Chapter 136 137: ?'s Facility [II]
But that was all in his head… In reality, Koya was down on his knees clutching his head while screaming and Riffi doing the same.
? looked at them with a sigh.
He expected this to happen since these were the laws of the very world in place, any subject of the White King was prohibited from learning the knowledge of what their god had done… if they did, their brains would scramble and make them forget what they had learned.
'No matter how much time has passed, that man still is despicable.' ? thought with a sigh and after a bit, the two of them stopped moving and Koya looked up at him like nothing had happened.
"What the hell… Why am I on my knees?" Koya grunted as he massaged his head, "Riffi, do you remember anything?"
"No Master, my head hurts too." Riffi said as she used her paw to massage her head, she felt like she was forgetting something that was important.
"You were just about to suck my balls." ? said with a grin on his face and Koya's face as well as Riffi turned to disgust immediately. "It was a joke, you're supposed to be the hero here… Loosen up a bit."
He walked past Koya and Koya looked at his back as he turned back to face the blond haired man.
"Chop chop… we have two more places to visit." ? said and walked out of the room, Koya staggered onto his feet.
'For some reason, I can't seem to remember anything.' Koya thought as he tried to remember…
He remembered hearing about the Hoshigaki clan and thinking about Hakai's half-sister but after that, his memories were blank. 'System, do you know what happened?'
「Host's memories of the last minute have been deleted, it is advisable to not try to retrieve them」
'Even with my skill to protect against Mind Control? Also what do you mean by deleted?' Koya thought.
「...」
The System was not going to answer him and though Koya was feeling like there was a conspiracy going on, he walked out of the room as well.
"Master, are you okay?" Riffi asked with a concerned look on her face and he stroked her chin while looking at ? who was still walking forward.
"Of course I am, be on the lookout and stay sharp… This place is weird." Koya replied as he jogged a bit to catch up with this man.
? turned around and smiled at him while stopping and opening another door.
"Glad you could keep up, my facility isn't that big so you don't need to worry." ? said and entered this new room, at first, it was all white and then the room revealed itself.
It was wider than even the last room and featured different robots laid across stretchers that were being worked on by other robots. "I present to you, the Mimic Droid Manufactury."
The noise in the room was constant. If he hadn't known, he would have walked in and seen a hospital ward.
Each and everything in this room, including the humans that were working on the other robots were robots… like Renji and the several mimic droids, one couldn't know if they were humans until they were checked thoroughly and even then, there was a chance.
"These Mimic Droids are created in the shape of humans, unlike those villains in pieces of fiction that you have probably read since you review manga. I'm not cloning people after all but creating them from scratch. That shouldn't be a problem right?" ? said with a smile on his face. "Personally I think these are my best creations yet."
"Why?" Koya asked and ? raised an eyebrow turning to face him.
"Why what?"
"Why are you doing all this?" Koya finished and though he knew he sounded generic, he just wanted to know why… Mimicking humans, stealing blood, why was he doing all of this? What was his goal?
Why had ? even called him over?
"Well my goals are simply too complex for someone as young as you to understand." ? said. "But you could say that I do all this to tick a certain someone off and eventually, get my revenge."
He said it lightly, like it was something he'd been carrying for a long time.
Koya was confused, revenge on who?
So far, that was the thing about ? he was confused about… What kind of beef could someone have that would involve everyone in it indirectly?
"I'm far surprised that you haven't crashed out yet and tried destroying everything." ? placed a hand on his shoulder. "You have good self-control."
That was a compliment but strangely from him, it felt like being looked down on in a very annoying way.
He shrugged the man's hand off his shoulder.
"You're looking so disgusted again, I swear I washed up before I got here… this body is fresh out of the pod after all." ? said. "Do you have any questions for me?"
"Why do you have my blood? What do you plan to use the massive amount of blood you've collected to do?" He asked and ? chuckled while walking out of the room.
Koya followed him and the man walked a bit faster than usual.
