Chapter 99 - [Singularity] (Patreon)

Attention! Narrative irregularity detected. The current difficulty has escalated, now verging on %e^*@d difficulty.

The present difficulty level doesn't align with the pre-set configuration. The floor quest is nearing completion. The deviation is within permissible limits. Reward reduction will be minimal.

Congratulations! You've successfully completed the second floor's main quest in the fifth round of the tutorial for Hell difficulty. An entrance to the third floor has been created.

A hole in the air, similar to the entrance that appeared after I completed the first floor, materializes next to me.

The woman in front of me, Lissandra, continues to charge more and more mana, looking at me and not even noticing the entrance. Her eyes don’t even glance towards it. She is not feeling anything, not even with the room full of her mana, and even as she stands so close.

“That look of pity you're giving me is annoying, little pup.”

The defensive item she gave me already works at full power, shielding me against her mana. I'm sure I would be long dead if not for it, overwhelmed by the pressure.

And now, the choice stands in front of me. I can keep an extremely powerful defensive item. The most powerful defensive item on this planet. With it in my hands, the next few floors of the tutorial would become so much easier. Or I can stay.

The hole, the door, the entrance to the third floor hangs in the air next to me, and I see what lies in front of me. Just like back on the first floor, I take a step.

Away from the door, closer to the woman in front of me. The woman who killed Ruby. The woman who murdered everyone she considered a friend, a family member. All without a hint of hesitation. All at the moment she fully accepted that she is not real.

I want to know more, I want to hear more, and I want to see more. Even if it means sacrificing an item in my hands, I'll gladly throw it away just to be able to satisfy my curiosity.

Even as powerful as she is, she is still only a toy in the hands of the system, so I want to observe more of it. For my own future.

“You are different than me, so I have only one request for you,” she says.

I watch as she does something similar to when I created a construct. She etches circuits and pathways into her body. They are as thin as hair and intricately complex to a dizzying degree. The pattern is so complex that it's hard to believe that something like this is possible for a human.

“Watch my last moments and the last moments of this world. Etch it all into your memory and live on as proof of my existence and of my determination not to be a slave to whatever this is.”

I hate her, my blood boils as I look at her, still remembering the last moments of the pitiful red-headed woman.

“What was her name?”

For a moment, the roars of her mana go silent, and instead, a quiet laugh sounds.

“Her real name was Ruby. She was a spy that a kingdom put on me, and she was precious to me.”

Oh,  a last joke a red-haired woman did on me, pretending for it to be a fake name. It's so silly, it isn't even funny. It's so like her.

Lissandra's laugh continues and the room starts shaking more, the cause being something from the outside.

“They sense what I want to do, so they are trying to destroy this room. But they can’t. I have killed everyone capable of putting up a fight, and the only one who could fight me now is Tristan, but even he will die soon. Devoured by his own [Dawn] that is now charged by the "Sword of Aeons,” she looks at me, “The Emperor got to him and made him sacrifice his life and destroy the kingdom, the continent. He made him destroy humanity.”

So that's how the second floor should end.

Her hands move towards her hair, one of them still bleeding profusely, and she fixes her hair, staining it with blood as she does so, making her grey hair partially red as she ties them into a ponytail and fixes her clothes one last time.

She does it slowly, and carefully, all while the world continues to shake.

“Now then. Watch carefully, little pup. Witness my [Singularity]. Learn as much as you can and in the future, if you step beyond my level, remember this poor old woman, remember this world, and maybe…” She shakes her head, “You and I aren’t that dissimilar. There is no need for more words.”

Our eyes meet, and I think at that moment she understood me in the same way I understood her.

She then starts charging herself with more mana. She does something I thought impossible. She pulls ambient mana from the air. The mana that isn't hers, and she devours it. She keeps pulling it from greater and greater distances.

A bit beyond this room. The size of a city. An entire kingdom. A continent.

All the mana rushes towards her like water from a broken dam, yet she absorbs it all. She spins it around her body and pulls it inside her mana heart which is still beating strongly. Every single thud of her heart sounds deafening, and intricate patterns start glowing all over her body as she continues to etch them. On her skin, over her flesh, into her bones, on inner organs, circles around her heart.

The woman is turning herself into a construct.

An hour passes and the attacks on our position stop. Everyone above the ground is most likely dead already.

Lissandra is still standing there, tears visible all over her skin and blood flowing from her body. Yet not even for a second does her face lose its determination and her eyes continue to look at me.

Another hour. Her entire skin is covered in etched circuits, and I almost can't feel anything anymore, even my [Perception] pulled towards her. The mana in the air feels palpable, almost as if I can touch it.

But she continues to absorb more and more and squeeze it all into one place. She makes it so dense I would consider it impossible, yet she does just that. An impossible amount of mana gets squeezed to smaller and smaller point while the body of the woman continues to break. There is no hesitation as she continues.

In the same way, she was decisive when killing all the people she knew, she is also decisively ruining her own body. All because of some sort of twisted logic belonging to her.

A bit more time passes, and the item in my hands continues to hum, constantly generating a protective field around me. Yet, that field becomes smaller and smaller. Amazingly the item still holds on.

And more amazingly, the woman in front of me too.

Her eyes now burned out, her skin charred and her figure even thinner than before. Turned into a glowing shape only barely similar to that of a human.

Yet I still feel her mana on me and she continues to make sure I watch.

*****

Lissandra dies. Her perceiving touch on me is gone. Her brain unable to endure all this mana.

The woman sacrificed her family, her friends, her body, and her own mind to reach her goal.

It's the single most captivating sight I've ever witnessed. A resolve so unyielding, it's willing to shatter its own mind upon making a decision. My eyes are glued to it, heart pounding, shaken by her absolute and unhesitating resolve.

Without hesitation, she slowly lost more and more of herself, as if wiping out her mind. Memories, thoughts, she gave it all up without hesitation, turning her body into a massive mana battery that continues to absorb mana from the world even now and her heart still beating, kept alive by an intricate web of circuits that cover what remains of her body.

The shield around me starts flickering, and I move closer to the entrance, yet I still watch as what remains of her finally activates the skill she had been charging the entire time, feeding it with mana.

[Singularity]

The skill activation is sudden, almost unfathomable. A core of darkness is emerging from the center of Lissandra's remains, akin to an obsidian pearl birthed from a shattered star.

It starts small, a mere point in space, but it's growing, nourished by an incessant stream of mana from the battered body. The shadows around it are warping and twisting, drawn towards it as if into a vortex.

The ground beneath it is buckling, groaning, and eventually shattering, unable to resist the unfathomable gravitational pull. It's like watching a star collapse in reverse, a world-ending event happening in slow motion.

The singularity, a black hole in its rawest form, is being unleashed. Space itself starts to bend around it.

Looking towards where she stood one more time, I step through the portal, feeling the item in my hands turning to dust.

The entrance behind me closes and so many notifications ring in my head. I have to shake them off, needing a moment to calm down, to absorb what I saw.

I look around, finding myself standing alone in a vast, desolate landscape. The remnants of what once must have been a bustling city lay in ruins around me. A cold wind cuts through the silence, carrying with it the scent of burnt wood.

In the distance, a small figure stands against the grey backdrop. A young girl, barely ten, with flames flickering around her body.

But I do not have time to rest. A circle of blue flames surrounds me, slithering like a serpent, the heat palpable on my skin.

Without any hesitation, the flames attack me and my [Redistribution] activates.