“I’m sorry, I can only communicate with you in this form for now…”
The cyan glow of Amiya’s blade wasn’t a display of masterful swordsmanship; rather, it was a vessel for humanity’s most primal, unadulterated rage.
The sheer power of the Lord of Fiends ignited the freezing wind and snow, tearing through the suffocating darkness of the mindscape and shattering every illusion in its path.
Scorching flames seared deep into the Deathless Black Snake’s soul, the intense heat illuminating another consciousness that had lain dormant for far too long.
“What…
has happened to me?” Talulah murmured wearily, her spiritual form struggling to open its heavy eyes.
For a fleeting instant, she was blinded by the radiant, cyan-flame-coated light of the blade.
In the physical world, the fragments of the shattered ring clattered sharply against the cold ground, instantly drawing everyone’s gaze.
Blue flames—similar in shape to Talulah’s destructive Arts yet diametrically opposed in nature—ignited around Amiya.
Devoid of pain or berserk rage, they coiled around the young Cautus as tamely as little blue snakes.
Everyone present realized the truth: the next Lord of Fiends had truly awakened.
Back in the world of consciousness, the Black Snake could no longer sustain his blizzard illusion.
Caught between the cyan flames burning from within and the red flames scorching from without, the ancient entity was ruthlessly squeezed by both forces.
He had completely lost control of the host body.
You could even see his spiritual form crumbling layer by layer, fragmenting like corrupted code…
Wait, crumbling like code?
Following a petty little habit left over from that time you secretly scrambled your college roommate’s Naraka: Bladepoint keybindings, your fingers had suddenly gotten itchy.
So, you had mentally typed out a little string:
`sqoop import –connect jdbc:mysql://dear Priestess`
The formatting wasn’t standard, the command line was incomplete, and honestly, you didn’t even know what kind of operating system Originium ran on.
You just had an itchy trigger finger and wanted to inject some junk data.
It should be fine, right?
Watching the ancient Black Snake get mercilessly minced into digital bits by the two angry girls—losing his armor, his weapons, and fleeing naked into the void—you finally let out a long breath.
You felt completely at ease.
But with that relief, sheer exhaustion finally overrode your reason.
This time, the grandmaster facade cracked.
You could no longer remain composed.
Your Sanity hit absolute zero.
Inside the spiritual world, Talulah’s soul connected with Amiya’s memories.
As two Infected walking vastly different paths of resistance, they validated each other’s struggles and grew from the shared pain.
Though she had become the ultimate sinner of the Reunion Movement, Talulah’s resolve hardened.
She was determined to atone for every drop of blood spilled.
“I will not be bewitched again,” she vowed, her voice steady.
The two girls clasped hands tightly.
The illusory wind and snow ceased entirely, and the warm light of reality pierced through, dispelling the lingering darkness.
Taking her first step out of the consciousness space, Talulah braced herself.
She was ready to face drawn blades, bitter hatred, and endless skepticism.
Trembling slightly, she opened her eyes to face the horrific chaos she had caused—
“Doctor!
Doctor, this isn’t a bumper car!
You can’t drive it!”
“Lungmen, Lungmen!
Wei Yenwu, I’m here to check your DPS~~!”
“Someone get over here and pry the steering wheel out of the Doctor’s hands!”
Talulah.exe has stopped responding.
Wait?
Who is ramming Lungmen?
Didn’t I fail to destroy the city?
Suddenly, a burly Elite Operator shoved her forward.
“What are you just standing there for?!
Go grab the steering wheel from the Doctor!
I’m too strong, if I pull him I might snap his arms off!”
Talulah’s brain practically blue-screened.
Operating purely on bewildered instinct, she joined the frantic crowd attempting to physically tear the howling Doctor away from the main control helm.
“Screech—!”
As she pulled with all her might, the massive, dilapidated mobile city of Chernobog swerved sharply, its treads tearing up the earth as it changed course—heading straight for Victoria!
