Chapter 30 - EP.1 The Butterfly Dream 3

Ash raced toward the altar like a streak of light. He advanced over the swarming Sentinel Walkers, trampling, slashing, and crushing them as he made for the altar jutting high above them.

At last, Ash reached Akina. He seized her convulsing shoulders, but the girl only screamed in agony, her strange golden eyes shining.

"What in the world is this...!"

Someone answered his mutter. It was Ifrit. Smashing the head of an approaching Sentinel Walker, she shouted,

"It's the Echo Effect! Goddammit!"

"... Echo?"

Ash hurriedly searched his internal database using that keyword.

[DATA SEARCH: ECHO EFFECT]

[SEARCHING...]

[NO RESULTS FOUND]

'... What? Nothing?'

Not a single record on the Echo Effect turned up, as though the results had been filtered. The data card Akina had given him contained a truly enormous amount of information, yet there wasn't a single entry?

Something felt inexplicably wrong.

But this was no time to lose himself in contemplation. Ash hurriedly questioned Ifrit, who seemed to know something.

"What in heaven's name is it?"

"You want an explanation? Now?"

Ifrit snapped, but a glance at Ash made her click her tongue. She continued as she blasted through another Sentinel's armor plating with Dragon Breath.

"Sometimes it happens when you penetrate too deep into a Nexus Port. The flood of data completely eats away at you until... I guess you'd call it losing yourself."

"... What? Losing yourself...?"

"You've never heard of it? The kid didn't tell you? Outside threats aren't the only dangers a Technomancer faces. A Deep Dive is a risk in itself!"

He hadn't known. This was the very first he had heard of it.

"Aaaaaaah!"

Even now, Akina was screaming and tearing at her hair.

After standing motionless and watching her for a while, Ash reached for the cable connecting the nape of her neck to the Nexus Port.

Jack O' Lantern and Ifrit shouted at the same time.

"Hey! Are you out of your mind?"

"Ash! Pulling that cable now would be a disaster! You'll completely fry her mind!"

Ash's hand froze in midair. Feeling something surge up inside him, he cried,

"Then what am I to do? Simply stand here and watch?"

At his cry, Ifrit roughly raked a hand through her hair.

"Pray. That the kid... pulls through on her own. That she doesn't lose herself."

There was nothing they could do.

Neither masterful swordsmanship, nor an idol's firepower, nor any knowledge could save the girl who had fallen into the abyss of cyberspace.

She alone had to overcome it.

That truth filled Ash with an immense despair.

'...'

He understood now. Why Akina had been so nervous. Why fear had colored her gaze as she looked at Nexus.

But why, when she had passed on all this world's knowledge through that data card, had she left out everything about the Echo Effect?

Perhaps she had wanted to hide precisely this kind of danger. For fear he would dissuade her from exploring.

Knowing Ash's nature, he certainly might have.

A gamble in which she might lose herself.

For Ash, whose experience of society extended no further than an agrarian world, such a danger was beyond imagining.

["See you later."]

He remembered Akina saying those words with a resolute expression. The scene tore through his main core.

And so he gently embraced Akina, who was still spewing unintelligible fragments of data as though speaking in tongues.

His steel body would convey no warmth. Still, he held the girl with all his heart.

Then he whispered softly into her ear.

"Miss Akina. No, Akina."

It was an order.

"Come back. Is there not something you must do? That cherished ambition called revenge. Why would you forget it all?"

At the same time, it was a plea.

"You must come back. I shall be here the entire time."

Was it his imagination?

For an instant, her golden eyes seemed to turn toward Ash.

* * *

Akina Greenwood.

The world she saw now consisted entirely of a green grid. An infinite space in which she could distinguish neither up nor down, nor any other direction.

It was an endless ocean of information.

The grid beneath her feet stretched into the distance like an endless horizon, while overhead, countless streams of data wound through it like the Milky Way across a night sky. Winds of zeros and ones brushed past her ears, sometimes giving off sharp mechanical sounds.

In that space, the girl was alone.

A vast panorama of information, wondrous and terrifying at once.

That was cyberspace. A place where the girl's "consciousness," standing amid it all, felt like an insignificant speck of dust.

At some point, her very sense of "I" began to blur. It felt as though everything was breaking down, coming apart, and seeping into that green sea.

It happened just as the being called Akina Greenwood was about to fade into the abyss.

ROOOAR...!

Suddenly, the world shook. The quietly flowing green grids flickered all at once and began to move violently. Grid lines that had formed flat planes twisted and bent at random, shaping a three-dimensional space.

As though paint had been poured into them, the lines began to spill out colors of their own. Red as vivid as blood, gray as thick as ash, and gold burning like flames mingled in a dizzying swirl.

Some became scorched stone; others, polished wood.

The smell of burning wood and the metallic reek of blood. Wails, screams, even the sound of something exploding.

It was all utterly real; to call it mere data would not do it justice.

Thus, the multilayered data matrix of green grids became a burning temple.

"Divine Lady! Pull yourself together!"

Someone seized the girl's shoulders and shouted.

When she finally turned, she was no longer Akina. She was a woman in splendid silk robes, distinguished by a pair of horns rising from her head.

