Chapter 248 – Cheap Knockoff
Another day in the Demon Territory, on the day my girls will be launching their attack.
Hope nothing bad happens to them.
Yesterday, I somehow convinced Velvet not to drill into my skull by saying some dumb stuff. We didn’t really go into it in more detail before she forced me out of the engineering department wihout fixing my VISS Driver.
Lythea was still with me back then, so she took me to the school’s dorm and got me a place to spend the night before leaving to meet with the others.
Today came around, and I returned to the engineering department to meet with Velvet. She had me sit in a high-tech chair with a lot of scanners in a room that didn’t have much besides it and a computer. Velvet was on the other side of the desk, tapping away at the keyboard.
“Uhmm… Before I let myself relax, can you confirm something with me? You’re really not going to drill into my brain, are you?” That’s the kind of thing a girl still thinks about after knowing she just dodged a bullet. Can’t blame me for making sure?
“Huh? No. Why would I do that?” She was so engrossed with her work that she barely reacted.
“And no dissections or anything of the sort either?”
“*Sigh…* You’re getting on my nerves, walking on eggshells like Lythea. I already told you I don’t have a reason to hurt you anymore.”
Meaning you did before…
“But I still have no idea why. I didn’t do anything to change your mind! It’s not unreasonable for me to have some doubts…” I don’t think she’s lying. I’m still confused, but… Well… Maybe I can relax a little… Whoosh…
The scanner on the chair slid up and down for a while. Bits and pieces flash and make some tiny noises. Has she started the repairs already?
“It’s what you said back then.” Velvet only paid attention to the monitor. “It cleared you. We may have had some differences, but at least I know that our principles are not opposing. We actually walk the same path.” Are these ramblings of a genius? I don’t get it at all. “And stop spinning on that chair! You’re distracting me!”
“Ah… Sorry…” If she didn’t want people to spin, she shouldn’t have made it that way. Not that I have the courage to say that to her face. “That doesn’t clear it up though. What did I say? How are we on the same path? You mean we’re both guardians trying to prevent a catastrophe from destroying both worlds?”
“Eh? That’s what you were trying to do?” She paused her fingers. “I guess we also have that, but I was talking about your world’s culture.”
“Huh? Culture?!”
“It’s been a hobby of mine since I was young. Ever since the portals first appeared, many pieces of your world’s culture have fallen through to our world. Both games and anime, as soon as I got my hands on them, I was completely fascinated. As someone who seems well-versed enough in those kinds of things, I could instantly tell that you were an ally!” Her eyes held a longing glint for a second before she got back to work.
“Ah… It’s my passion that brought us together… I should have seen it coming.”
No wonder Carol complains that I do dumb shit and miraculously get through alright. This is way too dumb.
“Yeah. You’re right. I’d say I’m pretty well-versed. What have you played and watched and read so far? And how? You can’t really get a lot of the stuff working in here, can you?”
“Stop!” Her extended help from behind the monitor put a halt to that topic. “If you get me started on that, I won’t be able to focus on my work! You’ll tell me everything you know in a bit, just let me get the annoying work out of the way first.”
Ahaha… I’m the annoying work…
“Okay okay… I’m just gonna assume you’re also somewhat well versed. What are you doing right now?”
“What do you think? I’m working to fix the EX VISS Driver.”
EX? Has that always been there? “Huh… Just by me sitting on this chair?”
“Just by you sitting on that chair, yes. The EX VISS Driver merged with your soul when you stole it. It’s not longer the physical machine it once was, so interacting with it normally is impossible. Unless you’re on that chair.” Velvet tapped away, then let out a sigh. “Whew… This thing is ancient, though… Did I really make it this way? And it’s filled to the brim with errors. Maybe it’s a good thing that you got this piece of junk instead of Galene.”
“Don’t insult my VISS Driver! I’ll have you know it’s served me just fine until now!” I’m defending the VISS Driver against its own creator. What a world.
“You don’t have the VISS Driver! That’s the EX version. You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Haha!” She’s nitpicking me now.
“The ‘EX’ is a real thing? I thought the whole name was just nonsense!”
“It’s not nonsense! VISS stands for Velvet’s Instant Skill System, and the EX was for the experimental version. We were still working on it when you stole it, and it has a lot of problems. It doesn’t do a good enough job at filtering dangerous skills, and it doesn’t work for other people. For the Hero that’s supposed to journey with companions, that wouldn’t cut it.”
