

Foreign substances filled and mended a part of her injured thought, her ego.

“H-How! Why is this happening?!”

The newly filled part was her body, but it wasn’t hers.

The Apostle realized.

That the place she had gleefully entered was a nest of venomous insects.

To have willingly stepped into what was essentially a beast’s digestive organ.

As her thoughts furiously accelerated amidst the crisis, the Apostle grasped a terrible truth that stimulated all her nerves.

This girl was a vast abyss.

The moment they gazed into the abyss, the abyss also gazed back at them.

What she encountered within the abyss of the collective was not merely an interesting discovery.

If her judgment was correct, staying here for too long would…

‘Dangerous! This one is-’

She had to warn them immediately. If this being grew here, if it became larger,

‘It might become our natural predator!’

No sooner had the thought finished than dozens of black waves flew from the air.

Wingsuit Violets dropped from above, crushing the Apostle.

“You! I’ll kill you! You can’t go!”

“I’m going to kill you!”

“Let go of me! You bug-like wench!”

It was then that a searing heat surged into the struggling Apostle’s stomach.

A dull thud of flesh being torn, a sharp dagger plunged into the Apostle’s belly.

“Aaaaaagh-!!!”

As an utterly unspeakable scream echoed, it was around then that a part of his comrade’s consciousness arrived.

“What’s wrong? Has there been a problem with the research analysis?”

“No! Get out now!”

The warning was too late.

The two Apostles belatedly realized that parts of their consciousness had been trapped in the network.

The moment they stepped in, it was too late to leave.

“T-This! How! It’s impossible! A human with a consciousness of this magnitude!”

This lowly being’s mental space was pulling their very existence, like a deep gravitational well.

The Violets, filled with fighting spirit, surged forward, spewing fury.

“You called us bugs, didn’t you?”

“Feel it! The humiliation of being killed by bugs!”

Once again, a fierce shout echoed, shaking the entire network.

“Violet is a bug!”

“We are bugs!”

Two thousand five hundred Violets clashed with the Apostle from another world.