“Ooh, this works too!
Kitty-cat roll~ I’m coming for you~!” the Doctor cheered, completely unhinged.
Sanity zeroed out.
The mastermind had completely lost his damn mind.
No, no, this is bad!
Talulah suddenly realized the catastrophic trajectory and hurriedly let go of the wheel.
“Gaa—!” Chernobog violently swerved back the other way.
“Old Man Rat King, I’m parking my souped-up ghost ride right at your doorstep—!”
Talulah shrieked and reached out to grab the wheel again!
“Director—that’s not impossible either—!” the Doctor babbled, spinning the helm like a DJ on a turntable.
The colossal mass of Chernobog was writhing across the wasteland like a giant, metallic maggot, making everyone’s heart race with sheer, unadulterated terror.
Finally, someone’s nerves snapped.
“The Doctor is—urp—with Talulah—urp—fighting for the steering wheel!” Sharp yelled into the receiver, fighting back intense motion sickness.
“The situation is so critical that even the Doctor has to personally take the battlefield?” Wei Yenwu’s shocked, solemn voice came through the line.
Sharp was being shaken so hard he was on the verge of fainting.
He explained while retching over the console, “…No!
The situation is so critical that even Talulah has to join the battle!”
“The Doctor is attempting to ram Lungmen, and Talulah is saving the world!”
The communication was hung up with a heavy click.
On the other end of the line, the Chief Executive of Lungmen sat in absolute, stunned silence for a very long time.
In the long, exhausting years that followed, Talulah often wished she had just died on that rainy night.
A rainy night, an overpass, a mobile city.
Except there was no eight-legged steed Nearl, no one-eyed Odin Hoederer, and certainly no sanity-zeroed Doctor drifting a million-ton mobile city at 680 miles per hour.
Oh right, and her—why shouldn’t her territory count as Niflheim?
The Doctor had held Amiya’s blade in one hand, screaming, “I’ll leave Murasame to you!” like a deranged anime protagonist, while violently cranking the steering wheel with the other.
He managed to execute a few more violent, stomach-churning hairpin turns before finally being dog-piled and pinned to the floor by the combined, desperate efforts of every operator in the room.
The massive bulk of Chernobog finally screeched to a halt, stopping mere inches before the stall where Jaye was trying to sell finball scales, covering his entire inventory in a thick layer of wasteland mud.
Because the Elite Operators had been urgently summoned by the Doctor, none of them had brought their wallets.
In the end, Logos had to step up, using his Arts to kiss raw gold into existence on the spot, crafting a ‘siren’s kiss’ to barter with and compensate the poor vendor for his ruined wares.
…She really should have shattered her illusions about the Doctor right then and there.
She should have seen through his mastermind facade and realized what a deeply unreliable lunatic he actually was.
—If she had, she wouldn’t have followed him across the continent and thoroughly ruined her own reputation later!
Meanwhile, in an unknown, desolate corner of Victoria.
A pitch-black soul, its edges occasionally glitching and flashing with corrupted mosaic color blocks, wandered aimlessly through the wastes.
“Aaaaaah—Doctor, I’m going to kill you—!”
“Kill you, kill you, kill you—!”
The Deathless Black Snake, an ancient conspirator who had never once been flustered even when facing absolute dead ends, roared at the sky like a dying, rabid beast.
He still had absolutely no idea what kind of cursed witchcraft he had just been subjected to.
And in that higher dimension where he had completely lost his sight…
The endless threads of ancient dreams slowly began to unfold above the Originium.
[Rhodes’s Note: The “rainy night, overpass, Odin, Murasame, Niflheim” sequence is a direct homage to the famous Chinese web novel/franchise Dragon Raja (Long Zu), specifically the tragic scene involving the character Chu Zihang facing the god Odin on an elevated highway.]
[Rhodes’s Note:
Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?
(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!
to use the links!)