Yeah…
In the game, we can control which skills all the party members get, not just Galene’s. I was never able to do that. That wasn’t just a coincidence?
“Wow… I guess I really am clueless…” All of the ways the VISS Driver worked differently from what I remember are because it’s the experimental version? How did I never notice?
“That’s right. You would have been a perfectly boring girl without me. You should show some respect.” Velvet said. “And as thanks for sparing your life and fixing your EX VISS Driver, I think you owe me a favor…”
Here comes the moment another unreasonable request gets forced on me…
“I’ll hear you out, I guess… I’m not sure if I can help though…”
“I think you can… Let me just confirm a few things first…”
Velvet asked me some questions to make sure we’re on the same page. Portals? Yep, I’m aware. The boundary getting thinner? Also yes. Worlds getting pulled together, big tragedies, Miyuki filled me in.
“Alright. Then let me explain the reason the VISS Driver came to exist.” While we were talking, Velvet more or less finished the repair and walked over to the chair. “I created the VISS Driver in hopes of giving someone much stronger than me the power to stop the two worlds from merging. Someone who could stop my father.”
Oh! I studied this yesterday. “He’s the leader of the Tarthrus group, right? How does stopping him do anything?”
“Because he’s the person that connected our worlds to begin with.” Velvet paused. “Do you know what started the Demon’s rapid advancements? It all started with a machine my father engineered as the head of the Tarthrus group. An energy syphon able to generate a seemingly infinite amount of energy. With unlimited energy, our civilization was able to do pretty much whatever we wanted, which led to the current imbalance between humans and demons.”
“And you want to stop him, why?” I asked. “Is he planning on doing something bad with that power?”
“Well… That depends on your perspective. For the humans of this world, that power will eventually be used to control the world and subjugate all other races. Personally, I don’t think the sacrifice of lives is necessary for our prosperity, but conflicts are inevitable when there are large global alliances that can’t find common ground. The real problem is the source of that energy.”
With a vague look to the side, Velvet crossed her arms.
“The syphon creates its energy by connecting to a different dimension and… ‘syphoning’ its energy. The reason our worlds connected in the first place is exactly because of that. Your world was the one the machine attached to. As my father syphons more and more energy from your world, our worlds get pulled closer and closer. Eventually both worlds will physically overlap, which will cause natural disasters on global scale. Then, most likely, the survivors of our world will enter into a war with the survivors of your world for a place in this new world.”
Could that war be the disaster that Miyuki warned me about?
“My father and his close aides know this, but they’re confident that we’ll come out on top, but I don’t buy it. It’s not that simple. Who knows what this new world will look like after we go through all that? Will it be a place where anyone can be happy? Where life can exist?”
“It’s hard to imagine.”
“It is. Because there’s no way their plan will actually succeed…” Vevlet furrowed her brows. “When they say that the worlds will physically merge, I highly doubt that. I think that if the boundary breaks, something worse is going to happen. Everything we know will cease to be as it currently is. Both for our and your world.” She paused. “There are forces in our worlds that we don’t completely understand. The Three Pillars. And there are probably many more of those forces beyond our world. That boundary the syphon interacts with, that’s their territory. The more we interact with it, the riskier it gets.”
That’s a lot to take in, but… I think she’s right… Until I learned about the portals, supernatural stuff was something that only existed in fiction. The fact that someone was able to interfere with such a basic truth seems really dangerous, whether they did it intentionally or otherwise.
“And so, Iroha, as someone from the world that my father is trying to exploit, I’d like to ask for your help to stop him. I’m not asking for you to go after his head right now, but I want to know that I can count on you.”
Her request turned out not to be unreasonable at all…
“Yeah… yeah… If there’s something I can do, I’ll do my best, but…”
We still have problems. What does she plan to do after stopping her father? If the boundary goes back to normal and our worlds disconnect, their world will go back to being fiction.
“I don’t think that will happen.” Velvet shook her head. “Even if there was a game in your world where our world appeared, I don’t think they’re the same thing. Our world existed before it connected to yours.” How does she know? “Otherwise, how could a fictional machine connect to reality? I just don’t think it’s possible for our world to disappear like that.”
“Th- that… That makes sense…” Also explains why their world is not exactly the same as the game’s. It’s more like this world is an alternate universe that just happened to be very similar to the game.
Ahaha… Somehow connecting to an alternate universe is starting to sound like a reasonable thing. But it is more realistic than a game becoming real.
Still. Huge coincidence for this universe to be so similar to the game…
“I understand, Velvet. When the time comes, you can count on me!”