Chapter 135: What Does Despair Feel Like?
What was happening? Why was this happening? Why did these people want him dead so badly? Why were there so many of them?
Question after question, and not a single answer.
This "Sakura-chan" the golden-haired woman had mentioned — he had no idea who that was. He didn't know anyone by that name.
Zōken felt, not for the first time in this encounter, genuinely helpless. Five hundred years of accumulated power, and this was what it came to.
A flying girl overhead.
A spatial magus floating off to the side.
A male voice from somewhere behind the rubble — the source, presumably, of that crushing wave of presence that had swept through everything like a tide.
Whatever kind of being could produce an aura at that scale —
A Heroic Spirit? At this point in the timeline?
If not a Heroic Spirit, then a living king of some kind? And if he had somehow managed to offend a living king without knowing it, how was he still breathing right now? Even Zōken had enough self-awareness to know that wasn't plausible.
"My, the dust is really something — Tornado-nee-san's ability is extraordinary, isn't it. She dismantled that bounded field and brought down the whole building without even trying."
A fourth voice. A girl's, young, appearing from another direction entirely.
Zōken had stopped reacting properly.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Four strangers. Were there more?
And according to what he'd just heard, his home and his years-old bounded field had been destroyed by someone called "Tornado." Casually. Without apparent effort.
They looked like teenagers. All of them. The oldest might have been in her mid-twenties, he couldn't be certain. But teenagers, dismantling the work of a five-hundred-year-old magus.
Had the world changed that much? Had he fallen that far behind?
Before he could complete that thought, a fifth voice — colder than the others, clipped and businesslike: "We've been in this world for half an hour. Let's finish the old worm and go before Alaya or Gaia takes notice."
Zōken blinked.
Type-Moon world. Alaya. Gaia.
He understood almost none of what these people said to each other.
The part he did understand was: they wanted him dead. Quickly.
He allowed himself a small private exhale of relief.
They could do what they liked to this body. As long as the brain worm survived, he would survive. And the brain worm was not here. It was hidden somewhere distant, somewhere thoroughly secured. Whatever these people did to his current form, they would not get to it.
Just endure this. Let them think they've won. Once this passes, I'll use every contact I have to find out who these people are. And then, one by one—
He was already outlining the revenge. He couldn't match them openly. But in shadow, through proxies, through patience —
Zōken had always been good at patience.
A young man's voice cut through his planning: "Have you found the brain worm's location?"
The golden-haired woman answered lightly. "My, not to worry — I never deliver sloppy work. The old worm's scent is thoroughly unpleasant, but that made it quite easy to trace the worm's position." A brief pause. "This level of worm-craft barely qualifies as the basics. My own dabbling in the field runs circles around it."
"..."
The cold satisfaction Zōken had been nursing evaporated.
They know about the brain worm.
The realization went through him like something physical.
How. How do they know about the brain worm. That is mine alone. No one else has ever known. Is one of them a mind-reader?
And the way she said it — casual, almost bored — as if locating it was not going to be difficult.
She's bluffing.
She had to be bluffing.
The brain worm was not nearby. It was nowhere near here. He had placed it far away, in a location that had taken years to secure. If they found it this quickly, then everything — every precaution, every year of careful planning — had been worthless.
Yukari did not particularly care what was running through the old creature's head.
The Admin had been right: they couldn't linger. Gaia and Alaya noticing them was not a pleasant outcome to contemplate.
She extended one pale finger and drew a gap open in the air before her. From somewhere — no one would have been able to say where — she produced a pair of metal tweezers.
She inserted them into the gap.
"Oh my~ it's a little deep. Let me reach in a bit further."
Nearby, Ryū's expression developed a slight twitch. Was the gap youkai under the impression that the Group's content standards didn't apply outside the chat interface? There was a minor present — Kaguya was sixteen — and Yukari's running commentary was not appropriate for —
The tweezers withdrew.
The gap sealed itself behind them.
Clasped between the tips: a small, plump, deeply unsettling worm, twisting and struggling against the grip.
Yukari looked at it with visible distaste. "Why is it this hideous?"
Zōken had gone completely still.
He could feel the distance. He could feel his brain worm — found, removed, held — and the gap between himself and it.
The revenge plan had vanished. All of it. The entire architecture of contingency and patience he had been building in his head for the last few minutes — gone.
His expression was that of a man experiencing something his five hundred years of existence had not equipped him to process.
It was hidden that thoroughly. And she just... reached in and took it.
What is she—
What is that ability—
Before a single word could form in his throat, the worm in the tweezers gave one more violent twist —
— and burst.
Fluid spattered across Yukari's fingers. She blinked, then looked mildly sheepish.
"Oops. A little too much pressure."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you