So, this was weird. After giving Akira access to the main body, I decided to explore my inner mind. I found out how Akira kept himself entertained in my head. He was simply rewatching all the movies I’d watched while working on fusing skills. He had this entire man cave dedicated to himself. Well, if you were stuck in a body, might as well enjoy it.
Just as I was about to watch one anime, I received various alerts. The most alarming being,
[Warning! A massive surge of Chaos Energy is being shot your way.]
[Warning! Prolonged exposure will cause irreversible damage to you]
[Warning! The Chaos Energy is corrupting your [Sacred: Legend of Pandemonium]]
With that, I had the right to question Akira. Well, I doubted I could have handled the situation any better, but still… now I felt stupid for leaving it to him… myself. Gaah!
I was currently floating in a weird blackness. I couldn’t feel anything. Not my wings, not my legs, nothing. I was just there in the void.
Enough time to just talk about nonsense.
So, without further ado, welcome to my Tori Talk!
Agenda of the day is, am I an I-
“Hello?”
A voice shook me from my loneliness. I could somewhat feel it, even though my senses were basically dead now.
“Is there anybody here?”
It sounded like a girl. A child. Wait… it sounded familiar as well. As if I had heard it somewhere before.
The owner of the voice heaved a heavy sigh, as if disappointed.
“I thought it would actually work this time.”
She sounded frustrated. If only I could respond to her cry.
“Poor girl.”
Another voice echoed in the darkness, speaking my thoughts out loud. I was surprised and tried to look around, but I couldn’t find the source of the voice.
“Huh? So, there is someone there. Show yourself.”
The girl ordered haughtily. After that, I could see the girl.
She had fair pearly skin like a precious jewel. Her body was clothed in a ripped up red yukata, exposing her thighs to the darkness. The bangs of her hair were out of place, as was her silver hair that was barely being held together with a pin. Her crimson red eyes stared at me intensely and I gulped.
“Shiro…?”
The name just came out, making me realise that it was my thoughts that were being projected.
“Huh? You know my name? Are you some kind of god? I heard this is how paladins awaken their sacreds. Is this what’s happening to me? Are you my patron god?”
She asked me a bunch of questions in a moment. I wasn’t sure how to respond. She just paused after asking the questions, crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently. Her eyebrows furrowed the more she stared at me.
“Say… why won’t you show me your appearance already? This darkness is creepy.”
“My… appearance?”
“Eh? Don’t tell me I got a dumb patro-… uhh, no offense. No offense, really. But if you don’t want to appear before me, could you at least tell me what is happening?”
She was requesting something impossible from me. I didn’t know how to react to that since I myself was very confused.
“Agent.”
I tried calling for the agent, but I got no response.
“Agent?”
I looked at her. It would seem I would be getting no help this time. Should I tell her who I was? But, was there any benefit in doing so? Maybe I should act along for now.
“You are lost…?”
“I don’t know where I am, so technically I am, I guess. Wait… is this the beginning of my adventure! My freedom from my mother!”
She yelled excitedly, her eyes sparkled in delight and her voice went high, like a child. Somehow, she looked cute.
“If you seek an adventure, why not just leave?”
“My mother won’t allow me. She even killed a familiar I got recently.”
I could feel my heart split. Wasn’t she the one who caused me to die? Did that mean it was her mother’s fault for what happened to me?
“Your mother sounds cruel.”
“Sounds? You should meet her. She’d make you fed up with your immortality. Wait… you gods love her though.”
“Eh? They do? E-Ehem, yes, we do. Even as cruel as she is, your mother is still loved by us.”
I was starting to feel awkward. I almost gave myself up because of this one statement.
DING!
[Chaos Energy has been completely dissipated by the unique skill [Energy Transcriber]]
[You will be returned to your normal state]
“Chaos… energy? Dissipated? [Energy Transcriber]?”
“Huh? Chaos energy? Are you a chaos god?”
Shiro mentioned something weird. Her eyes were widened and a creepy grin was forming on her face. I wanted to ask her more, but I could feel myself fading from this darkness. I was probably returning to my body.
“Come to the west o-”
I was telling her to come to Larm so I could see her again, but I left the darkness once again before I could complete my request.
***
“Uuogh!”
My arms and legs shot up into the sky as something heavy fell on my body. I grabbed the perpetrator by the hair and pulled them up. She yelped in pain.
“Onii-chan! Ow!”
Mitsuki cried out, grabbing my wrist.
“System… Master?”
“Let go of me! Mom! Akira’s trying to make me bald!”
I instinctively let go of her hair at the mention of my mother.
“What are you doing here, Mitsuki?”
I sat up, accidentally throwing her off me and onto the floor. She fell on a pile of CDs in what looked to be quite painful. I could hear something crack, and when I looked down, it was a Visual Master X. The VR device Manyuda lent to me. Even worse, it was lent to Manyuda by someone else in the class.
‘Damn it! Just when I started making friends with Manyuda too! Wait… hasn’t this already happened bef-…? What’s going on?’
“Now he’s throwing me on the floor and kicking me.”
Mitsuki screamed.
“Mi-Mitsuki! Keep it down!”
“Waaaa!”
“I-I’ll buy you cand- oi! Get out of my room. Mom’s not around.”
