Chapter 822: Distraught Couronne! Humanity's Leader, Riku
Ren's arrival in this war-torn world served a dual purpose. First, he wanted to guide Shuvi into truly understanding humanity and the concept of a 'heart'—a core objective of his trip. On the flip side, he couldn't deny his own deep curiosity about this brutal, apocalyptic era.
"Shuvi," Ren began, his tone casual as he glanced down at the mechanical girl beside him. "From now on, you're completely cut off from the Ex Machina cluster. Any thoughts on that?"
Shuvi simply shook her head, her mechanical halo shifting slightly. "I will listen to Ren-ge."
Her voice lacked its former rigid, robotic cadence, replaced by a soft, unwavering trust. In her eyes, Ren was now her absolute priority.
Ren smiled, reaching out to pat her head. "Then let's take a stroll and explore this world together."
Elsewhere, within the hidden, subterranean ruins of a human settlement.
"Couronne, what's wrong?"
The white-haired young man, Riku—the weary but resolute leader of this fragile human colony—frowned. He had noticed Couronne staring blankly at the cavern walls, completely distracted since dawn.
Couronne blinked, quickly shaking her head to mask her daze. "It's nothing."
The truth was far more complicated. Her absent-mindedness stemmed from an impossibly vivid dream she had experienced. In that dream, she had lived out decades of an entirely different life. Every single day of those illusory years had deeply influenced her, altering her perspective and leaving a lingering, surreal residue on her waking reality.
Seeing her obvious reluctance to explain, Riku didn't press the issue. He simply gave her a long, meaningful look. "Just make sure to protect the colony while I'm gone."
Riku turned, leading a small, grim-faced squad of his companions out of the hidden settlement. A nearby human stronghold had recently been obliterated—not by a direct attack, but merely caught in the catastrophic crossfire of a battle between the higher races. They needed to scavenge the ruins and search for any impossible survivors.
Humanity was pitifully weak in this era. They were the lowest on the food chain, entirely incapable of participating in the Great War. Yet, the mere shockwaves of clashing gods and monsters were more than enough to wipe out entire human populations. The very air outside was choked with toxic black ash and lethal magical fallout, rendering the surface utterly uninhabitable for their fragile lungs.
Riku and his squad trudged through the desolate wasteland, their faces obscured by heavy, crude gas masks. They looked pathetic, scurrying like rats through the ruins of a broken world. But pride meant nothing. They had to survive.
However, scavenging the surface was never safe.
A sudden, guttural crunch echoed through the ash-filled fog, instantly freezing the squad in their tracks. They slowly turned their heads. Pure, unadulterated horror drained the blood from their faces.
"It's a Demonia!"
The Demonia. Ranked eleventh among the sixteen Exceed races. While they were far from the apex predators of this world, they were the absolute last creatures Riku and his team ever wanted to encounter.
Most of the higher races possessed intelligence. They could be reasoned with, avoided, or at least understood. The Demonia, however, were grotesque, failed biological weapons—byproducts of the Demon King's botched attempts to artificially engineer a new Phantasma. They possessed abysmal intelligence, driven purely by a primal, insatiable instinct for slaughter and destruction.
Encountering a Demonia meant that negotiation, surrender, or even being taken as a prisoner were impossible fantasies. There was only mindless butchery.
Worse still, the very presence of a Demonia radiated a natural, corrosive mental pollution that could shatter a fragile human mind.
Riku didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second. "Run!" he roared through his respirator.
The squad scattered instantly, their boots kicking up clouds of toxic black ash as they sprinted for their lives.
"Gah—!"
A sickening tear of flesh echoed behind them.
Humanity was simply too slow. The agonizing, wet screams of his dying companions tore through the desolate landscape, piercing straight into Riku's chest. His jaw locked tight, a vein pulsing violently at his temple. The guilt threatened to crush him, but he forced his legs to keep pumping. He couldn't stop. He couldn't look back. His life was the anchor keeping their entire colony from collapsing into despair.
Now was not the time to die. He had to live.
"Graaagh!"
But fate in this world was merciless. Riku's boots skidded to a halt against the jagged earth.
His pupils shrank to pinpricks. Emerging from the twisted steel ruins directly in his path were three more hulking, grotesque Demonia, their misshapen limbs twitching with predatory anticipation.
He glanced over his shoulder. The original beast that had just butchered his squad was rapidly closing the distance, its maw dripping with fresh, crimson blood.
He was trapped. Completely out of options.
'Is it over?'
A suffocating wave of helplessness washed over Riku. He bit down so hard on his lower lip that his teeth pierced the flesh beneath his gas mask. Warm, metallic blood flooded his mouth, sliding down his throat. The sharp, rusty taste jolted his brain, a cruel sensory reminder that this nightmare was absolute reality.
Riku let out a slow, trembling breath, the fight finally draining from his exhausted muscles.
'Perhaps... this is all the future holds for humanity.''Goodbye, you unfair, rotten world...'
