There were two ways to make a target hear a telepathic conversation.
The first was to transmit a signal directly, allowing the target to receive whatever the sender wished to convey.
With this method, however, the target could only respond by speaking aloud. Their thoughts remained inaccessible.
The second method involved more than simply sending a signal. The user forcibly connected their consciousness to the target's mind, allowing the two of them to communicate telepathically. The target only needed to think of a response for it to be heard.
The intruder could even read fragments of the target's memories.
Orphee Lam Tao could not tolerate what Lacus had done. By openly humiliating him to his face and treating him as an equal unworthy of consideration, she had wounded his pride beyond endurance.
He wanted revenge.
He would invade the mind of the man beside her and seize control of him.
Orphee despised this man even more than he despised Lacus's rejection. Lacus had practically confessed her love to him, yet the man's reaction had been strangely calm.
She was the finest woman in the world, the woman Orphee had pursued, only to be rejected. Yet she had turned around and pursued this man instead, and he could still respond with such indifference.
It made Orphee look like even more of a fool.
Once he gained control of the man, he would torture him mercilessly. He would make Lacus despair over the very person she claimed to love.
However, the instant Orphee forced his consciousness into Kain's mind, his entire body froze in shock.
It felt as though he had connected himself to a black hole.
The moment that black hole's gravitational pull seized his consciousness, it began dragging him inward, twisting and tearing at his will.
His whole body felt as though it were being ripped apart, especially his brain.
It was as if countless barbed needles had been driven into his skull. Threads attached to those needles were being pulled in every direction, threatening to tear his brain into countless pieces.
The agony was so terrible that he desperately wanted to lose consciousness and die.
Yet the pain did not originate solely from his physical body. It tore directly through his consciousness and soul.
Only death could end it.
Until death came, he could do nothing but endure an existence worse than dying.
Orphee desperately retracted his consciousness, struggling with everything he had to escape the black hole.
It was like someone stepping into a bear trap and wrenching their leg free by force. Huge chunks of flesh were torn away in the process, perhaps even the entire limb.
"Aaaaaaargh!"
His scream was so agonized that it nearly destroyed his vocal cords.
"Orphee! What happened? Lacus! What have you done?!"
Aura's expression had already grown increasingly ugly during Lacus's declaration. Now, seeing her precious son suddenly collapse in agony and slam his head against the floor, her face turned livid.
She furiously questioned Lacus.
Lacus must have done something to him.
Even as she shouted, Aura Maha Khyber fixed Lacus with an intense stare and forcibly invaded her mind.
This was impossible!
Aura's pupils contracted.
She had noticed something, particularly the rings worn by several people in the room.
Their flickering followed a rhythm that corresponded directly to the intensity of her mental intrusion.
Aura Maha Khyber's expression grew even uglier.
"Lady Aura, it seems you've discovered what our rings are designed to do."
Lacus's voice was icy.
"They were created specifically to counter the mental manipulation of Accords like you."
As she spoke, Lacus removed the ring from her hand.
The instant it came off, Aura Maha Khyber's gaze sharpened and bore down on her.
Lacus felt as though someone had struck her brain, sending a wave of dizziness through her.
She sensed another will attempting to burrow into her mind and search through her memories.
She immediately drove it out.
"Impossible!" Aura screamed.
Judging by their struggle, Aura was the one who looked like a fool now.
Lacus appeared to be the true queen of the Accords, while Aura herself was on the verge of being dominated instead.
"Why should it be impossible? It only proves that, in the end, you were never as capable as my mother."
Lacus answered with a cold smile.
Not only had she withstood Aura's mental intrusion, she was steadily forcing the woman's consciousness back.
Her words triggered an eruption of jealousy and hatred within Aura. Those emotions were directed not only at Lacus, but also at her mother.
So much for Aura being her mother's friend.
It would be more accurate to call them rivals, perhaps even enemies.
