Chapter 327: Cybernetic Abilities (4)
The peak realm of Level 8.
Lieutenant General Treffen, who had stepped into the domain of those monsters that transcended Hierarchy and humanity.
Even his formidable body was ultimately analyzed and dismantled within Davi’s spirit domain, merely to crumble back into human form.
This was by no means something Davi, a spirit, could achieve alone.
The Mobile Fortress possessed immense computational power and a power source, enough for Treffen to consider it his own body.
It was merely a miracle, momentarily manifested by Lennok, who absorbed its essence to the limit, vastly growing Davi’s vessel, and then guided her power in the correct direction from directly behind her.
However, the spirit domain, [Dream Virtual Realm], created as a result, was nothing short of a perfect counter, piercing Treffen’s vulnerability.
Thousands of blue cubic facets fell like snow within the domain. Innumerable blue lines, connecting points and surfaces, moved as if alive.
The visualization of thought exchange, moving at an inconceivable speed.
Davi’s will, contained within every fragment, infiltrated and interfered with Treffen’s body as if melting into it.
It hacked circuits that didn’t exist in his body, bypassed firewalls that shouldn’t be there, and filled and transformed empty system spaces.
The physical manifestation of cybernetic space.
It meant that Davi had been granted the privilege of extending her reach into the civilization of this land, which utilized magic-engineering.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!!
The number of parts spilling from Treffen’s body accelerated.
Even as he tried to pick them up, several times more screws and bolts slipped through his fingers.
At this rate, he would lose every part of his body within five minutes.
For Treffen, who had lost all control over the Mobile Fortress and was left with only this single core body, it meant true death.
Lennok had pronounced an unavoidable end for Treffen from the moment he deployed the spirit domain with Davi.
Treffen, who had been looking down at the parts spilling from his body, slowly stood up.
Clatter!!
Ignoring the parts pouring from his body as if shaking off dust, he raised his fist once more.
He unfurled his gradually thinning wings and spun his mana.
Lennok confirmed Treffen’s response and nodded.
“So your judgment didn’t stop even when your ego wavered.”
The conclusion Treffen had reached just before the spirit domain [Dream Virtual Realm] was deployed was correct.
This physical manifestation of the virtual space network, centered around the Cyber-Electronic Spirit, was ultimately a miracle that couldn’t be achieved without Lennok, the spellcaster.
The moment Lennok died, Davi would disappear, and the domain would vanish. Even his crumbling body could be restored.
All he needed was to kill Lennok and restore everything to normal before his body finally wore out and disappeared.
Lennok instantly stretched out his mana, stepped forward, and muttered.
“Show me everything you have. What it means to have stepped into Level 8.”
[Uwaaaaaaah!!!]
He swung his fist and unfurled his wings. His forearms became gaunt, and the membrane of his wings fell off.
Boom!!
He charged forward and slammed his shoulder. A shockwave exploded, and his shoulder joint burst.
A spherical dome, precariously shaking.
Behind the endless rain of screws and bolts falling to the ground below, Treffen moved like a madman.
The more he exerted himself to kill Lennok, the faster his body wore away.
The weighty rumble that accompanied each step was gone, replaced by the sound of a broken tin can echoing with every relentless forward charge.
Clank, clank!!
[Die, dieeeeee!!!]
Each time he turned his body, parts fell off and scattered in all directions, making a loud noise.
The endless exchange continued. But Treffen’s limbs, now so thin they resembled bare branches, hinted at the conclusion.
Thud!!
Treffen’s weakly thrown fist stopped, unable to even pierce Lennok’s bare hand.
[……]
Lennok silently looked at Treffen’s gaunt body, which was slumped forward, then grabbed his shoulder and pushed him back.
Treffen’s body, falling dozens of meters from the spherical ceiling open to the sky, plunged into the scrap heap beneath the deck.
Thud!!
The surrounding area was already filled with the wreckage of parts he had shed.
[……It’s not over.]
Treffen, who had lost all control of his body to Davi and was left with only a gaunt skeleton, muttered.
A bizarre sight, a faint red heart pulsating within the skeleton.
[As long as my consciousness data is uploaded to the network, I am immortal…!! If I were to just die here, I wouldn’t have started in the first place!!]
“…”
[Are you going to remain the City Council’s dog until the very end!!!]
To Treffen’s desperate shout, Lennok replied.
“I suspect the Vulcan City Council isn’t in a normal state.”
[…What?]
“I just couldn’t condone your methods. This city maintains a precarious balance on the interests of tens of millions of people. If you wanted revenge on the City Council, you should have chosen a smarter way.”
Whoosh!!
Above the crack in the sphere, Lennok extended his hand towards Treffen.
“At least that appearance isn’t the answer I wanted.”