"... Uh, your name was... Ryu? Right?"

But rather than answer her, the man concentrated on delivering his message. Or perhaps that was simply how it had been recorded.

"The humans have risen in rebellion!"

Humans?

But I'm human, aren't I?

My name is Akina Greenwood.

Born and raised in Sanctum...

But regardless of her will, someone else's data poured into her like a waterfall.

Humans.

Creatures akin to livestock, created through gene editing to perform menial labor.

Those things had rebelled?

The arrogance of noble blood instantly engulfed her thoughts.

"... Yes. Humans."

As it did, the somewhat hazy surroundings grew utterly clear.

"Humans! Those lowly, ungrateful things have finally dared!"

"Divine Lady, you must hurry! Before they storm the main sanctuary!"

His cry brought Akina—no, something from the past—back to reality.

"Very well! But where is my, my bodyguard?"

"Fighting the humans! Your bodyguard will soon reach the main sanctuary as well..."

BOOM!

At that moment, something shining flew from the far end of the corridor and smashed through one wall. Stone fragments and dust scattered everywhere.

A group emerged through the spreading cloud of dust. Humans, all wearing robes bearing the same emblem.

"Damn them...! They've already come this far!"

The Divine Lady gritted her teeth.

The sacred precinct was being defiled by the hands of those lowborn things who did not know their place. Look at those ungrateful creatures, daring to threaten their creator. Their very existence was blasphemy.

"Go! I'll hold them here! Hurry!"

Ryu activated a shielding field around his entire body and charged at the humans.

Where was her bodyguard, and what could he possibly be doing at such a desperate moment?

The image of a man flashed through the Divine Lady's mind. A large swordsman whose entire body was mechanical. The person she had assembled, who had been with her ever since.

Mister □□.

"... Mister?"

It was then that she heard an unfamiliar voice from somewhere.

["...kina."]

Yet something was strange.

["... Come back."]

It was surely an unfamiliar voice, yet hearing it made her turbulent heart feel as though it was rapidly settling.

["Is there not something you must do? That cherished ambition called revenge..."]

Revenge.

That single word lodged in her mind.

Yes, I must have revenge. On everything that made me this way.

But on whom?

The humans before me? Or Sanctum?

But what is Sanctum?

"Aaargh!"

Her thoughts did not last long. Ryu, who had stepped forward so boldly, collapsed, blood spraying through his broken shielding field.

"Ryu!"

He died there and then.

Yet somehow, she felt as though she had seen this very scene before.

Grief surged up. Anger boiled within her as well.

Even that grief and anger were old and worn. As though she had lived through them hundreds, thousands more times.

Fragments of memory whirled through her.

Ryu, a cold corpse. The Divine Lady, her face contorted with fear and rage.

Are those my memories?

Then am I the Divine Lady?

Who, then, is Akina Greenwood?

Two sets of memories collided violently, throwing her consciousness into confusion. Green grids overlapped the burning temple. Glitches broke out, and parts of the world collapsed.

Then humans whose frames had fragmented until their shapes were barely recognizable gathered around the bewildered Divine Lady—no, Akina.

They all spoke at once.

["Miss Akina, you are more than worthy of being called a genius."]

["I have no affiliation. I am a wandering swordsman."]

["Pull harder."]

["Miss Akina. You have come?"]

A familiar sound. Yet a grotesquely distorted electronic one.

It was Ash's voice.

["Are you all right?"]

["Run, quickly!"]

["Did you not ask me to help you?"]

One human reached out. In his hand was a sharp knife.

["Do not worry."]

The blade stabbed into the Divine Lady's thigh.

"Aaaaaaaaaah!!"

The girl screamed in pain.

["I shall be at your side."]

The human beside her pierced the Divine Lady's body with a short spear.

["You must come back. I shall be here the entire time."]

"Aaaaah, aaaaaaah!!"

Surrounded by shapeless things that slashed her to pieces, the Divine Lady screamed, groping at her body and face.

Cyberspace crumbled.

Akina, trapped within it, crumbled as well.

Through it all, the conversations with Ash that the girl remembered continued to spill out.

Like echoes.

* * *

"... Miss Akina?"

The instant Ash and Akina's eyes met, the blue haze enveloping her entire body turned golden, then spread outward in great concentric circles.

THRUM!

A powerful shock wave swept across everything on the altar. Not only Ash and the other Pathfinders, but even the Sentinels surrounding it were hurled backward by that overwhelming wave of energy.

An electromagnetic pulse reminiscent of an EMP shock.

Ash, who had been closest and taken the full force of it, could not collect himself for some time amid the system messages appearing across his optical sensors.

[VISUAL SYSTEM ERROR]

[AUDIO INPUT SYSTEM...]

[ERROR]

[NEURAL MATRIX HAS NOT...]

[...]

Amid the waterfall of warning messages, Ash slowly raised his head.

Akina was no longer in his arms.

She stood upright at the center of the altar.

On her own two feet.

"Miss Akina...!"

There were no convulsions. No screams.

Neither the Levitation that marked a Deep Dive nor the haze that had unleashed the shock wave a moment earlier remained.