Lacus's mother and Aura Maha Khyber had both conducted research into Accords, but her mother had clearly been the more brilliant of the two. That was why she had been able to give birth to a daughter as exceptional as Lacus.
Furthermore, Aura had not been born an Accord. She had clearly transformed herself into one later in life.
Lacus learned this through their ongoing mental struggle.
Unable to accept defeat, Aura continued hammering her with psychic attacks. However, her consciousness was filled with impurities. Her jealousy, hatred, and countless other emotions carried fragments of information with them.
Even Aura's unnaturally young body was most likely maintained through extensive genetic modification.
Her mind could only exceed a certain threshold before her physical body came under tremendous strain.
Lacus could feel Aura growing increasingly agitated. Sweat poured from her body in an unnatural torrent, almost as if she were a towel being wrung dry.
It was as though her body had produced too much heat and was desperately trying to cool itself down.
"Shura!"
Aura shouted a name.
It belonged to her chief bodyguard, a white-haired young man.
He moved with such speed that Lacus had no time to react, appearing directly before her in an instant.
Boom!
A deafening crash rang out, as though an artillery shell had struck the floor.
The ground certainly looked as though it had been hit by a smaller-caliber shell.
A head that had nearly been flattened was buried in a shallow crater surrounded by radiating cracks.
A hand pressed firmly against the ruined head.
Its owner was the guardian knight Lacus had personally chosen.
Her guardian knight suddenly raised his other hand and caught a dinner knife that had torn through the air between his fingertips.
In the blink of an eye, the knife vanished from his hand.
At the same moment, Lacus heard a wet puncture.
She looked toward another of Aura's attendants, a red-haired young man. The dinner knife he had thrown was now embedded in his own throat, nearly piercing all the way through his neck.
He would spend his final moments in agony, suffocating as death closed in.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Three gunshots rang out in rapid succession.
At some point, Orphee Lam Tao had managed to push himself halfway upright. A smoking pistol was clutched in his hand.
Yet the person he had aimed at bore no gunshot wounds.
Instead, three holes appeared in Orphee's own head.
One pierced his right cheek, another his left eye, and the third his forehead.
Those fatal injuries instantly extinguished all life in his body.
The bullets had been deflected by the short blade of Lacus's chosen guardian knight and sent flying back at Orphee.
"No! Orphee! All of you, die!"
Aura's nearly deranged scream made Lacus's expression change.
Still locked in a mental contest with Aura Maha Khyber, she immediately understood what the woman intended to do.
Aura planned to detonate her own consciousness like an explosive, striking the minds of everyone in the banquet hall and driving them insane.
Her shattered psyche would become countless fragments of a mental virus. Anyone infected by them would descend into a frenzy and begin slaughtering everyone around them without distinguishing friend from foe.
Just as Aura Maha Khyber was about to turn herself into a psychic virus bomb, something abruptly extinguished the ignition.
Her entire body went limp, and she collapsed to the floor.
At the same time, nearly everyone in the banquet hall lost consciousness and fainted.
Lacus's face turned deathly pale. Her legs gave out beneath her, but someone caught her before she fell.
The sudden transformation throughout the hall had been caused by the man supporting her.
He had used the same ability he had displayed at the previous concert, stopping Aura Maha Khyber's psychic bomb before it could detonate.
"Damn you... This shouldn't... Ngh!"
The psychic bomb had failed to explode, but Aura Maha Khyber had clearly suffered catastrophic damage.
Her eyes were filled with resentment and malice, but blood suddenly surged into her throat and cut off the rest of her words.
Blood began pouring from her nose and ears.
Her eyes bulged farther and farther from their sockets, as if the pressure inside her skull were rising uncontrollably.
It seemed her own psychic bomb was now rampaging throughout her body.
A moment later, both of her eyeballs burst.
At the same time, her childlike, youthful body began visibly withering and aging.
"Don't think you've won, Lacus! You'll see hell soon enough!"
(End of Chapter)
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