"So you don't care about where I've infiltrated with the Mimic Droids? Or whether the people that I use to create Mimic droids are actually real people? You're less noble than I made you out to be, Koya-kun. What if I killed your friend Renji and replaced his body with a droid?" ? asked and Koya didn't speak, he was a bit hurt… so Koya didn't place the friendship on the pedestal that he did? "Harsh, you hurt me Koya-kun."
"I already did research about this using my wife, you had told me that the only connection you had with a girl once was in a Supercity… Apart from the ID that you forged to get into ALI, Renji Kusaba doesn't exist." Koya said, rather Hakai had told him all this but at the end of the day, he was aware.
"Aw man~" ? said and continued walking. "You're right, I don't really kill people neither do I use them to do Mimic Droids?"
"Then what about those Streamers that died up there?" Koya asked. "You're sure that you don't have anything to do with it?"
"Nah, that was some guy called the Irongate District Butcher… I'm definitely not responsible for that." ? said with a wave. "Or maybe it was me, I wouldn't really remember NPCs like that."
Calling living people NPCs was crazy work but hey, he couldn't judge at all… He was just like that when he got here, he didn't want to think back to those times.
"Now I remember you asked me what I was using that blood to do." The crimson haired man said while suddenly stopping in his tracks. "Well, yore and behold! Look forward and feast your eyes on the greatest of my creations!"
The bigger door opened up suddenly and revealed a wide room, but there was only a singular wide transparent container tube in the middle with green fluid in it.
Koya's eyes widened in surprise and ? started walking down the stairs making him follow.
"Pretty neat right?" ? asked with a proud smile on his face and Koya's eyes twitched.
"I honestly thought you were stealing blood to create an army of clones of every single person that you stole their blood from." Koya replied, it wouldn't be the first time that a villain had decided to start a Clone war but he had to give points to ? for originality at least.
"Oh, clones? I tried that centur–-" Koya and Riffi began spazzing out again and he collapsed to his knees rolling down the long staircase making ? facepalm himself and drag his hand down his face. "Fuck!"
By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Koya had started to wake up again.
"What the hell did you do to me?" Koya asked, this was the second time and he felt like shit… It had to be some sort of skill or something. He didn't even know where he was now.
"Blame your god, not me." ? replied with a sigh. "Follow along."
Riffi wanted to blast the man with void however Koya patted her head to make her stop.
"Don't worry." Koya sighed as well, They couldn't kill him now… if they could kill him at all, Tech Tube did say that ? had managed to get his own power and from what he remembered from the novel, Tech Tube had a physical avatar but his main body was that of a living AI so did that mean that this man was a living AI too?
"Koya-kun, you're missing the best part!" ? called and he stood back up, looking around the room.
This was the biggest room yet and probably the final room of the whole tour since it looked important but where was the army of clones?
Why would the man be harvesting so much blood from people across decades if he was only going to have one tube?
He walked over to the tube and the closer he got to this, the more his eyes widened.
"H… huh?" He looked in the container and a small baby was hovering within it, it had small blondish-white hair suspended within the green liquid… and around its neck was a collar too. "What is this?"
The baby wasn't moving. It was just suspended-still and perfectly preserved in the fluid like it was floating.
The collar around its neck was the size of a finger ring and the center of it beeped every second, he didn't like what he was seeing to be honest.
He was standing behind ? so he couldn't see the grin on the man's face.
"This is what my end goal is… Why have an army of useless clones when I have one perfect being?" ? asked while looking at the container. "This is an amalgamation of every DNA in the world… the genes of every clan from the very beginning of the Apocalypse of every clan until now including the Hoshigaki, the genes of even the White King and yourself, and even those of the Black Dragon and monsters too including the monster that the White King refused to name, It's in our history textbooks. You could say that this is my ultimate possession. What do you think, Koya-kun? Perfect isn't it?"
Koya really didn't have a word… he was very confused, the genes of everyone including him and the White King?
How did this man even get the blood of the White King? He was confused but all he knew was that this thing was dangerous… and ? was even more dangerous, how long had he been alive?
As long as the White King?
Regardless, he was too dangerous to be alive and so was this experiment… Now that he had it in front of him, Koya had to destroy it.