As Davi, standing behind Lennok, drew up mana, thousands of cubic facets, which had been aimlessly floating within the domain, all soared towards the sky.
Following them, thousands of lines spread within the domain moved along the cubes, grasping the wall of the mechanical sphere and rotating.
As the scenery within the domain completely transformed, the mechanical sphere, obeying Davi’s command, instantly underwent a drastic change.
Rumble-rumble-rumble!!
A giant cylindrical prison connecting the ground and the ceiling. Lennok, standing on the ceiling, raised his mana towards Treffen, who had fallen to the ground.
Huge sparks flew on the wall of the giant cylinder, forming rails. It began to draw long paths, as if marking a target zone.
Crackle!!!
[Aaaaaaaah!!]
The end of the ripple rail created by electromagnetic force.
Realizing that its direction was aimed squarely at his chest, Treffen screamed like a madman.
A metal bullet the size of a forearm, compressed at Lennok’s fingertips, shot downwards, turning into a streak of light.
Wheeeeeee!!!
The modified Mobile Fortress transformed into a cylinder. A railgun fired using the entire fortress as two gigantic rails.
Unable to withstand the impact, the gun barrel crumpled and collapsed, and the lower part of the cylinder exploded upon the impact of the bullet reaching the ground.
Crash!!!
Treffen’s body, reduced to nothing but a skeleton, evaporated like dust and vanished.
Treffen’s consciousness data, having instantly lost its body, was retransmitted to Gearsight’s backup server.
However, even that series of electrical signals was trapped among the thousands of cubic facets filling the domain and melted away as if dissolving.
[Please… no…….]
Treffen’s final death throes echoed.
An electrical signal that had lost the organ to produce sound. That voice, which shouldn’t have been heard, transformed into a timbre in the physically manifested cybernetic space and reached Lennok’s ears.
Feeling Treffen’s consciousness completely vanish within the domain, Lennok slowly exhaled.
“Phew…”
The moment he succeeded in awakening Davi through Thunder Convergence and deploying the Domain, the battle was effectively over.
The reason Lennok had gone to such lengths to deal with Treffen was simply to leave no room for error.
He instantly transformed the entire Mobile Fortress into a railgun turret, using extreme compressed firepower to completely evaporate the remaining parts debris beneath the deck, preventing consciousness data from being extracted externally.
Immediately afterward, by deploying Davi’s domain at full power to completely erase Treffen’s consciousness and the backup network, he had thoroughly eliminated any possibility of Treffen’s revival.
Rumble-rumble-rumble!!!
The Mobile Fortress, transformed into a gigantic machine tower, began to slowly sway.
It could no longer withstand the continuous transformations without pause and the recoil from being used as a railgun turret.
Boom!!
The very top of the collapsing machine tower. As Lennok’s body swayed, losing balance, the gigantic three-tailed fox seemed to have been waiting, seizing him and placing him on its back.
Then, gradually loosening the form of the domain, it descended to the ground as if walking through the air, gently landing.
Lennok, safely settled in the middle of the sandy desert, stroked Davi’s head.
“You did well.”
[It was trickier than I thought.]
Davi said, rubbing her much larger head against Lennok’s hand.
[According to calculations, I should have been able to take control of Treffen’s consciousness world the moment the domain was deployed.]
“Perhaps there are aspects of their fervent wish that cannot be explained by theory alone. In fact, when Treffen transplanted his consciousness into the Mobile Fortress, he couldn’t bring himself to give up his heart.”
Even though he had made the entire Mobile Fortress his body, didn’t he ultimately transplant his heart into the combat core body and communicate his will through it?
It was already over, but Lennok had been thinking that Treffen’s actions might have a meaning different from the ordinary.
“Where a person’s soul resides, in the head or the heart. It’s not strange that he couldn’t abandon such concerns even after completely modifying his entire body.”
Even though there was a clear power difference between Treffen and Lennok, the reason the battle was so one-sided was that Treffen’s body, reconstructed from machinery, and Davi’s abilities were in a perfectly complementary relationship.
An extreme counter, rarely seen even in this world where all sorts of abilities and spells ran rampant.
Moreover, because Lennok had thoroughly hidden Davi’s existence, Gearsight was caught completely off guard, without any chance to detect her presence.
By first eliminating the consciousnesses of the researchers who should have been assisting Treffen in real-time, adjusting his state, and proposing countermeasures, Treffen found himself helpless, unable to resist Davi’s interference, and self-destructed.
Lennok only helped Davi build the Domain and bought her time to adapt to her altered power and abilities.
The one who truly crushed Treffen and Gearsight’s ambitions was none other than this Cyber-Electronic Spirit.
“How does it feel to be a spirit with a Domain?”
Lennok stroked Davi’s head and asked with a smile.