I knocked her head to silence her and she looked up at me with teary eyes. I glared at her and she eventually ran out the door.
Slowly taking a peek around, I realised that I was in my room. I looked at my hand, pale and skinny with a scar on the left one, but bigger than my other hands. I clenched my fist.
‘I’m back home…? Is this just an illusion?’
“I’ll be in the kitchen preparing lunch. Akane will come over at 1.”
Mitsuki whimpered behind my door. After saying what she had to, she shut the door behind her and left.
I looked out the window, sunlight was bleeding in.
‘Did Mitsuki pull it open while I was sleeping?’
I could hear my neighbours partying outside. Slowly, I got out of bed and headed towards my computer. I looked through my folders and found two folders with similar names. Obviously one of them was a dummy folder. I couldn’t risk Akane seeing me so I was planning on deleting it.
However, before I could delete it, I had a thought.
‘It’s been a while since I…’
“Akira!”
I deleted it as soon as I heard Akane’s voice call my name. At the bottom of my computer screen, the time was 1:05pm.
‘Sigh… the glory days when I could wake up whenever I felt like it.’
Akane walked in through the door with her yellow blouse and grey baggy pants that simply didn’t match. Her black hair was tied into a ponytail and her face still looked angelic and cute. She really had a poor sense of fashion. I was surprised she could change so much overnight.
“Are you ok?”
She was merely inches away from me when she asked me this question, catching me off-guard. I hadn’t even noticed how fast she was. I looked into her eyes. I was surprised because of how large beautiful they were. As I was thinking this, an image flashed through my mind. All I saw was Yokino’s heterochronic eyes. Glaring at me voraciously, reminding me of what happened. I instinctively pushed back, making Akane make an “Uh?” sound.
“Akkun?”
She nervously called out the childish name she used on me.
“I told you to stop calling me that.”
“But Akkun is Akkun. I won’t stop! Hehe.”
She proclaimed loudly, ignoring my wishes as she usually did with a certain level of innocence in it. This girl was really too cute. I gave up with a sigh.
“Could you go down? I need to get dressed.”
“Hm? But since when did you care about dressing up in front of me?”
“Since today. Now get out.”
“Huh? Bu-”
I pushed her out of my room and shut the door behind her. I took out my phone and looked at my contact list. I wanted to call Manyuda to give him his Visual Master X today before it somehow got destroyed. I had only 9 contacts on it.
“This is… what the hell?”
When I checked, I actually had 10 contacts on it. The final contact was called Alpha. My eye twitched the moment I saw this. Quickly, I called the number and put it to my ear.
“Hellooooo~ Super Duper Alpha here! How can I help you?!”
Her hyper voice came through quickly.
“Cut the crap, System Master!”
I yelled at her.
“Hey, if it isn’t my favourite system user. Nice to hear you too. Been a while. Yeah, I’ve been alright. Just dealing with a little bit of stress from working on your system. No biggie. Thanks for asking. Now if that’s all, I’m cutting the call.”
“Wait! Wait…”
I heaved a heavy sigh when the line wasn’t disconnected.
“I’m sorry. It’s just… I’m really stressed out right now.”
“Sorry you’re stressed out from simply losing a goblin. Anyway, what do you want?”
She disregarded my feelings, but I couldn’t get angry at her. Mostly because I didn’t know what she’d do to me if I got her too angry. That wasn’t something I was willing test either.
“Can you tell me why I’m here? Is there a point to this?”
“Huh? You mean you don’t know?!”
She exclaimed over the call, forcing me to pull the phone away temporarily.
“What do you mean? I wasn’t given any heads up.”
I explained to her.
“Hmm. Is that so? Well sorry, but I don’t know either.”
“Eh?”
“Well, truth is. I don’t even know how you have a direct line to me. I assumed this was something you made yourself, but it seems you don’t even know what this is.”
I felt my heart sink.
“H-How would I have made this myself?”
“Don’t ask me. Your species is weird in all sorts of ways.”
“What’s the supposed to mean?”
“Wait… could this be… N-No way…”
“System Master? Is this being done by someone like you?”
“Find a way to escape from this place. When you do, we’ll talk in my domain where no one can interfere.”
She cut the call immediately, leaving me alone. There was an odd thunderous silence in the room. I was starting to breathe heavily. It suddenly felt like I was in enemy territory, being watched secretly. I looked around my room. The walls were closing in on me. I wanted to shout, but it felt like my voice was lost. My mouth was dry and sweat fell like rain drops from my forehead.
I looked at the door. I ran for it and left the room. The whole house was starting to warp around me. I could hear faint voices as I made for the staircase. Down there, I saw Mitsuki looking at me with concern in her eyes. But that couldn’t possibly be Mitsuki.
While trying to run back to my room, Akane popped up behind me. She was muttering somethings, but it just sounded like noise. Scared, I decided to take my chances with Mitsuki down the stairs. In a hurry, I ended up tripping and falling down the staircase.
DING!
[Checkpoint Saved]
[Scenario failed!]
[Returning the soul to the host body]
<A/N: Due to certain reasons, I will be taking a short break from posting this week. I will return next week. Please leave a comment or review to help in getting more readers! Also join the discord here: https://discord.gg/Ew44jhbVym or message me on discord here: Rados47#5271 to get invited>