The decision took about half a second with no dramatic internal debate and no weighing options.
The experiment in that tube was built from his own DNA among everything else so there was no version of leaving this room where this ended well if he let this man live today.
Hollowblade immediately appeared in front of his hand from his Inventory and he clutched the blade instantly.
This thing could cut through mana and kill mages…
He remembered receiving it from HeroGod not too long ago and while he didn't know the effectiveness of it against ? who wasn't giving off any mana signature, he was going to kill him and put an end to the experiment too.
Koya stabbed the blade forward with both hands in an instant, aiming to pierce through the man's chest in one go however while he was mid-motion, he could feel an attack coming from the side fast…
By the time he stabbed it in, the attack would have stabbed through and he would be hit as well.
The Hollowblade went through ? like he was smoke with no resistance or impact.
The blade simply came out the other side and there was nothing on it… he had just stood there while the blade passed through his chest, looking mildly entertained.
'Frame Skip!' He activated the Kurohane clan Frame Magic to turn everything into slow-motion however it didn't… work?
There was nothing.
The familiar frames that normally appeared in the Frame World or even the familiar feeling of his senses reaching new heights as he crossed over to the new world didn't come…. It was like reaching for a door handle that wasn't there.
He was hit by the beam and knocked to the side with several tumbles as Riffi was sent flying to the ground as well.
"Master!" She stood back up and ran over to Koya who was on his knees with shaky eyes as his vision was flashing, his blood trailed the ground up until this point and his left shoulder had been blasted through completely leaving a hole in his body with more blood coming out of it.
One shot and his left shoulder was pierced through leaving a hole there… Since he didn't have Numb activated, it felt like hell but he gritted his teeth and kept down the pain.
Koya was still trying to understand what happened to Frame World and if it would affect his other skills.
"I'm fine." Koya assured her as the wound began healing again and he looked upward to see ? standing in the same place with the stab had gone through the man like he didn't exist and the person that had attacked him stepped out from the side.
Like ?, Koya couldn't sense him but he could see the man was tall with black hair and his pupils were glowing, had he shot out that hot beam from his eyes?
The white bodysuit with crimson lines running over it fit him like it had been made specifically for his measurements and the crimson lines weren't decoration, they glowed periodically like the collar that was around the neck of the baby.
"I hope you didn't think of me as idiotic enough to invite an enemy to my home base for no reason without a back-up plan." ? said while adjusting his clothes. "The real reason I was showing you everything is because you will not live to tell the tale naturally, and I'm sure you're wondering why your Frame Skip isn't working right?"
Koya coughed up some more blood, that single strike rattled his insides but at least Blessing was working against it, he would be fine and good to go in several minutes but he doubted ? would give him that much time to recuperate.
"We're in a different dimension of sorts, nobody will be able to reach you here… as this is a personal world I created and that spell won't work." ? said then took a step back letting the tall man come forward. "I guess I should introduce you to your opponent right? This is Derek Todd."
Koya was still looking at him, wondering why this person had an american name in an obvious Japanese manga… was it some sort of self-insert character that the God of novelty had placed in the novel?
'It didn't trigger? That bastard doesn't even regard Derek.' ? thought, he was planning to use the spazz to give Koya's body time to heal or something since it would make his intro more cooler.
Koya wouldn't know what happened but he would know that he had been attacked… that would have made a better entrance but ? sighed, he had to make with what he was due.
"And he is your end!" ? yelled out and Derek took a step forward, concentrating mana within his feet and shooting forward with a shockwave.
The air around Derek bent as the man's output of mana was so high it was physically pressing against the room.
It was like standing too close to a generator that was about to blow.
The ground under his foot caved inward completely leaving a full circle of fractured white floor radiating outward from where he pushed off.
The shockwave hit the walls before Derek even crossed half the distance.
He closed the distance between himself and Koya immediately after and his eyes began glowing.
"Oh shit…" Koya said and used his working hand to lift Hollowblade up to defend against the two beams that shot at him from Derek's eyes, the beams of mana and Hollowblade collided turning everywhere white.