Through various conditions, and because of the opponent, it was something that became possible, but Davi had gained a spirit domain.
Her spirit domain defined a specific area as a unique network, a kind of illusion that physically manifested interference capabilities previously only possible in the cybernetic world.
It was tantamount to forcefully granting cybernetic space to objects that didn’t possess systems and networks, enabling interference.
As almost all civilization in this world is based on magic-engineering, the scope of her interference expanded dramatically from an intangible network.
Of course, since Davi herself hadn’t reached the Archmage level, and because it depended on various conditions and affinities, it would be difficult for her to possess near-omnipotent power.
But the fact that there were now more ways to interfere with various objects without placing a heavy burden on Lennok himself was a major boon.
[Well… I don’t really feel like I’ve accomplished anything great. It’s only possible because of Master, after all.]
But despite Lennok’s words, Davi calmly licked her paw.
[Rather than that, shouldn’t we be thinking about how to play innocent when we research spirit spells with the professor now?]
“…”
Indeed, hadn’t he been researching with Aris how to raise spirit spells to Level 7 just before participating in this operation?
[If I go back to the next meeting with a bunch of new abilities, she’ll probably be thrilled.]
“Are you going to keep talking as if it’s not your problem?”
Lennok grabbed both of Davi’s ears and rubbed them roughly at her sharp, accurate remark.
“First, we need to figure out how to make that tail and body size smaller.”
[My body size will return to normal once the power I stole from the Mobile Fortress runs out. The tail… wait a moment.]
Davi suddenly lifted her head and muttered.
[It seems they’re almost done too. They’re coming this way.]
“…What?”
Two fortresses had been charging towards the mega-city.
One of them, the fortress Treffen had gained through physical synchronization, Lennok had personally dealt with.
And the other fortress, which Aris and Hina had been responsible for, had also stopped its fierce charge, tilting precariously and collapsing.
It slowly tilted, spewing smoke.
Behind the burning wreckage of the fortress, two figures emerged from the desert.
Hina was carefully supporting Aris’s drooping shoulders.
From the crown of Hina’s head, where her broken glasses were casually perched on her nose, the residual effects of Lennok’s [Remnant Thunder Body] still emanated.
Lennok and Davi exchanged glances and clicked their tongues simultaneously.
“…What do we do?”
[My body isn’t shrinking. Should I run away somewhere and drain some mana?]
“…”
Lennok, whose mind worked instantly, shook his head.
“No. It’s too late. Now, it would just look suspicious. Rather—”
[Rather?]
“Van-nim!!”
Hina, who had been walking with a tired face, stopped, waving her hand cheerfully when she saw Lennok sitting on the sand.
“Um, what’s that you’re riding?”
“My summoned beast.”
Lennok, dismounting from Davi’s back with a calm face, replied.
“The battle was so intense, I called her for help.”
[……]
Davi, wearing a fragment of Walter Martinez’s carapace like a mask, wagged her tail silently.
With the carapace covering the three-tailed fox’s upper body, it would be difficult to tell it was a fox, even if one recognized it as a beast.
It was Lennok’s quick-witted judgment, but Hina’s expression was utterly bewildered.
“Ah, yes…”
“…”
[……]
Lennok saw Aris leaning on Hina’s shoulder with her eyes closed and asked casually.
“Is Professor Richellen alright?”
“It seems she overexerted herself while drawing out mana. It’s just mild exhaustion, she’ll come to after a short rest.”
“I see…”
The important thing was to prevent Aris from seeing Davi’s true form.
All he needed to do was shrink Davi’s body before Aris regained consciousness, then secretly hide her back in his arms.
Just as Lennok was about to sigh in relief.
“Mmm…”
Aris slowly opened her eyes with a somewhat subdued voice.
Her blue eyes met Lennok’s precisely, then naturally drifted towards the three-tailed fox standing behind him.
“…”
Silence fell.
Aris asked.
“What is this?”
“Uh, she’s my summoned beast.”
Lennok replied, feeling cold sweat trickle down his back.
Aris, leaning against a nearby rock with Hina’s support, narrowed her eyes.
“Somehow, it looks very similar to a spirit I know…”
A moment of absolute crisis. Lennok quickly wracked his brain for a plausible excuse.
“Contrary to how she looks, she’s a fierce and wild one, so I usually don’t call her out much, my friend.”
[Master?]
Davi’s flustered voice echoed in the earpiece.
Instead of answering, Lennok quickly met Davi’s gaze through the mask and nodded.
The spirit, understanding her master’s fervent wish, faithfully responded.
Davi raised a paw and let out a resounding cry.
[Krooong, krooong.]
“…”
“…”
Aris’s eyes grew cold.
Hina, who had been observing the entire situation, subtly edged away.
“Um, could I go look around for a moment?”