Riku let his eyelids fall shut, bracing himself for the inevitable, tearing agony of death.
However.
The agonizing strike never came.
Instead, the chaotic, roaring wasteland plunged into an absolute, suffocating silence. It was so deeply quiet that he could have heard a pin drop against the ash.
"Is Ren-ge going to save him?" a soft, distinctly feminine voice chimed in the stillness.
"Heh. I just find this guy pretty interesting," a smooth, relaxed male voice replied, carrying a hint of dry amusement.
Riku snapped his eyes open.
Standing casually in front of him were a man and a young girl. Both were dressed in immaculate, elegant clothing without a single speck of ash or grime on them—an impossible sight in this ruined world.
Riku didn't immediately try to deduce their race. His survival instincts forced him to scan his surroundings first, and what he saw made his breath hitch.
Everything was frozen.
The hulking Demonia were locked in mid-lunge, their grotesque muscles strained, spit hovering in the air just outside their jaws. Even the toxic black ash drifting through the wind hung perfectly suspended in the atmosphere, like a paused painting.
His mind raced at a frantic pace. What kind of Exceed possessed the power to literally halt time itself?
"No need to overthink it. I'm human," the man said, effortlessly reading the frantic calculations in Riku's eyes.
'Human?'
Riku didn't immediately dismiss the claim. Instead, his sharp gaze shifted toward the girl standing beside the man. With her mechanical halo and synthetic appendages, she was clearly not human. He deduced that this terrifying temporal freeze had to be her doing.
"Ex Machina?" Riku rasped through his mask.
"Heh." Ren chuckled, reaching out to gently stroke Shuvi's metallic hair. "This is my little sister, Shuvi."
He then pointed a thumb at his own chest. "As for me, the name's Ren."
Without another word, Ren casually raised his hand and snapped his fingers.
Snap.
"Gyaaaargh—!"
The frozen Demonia suddenly shrieked in unison as time violently snapped back into motion. Before Riku's stunned eyes, the grotesque monsters began to rapidly expand. Their thick, leathery hides stretched and bulged grotesquely, swelling larger and larger until they reached a critical mass.
SQUELCH!
The massive beasts violently detonated like overinflated balloons, showering the ash-covered earth in a torrential downpour of black blood and pulverized viscera.
Riku stared at the smoking craters. 'They're... dead? Just like that?'
The howling wind of the wasteland resumed its natural course.
Riku's eyes narrowed sharply beneath his goggles. Eradicating a pack of Demonia with a mere snap of his fingers... was that the man's own power?
He instantly discarded Ren's earlier claim of being human. Humanity absolutely did not—could not—possess such reality-bending strength.
'Could he be... an Old Deus?'
Catching the deep suspicion and wild theories swirling in the white-haired youth's eyes, Ren didn't bother offering any further explanations. Whatever Riku chose to believe meant little to him.
If anything, Ren held a genuine sliver of respect for the sheer tenacity of humanity, struggling to survive in such a hellish, unforgiving ecosystem.
"Do you want me to revive your friends?" Ren asked casually, breaking the silence.
Riku, whose mind had been rapidly formulating a dozen different survival strategies, froze completely. His brain short-circuited. It was as if he had just heard a fairy tale read aloud in the middle of a slaughterhouse.
"You... what did you just say?" Riku stammered, his voice trembling. He was certain the toxic air had finally driven him mad.
"Tsk, tsk. Are your ears already failing you at such a young age? That won't do," Ren teased, shaking his head in mock disappointment.
"Ren-ge," Shuvi chimed in, her glowing eyes fixed on Riku. "He simply cannot process the statistical probability of your statement. He does not believe it."
"Haha, I know, I know. I was just teasing the guy to lighten the mood," Ren chuckled. He glanced at Shuvi with a warm sense of pride. The mechanical girl was becoming more human by the day, even learning how to play the straight man to his jokes.
Ren turned his attention back to the stunned leader and repeated himself, his tone shifting to something slightly more serious. "I can easily bring your squad back from the dead. Do you want me to do it?"
Riku swallowed hard. He hadn't misheard. But resurrection... did such a miraculous concept even exist in this cursed world?
If it were true...
Riku's gaze darkened, his pragmatic instincts kicking into overdrive. "You... what is your price? What do you want from me?"
"I know you're naturally paranoid, given the circumstances," Ren said, waving a hand dismissively. "But unfortunately for your bargaining strategies, I want absolutely nothing from someone as weak and destitute as you. Consider this me acting purely on a whim."
It was a rare display of unadulterated kindness from the overpowered transmigrator.
"Though," Ren added, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his lips, "there is a certain someone back in your settlement who has caught my interest."
Shuvi's mechanical ears twitched, her eyes lighting up with sudden realization. "Are you referring to Couronne-jie?"
"Couronne?!" Riku's entire body jolted as if struck by lightning.
His mind instantly flashed back to that morning, recalling the dazed, absent-minded expression Couronne had worn all day. Suddenly, the pieces of a very strange puzzle were beginning to fall into place.
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